ab Epicuro soluti non metuimus Deos said Cicero and thence came this acceptation of the word that superstition should signifie an unreasonable fear of God It is true he and all his scholars extended the case beyond the measure and made all fear unreasonable but then if we upon grounds of reason and divine revelation shall better discern the measure of the fear of God whatsoever fear we find to be unreasonable we may by the same reason call it superstition and reckon it criminall as they did all fear that it may be call'd superstition their authority is sufficient warrant for the grammar of the appellative and that it is criminall we shall derive from better principles But besides this there was another part of its definition 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the superstitious man is also an Idolater 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one that is afraid of something besides God The Latines according to their custome imitating the Greeks in all their learned notices of things had also the same conception of this and by their word Superstitio understood the worship of Daemons or separate spirits by which they meant either their minores Deos or else their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their braver personages whose souls were supposed to live after death the fault of this was the object of their Religion they gave a worship or a fear to whom it was not due for when ever they worship'd the great God of heaven and earth they never cal'd that superstition in an evill sense except the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the◠that beleeved there was no God at all Hence came the etymology of superstition it was a worshipping or fearing the spirits of their dead Heroes quos superstites credebant whom they thought to be alive after their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Deification or quos superstantes credebant standing in places and thrones above us and it alludes to that admirable description of old age which Solomon made beyond all the Rhetorick of the Greeks and Romans Also they shall be afraid of that which is high and fears shall be in the way intimating the weaknesse of old persons who if ever they have been religious are apt to be abused into superstition They are afraid of that which is high that is of spirit and separate souls of those excellent beings which dwell in the regions above meaning that then they are superstitious However fear is most commonly its principle alwaies its ingredient For if it enter first by credulity and a weak perswasion yet it becomes incorporated into the spirit of the man and thought necessary and the action it perswades to dares not be omitted for fear of an evill themselves dream of upon this account the sin is reducible to two heads the 1. is Superstition of an undue object 2. Superstition of an undue expression to a right object 1. Superstition of an undue object is that which the Etymologist cals 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the worshipping of idols the Scripture addes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a sacrificing to Daemons in St. Paul and in Baruch where although we usually read it sacrificing to Devils yet it was but accidentall that they were such for those indeed were evill spirits who had seduced them and tempted them to such ungodly rites and yet they who were of the Pythagorean sect pretended a more holy worship and did their devotion to Angels But whosoever shall worship Angels do the same thing they worship them because they are good and powerfull as the Gentiles did the Devils whom they thought so and the error which the Apostle reproves was not in matter of Judgement in mistaking bad angels for good but in matter of manners and choice they mistook the creature for the Creator and therefore it is more fully expressed by St. Paul in a generall signification they worshipped the creature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 besides the Creator so it should be read if we worship any creature besides God worshipping so as the worship of him becomes a part of Religion it is also a direct superstition but concerning this part of superstition I shall not trouble this discourse because I know no Christians blamable in this particular but the Church of Rome and they that communicate with her in the worshipping of Images of Angels and Saints burning lights and perfumes to them making offerings confidences advocations and vowes to them and direct and solemn divine worshipping the Symbols of bread and wine when they are consecrated in the holy Sacrament These are direct superstition as the word is used by all Authors profane and sacred and are of such evill report that where ever the word Superstition does signifie any thing criminall these instances must come under the definition of it They are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a cultus superstitum a cultus Daemonum and therefore besides that they have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a proper reproof in Christian Religion are condemned by all wise men which call superstition criminall But as it is superstition to worship any thing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 besides the Creator so it is superstition to worship God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 otherwise then is decent proportionable or described Every inordination of Religion that is not in defect is properly called superstition 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Maximus Tyrius The true worshipper is a lover of God the superstitious man loves him not but flatters To which if we adde that fear unreasonable fear is also superstition and an ingredient in its definition we are taught by this word to signifie all irregularity and inordination in actions of Religion The summe is this the Atheist cal'd all worship of God superstition the Epicurean cal'd all fear of God superstition but did not condemn his worship the other part of wise men cal'd all unreasonable fear and inordinate worship superstition but did not condemn all fear But the Christian besides this cals every error in worship in the manner or excesse by this name and condemns it Now because the three great actions of Religion are to worship God to fear God and to trust in him by the inordination of these three actions we may reckon three sorts of this crime the excesse of fear and the obliquity in trust and the errors in worship are the three sorts of superstition the first of which is only pertinent to our present consideration 1. Fear is the duty we owe to God as being the God of power and Justice the great Judge of heaven and earth the avenger of the cause of Widows the Patron of the poor and the Advocate of the oppressed a mighty God and terrible and so essentiall an enemy to sin that he spared not his own Son but gave him over to death and to become a sacrifice when he took upon him our Nature and became a person obliged for our guilt Fear is the great bridle of intemperance the modesty of the spirit and the restraint of
this sense and for these reasons it is that although a lukewarm Christian hath gone forward some steps towards a state of holynesse and is advanced beyond him that is cold and dead and unconcerned and therefore speaking absolutely and naturally is neerer the Kingdome of God then he that is not yet set out yet accidentally and by reason of these ill appendages he is worse in greater danger in a state equally unacceptable and therefore must either goe forward and still doe the work of God carefully and diligently with a Fervent spirit and an Active hand with a willing heart and a chearefull eye or it had been better he had never begun 2. It concerns us next to enquire concerning the duty in its proper instances that we may perceive to what parts and degrees of duty it amounts we shall find it especially in the duties of faith of prayer and of charity 1. Our faith must be strong vigorous active confident and patient reasonable and unalterable without doubting and feare and partiality For the faith of very many men seems a duty so weak and indifferent is so often untwisted by violence or ravel'd and intangled in weak discourses or so false and fallacious by its mixture of interest that though men usually put most confidences in the pretences of faith yet no pretences are more unreasonable 1. Our faith and perswasions in Religion is most commonly imprinted in us by our country and we are Christians at the same rate as we are English or Spaniards or of such a family our reason is first stained and spotted with the dye of our kindred and country and our education puts it in grain and whatsoever is against this we are taught to call a temptaiton in the mean time we call these accidentall and artificiall perswasions by the name of faith which is onely the are of the countrey or an heireloome of the family or the daughter of a present interest Whatever it was that brought us in we are to take care that when we are in our faith be noble and stand upon its most proper and most reasonable foundation it concerns us better to understand that Religion which we call Faith and that faith whereby we hope to be saved 2. The faith and the whole Religion of many men is the production of fear Men are threatned into their perswasions and the iron rod of a Tyrant converts whole nations to his principles when the wise discourses of the Religion seems dull as sleep and unprevailing as the talk of childhood That 's but a deceitfull faith which our timorousnesse begot and our weaknesse nurses and brings up The Religion of a Christian is immortall and certaine and perswasive and infallible and unalterable and therefore needs not be received by humane and weake convoycs like worldly and mortall Religions that faith is lukewarm and easie and trifling which is onely a beleef of that which a man wants courage to disbeleeve 3. The faith of many men is such that they dare not trust it they will talk of it and serve vanity or their lust or their company or their interest by it but when the matter comes to a pinch they dare not trust it When Antisthenes was initiated into the mysteries of Orphâ—us the Priest told him that all that were of that Religion immediately after death should be perfectly happy the Philosopher asked him why he did not dye if he beleeved what he said such a faith as that was fine to talk of at table or eating the sacrifices of the Religion when the mystick man was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 full of wine and flesh of confidence and religion but to dye is a more material consideration and to be chosen upon no grounds but such a faith which really comes from God and can secure our reason and our choyce and perfect our interest and designes And it hath been long observed concerning those bold people that use their reason against God that gave it they have one perswasion in their health and another in their sicknesse and fears when they are well they blaspheme when they die they are superstitious It was Bias his case when he was poyson'd by the Atheismes of Theodorus no man died more like a coward and a fool as if the gods were to come and goe as Bias pleased to think and talk so one said of his folly If God be to be feared when we die he is also to be feared in all our life for he can for ever make us die he that will doe it once and that when he please can alwayes And therefore all those perswasions against God and against Religion are onely the production of vicious passions of drink or fancy of confidence and ignorance of boldnesse or vile appetites of vanity or fiercenesse of pride or flatteries and Atheisme is a proportion so unnaturall and monstrous that it can never dwell in a mans heart as faith does in health and sicknesse in peace and warre in company and alone at the beginning and at the end of a designe but comes from weake principles and leaves shallow and superficiall impressions but when men endevour to strengthen and confirme it they onely strive to make themselves worse then they can Naturally a man cannot be an Atheist for he that is so must have something within him that is worse either then man or devill 4. Some measure their faith by shews and apparencies by ceremonies and names by professions and little institutions Diogenes was angry at the silly Priest that thought he should be immortall because he was a Priest and would not promise so concerning Agesilaus and Epaminondas two noble Greeks that had preserved their country and lived vertuously The faith of a Christian hath no signification at all but obedience and charity if men be just and charitable and good and live according to their faith then onely they are Christians whatsoever else is pretended is but a shadow and the image of a grace for since in all the sects and institutions of the world the professors did in some reasonable sort conform to the rules of the profession as appears in all the Schooles of Philosophers and Religions of the world and the practises of the Jews and the usages and the countrey customes of the Turks it is a strange dishonour to Christianity that in it alone men should pretend to the faith of it and doe nothing of what it perswades and commands upon the account of those promises which it makes us to beleeve * He that means to please God by his faith must have his faith begotten in him by the Spirit of God and proper arguments of Religion he must professe it without feare he must dare to die for it and resolve to live according to its institution he must grow more confident and more holy have fewer doubtings and more vertues he must be resolute and constant far from indifferency and above secular regards he must by it regulate his life
XXV SERMONS PREACHED AT GOLDEN-GROVE Being for the VVinter half-year BEGINNING ON ADVENT-SUNDAY UNTILL WHIT-SUNDAY By JEREMY TAYLOR D. D. Vae mihi si non Evangelizavero LONDON Printed by E. Cotes for Richard Royston at the Angel in Ivie-Lane M. D C. LIII To the right Honourable and truely Noble RICHARD Lord VAUHAN Earle of Carbery c. MY LORD I Have now by the assistance of God and the advantages of your many favours finished a Year of Sermons which if like the first year of our Saviours preaching it may be annus acceptabilis an acceptable year to God and his afflicted hand-maid the Church of England a reliefe to some of her new necessities and an institution or assistance to any soule I shall esteem it among those honors and blessings with which God uses to reward those good intentions which himselfe first puts into our hearts and then recompenses upon our heads My Lord They were first presented to God in the ministeries of your family For this is a blessing for which your Lordship is to blesse God that your Family is like Gideons Fleece irriguous with a dew from heaven when much of the voicinage is dry for we have cause to remember that Isaac complain'd of the Philistims who fill'd up his wells with stones and rubbish and left no beauvrage for the Flocks and therefore they could give no milke to them that waited upon the Flocks and the flocks could not be gathered nor fed nor defended It was a designe of ruine and had in it the greatest hostility and so it hath been lately undique totis Vsque adeo turbatur agris En ipse capellas Protenus aeger ago hanc etiam vix Tityre duco But My Lord this is not all I would faine also complaine that men feele not their greatest evill and are not sensible of their danger nor covetous of what they want nor strive for that which is forbidden them but that this complaint would suppose an unnaturall evill to rule in the hearts of men For who would have in him so little of a Man as not to be greedy of the Word of God and of holy Ordinances even therefore because they are so hard to have and this evill although it can have no excuse yet it hath a great and a certain cause for the Word of God still creates new appetites as it satisfies the old and enlarges the capacity as it fils the first propensities of the Spirit For all Spirituall blessings are seeds of Immortality and of infinite felicities they swell up to the comprehensions of Eternity and the desires of the soule can never be wearied but when they are decayed as the stomach will be craving every day unlesse it be sick and abused But every mans experience tels him now that because men have not Preaching they lesse desire it their long fasting makes them not to love their meat and so wee have cause to feare the people will fall to an Atrophy then to a loathing of holy food and then Gods anger will follow the method of our sinne and send a famine of the Word and Sacraments This we have the greatest reason to feare and this feare can be relieved by nothing but by notices and experience of the greatnesse of the Divine mercies and goodnesse Against this danger in future and evill in present as you and all good men interpose their prayers so have I added this little instance of my care and services being willing to minister in all offices and varieties of imployment that so I may by all meanes save some and confirme others or at least that my selfe may be accepted of God in my desiring it And I thinke I have some reasons to expect a speciall mercy in this because I finde by the constitution of the Divine providence and Ecclesiasticall affaires that all the great necessities of the Church have been served by the zeale of preaching in publick and other holy ministeries in publick or private as they could be had By this the Apostles planted the Church and the primitive Bishops supported the faith of Martyrs and the hardinesse of Confessors and the austerity of the Retired By this they confounded Hereticks and evill livers and taught them the wayes of the Spirit and left them without pertinacy or without excuse It was Preaching that restored the splendour of the Church when Barbarisme and Warres and Ignorance either sate in or broke the Doctors Chaire in pieces For then it was that divers Orders of religious and especially of Preachers were erected God inspiring into whole companies of men a zeal of Preaching And by the same instrument God restored the beauty of the Church when it was necessary shee should be reformed it was the assiduous and learned preaching of those whom God chose for his Ministers in that work that wrought the Advantages and persuaded those Truths which are the enamel and beautie of our Churches And because by the same meanes all things are preserved by which they are produc'd it cannot but be certaine that the present state of the Church requires a greater care and prudence in this Ministerie then ever especially since by Preaching some endevour to supplant Preacbing and by intercepting the fruits of the flocks to dishearten the Shepheards from their attendances My Lord your great noblenesse and religious charitie hath taken from mee some portions of that glory which I designed to my selfe in imitation of St. Paul towards the Corinthian Church who esteemed it his honour to preach to them without a revenue and though also like him I have a trade by which as I can be more usefull to others and lesse burthensome to you yet to you also under God I owe the quiet and the opportunities and circumstances of that as if God had so interweaved the support of my affaires with your charitie that he would have no advantages passe upon mee but by your interest and that I should expect no reward of the issues of my Calling unlesse your Lordship have a share in the blessing My Lord I give God thanks that my lot is fallen so fairely and that I can serve your Lordship in that ministerie by which I am bound to serve God and that my gratitude and my duty are bound up in the same bundle but now that which was yours by a right of propriety I have made publick that it may still be more yours and you derive to your selfe a comfort if you shall see the necessitie of others serv'd by that which you heard so diligently and accepted with so much pietie and I am persuaded have entertain'd with that religion and obedience which is the dutie of all those who know that Sermons are arguments against us unlesse they make us better and that no Sermon is received as it ought unlesse it makes us quit a vice or bee in love with vertue unlesse we suffer it in some instance or degree to doe the work of God upon our soules My Lord in these
