yea sum of our belief we deny and bandy against all our lives long If the story of Christ coming to judgment set down in the xxv of Matthew after the 30. verse had ever entred through the doors of our ears to the inward closets of our hearts 't is impossible but we should observe and practise that one single duty there required of us Christ there as a Judge exacts and calls us to account for nothing in the world but only works of mercy and according to the satisfaction which we are able to give him in that one point he either entertains or repels us and therefore our care and negligence in this one business will prove us either Christians or Infidels But alas 't is too plain that in our actions we never dream either of the judgment or the arraignment our stupid neglect of this one duty argues us not only unchristian but unnatural Besides our Alms-deeds which concern only the outside of our neighbour and are but a kind of worldly mercy there are many more important but cheaper works of mercy as good counsel spiritual instructions holy education of them that are come out of our loyns or are committed to our care seasonable reproof according to that excellent place Lev xix 17. Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart but in any wise reprove him a care of carrying our selves that we may not scandal or injure or offer violence to the soul and tender conscience of him that is flexible to follow us into any riot These and many other works of mercy in the highest degree as concerning the welfare of other mens souls and the chief thing required of us at the day of judgment are yet so out-dated in our thoughts so utterly defaced and blotted out in the whole course of our lives that it seems we never expect that Christ in his Majesty as a Judge whom we apprehend and embrace and hug in his humility as a Saviour Beloved till by some severe hand held over our lives and particularly by the daily study and exercise of some work of mercy or other we demonstrate the sincerity of our belief the Saints on Earth and Angels in Heaven will shrewdly suspect that we do only say over that part of our Creed that we believe only that which is for our turn the sufferings and satisfactions of Christ which cost us nothing but do not proceed to his office of a Judge do not either fear his judgments or desire to make our selves capable of his mercies Briefly whosoever neglects or takes no notice of this duty of exercising works of mercy whatsoever he brags of in his theory or speculation in his heart either denies or contemns Christ as Judge and so destroys the sum of his Faith and this is another kind of secret Atheism Fourthly Our Creed leads us on to a belief and acknowledgement of the Holy Ghost and 't is well we have all conn'd his name there for otherwise I should much fear that it would be said of many nominal Christians what is reported of the Ephesian Disciples Acts xix 2. They have not so much as heard whether there be an Holy Ghost or no. But not to suspect so much ignorance in any Christian we will suppose indeed men to know whatsoever they profess and enquire only whether our lives second our professions or whether indeed they are meer Infidels and Atheistical in this business concerning the Holy Ghost How many of the ignorant sort which have learnt this name in their Catechism or Creed have not yet any further use to put it to but only to make up the number of the Trinity have no special office to appoint for him no special mercy or gift or ability to beg of him in the business of their salvation but mention him only for fashion sake not that they ever think of preparing their bodies or souls to be Temples worthy to entertain him not that they ever look after the earnest of the Spirit in their hearts 2 Cor. i. 22. Further yet how many better learned amongst us do not yet in our lives acknowledge him in that Epithet annext to his title the Holy Ghost i. e. not only eminently in himself holy but causally producing the same quality in us from thence called the sanctifying and renewing Spirit How do we for the most part fly from and abandon and resist and so violently deny him when he once appears to us in this Attribute When he comes to sanctifie us we are not patient of so much sowreness so much humility so much non-conformity with the world as he begins to exact of us we shake off many blessed motions of the Spirit and keep our selves within garrison as far as we can out of his reach lest at any turn he should meet with and we should be converted Lastly the most ordinary morally qualified tame Christians amongst us who are not so violent as to profess open arms against this Spirit how do they yet reject him out of all their thoughts How seldom do many peaceable orderly men amongst us ever observe their wants or importune the assistance of this Spirit In sum 't was a shrewd speech of the Fathers which will cast many fair out-sides at the bar for Atheists That the life of an unregenerate man is but the life of an Heathen and that 't is our regeneration only that raises us up 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from being still meer Gentiles He that believes in his Creed the person nay understands in the Schools the Attributes and gifts of the Holy Ghost and yet sees them only in the fountain neither finds nor seeks for any effects of them in his own soul he that is still unregenerate and continues still gaping and yawning stupid and senseless in this his condition is still for all his Creed and learning in effect an Atheist And the Lord of Heaven give him to see and endeavours to work and an heart to pray and his Spirit to draw and force him out of this condition Fifthly Not to cramp in every Article of our Creed into this Discourse we will only insist on two more We say therefore that we believe the forgiveness of sins and 't is a blessed confidence that all the treasures in the world cannot equal But do our selves keep equipage and hand in hand accompany this profession Let me catechize you a while You believe the forgiveness of sins but I hope not absolutely that the sufferings of Christ shall effectually clear every mans score at the day of judgment well then it must be meant only of those that by repentance and faith are grafted into Christ and shall appear at that great marriage in a wedding garment which shall be acknowledged the livery and colours of the Lamb. But do our lives ever stand to this explication and restriction of the Article Do they ever expect this beloved remission by performing the condition of repentance Do we ever
noisome Soul or more truly that evil spirit Mark I. 23. that made the man disclaim and renounce Christ and his mercies when he came to cure Let us alone what have we to do with thee By which is noted That contentedness and acquiescence in sin that even stubborn wilfulness and resolvedness to die that a long sluggish custom in sin will bring us to and that you may resolve on as the main discernable cause of this weakness of the heart a habit and long service and drudgery in sin But then as a ground of that you may take notice of another a phansie that hath crept into most mens hearts and suffers them not to think of resisting any temptation to sin that all their actions as well evil as good were long ago determined and set down by God and now nothing left to them but a necessity of performing what was then determined I would fain believe that that old heresie of the Stoicks revived indeed among the Turks concerning the inevitable production of all things that fatal necessity even of sins should yet never have gotten any footing or entertainment among Christians but that by a little experience in the practice of the world I find it among many a main piece of their faith and the only point that can yield them any comfort that their sins be they never so many outragious are but the effects or at least the consequents of Gods decree that all their care and sollicitude and most wary endeavors could not have cut off any one sin from the Catalogue that unless God be pleased 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to come down upon the Stage by the irresistible power of his constraining spirit as with a Thunderbolt from Heaven to shake and shiver to pieces the carnal man within them to strike them into a swoon as he did Saul that so he may convert them and in a word to force and ravish them to Heaven Unless he will even drive and carry them they are never likely to be able to stir to perform any the least work of reason but fall minutely into the most irrational unnatural sins in the world nay even into the bottom of that pit of Hell without any stop or delay or power of deliberating in this their precipice This is an heresie that in some Philosopher-Christians hath sprouted above ground hath shewed it self in their brains and tongues and that more openly in some bolder Wits but the Seeds of it are sown thick in most of our hearts I fear in every habitual sinner amongst us if we were but at leisure to look into our selves The Lord give us a heart to be forewarned in this behalf To return into the rode Our natural inclinations and propensions to sin are no doubt active and prurient enough within us somewhat of Jehu's constitution and temper they drive very furiously But then to perswade our selves that there is no means on earth besides the very hand of God and that out of our reach able to trash or overslow this furious driver that all the ordinary clogs that God hath provided us our reason and natural conscience as Men our Knowledge as Christians nay his restraining though not sanctifying graces together with the Lungs and Bowels of his Ministers and that energetical powerful Instrument the Gospel of Christ Which is the power of God unto salvation even to every Jew nay and Heathen Rom. 1. To resolve That all these are not able to keep us in any compass to quell any the least sin we are inclined to that unless God will by force make Saints of us we must needs presently be Devils and so leave all to Gods omnipotent working and never make use of those powers with which he hath already furnished us This is a monstrous piece of unchristian divinity a way by advancing the Grace of God to destroy it and by depending on the Holy Ghost to grieve if not to sin against him to make the corruption of our nature equal to nay surpassing the punishment of the Devils a necessary and irreversible obduration in all kinds and measures of sin This one practical Heresie will bring us through all the prodigies of the old Philosophical Sects from Stoicks to Epicurism and all sensual Libertinism and from thence to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Pythagoreans For unless the soul that is now in one of us had been transplanted from a Swine or some other the most stupid sottish degenerous sort of Beasts it is impossible that it should thus naturally and necessarily and perpetually and irrecoverably delight wallow in every kind of sensuality without any check or contradiction either of Reason or Christianity If I should tell you that none of you that hath understood and pondered the Will of God wants abilities in some measure to perform it if he would muster up all his forces at time of need that every Christian hath grace enough to smother lusts in the Womb and keep them at least from bringing forth to quell a temptation before it break out into an actual sin you would think perhaps that I flattered you and deceived my self in too good an opinion of your strength Only thus much then It would be somewhat for your edification to try what you could do Certainly there is much more in a Christians power if he be not engaged in a habit of sin than we imagine though not for the performing of good yet for the inhibiting of evil And therefore bethinking our selves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Arrian That we are the sons of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Let us not have too low and degenerous an opinion of our selves Do but endeavour resolutely and couragiously to repel temptations as often as they sollicite thee make use of all thy ordinary restraints improve thy natural fear and shamefac'dness thy Christian education tender disposition to the highest pitch do but hold sincerely as long as thou art able and though I will not say that all thy sins shall be confin'd to those two heads of original a branch of which are evil motions and of omission yet I will undertake that thou shalt have an easier burthen of actual commissions upon thy soul and that will prove a good ease for thee Those are they that weigh it down into the deep that sink it desperateliest into that double Tophet of obduration and despair Final obduration being a just judgment of God on one that hath fill'd up the measure of his iniquities that hath told over all the hairs of his head and sands of the Sea in actual sins and a necessary consummation of that despair the first part the Prologue and Harbinger to that worm in Hell 'T were easie to shew how faith might afford a Christian sufficient guard and defence against the keenest weapon in the Devils armory and retort every stroke upon himself But because this is the Faith only of a Wife not as we now consider as a woman at
