in due season to such souls as are weary And first to clear up that misty Objection of ignorance Know for a certain that salvation's no matter of wit but as St. Austin in that known speech of his The faithful soul is safe in the sim plicity of his believing and not in the vivacity of understanding and as Nazâ—anzene hath it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Nothing could be more unequal then that our faith and so the way to salvation should be a thing only incident to learned bra ns Remember thy belief is like thy love he that commanâ—'s both gives both and having given a first spark blows it to a flame and if smal and weak yet if right and hearty good enough The best schollar of them all hath no better a Receipt then thou and God will firm thy Reed to support thee all the way to Heaven and as for dejection and aptness to despair I will take again that Cup of consolation in hand and strive to brew it so as it may relish on the palate of the weakest Christian and afford him a complacency at least an allay to all thought of impossibity or difficulty wont to prevail with such as taste themselves and consider not the puâ—ssance of Vitis and Racemus the power of God For our errour proceeds both wayes not knowing the Scriptures or not observing the power of God My Ingredients shall be but two and taken from two Comparisons 1. First compare this act of Regeneration with the worlds Creation there for the consolation of the darker and weaker spirit we find it vain to enquire what was before the frame so it is not clear what shall be after the dissolution so in Recreation what goes before of the destinating is a Depth and what the state of glory shall be is not clear it appears not yet what we shal be 1 Joh. 3. But this appears the Grace of God appears and his free act is evident in both The creature can contribute nothing at first and then though a double cover on the earth of darkness and the deep yet that released by his power infinite and then having removed the waters also by virtue of his Producat he made the land appear and suddenly disappear invested in a robe of numerous plants and flowers Just so in this work of thy new birth Darkness is first all over thee and t is Gods method first darkness and then light Our imaginations dark and our foolish heart full of darkness and all that men can do in that state of nature deeds and works of darkness But then comes oriens ex alto with his marvellous Light till the day dawn and Day-star rise in our hearts Those hearts that were all dark before all was a Chaos till light pin'd to the Sun stream'd to remotest angles And so it was with that Apostle St. Thomas deepsy cover'd in infidelity till the powerful light let in through his sense upon his soul Then see how soon he sees and startles up and fervently rises in that cry of Domine Deus my Lord and my God! and the spirit speaks the same comfort evidently to all Arise thou that sleepest and stand up from the dead and Christ shall give thee Light for he hath it and he is it He is the true Light in both those main properties of Light First Light makes things discernable in night great stones and blocks So to blind nature gross sins lie undiscovered till Light of Grace infuse a tenderness and scrupulosity and a discretion and ability both to observe the surprizes of and ask pardon for the least offences Then secondly The other Property of Light Irradiation it not shews alone but beautifies and gnilds and enamels where it lights so doth that Grace of Gratum faciens His embracing Grace upon thy soul rendring it gracious and precious in the eyes of thy heavenly Father Lastly I forget not that second Cover of the deep That inland Gulf of Corruption inborn and bred up with us respecting which we all must crie with David de profundis Out of the deeps But then remember one deep calls upon another There is a deep of Mercy answers the depth of all our misery and to top this Consolation if the waves of ungodliness make us afraid and roar horribly or after a sense of Mercy and Forgiveness we fear the reflux and revalescency of our prevailing sins upon us Remember his bow is in the clouds his gracious promise in his holy Word to make his Power perfect in weakness and he hath given to the Sea a Law and said to wickedness Hitherto shalt thou come and no further and here stay thy proud waves 2. Our secondingredient is from Resemblance of our Saviours incarnation First In Virgo his birth of a pure Virgin Mary so is thine of a pure heavenly Grace distilled from God without mans contribution or assistance When the Angel came to salute her when Christ came to Nicodemus one with tidings of her conceiving the Son of God the other with strange news of a man being born again and so become the Son of God both wondred alike both ask in effect the self same question How can these things be How can a man be born again and take notice the answer is the same to both for there is no other The holy Ghost shall come upon thee the Power of the most High shall do this in an act of as great freed om as the blowing of the wind so is every one that is born of the Spirit A second considerable comfort is that of infinite distance God the simplest essence to stoop and marry with mans body of all other the most compounded substance This hindred not the day-spring from on high to visit us why then dismaid to look down upon our own spirit wherein is summamalitia when we know in his sacred spirit there is summa bonitas and for all the distance and for all the deadness of our souls womb to conceive a thought that is holy of our selves yet he descends that Spirit which is the Comforter and applies unto us in an union so high and heavenly as all words forsake us in the expression Thirdly Another Consolation yet in plenè administravit when God descended to us but staid at her Full of Grace not abhorring to be there enclosed who yet fills and even then filled Heaven and earth wherein then and before and since he fully hath the administrations so it must be no dismay to thy own soul that God descends and shines into many others having abundance of spirit and of such a diffusive Power as the Sun which though received whole in the light and graces here yet shines elsewhere and think if a word spoken by us can pass to a whole audience and if our discursive Spirit can so suddainly shoot and subtilly pass to things distant and manifold What Energie is in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Power in his Spirit differenced from ours both
in essence and properties And as lending thus his light to others averts no beam from us by reason of his full administration so nor the opacity nor incapacity of our Spirit can uneffectuate his power but that as our knowledge from a meer vacuity and brutish ignorance he brings up and raises to angel-like perfection so he can encrease and multiply that grain of precious faith to such a tree as shall lift up its Crown and reach the stars and apprehend and receive him there who is both the Author and Finisher of our Faith and Salvation Lastly Fix on what the school calls Convenientius for a surplusage to make this Cup oâ— Consolation brim-full and run over God was tied to no necessity absolute of sending his Son He could have saved us some other way yet this was so convenient that they dare think that if a man had not faln yet Christ had been incarnate for the demonstration of two things Gods infinite Power and Bounty His Power was not manisest so fully in Creation because no infinite Act and his bounteous and boundless love in it self apt for Communion had not yet come near enough to his beloved Creature in that our first Off-spring and universal Derive of being his generation Then a Christ Convenientius for man too more steadily to â—asten and anchor on Christ by faith and hope more to enlarge his knowledge in the proclaim of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here the Dignity to which sinfull flesh is exalted and thereby more enflame his love saltem redamare to relove him that so loved us in Christ Now observe in this second Edition of Grace and Mercy in this great work of the holy Ghost all these are reprinted and sealed in good assurance by the evidence and earnest and testimony which it gives to the bargain of thy salvation And to conclude this point As Christ was not sent till the fulness of time not presently after the fall a sense and discovery of sins power must precede ere we find our need of his powerful blood and man first sent to reason and to the Law under School-masters to bring us to Christ so the Spirit of Grace falls down in infinite Power and in strictest Union and yet performs the work in measure and by degrees which it could do by one Ransack and Destruction of all sin and infirmitie at once But for convenience and fit appliance to the Receiver it proceeds leisurely to fill our narrow vessels and stays that very season till the water be troubled mans heart made ready by remorse when he perceives himself sinking and is at it with Save Lord we perish and all this that the excellency of the power might be and might be felt and acknowledged to be of God and not of us By this time if you be content to taste this Cup so brewed I yet have no Power so to minister it not alone It must be mingled with both the former and if so it please you I shall be bold upon your Patience to urge and press the health of all three together AND first For conveniency in relation to our common Lord whose Cup it is The world hath her Cup of pleasure and she of Babylon hers of Fornication and what swilling in of these Even Kings of the earth drunk And shall we startle or scruple at this Cup of Christ What! Sit at my right hand in Glory and shame to taste a little shame and bitterness of a Cross and Cup which I have born and drunk off before you Remember 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is in the bottom what if it should make you sweat and pant in getting off this health Do but think how oft you have enforced your selves to take down those healths falsly so called and suffer then the word of exhortation which presses you down upon your knees to beg this pledge at the hand of your Soveraign Lord and Maker as his servant did Pota me Domine torrente voluptatis saith Austin for so you shall find it in the end though you should be compelled for Christs sake and the Gospels to drink it blood warm and in a fiery tryal So much the sweeter by his Grace and Power seasoning it who by his own example hath so begun it to us Secondly A Convenience in reference to our selves This Cup must down or else another that is worse and there is but another and that is in the hand of the Lord too wherein the wine is red and it is full mixt and the wicked of the earth must drink and wring out the dregs of Gods wrath If we would scape that drench and bane of soul and body which but begins the torment of those damned Spirits who must for ever drink it burning hot in a lake of fire and brimstone Resolve and speedily to taste and consider how gracious and sweet his offered Mercies are in Christ and if we would shun that Cup of his vengeance which runs out for the seirceness take then to day while it is called to day and while we are called to day this Cup of his Mercy which runs over for the sulness 2. As thus for Conveniency so is this Recipe to be prest on all for necessity absolute Wo to me if I do not preach or preach it dully or lazily and wo unto you if you receive it not as the unum necessarium For shall we need any more Receipts What would be given for a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an Elixar a Cathâ—â—con to cure all diseases of the body and beside renue and preserve health youth beauty and restore them still fairer and fresher then before Such a Merchant might have all the Lords and Ladies and all the Kings of the earth his Clients and Patients Alas Is our soul and inward beauty less precious Why Here it is that will cure all sinfull distempers Restore thy soul her native Candor and sweetness and ingenuity making thee young and lustie as an Eagle Make all their eyes that be of a right aerie able by a lively faith to look up and contemplate that sun where the body of that light is there will the Eagles be gathered together and that body is here 'T is the very Vitis and Vitals and the Corps of my Text. Let me not lose you then Be gathered still in the continuance of your gracious and patient Attentions For now the last way I am to urge this health for necessity respective on those first that deny the Lord that bought them either directly as the Arrian and Socinian do or indirectly yet desperately would undermine our faith and sap out of the corner stone on which all relies by ruining some other parts of the building These boast themselves the rational discoursers of the age such as Saint Paul means in that question Where is the Disputer of this world For these dare dispute openly against the Creation related by Moses and justified by Christ and quarrel the souls immortality and the bodies resurrection which