spirits and have been obedient to the heavenly calling There shall stand the men of Ninevch and they shall stand upright in Judgement for they at the preaching of one man in a lesse space then forty dayes returned unto the Lord their God but we have heard him call all our lives and like the deaf Adder stopt our ears against the voice of Gods servants charme they never so wisely There shall appear the men of Capernaum and the Queen of the South and the Men of Berea and the first fruits of the Christian Church and the holy Martyrs and shall proclaim to all the world that it was not impossible to do the work of Grace in the midst of all our weaknesses and accidentall disadvantages and that the obedience of Faith and the labour of Love and the contentions of chastity and the severities of temperance and self-deniall are not such insuperable mountains but that an honest and a sober person may perform them in acceptable degrees if he have but a ready ear and a willing minde and an honest heart and this seen of honest persons shall make the Divine Judgement upon sinners more reasonable and apparently just in passing upon them the horrible sentence for why cannot we as well serve God in peace as others served him in war why cannot we love him as well when he treats us sweetly and gives us health and plenty honours or fair fortunes reputation or contentednesse quietnesse and peace as others did upon gibbets and under axes in the hands of tormentors and in hard wildernesses in nakednesse and poverty in the midst of all evill things and all sad discomforts Concerning this no answer can be made 4. But there is a worse sight then this yet which in that great assembly shall distract our sight and amaze our spirits There men shall meet the partners of their sins and them that drank the round when they crown'd their heads with folly and forgetfulnesse and their cups with wine and noises There shall ye see that poor perishing soul whom thou didst tempt to adultery and wantonnesse to drunkennesse or perjury to rebellion or an evill interest by power or craft by witty discourses or deep dissembling by scandall or a snare by evill example or pernicious counsell by malice or unwarinesse and when all this is summ'd up and from the variety of its particulars is drawn into an uneasie load and a formidable summe possibly we may finde sights enough to scare all our confidences and arguments enough to presse our evill souls into the sorrowes of a most intolerable death For however we make now but light accounts and evill proportions concerning it yet it will be a fearfull circumstance of appearing to see one or two or ten or twenty accursed souls despairing miserable infinitely miserable roaring and blaspheming and fearfully cursing thee as the cause of its eternall sorrowes Thy lust betray'd and rifled her weak unguarded innocence thy example made thy servant confident to lye or to be perjur'd thy society brought a third into intemperance and the disguises of a beast and when thou feest that soul with whom thou didst sin drag'd into hell well maist thou fear to drink the dregs of thy intolerable potion And most certainly it is the greatest of evils to destroy a soul for whom the Lord Jesus dyed and to undoe that grace which our Lord purchased with so much sweat and bloud pains and a mighty charity And because very many sins are sins of society and confederation such are fornication drunkennesse bribery simony rebellion schisme and many others it is a hard and a weighty consideration what shall become of any one of us who have tempted our Brother or Sister to sin and death for though God hath spar'd our life and they are dead and their debt-books are sealed up till the day of account yet the mischief of our sin is gone before us and it is like a murther but more execrable the soul is dead in trespasses and sins and sealed up to an eternall sorrow and thou shalt see at Dooms-day what damnable uncharitablenesse thou hast done That soul that cryes to those rocks to cover her if it had not been for thy perpetuall temptations might have followed the Lamb in a white robe and that poor man that is cloathed with shame and flames of fire would have shin'd in glory but that thou didst force him to be partner of thy basenesse And who shall pay for this losse a soul is lost by thy means thou hast defeated the holy purposes of the Lord 's bitter passion by thy impurities and what shall happen to thee by whom thy Brother dies eternally Of all the considerations that concern this part of the horrors of Dooms-day nothing can be more formidable then this to such whom it does concern and truly it concerns so many and amongst so many perhaps some persons are so tender that it might affright their hopes and discompose their industries and spritefull labours of repentance but that our most mercifull Lord hath in the midst of all the fearfull circumstances of his second coming interwoven this one comfort relating to this which to my sense seems the most fearfull and killing circumstance Two shall be grinding at one mill the one shall be taken and the other left Two shall be in a bed the one shall be taken and the other left that is those who are confederate in the same fortunes and interests and actions may yet have a different sentence for an early and an active repentance will wash off this account and put it upon the tables of the Crosse and though it ought to make us diligent and carefull charitable and penitent hugely penitent even so long as we live yet when we shall appear together there is a mercy that shall there separate us who sometimes had blended each other in a common crime Blessed be the mercies of of God who hath so carefully provided a fruitfull shower of grace to refresh the miseries and dangers of the greatest part of mankind Thomas Aquinas was used to beg of God that he might never be tempted from his low fortune to Prelacies and dignities Ecclesiasticall and that his minde might never be discomposed or polluted with the love of any creature and that he might by some instrument or other understand the state of his deceased Brother and the story sayes that he was heard in all In him it was a great curiosity or the passion and impertinencies of a uselesse charity to search after him unlesse he had some other personall concernment then his relation of kindred But truly it would concern very many to be solicitous concerning the event of those souls with whom we have mingled death and sin for many of those sentences which have passed and decreed concerning our departed relatives will concern us dearly and we are bound in the same bundles and shall be thrown into the same fires unlesse we repent for our own sins and double our
shall have three sorts of accusers 1. Christ himself who is their Judge 2. Their own conscience whom they have injured and blotted with characters of death and foul dishonour 3. The Devill their enemy whom they served 1. Christ shall be their accuser not only upon the stock of those direct injuries which I before reckoned of crucifying the Lord of life once and again c. But upon the titles of contempt and unworthinesse of unkindnesse and ingratitude and the accusation will be nothing else but a plain representation of those artifices and assistances those bonds and invitations those constrainings and importunities which our dear Lord used to us to make it almost impossible to lye in sin and necessary to be sav'd For it will it must needs be a fearfull exprobration of our unworthinesse when the Judge himself shall bear witnesse against us that the wisdome of God himself was strangely imployed in bringing us safely to felicity I shall draw a short Scheme which although it must needs be infinitely short of what God hath done for us yet it will be enough to shame us * God did not only give his Son for an example and the Son gave himself for a price for us but both gave the holy Spirit to assist us in mighty graces for the verifications of Faith and the entertainments of Hope and the increase and perseverance of Charity * God gave to us a new nature he put another principle into us a third part of a perfective constitution we have the Spirit put into us to be a part of us as properly to produce actions of a holy life as the soul of man in the body does produce the naturall * God hath exalted humane nature and made it in the person of Jesus Christ to sit above the highest seat of Angels and the Angels are made ministring spirits ever since their Lord became our Brother * Christ hath by a miraculous Sacrament given us his body to eat and his bloud to drink he made waies that we may become all one with him * He hath given us an easie religion and hath established our future felicity upon naturall and pleasant conditions and we are to be happy hereafter if we suffer God to make us happy here and things are so ordered that a man must take more pains to perish then to be happy * God hath found out rare wayes to make our prayers acceptable our weak petitions the desires of our imperfect souls to prevail mightily with God and to lay a holy violence and an undeniable necessity upon himself and God will deny us nothing but when we aske of him to do us ill offices to give us poisons and dangers and evill nourishment and temptations and he that hath given such mighty power to the prayers of his servants yet will not be moved by those potent and mighty prayers to do any good man an evill turn or to grant him one mischief in that only God can deny us * But in all things else God hath made all the excellent things in heaven and earth to joyn towards holy and fortunate effects for he hath appointed an Angell to present the prayers of Saints and Christ makes intercession for us and the holy Spirit makes intercession for us with groans unutterable and all the holy men in the world pray for all and for every one and God hath instructed us with Scriptures and precedents and collaterall and direct assistances to pray and he incouraged us with divers excellent promises and parables and examples and teaches us what to pray and how and gives one promise to publique prayer and another to private prayer and to both the blessing of being heard * Adde to this account that God did heap blessings upon us without order infinitely perpetually and in all instances when we needed and when we needed not * He heard us when we pray'd giving us all and giving us more then we desired * He desired that we should aske and yet he hath also prevented our desires * He watch'd for us and at his own charge sent a whole order of men whose imployment is to minister to our souls and if all this had not been enough he had given us more also * He promised heaven to our obedience a Province for a dish of water a Kingdome for a prayer satisfaction for desiring it grace for receiving and more grace for accepting and using the first * He invited us with gracious words and perfect entertainments * He threatned horrible things to us if we would not be happy * He hath made strange necessities for us making our very repentance to be a conjugation of holy actions and holy times and a long succession * He hath taken away all excuses from us he hath called us off from temptation he bears our charges he is alwaies before-hand with us in every act of favour and perpetually slow in striking and his arrowes are unfeathered and he is so long first in drawing his sword and another long while in whetting it and yet longer in lifting his hand to strike that before the blow comes the man hath repented long unlesse he be a fool and impudent and then God is so glad of an excuse to lay his anger aside that certainly if after all this we refuse life and glory there is no more to be said this plain story will condemn us but the story is very much longer and as our conscience will represent all our sins to us so the Judge will represent all his Fathers kindnesses as Nathan did to David when he was to make the justice of the Divine Sentence appear against him * Then it shall be remembred that the joyes of every daies piety would have been a greater pleasure every night then the remembrance of every nights sin could have been in the morning * That every night the trouble and labour of the daies vertue would have been as much passed and turned to as very a nothing as the pleasure of that daies sin but that they would be infinitely distinguished by the remanent effects 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So Musonius expressed the sense of this inducement and that this argument would have grown so great by that time we come to dye that the certain pleasures and rare confidences and holy hopes of a death-bed would be a strange felicity to the man when he remembers he did obey if they were compared to the fearfull expectations of a dying sinner who feels by a formidable and afrighting remembrance that of all his sins nothing remains but the gains of a miserable eternity * The offering our selves to God every morning and the thanksgiving to God every night hope and fear shame and desire the honour of leaving a fair name behinde us and the shame of dying like a fool every thing indeed in the world is made to be an argument and an inducement
creatures for it and is it not just in God to stop his own fountaines and seal the cisterns and little emanations of the creatures from thee who shuttest thy hand and shuttest thy eye and twistest thy bowells against thy brother who would as fain be comforted as thou It is a strange Iliacall passion that so hardens a mans bowells that nothing proceeds from him but the name of his own disease a Miserere mei Deus a prayer to God for pity upon him that will not shew pity to others We are troubled when God through severity breaks our bones and hardens his face against us but we think our poor brother is made of iron and not of flesh and bloud as we are God hath bound mercy upon us by the iron bands of necessity and though Gods mercy is the measure of his justice yet justice is the measure of our mercy and as we doe to others it shall be done to us even in the matter of pardon and of bounty of gentlenesse and remission of bearing each others burdens and faire interpretation Forgive us our trespasses as wee forgive them that trespasse against us so we pray The finall sentence in this affair is recorded by St. James Hee that shews no mercy shall have justice with out mercy as thy poor brother hath groan'd under thy cruelty and ungentle nature without remedy so shalt thou before the throne of God thou shalt pray and plead and call and cry and beg again and in the midst of thy despairing noyses be carryed in the regions of sorrow which never did and never shall feel a mercy God never can heare the prayers of an unmercifull man 2. Lust and uncleannesse is a direct enemy to the Praying man and an obstruction to his prayers for this is not onely a prophanation but a direct sacriledge it defiles a Temple to the ground it takes from a man all affection to spirituall things and mingles his very soul with the things of the world it makes his understanding low and his reasonings cheap and foolish and it destroys his confidence and all his manly hopes it makes his spirit light effeminate and fantastick and dissolves his attention and makes his mind so to disaffect all the objects of his desires that when he prays he is as uneasy as an impaled person or a condemned criminall upon the hook or wheel and it hath in it this evill quality that a lustfull person cannot pray heartily against his sin he cannot desire his cure for his will is contradictory to his Collect and he would not that God should hear the words of his prayer which he poor man never intended For no crime so seises upon the will as that some sins steale an affection or obey a temptation or secure an interest or work by the way of understanding but lust seises directly upon the will for the Devil knows well that the lusts of the body are soon cured the uneasynesse that dwels there is a disease very tolerable and every degree of patience can passe under it But therefore the Devill seises upon the will and that 's it that makes adulteries and all the species of uncleannesse and lust growes so hard a cure because the formality of it is that it will not be cured the will loves it and so long as it does God cannot love the Man for God is the Prince of purities and the Son of God is the King of Virgins and the holy Spirit is all love and that is all purity and all spirituality And therefore the prayer of an Adulterer or an uncleane person is like the sacrifices to Moloch or the rites of Flora ubi Cato spectator esse non potuit a good man will not endure them much lesse will God entertaine such reekings of the Dead sea and clouds of Sodome For so an impure vapor begotten of the slime of the earth by the feavers and adulterous heats of an intemperate Summer sun striving by the ladder of a mountaine to climbe up to heaven and rolling into various figures by an uneasy unfixed revolution and stop'd at the middle region of the aire being thrown from his pride and attempt of passing towards the seat of the stars turnes into an unwholsome flame and like the breath of hell is confin'd into a prison of darknesse and a cloud till it breaks into diseases plagues and mildews stink and blastings so is the prayer of an unchast person it strives to climbe the battlements of heaven but because it is a flame of sulphur salt and bitumen and was kindled in the dishonorable regions below deriv'd from hell and contrary to God it cannot passe forth to the element of love but ends in barrennesse and murmur fantastick expectations and trifling imaginative confidences and they at last end in sorrows and despaire * Every state of sin is against the possibility of a mans being accepted but these have a proper venome against the graciousnesse of the person and the power of the prayer God can never accept an unholy prayer and a wicked man can never send forth any other the waters passe thorough impure aquaeducts and channels of brimstone and therefore may end in brimstone and fire but never in forgivenesse and the blessings of an eternall charity Henceforth therefore never any more wonder that men pray so seldome there are few that feel the relish and are enticed with the deliciousnesse and refreshed with the comforts and instructed with the sanctity and acquainted with the secrets of a holy prayer But cease also to wonder that of those few that say many prayers so few find any return of any at all To make up a good and a lawfull prayer there must be charity with all its daughters almes forgivenesse not judging uncharitably there must be purity of spirit that is purity of intention and there must be purity of the body and soule that is the cleannesse of chastity and there must be no vice remaining no affection to sin for he that brings his body to God and hath left his will in the power of any sin offers to God the calves of his lips but not a whole burnt-offering a lame oblation but not a reasonable sacrifice and therefore their portion shall be amongst them whose prayers were never recorded in the book of life whose tears God never put into his bottle whose desires shall remaine ineffectuall to eternall ages Take heed you doe not lose your prayers for by them you hope to have eternall life and let any of you whose conscience is most religious and tender consider what condition that man is in that hath not said his prayers in thirty or forty years together and that is the true state of him who hath lived so long in the course of an unsanctified life in all that while he never said one prayer that did him any good but they ought to be reckoned to him upon the account of his sins Hee that is in the affection or in the habit or
all our unguarded strengths There are some desires which have a period and Gods visitations expire in mercy at the revolution of a certain number of dayes and our prayer must dwell so long as Gods anger abides and in all the storm we must out cry the noyse of the tempest and the voices of that thunder But if we become hardned and by custome and cohabitation with the danger lose our fears and abate of our desires and devotions many times we shall finde that God by a sudden breach upon us will chastise us for letting our hands go down Israel prevailed no longer then Moses held up his hands in prayer and he was forced to continue his prayer till the going down of the Sun that is till the danger was over till the battell was done But when our desires and prayers are in the matter of spirituall danger they must never be remitted because our danger continues for ever and therefore so must our watchfulnesse and our guards Vult n. Deus rogari vult cogi vult quâdam importunitate vinci sayes S. Gregory God loves to be invited intreated importun'd with an unquiet restlesse desire and a persevering prayer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Proclus That 's a holy and a religious prayer that never gives over but renewes the prayer and dwels upon the desire for this only is effectuall 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God hears the persevering man and the unwearied prayer For it is very considerable that we be very curious to observe that many times a lust is sopita non mortua it is asleep the enemy is at truce and at quiet for a while but not conquered not dead and if we put off our armour too soon we lose all the benefit of our former war and are surprised by indiligence and a carelesse guard For God sometimes binds the Devill in a short chain and gives his servants respite that they may feel the short pleasures of a peace and the rest of innocence and perceive what are the eternall felicities of heaven where it shall be so for ever But then we must return to our warfare again and every second assault is more troublesome because it finds our spirits at ease and without watchfulnesse and delighted with a spirituall rest and keeping holiday But let us take heed for whatsoever temptation we can be troubled withall by our naturall temper or by the condition of our life or the evill circumstances of our condition so long as we have capacity to feel it so long we are in danger and must watch thereunto with prayer and continuall diligence And when your temptations let you alone let not you God alone but lay up prayers and the blessings of a constant devotion against the day of tryall Well may your temptation sleep but if your prayers do so you may chance to be awakened with an assault that may ruine you However the rule is easie Whatsoever you need aske it of God so long as you want it even till you have it For God therefore many times defers to grant that thou mayst persevere to aske and because every holy prayer is a glorification of God by the confessing many of his attributes a lasting and a persevering prayer is a little image of the Allellujahs and services of eternity it is a continuation to do that according to our measures which we shall be doing to eternall ages therefore think not that five or six hearty prayers can secure to thee a great blessing and a supply of a mighty necessity He that prays so and then leaves off hath said some prayers and done the ordinary offices of his Religion but hath not secured the blessing nor used means reasonably proportionable to a mighty interest 4. The prayers of a good man are oftentimes hindered and destiture of their effect for want of praying in good company for sometimes an evill or an obnoxious person hath so secured and ascertained a mischief to himself that he that stayes in his company or his cratfick must also share in his punishment and the Tyrian sailers with all their vows and prayers could not obtain a prosperous voyage so long as Jonas was within the Bark for in this case the interest is divided and the publick sin prevails above the private piety When the Philosopher asked a penny of Antigonus he told him it was too little for a King to give when he asked a talent he told him it was too much for a Philosopher to receive for he did purpose to cousen his own charity and elude the others necessity upon pretence of a double inequality So it is in the case of a good man mingled in evill company if a curse be too severe for a good man a mercy is not to be expected by evill company and his prayer when it is made in common must partake of that event of things which is appropriate to that society The purpose of this caution is that every good man be carefull that he do not mingle his devotion in the communions of hereticall persons and in schismaticall conventicles for although he be like them that follow Absalom in the simplicity of their heart yet his intermediall fortune and the event of his present affairs may be the same with Absaloms and it is not a light thing that we curiously choose the parties of our Communion I do not say it is necessary to avoid all the society of evill persons for then we must go out of the world and when we have thrown out a drunkard possibly we have entertain'd an hypocrite or when a swearer is gone an oppressor may stay still or if that be remedied yet pride is soon discernible but not easily judicable but that which is of caution in this question is that we never mingle with those whose very combination is a sin such as were Corah and his company that rebelled against Moses their Prince and Dathan and Abiram that made a schisme in Religion against Aaron the Priest for so said the Spirit of the Lord Come out from the congregation of these men lest ye perish in their company and all those that were abused in their communion did perish in the gain saying of Corah It is a sad thing to see a good man cousened by fair pretences and allured into an evill snare for besides that he dwels in danger and cohabits with a dragon and his vertue may change by evill perswasion into an evill disposition from sweetnesse to bitternesse from thence to evill speaking from thence to beleeve a lye and from beleeving to practise it besides this it is a very great sadnesse that such a man should lose all his prayers to very many purposes God will not respect the offering of those men who assemble by a peevish spirit and therefore although God in pity regards the desires of a good man if innocently abused yet as it unites in that assembly God will not hear it to any purposes of blessing and holinesse unlesse we