large but in a nearer obligation as a Spouse We shall more opportunely handle that in the next Part where we shall consider Indulgence in sin as the work of a whorish Woman where whoredome noting adultery presupposes wedlock and consists in unfaithfulness to the Husband the thing in the next place to be discovered The Work c. That Christ is offered by his Father to all the Church for an Husband that he waits and begs and sends presents to us all to accept of the proposal the whole Book of Canticles that Song of spiritual love that affectionate wooing Sonnet will demonstrate That every Christian accepts of this Match and is Sacramentally espoused to Christ at his Baptism his being call'd by the Husbands Name imports For that is the meaning of the phrase Isai IV. 1. Let us be called by thy Name i. e. marry us That Faith is the only thing that makes up the Match and entitles us to his Name and Estate is observable both from many places of Scripture and by the opposition which is set betwixt a Christian and all others Jews and Infidels betwixt the Spouse and either the destitute Widow or barren Virgin the ground of which is only Faith So then every Christian at his Baptism being supposed a Believer and thereby espoused sacramentally to Christ and so obliged to all the observances as partaker of all the priviledges of a Wife doth at every unchaste thought or adulterous motion offend against the fidelity promised in marriage by every actual breach of this faith is for the present guilty of Adultery but by indulgence in it is downright a whore i. e. either one that came to Christ with an unchaste adulterous love to gain somewhat not for any sincere affection to his person but insidious to his estate and having got that is soon weary of his person or else one that came to him with pure virgin thoughts resolving her self a perpetual captive to his love and never to be tyred with those beloved fetters of his embraces but in time meets with a more flattering amiable piece of beauty and is soon hurried after that and so forgetteth both her vows and love Thus shall you see an handsome modest maidenly Christian espoused to Christ at the Font and fully wedded by his Ring at Confirmation Nay come nearer yet to him and upon many solemn expressions of fidelity and obedience vouchsafed the seal of his very heart in the Sacrament of his Blood Another that hath liv'd with him a long while in uniform constant loyalty noted by all the neighborhood for an absolute Wife a grave solemn matronly Christian yet either upon the allurements of some fresh sprightful sin or the sollicitations of an old-acquaintance lust the insinuations of some wily intruder or a specious shew of a glorious glittering temptation or when these are all wanting upon the breaking out of an evil heart of unbelief which some outward restraints formerly kept in departing from the living God profess open neglect and despight against the Husband which before they so wooed and flattered and made love to 'T were long to number out to you and give you by tale a Catalogue of those defections and adulterous practices which Christians are ordinarily observed to be guilty of which whether they go so far as to make a divorce betwixt the soul and Christ or whether only to provoke him to jealousie whether by an intercision of Grace and Faith or by an interruption and suspension of the acts I will not now examine I will go no farther than the Text which censures it here as a piece of spiritual whoredom of treacherous unfaithful dealing to be light unconstant and false to Christ whose Spouse they are esteemed whose Name they bear and Estate they pretend title to And so indeed it is for what greater degree of unfaithfulness can be imagined What fouler breach of Matrimonial Covenants than to value every ordinary prostitute sin before the precious chastest embraces of an Husband and a Saviour to be caught and captivate with the meanest vanity upon earth when it appears in competition with all the treasures in Heaven Besides that spiritual Armor which Faith bestows on a Christian Eph. vi 16. sufficient to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked or as the Greek hath it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that wicked one the Devil methinks there is a kind of moral influence from Faith on any wise prudent heart enough to enliven and animate and give it spirit against the force or threatnings of any the strongest temptation and to encourage him in the most crabbed uncooth disconsolate undertakings of godly obedience For what sin didst thou ever look upon with the fullest delight of all thy senses in the enjoying of which thy most covetous troublesome importunate lusts would all rest satisfied but one minute of Heaven truly represented to thy heart would infinitely out-weigh A Turk is so affected with the expectation of his carnal Paradise those Catholick everlasting Stews which he fancies to himself for heaven that he will scarce taste any wine all his life-time for fear of disabling and depriving him of his lust he will be very stanch from sin that he may merit and be sure to have his fill of it And then certainly one clear single apprehension of that infinite bliss which the Eye of Faith represents to us were enough to ravish a world of souls to preponderate all other delights which the most poetical fancy of man or Devil could possess us with Were but the love of Christ to us ever suffered to come into our hearts as Species to the Eye by introreception had we but come to the least taste and relish of it what would we not do to recompence and answer and entertain that love what difficulty would it not ingratiate to us what exquisite pleasure or carnal rival would not be cheap and contemptible in its presence If thou hast but faith to the size of a grain of Mustard-seed speak to this mountain and it shall be removed the tallest cumbersome unweildy temptation which all the giants in Hell can mould together as once they are feign'd to do the Hills to get up to Heaven Pelion Ossae c. if thou dost but live or breath by Faith shall vanish at the least blast of thy nostrils The clear representation of more valuable pleasures and more horrid dangers than any the flesh can propose certainly attending the performances or breach of our Vow of Wedlock is enough to charm and force us to perpetual chastity to fright or scoff all other wooers out of our sights to reprobate and damn them as soon as they appear There is on this husband of ours a confluence of all infinite imaginable delights which whosoever hath but once tasted but from a kiss of his mouth he is not unconstant but sottish if he ever be brought to any new embraces But then openly to contemn to profess neglects to go a
disposition motions of Gods Spirit or gripes of Conscience can make against it goading and spurring on any of his faculties as being too dull unactive and slothful in the ways of death even forcing them if they be any time foreslowed and trashed by either outward or inward restraints to sin even in sight of them and hastening them to a kind of unvoluntary disobedience Thus will a stone when 't is kept violently from the ground being held in a mans hand or the like press and weigh towards the Earth incessantly as if it were naturally resolved to be revenged on any one to tire him out that thus detained it from its place nay when it is let down you may see it yet press lower make its print in the Earth as if it would never be satisfied till it could rest in Hell The sinner is never at quiet with himself Instat imperat He is urgent and importunate upon himself to satisfie every craving lust Not the beggarliest affection or laziest unworthiest desire of the flesh but shall have its alms and dole rather than starve though it be an atome of his very soul to the utter undoing and bankrupting of him that gives it And for his tyranny over his estate whether Temporal or Spiritual his goods of Fortune or gifts of Grace they must all do homage to this carnal Idol All his treasures on Earth are richly sold if they can but yield him the fruition of one beloved sin And for Spiritual Illuminations or any Seeds of Grace he will lose them all and even shut himself for ever into the darkness of Hell rather than ever be directed by their light out of those pleasing paths of death A restraining grace was but a burthensome needless encumbrance and a gleam of the Spirit but a means to set Conscience a working to actuate her malice and execution on sin and it were an happy exchange to get but one loving delight or companion for them both Let but a sin be coy and stanch not to be gain'd at the first woing and all these together like Jacob's present out of all his goods shall be all little enough for a sacrifice or bribe to sollicite or hire it And this the Prophet notes here distinctly Vers 33. and 34. Thou art contrary to all the Whores in the World In other places Men give gifts to all Whores but thou givest gifts to all thy lovers None follow or bribe thee to commit whoredoms Thou givest a reward and no reward is given to thee therefore thou art contrary The sinner in my Text scorns to set so low a value on sin as that profit or advantage should ingratiate it to him it is so amiable in his eyes of it self he will prize it so high that any other treasure shall not be considerable in respect of it It is part of his loyalty and expression of his special service to the Devil to become a bankrupt in his cause to sell all that he hath both God and fortunes to follow him It is the art and cunning of common Whores to raise mens desires of them by being coy Difficultate augere libidinis pretium to hold off that they may be followed Vers 34. But this sin is not at so artificial her affections are boysterous and impatient of delay she is not at so much leisure as to windlace or use craft to satisfie them she goes downright a woing and if there be any difficulty in compassing all that she hath is ready for a dowry and prostitute before her idol Lust Lastly Imperious over all that come near him either men or sins Everyman must serve him either as his pander or companion to further or associate him I told you he sinned in Cathedrâ Psal I. 1. that is also doctorally and magisterially every spectator must learn of him it is his profession he sets up school for it his practises are so commandingly exemplary that they do even force and ravish the most maidenly tender conscience And then for all inferiors they are required to provide him means and opportunities of sinning to find him out some game and no such injury can be done as to rouze or spring a sin that would otherwise have lodged in his walk It was part of the Heathenish Romans quarrel against the Primitive Christians saith Tertullian that they drove away their Devils These Exorcist-Christians had banished all their old familiars out of the Kingdom which they were impatient to be deprived of And thus careful and chary are men of their helps of opportunities to sin it is all the joy they have in the world sometimes to have a temptation and to be able to make use of it to have the Devil continue strong with them in an old Courtier 's phrase It is their very life and he that deprives them of it is a murtherer And for the sins themselves Lord how they tyrannize over them how they will rack and torture and stretch every limb of a sin that they may multiply it into infinites and sin as often at once as is possible Adam in the bare eating of an Apple committed a multitude of sins Leo in his 86 Epist August de Civit. Dei and other of the Fathers will number them out to you And thus far this tyrant over Impiety and Lust will be a Pelagian as to order all his deviation by imitation of Adam's Every breach of one single Law shall contain a brood or nest into which it may be subdivided and every circumstance in the Action shall furnish him with fresh matter for variety of sin Again How imperious is he in triumphing over a sin which he hath once atchieved If he have once got the better of good nature and Religion broke in upon a stubborn sullen vice that was formerly too hard for him how often doth he reiterate and repeat that he may perfect his conquest that it may lie prostrate and tame before him never daring to resist him And if there be any Virgin modest sins which are ashamed of the light either of the Sun or Nature not coming abroad but under a veil as some sins being too horrid and abominable are fain to appear in other shapes and so keep us company under the name of amiable or innocent qualities then will this violent imperious sinner call them out into the Court or Market place tear away the veil that he may commit them openly and as if the Devil were too modest for him bring him upon the stage against his will and even take Hell by violence and force Thus are men come at last to a glorying in the highest impieties and expect some renown credit as a reward for the pains they take about it and then certainly honour is grown very cheap when it is bestowed upon sins and the man very tyrannical over his spectators thoughts that requires to be worshipped for them This was a piece of the Devils old tyranny in the times of Heathenism which I
the Disciples will have fire from Heaven upon those Samaritans Jerusalem was at that time the only proper place of God's worship may note to us as an embleme the true established Protestant Religion of this Kingdom The Samaritans were great enemies to this enemies to Jerusalem being first Hereticks in Religion took in the Assyrian Idols into the worship of the true God they feared the Lord and served their own gods as it is in the story and continued their wont when they turned Christians make up the first sort of Hereticks in Epiphanius his Catalogue Secondly They were Schismaticks in an eminent manner fet up a new separation by themselves on Mount Gerizim And farther yet in the third place pretended to the only purity and antiquity they lived where Jacob once lived and therefore though Assyrians by extraction they boast they are Jacob's seed and pretend more antiquity for that Schism of theirs because Jacob once worshipped in that Mountain than they think can be shewed for the Temple at Jerusalem which was but in Solomon's time of a latter structure Just as they which pretended though never so falsly that they were of Christ have still despised and separated from all others as Novelists which walked in the Apostles steps and practises and so Samaritans under guilts enough First Haters of Jerusalem Secondly Hereticks Thirdly Separatists Fourthly Pretenders though without all reason to the first antiquity and so arrogant Hypocrites too And fifthly beyond all prodigious but still confident Disputers and yet sixthly one higher step than all these Contemners and haters of all even of Christ himself on this only quarrel because he was a friend to Jerusalem and looked as if he were a going thither as if he had some favour to the established Religion of the Land I wish this passage did not hitherto parallel it self but seeing it doth too illustriously to be denied or disguised I shall imagin that that which follows may do so too All this together was temptation to two honest Disciples to think fire from Heaven a but reasonable reward for such Samaritans and having flesh and blood about them compounded with Piety You will not much wonder at them that they were wrought on by the temptation and yet this very thought of theirs the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is presently checked by Christ as being against the Gospel-spirit you know not what spirit you are of Haters of the Church Hereticks Schismaticks Hypocrites Irrational Pretenders Enemies Contumelious even to Christ himself must not presently be assigned the Devils portion the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may be yet capable of some mercy some humanity not instantly devoted to be sacrifices to our fury The Gospel-spirit will have thoughts of peace of reconciliableness toward them And let me beseech God first and then you Right Honorable God that he indue and inspire your hearts with this piece of the Gospel spirit