and the winter house Solomons house in Jerusalem and that in the Green and that in the forest of Libanon 1 King 7. And if many houses for a man for a King What for the King oâ— Kings Why the Scripture besides this in the Text mentions very many houses of the Lord a multiplicity a Zodiack of houses for the Sun of Righteousness for our Lord and Master Christ Jesus both to receive our service and to do us service in them all c. 1. First Mundi machina the Universe the whole round world with many fair and goodly rooms 2. then that named Habitaculum ejus sacrum Heaven his dwelling place the new Jerusalem of miraculous Structure past Amphions or Apollo's fingring The work of thy fingers saith David yet he speaks it only of this rough cast out-building stuck with stars which though a glorious sight yet is but the cover or shell of this great hollow Egg wherein as in a perfect Vivary full of Cages and Parks and ponds he hath ark't and housed together us and all inferiour Creatures But of his higher Palace His Empyreal in most court imperial for his Saints and Angels the Apostle calls it an House not made with hands but as he is light and his robe is so cloaths himself with light so is the house Light inaccessible Domine bonum est Let us dwell here No more go down from this mount but 3. we must descend as he vouchsafed to do to the womb of the Virgin Sol in Virgine sometime it s one of his houses in the Zodiack and now the Son of Righteousness was there there was God hid and housed for a time nay Gemini in virgine not in a Nestorian but in a sober sence and to crie up the Miracle such as never was God and Man together though in two natures yet in one person remaining what he was yet taking and made what he was not There was a right vivary indeed when the Lord of Glory blessed for ever took lise blood of the blessed Virgin our Lady O what a Store-house Treasure house Jewel house was that that confined that reserved such a Rarity What a strange new earthly heaven for God to dwell and dress himself in and yet behold without breaking that house forth he comes and brings a fourth house on his back another new house of his own making still though assisted in the nchoation yet terminated in his person 4. he only of the blessed Trinity wearing that garment they all wrought upon which creando assumpsit sumendo creavit non extra sed in persona sua which rayment was a body real not phantastick as Marcion that eldest child of Satan so Polycarpus called him and the Marichees imagined For then is all our faith imaginary too if no true conception then nor birth nor death nor resurrection true then is our preaching and your believing vain This destroyes all but we have not so learned Christ if we have been taught as the Truth is in Jesus We have learned that our Lord here took our very nature and true flesh woven with sinews a clay-house moated round about like one of ours that is compast with all mans infirmities sin except but very man of the substance of his mother No substance out of God or new caelestial or sidereal or Elementary matter as Valentinus thought A body then like ours yet in this unlike that in ipso articulo in the very moment of Conception it was proved entire and perfect in all the parts and endued with a rational soul at once which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saâ—tb Damascen the very extract of all novelty when that invisible and incommunicable verity by the Spirit took a soul and by the soul a body saith both Damascen and St. Cyprian when not by any addition or aggregation of Parts by degrees and leisurely sed uno conâ—extu the whole figure and frame of the body set 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the mighty work of Gods holy Spirit faith St. Austin and the School into which though a flow of manifold Graces from the divine nature of Wisdom Power Glory yet in the two natures united we preserve those adverbs all of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. that is without Mutation Confusion Division Separation as the Council of Chalcedon against Eutyches Corpus aptasti it is in the Psalm Never so fitted for an house For in this house dwels the fulness of the God-head bodily that is not by a simple Inhabitation nor Assistance or Habitude or Dignity or that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 willing consent or what they call Equality of honor or Nuncupation or Beneplacitum only None of all these will serve but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an Union or Unition rather hypostatical In this house dwelt our Lord many years submitting to clouds and waves of Our Infirmities and in this house new-raised from ruine and made glorious this blessed Eagle flew Cage and all This holy Inhabiter of Eternity ascended house and all to his Holy Habitation in Heaven and is there enthroned on the right hand of his heavenly Father 5. But while he was an infant Lord in the hand of his blessed Virgin Mother here he dwelt a while in his Cradle-house the stable-cratch then the Palace of a great King at the sign of the Star in Bethlehem then the right house of Bread Panis Angelorum The true Bread-house and true Head-house though low and little of all his greater Houses his famous Churches after at those great Cities of Jerusalem Caesarea Antioch and in good time their sister Rome her self their little Sister earst that had no brests but since ovationed for Mater Domina as if Domus Cultus Dominus himself had been born and upbrought there ab Origine 6. But stay a while Let us observe Dominus Domus yet better and we shall find him returned from AEgypt abiding at Nazareth and Capernaum and Jerusalem but commonly in the dwelling houses and banqueting houses of his Converts 7. Let these then if I staied too long at the former serve briefly for two Removes of our Lord. And because the Sea of Tiberias is near at hand we may safely walk with him on the water or see him take ship or hear him preach from thence and then a Ship is more then Domus 't is Domus Domini the house of the Lord then indeed 8. From the Press of people he was fain to hide himself in that house But no house must hide or hold him long Over the brook Cedron there was a Garden and oft he resorted thither and thence betrayed was brought from house to house to Annas house and Caiphas to Pilats's Judgement-hall to Heroa's and back again to Pilate's so to his Cross and never rested till the noble Joseph laid him in his Garden-house in a new Sepulchre where never man lay yet that the common house and lodging of mankind the Grave 9. There Kings and Counsellors of the
earth build desolate places for themselves lie still and are at rest saith Job but so did not he we know better then so what he did I believe The third day he rose again and ascended into Heaven and at that house we have toucht already but yet from none of these houses not that eternal house of our Lord comes any comfort to us till that Spirit of the Lord the Comforter come from him to us to dwell in us so putting us all into one houshold of Faith the common faith and making us all the habitation of God by the Spirit 10. And to make fit this house this Lord the blessed Carpenter was put to work it out of the rough and troubled to take to break down a Partition-wall whose more then Alpine rockiness no Hannibal but he could conquer and no fire no liquor but his heart blood could penetrate Nothing but his living-dead body raise this dead living frame of Saints built upon the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone in whom all the building fitly framed together grows into an holy Temple in the Lord Eph. 2.20 21. There 's right Dominicum every way The house of the Lord In the Lord On the Lord By the Lord. This house then in no case to be left out nor we left out of it you know who would allow us no room in their Inn at the Popes head and by that device exclude us out of the Church which is called a great house 2 Tim. 2. and the foundation stands sure but sure it stands not all upon the cloudy Apennine This is just like private Mass that 's proper Communion a right Bull to pin down Universal in a particular corner as if to thrust twenty royal Courts into one Room like that people wise in their own conceit that to make sure of Conquest pinned and riveted the Goddess Victory to their City wals So these Reckoners go to it stilo novo the Romane Computation this and it is a good confession their fat Bishop Spalatâ— makes in all their names Ecclesians Catholicam nobiscum esse vel cogitamus vel cogimus They would fain think so and fain force us to think so but we are not much to trouble our selves at their Cogitamus God knows the thoughts of men to be but vain and the divisions of Reuben were from great thoughs of heart but from their Cogimus Libera nos Domine He hath and doth and will deliver us if we embrace our Creed and by vertue thereof belong to this house of the Catholick Church 11. Nay we our selves our souls and bodies are his Church and Temple which house we are 1 Cor. 6. wherein God remains under our roof gracing even the houses of his Saints bodies while they stand and faln watches over their Atoms while the spirits return to him and will recollect and raise them up in far greater State and Glory So that Mors shall not be ultima not the last line strectht upon this building but a linea yet more ultimate reaching from Earth to Heaven And so with much ado having so many houses to call at by the way which very calling yet hath done us some service and may do us more we are come Christo auspice to this very house in the Text and seen in a quarter of an hour this Sun pass through all those houses to this which is the last in our Zodiack The Temple which David prepared and Solomon built for the service of the Lord and in which house God hath a propriety stiled therefore by way of Excellency The house of the Lord. 12. Where the first service we can do for Domus Dominus both is to wake them meet with and meet for one another For is there not a mighty discrepance betwixt them the Temple a stately piece the Joy of the whole earth Par domus haec coelo But you know what follows will not serve his turn though as God by his Eternity transcendently and supereminently comprehends all time so by his immensity all places And Dominus here though true of Christ as we heard and may hear more anon is Jehovah and he dwell in Temples Temples plural if set altogether made with hands Heaven of Heavens cannot What house can contain him then What house will you build for me no house Lord to comprehend thee who art God incomprehensible but for thy name and an house for thy worship and service that may comprehend us But what matter if no such houses at all neither on this Mount nor yet at Jerusalem but right service in Spirit and Truth So say some haunted perchance with a worldly and dangerous spirit we deny not our best sacrifice on the heartaltar best worship in Spirit Yet if God were undelighted with a set local Worship why would the Scripture mention Hannahs motion 1 Sam. 2. And another Anna the Prophetess residing in the Temple why our Saviour dayly in the Temple and Synagogues and his Apostles Peter the chief and John the beloved of Jesus ascending at the hour of prayer Or would the Spirit of God have put it into the heart of David a man after Gods own heart to prepare him service in a Temple or his Prophet in his name so cry out upon this deserting this house of God and bring his double action of Wast vain Wast on our own ceiled houses and laying wast this house of God My house lie wast Hgg. 1. so the propriety held then and if we follow it to the spring-head we find indeed Cultus Domini before Domus Abel sacrificed and in Enos time they invocated Immolation and Invocation both in the beginning of Genesis but go on and you come to a place framed before you go out of Exodus and even in Genesis we have Noahs and Abrahams Altars and Jacobs Bethel But to clear this at once only that in Deut. 12. The reason why Cultus was not set in order because no proper Domus for this Dominus ver 8. Now you serve me as you lâ—â—â— hievery man what is right in his own eyes and why no Reformation v. 9. you are not yet come to the rest and inheritance which the Lord your God gives you but when you go over Jordan a better order then then there shall be a place which the Lord shall chuse to cause his name to dwell there So far is Dominus from dis-avowing Domus that he ordains both Domus Cultus and therefore let them remain all there as we find them here in order Cultus Domus Domini Do you not find too every precious stone and string appointed to Moses by pattern in the Mount and David had the Platform of the Temple in writing 1 Chron. 28.19 And Dominus then took possession of Domus his Glory appeared before the Tabernacle and filled the Temple at Solomons dedication yea he made his Residence in both took up his seat in the Tabernacle his Mercy seat too wherein