Sacrament the effects and admirable issues of which we know not and perceive not we loâ—e because we desire not and choose to lose many great blessings rather then purchase them with the frequent commemoration of that sacrifice which was offered up for all the needs of Mankind and for obtaining all favours and graces to the Catholick Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God never refuses to hear a holy prayer and our prayers can never be so holy as when they are offered up in the union of Christs sacrifice For Christ by that sacrifice reconcil'd God and the world And because our needs continue therefore we are commanded to continue the memory and to represent to God that which was done to satisfie all our needs Then we receive Christ we are after a secret and mysterious but most reall and admirable manner made all one with Christ and if God giving us his Son could not but with him give us all things else how shall he refuse our persons when we are united to his person when our souls are joined to his soul our body nourished by his body and our souls sanctified by his bloud and cloth'd with his robes and marked with his character and sealed with his Spirit and renewed with holy vows and consign'd to all his glories and adopted to his inheritance when we represent his death and pray in vertue of his passion and imitate his intercession and doe that which God commands and offer him in our manner that which he essentially loves can it be that either any thing should be more prevalent or that God can possibly deny such addresses and such importunities Try it often and let all things else be answerable and you cannot have greater reason for your confidence Doe not all the Christians in the world that understand Religion desire to have the holy Sacrament when they die when they are to make their great appearance before God and to receive their great consignation to their eternall sentence good or bad And if then be their greatest needs that is their greatest advantage and instrument of acceptation Therefore if you have a great need to be serv'd or a great charity to serve and a great pity to minister and a dear friend in a sorrow take Christ along in thy prayers in all thy ways thou canst take him take him in affection and take him in a solemnity take him by obedience and receive him in the Sacrament and if thou then offerest up thy prayers and makest thy needs known if thou nor thy friend be not relieved if thy party be not prevalent and the war be not appeased or the plague be not cured or the enemy taken off there is something else in it but thy prayer is good and pleasing to God and dressed with circumstances of advantage and thy person is apt to be an intercessor and thou hast done all that thou canst the event must be left to God and the secret reasons of the deniall either thou shalt find in time or thou maist trust with God who certainly does it with the greatest wisdome and the greatest charity I have in this thing onely one caution to insert viz. That in our importunity and extraordinary offices for others we must nor make our accounts by multitude of words and long prayers but by the measures of the Spirit by the holynesse of the soul and the just nesse of the desire and the usefulnesse of the request and its order to Gods glory and its place in the order of providence and the sincerity of our heart and the charity of our wishes and the perseverance of our advocation There are some as Tertullian observes qui loquacitatem facundiam existimant at impudentiam constantiam deputant They are praters and they are impudent and they call that constancy and importunity concerning which the advice is easy Many words or few are extrinsecall to the nature and not at all considered in the effects of prayer but much desire and much holinesse are essentiall to its constitution but we must be very curious that our importunity do not degenerate into impudence and a rude boldnesse Capitolinus said of Antonius the Emperour and Philosopher sanè quamvis esset constans erat etiam verecundus he was modest even when he was most pertinacious in his desires So must wee though wee must not be ashamed to aske for whatsoever we need Rebus semper pudor absit in arctis and in this sense it is true that Stasimus in the Comedy said concerning Mear Verecundari neminem apud mensam decet Nam ibi de divinis humanis cernitur Men must not be bashfull so as to lose their meat for that is a necessity that cannot bee dispensed withall so it is in our prayers whatsoever our necessity calls to us for we must call to God for and he is not pleased with that rusticity or fond modesty of being ashamed to ask of God any thing that is honest and necessary yet our importunity hath also bounds of modesty but such as are to be expressed with other significations and he is rightly modest towards God who without confidence in himself but not without confidence in Gods mercy nor without great humility of person and reverence of addresse presents his prayers to God as earnestly as he can Provided alwayes that in the greatest of our desires and holy violence we submit to Gods will and desire him to choose for us Our modesty to God in prayers hath no other measures but these 1. Distrust of our selves 2. Confidence in God 3. Humility of person 4. Reverence of addresse and 5. Submission to Gods will These are all unlesse also you will adde that of Solomon Be not rash with thy mouth and let not thy heart be hasty to utter a thing before God for God is in heaven and thou upon earth therefore let thy words be few These things being observed let your importunity be as great as it can it is still the more likely to prevaile by how much it is the more earnest and signified and represented by the most offices extraordinary 3ly The last great advantage towards a prevailing intercession for others is that the person that prayes for his relatives be a person of an extraordinary dignity imployment or designation For God hath appointed some persons and callings of men to pray for others such are Fathers for their Children Bishops for their Dioceses Kings for their Subjects and the whole Order Ecclesiasticall for all the men and women in the Christian Church And it is well it is so for as things are now and have been too long how few are there that understand it to be their duty or part of their necessary imployment that some of their time and much of their prayers and an equall portion of their desires be spent upon the necessities of others All men doe not think it necessary and fewer practise it frequently and they but coldly without interest and deep resentment it
sorts of men who it may be least think of it and therefore have most cause to fear 1t. Are those of whom the Apostle speaks Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said the Greek proverb In ordinary fish we shall never meet with thornes and spiny prickles and in persons of an ordinary even course of life we finde it too often that they have no checks of conscience or sharp reflexions upon their conditions they fall into no horrid crimes and they think all is peace round about them But you must know that as Grace is the improvement and bettering of Nature and Christian graces are the persections of Morall habits and are but new circumstances formalities and degrees so it grows in naturall measures by supernaturall aides and it hath its degrees its strengths and weaknesses its promotions and arrests its stations and declensions its direct sicknesses and indispositions and there is a state of grace that is next to sin it inclines to evill and dwels with a temptation its acts are imperfect and the man is within the Kingdome but he lives in its borders and is dubiae jurisdictionis These men have cause to fear These men seem to stand but they reel indeed and decline toward danger and death Let these men saith the Apostle take heed lest they fall for they shake already such are persons whom the Scriptures call weak in faith I doe not mean new beginners in Religion but such who have dwelt long in its confines and yet never enter into the heart of the countrey such whose faith is tempted whose piety does not grow such who yeeld a little people that doe all that they can lawfully doe and study how much is lawfull that they may lose nothing of a temporall interest people that will not be Martyrs in any degree and yet have good affections and love the cause of Religion and yet will suffer nothing for it these are such which the Apostle speaks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They think they stand and so they doe upon one leg that is so long as they are untempted but when the Tempter comes then they fall and bemoan themselves that by losing peace they lost their inheritance There are a great many sorts of such persons some when they are full are content and rejoyce in Gods providence but murmur and are amazed when they fall into poverty They are chaste so long as they are within the protection of marriage but when they return to liberty they fall into bondage and complain they cannot help it They are temperate and sober if you let them alone at home but call them abroad and they will lose their sober thoughts as Dinah did her honour by going into new company These men in these estates think they stand but God knows they are soon weary and stand stiffe as a Cane which the heat of the Sirian star or the flames of the Sun cannot bend but one sigh of a Northern wind shakes them into the tremblings of a palsey In this the best advice is that such persons should watch their own infirmities and see on which side they are most open and by what enemies they use to fall and to fly from such parties as they would avoid death But certainly they have great cause to fear who are sure to be sick when the weather changes or can no longer retain their possession but till an enemy please to take it away or will preserve their honour but till some smiling temptation aske them to forgoe it 2ly They also have great reason to fear whose repentance is broken into fragments and is never a whole or entire change of life I mean those that resolve against a sin and pray against it and hate it in all the resolutions of their understanding till that unlucky period comes in which they use to act it but then they sin as certainly as they will infallibly repent it when they have done these are a very great many Christians who are esteemed of the better sort of penitents yet feel this feaverish repentance to be their best state of health they fall certainly in the returns of the same circumstances or at a certain distance of time but God knows they doe not get the victory over their sin but are within its power For this is certain they who sin and repent and sin again in the same or the like circumstances are in some degree under the power and dominion of sin when their actions can be reduc'd to an order or a method to a rule or a certainty that oftner hits then fails that sin is habituall though it be the least habit yet a habit it is every course or order or method of sin every constant or periodicall return every return that can be regularly observed or which a man can foresee or probably foretell even then when he does not intend it but prays against it every such sin is to be reckoned not for a single action or upon the accounts of a pardonable infirmity but it is a combination an evill state such a thing as the man ought to feare concerning himselfe lest he be surpriz'd and call'd from this world before this evill state be altered for if he be his securities are but slender and his hopes will deceive him It was a severe doctrine that was maintain'd by some great Clerks and holy men in the Primitive Church That Repentance was to be but once after Baptism One Faith one Lord one Baptisme one Repentance all these the Scripture saith and it is true if by repentance we mean the entire change of our condition for he that returns willingly to the state of an unbeleeving or a heathen profane person intirely and choosingly in defiance of and apostasie from his Religion cannot be renew'd againe as the Apostle twice affirms in his Epistle to the Hebrews But then concerning this state of Apostasie when it hapned in the case not of Faith but of Charity and obedience there were many fears and jealousies they were therefore very severe in their doctrines lest men should fall into so evill a condition they enlarged their fear that they might be stricter in their duty and generally this they did beleeve that every second repentance was worse then the first and the third worse then the second and still as the sin returned the Spirit of God did the lesse love to inhabit and if he were provoked too often would so withdraw his aides and comfortable cohabitation that the Church had little comfort in such children so said Clemens Alexandr stromat 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Those frequent and alternate repentances that is repentances and sinnings interchangeably differ not from the conditions of men that are not within the covenant of grace from them that are not beleevers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 save onely says he that these men perceive that they sin they doe it more against their conscience then infidels and
concerning the finall issue of their souls For return to folly hath in it many evils beyond the common state of sin and death and such evils which are most contrary to the hopes of pardon 1. He that falls back into those sins he hath repented of does grieve the holy Spirit of God by which he was sealed to the day of redemption For so the Antithesis is plain and obvious If at the conversion of a sinner there is joy before the beatified Spirits the Angels of God and that is the consummation of our pardon and our consignation to felicity then we may imagine how great an evill it is to grieve the Spirit of God who is greater then the Angels The Children of Israel were carefully warned that they should not offend the Angel Behold I send an Angel before thee beware of him and obey his voyce provoke him not for he will not pardon your transgressions that is he will not spare to punish you if you grieve him Much greater is the evill if we grieve him who sits upon the throne of God who is the Prince of all the Spirits and besides grieving the Spirit of God is an affection that is as contrary to his felicity as lust is to his holinesse both which are essentiall to him Tristitia enim omnium spirituum nequissima est pessima servis Dei omnium spiritus exterminat cruciat Spiritum sanctum said Hennas Sadnesse is the greatest enemy to Gods servants if you grieve Gods Spirit you cast him out for he cannot dwell with sorrow and grieving unlesse it be such a sorrow which by the way of vertue passes on to joy and never ceasing felicity Now by grieving the holy Spirit is meant those things which displease him doing unkindnesse to him and then the grief which cannot in proper sense seise upon him will in certain effects return upon us Ita enim dica said Seneca sacer intra nos Spiritus sedet bonorum malorúmque nostrorum observator custos hic prout à nobis tractatus est ita nos ipse tractat There is a holy spirit dwels in every good man who is the observer and guardian of all our actions and as we treat him so will he treat us Now we ought to treat him sweetly and tenderly thankfully and with observation Deus praecepit Spiritum sanctum utpote pro naturae suae bono tenerum delicatum tranquillitate lenitate quiete pace tractare said Tertullian de Spectaculis The Spirit of God is a loving and a kind Spirit gentle and easy chast and pure righteous and peaceable and when he hath done so much for us as to wash us from our impurities and to cleanse us from our stains and streighten our obliquities and to instruct our ignorances and to snatch us from an intolerable death and to consign us to the day of redemption that is to the resurrection of our bodies from death corruption and the dishonors of the grave and to appease all the storms and uneasynesse and to make us free as the Sons of God and furnished with the riches of the Kingdome and all this with innumerable arts with difficulty and in despite of our lusts and reluctancies with parts and interrupted steps with waitings and expectations with watchfulnesse and stratagems with inspirations and collaterall assistances after all this grace and bounty and diligence that we should despite this grace and trample upon the blessings and scorn to receive life at so great an expence and love of God this is so great a basenesse and unworthynesse that by troubling the tenderest passions it turns into the most bitter hostilities by abusing Gods love it turns into jealousie and rage and indignation Goe and sin no more lest a worse thing happen to thee 2. Falling away after we have begun to live well is a great cause of fear because there is added to it the circumstance of inexcuseablenesse The man hath been taught the secrets of the Kingdome and therefore his understanding hath been instructed he hath tasted the pleasures of the Kingdome and therefore his will hath been sufficiently entertain'd He was entred into the state of life and renounced the ways of death his sin began to be pardoned and his lusts to be crucified he felt the pleasures of victory and the blessings of peace and therefore fell away not onely against his reason but also against his interest and to such a person the Questions of his soul have been so perfectly stated and his prejudices and inevitable abuses so cleerly taken off and he was so made to view the paths of life and death that if he chooses the way of sin again it must be not by weaknesse or the infelicity of his breeding or the weaknesse of his understanding but a direct preference or prelation a preferring sin before grace the spirit of lust before the purities of the soul the madnesse of drunkennesse before the fulnesse of the Spirit money before our friend and above our Religion and Heaven and God himself This man is not to be pityed upon pretence that he is betrayed or to be relieved because he is oppressed with potent enemies or to be pardoned because he could not help it for he once did help it he did overcome his temptation and choose God and delight in vertue and was an heir of heaven and was a conqueror over sin and delivered from death and he may do so still and Gods grace is upon him more plentifully and the lust does not tempt so strongly and if it did he hath more power to resist it and therefore if this man fals it is because he wilfully chooses death it is the portion that he loves and descends into with willing and unpityed steps Quà m vilis facta es nimis iterans vias tuas said God to Judah 3. He that returns from vertue to his old vices is forced to doe violence to his own reason to make his conscience quiet he does it so unreasonably so against all his fair inducements so against his reputation and the principles of his society so against his honour and his promises and his former discourses and his doctrines his censuring of men for the same crimes and the bitter invectives and reproofs which in the dayes of his health and reason he used against his erring Brethren that he is now constrained to answer his own arguments he is intangled in his own discourses he is shamed with his former conversation and it will be remembred against him how severely he reproved and how reasonably he chastised the lust which now he runs to in despite of himself and all his friends And because this is his condition he hath no way left him but either to be impudent which is hard for him at first it being too big a naturall change to passe suddenly from grace to immodest circumstances and hardnesses of face and heart or else therefore he must entertain new