so seasonable to your present consultations And you that you would not reject my Prayers to God but open your hearts to receive the return of them and not imitate even the Disciples of Christ in that they are Boanerges but stay till the cool of the day till you have them in a calmer temper when Christ's Word and Doctrine hath stilled those billows as once he did the other tempestuous Element It was Antonius his way to be revenged on his enemies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not to imitate them whatever he did And this was but an Essay or obscure shadow of the Christian Magnanimity that goes for poverty of spirit in the World but proceeding from the right principle of unshaken patience of constant unmoveable meekness of design to be like our Royal Master-sufferer Father forgive them that crucifie me and go and preach the doctrine of the Kingdom to them after they have crucified me And you know all we Ministers ever since are but Ambassadours of Christ to ingrate crucifying enemies Praying them in Christs name and stead that they would be reconciled that they that have done the wrong will vouchsafe to be friends What is it but that eminent piece of Gospel-spirit which they that can be perswaded to part with for all the sweetness that thirst of Revenge can promise or pretend to bring in unto them are unhappily ignorant of the richest Jewel that ever came within their reach They know not c. I have as yet given you the Gospel-spirit in one colour or notion that of its opposition to Elias first and then to the Boanerges It will be necessary to add somewhat of the Positive consideration of it though that must be fetched from other Scriptures And this will be but necessary to this Text because that which is here mentioned is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 spirit in the extent not only that one part of it that respected the present action where though any one eminent defect that particularly wherein those Disciples offended were destructive to the Gospel-spirit Malum ex quolibet defectu yet all the several branches of it are required to integrate or make up the Gospel-spirit Bonum ex essentiâ integra And what these branches are I cannot better direct you than by putting you in mind of these few severals First Christ's badge or cognizance By this shall all men know that ye are my Disciples if you love one another Not of one opinion but of love Add Nunquam laeti sitis c. as Jews rend Garments at Blasphemy so we at Uncharitableness Secondly Christs legacy Peace I leave with you my peace I give unto you Thirdly Christ's copy Learn of me what 's beyond all his other perfections I am meek Fourthly The Nature of that Wisdom which cometh from above Jam. iii. First pure then peaceable Fifthly The quality of the fruits of the Spirit in St. Paul Gal. v. Love joy peace long-suffering gentleness goodness faith meekness c. Sixthly The gallantry of meekness in St. Peter Ornament of a meek and quiet spirit Seventhly Titus's charge that all Christians are to be put in mind of Tit. iii. 1. To be subject to Principalities to obey Magistrates to be ready to every good work to speak evil of no man to be no brawlers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 no fighters but gentle shewing all meekness to all men Things that it seems nothing but Christianity could infuse For we our selves were sometimes fools disâ—bedient c. But after the kindness and love of God our Saviour appeared then room for this Spirit I cannot give you a readier Landskip to present them all to your view together than that excellent Sermon of Christ upon the Mount that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Chrysostom calls it That top pitch of Divine Philosophy worthy to be imprinted in every mans heart and of which he that hath not been a pondering student and resolved to regulate his practice by it as much as his Faith by the Apostles Creed yea and to lay down his life a Martyr of that Doctrine
work so much miracle as Simon Magus is said to have done who undertook to raise the dead give motion to the head make the eyes look up or the tongue speak but the lower part of the man and that the heaviest will by no charm or spell be brought to stir but weigh sink even into Hell will still be carcass and corruption Damnation is his birth-right Ecclus xx 25. And it is impossible though not absolutely yet ex hypothesi the second Covenant being now sealed even for God himself to save him or give him life It is not David's Musick that exorcised and quieted Saul's evil spirit nor Pythagoras's Spondees that tamed a man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 set him right in his wits for ever that can work any effect on a fleshy heart So that Chrysostom would not wonder at the voice that cried O Altar Altar hear the voice of the Lord because Jeroboam's heart was harder than that nor will I find fault with Bonaventure that made a solemn prayer for a stony heart as if it were more likely to receive impression than that which he had already of flesh It were long to insist on the wilfulness of our fleshy hearts how they make a faction within themselves and bandy faculties for the Devil how when grace and life appear and make proffer of themselves all the carnal affections like them in the Gospel Joyn all with one consent to make excuses nothing in our whole lives we are so sollicitous for as to get off fairly to have made a cleanly Apology to the invitations of God's Spirit and yet for a need rather than go we will venture to be unmannerly We have all married a Wife espoused our selves to some amiable delight or other we cannot we will not come The Devil is wiser in his generation than we he knows the price and value of a Soul will pay any rate for it rather than lose his market he will give all the riches in the world rather than miss And we at how low a rate do we prize it it is the cheapest commodity we carry about us The beggarliest content under Heaven is fair is rich enough to be given in exchange for the Soul Spiritus non ponderat saith the Philosopher the Soul being a spirit when we put it into the balance weighs nothing nay more than so it is lighter than vanity lighter than nothing i. e. it doth not only weigh nothing but even lifts up the scale it is put into when nothing is weighed against it How many sins how many vanities how many idols i. e. in the Scripture phrase how many nothings be there in the world each of which will outweigh and preponderate the Soul It were tedious to observe and describe the several ways that our devillish sagacity hath found out to speed our selves to damnation to make quicker dispatch in that unhappy rode than ever Elias his fiery Chariot could do toward Heaven Our daily practice is too full of arguments almost every minute of our lives as it is an example so is it a proof of it Our pains will be employed to better purpose if we leave that as a worn beaten common place and betake our selves to a more necessary Theme a close of Exhortation And that shall be by way of Treaty as an Ambassador sent from God that you will lay down your arms that you will be content to be friends with God and accept of fair terms of composition which are That as you have thus long been enemies to God proclaiming hostility perpetually opposing every merciful will of his by that wilfulness so now being likely to fall into his hands you will prevent that ruine you will come in and whilst it is not too late submit your selves that you may not be forced as Rebels and outlaws but submit as Servants This perhaps may be your last parley for peace and if you stand out the battery will begin suddenly and with it the horrendum est Heb. x. 31. It is a fearful hideous thing to fall into the hands of the living God All that remains upon our wilful holding out may be the doom of Apostates from Christianity a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation that shall devour the adversaries Vers 27. And methinks the very emphasis in my Text notes as much Why will you die As if we were just now falling into the pit and there were but one minute betwixt this time of our jollity and our everlasting hell Do but lay this one circumstance to your hearts do but suppose your selves on a Bed of sickness laid at with a violent burning Fever such a one as shall finally consume the whole world as it were battered with thundering and lightning and besieged with fire where the next throw or plunge of thy disease may possibly separate thy soul from thy body and the mouth of Hell just then open and yawning at thee and then suppose there were one only minute wherein a serious resigning up thy self to God might recover you to Heaven O then what power and energy what force and strong efficacy would there be in this voice from God Why will you die I am resolved that heart that were truly sensible of it that were prepared seasonably by all these circumstances to receive it would find such inward vigor and spirit from it that it would strike death dead in that one minute this ultimus conatus this last spring and plunge would do more than a thousand heartless heaves in a lingring sickness and perhaps overcome and quit the danger And therefore let me beseech you to represent this condition to your selves and not any longer be flattered or couzened in a slow security To day if you will hear his voice harden not your hearts If you let it alone till this day come in earnest you may then perhaps heave in vain labour and struggle and not have breath enough to send up one sigh toward Heaven The hour of our death we are wont to call Tempus improbabilitatis a very improbable inch of time to build our Heaven in as after death is impossibilitatis a time wherein it is impossible to recover us from Hell If nothing were required to make us Saints but outward performances if true repentance were but to groan and Faith but to cry Lord Lord we could not promise our selves that at our last hour we should be sufficient for that perhaps a Lethargy may be our fate and then what life or spirits even for that perhaps a Fever may send us away raving in no case to name God but only in oaths and curses and then it were hideous to tell you what a Bethlehem we should be carried to But when that which must save us must be a work of the Soul and a gift of God how can we promise our selves that God will be so merciful whom we have till then contemned or our souls then capable of any holy impression having
been so long frozen in sin and petrified even into Adamant Beloved as a man may come to such an estate of grace here that he may be most sure he shall not fall as St. Paul in likelihood was when he resolved that nothing could separate him So may a man be engaged so far in sin that there is no rescuing from the Devil There is an irreversible estate in evil as well as good and perhaps I may have arrived to that before my hour of death for I believe Pharaoh was come to it Exod. ix 34. after the seventh Plague hardning his heart and then I say it is possible that thou that hitherto hast gone on in habituate stupid customary rebellions mayest be now at this minute arrived to this pitch That if thou run on one pace farther thou art engaged for ever past recovery And therefore at this minute in the strength of your age and lusts this speech may be as seasonable as if death were seizing on you Why will you die At what time soever thou repentest God will have mercy but this may be the last instant wherein thou canst repent the next sin may benumb or fear thy heart that even the pangs of death shall come on thee insensibly that the rest of thy life shall be a sleep or lethargy and thou lie stupid in it till thou findest thy self awake in flames Oh if thou shouldst pass away in such a sleep Again I cannot tell you whether a death-bed repentance shall save you or no. The Spouse sought Christ on her bed but found him not Cant. iii. 1. The last of Ecclesiastes would make a man suspect that remembring God when our feeble impotent age comes on us would stand us in little stead Read it for it is a most learned powerful Chapter This I am sure of God hath chosen to himself a people Zealous of good works Tit. ii 14. And they that find not some of this holy fire alive within them till their Souls are going out have little cause to think themselves of God's election So that perhaps there is something in it that Matth. iii. 8. the Exhortation bring forth fruits worthy of repentance is exprest by a tense that ordinarily signifies time past 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 have brought forth fruits It will not be enough upon an exigence when there is no way but one with me to be inclinable to any good works to resolve to live well when I expect to die I must have done this and more too in my life if I expect any true comfort at my death There is not any point we err more familiarly in and easily than our spiritual condition what is likely to become of us after death Any slight phansie that Christ died for us in particular we take for a Faith that will be sure to save us Now there is no way to preserve our selves from this Error but to measure our Faith and Hopes by our Obedience that if we sincerely obey God then are we true believers And this cannot well be done by any that begins not till he is on his death-bed be his inclinations to good then never so strong his faith in Christ never so lusty yet how knows he whether it is only fear of death and a conviction that in spight of his teeth he must now sin no longer that hath wrought these inclinations produced this faith in him Many a sick man resolves strongly to take the Physicians dose in hope that it will cure him yet when he comes to taste its bitterness will rather die than take it If he that on his death-bed hath made his solemnest severest Vows should but recover to a possibility of enjoying those delights which now have given him over I much fear his fiercest resolutions would be soon out-dated Such inclinations that either hover in the Brain only or float on the Surface of the Heart are but like those wavering temporary thoughts Jam. i. 6. Like a wave of the Sea driven by the wind and tost they have no firmness or stable consistence in the Soul it will be hard to build Heaven on so slight a foundation All this I have said not to discourage any tender languishing Soul but by representing the horrors of death to you now in health to instruct you in the doctrine of Mortality betimes so to speed and hasten your Repentance Now as if to morrow would be too late as if there were but a small Isthmus or inch of ground between your present mirth and jollity and your everlasting earnest To gather up all on the Clue Christ is now offered to you as a Jesus The times and sins of your Heathenism and unbelief God winketh at Acts xvii 30. The Spirit proclaims all this by the Word to your hearts and now God knows if ever again commands all men every where to repent Oh that there were such a Spirit in our hearts such a zeal to our eternal bliss and indignation at Hell that we would give one heave and spring before we die that we would but answer those invitations of mercy those desires of God that we should live with an inclination with a breath with a sigh toward Heaven Briefly if there be any strong violent boisterous Devil within us that keeps possession of our hearts against God if the lower sensual part of our Soul if an habit of sin i. e. a combination or legion of Devils will not be over-topped by reason or grace in our hearts if a major part of our carnal faculties be still canvasing for Hell if for all our endeavors and pains it may appear to us that this kind of evil spirit will not be cast out save only by Fasting and Prayer Then have we yet that remedy left First To fast and pine and keep him weak within by denying him all foreign fresh Provision all new occasions of sin and the like and so to block and in time starve him up And then secondly To pray that God will second and fortifie our endeavours that he will force and rend and ravish this carnal Devil out of us that he will subdue our wills to his will that he will prepare and make ready life for us and us for life that he will prevent us by his grace here and accomplish us with his glory hereafter Now to him c. The VII Sermon JER v. 2. Though they say the Lord liveth surely they swear falsly NOt to waste any time or breath or which men in this delicate and effeminate Age are wont to be most sparing and thrifty of any part of your precious patience unprofitably but briefly to give you a guess whither our discourse is like to lead you We will severally lay down and sort to your view every word of the Text single and so we may gather them up again and apply them to their natural proper purposes First then the particle Though in the front and surely in the body of the Text are but bands