he most delights to shew and shine forth in perfect beauty and majesty and of the Temple he saith Mine eyes and my heart shall be there continually This is my rest for ever Here I will dwell The place where his honor dwels which he owns My house and gives it a name An house of Prayer and our Saviour confirms it in the New Testament too it shall be so My Fathers house shall be so called and therefore I pray you in Gods name let him have it so The house of the Lord let it be Let him rest and dwell in this house for ever but a thousand pities he should dwell alone no body to attend him What! The Courts of the Lords house and no Courtiers Are there no Places no Pensions no Offices in this Court where are then the servants of his Majesty I hope they be even here even all the true and loyal and faithfull servants of the earthly majesty will rejoyce and be glad by the benign Influence of a royal example to become faithful and obedient Worshippers of the Majesty in Heaven PART 3. THis comes in right and puts us on Cultus our next particular Service 't is no domineering word an humble expression this and must be co nomine therefore exalted for it is indeed the word in the Text most predominant in a sense above Dominus and all for take out Dominus and what becomes of Domus Domus and Rus may then be likewise used that is as Rustically as Rudely as you will Well! Take out Cultus and I am sure Dominus will never abide it All staies or goes with this Cultus the main and mainly to be insisted on and Cultus absolute is due to Dominus first In Equiparence to his other houses and service in them all why this house far worse then all the rest as many as we called at in all Gods houses before I told you they might do us more service yet 1. First In the Maorocosm all things serve this their Lord up at Matins of Prayer seeking their meat at God at Vespers of Laws with the Anthem 1. It is He that hath made us and not We our selves 2. In Heaven his Angels ministring Spirits with Holy Holy Holy and a great voice of much people Rev. 19. saying Hâ—lelujahs Salvation and Glory and Honor and Power unto the Lord. 3. And in the womb of the blessed Virgin the house is aired and consecrated for his Conception by the holy Ghost And when he first brings in his first begotten Son into the world and Let all the Angels of of God worship him The Baptist did him service then unborn springing in the womb for joy and his own blessed mother Mary sings her service to to him while yet in her body My soul doth magnifie the Lord my Spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour In one and the same little house and Chappel royal of her great and mighty Lord the first St. Maries that ever was at once conceiving and containing him and her Devotion 4. And as for the house of flesh and Bethlems manger put them both together not all those clouds and swadling clouts of obscurity could dim the Light of the world nor hide this glorious Lord from the attendance of an host of Heavenly Courtiers and Souldiers running down the hill of Heaven to salute him Imperator with an Hymn of Gloria Deo in excelsis nor conceal him from those Kings some say wise men we are sure that came from the East to worship this Oriens who fell down before him opened their Treasures and presented him They could not hide him from old Simeons eyes after in the Temple for he then saw clearly the presence of the Lord in him that was there presented to the Lord even the Lords Christ whom he served with gladness and carolled out a blessing on him in his arms 5. Nor was this worship wanting in the very dwelling and banqueting houses of his servants 6. Simeon entertains him Levi makes him a great Feast and even there was Wisdom justified of her children One example above all in the house of that Simon the Pharisee that which went beyond his banquet and all the service there was the poor sinners service from her box of precious oyntment and her more precious tears serving to wash his feet 7. Next apply to him on shipboard and behold him not only heard with reverence by the shore-audience but St. Peter down at his knees with his Depart from me for I am a sinful man O Lord. 8. But in or at his grave no service That house so ill and low situate that none obliged to pay or tender service there 9. That 's the desolate house even of Kings saith Job the train forsakes them there Yet behold even in that house as Joseph and Nicodemus spare no coft of linnen cloaths and spices with a mixture of Myrrhe and Aloes of an hundred weight so the two Maries faild not with their oyntment and early visitation at the Sepulchre But as it was Johns eager spirit that out-ran Peter so Magdalen her loving spirit out-went them all in a constant service and devotion for when left alone she stood she wept she stoopt she lookt into the Sepulchre and there at length she lights on other fellow-servants of her Lord even two Angels in white sitting at the head and feet that is where those blessed head and feet of their Lord where the body of Jesus had layn John 20.12 10. As for service in his next house the Catholick Church we know as in the Jewish he was the only Lord of Israel and Moses and David wear that name of his servants So in the Christian Church What stile take Peter and Paul but servants of Jesus Christ and even the weaker sex behold the lowliness of his hand-maid an humblâ— Maid-servant at 16. and a blessed woddow-servant Anna in her great Climackterick Luke 2. That departed not from the Temple but served the Lord with fasting and prayer night and day 11. Lastly Our own souls and bodies what are they if rightly used but Organs and living Oratories and when here assembled a Box or Nest of little temples in His Temple which houses all his Saints and servants are carefull to possess in honor and keep them clean not for Bacchus or Venus but the pure and sacred Spirit of the Lord to keep out the Tempter to escape the pollutions of the world For if God be well served in these inner Temples the service of this house of the Lord would be the better set in order and that 's the last in our Zodiack There we are now again at service in this very place proper to Divine service this very place inclining as the cell to study the grove to Contemplation a Church or Chappel to Devotion ever this the house of the Lord both by way of excellency and propriety But remember I am upon Cultus absolute due to Dominus upon another double ground first Qua
meat and drink to do service And here again Corpus aptasti I am sure we sure were â—â—â—er so fitted for a body and for an house For were it not for this house in woful state were all the great houses of the Land all the Princely houses of all Christian lands the famous houses of York and Laneaster Valois Burbon Medices and Austria The right descent and purest royal blood is from this house of flesh but for this house and his wearing it and bearing all ours sins on the top of it For into the house they came not What Title but from this Ancestour to Paradise the Palace the Nonsuch above not a Tarquin Priscus or Superbus but beholden to this Servius nay the best and purest votaties in this house of God the place of his service not David or Solomon or good King Ezekiah not Constantine or Theodosius or Jacobus or Carilaus no gratious King of famous Memory or present Merit no body though never so embellisht or embraved shall ever joyn in that Quire of his Saints and holy Angels above without the mediation of the body of Jesus our Lord and the service done in that body 5. But what service in that Inn at Bethlem where was no room for him it was yet made serviceable for us for there we Inn to this day all at that Star we Gentiles claim by those that were Primitiae first Guests to that house of Gold and Incense we find there he had and we Partakers of his fine Gold and good service hath his Incense done us I am sure We pray Lord increase our faith and he that could help our unbelief Lord might do us good service if so surely a hundred Sermons in this house not more available then the dumb Cradle of our Lord in that cratch The Scripture speaks evidently saith the Apostle the Scripture lies mute thâ— Cradle house yet therein is an herald to proclaim the fulfilling of two great Prophecies one was Et tu Bethlem there Christ to be born The other that of his poverty A Worm shame of men out-cast of the people Upon the very Pillars of this house which are but the staves of the Cratch may we safely relie and build our Faith this blinded and madded the Jew but thus it must be thus must Christ be born if ever he do us good this obscureness to manifest him this emptiness to be his fulness of a Messiah to fulfill the Scripture that so our joy might be full full of joy and Peace in believing This the service he doth our Faith and no less service in making us humble I believe Lord and may not every one say I am humble Lord too but Lord help our unhumility Help us off with the double lets of outward Pomp and inward Pride Behold this Royal Insant reaches out his hand to serve us from his Cratch in our Bed-chambers and by his powerfull his high and mighty and stupendious Humility thrusts it to our hearts and strips off all from the souls and bodies of his faithfull servants all that may offend the eye of his heavenly Father and in that voice comes from him in this Cradle though yet inarticulate we hear him in the evidence of his holy Word and Spirit say Learn of me Put on the Lord Jesus Christ who thus in this House serves us and helps his servants both in their Faith and their Humility 6. and 7. In the sixth and seventh the private houses and banqueting houses of his servants the Lord serves as a Builder and a Watch-man and a â—â—aplain to say Grace and bless and loves to do â—â—vice there in the freedom of his conversation said in his dish by the proud Pharisee and in dayly working that Miracle of warry juice turned into Wine concoct into fresh and cheerfull blood 8. Next he serves us in those water-houses Wilt not thou O Lord go forth with our Armies saith the Psalmist so we may say The Lord hath gone forth with our Navies as in 88. so Quadragesimus octavus too Mirabilis Annus And then it is the Lord and the Power of his Might that hath saved the Metaphorical ships of Church and State kept those Bottoms from forreign invasive storms and dangerous Schisms and Leaks at home Skilfull Mariners may do well but he the Pilote at the Helm Christo Duce auspice regno is a Right Prophetick and true Inscription by Land and Water His bloody Cross a braver Flag and nobler Badge then Lucida sidera Castor Pollux This Pollens Lux ipsa the true Light to guide the whole feet He did us worthy service who first came by ship to conveigh the Light of the Gospel hither some years before a spark of fire at Rome What doth Lux by whose blessing on our ships we may by the same way derive the Light to other Nation yet in darkness as importing so thus exporting too the unsearchable Riches of Christ to which all Treasures of East and West are pale and drowsie and muddy things as a little Gravel in comparison Thus venture I still on with my frail bark and well enough if still Cesarem veho bear his well tryed Patience and attention along while Dominum Caesarem vebo That Lord who now could find no further house-room on earth or water but ceas'd not yet to do us further service in his very Sepulchre 9. For till he came thither thither we were come dead and buried bound hand foot in the grave-cloaths of our sins sealed up and claspt down with a stony weight of the wrath of God which would have prest us to the nethermost Hell But behold in that short time of his abode in this house what Rare Redoubts and Mines this mighty Engineer casts and contrives works a descent through the Iron jaws of death down to Hell and like a Conqueror ascends leading in Triumph Captivity Captive opening so and seasoning and sweetning so this house before so dreadfull filled with ultimum terribilium that his Disciples all that love and seek him in Life and Death shall never find discomfort in a Grave Nothing but a Requiem and Dormitory with Angels sitting at the head and feet till he awake them in Tuba novissima and raise them to a meeting in the clouds where all his servants shall enter into the joy of that their Lord. 10. As for the Catholick Church to demand his service there is to ask What good the Vine the Head the Bridegroom the Corner-stone do to the Branches Members Spouse and Building in those strict Unions nay closer then all those per euâ—dem spiritum Behold so am with you never to offer to part from you never to suffer you to part from me to the end of the world in the end and world without end which will be soon discovered by the Service done to each particular Member in every â—fâ—nr Souls and Bodies in that house For is not our body his house wonderfully and fearfully built that little world of beauty shaken
out of dust and bals of living fire fiâ—xt in our eye-brow what work makes this heavenly Potter even with that clay in white red blew after all his polishing forced to take it down and like China earth hiding some for many 1000 years will shew his Power in their raising far fairer then before and yet able to dispatch the same effect on others in a moment in the twinckling of an eye changed and not die by a suddain dissolution and a suddain re-union But far rarer Workmanship is the Recreation of our souls washt brighter in his blood and heightned by his Spirit We need but two things for our souls Grace Truth and both came by Jesus Christ from his fulness we receive both by whose service and Ministry we are made New Creatures invested in a Robe and admitted to an Order past the Fleece and Garter the Right Order of the holy Ghost Brag not vain man O run not up into some beastly figure if guilding like a snail or tracing the way of thy preferment by thy blood or match thou be mounted to a local state of Wealth and Honor for these can add no new substantial forms But this access of Spirit from this Lord is right enobling and superinduces a new soul which like fire devours and takes up all within thee and winding in one Coelestial flame and embracing Understanding Will Affections wings and lifts up all to Heaven 12. Lastly In this very house where we assemble for the Worship and Service of the Lord it is the Lord himself that does the Service to the whole Assembly So that a non nobis Domine is fixable upon the porch of this and every house of God For first he invites us hither Come I Call upon me Seek you my face The skie of Scripture hung round with provocations calling us to service and being entered who executes the parts of our Divine Service in this house of Prayer And is it not he that prays for us in us with us before us and teaches us to pray and say after him Our Father and as once by himself in Prayers and strong cries so here assists our dulness and deadness of Spirit by his own quickning Spirit inditing our Prayers and raising our Devotion with sighs and groans that cannot be exprest It is secondly a house of preaching and we indeed preach Jesus and our selves your servants for Jesus sake nay him a Servant for your sakes But if we speak him right it is he that speaks the word of the Lord heavenly Treasure from our earthen vessels that the excellency might be of God and not of us 'T is he that first did write the word which is his Power and Wisdom to our salvation