gaieties and dissolutions it is the girdle to the soul and the handmaid to repentance the arrest of sin and the cure or antidote to the spirit of reprobation it preserves our apprehensions of the divine Majesty and hinders our single actions from combining to sinfull habits it is the mother of consideration and the nurse of sober counsels and it puts the soul to fermentation and activity making it to passe from trembling to caution from caution to carefulnesse from carefulnesse to watchfulnesse from thence to prudence and by the gates and progresses of repentance it leads the soul on to love and to felicity and to joyes in God that shall never cease again Fear is the guard of a man in the dayes of prosperity and it stands upon the watch-towers and spies the approaching danger and gives warning to them that laugh loud and feast in the chambers of rejoycing where a man cannot consider by reason of the noises of wine and jest and musick and if prudence takes it by the hand and leads it on to duty it is a state of grace and an universall instrument to infant Religion and the only security of the lesse perfect persons and in all senses is that homage we owe to God who sends often to demand it even then when he speaks in thunder or smites by a plague or awakens us by threatning or discomposes our easinesse by sad thoughts and tender eyes and fearfull hearts and trembling considerations But this so excellent grace is soon abused in the best and most tender spirits in those who are softned by Nature and by Religion by infelicities or caâ—es by sudden accidents or a sad soul and the Devill observing that fear like spare diet starves the feavers of lust and quenches the flames of hell endevours to highten this abstinence so much as to starve the man and break the spirit into timorousnesse and scruple sadnesse and unreasonable tremblings credulity and trifling observation suspicion and false accusations of God and then vice being turned out at the gate returns in at the postern and does the work of hell and death by running too inconsiderately in the paths which seem to lead to heaven But so have I seen a harmlesse dove made dark with an artificiall night and her eyes ceel'd and lock'd up with a little quill soaring upward and flying with amazement fear and an undiscerning wing she made toward heaven but knew not that she was made a train and an instrument to teach her enemy to prevail upon her and all her defencelesse kindred so is a superstitious man zealous and blinde forward and mistaken he runs towards heaven as he thinks but he chooses foolish paths and out of fear takes any thing that he is told or fancies and guesses concerning God by measures taken from his own diseases and imperfections But fear when it is inordinate is never a good counsellor nor makes a good friend and he that fears God as his enemy is the most compleatly miserable person in the world For if he with reason beleeves God to be his enemy then the man needs no other argument to prove that he is undone then this that the fountain of blessing in this state in which the man is will never issue any thing upon him but cursings But if he fears this without reason he makes his fears true by the very suspicion of God doing him dishonour and then doing those fond and trifling acts of jealousie which will make God to be what the man feared he already was We do not know God if we can think any hard thing concerning him If God be mercifull let us only fear to offend him but then let us never be fearfull that he will destroy us when we are carefull not to displease him There are some persons so miserable and scrupulous such perpetuall tormentors of themselves with unnecessary fears that their meat and drink is a snare to their consciences if they eat they fear they are gluttons if they fast they fear they are hypocrites and if they would watch they complain of sleep as of a deadly sin and every temptation though resisted makes them cry for pardon and every return of such an accident makes them think God is angry and every anger of God will break them in pieces These persons do not beleeve noble things concerning God they do not think that he is as ready to pardon them as they are to pardon a sinning servant they do not beleeve how much God delights in mercy nor how wise he is to consider and to make abatement for our unavoidable infirmities they make judgement of themselves by the measures of an Angell and take the accounts of God by the proportions of a Tyrant The best that can be said concerning such persons is that they are hugely tempted or hugely ignorant For although ignorance is by some persons named the mother of devotion yet if it fals in a hard ground it is the mother of Atheisme if in a soft ground it is the parent of superstition but if it proceeds from evill or mean opinions of God as such scruples and unreasonable fears do many times it is an evill of a great impiety and in some sense and if it were in equall degrees is as bad as Atheisme for he that sayes there was no such man as Julius Caesar does him lesse displeasure then he that sayes there was but that he was a Tyrant and a bloudy parricide And the Cimmerians were not esteemed impious for saying that there was no sun in the heavens But Anaxagoras was esteemed irreligious for saying the sun was a very stone And though to deny there is a God is a high impiety and intolerable yet he sayes worse who beleeving there is a God sayes he delights in humane sacrifices in miseries and death in tormenting his servants and punishing their very infelicities and unavoidable mischances To be God and to be essentially and infinitely good is the same thing and therefore to deny either is to be reckoned among the greatest crimes in the world Adde to this that he that is afraid of God cannot in that disposition love him at all for what delight is there in that religion which drawes me to the Altar as if I were going to be sacrificed or to the Temples as to the Dens of Bears Oderunt quos metuunt sed colunt tamen whom men fear they hate certainly and flatter readily and worship timorously and he that saw Hermolaus converse with Alexander and Pausanias follow Philip the Macedonian or Chaereas kissing the feet of Cajus Caligula would have observed how sordid men are made with fear and how unhappy and how hated Tyrants are in the midst of those acclamations which are loud and forc'd and unnaturall and without love or fair opinion And therefore although the Atheist sayes there is no God the scrupulous fearfull and superstitious man does heartily wish what the other does beleeve But that the evill may be proportionable to
sottishnesse of lust and the follies of drunkennesse that reflecting upon the change they begin to love themselves too well and take delight in the wisdome of the change and the reasonablenesse of the new life and then they by hating their own follies begin to despise them that dwell below It was the tricke of the old Philosophers whom Aristophanes thus describes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 pale and barefoot and proud that is persons singular in their habit eminent in their institution proud and pleased in their persons and despisers of them that are lesse glorious in their vertue then themselves and for this very thing our blessed Saviour remarks the Pharisees they were severe and phantasticall advancers of themselves and Judgers of their neighbors and here when they have mortified corporall vices such which are scandalous and punishable by men they keep the spirituall and those that are onely discernible by God these men doe but change their sin from scandall to danger and that they may sin more safely they sin more spiritually 2. Sometimes the passions of the flesh spoyle the changes of the Spirit by naturall excesses and disproportion of degrees it mingles violence with industry and fury with zeale and uncharitablenesse with reproofe and censuring with discipline and violence with desires and immortifications in all the appetites and prosecutions of the soule Some think it is enough in all instances if they pray hugely and fervently and that it is religion impatiently to desire a victory over our enemies or the life of a childe or an heir to be born they call it holy so they desire it in prayer that if they reprove a vicious person they may say what they list and be as angry as they please that when they demand but reason they may enforce it by all means that when they exact duty of their children they may be imperious and without limit that if they designe a good end they may prosecute it by all instruments that when they give God thanks for blessings they may value the thing as high as they list though their persons come into a share of the honour here the spirit is willing and holy but the flesh creeps too busily and insinuates into the substance of good actions and spoyles them by unhandsome circumstances and then the prayer is spoil'd for want of prudence of conformity to Gods will and discipline and government is imbittered by an angry spirit and the Fathers authority turns into an uneasie load by being thrust like an unequall burden to one side without allowing equall measures to the other And if we consider it wisely we shall find that in many good actions the flesh is the bigger ingredient and we betray our weak constitutions even when we do Justice or Charity and many men pray in the flesh when they pretend they pray by the spirit 3. In the first changes and weak progresses of our spirituall life we find a long weaknesse upon us because we are long before we begin and the flesh was powerfull and its habits strong and it will mingle indirect pretences with all the actions of the spirit If we mean to pray the flesh thrusts in thoughts of the world and our tongue speaks one thing and our heart means another and we are hardly brought to say our prayers or to undertake a fasting day or to celebrate a Communion and if we remember that all these are holy actions and that we have many opportunities of doing them all and yet doe them very seldome and then very coldly it will be found at the foot of the account that our flesh and our naturall weaknesse prevailes oftner then our spirituall strengths 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they that are bound long in chains feel such a lamenesse in the first restitutions of their liberty 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by reason of the long accustomed chain and pressure that they must stay till Nature hath set them free and the disease be taken off as well as the chain and when the soul is got free from her actuall pressure of sins still the wound remaines and a long habitude and longing after it a looking back and upon the presenting the old object the same company or the remembrance of the delight the fancy strikes and the heart fails and the temptations returne and stand dressed in form and circumstances and ten to one but the man dies again 4. Some men are wise and know their weaknesses and to prevent their startings back will make fierce and strong resolutions and bind up their gaps with thornes and make a new hedge about their spirits and what then this shews indeed that the spirit is willing but the storm arises and windes blow and rain descends and presently the earth trembles and the whole fabrick falls into ruine and disorder A resolution such as we usually make is nothing but a little trench which every childe can step over and there is no civill man that commits a willing sin but he does it against his resolution and what Christian lives that will not say and think that he hath repented in some degree and yet still they commit sin that is they break all their holy purposes as readily as they lose a dream and so great is our weaknesse that to most men the strength of a resolution is just such a restraint as he suffers who is imprisoned in a curtain and secured with dores and bars of the finest linnen for though the spirit be strong to resolve the flesh is weak to keep it 5. But when they have felt their follies and see the linnen vail rent some that are desirous to please God back their resolutions with vows and then the spirit is fortified and the flesh may tempt and call but the soul cannot come forth and therefore it triumphs and acts its interest easily and certainly and then the flesh is mortified It may be so But doe not many of us inquire after a vow And we consider it may be it was rash or it was an impossible matter or without just consideration and weighing of circumstances or the case is alter'd and there is a new emergent necessity or a vow is no more then a resolution made in matter of duty both are made for God and in his eye and witnesse or if nothing will doe it men grow sad and weary and despaire and are impatient and bite the knot in pieces with their teeth which they cannot by disputing and the arts of the tongue A vow will not secure our duty because it is not stronger then our appetite and the spirit of man is weaker then the habits and superinduced nature of the flesh but by little and little it falls off like the finest thread twisted upon the traces of a chariot it cannot hold long 6. Beyond all this some choose excellent guides and stand within the restraints of modesty and a severe Monitor and the Spirit of God hath put a veile upon our spirits and by modesty in
women and young persons by reputation in the more aged and by honour in the more noble and by conscience in all have fortified the spirit of Man that men dare not prevaricate their duty though they be tempted strongly and invited perpetually and this is a partition wall that separates the spirit from the flesh and keeps it in its proper strengths and retirements But here the spirit of man for all that it is assisted strongly breaks from the inclosure and runnes into societies of flesh and sometimes despises reputation and sometimes supplies it with little arts of flattery and self-love and is modest as long as it can be secret and when it is discovered it growes impudent and a man shelters himselfe in crouds and heaps of sinners and beleeves that it is no worse with him then with other mighty criminals and publick persons who bring sin into credit amongst fooles and vicious persons or else men take false measures of fame or publick honesty and the world being broken into so many parts of disunion and agreeing in nothing but in confederate vices and grown so remisse in governments and severe accounts every thing is left so loose that honour and publick fame modesty and shame are now so slender guards to the spirit that the flesh breaks in and makes most men more bold against God then against men and against the laws of Religion then of the Common-wealth 7. When the spirit is made willing by the grace of God the flesh interposes in deceptions and false principles If you tempt some man to a notorious sin as to rebellion to deceive his trust or to be drunk he will answer he had rather die then doe it But put the sin civilly to him and let it be disguised with little excuses such things which indeed are trifles but yet they are colours fair enough to make a weak pretence and the spirit yeelds instantly Most men choose the sin if it be once disputable whether it be a sin or no If they can but make an excuse or a colour so that it shall not rudely dash against the conscience with an open professed name of Sin they suffer the temptation to doe its worst If you tempt a man you must tell him 't is no sin or it is excusable this is not rebellion but necessity and selfe defence it is not against my allegiance but is a performing of my trust I doe it for my friend not against my Superiour I doe it for a good end and for his advantage this is not drunkennesse but free mirth and fair society it is refreshment and entertainment of some supernumerary hours but it is not a throwing away my time or neglecting a day of salvation and if there be any thing more to say for it though it be no more then Adams fig-leaves or the excuses of children and truants it shall be enough to make the flesh prevail and the spirit not to be troubled for so great is our folly that the flesh always carries the cause if the spirit can be cousen'd 8. The flesh is so mingled with the spirit that we are forced to make distinctions in our appetite to reconcile our affections to God and Religion lest it be impossible to doe our duty we weep for our sins but we weep more for the death of our dearest friends or other temporall sadnesses we say we had rather die then lose our faith and yet we doe not live according to it we lose our estates and are impatient we lose our vertue and bear it well enough and what vertue is so great as more to be troubled for having sin'd then for being asham'd and begger'd and condemn'd to die Here we are forced to a distinction there is a valuation of price and a valuation of sense or the spirit hath one rate of things and the flesh hath another and what we beleeve the greatest evill does not alwayes cause to us the greatest trouble which shews plainly that we are imperfect carnall persons and the flesh will in some measure prevaile over the spirit because we will suffer it in too many instances and cannot help it in all 9. The spirit is abated and interrupted by the flesh because the flesh pretends it is not able to doe those ministeries which are appointed in order to Religion we are not able to fast or if we watch it breeds gouts and catarrhes or charity is a grace too expensive our necessities are too big to do it or we cannot suffer pain and sorrow breeds death and therefore our repentances must be more gentle and we must support our selves in all our calamities for we cannot beare our crosses without a freer refreshment and this freedome passes on to licence and many melancholy persons drowne their sorrows in sin and forgetfulnesse as if sin were more tolerable then sorrow and the anger of God an easier load then a temporall care here the flesh betrayes its weaknesse and its follies For the flesh complains too soon and the spirit of some men like Adam being too fond of his Eve attends to all its murmurs and temptations and yet the flesh is able to bear farre more then is required of it in usuall duties Custome of suffering will make us endure much and feare will make us suffer more and necessity makes us suffer any thing and lust and desire makes us to endure more then God is willing we should and yet we are nice and tender and indulgent to our weaknesses till our weaknesses grow too strong for us And what shall we doe to secure our duty and to be delivered of our selves that the body of death which we bear about us may not destroy the life of the spirit I have all this while complain'd and you see not without cause I shall afterwards tell you the remedies for all this evill In the mean time let us have but mean opinions of our selves let us watch every thing of our selves as of suspected persons and magnifie the grace of God and be humbled for our stock and spring of follies and let us look up to him who is the fountaine of grace and spirituall strengths 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And pray that God would give us what we ask and what we ask not for we want more helps then we understand and we are neerer to evill then we perceive and we bear sin and death about us and are in love with it and nothing comes from us but false principles and silly propositions and weak discourses and startings from our holy purposes and care of our bodies and of our palates and the lust of the lower belly these are the imployment of our lives but if wee design to live happily and in a better place it must be otherwise with us we must become new creatures and have another definition and have new strengths which we can onely derive from God whose grace is sufficient for us and strong enough to prevail over all our
follies and infirmities SERMON XI Part II. IF it be possible to cure an evill nature we must inquire after remedies for all this mischief In order to which I shall consider 1. That since it is our flesh and bloud that is the principle of mischief we must not think to have it cured by washings and light medicaments the Physitian that went to cure the Hectick with quick-silver and fasting spittle did his Patient no good but himself became a proverb and he that by easie prayers and a seldome fast by the scattering of a little almes and the issues of some more naturall vertue thinks to cure his evill nature does fortifie his indisposition as a stick is hardened by a little fire which by a great one is devoured Quanto satius est mentem potius eluere quae malis cupiditatibus sordidatur uno virtutis as sidei lavacro universa vitia depellere Better it is by an intire body of vertue by a living and active faith to cleanse the minde from every vice and to take off all superinduced habits of sin Quod qui fecerit quamlibet inquinatum ac sordidum corpus gerat satis purus est If we take this course although our body is foul and our affections unquiet and our rest discomposed yet we shall be masters of our resolution and clean from habituall sins and so cure our evill nature For our nature was not made evill but by our selves but yet we are naturally evill that is by a superinduced nature just as drunkards and intemperate persons have made it necessary to drink extremely and their nature requires it and it is health to them they dye without it because they have made to themselves a new constitution and another nature but much worse then that which God made their sin made this new nature and this new nature makes sin necessary and unavoidable so it is in all other instances Our nature is evill because we have spoil'd it and therefore the removing the sin which we have brought in is the way to cure our nature for this evill nature is not a thing which we cannot avoid we made it and therefore we must help it but as in the superinducing this evill nature we were thrust forward by the world and the Devill by all objects from without and weaknesse from within so in the curing it we are to be helped by God and his most holy Spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We must have a new nature put into us which must be the principle of new counsels and better purposes of holy actions and great devotion and this nature is deriv'd from God and is a grace and a favour of heaven The same Spirit that caused the holy Jesus to be born after a new and strange manner must also descend upon us and cause us to be born again and to begin a new life upon the stock of a new nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Origen From him it first began that a divine and humane nature were weaved together that the humane nature by communication with the celestiall may also become divine 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Not only in Jesus but in all that first beleeve in him and then obey him living such a life as Jesus taught and this is the summe totall of the whole design As we have liv'd to the flesh so we must hereafter live to the spirit as our nature hath been flesh not only in its originall but in habits and affection so our nature must be spirit in habit and choice in design and effectuall prosecutions for nothing can cure our old death but this new birth and this is the recovery of our nature and the restitution of our hopes and therefore the greatest joy of mankinde 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is a fine thing to see the light of this sun and it is pleasant to see the storm allayed and turned into a smooth sea and a fresh gale our eyes are pleased to see the earth begin to live and to produce her little issues with particolour'd coats 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nothing is so beauteous as to see a new birth in a childlesse family And it is excellent to hear a man discourse the hidden things of Nature and unriddle the perplexities of humane notices and mistakes it is comely to see a wise man sit in the gates of the City and give right judgement in difficult causes But all this is nothing to the excellencies of a new birth to see the old man carryed forth to funerall with the solemn tears of repentance and buryed in the grave of Jesus and in his place a new creation to arise a new heart and a new understanding and new affections and excellent appetites for nothing lesse then this can cure all the old distempers 2. Our life and all our discourses and every observation and a state of reason and a union of sober counsels are too little to cure a peevish spirit and a weak reasoning and silly principles and accursed habits and evill examples and perverse affections and a whole body of sin and death It was well said in the Comedy Nunquam ita quisquam bene subductâ ratione ad vitam fuit Quin aetas usus semper aliquid apportet novi Aliquid moneat ut illa quae scire credas nescias Et quae tibi put as prima in experiundo repudies Men at first think themselves wise and are alwaies most confident when they have the least reason and to morrow they begin to perceive yesterdayes folly and yet they are not wise But as the little Embryo in the naturall sheet and lap of its mother first distinguishes into a little knot and that in time will be the heart and then into a bigger bundle which after some dayes abode grows into two little spots and they if cherished by nature will become eyes and each part by order commences into weak principles and is preserved with natures greatest curiosity that it may assist first to distinction then to order next to usefulnesse and from thence to strength till it arrive at beauty and a perfect creature so are the necessities and so are the discourses of men we first learn the principles of reason which breaks obscurely through a cloud and brings a little light and then we discern a folly and by little and little leave it till that enlightens the next corner of the soul and then there is a new discovery but the soul is still in infancy and childish follies and every day does but the work of one day but therefore art and use experience and reason although they do something yet they cannot do enough there must be something else But this is to be wrought by a new principle that is by the Spirit of grace Nature and reason alone cannot do it and therefore the