Gentiles is here meant by Gods commanding them we are to rank the commands of God into two sorts 1. common Catholick commands and these extend as far as the visible Church 2. peculiar commands inward operations of the spirit these are both priviledges and characters and properties of the invisible Church i. e the Elect and in both these respects doth he vouchsafe his commands to the Gentiles In the first respect God hath his louder trumpets 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Matth. xxiv 31. Mat. XXIV 31 which all acknowledge who are in the noise of it and that is the sound of the Gospel the hearing of which constitutes a visible Church And thus at the preaching of the Gospel 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all the Heathens had knowledge of his Laws Acts l. 25. and so were offered the Covenant if they would accept the condition For however that place Acts i. 25. be by one of our writers of the Church wrested by changing that I say not by falsifying the punctuation to witness this truth I think we need not such shifts to prove that God took some course by the means of the Ministery and Apostleship to make known to all nations under Heaven i. e. to some of all nations both his Gospel and commands Rom. X. 18. the sound of it went through all the earth Rom. x. 18. Psal XIX 4. cited out the xix Psal verse 4. though with some change of a word their sound in the Romans for their line in the Psalmist caused by the Greek Translators who either read and rendred 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or else laid hold of the Arabick notion of the word the loud noise and clamor which hunters make in their pursuit and chase Mar. XIV 9. So Mark xiv 9. This Gospel shall be preached througthout the world Mar. XVI 15. So Mark xvi 15. To every creature Matth. xxiv 14. in all the world Mat. XXIV 14 and many the like as belongs to our last particular to demonstrate Besides this God had in the second respect his vocem pedissequam which the Prophet mentions a voice attending us to tell us of our duty to shew us the way and accompany us therein And this I say sounds in the heart not in the Ear and they only hear and understand the voice who are partakers as well of the effect as of the news of the covenant Thus in these two respects doth he command by his word in the Ears of the Gentiles by giving every man every where knowledge of his laws Just l. 24. and so in some Latin Authors mandare signifies to give notice to express ones will to declare or proclaim And thus secondly doth he command by his spirit in the spirits of the elect Gentiles by giving them the benefit of adoption and in both these respects he enters a covenant with the Gentiles which was the thing to be demonstrated with the whole name of them at large with some choice vessels of them more nearly and peculiarly and this was the thing which by way of doctrine we collected out of these words but now commands Now that we may not let such a precious truth pass by unrespected that such an important speculation may not float only in our brains we must by way of Application press it down to the heart and fill our spirits with the comfort of that doctrine which hath matter for our practice as well as our contemplation For if we do but lay to our thoughts 1. the miracle of the Gentiles calling as hath been heretofore and now insisted on and 2. mark how nearly the receiving of them into covenant concerns us their successors we shall find real motives to provoke us to a strain and key above ordinary thanksgiving For as Peter spake of Gods promise so it is in the like nature of Gods command which is also virtually a promise it belonged not to them only but it is to you and your children and to all that are afar off even as many as the Lord our God shall call Acts II. 39. Acts ii 39. From the first the miracle of their calling our gratitude may take occasion much to enlarge it self Pag. 158. 'T is storied of Brasidas in the fourth of Thucidides that imputing the victory which was somewhat miraculous to some more then ordinary humane cause he went presently to the Temple loaded with offerings and would not suffer the gods to bestow such an unexpected favour on him unrewarded and can we pass by such a mercy of our God without a spiritual sacrifice without a daily Anthem of Magnificats and Hallelujah's Herodotus observes it is as a Proverb of Greece 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pag. 59 that if God would not send them rain they were to famish for they had said he no natural fountains or any other help of waters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but what God from above sent Pag. 130. So faith Thucidides in the fourth of his History there was but one fountain within a great compass and that none of the biggest So also was Aegypt another part of the Heathen world to be watered only by Nilus Herod p. 62 and that being drawn by the Sua did often succour them and fatten the Land for which all the neighbours fared the worse for when Nilus flowed Pag. 61 the neighbouring Rivers were left dry saith Herodotus You need not the mythology the Philosophers as well as soyl of Greece had not moisture enough to sustain them from nature if God had not sent them water from Heaven they and all we Gentiles had for ever suffered a spiritual thirst Aegypt and all the Nations had for ever gasped for drought if the sun-shine of the Gospel had not by its beams call'd out of the Well which had no bucket 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 living or enlivening water John 4. 6. But by this attraction of the Sun these living waters did so break out upon the Gentiles that all the waters of Jury were left dry as once the dew was on Gideons fleece and drought on all the earth besides Judg. vi 37. Judg. VI 37. And is it reasonable for us to observe this miracle of mercy and not return even a miracle of thanksgiving Can we think upon it without some rapture of our souls Can we insist on it and not feel a holy tempest within us a fsorm and disquiet till we have some way disburthened and eased our selves with a powring out of thanksgiving That spirit is too calm that I say not stupid which can bear and be loaded with mercies of this kind and not take notice of its burthen for besides those peculiar favours bestowed on us in particular we are as faith Chrysostome Tom. 4. P. 824. in our audit of thanksgiving to reckon up all the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all those common benefactions of which others partake with us
not destroy but humble us But when sins shall come like gaol birds linked and chained together when our corruptions and insolent tyrannical passions shall make us contemn the light and law of reason and nature when that contempt shall bring forth Idolatry and the like either worship of Idol-gods or vain conceits or imaginary delights every lust of our baser soul then can it not be expected that God will have so little to do as to take any more care of us that he will have so much mercy as even to punish us any longer The next voice that we can expect is that horrible mercy of his Why should you be smitten any more Any restraint either of chastisement or instruction would be scarce seen upon us and therefore 't is but lost labour to beat the air or to lay stripes upon the sea with Xerxes The height of Gods wrath in this world is but our just reward and that is disertion or dereliction and giving us over and giving us up which will suddenly bring us to that which our corrupt nature posts after all vile affections The issue of all is this that those that contemn Gods ordinary restraints God ordinarily leaves to themselves and suffers them to run into most horrible sins 'T is justice that they which delight in errour should be let alone in their course that they may see and acknowledge the errour of their delight that they which have contemned Gods voice and natures within them should be forsaken and left without either ungodly unnatural that they which lul'd their reasonable soul into a lethargie for fear it should awake them or disturb their delights should not have life enough without it ever to awake or rouse themselves or it that they which have maliciously and contemptuously put out the Sun should for ever suffer a continued night 'T is Hippoer his observation that the Africans are very libidinous they are neither hardy nor valiant nor laborious 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lust hath so effeminated them that they are fit for nothing but for softness and therefore saith he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there be among them beasts of all sorts of strange shapes the heat and violence of the same lust makes the very beasts unnatural the confusion of species is ordinary among them and so almost every birth a Monster nature is almost lost amongst them and many beasts may be found in Africk which never had any of their kind in the Ark Africa semper aliquod apportat novi whosoever hath a mind to a strange sight there he shall have store of them Thus is it in the soul if the upper the manly part of it be overswell'd with lust it straight becomes effeminate and enervate hath neither strength nor sinews nor courage for any undertaking and then the beasts of the field the lower baser sensual faculties of the soul are not only lusty but outragious having no keeper to govern them they become wilde scorn any limits or bounds of nature do every day conceive horrid unnatural vile imaginations and every season grow big and bring forth Monsters monstrous oaths monstrous delights monstrous vanities Some new art or trick of sinning that was never heard of before is invented against every solemn season of our jollity and this we carry about and shew and brag of as a new creature or strange sight and get a great deal of applause and admiration and perhaps some money by the employment 'T were too long to point out the several sorts of these vile affections which contempt of this light hath produced in every one of us only let us strive and strain and stretch the eyes that are left us to examine and observe every degree and Symptome and prognostick of them in our selves and never leave poring till we have pierced through that carnal security that blinded us and fully humble our selves in a sense of that desperate estate and almost the hell that we are fain blindfold into And if we are still blinded still unable to see or move or relieve our selves let us then lay hold of the next post or pillar we meet with and there fix and dwell and weep and pray to that omnipotent Physician of our souls that Restorer of reasonable creatures that he will by some spiritual eye water recover us to that sense 'T is impossible saith Tobias for any one to restore us to the Image of the Father which was once on us but him only who was the eternal Image of the Father he only could 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 turn out that unreasonable blind soul within us made up of our sins which move us and reduce us to the dignity of reasonable creatures He hath already by his incarnation delivered us from one long night the dark gloom of our heathen Ancestors O that he would be born again spiritually in our souls to deliver us from other more Cimerian darkness the night and hell of habituate sin wherein we grope He once breathed on us the breath of life to make us men O that he would again but breath on us the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 His holy breath his hallowing breath his breath of holiness to make us Saints It is he that must prevent us with his Spirit or else we run headlong into all vile affections O that he would but Sanctifie us and then the most plausible flattering sin in the world nay the most boystrous impetuous lust should not be able to tyrannize over us In the mean time let us remain men till it shall please that free voice to call us into Saints Grace is never placed but in a reasonable creature and is therefore said to be sent to make reason see what by nature only it cannot never to blemish it in what it can comprehend as the Learned Bishop hath observed against the Jesuit Let us make much of all the light that nature and reason will afford us let us not suffer one precious ray to be cast away upon us but improve it to the extent of its virtue for the direction of our lives And whensoever this light shall fail that it cannot guide us or our eyes dazle that we cannot follow let us pray to the father of lights and God of Spirits that he will shine spiritually in our hearts and fulfill us with his light of grace here which may enable us to behold him and enjoy him and rejoyce with him and be satisfied with that eternal light of his Glory hereafter Now to him which hath elected us hath created redeemed c. The XV. Sermon Gal. VI. 15. But a new Creature AMongst all other encumbrances and delayes in our way to Heaven there is no one that doth so clog and trash so disadvantage and backward us and in fine so cast us behind in our race as a contentedness in a formal worship of God an acquiescence and resting satisfied in outward performances when men upon a confidence that they perform all that