and 't is he that spels the Gospel and reads and speaks to us in his Word and he that laies out and distributes sentences to several bosoms as every man hath need and he alone that follows the Sermon home and saies it all over again to our hearts Finally his House is a House of Communion for the Saints and Churches of God for the due receiving of his holy Sacraments And as in the Baptistery it is he that receives the Infants in his arms and washes their Souls in his blood and makes the water there a Laver of Regeneration So in the Supper of the Lord it is the same Lord who first shed those primordial purple drops at his Circumcision the first fruits of his all powerfull blood to begin the work of our Salvation and ever since at every holy Communion gives both body and blood the food of faithfull and repentant Spirits and makes those sad sweet drops fall again to the anguish first and then the healing of our souls For such a different office hath this blessed Sacrament that it serves both to discover our sins and to seal our Pardons Wherein while faithfully we receive him he really receives us into him and we him into us So all of us become one body and one Spirit and all by the service of one and the same for ever Jesus Christ to whom c. S. D. G. A SERMON Preached at YORK 1640. AT The Council of King and Lords EPHE 5.8 For you were once darkness but are now Light in the Lord. Walk as Children of Light IN the Skie of Scripture shines the Sun of Divinity And all Divinity all that Sun is shed in these thee Radii The Lapse the Restoring the Duty These are a perfect Catechism And a sum of these is the Epistle to the Romans injust Methode and this Text a methodical Brâ—â—iat of that Epistle indeed an Epitome of all the Book of God for here we have the Creation the World struck out of Chaos or what is more mysterious It could not chuse but please the Angels then to see the LIGHT rise out of darkness by a powerfull FIAT and the earth anon to emulate heaven by vertue of a Producat But this This Rare Work the Angels desire to prie into 1 Pet. 1.12 And if we pace along we shall find here Enoch walking with God Abraham called out of VR to another VR a purer Light The deliverance from Egypt the Red Sea the Rock the Mannae the Ark the Mercy-seat And here are all the Sacrifices the Life and Substance of them all with the Fulness and Light of all the Promises and Prophesies and here is the new Testament The Star appears Behold we bring you glad tidings Run Shepherds and see the great Shepherd of all our Souls whiles yet an Infant Loe He is wrapt here in the Swadling bands of this Text. He is the Word and this his Comment his Paraphrase and Explication You were once c. These words are a Tree laden with fruit most precious the very shell the rind is precious But if we open this Onyx this Pearl Cabinet it contains rare Food and Medicine and Wine and Balsam a Quintessence an Extraction beyond the Spirits of Oyl and Wine and Spices For what Chymist can draw Light Is not that that thing my sterious in Job 38. which way saith he is the Light parted yet here is more the Sun the Spring of Light here is that Sun of Righteousness and the Father of Light and the Spirit of Illuminations All All the holy blessed and glorious TRINITY unfolded here we may with Moses in a pious sense see him that is invisible Behold that rare workman tasking himself in his main project busie in dispatch of all his Miracles at once The Leper is cleansed the Lame walk the Blind receive their sight the dead are raised Nay Majus opus moveo The earth raised up to Heaven Flesh wrought up to Spirit Nature changed to Grace and dust advanced to he Partaker of Divine Nature For you were once Darkness c. A Comprehensive Text it is will take in all persons Speak I to a King or Lords Will they not all be glad at heart to be enlightned by this Dominus in the
who by his beams currents it out and delivers it over to all others 'T is in him universally and totally not now Light and now Darkness and exemplarily For all Light uniformly and causally prae-exists in him as in the simple and supernatural cause of all Lastly In him is Light in all the Powers of Light Expansion Renovation Nutrition Conciliation and in this power he vouchsafes it us though thus to make it ours it cost him more then making Light at first then he spake the Word only but here he suffered Multa tulit Sudavit alsit But blessed be the Lord God of Israel he hath raised a mighty Salvation for us in him Two ways as we are in Domino by Justification and then as Dominus in nobis by Sanctifications See already for our comfort Darkness of the first Adam taken off by a double Light in the Second Plus addidit medicina Christi ad salutem quam infirmitas detraxit sanitati saith St. Ambrose on the 12. cap. of the second of the Coriuthians And St. Paul agrees the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Gift of free Grace far to exceed the loss Rom. 5. and calls this dealing of our Saviour The exceeding Riches of his Grace Eph. 2.5 Call it the Miracle and the grand Mysterie no words will reach it Call it the Height it s above all the Depth there is no founding it nor Length nor Breadth imaginable by our weak spirits can span it Call it the Incomprehensibleness Numen the Deity of his Mercy to restore Light and Ability that we might have Life and have it more abundantly 1. A Sun and a Moon for day and night it is so Justification a Sun a prime a Spring original purity absolute in him and we in it and under the imputed Raies thereof our whole persons made bright and gâ—â—tious and acceptable Adam was brave in his native Integrity but this above humane perfection the Righteousness of God preserved too by him that it may never be lost 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 now that is nor man nor Devils able to take them out of his hands those that are thus made Lux in Domino that is justified by faith working by love This is that white Robe which as it hath no spot so it will admit no mixture in the Act and Energie of justifying Our merits wrought up with his are like Musk and Ambergreece in a Perfume faith Gomesius a Papist and thinks he makes a fine composition but is it not rather an odious comparison Yea we are to renounce all those devices of Congruity Configuration Conformity c. if supposed to contain any vertue in themselves toward the Act of Justification only that true Hercules sailing in the frail vessel of his flesh comes to unrivet us from the Caucasus of despair to which mankind was fastened by a knot inexplicable and inextricable God is just and man unrighteous a sinner and must die and for sin is in darkness and shall not see Light Christ Jesus stoops to untie this knot denies the Minor makes the sinner righteous justifies the ungodly makes Darkness Light in Domino and then there is no Condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus 2. The second Light is Sanctification and that 's the striking the raies not upon us only but into us The first is in him only and ours by imputation God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself pleases himself in that but this second is inherent Righteousness in our hearts called Holiness without which we shall never see nor please God You will say these are high and glorious sounds and these Graces with their distinct or united natures and times have exercised the wits of men but since they are Donatives in the hand of our heavenly Father How are these things made over to us Clear that passage make this part of your discourse this Point of Divinity lightsom to our Capacities Tell us how shall these things be So said the blessed Virgin to the Angel when she was to conceive Christ in her body and for this Conception this Perception of the Lord in thy soul the same Answer must serve The holy Ghost shall come upon thee The Power of the most high can do this by his Spirit and how oft is that repeated Habitat he dwells in us by his Spirit and if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his that 's the surest mark and a man cannot say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Spirit which is therefore called the finger and hand of God the vertue and Power of Christ who tells us in Joh. 14. I will not leave you Orphans I will come to you there 's his visitation and abide with you there 's his Residence and erecting of a Court and adds I will be your Teacher Comforter Remembrancer and all these in his Spirit who is all these to us these are his Offices and operations And must not he needs have Heaven at hand that hath the God of Heaven in his heart John lean'd upon his bosom but Christ rests in thy bosom by his Spirit opening thy dim eyes and opening them twice saith St. Austin giving a double Light in the Lord First to see thy sin and guiltiness and blenching at the horror thereof opens them again to see thy Saviour in his blood and the Spirit of his Grace But all this I have said you will say still is meer speculation But tell us what heavenly Magick or Mastick can combine or which way shall these two spirits meet How Gods Spirit and mans comes thus to match and marry in Domino Quae ferramenta qui vectes said the curious Enquirers into the Creation And have not we some as curions in this Reparation States have their Arcana Imperii their Ragioni di stato which is Jus Dominationis and every Trade is called a Mysterie But God must shew us all the jointures and Inlay of his Work and Will Take heed of pressing into Light lest we be opprest with the Glory Poor man What discernest thou in the workings of those Spirits that are but Creatures and vassals to the Creator yet have their methods Eph. 6. Inventions Circumventions and are exalted above thy reach in high places have the vantage ground of Pigmee mankind Nay What seest thou of thy own spirit Who saw it come in or go forth In the Air we all breath in the wind that fans that air which are but a little kin to spirits what do we understand yet God is so indulgent to our nature and weakness as to take in for us auxiliary Light of comparison for the clearing of that which in the downright act is indeprehensible Here 's a stir indeed saith the poor blind-born man in Joh. 9. With what and how which way Well! I cannot tell you all but one thing I am sure of I was blind born blind and now I see And our Saviour John 3. Thou bearest the sound of wind and
knowest it is wind by that but knowest not whence nor whither So is every one that is born of the Spirit The cause and course is secret but the effect discernable As in Creation our soul and body meet by breathing so here the mystick work is Inspiration and infusion of manifold graces but those graces have activities and such whereby you shall easily perceive that you were once darkness but are now Light in the Lord. These Graces then will give us further Light whose excellencies are laid out in those expressions of Water Floods Fountains and Fire and Milk and Manna and Oyntment and their Efficacies in those names of Seal and Evidence and Earnest and Witness and Joy and Consolation And are there not fruits of the Spirit Gal. 5. Fruits that grow not up from the bitter Root of corrupted nature but from another Principle and which in their bloom and freshness render a man not like those Ethnick Graces only facile and sweet in conversation though they do that too but gracious in Gods aspect and glorious too shining as a Light in the midst of a crooked and perverse Generation If we shall taft a fruit or two in specialty I will only trie to do it in this notion here and under this Capacity of Light 1. Knowledge even that of nature is a Light and mans soul still is the Lamp of God saith Solomon and a Wisdom residing therein that Recedes as far from folly as Light ftom Darkness and this was all those great Philosophers Animalia Gloriae had which puft them up so For this hath some tincture of the Serpent and soon inflates yet alas Mans salvation is that Grove and Mysterie Nulli penetrabilis astro not pervious nor peirceable by the star-light of Reason There must come a supernatural Light from Heaven which as in the Giver it is called a Sun of Righteousness rising with healing in his wings the day-spring from on high and the True Light so in the Receiver it is called a great and marvellous Light of which Will you hear St. Paul I count all loss 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the supereminence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord this indeed is all for in this is all This is Eternal life to know Thee and him whom thou hast sent Jesus Christ to know him for my Jesus to apprehend him for my Justifier by a second Grace by a true and lively Faith 2. Faith then is another Light of the sanctifying Spirit superinduced on the Light of Reason to raise and perfect it for it is not in stones or beasts God can from stones raise up Children unto Abraham but if so the work must first be done by Infusion of a rational soul and the golden Key of this Grace then fitted to the prepared wards of reasonable Nature It is not amiss to compare it to Sybillaes golden bough which grew to and upon the Trce and as he adds Auri per Ramos aura refulsit So this superstructure out-shines the utmost endeavours and perfections of Nature and Reason and resembled it is by some as the Seal to Wax It is not naked and meer reason as Air is Fire but Faith is rather printed reason and there joined Light if we wilfully exstinguish not their flames will yield the bearer fair Direction and Confidence and Consolation There may be there will be a coarctation a compression of this flame in the act of Faith a damp upon the alacrity thereof yet if there be not in us an evil heart desirous nay wilfully set to depart from the living God If you abide in me saith our Saviour then certainly as