they are in themselves as they have an irregularity and disorder an unreasonablenesse and a sting and be sure to relye upon nothing but the truth of lawes and promises and take severe accounts by those lines which God gave us on purpose to reprove our evill habits and filthy inclinations Men that are not willing to be cured are glad of any thing to cousen them but the body of death cannot be taken off from us unlesse we be honest in our purposes and severe in our counsels and take just measures and glorifie God and set our selves against our selves that we may be changed into the likenesse of the sons of God 9. Avoid all delay in the counsels of Religion Because the aversation and perversnesse of a childes nature may be corrected easily but every day of indulgence and excuse increases the evill and makes it still more naturall and still more necessary 10. Learn to despise the world or which is a better compendium in the duty learn but truly to understand it for it is a cousenage all the way the head of it is a rainbow and the face of it is flattery its words are charmes and all its stories are false its body is a shadow and its hands to knit spiders webs it is an image and a noise with a Hyaena's lip and a Serpents tail it was given to serve the needs of our nature and in stead of doing it it creates strange appetites and nourishes thirsts and feavers it brings care and debauches our nature and brings shame and death as the reward of all our cares Our nature is a disease and the world does nourish it but if you leave to feed upon such unwholesome diet your nature reverts to its first purities and to the entertainments of the grace of God 4. I am now to consider how farre the infirmities of the flesh can be innocent and consist with the spirit of grace For all these counsels are to be entertain'd into a willing spirit and not only so but into an active and so long as the spirit is only willing the weaknesse of the flesh will in many instances become stronger then the strengths of the spirit For he that hath a good will and does not do good actions which are required of him is hindred but not by God that requires them and therefore by himself or his worst enemy But the measures of this question are these 1. If the flesh hinders us of our duty it is our enemy and then our misery is not that the flesh is weak but that it is too strong But 2. when it abates the degrees of duty and stops its growth or its passing on to action and effect then it is weak but not directly nor alwaies criminall But to speak particularly If our flesh hinders us of any thing that is a direct duty and prevails upon the spirit to make it do an evill action or contract an evill habit the man is in a state of bondage and sin his flesh is the mother of corruption and an enemy to God It is not enough to say I desire to serve God and cannot as I would I would fain love God above all the things in the world but the flesh hath appetites of its own that must be served I pray to be forgiven as I forgive others but flesh and bloud cannot put up such an injury for know that no infirmity no unavoidable accident no necessity no poverty no businesse can hinder us from the love of God or forgiving injuries or being of a religious and a devout spirit Poverty and the intrigues of the world are things that can no more hinder the spirit in these duties then a strong enemy can hinder the sun to shine or the clouds to drop rain These things which God requires of us and exacts from us with mighty penalties these he hath made us able to perform for he knows that we have no strength but what he gives us and therefore as he binds burdens upon our shoulders so he gives us strength to bear them and therefore he that sayes he cannot forgive sayes only that his lust is stronger then his religion his flesh prevails upon his spirit For what necessity can a man have to curse him whom he cals enemy or to sue him or kill him or do him any spite A man may serve all his needs of nature though he does nothing of all this and if he be willing what hinders him to love to pardon to wish well to desire The willing is the doing in this case and he that sayes he is willing to do his duty but he cannot does not understand what he sayes For all the duty of the inner man consists in the actions of the will and there they are seated and to it all the inferiour faculties obey in those things which are direct emanations and effects of will He that desires to love God does love him indeed men are often cousened with pretences and in some good mood are warm'd with a holy passion but it signifies nothing because they will not quit the love of Gods enemies and therefore they do not desire what they say they doe but if the will and heart be right and not false and dissembling this duty is or will be done infallibly 2. If the spirit and the heart be willing it will passe on to outward actions in all things where it ought or can He that hath a charitable soul will have a charitable hand and will give his money to the poor as he hath given his heart to God For these things which are in our hand are under the power of our will and therefore are to be commanded by it He that sayes to the naked be warm and cloathed and gives him not the garment that lies by him or money to buy one mocks God and the poor and himself Nequam illud verbâ—m est bene vult nisi qui bene facit said the Comedy It is an evill saying he wishes well unlesse he do well 3. Those things which are not in our power that is such things in which the flesh is inculpably weak or naturally or politically disabled the will does the work of the outward and of the inward man we cannot cloath Christs body he needs it not and we cannot approach so sacred and separate a presence but if we desire to do it it is accounted as if we had The ignorant man cannot discourse wisely and promote the interest of souls but he can love souls and desire their felicity though I cannot build Hospitals and Colledges or pour great summes of money into the lap of the poor yet if I incourage others and exhort them if I commend and promote the work I have done the work of a holy Religion For in these and the like cases the outward work is not alwaies set in our power and therefore without our fault is omitted and can be supplyed by that which is in our power 4. For that is the
the precepts of the Gospell were impossible to be kept because it also requiring the heart of man did stop every egression of disorders for making the root holy and healthfull as the Balsame of Judaea or the drops of Manna in the evening of the sabbath it also causes that nothing spring thence but gummes fit for incense and oblations for the Altar of proposition and a cloud of perfume fit to make atonement for our sins and being united to the great sacrifice of the world to reconcile God and man together Upon these reasons you see it is highly fit that God should require it and that we should pay the sacrifice of our hearts and not at all think that God is satisfied with the work of the hands when the affections of the heart are absent He that prayes because he would be quiet and would fain be quit of it and communicates for fear of the lawes and comes to Church to avoid shame and gives almes to be eased of an importunate begger or relieves his old parents because they will not dye in their time and provides for his children lest he be compled by Lawes and shame but yet complains of the charge of Gods blessings this man is a servant of the eyes of men and offers parchment or a white skin in sacrifice but the flesh and the inwards he leaves to be consumed by a stranger fire And therefore this is a deceit that robs God of the best and leaves that for religion which men pare off It is sacriledge and brings a double curse 2. He that serves God with the soule without the body when both can be conjoyned doth the work of the Lord deceitfully Paphnutius whose knees were cut for the testimony of Jesus was not obliged to worship with the humble flexures of the bending penitents and blinde Bartimeus could not read the holy lines of the Law and therefore that part of the work was not his duty and God shall not call Lazarus to account for not giving almes nor St. Peter and St. John for not giving silver and gold to the lame man nor Epaphroditus for not keeping his fasting dayes when he had his sicknesse But when God hath made the body an apt minister to the soul and hath given money for almes and power to protect the oppressed and knees to serve in prayer and hands to serve our needs then the soul alone is not to work but as Rachel gave her maid to Jacob and she bore children to her Lord upon her Ministresse knees and the children were reckoned to them both because the one had fruitfull desires and the other a fruitfull wombe so must the body serve the needs of the spirit that what the one desires the other may effect and the conceptions of the soul may be the productions of the body and the body must bow when the soul worships and the hand must help when the soul pities and both together do the work of a holy Religion the body alone can never serve God without the conjunction and preceding act of the soul and sometimes the soul without the body is imperfect and vain for in some actions there is a body and a spirit a materiall and a spirituall part and when the action hath the same constitution that a man hath without the act of both it is as imperfect as a dead man the soul cannot produce the body of some actions any more then the body can put life into it and therefore an ineffective pity and a lazie counsell an empty blessing and gay words are but deceitfull charity Quod peto da Caï non peto consilium He that gave his friend counsell to study the Law when he desired to borrow 20 l. was not so friendly in this counsell as he was uselesse in his charity spirituall acts can cure a spirituall malady but if my body needs relief because you cannot feed me with Diagrams or cloath me with Euclids elements you must minister a reall supply by a corporall charity to my corporall necessity This proposition is not only usefull in the doctrine of charity and the vertue of religion but in the professions of faith and requires that it be publick open and ingenuous In matters of necessary duty it is not sufficient to have it to our selves but we must also have it to God and all the world and as in the heart we beleeve so by the mouth we confesse unto salvation he is an ill man that is only a Christian in his heart and is not so in his professions and publications and as your heart must not be wanting in any good profession and pretences so neither must publick profession be wanting in every good and necessary perswasion The faith and the cause of God must be owned publiquely for if it be the cause of God it will never bring us to shame I do not say what ever we think we must tell it to all the world much lesse at all times and in all circumstances but we must never deny that which we beleeve to be the cause of God in such circumstances in which we can and ought to glorifie him But this extends also to other instances He that swears a false oath with his lips and unswears it with his heart hath deceived one more then he thinks for himself is the most abused person and when my action is contrary to men they will reprove me but when it is against my own perswasion I cannot but reprove my self and am witnesse and accuser and party and guilty and then God is the Judge and his anger will be a fierce executioner because we do the Lords work deceitfully 3. They are deceitfull in the Lords work that reserve one faculty for sin or one sin for themselves or one action to please their appetite and many for Religion Rabbi Kimchi taught his Scholars Cogitationem pravam Deus non habet vice facti nisi concepta fuerit in Dei fidem Religionem that God is never angry with an evill thought unlesse it be a thought of Apostasie from the Jewes religion and therefore provided that men be severe and close in their sect and party they might roll in lustfull thoughts and the torches they light up in the Temple might smoke with anger at one end and lust at the other so they did not flame out in egressions of violence and injustice in adulteries and fouler complications nay they would give leave to some degrees of evill actions for R. Moses and Selomoh taught that if the most part of a mans actions were holy and just though in one he sinned often yet the greater ingredient should prevail and the number of good works should outweigh the lesser account of evill things and this Pharisaicall righteousnesse is too frequent even amongst Christians For who almost is there that does not count fairly concerning himself if he reckons many vertues upon the stock of his Religion and but one vice upon the stock of his infirmity
reputation against piety the love of the world in civill instances to countenance enmity against God these are the deceitfull workers of Gods work they make a schisme in the duties of Religion and a warre in heaven worse then that between Michael and the Dragon for they divide the Spirit of God and distinguish his commandements into parties and factions by seeking an excuse sometimes they destroy the integrity and perfect constitution of duty or they do something whereby the effect and usefulnesse of the duty is hindred concerning all which this only can be said they who serve God with a lame sacrifice and an imperfect duty a duty defective in its constituent parts can never enjoy God because he can never be divided and though it be better to enter into heaven with one foot and one eye then that both should be cast into hell because heaven can make recompence for this losse yet nothing can repair his losse who for being lame in his duty shall enter into hell where nothing is perfect but the measures and duration of torment and they both are next to infinite SERMON XIII Part II. 2. THe next enquiry is into the intention of our duty and here it will not be amisse to change the word fraudulentèr or dolosè into that which some of the Latin Copies doe use Maledictus qui facit opus Dei negligentèr Cursed is he that doth the work of the Lord negligently or remissely and it implyes that as our duty must be whole so it must be fervent for a languishing body may have all its parts and yet be uselesse to many purposes of nature and you may reckon all the joynts of a dead man but the heart is cold and the joynts are stiffe and fit for nothing but for the little people that creep in graves and so are very many men if you summe up the accounts of their religion they can reckon dayes and months of Religion various offices charity and prayers reading and meditation faith and knowledge catechisme and sacraments duty to God and duty to Princes paying debts and provision for children confessions and tears discipline in families and love of good people and it may be you shall not reprove their numbers or find any lines unfill'd in their tables of accounts but when you have handled all this and consider'd you will find at last you have taken a dead man by the hand there is not a finger wanting but they are stiffe as Isicles and without flexure as the legs of Elephants such are they whom S. Bernard describes whose spirituall joy is allayed with tediousnesse whose compunction for sins is short and seldome whose thoughts are animall and their designes secular whose Religion is lukewarm their obedience is without devotion their discourse without profit their prayer without intention of heart their reading without instruction their meditation is without spirituall advantages and is not the commencement and strengthning of holy purposes and they are such whom modesty will not restrain nor reason bridle nor discipline correct nor the fear of death and hell can keep from yeelding to the imperiousnesse of a foolish lust that dishonors a mans understanding and makes his reason in which he most glories to be weaker then the discourse of a girle and the dreams of the night In every action of Religion God expects such a warmth and a holy fire to goe along that it may be able to enkindle the wood upon the altar and consume the sacrifice but God hates an indifferent spirit Earnestnesse and vivacity quicknesse and delight perfect choyce of the service and a delight in the prosecution is all that the spirit of a man can yeeld towards his Religion the outward work is the effect of the body but if a man does it heartily and with all his mind then religion hath wings and moves upon wheels of fire and therefore when our blessed Saviour made those capitulars and canons of Religion to love God and to love our neighbors besides that the materiall part of the duty love is founded in the spirit as its naturall seat he also gives three words to involve the spirit in the action and but one for the body Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soule and with all thy mind and lastly with all thy strength this brings in the body too because it hath some strengths and some significations of its own but heart and soule and mind mean all the same thing in a stronger and more earnest expression that is that we doe it hugely as much as we can with a cleer choice with a resolute understanding with strong affections with great diligence Enerves animos odisse virtus solet Vertue haâ—es weak and ineffective minds and tame easie prosecutions Loripedes people whose arme is all flesh whose foot is all leather and an unsupporting skin they creep like snakes and pursue the noblest mysteries of Religion as Naaman did the mysteries of Rimmon onely in a complement or for secular regards but without the mind and therefore without Zeal I would thou wert either hot or cold said the Spirit of God to the Angell or Bishop of Laodicea In feasts or sacrifices the Ancients did use apponere frigidam or calidam sometimes they drank hot drink sometimes they poured cold upon their graves or in their wines but no services of Tables or Altars were ever with lukewarm God hates it worse then stark cold which expression is the more considerable because in naturall and superinduc'd progressions from extreme to extreme we must necessarily passe through the midst and therefore it is certain a lukewarm Religion is better then none at all as being the doing some parts of the work designed and neerer to perfection then the utmost distance could be and yet that God hates it more must mean that there is some appendant evill in this state which is not in the other and that accidentally it is much worse and so it is if we rightly understand it that is if we consider it not as a being in or passing through the middle way but as a state and a period of Religion If it be in motion a lukewarm Religion is pleasing to God for God hates it not for its imperfection and its naturall measures of proceeding but if it stands still and rests there it is a state against the designes and against the perfection of God and it hath in it these evills 1. It is a state of the greatest imprudence in the world for it makes a man to spend his labour for that which profits not and to deny his appetite for an unsatisfying interest he puts his moneys in a napkin and he that does so puts them into a broken bag he loses the principall for not encreasing the interest He that dwells in a state of life that is unacceptable loses the money of his almes and the rewards of his charity his hours of prayer and his parts of justice
he confesses his sins and is not pardoned he is patient but hath no hope and he that is gone so far towards his countrey and stands in the middle way hath gone so far out of his way he had better have stay'd under a dry roof in the house of banishment then to have left his Gyarus the Island of his sorrow and to dwell upon the Adriatick So is he that begins a state of Religion and does not finish it he abides in the high-way and though he be neerer the place yet is as far from the rest of his countrey as ever and therefore all that beginning of labour was in the prejudice of his rest but nothing to the advantages of his hopes He that hath never begun hath lost no labour Jactura praeteritorum the losse of all that he hath done is the first evill of the negligent and luke-warm Christian according to the saying of Solomon He that is remisse or idle in his labour is the brother of him that scattereth his goods 2. The second appendant evill is that lukewarmnesse is the occasion of greater evill because the remisse easie Christian shuts the gate against the heavenly breathings of Gods holy Spirit he thinks every breath that is fan'd by the wings of the holy Dove is not intended to encourage his fires which burn and smoke and peep through the cloud already it tempts him to security and if an evill life be a certain inlet to a second death despaire on one side and security on the other are the bars and locks to that dore he can never passe forth again while that state remains who ever slips in his spirituall walking does not presently fall but if that slip does not awaken his diligence and his caution then his ruine begins vel pravae institutionis deceptus exordio aut per longam mentis incuriam virtute animi decidente as St. Austin observes either upon the pursuit of his first error or by a carelesse spirit or a decaying slackned resolution all which are the direct effects of lukewarmnesse But so have I seen a fair structure begun with art and care and raised to halfe its stature and then it stood still by the misfortune or negligence of the owner and the rain descended and dwelt in its joynts and supplanted the contexture of its pillars and having stood a while like the antiquated Temple of a deceased Oracle it fell into a hasty age and sunk upon its owne knees and so descended into ruine So is the imperfect unfinished spirit of a man it layes the foundation of a holy resolution and strengthens it with vows and arts of prosecution it raises up the walls Sacraments and Prayers Reading and holy Ordinances and holy actions begin with a slow motion and the building stays and the spirit is weary and the soul is naked and exposed to temptation and in the days of storm take in every thing that can doe it mischief and it is faint and sick listlesse and tired and it stands till its owne weight wearies the foundation and then declines to death and sad disorder being so much the worse because it hath not onely returned to its first follies but hath superadded unthankfulnesse and carelesnesse a positive neglect and a despite of holy things a setting a low price to the things of God lazinesse and wretchlesnesse all which are evills superadded to the first state of coldnesse whither he is with all these loads and circumstances of death easily revolv'd 3. A state of lukewarmnesse is more incorrigible then a state of coldnesse while men flatter themselves that their state is good that they are rich and need nothing that their lamps are dressed and full of ornament There are many that think they are in their countrey as soon as ever they are weary and measure not the end of their hopes by the possession of them but by their precedent labour which they overvalue because they have easie and effeminate souls S. Bernard complains of some that say Sufficit nobis nolumus esse meliores quà m Patres nostri It is enough for us to be as our forefathers who were honest and usefull in their generations but be not over-righteous These men are such as think they have knowledge enough to need no teacher devotion enough to need no new fires perfection enough to need no new progresse justice enough to need no repentance and then because the spirit of a man and all the things of this world are in perpetuall variety and change these men decline when they have gone their period they stand still and then revert like a stone returning from the bosome of a cloud where it rested as long as the thought of a childe and fell to its naturall bed of earth and dwelt below for ever He that says he will take care he be no worse and that he desires to be no better stops his journey into heaven but cannot be secure against his descending into hell and Cassian spake a hard saying Frequentèr vidimus de frigidis carnalibus ad spiritualem venisse fervorem de tepidis animalibus omninò non vidimus Many persons from vicious and dead and cold have passed into life and an excellent grace and a spirituall warmth and holy fires but from lukewarm and indifferent never any body came to an excellent condition and state of holynesse rarissimè S. Bernard sayes very extremely seldome and our blessed Saviour said something of this The Publicans and the Harlots goe before you into the Kingdome of heaven they are moved by shame and punished by disgrace and remarked by punishments and frighted by the circumstances and notices of all the world and separated from sober persons by laws and an intolerable character and the sense of honour and the care of their persons and their love of civill societie and every thing in the world can invite them towards vertues But the man that is accounted honest and does justice and some things of Religion unlesse he finds himselfe but upon his way and feels his wants and groans under the sense of his infirmities and sighs under his imperfections and accounts himself not to have comprehended but still presses towards the mark of his calling unlesse I say he still increases in his appetites of Religion as he does in his progression he will think he needs no counsellor and the spirit of God whispers to an ear that is already fill'd with noyses and cannot atrend to the heavenly calling The stomach that is already full is next to loathing and that 's the prologue to sicknesse and a rejecting the first wholesome nutriment which was entertained to relieve the first naturall necessities Qui non proficit vult deficere said S. Bernard He that goes not forward in the love of God and of Religion does not stand still but goes for all that but whither such a motion will lead him himself without a timely care shall feel by an intolerable experiment In