up into an ear the Spring improved to Autumn when the tongue discourses the hands act the feet run the way of Gods Commandments So I say the soul is the mother and the operations of soul and body the nurse of this Spirit in us and then who can hold in his Spirit without stifling from breaking out into that joyful acclamation Blessed is the womb that bears this incarnate Spirit and the paps that give him suck Now this inward principle this grace of regeneration though it be seated in the whole soul as it is an habit yet as it is an operative habit producing or rather enabling the man to produce several gracious works so it is peculiarly in every part and accordingly receives divers names according to several exercises of its power in those several parts As the soul of man sees in the eye hears in the ear understands in the brain chooses and desires in the heart and being but one soul yet works in every room every shop of the body in a several trade as it were and is accordingly called a seeing a hearing a willing or understanding soul thus doth the habit of grace seated in the whole express and evidence it self peculiarly in every act of it and is called by as several names as the reasonable soul hath distinct acts or objects In the understanding 't is first spiritual wisdom and discretion in holy things opposite to which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. i. 28. an unapproving as well as unapproved or reprobate mind and frequently in Scripture spiritual blindness Then as a branch of this it is belief or assent to the truth of the promises and the like in the practical judgment 't is spiritual prudence in ordering all our holy knowledge to holy practice in the will 't is a regular choice of whatsoever may prove available to salvation a holy love of the end and embracing of the means with courage and zeal Lastly in the outward man 't is an ordering of all our actions to a blessed conformity with a sanctified soul In brief 't is one principle within us doth every thing that is holy believes repents hopes loves obeys and what not And consequently is effectually in every part of body and soul sanctifying it to work spiritually as an holy instrument of a divine invisible cause that is the Holy Ghost that is in us and throughout us For the third question when this new principle enters first you are to know that comes into the heart in a three-fold condition 1. as an harbinger 2. as a private secret guest 3. as an inhabitant or house-keeper As 't is an harbinger so it comes to fit and prepare us for it self trims up and sweeps and sweetens the soul that it may be readier to entertain him when he comes to reside and that he doth as the ancient gladiators had their arma praelusoria by skirmishing with our corruptions before he comes to give them a pitch-battel he brandishes a flaming sword about our ears and as by a flash of lightning gives us a sense of a dismal hideous state and so somewhat restrains us from excess and fury first by a momentary remorse then by a more lasting yet not purifying flame the Spirit of bondage In sum every check of conscience every sigh for sin every fear of judgment every desire of grace every motion or inclination toward spiritual good he it never so short-winded is praeludium spiritus a kind of John Baptist to Christ something that God sent before to prepare the wayes of the Lord. And thus the Spirit comes very often in every affliction every disease which is part of Gods discipline to keep us in some order in brief at every Sermon that works upon us at the hearing then I say the lightning flashes in our eyes we have a glimpse of his Spirit but cannot come to a full sight of it and thus he appears to many whom he will never dwell with Unhappy men that they cannot lay hold on him when he comes so near them and yet somewhat more happy then they that never came within ken of him stopt their ears when he spake to them even at this distance Every man in the Christian Church hath frequently in his life a power to partake of Gods ordinary preparing graces and 't is some degree of obedience though no work of regeneration to make good use of them and if he without the Inhabitance of the Spirit cannot make such use as he should yet to make the best he can and thus I say the Spirit appears to the unregenerate almost every day of our lives 2. When this Spirit comes a guest to lodge with us then is he said to enter but till by actions and frequent obliging works he makes himself known to his neighbours as long as he keeps his chamber till he declare himself to be there so long he remains a private secret guest and that 's called the introduction of the form that makes a man to be truly regenerate when the seed is sown in his heart when the habit is infused and that is done sometimes discernibly sometimes not discernibly but seldom as when Saul was called in the midst of his madness Acts ix he was certainly able to tell a man the very minute of his change of his being made a new creature Thus they which have long lived in an enormous Antichristian course do many times find themselves strucken on a sudden and are able to date their regeneration and tell you punctually how old they are in the Spirit Yet because there be many preparations to this Spirit which are not this Spirit many presumptions in our hearts false-grounded many tremblings and jealousies in those that have it great affinity between faith natural and spiritual seeing 't is a Spirit that thus enters and not as it did light on the Disciples in a bodily shape 't is not an easie matter for any one to define the time of his conversion Some may guess somewhat nearer then others as remembring a sensible change in themselves but in a word the surest discerning of it is in its working not at its entring I may know that now I have the Spirit better then at what time I came to it Undiscernibly Gods supernatural agency interposes sometimes in the mothers womb as in John Baptist springing in Elizabeth at Maryes salutation Luke i. 41. and perhaps in Jeremy Jer. i. 5. Before thou camest out of the womb I Sanctified thee and in Isaiah Isa xlix 5. The Lord that formed me from the womb to be his servant But this divine address attends most ordinarily till the time of our Baptism when the Spirit accompanying the outward sign infuses it self into their hearts and there seats and plants it self and grows up with the reasonable soul keeping even their most luxuriant years within bounds and as they come to an use of their reason to a more and more multiplying this habit of
expect to be called from the depth of sin to regeneracy and salvation Although Saul being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the chief of sinners was called and saved yet Saul was also in another sense for ought we read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and perhaps the last that from so great a riot of sin obtained so great salvation Wherefore O sinner be not presumptuous from Pauls example but from Pauls single example begin to suspect thy state and fear that such a miracle of salvation shall not be afforded thee There hath been an opinion of late reviv'd perhaps original among the Romans that the greatest sinner is the more likely object of Gods mercy or subject of his grace then the mere moral man whom either natural fear or the like not spiritual respects hath restrained from those out-rages of sin The being of this opinion in the primitive Romans and the falseness of it is sufficiently prov'd by that expostulation of St. Paul Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound God forbid In answer to some who hearing that Christ came into the world to save sinners thought that the excess of sin was the best qualification and only motive to provoke and deserve a more abundant grace and certain salvation As if that spirit which once to manifest its power called Saul in the midst of his madness breathing out threatnings and slaughters against the Church would not call any but those who had prepared themselves by the same degree of madness but required that men should make themselves almost Devils that they might be called into Christians as if that God which could out of stones could not also out of men raise up children unto Abraham as if that Christ which raised up Lazarus being dead four dayes and as they thought stinking in his grave could not as easily have heal'd him whilst he was yet alive whereas we read that Christ dealt more on the cures of the impotent then resurrections of the dead that is in a spiritual application heal'd more from the bed of languishment of their weaknesses and diseases then he raised out of the graves of trespasses and sins though some also hath he out of death quickned to exalt the power and miracle of his mercy Yet hath not this doctrine too been most confidently maintained among some of our times That there is more hope of the debauch'd man that he shall be called or saved then of the mere moral honest man who yet is in the state of unregeneracy Have not some men defining this moral man by the formal hypocrite set him in the greatest opposition to Heaven As if that degree of innocence or rather not being extremely sinful which a moral care of our wayes may bestow on us were a greater hindrance then promotion toward the state of grace and the natural man were so much the further from God the nearer he were to goodness and no man could hope to come to Heaven but he that had knockt at Hell gates I confess indeed that the Holy Ghost where he means to inhabit hath no need of pains to prepare him a room but can at his first knock open and cleanse adorn and beautifie the most uncouth ugly and unsavory heart in the world That omnipotent convincing Spirit can at the same instant strike the most obdurate heart and soften it and where it once enters cannot be repuls'd by the most sturdy habituate sin or Deval I confess likewise that some have been thus rather snatch'd then call'd like the fire-brands out of the fire and by an extasie of the Spirit inwardly in a minute chang'd from incarnate Devils into incarnate Saint So was Mary dispossest of seven Devils who was after so highly promoted in Christs favour that she had the honor to be the first witness of the resurrection So that Gadarene who had intrencht and fortified himself among the Tombs and was garrison'd with an army of Devils so that he brake fetters and chains and could not be tam'd or kept in any compass yet in a minute at Christs word sent forth a legion of Fiends sufficient to people and destroy a Colony of Swine And so was Paul in my Text in a minute at Christs call delivered of a multitude of blasphemous malicious spirits and straight became the joy of Angels the Apostle of the Gentiles Yet mean time these miraculous but rarer examples must not prescribe and set up must not become a rule and encourage any one to Sauls madness on confidence of Pauls conversion to a more impetuous course of sinning that he may become a more glorious Saints 'T is a wrong way to Heaven to dig into the deep and a brutish arrogance to hope that God will the more eagerly woo us the further our sins have divorc't us from him If some as hath been said have been caught or strucken in the height of their rebellions or in the fulness of the evil spirit called to a wane as diseases in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or top-pitch are wont to decay and weaken into health again if there have been some of these as my Apostle rais'd from the depth of sin as Lazarus from the stench of the grave yet these in respect of others more softly and ordinarily called are found few in number and such as were appointed for the miracles as well as the objects of Gods mercy Hence it is that a strange disorder hath most times accompanied this extraordinary conversion of more violent outragious sinners Our Apostle to go no farther was to be cast into a trance and his regeneration not to be accomplisht without a kind of death and resurrection whereas others who are better morally qualified or rather are less hardned in the sins of unregeneracy do answer at the softest knock or whispering'st call of the Spirit and at his becken will come after him More might be said of this point how St. Paul was most notably converted that he had the alleviation of ignorance for which cause as he sayes himself he found mercy and that others are not probably to expect the like miracle who have not those insuperable prepossessions from custom and religion but that this is not the business of the Text but a praecognoscendum or passage to the clearing of it Briefly therefore to conclude this note Paul is the chief example mentioned in Scripture and there be not many though some more that were called from the height of impiety from the gall of bitterness to this mystical third Heaven or so high degree of Saint and Apostle The more ordinary course of Gods proceeding if we may possibly judge of the Decree by events and examples is to call such to the state of grace and so consequently of glory who have passed their unregeneracy most innocently and kept themselves least polluted from the stains of habituate wickedness that is have lived as much as natural men can do in the plainest honestest course of morality it being presupposed that