his Father and he with the sacred Spirit joyntly made Light at first and pin'd it to that Sun which was never wholly darkned since and as he the true Light breaking from the clouds of the blessed Virgins body and joyned to mans nature retains that nature still now glorified so the Spirit of this Grace possessing thy spirit loves never to part again but grieves when we offer to quench his coelestial fires O then learn not to despair of Mercy and Assistance Clouds and Eclipses obscure and wandring and wicked thoughts self-accusings and self-condemnings and Satans suggestions may trouble and affright us But if we abide in him and be strong in the Lord and in the Power of his Might and resist the Devill he will flie from us and our hope in Christ and the Power of his Resurrection like a rising Morn will scatter all the delusions and rebellions of the Night and remember his gracious Promise Hell-gates shall not prevail against a Faith of Adherence All the Powers of Darkness let loose upon St. Paul yet he was safe I know in whom I have believed I live saith he no not I but Ckrist lives in me and it is his Spirit only that can give assurance that whereas I was darkness my Faith in him makes me light in the Lord. 3. As for Love another Grace the Grace of Graces the bond of perfection and especially of that coelestial Armor and Ardor of the soul to God What might we say Whatdo they feel into whose breasts is shot this right coelestial flame and there shed abroad by the holy Ghost which is given them Away then with all wanton fires of earthly Love or ambition set them but by this and they will appear poor and wan discolour'd pale and drousie things and like meretritious females shewn with modest and noble Matrons dasht all out of countenance 4. Lastly for I am not too long to insist on these Graces so perceptible to the Possessors if we would have true and lasting joy Where shall we seek it Is it to be found among those Pangs and Convulsions and Palpitations of an earthly sensuall mind Mala mentis gaudia as the heathen Poet calls them and plac'd by him far within the Porch of hell Meteors of imperfect mixture Scansory and seeming to mine and aim at lightsomness and height of Spirit But having crackt awhile and blaz'd down they slide again and resolve into their first earth and drossiness But he that hath tasted of the heavenly gift the joy in the Holy Ghost wherein the Kingdom of Heaven on earth doth principally consist can tell you of a joy that is full a joy unspeakable and glorious consisting in a dispersion of all that is dark and desolate and a true Light that is Lux in Domine Light in the Lord. Thus have we trac'd this Oriens ex alto and thus far described that Method that Lucidus Ordo of Gods procedure in descent of his Spirit and defluence of his Graces Thus far we are come to meet with this great Bishop of all our souls this blessed Visitor and have observed his way of baptizing with the Holy Ghost and with enthean fire and confirming his People with the manifold Graces of his Spirit But yet since he is in Heaven and that Spirit is to descend on us we are not satisfied till we
Monarchies so after he had joined and made up a Church of Jews and Gentiles he blest and preserved it through the ten Persecutions and to this very day For now we are refining this Gold and extending this propriety of God in his Saints and servants under the new Testament as we have cause to do we that live since that fulness of time which delivered him to the world in whom it pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell Then cartainly this consideration of our being Gods Peculiar in Christ the Sen of his love will rise to a full consolation For in him we know the Covenant was renewed and sealed in his sacred blood whereby those great Rivers of Creation and Providence flow over and fall into the large sea of Redemption and by that sea we may sail fairly on to the fair havens of Sanctification and compassing the point of good hope of a true and lively hope arrive in the end at endless Glory All this will be done if once we be his own in him that is his only Beloved if once he admits us into the league make us Confiederates and Princes of the Union Kings unto God by his blood Rev. 1.7 The Emphasis is upon His for that blood of his that Unction that Inauguration will effect it He and They God and Man at distance at enmity before by him who is both God and man and so a fit Modus and Medium and a fit Mediator are reconciled God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself No wonder though this be not only called a grand Mysterie as it is considerable in the person of Christ alone God manifested in the flesh that God should be made our very flesh but also as it reflects as it returns to us and brings us back for our flesh his Spirit That 's a Mysterie even Marriage wherein of two is made una Caro one flesh but this is more when we are joined to Christ per eundem by one and the same Spirit The Fathers are bold and industrious in the mintage of new words to express the nearness of God and man in Christs Incarnation by Corporation Illumination Adunation Contemperation But what man or Angel knows a word large and entire enough and high enough to title that Union by wherein the Apostle saith Man joined to the Lord is one Spirit and changed into the same Image from Glory to Glory This is that nuptial mentioned in Hos 2.18 and rementioned in the Gospels and all Solomons song and Davids Psalm 45. are Epithalamions wholly spent in Celebration of this Solemnity It was an happy Contract the Union of great Brittain when in the worlds Temple two Kingdoms were the wedded pair a gracious King was Priest and the Sea like a marriage-ring encircling both That was the way had it held for the education of both Realms to a Grandeur and Convalescence And even in story of time past it is a pleasant a delightsom Consideration to behold an Infant-state rise to maturity as in Rome or Venice But will you put out the eyes of all History or Poetry and dis-illustre all the Senate and becloud all the Clarissimo's of all mankind Look then upon God in his Son Christ Jesus founding a most noble Incorporation whereof all bodies Politick are but weak representations Excellent things are spoken of thee thou City of God And we know how large that holy Father Augustine is in delivery of those excellent things in his Civitate Dei whereof Christ is the supream Head The parts of this society Kings and Priests venerable and sacred persons in all antiquity and where other bodies want a soul the Ligament and soul of this body is the holy Ghost For by one Spirit are we baptized into one body and all made to drink into one Spirit Eph. 4.4 So that in this Center all meet Gods possession the Saints priviledge and in that these are become words all of one signification His Chosen His Holy His own His Royall His Peculiar People Nor can this chuse but prove a pure refined golden Consolation indeed when we find the proof in Gods own Testament that Jesus is not only the Mine wherein all the Treasures of Wisdom are hid but Jesus is the pure and grand golden Ingot of all the Comforts contained in holy Scriptures out of which Ingot are coined so many Medals some with Serpents and Anchors and some with Lions and Lilies and Doves and Crowns and Roses and Carduus Benedictus too good for Tremor cordis and all with the Effigies of that Cross whereon our joyes depend and wherein is found that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Apostle the exceeding riches proclaimed and offered to sail by the Possessor himself saying Buy of me fine Gold for fine Gold is he to the worlds brasse-farthings or as the Sun let in on stars or seas on pools which over-run chase away engulph and strike out their petite drops and sparkles Shall we hope to reach it in a big comparison and so comprehend that which is incomprehensible and cannot enter into the heart of man to conceive What Speaker can search out words fit for the unsearchable riches of Christ As Sopor Domini is the language of the Holy Ghost for the deepest sleep and Tuba Domini a superlative for the loudest found and Gandium Domini to express the very joy of Heaven so the Apostles Gaudete in Domino even here in the Kingdom of Grace implies the best and purest consolation 'T is with an Emphasis that if there be any consolation in Christ there is an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the joy as well as in the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord my Lord and my God with an Abfit too God for did I should prophane or mix this joy with any thing else I shall not need for this is enough to make St. Paul overflow exceedingly to abound with all joy and St. Peter to rejoyce with joy unspeakable and glorious This is comfort enough for every Christian to diminish and bedwarf and dis-illustre all those glimmerings and Glow-worms all those gleanings in risled fields and all that we are fain to feign to find in forelorn Ariadnes that is other mens leavings of Wealth and Beauty and Wit and Honor which are but empty Rinds and Husks and widowed shels and shoos thrown away in contempt and weariness And yet this Crown of Consolation here set on our souls in Grace is topt and phan'd and crown'd again This Consummation hath another Consummation yet above it The Emperor that keeps his hungry Eagle still poor man when the Romish Harpyes have devoured his dainties is glad after two duller Crowns to take a third of Gold which his holiness forsooth puts on and off at pleasure But the Christian faith which makes us Kings in Jesus blood and embalms us with his oyl of gladness assures us of a tripled Comfort when on those Crowns of hope and joy below the holy of Holies who will
are all heads upon the same string fastened with our faith in Vitis here for our principal Jewel which if any of these fall loose is lost for ever and then all our preaching and ministring and your hearing and receiving vain and we be stript of our whole Creed even from God the Father Almighty maker of Heaven and earth along to Christ crucified and on to life everlasting But we have not so weakly learned Christ to be shaken from our botome with such wind and waves of wicked Disputants Let us take heed of infection from a second sort such as in deeds deny him having a shew but no power of godliness such as may be tract like the snail by their unclean and slimy passages and yet dare resolve it in the Imparative Let us leave some Tokens of our wantoness so of our prophaness blasphemie drunkenness in every place This is a large field and a common place but for I am upon an health suffer me to single him out and say a coolword or two this morning next his heart unto the drunkard such especially as in a more then barbarous custom for in Est 1. no man might compell by forcing healths make it yet a more sickly and disorderly drunkenness First I commend to their consideration St. Pauls Epiphany where the Grace of God comes it appears saith he and how teaching us to denie ungodliness c. and to live soberly So then where sobrieey is not learnt the Grace of Christ hath appeared in vain Then that Caveat of our Saviour which he gave even to his own Apostles Take heed lest your hearts be overcome with surfeiting and drunkenness Why What 's the danger and so that day come upon you unwares My next is that Redoubt and Barricado rather of St. Peter wherewith he makes out the enemie the Lion At one end he plants the great Ordinance of Faith Whom resist stedfast in the faith At the other he makes it sure and sets good guard Be sober and watch as if all our faith without sobriety would not keep out the devil that roaring Adversary who can out-roar these roars and devour these Devourers of drink My close shall be that terrible sentence of the great Judge of heaven and earth gone out against them That they shall never inherit the Kingdom of heaven It now remains I should press for faith in the foundation and furnishing a Believer with reasons of his faith against the Aâ—heist Jew and Mahumetan and then for the super structure of Good works But these are fitter for large Treatises in books then short notes in a Sermon Let us come then to the last trial how we receive Christ by receiving his Receivers Persons deputed to take our homage and receive our reward in his stead 1. AND first The Poor With him I shall deal as usually men do dispatch him briefly Yet such are near and dear unto the Vine and sent as Leiger-Embassadours and à Latere too cut like another Eve out of his own bleeding side Members of that mistical Body whereof he is supream Head and whoever wrongs oppresses grinds or pares them to the blood He cries in Heaven Non cruor hic de stipite manat I am Jesus of Nazareth whom thou persecutest It will come all to one in the end In as much as you have done it to them you have done it to me On the other side Do them good relieve them and he will reward it and make them able to requite it in proportion Receive them to harbour and those friends shall stand at heaven-gate to receive you into everlasting habitations 2. The Priest would be received too For Is not he in Vitis He that receives you receives me And is not our Ministry Vitis laetificans chearing God and man Did not the first Preachers receive largely for themselves and you when they received the holy Ghost and received power from on high at Christs ascension and gifts for men and were not the Apostles an odour of a sweet smelling savour to God and to men that received it even the savour of life unto life And is there not a Botrus of Blessing still received in receiving our Ministry If it be saith which is receiving Christ it is the word of God which we preach Nay May we not in a sober sense ask What have you that you have not received if it concern your