sun may shine under a cloud and a man may rejoyce in persecution and delight in losses that is though his outward man groanes and faints and dies yet his spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the inner man is confident and industrious and hath a hope by which it lives and works unto the end It was the case of our blessed Saviour in his agony his soule was exceeding sorrowfull unto death and the load of his Fathers anger crushed his shoulder and bowed his knees to the ground and yet he chose it and still went forward and resolved to die and did so and what wee choose wee delight in and wee thinke it to be eligible and therefore amiable and fit by its proper excellencies and appendages to be delighted in it is not pleasant to the flesh at all times for its dignity is spirituall and heavenly but therefore it is proportioned to the spirit which is as heavenly as the reward and therefore can feel the joys of it when the body hangs the head and is uneasie and troubled These are the necessary parts of zeale of which if any man failes he is in a state of lukewarmnesse and that is a spirituall death As a banished man or a condemned person is dead civilly he is diminutus capite he is not reckoned in the census nor partakes of the priviledges nor goes for a person but is reckoned among things in the possession of others so is a lukewarm person he is corde diminutus he is spiritually dead his heart is estranged from God his affections are lessened his hope diminished and his title cancell'd and he remains so unlesse 1. he prefers Religion before the world and 2. spiritually rejoyces in doing his duty and 3. doe it constantly and with perseverance These are the heats and warmth of life whatsoever is lesse then this is a disease and leads to the coldnesse and dishonors of the grave SERMON XIV Part III. 3. SO long as our zeal and forwardnesse in Religion hath only these constituent parts it hath no more then can keep the duty alive but beyond this there are many degrees of earnestnesse and vehemence which are progressions towards the state of perfection which every man ought to design and desire to be added to his portion of this sort I reckon frequency in prayer and almes above our estate Concerning which two instances I have these two cautions to insert 1. Concerning frequency in prayer it is an act of zeal so ready and prepared for the spirit of a man so easie and usefull so without objection and so fitted for every mans affairs his necessities and possibilities that he that prayes but seldome cannot in any sense pretend to be a religious person For in Scripture there is no other rule for the frequency of prayer given us but by such words which signifie we should do it alwaies Pray continually and Men ought alwayes to pray and not to faint And then men have so many necessities that if we should esteem our needs to be the circumstances and positive determination of our times of prayer we should be very far from admitting limitation of the former words but they must mean that we ought to pray frequently every day For in danger and trouble naturall Religion teaches us to pray In a festivall fortune our prudence and our needs inforce us equally For though we feel not a present smart yet we are certain then is our biggest danger and if we observe how the world treats her darlings men of riches and honour of prosperity and great successe we cannot but confesse them to be the most miserable of all men as being in the greatest danger of losing their biggest interest For they are bigger then the iron hand of Law and they cannot be restrain'd with fear the hand grasps a power of doing all that which their evill heart can desire and they cannot be restrained with disability to sin they are flatter'd by all mean and base and indiligent persons which are the greatest part of mankinde but few men dare reprove a potent sinner he shall every day be flattered and seldome counselled and his great reflexions and opinions of his condition makes him impatient of reproof and so he cannot be restrain'd with modesty and therefore as the needs of the poor man his rent day and the cryes of his children and the oppression he groans under and his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his uneasie ill sleeping care will make him run to his prayers that in heaven a new decree may be passed every day for the provisions of his daily bread so the greater needs of the rich their temptations and their dangers the flattery and the vanity the power and the pride their businesse and evill estate of the whole world upon them cals upon them to be zealous in this instance that they pray often that they pray without ceasing For there is great reason they should do so and great security and advantage if they do For he that prayes well and prayes often must needs be a good and a blessed man and truly he that does not deserves no pity for his misery For when all the troubles and dangers of his condition may turn into his good if he will but desire they should when upon such easie terms he may be happy for there is no more trouble in it then this Aske and ye shall receive that 's all that is required no more turnings and variety in their road when I say at so cheap a rate a poor man may be provided for and a rich man may escape damnation they that refuse to apply themselves to this remedy quickly earnestly zealously and constantly deserves the smart of his poverty and the care of it and the scorne if he be poor and if he be rich it is fit he should because he desires it dye by the evils of his proper danger * It was observed by Cassian orationibus maximè insidiantur Daemones the Devill is more busie to disturb our prayers then to hinder any thing else For else it cannot be imagined why we should be brought to pray so seldome and to be so listlesse to them and so trifling to them No The Devill knowes upon what hard terms he stands with the praying man he also knows that it is a mighty emanation of Gods infinite goodnesse and a strange desire of saving mankinde that he hath to so easie a duty promised such mighty blessings For God knowing that upon hard terms we would not accept of heaven it self and yet hell was so intolerable a state that God who loved us would affixe heaven to a state of prayer and devotion this because the Devill knowes to be one of the greatest arts of the Divine mercy he labours infinitely to supplant and if he can but make men unwilling to pray or to pray coldly or to pray seldome he secures his interest and destroys the mans and it is infinitely strange that he can and doth prevail so
can never go too far But then be carefull that this zeal of thy neighbours amendment be only expressed in waies of charity not of cruelty or importune justice He that strikes the Prince for justice as Solomons expression is is a companion of murderers and he that out of zeal of Religion shall go to convert Nations to his opinion by destroying Christians whose faith is intire and summ'd up by the Apostles this man breaks the ground with a sword and sowes tares and waters the ground with bloud and ministers to envie and cruelty to errors and mistake and there comes up nothing but poppies to please the eye and fancy disputes and hypocrisie new summaries of Religion estimated by measures of anger and accursed principles and so much of the religion as is necessary to salvation is laid aside and that brought forth that serves an interest not holinesse that fils the Schooles of a proud man but not that which will fill Heaven Any zeal is proper for Religion but the zeal of the sword and the zeal of anger this is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the bitternesse of zeal and it is a certain temptation to every man against his duty for if the sword turns preacher and dictates propositions by empire in stead of arguments and ingraves them in mens hearts with a ponyard that it shall be death to beleeve what I innocently and ignorantly am perswaded of it must needs be unsafe to try the spirits to try all things to make inquiry and yet without this liberty no man can justifie himself before God or man nor confidently say that his Religion is best since he cannot without a finall danger make himself able to give a right sentence and to follow that which he findes to be the best this may ruine souls by making Hypocrites or carelesse and complyant against conscience or without it but it does not save souls though peradventure it should force them to a good opinion This is inordination of zeal for Christ by reproving St. Peter drawing his sword even in the cause of Christ for his sacred and yet injured person 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Theophylact teaches us not to use the sword though in the cause of God or for God himself because he will secure his own interest only let him be served as himself is pleased to command and it is like Moses passion it throwes the tables of the Law out of our hands and breaks them in pieces out of indignation to see them broken This is the zeal that is now in fashion and hath almost spoyl'd Religion men like the Zelots of the Jewes cry up their Sect and in it their interest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they affect Disciples and fight against the opponents and we shall finde in Scripture that when the Apostles began to preach the meeknesse of the Christian institution salvations and promises charity and humility there was a zeal set up against them the Apostles were zealous for the Gospell the Jewes were zealous for the Law and see what different effects these two zeals did produce the zeal of the Law came to this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they stirred up the City they made tumults they persecuted this way unto the death they got letters from the high Priest they kept Damascus with a Garrison they sent parties of souldiers to silence and to imprison the Preachers and thought they did God service when they put the Apostles to death and they swore neither to eat nor to drink till they had killed Paul It was an old trick of the Jewish zeal Non monstrare vias eadem nisi sacra colenti Quaesitum ad fontem solos deducere verpos They would not shew the way to a Samaritan nor give a cup of cold water but to a circumcised brother That was their zeal But the zeal of the Apostles was this they preached publickly and privately they prayed for all men they wept to God for the hardnesse of mens hearts they became all things to all men that they might gain some they travel'd through deeps and deserts they indured the heat of the Syrian Starre and the violence of Euroclydon winds and tempests seas and prisons mockings and scourgings fastings and poverty labour and watching they endured every man and wronged no man they would do any good thing and suffer any evill if they had but hopes to prevail upon a soul they perswaded men meekly they intreated them humbly they convinced them powerfully the watched for their good but medled not with their interest and this is the Christian zeal the zeal of mecknesse the zeal of charity the zeal of patience 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in these it is good to be zealous for you can never goe farre enough 2. The next measure of zeal is prudence For as charity is the matter of zeal so is discretion the manner It must alwaies be for good to our neighbour and there needs no rules for the conducting of that provided the end be consonant to the design that is that charity be intended and charity done But there is a zeal also of Religion or worshipping and this hath more need of measures and proper cautions For Religion can turn into a snare it may be abused into superstition it may become wearinesse in the spirit and tempt to tediousnesse to hatred and despair and many persons through their indiscreet conduct and furious marches and great loads taken upon tender shoulders and unexperienced have come to be perfect haters of their joy and despisers of all their hopes being like dark Lanthorns in which a candle burnes bright but the body is incompassed with a crust and a dark cloud of iron and these men keep the fires and light of holy propositions within them but the darknesse of hell the hardnesse of a vexed heart hath shaded all the light and makes it neither apt to warm nor to enlighten others but it turnes to fire within a feaver and a distemper dwels there and Religion is become their torment 1. Therefore our zeal must never carry us beyond that which is profitable There are many institutions customes and usages introduced into Religion upon very fair motives and apted to great necessities but to imitate those things when they are disrobed of their proper ends is an importune zeal and signifies nothing but a forward minde and an easie heart and an imprudent head unlesse these actions can be invested with other ends and usefull purposes The primitive Church were strangely inspired with a zeal of virginity in order to the necessities of preaching and travelling and easing the troubles and temptations of persecution but when the necessity went on and drove the holy men into deserts that made Colleges of Religious and their manner of life was such so united so poor so dressed that they must live more non saeculari after the manner of men divore'd from the
renders They that are drunk are drunk in the night but the Priests of Heliopolis never did sacrifice to the Sun with wine meaning that this is so great a dishonor that the Sun ought not to see it and they that think there is no other eye but the Sun that sees them may cover their shame by choosing their time just as children doe their danger by winking hard and not looking on 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To drink sweet drinks and hot to quaffe great draughts and to eat greedily Theophrastus makes them characters of a Clown And now that I have told you the foulnesse of the Epicures feasts and principles it will be fit that I describe the measures of our eating and drinking that the needs of nature may neither become the cover to an intemperate dish nor the freer refreshment of our persons be changed into scruples that neither our vertue nor our conscience fall into an evill snare 1. The first measure of our eating and drinking is our natural needs 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 these are the measures of nature that the body be free from pain and the soul from violence Hunger and thirst and cold are the naturall diseases of the body and food and rayment are their remedies and therefore are the measures In quantum sitis atque fames frigora poscunt Quantum Epicure tibi parvis suffecit in hortis But in this there are two cautions 1. Hunger and thirst are onely to be extinguished while they are violent and troublesome and are not to be provided for to the utmost extent and possibilities of nature a man is not hungry so long till he can eat no more but till its sharpnesse and trouble is over and he that does not leave some reserves for temperance gives all that he can to nature and nothing at all to grace For God hath given a latitude in desires and degrees of appetite and when he hath done he laid restraint upon it in some whole instances and of some parts in every instance that man might have something to serve God of his own and something to distinguish him from a beast in the use of their common faculties Beasts cannot refrain but fill all the capacity when they can and if a man does so he does what becomes a beast and not a man And therefore there are some little symptomes of this inordination by which a man may perceive himself to have transgressed his measures Ructation uneasie loads singing looser pratings importune drowsinesse provocation of others to equall and full chalices and though in every accident of this signification it is hard for another to pronounce that the man hath sinned yet by these he may suspect himself and learn the next time to hold the bridle harder 2. This hunger must be naturall not artificiall and provoked For many men make necessities to themselves and then think they are bound to provide for them It is necessary to some men to have garments made of the Calabrian fleece stain'd with the blood of the murex and to get money to buy pearls round and orient scelerata hoc fecit pulpa but it is the mans luxury that made it so and by the same principle it is that in-meats what is abundant to nature is defective and beggerly to art and when nature willingly rises from Table when the first course of flesh plain and naturall is done then art and sophistry and adulterate dishes invite him to taste and die 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 well may a sober man wonder that men should be so much in love with earth and corrution the parent of rottennesse and a disease that even then when by all laws witches and inchanters murderers and manstealers are chastised and restrain'd with the iron hands of death yet that men should at great charges give pensions to an order of men whose trade it is to rob them of their temperance and wittily to destroy their health 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Greek Fathers call such persons curvae in terris animae coelestium inanes people bowed downe to the earth lovers of pleasures more then lovers of God Aretinas mentes so Antidamus calls them men framed in the furnaces of Etruria Aretine spirits beginning and ending in flesh and filthynesse dirt and clay all over But goe to the Crib thou glutton and there it will be found that when the charger is clean yet natures rules were not prevaricated the beast eats up all his provisions because they are naturall and simple or if he leaves any it is because he desires no more then till his needs be served and neither can a man unlesse he be diseased in body or inspirit in affection or in habit eat more of naturall and simple food then to the satisfactions of his naturall necessities He that drinks a draught or two of water and cooles his thirst drinks no more till his thirst returnes but he that drinks wine drinks it again longer then it is needfull even so long as it is pleasant Nature best provides for her self when she spreads her own Table but when men have gotten superinduced habits and new necessities art that brought them in must maintain them but wantonnesse and folly wait at the table and sickness and death take away 2. Reason is the second measure or rather the rule whereby we judge of intemperance For whatsoever loads of meat or drink make the reason uselesse or troubled are effects of this deformity not that reason is the adequate measure for a man may be intemperate upon other causes though he doe not force his understanding and trouble his head Some are strong to drink and can eat like a wolfe and love to doe so as fire to destroy the stubble such were those Harlots in the Comedy Quae cum amatore suo cum coenant liguriunt These persons are to take their accounts from the measures of Religion and the Spirit though they can talk still or transact the affaires of the world yet if they be not fitted for the things of the Spirit they are too full of flesh or wine and cannot or care not to attend to the things of God But reason is the limit beyond which temperance never wanders and in every degree in which our discourse is troubled and our soul is lifted from its wheels in the same degree the sin prevails Dum sumus in quâdam delinquendi libidine nebulis quibusdam insipientiae mens obducitur saith St. Ambrose when the flesh-pots reek and the uncovered dishes send forth a nidor and hungry smels that cloud hides the face and puts out the eye of reason and then tell them mors in ollâ that death is in the pot and folly in the chalice that those smels are fumes of brimstone and vapours of Egypt that they will make their heart easie and their head sottish and their colour pale and their hands trembling and their feet tormented Mullorum leporúmque suminis exitus