It makes him apply himself c. we mean not that the encrease of sin produces faith formally but only inciteth to believe by way of instruction by shewing us what distress we are in and consequently in what a necessity of a deliverer The meditation of our sinful courses may disclose our misery not redress it may explore not mend a sinner like a touchstone to try not any way to alter him It is the controuling Spirit which must effectually renew our spirits and lead us to the Christ which our sins told us we had need of The sense of sin may rouze the soul but it is the Spirit of God that layes the toils the feeling of our guilt may beat the waters but it is the great fisher of our souls which spreads the nets which entraps us as we are in our way to Hell and leads us captive to salvation The mere gripings of our Conscience being not produced by any Pharmacon of the spirit but by some distemper arising from sin what anxiety doth it cause within us What pangs and twinges to the soul O Lord do thou regenerate us and then thy Holy Spirit shall sanctifie even our sins unto our good and if thy grace may lead us our sins shall pursue and drive us unto Christ Secondly by way of character how to distinguish a true convert from a false A man which from an inveterate desperate malady shall meet with a miraculous unexpected cure will naturally have some art of expression above an ordinary joy you shall see him in an extasie of thanksgiving and exultancy whilst another which was never in that distress quietly enjoys the same health and gives thanks softly by himself to his preserver So is it in the distresses of the soul which if they have been excessive and almost beyond hope of recovery as the miracle must so will the expression of this deliverance be somewhat extraordinary The soul which from a good moral or less sinful natural estate is magis immutata quam genita rather chang'd then regenerate into a spiritual goes through this business without any great noise the Spirit entring into it in a still small voice or at a breathing but when a robustous obdurate sinner shall be rather apprehended then called when the Sea shall be commanded to give up his ship-wrack't and the Sepulchre to restore her dead the soul surely which thus escapeth shall not be content with a mean expression but will practice all the Hallelujahs and Magnificats which the triumphant Liturgies of the Saints can afford it Wherefore I say if any one out of a full violent course of sinning conceive himself converted and regenerated let him examine what a degree of spiritual exultancy he hath attained to and if he find it but mean and slight and perfunctory let him somewhat suspect that he may the more confirm the evidence of his calling Now this spiritual exultancy of the regenerate consists both in a solemn humiliation of himself and a spiritual rejoycing in God his Saviour both exprest in Maries Magnificat where she specifies in the midst of her joy the lowliness of his handmaid and in St. Pauls victory-song over death So that if the conversion of an inordinate sinner be not accompanied with unwonted joy and sorrow with a godly sense of his past distress and a godly triumph for his delivery if it be not followed with a violent eagerness to fasten on Christ finally if there be not somewhat above ordinary in the expression then I counsel not to distrust but fear that is with a sollicitous not suspicious trembling to labour to make thy calling and election sure to pray to that Holy Spirit to strike our hearts with a measure of holy joy and holy sorrow some way proportionable to the size of those sins which in our unregeneracy reigned in us and for those of us whom our sins have separated far from him but his grace hath called home to him that he will not suffer us to be content with a distance but draw us close unto himself make us press toward the mark and fasten our selves on that Saviour which hath redeemed us from the body and guilt of this so great death The third Use is of comfort and confirmation to some tender souls who are incorporated into Christ yet finding not in themselves that excessive measure of humiliation which they observe in others suspect their own state and infinitely grieve that they can grieve no more Whereas this doctrine being observed will be an allay to their sorrow and wipe some unnecessary tears from their eyes For if the greatness of sin past or the plentiful relicks of sin remaining do require so great a measure of sorrow to expiate the one and subdue the other if it be a deliverance from an habituate servitude to all manner of sin which provokes this extraordinary pains of expression then certainly they who have been brought up with the spirit which were from their baptism never wholly deprived of it need not to be bound over to this trade of sorrow need not to be set apart to that perpetual humiliation which a more stubborn sin or Devil is wont to be cast out by I doubt not but a soul educated in familiarity with the spirit may at once enjoy her self and it and so that if it have an humble conceit of it self and a filial of God may in earth possess God with some clearness of look some serenity of affections some alacrity of heart and tranquility of spirit God delights not in the torment of his children though some are so to be humbled yea he delights not in such burnt offerings as they bestow upon him who destroy and consume and sacrifice themselves but the Lords delight is in them that fear him filially and put their trust i. e. assurance confidence in his mercy in them that rejoyce that make their service a pleasure not an affliction and thereby possess Heaven before they come to it 'T is observed in husbandry that soil laid on hard barren starved ground doth improve it and at once deface and enrich it which yet in ground naturally fruitful and kept in heart and good case is esteemed unnecessary and burthensome You need not the application Again the husbandman can mend a dry stubborn wayward fruitless earth by overflowing of it and on such indeed is his ordinary requisite discipline to punish it for its amendment But there is a ground otherwise well tempered which they call a weeping ground whence continually water soaks out and this proves seldom fruitful if our learned husbandmen observe aright whereof there is sometime need of draining as well as watering The application is that your soul which either hath been naturally dry and barren or else over-wrought in the business of the world needs a flood of tears to soften and purge it But the well temper'd soul which hath never been out of heart but hath alwayes had some inward life some fatness of
straight she applies it to her self which was the point we undertook to shew The direct use of this Proposition is for a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or judgment of our estate 'T is observed in the body that the rest of the senses may be distempered and lost without impairing of it but only the touch cannot which therefore they call the sense of life because that part or body which is deprived of feeling is also at deaths door and hath no more life in it then it hath reliques of this sense So is it also in spiritual matters of all other symptomes this of senslesness is most dangerous and as the Greek Physicians are wont to say of a desperate disease 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 very very mortal This feeling tenderness is necessary to the life of grace and is an inseparable both effect and argument of it Wherefore I say for the judgment of your selves observe how every piece of Scripture works upon you If you can pass over a Catalogue of sins and judgments without any regret or reluctancy if you can read Sodom and Gomorrah Babylon and the Harlot Jerusalem and not be affected with their stories if thou canst be the Auditor of other mens faults without any sense or griping of thine own if the name of sin or sinner be unto thee but as a jest or fable not worthy thy serious notice then fear thy affections want of that temper which the softning spirit is wont to bestow where it rests and accordingly as thou findest this tenderness increasing or waining in thee either give thanks or pray either give thanks for the plenty of that spirit which thou enjoyest or in the sense of thy wants importune it that God will give us softned relenting hearts that the recital of other mens sins may move us other mens judgments may strike us other mens repentance melt us with a sense with a confession with a contrition of our own But above all O Holy Spirit from hardness of heart from an undiscerning reprobate spirit from a contempt nay neglect a not observing of thy Word as from the danger of hell Good Lord deliver us And thus much of this point of this effect of a tender heart noted to you out of the cadence of the words I now come to observe somewhat more real out of the main of the words themselves Of whom c. We find not our Apostle here complementing with himself either excusing or attenuating his guilt but as it were glorying in the measure of his sins striving for preeminence above all other sinners challenging it as his right and as eager upon the preferment as his fellow labourer Peter his successor for a Primacy as he professes of all Bishops yea the whole Church so our Apostle here Of all sinners I am the chief The note briefly is this That every one is to aggravate the measure and number of his sins against himself and as near as he can observe how his guilt exceedeth other mens This was St. Pauls practise and our pattern not to be gazed on but followed not to be discust but imitated In the discourse whereof I shall not labour to prove you the necessity of this practise which yet I might do out of Davids example in his penitential Psalms especially 51. out of Nehemiahs confession and the like but taking this as supposed I shall rather mix doctrine and reason and use altogether in prescribeing some forms of aggravating our selves to our selves yet not descending to a particular dissection of sin into all its parts but dealing only on general heads equally appliable to all men briefly reducible to these two 1. Original sin or the sin of our nature of which we are all equally guilty 2. Personal sin grounded in and terminated to each mans person For Original sin it is the Fathers complaint and ought more justly to be ours of these times that there is no reckoning made of it 't is seldom thought worthy to supply a serious place in our humiliation 't is mentioned only for fashions sake and as it were to stop Gods mouth and to give him satisfaction or palliate the guilt of our wilful rebellions not on any real apprehension that its cure and remedy in Baptism is a considerable benefit or the remanant weakness after the killing venom is abated were more then a trivial disadvantage So that we have a kind of need of original clearness of understanding to judge of the foulness of original sin and we cannot sufficiently conceive our los without some recovery of those very faculties we forfeited in it But that we may not be wilfully blind in a matter that so imports us that we may understand somewhat of the nature and dangerous condition of this sin you must conceive Adam who committed this first sin in a doub'e respect either as one particular man or as containing in his loyns the whole nature of man all mankind which should ever come from him Adams particular sin i. e. his personal disobedience is wonderfully aggravated by the Fathers 1. from his original justice which God had bestowed on him 2. from the near familiarity with God which he enjoyed and then lost 3. from the perpetual blest estate which had it not been for this disobedience he might for ever have lived in 4. from the purity and integrity of his Will which was then void of all sinful desire which otherwise might have tempted to this disobedience 5. from the easiness of both remembring and observing the Commandment it being a short prohibition and only to abstain from one tree where there was such plenty besides 6. from the nature and circumstances of the offence by which the Fathers do refer it to all manner of most hainous sins making it to contain a breach of almost each moral law all which were then written in the tables of his heart and therefore concluding it to be an aggregate or mixture of all those sins which we have since so reiterated and so many times sinn'd over So then this personal sin of Adam was of no mean size not to be reckoned of as an every days offence as an ordinary breach or the meer eating of an apple In the next place as Adam was no private person but the whole humane nature so this sin is to be considered either in the root or in the fruit in its self or in its effects In its self so all mankind and every particular man is and in that name must humble himself as concerned in the eating of that fruit which only Adams teeth did fasten on is to deem himself bound to be humbled for that pride that curiosity that disobedience or whatsoever sin else can be contained in that first great transgression and count you this nothing to have a share in such a sin which contains such a multitude of rebellions T' is not a slight perfunctory humiliation that can expiate not a small labour that can destroy this monster which