spiritual state Christendom matriculation ablution from sin at one Receipt in baptism The body and blood and spirit of your Saviour by frequent receivings of the Eucharist which by the way now let me tell you in a word in verbo Sacerdotis if you should change for the mass it would lessen your receipts for whereas no lay-person hath a drop of the chalice allowed yet they have a Missale case that if any of the Consecrate-wine fall on the floore or pavement in that case a lay body may be permitted to lick it up left the dog should A fair reward it will be for such as decline to that Religion that Religion which hides away and denies the use of the word it self which is the power and wisedom of God to mans salvation But to fall back to our reckoning and Receipts is there nothing else Remember at night when you go to bed what is she if any be that sleeps in your bosome if you have not received her at the hand of some ordered and lawful Minister And when you shall go to your latest bed the Grave what difference from brute animals if we assist not to make it an honest and honourable Sepulture strange that mankind cannot well come in nor well stay nor well go out of this world without us and yet the world hates us Doth not this deserve a Torcular And I need not here press the cup of Comfort all apt enough to receive that benefits of Light and Salt and few so sensless but perceive it would be a very dark and a flash unsavoury dwelling here without the Gospel even stony ground will take in the Seed and gladly But where 's the Consideration of what is due to us And here I spare you I will not press that in the old Testament of Honouring God with your substance and first fruits and tithe of all that you possess I know the evasion you would turn over a new leaf and turn me to the new Priesthood in the New Testament yet take heed what you do for what is the news there How soon in that primitive Church do you meet with fellers of Possessions and laying all at the Apostles feet that 's a Torcular indeed and puts me in mind of a pretty passage in Tannerns a Jesuit who wishes withall his heart that all the Kings in Christendom would come and bring in all that ever they have and put it in their Churches treasury and henceforth be ruled by her but his Conclusion I like best Hoc in aeternum nunquaâ—fiet this will never be while the world stands saith
and none able to answer him a word yet were they still offended at him and even in that offended because he was unanswerable nay the lustre of his Grace and Goodness his temper and sweetness and clearness dis-illustring the highest of their Priests and Princes and Rulers of the people being dazled and madded with the splendor of his Vestigia the prints and proofs the tracts and evidences of his meekness and innocence all along in his active and passive obedience when there was nothing else for the tooth and tongue of envy they took indignation at his very vertues and Pilate knew that for envy they had delivered him to his Judgement 12. And now methinks we have been all this while in America among Negroes black slaves not so much as an Albus dextris but all black toothed and black-mouthed and black-tongued and black-sould people A generation viperous and rising strangly from the earth with spears and swords not in their hands but in their mouths And yet Negroes can but poison arrows to take away mens lives but these opprobrious people corrode the very honour of Gods best servants far more precious then life it self O foul presumption How camest thou into the world to cover and blast both carth and skie and all the Children of the Light and him that is the Father of Light overrunning all with this new Chaos this foul Reconfusion 13. Indeed some read for all the people here all the Mighty and if so that will make Infamy yet more infamous and this world of wickedness worse then it was 'T is best to hold us to our old belief for if with Copernicus we turn the skeme and so let Servi Rex David Christus Domini himself that is the whole Church militant on earth which is his Spouse his Dove his dearly Beloved one body and one Spirit with Christ and dear as his eyes or heart be under a power of such Populorum with the sway and addition of Maximorum that is if Might be added to multitude then will the Church of God be but a miserable Center when those other wheel aloft and thwart their underlinings like the Zodiaque All the bosoms then of all the servants of Jehovah Christus Domin would soon be filled with Reproaches and with deadly arrows like the poor Anatomy in the Almanack Cancer would not only go against the stomack while others lie heavy on the head and heart but every pelting petty Sagittary would be dribbling at the legs and very Aquarius pour out the venom and dregs and bottom of his Tankard upon Vestigia here the Footsteps of Gods people PART 2. ANd then what Remedy against Opprobrium populorum truly if we intend it of Faex populi the skum it is like Babylon they cannot because they will not be cured born and bred like a wild Asses colt saith Job worse saith Isaiah then Ox or Asse know not their own Owner not God that made them Subjects nor Gods anointed set over them for their good Rom. 13. Such stuborn stomacks as are irreducible by moral swasion or any power of Eloquence not Orpheus nor any from hell tune them to a temperate obedience either of that Command in the beginning of the old Testament which God gave Laban concerning Jacob Nequid durius speak no harsh language nor to a fear of that Commination in the end of the New Testament against such as despise Dominions and speak evil of Dignities and of things they know not raging waves foaming out their own shame and concludes the Lord is coming with 10000 of his Saints to execute Judgement upon such impious sinners for all their ungodly deeds and for all their hard speeches Will these regard a Prophet or a Preacher against whom their usual fence is to strike him with the tongue when with such the Lords anointed shall be no longer so if they list to bring their Expurgatory for they can do it as fast as Jesuits or Anababtists That brace of Sects whose Dignity proceeds of themselves like those Chaldeans in the Prophet and who scoff at Kings and Princes are a scorn unto them Hab. 1.10 Nay What Cure for such mad men as think themselves all Kings or as the Devil boasts that all the Kingdoms of the earth are their Doles and Donatives as mad as he that fate in the haven and counted all the ships arriving there his own proper goods Such sots as these may have at times some Lucida but never continue in one mind David for a fit shall be the breath of their Nostrils they will sing his Glory and challenge ten parts in the King But the Son of Bichri a man of Belial may turn all this with one blast and every one of them gone with Opprobrium We have no part in the Son of Jesse 2 Sam. 20. So one while the barbarous people call St. Paul a Murderer and presently a God Gods are come down to us in the shapes of men O run and fetch Garlands and let us sacrifice All on a suddain the wind changes and then this fine speaker Mercury must be stoned But what speak we of Servi Christus Domini was not our Lord himself so tost from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to crucâ—fige He They 'l none of him give them Barabbas What was he A thief he was a Robber made Insurrection in the City and committed Murder Did they not make a rare choice Yet such wise men as these are those who to this day first elect themselves and then clep and call their friends and fellows by the names of Saints and Children of God As for Moses and Aaron they are too proud and officious but Core and his complicies are called the people of the Lord and when they saw them go down quick to hell yet next morning at it again the people of the Lord still But is there no Balm no Physitian Yes enough if Mountbanks not mistaken for Doctors and if they prescribed not poison instead of medicine Such leaders seduce and cause a mad people to err The divisions of Reuben were from great thoughts of heart But might not Simeon and Levi these were their Writers and Teachers be the Raisers and Fomenters of such Divisions Sure I am in Num. 16. where the Rubenites conspite against Moses the meekest man on earth and Aaron the Saint of the Lord it is Corah and his company of Levites and that coar of envy in their hearts for the high Priesthood that began the mischief And how oft do we read forewarnings of false Prophets and in Act. 20.20 among your selves saith the Apostle shall rise up men speaking perverse things to draw Disciples after them And I wish such Incendiaries only came from Rome with their charm of the Church Catholique and that we were free from Impostors and Seducers in this sence for drawing Disciples after them and infusing such Doctrines that with Satyrâ—k Sermons and incentive vociferations they have filled the State and Church both with
Lastly As it is implyed that our Saviours victory on the Cross was his purchase of the Gentiles Rev. 2.26 27. and Phil. 2. His stooping even to the Cross precedes his exaltation and then a Genuflexion and universal Acclamation All tongues to confess him c. So the mission of his Apostles to the Gentiles was after his passion and a little before it we find in John 12.24 some Greeks desired to see him and he answers in a Riddle If the grain of wheat die it will bring forth much fruit which was meant of himself saith St. Austin He was to die by the unbelief of the Jews and then to be multiplyed in the faith of all Nations as we see it come to pass But that faith saith St. Paul Rom. 10. it grows not in nature comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God And this hath brought us a little on our way in the understanding of our second part which we now pursue Lux in Domino Light That 's the matter here and the manner is in Domino or the other way for the matter indeed is in Domino and the manner by way of Illumination For what is meant surely that great work of God Mans restoring is meant included in a second great work Illumination of our minds and that in a third great work The light of the Sun in our eyes How rare and choice a fruit must that be which hath such curious Coverings The very Metaphor or rather Box and Nest of Metaphors is observable Is God a Metaphorical God saith one D. D. And he answers himself In a pious and humble meaning respecting the Scriptures heights and Excellencies in Allegories not only sinews in the Milk of Gods Word and things in his Words but spreadings and strange Rhetorical passages and curtains of figures flowing into figures Where are those Sophisters and Grand Seniors and grave Rabbies with their old dissembled Ensigns of Ignorance the Beard the Habit and the Title that will allow men no use of humane Learning in disclosing Divine Mysteries Is the Grape therefore harsh because such Strainers cannot reach it Theology shall remain the crowned Queen of Sciences but will admit her Hand-maids to carry keys to her Cabinets But ere we look in here be pleased to arrest your consideration on the covering of this Ark that is the Light of Heaven And as before in Darkness so here again we are blind with dazling How many are the opinions of those rowling Torches of Heaven the Sun and Moon St. Austin and in his old age too for it is in his Euchir ad Lauren. knew not whether he might account them to the Angels And for the Light Who shall tell us what it is When it comes to our doors and beats upon our eves we know not whether it have a real Being in the Air or an Intentional The first the second both and neither of both are defended Look into the Microcosm and Fiat Lux else all invisible no form no distinction and all inglorious nor use nor beauty 'T is Plenitudo the filling of all the Creatures and gives them Cognition Life Motion View the Microcosm the Light of the Body is the eye and not the Organ so much as the visive Power the light within that sits behind those Glass-windows with a balance and a file and weighs and works upon the shapes of things that enter But both these Lights are Darkness if the Medium be not illuminated if the Air be dark and searching the Scripture though we find not what it is yet we find a world of wonders in it Five things imparted yet remain entire Knowledge Vertue Happiness Joy and Light and this the Embleme of them all No good thing but Light takes it in by comparison all good things but never any ill Wisdom Health Beauty Food Joy and Reputation All the Graces of God Knowledge Faith Love Hope Joy Consolation yea the very Glory to come all our Joy and endless Bliss in that vision of Light And if God should ask us What house we would make him or to what compare him Should we offend in saying LIGHT though nothing resemble God exactly yet something better shews how far he is beyond all resmblance and by that Light his Creatures afford our admiration of his Incomprehensibleness may be raised higher and higher and with it so raised our longing after him enlarged And sure as in the works of Grace none liker God then LOVE So in the works of Nature Light as it is the eldest so the amiablest and the likest to the Father and what the Fathers affection is to it we may see by his first giving Light to the Chaos It could yield him no delight who was the double Parent so long as it lay in Night and Darkness and so deep in too that nothing yet was day What stood thus blindly could not be pleasing in his eye who is all eye But when it saw the Text saith God saw that all was good Doth he not dwell in Light and cover himself with Light as with a Garment May we not say his House and Robe and Eternal Essence are all one boundless christal Globe of Light Doth not he say so God is Light the Father the Father of Lights and the Son is God of God and Light of Light and the Holy Spirit as in this wide Engine of the world it is an inward eye which moves and rowls Spiritus in us alit So in our Souls it is the Spirit of Illuminations directing us to that place where in his Light we shall see Light even see God face to face and know him even as we are known I had not staid so long on this this cover here but that I conceived it might be in our way to discover what remains remembring my Promise to pass this part in explanation so demonstrating in an Orb where every part gives Light unto one another Here by the way might be inferred the usefulness of our sight and how we are bound to bless God that enjoy that Comfort And secondly How to compassionate the blind that sit in darkness considering there is no perfect joy on earth without it no nor in Heaven it being one of the torments in hell Darkness and contrary to the Inheritance of the Saints in Light And thirdly Applying to such times as these Rejoyce in this favour of Heaven that earthly men cannot restrain or excise the comforts of the Air and Light c. But we pass to our fruit it self the meaning of this Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ in our restoring veil'd here under this God-like Creature of Light That illumination which we receive from him by his Spirit relieving us from our state of corruption and bondage of darkness and translating us into his marvelous Light and glorious liberty of the Sons of God For you were c. In Domino In Domino For he is Light in the abstract others by participation He the true Light the cause efficient