hic est Sulphureúsque color carnificésque pedes For that is the end of delicacies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Dio Chrysostom palenesse and effeminacy and lazinesse and folly yet under the dominion of the pleasures of sensuality men are so stript of the use of reason that they are not onely uselesse in wise counsels and assistances but they have not reason enough to avoid the evils of their own throat and belly when once their reason fails we must know that their temperance and their religion went before 3. Though reason be so strictly to be preserved at our tables as well as at our prayers and we can never have leave to doe any violence to it yet the measures of Nature may be enlarged beyond the bounds of prime and common necessity For besides hunger and thirst there are some labours of the body and others of the mind and there are sorrows and loads upon the spirit by its communications with the indispositions of the body and as the labouring man may be supplyed with bigger quantities so the student and contemplative man with more delicious and spritefull nutriment for as the tender and more delicate easily-digested meats will not help to carry burthens upon the neck and hold the plough in society and yokes of the laborious oxen so neither will the pulse and the leeks Lavinian sausages and the Cisalpine tucets or gobbets of condited buls flesh minister such delicate spirits to the thinking man but his notion will be flat as the noyse of the Arcadian porter and thick as the first juice of his countrey lard unlesse he makes his body a fit servant to the soul and both fitted for the imployment But in these cases necessity and prudence and experience are to make the measures and the rule and so long as the just end is fairly designed and aptly ministred to there ought to be no scruple concerning the quantity or quality of the provision and he that would stint a Swain by the commons of a Student and give Philotas the Candian the leavings of Plato does but ill serve the ends of temperance but worse of prudence and necessity 4. Sorrow and a wounded spirit may as well be provided for in the quantity and quality of meat and drink as any other disease and this disease by this remedy as well as by any other For great sorrow and importune melancholy may be as great a sin as a great anger and if it be a sin in its nature it is more malignant and dangerous in its quality as naturally tending to murmur and despair wearinesse of Religion and hatred of God timorousnesse and jealousies fantastick images of things and superstition and therefore as it is necessary to restrain the feavers of anger so also to warm the freezings and dulnesse of melancholy by prudent and temperate but proper and apportion'd diets and if some meats and drinks make men lustfull or sleepy or dull or lazy or spritely or merry so far as meats and drinks can minister to the passion and the passion minister to vertue so far by this means they may be provided for Give strong drink to him that is ready to perish and wine to those that be of heavy hearts let him drink and forget his poverty and remember his misery no more said King Lemuel's Mother But this is not intended to be an habituall cure but single and occasionall for he that hath a pertinacious sorrow is beyond the cure of meat and drink and if this become every days physick it will quickly become every days sin 2. It must alwayes keep within the bounds of reason and never seise upon any portions of affection The Germans use to mingle musick with their bowls and drink by the measures of the six Notes of Musick Ut relevet miserum fatum solitósque labores but they sing so long that they forget not their sorrow onely but their vertue also and their Religion and there are some men that fall into drunkennesse because they would forget a lighter calamity running into the fire to cure a calenture and beating their brains out to be quit of the aking of their heads A mans heavynesse is refreshed long before he comes to drunkennesse for when he arrives thither he hath but chang'd his heavynesse and taken a crime to boot 5. Even when a man hath no necessity upon him no pungent sorrow or naturall or artificiall necessity it is lawfull in some cases of eating and drinking to receive pleasure and intend it For whatsoever is naturall and necessary is therefore not criminall because it is of Gods procuring and since we eate for need and the satisfaction of our need is a removing of a pain and that in nature is the greatest pleasure it is impossible that in its own nature it should be a sin But in this case of Conscience these cautions are to be observed 1. So long as nature ministers the pleasure and not art it is materially innocent Si tuo veniat jure luxuria est But it is safe while it enters upon natures stock for it is impossible that the proper effect of health and temperance and prudent abstinence should be vicious and yet these are the parents of the greatest pleasure in eating and drinking Malum panem expecta bonus fiet etiam illum tenerum tibi siligineum fames reddet If you abstaine and be hungry you shall turne the meanest provision into delicate and desireable 2. Let all the pleasure of meat and drink be such as can minister to health and be within the former bounds For since pleasure in eating and drinking is its naturall appendage and like a shadow follows the substance as the meat is to be accounted so is the pleasure and if these be observed there is no difference whether nature or art be the Cook For some constitutions and some mens customes and some mens educations and necessities and weaknesses are such that their appetite is to be invited and their digestion helped but all this while we are within the bounds of nature and need 3. It is lawfull when a man needs meat to choose the pleasanter even meerly for their pleasures that is because they are pleasant besides that they are usefull this is as lawfull as to smell of a rose or to lye in feathers or change the posture of our body in bed for ease or to hear musick or to walk in gardens rather then the high-wayes and God hath given us leave to be delighted in those things which he made to that purpose that we may also be delighted in him that gives them For so as the more pleasant may better serve for health and directly to refreshment so collaterally to Religion Alwayes provided that it be in its degree moderate and we temperate in our desires without transportation and violence without unhandsome usages of our selves or taking from God and from Religion any minutes and portions of our affections When Eicadastes the Epicure
bosome and he sighes deeply Ah tum te miserum malique fati Quem attractis pedibus patente portâ Percurrent mugiléque raphanique The boyes and the pedlers and the fruiterers shall tell of this man when he is carryed to his grave that he lived and dyed a poor wretched person The Stags in the Greek Epigram whose knees were clog'd with frozen snow upon the mountains came down to the brooks of the vallies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hoping to thaw their joynts with the waters of the stream but there the frost overtook them and bound them fast in ice till the young heardsmen took them in their stranger snare It is the unhappy chance of many men finding many inconveniences upon the mountains of single life they descend into the vallies of marriage to refresh their troubles and there they enter into fetters and are bound to sorrow by the cords of a mans or womans peevishnesse and the worst of the evill is they are to thank their own follies for they fell into the snare by entring an improper way Christ and the Church were no ingredients in their choice but as the Indian women enter into folly for the price of an Elephant and think their crime warrantable so do men and women change their liberty for a rich fortune like Eriphyle the Argive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 she prefer'd gold before a good man and shew themselves to be lesse then money by overvaluing that to all the content and wise felicity of their lives and when they have counted the money and their sorrowes together how willingly would they buy with the losse of all that money modesty or sweet nature to their relative the odde thousand pound would gladly be allowed in good nature and fair manners As very a fool is he that chooses for beauty principally cui sunt eruditi oculi stulta mens as one said whose eyes are witty and their soul sensuall It is an ill band of affections to tye two hearts together by a little thread of red and white 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And they can love no longer but untill the next ague comes and they are fond of each other but at the chance of fancy or the small pox or childebearing or care or time or any thing that can destroy a pretty flower But it is the basest of all when lust is the Paranymph and solicits the suit and makes the contract and joyn'd the hands for this is commonly the effect of the former according to the Greek proverb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 At first for his fair cheeks and comely beard the beast is taken for a Lion but at last he is turn'd to a Dragon or a Leopard or a Swine That which is at first beauty on the face may prove lust in the manners 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So Eubulus wittily reprehended such impure contracts they offer in their maritall sacrifices nothing but the thigh and that which the Priests cut from the goats when they were laid to bleed upon the Altars 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said St. Clement He or she that looks too curiously upon the beauty of the body looks too low and hath flesh and corruption in his heart and is judg'd sensuall and earthly in his affections and desires Begin therefore with God Christ is the president of marriage and the holy Ghost is the fountain of purities and chast loves and he joynes the hearts and therefore let our first suit be in the court of heaven and with designs of piety or safety or charity let no impure spirit defile the virgin purities and castifications of the soul as St. Peters phrase is let all such contracts begin with religious affections Conjugium petimus partúmque uxoris at illi Notum qui pueri qualisve futura sit uxor We sometimes beg of God for a wife or a childe and he alone knows what the wife shall prove and by what dispositions and manners and into what fortune that childe shall enter but we shall not need to fear concerning the event of it if religion and fair intentions and prudence manage and conduct it all the way The preservation of a family the production of children the avoiding fornication the refreshment of our sorrowes by the comforts of society all these are fair ends of marriage and hallow the entrance but in these there is a speciall order society was the first designed It is not good for man to be alone Children was the next Increase and multiply but the avoiding fornication came in by the superfetation of the evill accidents of the world The first makes marriage delectable the second necessary to the publick the third necessary to the particular This is for safety for life and heaven it self Nam simulac venas inflavit dira cupido Huc juvenes aequum est descendere The other have in them joy and a portion of immortality the first makes the mans heart glad the second is the friend of Kingdomes and cities and families and the third is the enemy to hell and an antidote of the chiefest inlet to damnation but of all these the noblest end is the multiplying children Mundus cum patet Deorum tristium atque inferûm quasi patet janua propterea uxorem liberorum quaerendorum causâ ducere religiosum est said Varro It is religion to marry for children and Quintilian puts it into the definition of a wife est enim uxor quam jungit quam diducit utilitas cujus haec reverentia est quòd videtur inventa in causa liberorum and therefore St. Ignatius when he had spoken of Elias and Titus and Clement with an honourable mention of their virgin state lest he might seem to have lessened the marryed Apostles at whose feet in Christs Kingdome he thought himself unworthy to sit he gives this testimony they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that they might not be disparaged in their great names of holinesse and severity they were secured by not marrying to satisfie their lower appetites but out of desire of children Other considerations if they be incident and by way of appendage are also considerable in the accounts of prudence but when they become principles they defile the mystery and make the blessing doubtfull Amabit sapiens cupient caeteri said Afranius love is a fair inducement but desire and appetite are rude and the characterismes of a sensuall person Amare justi boni est cupere impotentis to love belongs to a just and a good man but to lust or furiously and passionately to desire is the sign of impotency and an unruly minde 2. Man and wife are equally concerned to avoid all offences of each other in the beginning of their conversation every little thing can blast an infant blossome and the breath of the south can shake the little rings of the Vine when first they begin to curle like the
so much pains he removed a little out of his way and he would lose the spent wealth or the health and the reputation over again if it were in his power Philomusus was a wilde young fellow in Domitian's time and he was hard put to it to make a large pension to maintain his lust and luxury and he was every moneth put to beggerly arts to feed his crime But when his father died and left him all he disinherited himself he spent it all though he knew he was to suffer that trouble alwayes which vexed his lustfull soul in the frequent periods of his violent want Now this is such a state of slavery that persons that are sensible ought to complain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that they serve worse lords them Egyptian task-masters there is a lord within that rules and rages Intus in jecore aegro pascuntur domini sin dwels there and makes a man a miserable servant and this is not only a Metaphoricall expression under which some spirituall and metaphysicall truth is represented but it is a physicall materiall truth and a man endures hardship he cannot move but at this command and not his outward actions only but his will and his understanding too are kept in fetters and foolish bondage 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Marcus Antoninus The two parts of a man are rent in sunder and that that prevails is the life it is the man it is the eloquence perswading every thing to its own interest * And now consider what is the effect of this evill A man by sin is made a slave he loses that liberty that is dearer to him then life it self and like the dog in the fable we suffer chains and ropes only for a piece of bread when the Lion thought liberty a sufficient reward and price for hunger and all the hardnesses of the wildernesse Do not all the world fight for liberty and at no terms will lay down armes till at least they be cousened with the image and colour of it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and yet for the pleasure of a few minutes we give our selves into bondage and all the world does it more or lesse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Either men are slaves to fortune or to lust to covetousnesse or tyranny something or other compels him to usages against his will and reason and when the lawes cannot rule him money can divitiae enim apud sapientem virum in servitute sunt apud stultum in imperio for money is the wise mans servant and the fools Master but the bondage of a vicious person is such a bondage as the childe hath in the wombe or rather as a sick man in his bed we are bound fast by our disease and a consequent weaknesse we cannot go forth though the doors be open and the fetters knockt off and vertue and reason like St. Peters Angel call us and bâ—at us upon the sides and offer to go before us yet we cannot come forth from prison for we have by our evill customes given hostages to the Devill never to stirre from the enemies quarter and this is the greatest bondage that is imaginable the bondage of conquered wounded unresisting people 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vertue only is the truest liberty And if the Son of God make us free then are we free indeed 3. Sin does naturally introduce a great basenesse upon the spirit expressed in Scripture in some cases by the Devils entring into a man as it was in the case of Judas after he had taken the sop Satan entred into him and St. Cyprian speaking of them that after Baptisme lapsed into foul crimes he affirms that spiritu immundo quasi redeunte quatiuntur ut manifestum sit Diabolum in baptismo side credentis excludi si sides postmedum defecerit regredi Faith and the grace of Baptisme turns the Devill out of possession but when faith fails and we loose the bands of Religion then the Devill returns that is the man is devolved into such sins of which there can be no reason given which no excuse can lessen which are set off with no pleasure advanced by no temptations which deceive by no allurements and flattering pretences such things which have a proper and direct contrariety to the good Spirit and such as are not restrained by humane laws because they are states of evill rather then evill actions principles of mischief rather then direct emanations such as are u. thankfulnesse impiety giving a secret blow fawning bypocrisie detraction impudence forgetfulnesse of the dead and forgetting to do that in their absence which we promised to them in presence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Concerning which sorts of unworthinesse it is certain they argue a most degenerous spirit and they are the effect the naturall effect of malice and despair an unwholesome ill natur'd soul a soul corrupted in its whole constitution I remember that in the Apologues of Phaedrus it is told concerning an ill natured fellow that he refused to pay his Symbol which himself and all the company had agreed should be given for every disease that each man had he denying his itch to be a disease but the company taking off the refusers hat for a pledge found that he had a scal'd head and so demanded the money double which he pertinaciously resisting they threw him down and then discovered he was broken bellied and justly condemned him to pay three Philippicks Quae fuerat fabula poenafuit One disease discovers it self by the hiding of another and that being open'd discovers a third He that is almost taken in a fault tels a lye to escape and to protect that lye he forswears himself and that he may not be suspected of perjury he growes impudent and that sin may not shame him he will glory in it like the slave in the Comedy who being torn with whips grinn'd and forc'd an ugly smile that it might not seem to smart * There are some sins which a man that is newly fallen cannot entertain There is no crime made ready for a young sinner but that which nature prompts him to Naturall inclination is the first tempter then compliance then custome but this being helped by a consequent folly dismantles the soul making it to hate God to despise Religion to laugh at severity to deride sober counsels to flie from repentance to resolve against it to delight in sin without abatement of spirit or purposes For it is an intolerable thing for a man to be tormented in his conscience for every sin he acts that must not be he must have his sin and his peace too or else he can have neither long and because true peace cannot come for there is no peace saith my God to the wicked therefore they must make a phantastick peace by a studied cousening of themselves by false propositions by carelesnesse by stupidity by impudence by sufferance and
habit by conversation and daily acquaintances by doing some things as Absalom did when he lay with his fathers concubines to make it impossible for him to repent or to be forgiven something to secure him in the possession of hell Tute hoc intristi quod tibi exedendum est the man must thorough it now and this is it that makes men fall into all basenesse of spirituall sins 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when a man is come to the bottome of his wickednsse he despises all such as malice and despite rancor and impudence malicious studied ignorance voluntary contempt of all Religion hating of good men and good counsels and taking every wise man and wise action to be his enemy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And this is that basenesse of sin which Plato so much detested that he said he should blush to be guilty of though he knew God would pardon him and that men should never know it propter solam peccati turpitudinem for the very basenesse that is in it A man that is false to God will also if an evill temptation overtakes him betray his friend and it is notorious in the covetous and ambitious 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They are an unthankfull generation and to please the people or to serve their interest will hurt their friends That man hath so lost himself to all sweetnesse and excellency of spirit that is gone thus farre in sin that he looks like a condemned man or is like the accursed spirits preserved in chains of darknesse and impieties unto the Judgement of the great Day 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this man can be nothing but evill for these inclinations and evill forwardnesses this dyscrasie and gangren'd disposition does alwaies suppose a long or a base sin for their parent and the product of these is a wretchlesse spirit that is an aptnesse to any unworthinesse and an unwillingnesse to resist any temptation a perseverance in basenesse and a consignation to all damnation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If men do evill things evill things shall be their reward If they obey the evill spirit an evill spirit shall be their portion and the Devill shall enter into them as he entred into Judas and fill them full of iniquity SERMON XXI Part III. 4. ALthough these are shamefull effects of sin and a man need no greater dishonour then to be a fool and a slave and a base person all which sin infallibly makes him yet there are some sins which are directly shamefull in their nature and proper disreputation and a very great many sins are the worst and basest in severall respects that is every of them hath a venomous quality of its own whereby it is marked and appropriated to a peculiar evill spirit The Devils sin was the worst because it came from the greatest malice Adams was the worst because it was of most universall efficacy and dissemination Judas sin the worst of men because against the most excellent person and the relapses of the godly are the worst by reason they were the most obliged persons But the ignorance of the Law is the greatest of evils if we consider its danger but covetousnesse is worse then it if we regard its incurable and growing nature luxury is most alien from spirituall things and is the worst of all in its temptation and our pronenesse but pride growes most venomous by its unreasonablenesse and importunity arising even from the good things a man hath even from graces and endearments and from being more in debt to God Sins of malice and against the Holy Ghost oppugn the greatest grace with the greatest spite but Idolatry is perfectly hated by God by a direct enmity Some sins are therefore most hainous because to resist them is most easie and to act them there is the least temptation such as are severally lying and swearing There is a strange poison in the nature of sins that of so many sorts every one of them should be the worst Every sin hath an evill spirit a Devill of its own to manage to conduct and to imbitter it and although all these are Gods enemies and have an appendant shame in their retinue yet to some sins shame is more appropriate and a proper ingredient in their constitutions such as are lying and lust and vow-breach and inconstancy God sometimes cures the pride of a mans spirit by suffering his evill manners and filthy inclination to be determin'd upon lust lust makes a man afraid of publick eyes and common voices it is as all sins else are but this especially a work of darknesse it does debauch the spirit and make it to decay and fall off from courage and resolution constancy and severity the spirit of government and a noble freedome and those punishments which the nations of the world have inflicted upon it are not smart so much as shame Lustfull souls are cheap and easie trifling and despised in all wise accounts they are so farre from being fit to sit with Princes that they dare not chastise a sinning servant that is private to their secret follies It is strange to consider what laborious arts of concealment what excuses and lessenings what pretences and fig-leaves men will put before their nakednesse and crimes shame was the first thing that entred upon the sin of Adam and when the second world began there was a strange scene of shame acted by Noah and his sons and it ended in slavery and basenesse to all descending generations We see the event of this by too sad an experience What arguments what hardnesse what preaching what necessity can perswade men to confesse their sins they are so ashamed of them that to be conceal'd they preferre before their remedy and yet in penitentiall confession the shame is going off it is like Cato's coming out of the Theatre or the Philosopher from the Taverne it might have been shame to have entred but glory to have departed for ever and yet ever to have relation to sin is so shame-full a thing that a mans spirit is amazed and his face is confounded when he is dressed of so shamefull a disease And there are but few men that will endure it but rather choose to involve it in excuses and deniall in the clouds of lying and the white linnen of hypocrisie and yet when they make a vail for their shame such is the fate of sin the shame growes the bigger and the thicker we lye to men and we excuse it to God either some parts of lying or many parts of impudence darknesse or forgetfulnesse running away or running further in these are the covers of our shame like menstruous rags upon a skin of leprosie But so sometimes we see a decayed beauty besmear'd with a lying fucus and the chinks fill'd with ceruse besides that it makes no reall beauty it spoils the face and betrayes evill manners it does not hide old age or