are so raw and womanish that it would grieve one to behold a fair comely man-like Christian in shew betraying so much impotency in his behaviour even like the Emperour a spinning one who had undertaken to be a Champion for Christ led away and abused and baffled by every pelting paultry lust 'T is lamentable to observe what a poor cowardly degenerous spirit is in most Christians with how slender assaults and petty stratagems they are either taken captive or put to flight how easily in their most resolute undertakings of piety or vertue they are either vanquisht or caught The ordinariest coursest had-favouredst temptation that they can see affects and smites them suddenly they are entangled before they are wooed and the least appearance of any difficulty the vizard or picture of the easiest danger is enough to fright them for ever from any thought of Religion or hope of Heaven For a meer natural man that hath nothing but original sin or worse in him that hath received nothing from God and his parents but a talent in a broken Vessel a soul infected by a crazy body diseas'd as soon as born for an Heathen that hath nothing to subsist on but a poor pittance of natural reason but one eye to see by and that a dim one for a meer Barbarian or Gentile to be thus triumphed over by every Devil as an Owl by the smallest Bird in the air might be matter of pity rather than wonder And yet few of them were such cowards those very weapons that Nature had furnished them with being rightly put on and fitted to them stood many of them in very good stead There were few passions few sins of an ordinary size but a Philosopher and meer Stoick would be able to meet and vanquish And therefore 't is not so much natural as affected weakness not so much want of strength as sluggishness and want of care not so much impotency as numbness and stupidity of our parts which hath so extremely dis-abled those that take themselves to be the weakest of us The truth is we are willing to conceive that our natural abilities are quite perisht and annihilate and that God hath no ways repaired them by Christ because we will not be put to the trouble of making use of them We would spare our pains and therefore would fain count our selves impotent as sluggards that personate and act diseases because they would not work or the old Tragedians which could call a god down upon the Stage at any time to consummate the impossiblest Plot and therefore would not put their brains to the toil of concluding it fairly Certainly the decrepitest man under Heaven if he be but a degree above a Carcass is able to defend himself from an ordinary Flie 'T is one of the Devils titles to be Beelzebub the Prince of Flies and such are many of his temptations He that hath but life in him may keep himself from any harm of one of them but the matter is they come in flocks being driven once away they return again Muscaest animal insolens and the Devil is frequent in these temptations though you could repel them as fast as they come yet 't would be a troublesome piece of work it will be more for your ease to lye still under them to let them work their will So in time Fly-blows beget noysomness and vermine in the soul and then the life and death of that man becomes like that of the Egyptians or Herod and no plague more finally desperate than those two of Flies and Lice I am resolv'd there be many temptations which foil many jolly Christians which yet a meer natural man that never dream't of Scripture or Gods Spirit might if he did but bethink himself resist and many times overcome Many acts of uncleanness of intemperance of contempt of superiours of murther of false-dealing of swearing and prophaning that cheap unprofitable that untempting and therefore unreasonable sin Many acts I say of these open abhominable sins which either custome or humane Laws make men ashamed of and the like the very Law of Reason within us is able to affront and check and conquer That 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Methodius calls it that Law born with us Naturale judicatorium saith Austin against Pelagius Lux nostri intellectus say the Schoolmen out of Damascen Nay 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the Stoick the promise that every one makes to nature the Obligation that he is bound in when he hath first leave to be a man or as Hierocles on the Pythagorean Verses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That Oath that is coaetaneous and co-essential to all reasonable natures and engages them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. not to transgress the Laws that are set them This is I say enough to keep us in some terms or compass to swathe and bind us in to make us look somewhat like men defeat the Devil in many a skirmish But how much more for a Christian who if it were by nothing but his Baptism hath certainly some advantages of other men For one that if he acknowledge any worships the true God never went a fooling after Idols which was the Original of the Heathens being given up to vile affections Rom. 1. for one that lives in a civil Countrey among people that have the faces and hearts of men and Christians made as it were to upbraid his wayes and reprove his thoughts for one that is within the sound of Gods Law and Light of his Gospel by which he may edifie more than ever Heathen did by thunder and lightning for one that cannot chuse but fear and believe and love and hope in God in some measure or kind be he never so unregenerate for him I say that hath all these outward restraints and perhaps some inward twinges of Conscience to curb and moderate him to be yet so stupid under all these helps as never to be able to raise up one thought toward heaven to have yet not the least atome of Soul to move in the ways of godliness but to fall prostrate like a Carkass or a Statue or that Idol Dagon with his feet stricken off not able to stand before the slightest motion of sin or if a lust or a phansie or a devil be he the ugliest in Hell any thing but God appear to him presently to fall down and worship This is such a sottish condition such an either Lethargy or Consumption of the Soul such an extream degree of weakness that neither original sin that Serpent that despoiled Adam nor any one single Devil can be believed to have wrought in us but that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Platonicks call it A popular Government of sin under a multitude of Tyrants which have for so long a while wasted and harassed the Soul so that now it is quite crest-faln as that legion of Devils Mar. V. 3. which dwelt among the Tombs in a liveless cadaverous
we are men yet not Christians Live saith Clemens 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a kind of embryon imperfect heathen of a child in the womb of the gentle dark uncomfortable being a kind of first draught or ground colours only and monogram of life Though we have Souls yet in relation to spiritual acts or objects but weak consumptive cadaverous souls as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Old Testament word for the Soul and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the 72 signifies a carkass or dead body Numb v. 2. and otherwhere and then by this accession of this strength of Christ this dead Soul revives into a kind of omnipotency the Pygmie is sprung up into a Gyant this languishing puling state improv'd into an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he that even now was insufficient to think any thing is now able to do all things which brings me to my second Proposition The strength of a Christian from Christ deriv'd is a kind of Omnipotence sufficient for the whole duty of a Christian 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Can do all things The clearing of this Truth from all difficulties or prejudices will depend mainly on the right understanding of the predicate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in my Text or the whole duty of a Christian in the proposition which two being of the same importance the same hand will unravel them both Now what is the whole duty of a Christian but the adequate condition of the second Covenant upon performance of which salvation shall certainly be had and without which salvare nequeat ipsa si cupias salus the very sufferings and saving mercies of Christ will avail us nothing As for any Exercise of Gods absolute Will or Power in this business of Souls under Christs Kingdom I think we may fairly omit to take it into consideration for sure the New Testament will acknowledg no such phrase nor I think any of the Ancients that wrote in that language Whereupon perhaps it will be worth observing in the confession of the Religion of the Greek Church subscribed by Cyril the present Patriarch of Constantinople where having somewhat to do with this phrase Of Gods absolute Dominion so much talked on here in the West he is much put to it to express it in Greek and at last fain to do it by a word coyned on purpose a meer Latinism for the turn 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an expression I think capable of no excuse but this that a piece of new Divinity was to be content with a barbarous phrase Concerning this condition of the second Covenant Three things will require to be premised to our present enquiry 1. That there is a Condition and that an adequate one of the same extent as the promises of the Covenant something exacted at our hands to be performed if we mean to be the better for the demise of that Indenture As many as received him to them he gave power c. Joh. i. 12. to these and to none else positively and exclusively To him that overcometh will I give Rev. ii 7. I have fought a good fight c. 2 Tim. iv 7. henceforth there is laid up for me a Crown Then begins the title to the Crown and not before when the fight is fought the course finished the faith kept then coelum rapiunt God challenged on his righteousness as a Judg not on ground of his absolute pleasure as a Lord which will but upon supposition of a Pact or Covenant which limits and directs the award process for according unto it God the righteous Judge shall give And Mark xvi 16. in Christs farewel speech to his Disciples where he seals their Commission of Embassage and Preaching to every creature He that believeth not shall be damned this believing whatever it signifies is that condition here we speak of and what it imports you will best see by comparing it with the same passage set down by another Amanuensis in the last verse of S. Matth. To observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you A belief not of brain or phansie but that of heart and practice i. e. Distinctly Evangelical or Christian obedience the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in my Text and the whole duty of a Christian in the proposition which if a Christian by the help of Christ be not able to perform then consequently he is still uncapable of Salvation by the second Covenant no creature being now rescuable from Hell stante pacto but those that perform the condition of it that irreversible Oath of God which is always fulfilled in kind without relaxation or commutation or compensation of punishment being already gone out against them I have sworn in my wrath that they shall not enter into my rest And therefore when the end of Christs mission is described Joh. iii. 17. That the world through him might be saved there is a shrewd But in the next Verse But he that believeth not is condemned already This was upon agreement between God and Christ that the impenitent Infidel should be never the better for it should die unrescued in his old Condemnation So that there is not only a logical possibility but a moral necessity of the performing of this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or else no possibility of Salvation And then that reason of disannulling the old and establishing the new Covenant because there was no justification to be had by the old rendred Gal. iii. 21. would easily be retorted upon the Apostle thus Why neither is any life or justification to be had by this second the absurdity of which sequel being considered may serve for one proof of the Proposition The Second thing to be premised of this Condition is That it is an immutable unalterable indispensable Condition The 2d Covenant standing this must also stand that hath been proved already because a condition adequate and of the same latitude with the Covenant But now secondly this second both Covenant and Condition must needs stand an Everlasting Covenant Ezek. xvi 60. No possibility of a change unless upon an impossible supposition there should remain some other fourth Person of the Deity to come into the World The Tragick Poets saith Tully when they had overshot themselves in a desperate Plot that would never come about ad Deum confugiunt they were fain to flie to a God to lay that unruly spirit that their phansie had raised Upon Adam's sin and breach of the Condition of the First Covenant there was no possibility in the wit of man in the sphere of the most Poetical phansie Fabulae exitum explicare to come off with a fair conclusion had not the Second Person of the Trinity that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 come down in his tire and personation of flesh not in the stage Cloaths or Livery but substantial form of a servant upon the stage And he again having brought things into some possibility of an happy conclusion though it cost him his life in the
and opportunities and seed-times of Grace God may appear a thousand times not once find us in case to be parlyed with Christ comes but thrice to his Disciples from his Prayers in the Garden and that thrice he finds them asleep Mat. xxvi Christ can be awake to come and that in a more pathetical language Sic non potuistis horâ unâ as the vulgar most fully out of the Greek Were you so unable to watch one hour The Pharisee can be awake to Plot Judas to betray their joint Vigils and Proparasceve to that grand Passeover the slaying of the Lamb of God and only the Disciples they are asleep for their eyes were heavy saith the Text and this heaviness of eyes and heaviness of heart whereupon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the LXXII is ordinarily set for sinners is the depriving us many times not only of Christ but his Spirit too So many apologies and excuses to him when he calls A little more sleep and slumber and folding of the hands Such drowsie-hearted slovenly usage when he comes that no wonder if we grieve him out of our houses Such contentedness in our present servile estate that if a Jubilee should be proclaimed from Heaven a general Manumission of all servants from these Gallies of sin we would be ready with those servants for whom Moses makes a provision to come and tell him plaingly We will not go out free be bored through the ear to be slaves for ever Ex. xxi 6. 