know further of this Divine Method which is the Aquaeduct the Ventiduct the Luciduct which way still doth Christ in his Spirit conveigh this Holy water this gentle Air this blessed Light to our Spirits I confess this is one of the most necessary important and most usefull Queries we can make and which being clearly resolved will shame both Papists that hide away as much as they can and other Hereticks that blaspheme the Scriptures and pretend to a Spirit enthusiastick which is nothing but the Devil of delusion and spirit of Giddiness And therefore for our best Resolve upon this question Let us do as our Saviour in the point of marriage enquire how it was in the Beginning Look back then to the Creation consider how came Light at first At first the Spirit moves and broods over that which is in it self a confusion a depth and a darkness and then his mighty Word Fiat Lux. He spake and it was Light then Then when all was dark he made material Light and Christ Jesus is the WORD 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For as Speech is the Image of the mind so he the brightness of his Fathers Glory and the express Image of his person Heb. 1.3 The immaterial Light that was never made and the Spirit of the true God in declaring the true Way of his Worship and mans true way thereby to obtain eternal life as the very heathen trusted to the false gods fained Oracles which of necessity must be revealed before man could find or follow it goes that way still that is by the WORD His Word wherein is his Will revealed from Heaven both makes and is our Light This world is Gods Book wherein as in a Glass of wonders we discern him but that print being Dim to us that are sin-blind it pleased him by lively Oracles to make a Mirror far more clearly revealing his mind And as God engraved his form on his Son before all worlds so what that Son is and what the Father is to us in him the Spirit proceeding from both delivers in the Scriptures of both Testaments And as the Sun guilds and enamels clouds and streams and hill Tops with his raies but thrusts his own pure Light his own living sire through the bodies of the stars so other Authors can but yield a faint reflexion of that beam which is direct and native in his book where the very Law he stiles a flaming Light The Prophecies a more sure Word then any Eye-evidences of the Apostles to which we do well to look saith St. Peter himself as to a Light shining in a dark place till the day dawn the day-star rise in our hearts But then the Gospel written and spread by his Evangelists and held out by his spouse the Catholick Church is his marvellous Light He brought life and immortality to Light by the Gospel 2 Tim 1.10 and in Acts 26. 16. I have appeared to thee saith our Saviour to that choice vessel of his Grace and name to make thee a Minister and a witness c. And now behold I will send thee to the Gentiles to what end A glorious end to open their eyes and to turn them from Darkness to Light from the power of Satan unto God and accordingly we find it 2 Cor. 4.3 4. If our Gospel be hid it is hid in them that perish in whom the god of this world hath blinded their unfaithfull minds that the Light of the Gospel of the Glory of Christ who is the Image of God should not shine unto them And in the sixth verse he shews the Walk and Circuit of this Light God who commanded Light to shine out of Darkness hath shined in our hearts there first and then the casting of the beam to give light of the knowledge of the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ O then you have the means of Light and Grace among you Ministers you are the Light and Salt of the earth and who shall question that truth which the Truth himself hath testified And would it not be a very dark and desolate and a very flash and unsavory world without a publique Ministry of the Word and Sacraments The Clergie however despised are all out Spiritual Fathers Propter quos hanc suavissimam Lucem aspeximus But yet you and they both must know how they have it and the Apostle tells us that too in the next words We have this Treasure in our earthen vessels that the excellency of the Power might be of God and not of us You are not sent to a Means and Medicine of our preparing or any humane but to Gods Divine Ordinance that which is his Power and Wisdom to Salvation to every one that believes And therefore this may be enough to give all humble Christians satisfaction and acquiescence Speak then thy Word O Lord and thy servant shall be healed shall be undarkened and though like Bartimeus though sin-blind have my eyes opened with a word Mar. 10.12 St. Peter spake but words unto Cornelius but words whereby he and his house should be saved words so richly blest that the Text saith while Peter spake these words the holy Ghost fell on all them that heard the word Did not our hearts burn within us said those Disciples Luke 24. to whom our Saviour opened the Scriptures And the Apostles hearers prickt at their Hearts cried Men and Brethren What shall we do to be saved And what a large field of the Fathers testimonies do I here forsake to break by your patience into an Inclosure or two of the very Papists our enemies and the enemies of the Scripture Yet see the excellency of Gods word even those enemies being Judges Cardinal Bellarmine himself is in his superlatives Certissima tutissima regula credendi lib. 1. de verb. Dei ca. 20. and need we any more after so full a witness I 'le name but another but one Instar omnium 'T is he that in a traiterous itch of wit took on him purposely the abuse of Scripture that by mis appliance and prophane wresting he might so abuse our Princes and our Church Mark yet what he is forc'd to say and sure 't is worth our observation if I diminish him not in my English There is in Scripture sayes he an invisible Majesty an hidden splendour a Glory unperishable a wisdom in-exhaustible The solace of humane and the beginning of a Divine life made by the holy Spirit making our spirits holy compat'd with which the Egyptian sages will look pale and poor the Chaldee impure the Grecians blockish Plato no body and Philosophy it self a fool 'T is the print of Heaven on earth and if any where the Joy of Paradise or at least a brave Resemblance of Divine Light be shewed 't is in Scripture containing all that is severed from the actual Vision of God himself Again The paper burns me not yet am I all inflamed in reading it 'T is no composure no artificial tread the Scripture uses
Judge is joyn'd in Commission with the Holy Ghost to lead us into all Truth and to bring all such that is all needful truth to our remembrance The Spirit of God bears witness but it is with our spirit and so enables us to pronounce sentence of self-clearing or self-condemnation When therefore I dare knock at that privy Chamber door at that closet and dare ask that question Am I a Divine Royalist a true Deilift a godly Christian One of Gods peculiar where then is my fear my thinking on his Name Do I serve the Lord with fear and rejoyce before him with reverence Do I indeed as one of his Royal Priesthood present my body and soul and all their children all their off-spring the actions of my hands and the Imaginations of my heart and projects of my brain as a lively sacrifice unto my God Does my justice and honesty my chastity and sobriety for even these may rise from corrupt springs flow from this only consideration Is the bottom of my conceited happiness any better then a sick mans dream or mad mans boiling fancy Do I indeed feel my confidence grounded on a modest a tender and reverential fear Doe the Larum the remembrance of this strike louder and faster in my brest then all Satans temptations with meminto Philippe Henrics Garole not that thou art but a man but that thou art no mans man nor no womans man nor no devils man taken captive to do his Will This I must thus enquire and this when I thus know then I must resolve with Joshua Let others do what they will I and my house at the least I and my heart and all that is within me will serve the Lord. Shall such a man as I that profess Christ and his Gospel shall I flie saith one Can I do this wickedness and sin against God Shall I take the members of Christ and make them the members of an harlot saith another of Gods fearfull and faithfull servants God forbid Do I profess to serve that Lord of Hosts who keeps a book of Remembrance whose eye is ever zenith and so pure that no iniquity can tarry in his sight and shall I not pass the time of my dwelling here in fear of his most blessed name And do we can we think then nay do they or can they say what they will can they indeed think in good earnest can they believe themselves to be Gods peculiar people and such a Priest-hood and chosen People as Christ shed his precious blood to purchase who though they dare not but fear men and tremble at the sound of some great name on earth yet have no true fear of God before their eyes such as dare curse swear pollute and blaspheme that very name in which both we and they profess to look for both Protection and Salvation Thirdly Our third and last particular in this observation about the Ground-work of all our comforts bottom'd on our fear of God is the joy and blessing the Grace and Mercy tender indulgence of God unto us in this Appropriation that God vouchsafes to tie this cordial joy fast to each single-hearted Christian so admits him under this signet to be of his cabinet Council in the inward Testimony of his Spirit assuring him his spirit that he is the â—ords own that so the Joy of his faithfull servants may as himself hath spoken it be full and that not by rejoycing in another but by finding and feeling the Ground and Principles of true Joy and Confidence in themselves For I am not therefore honest or valiant because some credulous brethren or some brethren of the Sword repute me so and would so give it under their hands No I pass not for yours or any mans Judgement saith St. Paul a silly fame is that into which a man is voted or for which he hath a Testimonial or Certificat I know saith he in whom I have believed and so every just and justified man lives by his own faith as well as he lives by that very bread which himself eats It is no trusting to Salvation implicite if I pin my soul to that great name of the Catholique Church and know no meaning of it but only him that calls himself the Head of it when he can be scarce or but at most a corrupt member or if I make a Pope of that poor private Priest that creeps in at my window If I freely resign my soul to him and say I must confide in you for so millions profess and boast themselves to do Can I tell whether this Romist will cary it to Heaven or Hell or neither in haste but make it stay in purgatory as some souls they tell me must do till the day of Judgement I cannot relish that dependance on any mans infallibility for if I could be certain of their high Priests election that all things therein had been rightly and canonically performed which is very difficult if not impossible yet for his low Priest whom he sends to me and who for his own food and maintenance brings me the Sacraments of Penance and the wafer-god to be assured of his intention on which they teach the very essence of all Popish devotion depends they must acquaint me how I shall be a Searcher of hearts which God hath reserved only to himself and therefore assuredly as some Papists have openly jeared the pretended infallibilâ—y of their Father so no doubt but his white sons the Jesuits like the Latine Augurs do laugh when they meet in secret at the open gullage of the world willing to mistake their infamous mother for the very Catholique Church in the Apostles Creed and yet our own Ladies in stead of Preserves from St. Austins boxes of Prascriptum Legis Pradicta Prophetarum which are soundly mingled with this holy sear in the Text are content to swallow their conserves of implicite faith and blind obedience and comfort their hearts with the cold consideration of an Indulgence when yet the blessed and the blasting the cordial and yet confounding Truth of God in this ponit hath wrung after a thousand wranglings that plain consession from a learned but a bitter and violent Papist that the Church by her Ministerie and Magisterie received of God doth cause us to believe yet for all that the very Reason wherefore we believe is not the Church but God speaking in us This is Stapleton in his third book of the Authority of the Scripture cap. 12. And indeed when all is said and done nothing but the Testimony of Gods own Holy Spirit is ever able to minister true consolation in believing The God of peace it is that fils us with all peace and joy in believing if we belive St. Paul ' to the Romans cap. 15. verse 13. But this is not meant of any private whisper or Enthusiasus which is deceitfull but of the spirits Testimony joyned to his Holy Word in the clear evidence thereof assuring our spirit that God is become our