the change of years but it discovers pride or lust it was not shame to be old or wearied and worn out with age but it is a shame to dissemble nature by a wanton vizor So sin retires from blushing into shame if it be discover'd it is not to be endured and if we go to hide it we make it worse But then if we remember how ambitious we are for fame and reputation for honour and a fair opinion for a good name all our dayes and when our dayes are done and that no ingenuous man can enjoy any thing he hath if he lives in disgrace and that nothing so breaks a mans spirit as dishonour and the meanest person alive does not think himself fit to be despised we are to consider into what an evill condition sin puts us for which we are not only disgraced and disparaged here marked with disgracefull punishments despised by good men our follies derided our company avoided and hooted at by boyes talk'd of in fairs and markets pointed at and described by appellatives of scorn and everybody can chide us and we dye unpitied and lye in our graves eaten up by wormes and a foul dishonour but after all this at the day of Judgement we shall be called from our charnell houses where our disgrace could not sleep and shall in the face of God in the presence of Angels and Devils before all good men and all the evill see and feel the shame of all our sins written upon our foreheads Here in this state of misery and folly we make nothing of it and though we dread to be discovered to men yet to God we confesse our sins without a trouble or a blush but tell an even story because we finde some formes of confession prescrib'd in our prayer books and that it may appear how indifferent and unconcerned we seem to be we read and say all and confesse the sins we never did with as much sorrow and regret as those that we have acted a thousand times But in that strange day of recompences we shall finde the Devill to upbraid the criminall Christ to disown them the Angels to drive them from the seat of mercy and shame to be their smart the consigning them to damnation they shall then finde that they cannot dwell where vertue is rewarded and where honour and glory hath a throne there is no vail but what is rent no excuse to any but to them that are declared as innocent no circumstances concerning the wicked to be considered but them that aggravate then the disgrace is not confin'd to the talk of a village or a province but is scattered to all the world not only in one age shall the shame abide but the men of all generations shall see and wonder at the vastnesse of that evill that is spread upon the souls of sinners for ever and ever 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 No night shall then hide it for in those regions of darknesse where the dishonoured man shall dwell for ever there is nothing visible but the shame there is light enough for that but darknesse for all things else and then he shall reap the full harvest of his shame all that for which wise men scorned him and all that for which God hated him all that in which he was a fool and all that in which he was malicious that which was publick and that which was private that which fools applauded and that which himself durst not own the secrets of his lust and the criminall contrivances of his thoughts the base and odious circumstances and the frequency of the action and the partner of his sin all that which troubles his conscience and all that he willingly forgets shall be proclaim'd by the trumpet of God by the voice of an Archangell in the great congregation of spirits and just men There is one great circumstance more of the shame of sin which extremely enlarges the evill of a sinfull state but that is not consequent to sin by a naturall emanation but is superinduc'd by the just wrath of God and therefore is to be consider'd in the third part which is next to be handled 3. When the Boeotians asked the Oracle by what they should become happy the answer was made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 wicked and irreligious persons are prosperous and they taking the Devill at his word threw the inspired Pythian the ministring witeh into the sea hoping so to become mighty in peace and warre The effect of which was this The Devill was found a lyar and they fools at first and at last felt the reward of irreligion For there are to some crimes such events which are not to be expected from the connexion of naturall causes but from secret influences and undiscernible conveyances * that a man should be made sick for receiving the holy Sacrament unworthily and blinde for resisting the words of an Apostle a preacher of the Lawes of Jesus and dye suddenly for breaking of his vow and committing sacriledge and be under the power and scourge of an exterminating Angell for climbing his Fathers bed these are things beyond the worlds Philosophy But as in Nature so in Divinity too there are Sympathies and Antipathies effects which we feel by experience and are forewarned of by revelation which no naturall reason can judge nor any providence can prevent but by living innocently and complying with the Commandements of God The rod of God which cometh not into the lot of the righteous strikes the sinning man with sore strokes of veng eance 1. The first that I shall note is that which I called the aggravation of the shame of sin and that is an impossibility of being concealed in most cases of heinous crimes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 let no man suppose that he shall for ever hide his sin a single action may be conveyed away under the covert of an excuse or a privacy escaping as Ulysses did the search of Polyphemus and it shall in time be known that it did escape and shall be discover'd that it was private that is that it is so no longer But no wicked man that dwelt and delighted in sin did ever go off from his scene of unworthinesse without a filthy character The black veile is thrown over him before his death and by some contingency or other he enters into his cloud because few sins determine finally in the thoughts but if they dwell there they will also enter into action and then the thing discovers it self or else the injured person will proclaim it or the jealous man will talk of it before it 's done or curious people will inquire and discover or the spirit of detraction shall be let loose upon him and in spite shall declare more then he knowes not more then is true The Ancients especially the Scholars of Epicurus beleev'd that no man could be secured or quiet in his spirit from being discovered Scelus aliqua tutum nulla securum tulit They are not secure even when
blessed Saviour out of the Gospel of the Nazarens Nunquam laeti sitis nisi cum fratrem vestrum in charitate videritis Never be merry but when you see your brother in charity and when you are merry St. James hath appointed a proper expression of it and a fair entertainment to the passion If any man be merry let him sing Psalmes But St. Bernard who is also strict in this particular yet he addes the temper Though jesting be not fit for a Christian interdum tamen si incidant ferendae fortassis referendae nunquam magis interveniendum cautè prudentèr nugacitati If they seldome happen they are to be borne but never to be returned and made a businesse of but we must rather interpose warily and prudently to hinder the growth and progresse of the trifle But concerning this case of conscience we are to remember these holy persons found jesting to be a trade such were the ridicularii among the Romanes and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 among the Greeks and this trade besides its own unworthinesse was mingled with infinite impieties and in the institution and in all the circumstances of its practise was not onely against all prudent severity but against modesty and chastity and was a licence in disparagement of vertue and the most excellent things and persons were by it undervalued that in this throng of evill circumstances finding a humour placed which without infinite warinesse could never pretend to innocence it is no wonder they forbad all and so also did St. Paul upon the same account And in the same state of reproofe to this day are all that doe as they did such as are professed jesters people that play the foole for money whose employment and study is to unclothe themselves of the covers of reason or modesty that they may be laugh'd at And let it be considered how miserable every sinner is if he does not deeply and truely repent and when the man is wet with teares and covered with sorrow crying out mightily against his sins how ugly will it look when this is remembred the next day that he playes the foole and raises his laughter louder then his prayers and yesterdayes groans for no interest but that he may eat A Penitent and a Jester is like a Grecian piece of money on which were stamped a Helena on one side and a Hecuba on the other a Rose and a deadly Aconite a Paris and an Aesop nothing was more contrary and upon this account this folly was reproved by St. Hierom Verum haec à sanctis viris penitùs propellenda quibus magis convenit flere atque lugere Weeping and penitentiall sorrow and the sweet troubles of pity and compassion become a holy person much better then a scurrilous tongue But the whole state of this Question is briefly this 1. If jesting be unseasonable it is also intolerable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2. If it be immoderate it is criminall and a little thing here makes the excesse it is so in the confines of folly that as soon as it is out of dores it is in the regions of sin 3. If it be in an ordinary person it is dangerous but if in an eminent a consecrated a wise and extraordinary person it is scandalous Inter saeculares nugae sunt in ore Sacerdotis blasphemiae so St. Bernard 4. If the matter be not of an indifferent nature it becomes sinfull by giving countenance to a vice or making vertue to become ridiculous 5. If it be not watcht that it complies with all that heare it becomes offensive and injurious 6. If it be not intended to fair and lawfull purposes it is sowre in the using 7. If it be frequent it combines and clusters into a formall sinne 8. If it mingles with any sin it puts on the nature of that new unworthinesse beside the proper uglynesse of the thing it selfe and after all these when can it be lawfull or apt for Christian entertainment The Ecclesiasticall History reports that many jests passed between St. Anthony the Father of the Hermits and his Scholar St. Paul and St. Hilarion is reported to have been very pleasant and of a facete sweet and more lively conversation and indeed plaisance and joy and a lively spirit and a pleasant conversation and the innocent caresses of a charitable humanity is not forbidden plenum tamen suavitatis gratiae sermonem non esse indecorum St. Ambrose affirmed and here in my text our conversation is commanded to be such 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that it may minister grace that is favour complacence cheerfulnesse and be acceptable and pleasant to the hearer and so must be our conversation it must be as far from sullennesse as it ought to be from lightnesse and a cheerfull spirit is the best convoy for Religion and though sadnesse does in some cases become a Christian as being an Index of a pious minde of compassion and a wise proper resentment of things yet it serves but one end being useful in the onely instance of repentance and hath done its greatest works not when it weeps and sighs but when it hates and grows carefull against sin But cheerfulnesse and a festivall spirit fills the soule full of harmony it composes musick for Churches and hearts it makes and publishes glorifications of God it produces thankfulnesse and serves the ends of charity and when the oyle of gladnesse runs over it makes bright and tall emissions of light and holy fires reaching up to a cloud and making joy round about And therefore since it is so innocent and may be so pious and full of holy advantage whatsoever can innocently minister to this holy joy does set forward the work of Religion and Charity And indeed charity it selfe which is the verticall top of all Religion is nothing else but an union of joyes concentred in the heart and reflected from all the angles of our life and entercourse It is a rejoycing in God a gladnesse in our neighbours good a pleasure in doing good a rejoycing with him and without love we cannot have any joy at all It is this that makes children to be a pleasure and friendship to be so noble and divine a thing and upon this account it is certaine that all that which can innocently make a man cheerfull does also make him charitable for grief and age and sicknesse and wearinesse these are peevish and troublesome but mirth and cheerfulnesse is content and civil and compliant and communicative and loves to doe good and swels up to felicity onely upon the wings of charity In this account here is pleasure enough for a Christian in present and if a facete discourse and an amicable friendly mirth can refresh the spirit and take it off from the vile temptations of peevish despairing uncomplying melancholy it must needs be innocent and commendable And we may as well be refreshed by a clean and a brisk discourse as by the aire of Campanian wines
and value it above his life he must contend earnestly for the faith by the most prevailing arguments by the arguments of holy living and ready dying by zeale and patience by conformity and humility by reducing words to actions fair discourses to perfect perswasions by loving the article and encreasing in the knowledge and love of God and his Son Jesus Christ and then his faith is not negligent deceitfull artificiall and improper but true and holy and reasonable and usefull zealous and sufficient and therefore can never be reproved 2. Our prayers and devotions must be fervent and zealous not cold patient easie and soon rejected but supported by a patient spirit set forwards by importunity continued by perseverance waited on by attention and a present mind carryed along with holy but strong desires and ballasted with resignation and conformity to the divine will and then it is as God likes it and does the work to Gods glory and our interest effectively He that asks with a doubting mind and a lazy desire begs for nothing but to be denyed we must in our prayers be earnest and fervent or else we shall have but a cold answer for God gives his grace according as we can receive it and whatsoever evill returnes we meet in our prayers when we ask for good things is wholly by reason of our wandring spirits and cold desires we have reason to complain that our minds wander in our prayers and our diversions are more prevailing then all our arts of application and detention and we wander sometimes even when we pray against wandring and it is in some degrees naturall and unevitable but although the evill is not wholly to be cured yet the symptomes are to be eased and if our desires were strong and fervent our minds would in the same proportion be present we see it by a certain and regular experience what we love passionately we perpetually think on and it returnes upon us whether we will or no and in a great fear the apprehension cannot be shaken off and therefore if our desires of holy things were strong and earnest we should most certainly attend our prayers it is a more violent affection to other things that carries us off from this and therefore if we lov'd passionately what we aske for daily we should aske with hearty desires and an earnest appetite and a present spirit and however it be very easie to have our thoughts wander yet it is our indifferency and lukewarmnesse that makes it so naturall and you may observe it that so long as the light shines bright and the fires of devotion and desires flame out so long the mind of a man stands close to the altar and waits upon the sacrifice but as the fires die and desires decay so the mind steals away and walks abroad to see the little images of beauty and pleasure which it beholds in the falling stars and little glow-wormes of the world The river that runs slow and creeps by the banks and begs leave of every turfe to let it passe is drawn into little hollownesses and spends it selfe in smaller portions and dies with diversion but when it runs with vigorousnesse and a ful stream and breaks down every obstacle making it even as its own brow it stays not to be tempted by little avocations and to creep into holes but runs into the sea through full and usefull channels So is a mans prayer if it moves upon the feet of an abated appetite it wanders into the society of every trifling accident and stays at the corners of the fancy and talks with every object it meets and cannot arrive at heaven but when it is carryed upon the wings of passion and strong desires a swift motion and a hungry appetite it passes on through all the intermediall regions of clouds and stays not till it dwells at the foot of the Throne where mercy sits and thence sends holy showers of refreshment I deny not but some little drops will turn aside and fall from the full channell by the weaknesse of the banks and hollownesse of the passage but the main course is still continued and although the most earnest and devout persons feel and complain of some loosenesse of spirit and unfixed attentions yet their love and their desire secure the maine portions and make the prayer to be strong fervent and effectuall Any thing can be done by him that earnestly desires what he ought secure but your affections and passions and then no temptation will be too strong A wise man and a full resolution and an earnest spirit can doe any thing of duty but every temptation prevailes when we are willing to die and we usually lend nothing to devotion but the offices that flatter our passions we can desire and pray for any thing that may serve our lust or promote those ends which we covet but ought to tear and fly from but the same earnestnesse if it were transplanted into Religion and our prayers would serve all the needs of the spirit but for want of it we do the Lords work deceitfully 3. Our Charity also must be fervent Malus est miles qui ducem suum gemens sequitur He that follows his Generall with a heavy march and a heavy heart is but an ill souldier but our duty to God should be hugely pleasing and we should rejoyce in it it must passe on to action and doe the action vigorously it is called in Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the labour and travail of love A friend at a sneese and an almes-basket full of prayers a love that is lazy and a service that is uselesse and a pity without support are the images and colours of that grace whose very constitution and designe is beneficence and well-doing He that loves passionately will not onely doe all that his friend needs but all that himself can for although the law of charity is fulfilled by acts of profit and bounty and obedience and labour yet it hath no other measures but the proportions and abundance of a good mind and according to this God requires that we be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 abounding and that alwayes in the work of the Lord if we love passionately we shall doe all this for love endures labour and calls it pleasure it spends all and counts it a gain it suffers inconveniencies and is quickly reconciled to them if dishonours and affronts be to be endured love smiles and calls them favours and wears them willingly alii jacuere ligati Turpitèr atque aliquis de Diis non tristibus optat Sic fieri turpis It is the Lord said David and I will be yet more vile and it shall be honour unto me thus did the Disciples of our Lord goe from tribunals rejoycing that they were accounted worthy to suffer stripes for that beloved name and we are commanded to rejoyce in persecutions to resist unto bloud to strive to enter in at the strait gate not to be weary of well doing doe