perfect lacking nothing Alas if the unprofitable servant be cast out what shall become of the Malignant the Covetous the Proud the Luxurious How are we then to think of that triple charge of Pasce of Jacobs enduring frost and heat of the shepheards keeping watch by night and then of Leo Rugiens to devour both Pastor and Flock And how are they able to resist if we assist not unless we exhort rebuke exhort and minister a word of consolation to every soul that is weary and then the people to be swift to hear How precious is the treasure we bring though in earthen vessels Is it not the Word of God we bring and offer you To mens words we owe temporary belief if they speak wisely and a Resignation of our Judgements till we hear them out But to the Word of God which is diffused into a Sermon or else woe to him that makes it we owe an absolute Resignation and perpetual captivity Take heed then of contempt or wanton ranging after an heap of such Teachers as are after our own lusts lest we cause God to withold this bread from Heaven and endanger the famishing of our souls Let England remember the error of the Jewish Church once the Jewel and peculiar of the Lord of Hosts the defection of the Romish the Degeneration and then the demolition and abolition of Antioch Ephesus Corinth and many others O think in time for we draw very near it of this peoples sin here at the twelfth and thirteenth verses They held the Table of the Lord contemptible and snuffed at it perchance respecting the gorgeous Idols of the Gentiles In the same corrupt affection as many carnal Gospellers not ashamed to let men hear their wishes for the stately and triumphant shews again of Masse Dirges Processions Pilgrimages God hath blest the Land and Church even to the stupor and envy of our Neighbours with abundance of the Gospel of peace and the blessing of God in his Ordinance and with many curious and exact work-men Jewelers of souls and will we not bless the Lord praise him and magnifie him for ever Will we not prize this unsearchable Riches of Christ Shall we rather strive to quench and do despite to the Spirit of his Grace by despising Prophecying and like Swine and Dogs trample upon and turning again rend and tear such as pour these precious Pearls before us stoning them that are sent unto us with hard and bitter censures If the ministration of the Law was glorious what is that of the Gospel Examine it Is it not the Power and Wisdom of God and in the Administration of the Sacrament is not the bread we break the communion of the body and the cup we reach out into you from God the communion of the blood of Jesus Are not the offices of the Church such as distinguish us from Dogs and Infidels Let me then first creep a little into mount Ebal and bitterly curse all those thas have evil will at Sion and then flie into Gerizim and cheerfully bless with blessings of the right band Praise and Honor and Salvation upon the heads of all those Christian Kings Princes and people of all conditions who in their several places seek the advancement of the Truth of God and the encouragement of his faithfull servants while their own hearts strike them with the conscience and guilt of maliciousness and propenseness to Idolatry or schismatick Innovations that dare not say Amen 3. We come briefly to the third day to which we must all come the day of death when Gods own having past the fervor of youth and clean escaped the flesh and worlds contagions and the fiery darts of Satan having in short done what they came for they descend into the grave with their bodies like a rick of corn into the Barn in due season and their spirits return to God that gave them when even death is to them precious as well for rest and security as for that new Newness of life which then begins in death clearing to them that whereof Euripides doubted whether to die were indeed to live and contrary for so St. Paul determines it Christ is to me life and death is to me advantage and therefore desired he this day of his dissolution wherein he might be more perfectly united to his Jesus For these his holy Jewels are never so well set as when inset in the joy and Glory of their Lord and Master which makes that in such souls even the approaching towards death fils and purifies with high and heavenly apprehensions as it is in natural motions nearer still to the center or as in Diggers in a Myne who work most earnestly when near the Treasure But if it happen that any of these Jewels be so far dignified as his Lord accepts his life in sacrifice by Martyrdome consummate in sealing the Truth of Jesus with his blood how doth this add fresh ornament and addition of honor to these Servants of God as came to pass with that Protomartyr St. Stephen first made up a Jewel after his Master those stones the Persecutors threw surrounding his head as a precious Crown of Glory However they are all that die in the Lord enfranchised from those chains of corruption which abide the best alive for we dare not boast our Saints as Bellarmine doth Gouraga or his Fellow doth Phil. Nerius who was fain to pray God to depart from him and draw back his mind from heavenly things No we have learnt another way of humble acknowledgement from St. Paul I know that in me that is in my flesh dwels no good thing and St. James In many things we sin all and the day of absolute absolution from sin is not till this day of dissolution wherein these Jewels by death come to take possession of everlasting life 4. The last is the last of dayes Novissimus and the day of Renovation which none but the ancient of days can know and of which also there is a mixt mention in the beginning of this fourth chapter The day of the Lord comes as a furnace and Rev. 6. The great day of his wrath called the day of the Lord Jesus and the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ Rom. 16. The first day we spake on the day of affliction and the last we spake on the day of death do roule up sometime all together It befals alike saith the Preacher to the clean and unclean to him that swears and to him that fears an oath and for the second the day of powerfull preaching the word Hypocrites elude it The devil can transform himself into an Angil of Light and his zanies may make a fair shew in the flesh saith the Scripture But at this great day shall be a real Partition of Sheep and Goats of Wheat and Tares which yet flock and grow together then he will gather his elect from the four winds and declare his mighty Power in glorifying both their souls and
bodies both the Jewel and the Cabinet both which at that revealing of the Son of God when he appears shall also appear with him in glory Col. 3. Nor shall the association then of the body be as it may seem any diminution of glory to the soul For first The School resolves it that though the soul separate may seem more to resemble God and therefore happier yet joined it hath the nearer Resemblance having esse perfectius it being then more perfect As in the heart whose perfection is motion doth therefore more resemble God when moved then when quiescent though God never move as all Secondly Though vertue severed from matter be Potention and so Faelictor in absolute speech yet not so in such vertue as hath a nature and property to be in matter Thirdly Even in the Act of Understanding the glorious body shall be adjuvant to the spirit for as much as the glorified Body will cause the soul more perfectly to produce her operations and so the good redounding to the body in Glory shall instrumentally serve to the souls perfection as Anistotle saith external goods instrumentally contribute to his felicity in the action of vertue Lastly Though the soul have fulness of delight in God and so cannot receive addition by the body joyned which is but finite where God is infinite Goodness yet extensive they say it shall avail ad plus though not ad majus and Intensive too for the reason aforesaid because then the operation of the soul whereby she is born towards her enjoying of God shall be made more perfect being in her own natural state This is meant by that Apoc. 6. Lord how long and so much is arguable from proportion of pain in the damned which shall be then augmented And again Though this corruptible Body weigh down the immortal soul yet the glorious body shall be more compliant when all that shall be removed whereby there is any reluctance made to the souls actions as finally it seems most of all clear by that gracious invitement of Christ Jesus at that day Enter into thy Masters joyce So that in this day these Jewels are wholly refined and purified and beautified with Salvation as it is Psalm 149. For then as if they were made up into one chain with God and so many stones in a Bracelet God shall be all in all above all and through all and in them all When the pure Bride the wife of the Lamb shall have the Glory of God and her Light like unto a stone most precious even like a Jasper clear as Christal O how glorious things are spoken of thee thou City of God! and how great Riches hast thou reserved for them that love thee For of their very bodies the Scripture witnesseth that they shall shine as the Sun and like unto the glorious body of Christ Jesus himself And what do the Fathers and School-men comment upon the Subtilty Impassibility Agility and Clarity and Incorruptibility but for the Soul into what a glorious liberty of the sons of God she enters and exceeding that of Paradise which was posse non peccare But this Novissima this Power shall be Non posse peccare an impossibility of sinning any more for ever When there shall be no further need of working by that blessed Engine the Word of God Verbum Domini but we shall sweetly enjoy Verbum Domini that Lord who is the Eternal Word the Wisdom increated when there shall be no longer sacrifice because no expiation no more Sacraements but Res ipsae Things themselves presented us the substance and thing signified Here the Saints are fed with the leaves but there with the very fruits of that Tree of Life and all these endless in that incomprehensible Vision of the Almighty for there Felicitie begins and ends As in Philosophy they that made it consist and rest in Con templation of Forms separate do add this reason because souls do emanare do flow from thence So is God Alpha and Omega the First and the Last The beginning of our blessedness is to proceed from him to be his Off-spring and Generation and the last Resolution is that Fruition Vision Union with him an Union so high as no tongue of Man or Angel no comparison can reach it no thought of mans heart can ascend unto it For though the ocular Vision of God shall be terminate only in his Saints and in beholding the person of Christ Jesus in whom the fulness of the God-head dwels bodily yet the Intellectual Cognition shall pierce into the Essence of the Almighty For we shall see him face to face see him as he is and know even as we are known To make a delightfull Knowledge there are three things requisite 1. The sensible or understanding Faculty 2. The Object and 3. The Union And by how much apter and abler that apprehending Power is the Object more noble and the manner of uniting more inward still the more delight Now all these are here per and super-transcendent First The Understanding now not alone above sense but beyond it self in Purity and Glory Secondly The Object Goodness it self and in abstract Thirdly The way of Combination an open and clear Vision penetrating the whole mind of the Beholder If sounds and colors strike the senses even to a ravishing O what a heavenly kiss and spiritual Embrace shall that be when after a world of fears and languishings and longings incident even to this caelestial Love we come to interminable Acquiescence Satisfaction and Appetite perpetually interchangable This is to enter into our Masters very joy nay Gaudium Dei above mens or Angels joy No This is not to enter into it but to have the joy enter into Vs as unable to comprehend it to which joy c. S. D. G. GODS VISITATION JOB 31.14 What then shall I do when he riseth up And when God shall visit what shall I answer him THE Text comprehends those two notions which comprehend all God and Man For the whole world was in God before he made it and when he made it he made it all for Man and made it all over again in Man and made Man in his own Image like God And that Image defac'd and Man lost to recover him and make him new he vouchsaf'd to make himself Man God and Man in one person and the consummation of all his works which is also the consummation of all Mans hopes is to bring God and Man into to one place But this must await his time and obey his own Methode which he so frames by his powerfull hands his Understanding and his Will that as in infinite Mercy so with his Honor and his Justice too he may assume them to that place of Glory He will give Grace aad Glory Psal 84. but Grace first therefore enlightning rectifying purifying their Understanding Will Affections hewing and polishing pruning and dressing every stone in the building every branch in the Vine and in that nature we find him