3. Rankness and a kind of spiritual sin of Sodom Pride and fulness of bread abusing the Grace of God into wantonness either to the ostentatious setting themselves out before men or else the feeding themselves up to that high flood of spiritual pride confidence that it will be sure to impostumate in the soul Some men have been fain to be permitted to sin for the abating this humour in them by way of phlebotomy S. Peter I think is an example of that Nebuchadnezzar was turned a grazing to cure his secular Pride and S. Paul I am sure had a Messenger sent to him to that purpose by way of prevention that he might not be exalted above measure and when he thought well of it he receives it as a present sent him from Heaven 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 reckons of it as a gift of Grace or if you will a medicinal dose or recipe but rather a playster or outward application which per antiperistasin would drive in his spiritual heat and so help his weak digestion of grace make him the more thriving Christian for ever after The Issue of this first Inference is this That 't is not God's partial or niggardly dispencing of Grace but either our unpreparedness to receive or preposterous giddiness in making use of it which is the cause either of Consumption or Aposthume in the Soul either starving or surfeiting the Christian The second Inference how all the Christians diligence is to be placed what he hath to do in this wayfare to his home And that is the same that all Travellers have first to be alway upon his feet advancing minutely something toward his next stage See that we be employed or else how can God assist we must 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or else he cannot 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and see that we be employed aright or else God must not cannot assist The Sluggards devotions can never get into Gods presence they want heat and spirit to lift them up and activity to press and enfore them when they are there It was an impression in the very Heathen Porcius Cato in the History That watching and acting and advising aright and not emasoulate womanish supplications alone were the means whereby Gods help is obtained Ubi socordiae atque ignaviae tradideris frustra Deos implores And Jerome to the same purpose that their sacrifice are but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 food for the fire to devour and their richest offerings to the Temple but a spoil to the sacrilegious to prey on And the sinners devotions must not be entertained there they would even prophane that holy place He that was born blind saw thus much Joh. ix 31. Now we know that God heareth not sinners but if any be a worshipper of God and doth his will him doth God hear And then secondly to get furnished whatever it cost him of all provision and directions for his way and so this will conclude in a double Exhortation both combined in that of David to Solomon 1 Chron. xxii 16. when all materials were laid in and Artificers provided for the building of the Temple and wanted nothing but a chearful Leader to actuate and enliven them Arise therefore and be doing and the Lord be with thee 1. To set about the business as thine own work as the task that will not be required of the Spirit of God of the Scripture of the Preacher but of thee When it is performed thou wouldst be loth that God should impute all to himself crown his own Graces Ordinances Instruments and leave thee as a cypher unrewarded And therefore whilst it is a performing be content to believe that somewhat belongs to thee that thou hast some hardship to undergo some diligence to maintain some evidences of thy good husbandry thy wise managing of the Talent and in a word of faithful service to shew here or else when the Euge bone serve is pronounced thou will not be able confidently to answer to thy name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said the Milesians to Brutus All the Weapons in the world will not defend the man unless the man actuate and fortifie and defend his weapons Thy strength consists all in the strength of Christ but you will never walk or be invulnerable in the strength of that till you be resolved That the good use and so the strength of that strength to thee is a work that remains for thee If it were not that Exhortation of the Apostles would never have been given in form of Exhortation to the Christian but of Prayer only to Christ Stand fast quit your selves like men be strong 1 Cor. xvi 13. Lastly Or indeed that which must be both first and last commensurate to all our diligence the Viaticum that you must carry with you is the Prayers of humble gasping Souls Humble in respect of what grace is received Be sure not to be exalted with that consideration Gasping for what supply may be obtained from that eternal unexhausted Fountain and these Prayers not only that God will give but as Josephus makes mention of the Jews Liturgy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That they may receive And as Porphyry of one kind of Sacrifice 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That they may use and every of us fructifie in some proportion answerable to our irrigation Now the God of all Grace who hath called us into his eternal glory in Christ Jesus after that you have obeyed a while make you perfect stablish
the covetous man's sad galling Mules burthens of Gold his Achans Wedge that cleaves and rends in sunder Nations so that in the Hebrew that sin signifies wounding and incision Joel ii 8. and is alluded to by his piercing himself thorow with divers sorrows 1 Tim. vi 10. his very Purgatories and Limbo's nay Hell as devouring and perpetual as it and the no kind of satisfaction so much as to his eye from the vastest heaps or treasures were he not in love with folly and ruin had he not been drenched with philtres and charms had not the Necromancer plaid some of his prizes on him and as S. Paul saith of his Galatians even bewitched him to be a fool would we but make a rational choice of our sins discern somewhat that were amiable before we let loose our passion on them and not deal so blindly in absolute elections of the driest unsavory sin that may but be called a sin that hath but the honor of affronting God and damning one of Christ's redeemed most of our wasting sweeping sins would have no manner of pretensions to us and that you will allow to be one special accumulation of the folly and madness of these simple ones that they thus love simplicity The second aggravation is the continuance and duration of this fury a lasting chronical passion quite contrary to the nature of passions a flash of lightning lengthned out a whole day together That they should love simplicity so long It is the nature of acute diseases either to have intervals and intermissions or else to come to speedy crises and though these prove mortal sometimes yet the state is not generally so desperate and so it is with sins Many the sharpest and vehementest indispositions of the Soul pure Feavers of rage and lust prove happily but flashing short furies are attended with an instant smiting of the heart a hating and detesting our follies a striking on the thigh in Jeremy and in David's penitential stile a So foolish was I and ignorant even as a beast before thee And it were happy if our Feavers had such cool seasons such favorable ingenuous intermissions as these But for the hectick continual Feavers that like some weapons the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 barbed shafts in use among the Franks in Agathias being not mortal at the entrance do all their slaughter by the hardness of getting out the Vultures that so tyre and gnaw upon the Soul the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that never suffer the sinner fool to make any approach toward his wits toward sobriety again This passionate love of folly improved into an habitual steady course of Atheisticalness a deliberate peremptory final reprobating of Heaven the purity at once and the bliss of it the stanch demure covenanting with death resolvedness to have their part to run their fortune with Satan through all adventures this is that monstrous brat That as for the birth of the Champion in the Poet three nights of darkness more than Egyptian were to be crowded into one all the simplicity and folly in a Kingdom to help to a being in the World And at the birth of it you will pardon Wisdom if she break out into a passion and exclamation of pity first and then of indignation How long ye simple ones c. My last particular The first debt that Wisdom that Christ that every Christian Brother ows and pays to every unchristian liver is that of pity and compassion which is to him of all others the properest dole Look upon all the sad moanful objects in the world betwixt whom all our compassion is wont to be divided First the Bankrupt rotting in a Gaol secondly the direful bloody spectacle of the Soldier wounded by the Sword of War thirdly the Malefactor howling under the Stone or gasping upon the Rack or Wheel and fourthly the gallant person on the Scaffold or Gallows ready for execution And the secure senseless sinner is the brachygraphy of all these You have in him 1. A rich patrimony and treasure of grace purchased dear and setled on him by Christ most prodigally and contumeliously mispent exhausted 2. A Soul streaming out whole Rivers of blood and spirits through every wound even every sin it hath been guilty of and not enduring the Water to cleanse much less the Wine or Oyl to be poured into any one of them the whole Soul transfigured into one wound one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 congelation and clod of blood Then thirdly beyond this all the racks and pangs of a tormenting conscience his only present exercise And lastly all the torments in Hell the Officer ready hurrying him to the Judg and the Judg delivering him to the Executioner his minutely dread and expectation the dream that so haunts and hounds him And what would a man give in bowels of compassion to Christianity or but to humane kind to be able to reprieve or rescue such an unhappy creature to be but the Lazarus with one drop of water to cool the tipof the scalding Tongue that is engaged in such a pile of flames If there be any Charity left in this frozen World any Beam under this cold uninhabitable Zone it will certainly work some meltings on the most obdurate heart it will dissolve and pour out our bowels into a seasonable advice or admonition that excellent Recipe saith Themist 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That supplies the place and does the work of the burnings and scarifyings A cry to stop him in his precipitous course a tear at least to solemnize if not to prevent so sad a fate And it were well if all our bowels were thus employed all our kindness most passionate love thus converted and laid out on our poor lapsed sinner-brethrens souls to seize upon those fugitives as Christ is said to do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Heb. xi 16. to catch hold and bring them back ere it be yet too late rescue them out of the hands of their dearest espoused sins and not suffer the most flattering kind of death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Gal. de Athl. the Devil in the Angelical disguise the sin that undertakes to be the prime Saint the zeal for the Lord of Hosts any the most venerable impiety to lay hold on them Could I but see such a new fashioned Charity received and entertained in the World every man to become his brothers keeper and every man so tame as to love and interpret aright entertain and embrace this keeper this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this Guardian Angel as an Angel indeed as the only valuable friend he hath under Heaven I should think this a lucky omen of the worlds returning to its wits to some degree of piety again And till then there is a very fit place and season for the exercise of the other part of the passion here that of Indignation the last minute of my last particular as the how long is an expression of Indignation Indignation not at the men for however
and your Meditations to work on Now the God c. The V. Sermon LUKE IX 55. You know not what spirit you are of OF all Errours or Ignorances there are none so worthy our pains to cure or caution to prevent as those that have influence on practice The prime ingredient in the making up a a wise man saith Aristotle in his Metaphysicks is to be well advised 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what doubts must first be made what ignorances earliest provided for and there is not a more remarkable spring and principle of all the Scripture folly that is wickedness among men than the beginning our Christian course unluckily with some one or more false infusions which not only are very hardly ever corrected afterward like the errors of the first concoction that are never rectified in the second but moreover have an inauspicious poysonous propriety in them turn all into nourishment of the prevailing humour and then as the injury of filching some of that corn that was delivered out for seed hath a peculiar mark of aggravation upon it is not to be measured in the garner but in the field not by the quantity of what was stoln but of what it would probably have proved in the Harvest so the damage that is consequent to this infelicity is never fully aggravated but by putting into the Bill against it all the Sins of the whole life yea and all the damnation that attends it Of this kind I must profess to believe the ignorance of Gospel-Spirit to be chief an ignorance that cannot chuse but have an influence on every publick action of the life So that as Padre Paolo was designed an handsome office in the Senate of Venice to sit by and observe and take care nequid contra pietatem so it were to be wished that every man on whom the Name of Christ is called had some assistent Angel some 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be it conscience be it the remembrance of what I now say unto him to interpose in all especially the visible undertakings of the life nequid contra spiritum Evangelii that nothing be ventured on but what is agreeable to the spirit of the Gospel Even Disciples themselves may it seems run into great inconveniences for want of it James and John did so in the Text ignem de coelo fire from Heaven on all that did not treat them so well as they expected but Christ turned and reproved them saying You know not what spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what kind of spirit you are of and that with an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 on 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you Disciples you Christians You know not what spirit you are of In the words it will be very natural to observe these 3. Particulars 1. That there is a peculiar Spirit that Christians are of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2. That some prime Christians do not know the kind of spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 even so James and John You know not c. 3. That this ignorance is apt to betray Christians to unsafe unjustifiable designs and actions You that would have fire from Heaven do it upon this one ignorance You know not c. I begin first with the first of these That there is a Peculiar Spirit that Christians are of A spirit of the Gospel and that must be considered here not in an unlimited latitude but one as it is opposite to the Spirit of Elias 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Wilt thou do as he did It will then be necessary to shew you the peculiarity of the Gospel Spirit by its opposition to that of Elias which is manifold for instance First Elias was the great assertor of Law upon which ground Moses and he appear with our Saviour at his transfiguration So that two things will be observable which make a difference betwixt the Legal and the Gospel spirit 1. That some Precepts of Christ now clearly and with weight upon them delivered by Christ were if in substance delivered at all yet sure not so clearly and at length and intelligibly proposed under the Law You have examples in the fifth of Matthew in the opposition betwixt the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what was said by Moses to the Ancients and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Christs saying to his Disciples which if they be interpreted of Moses Law as many of the particulars are evidently taken out of the Decalogue Thou shalt not kill commit adultery perjury Christs are then clearly superadditions unto Moses or if they refer to the Pharisees glosses as some others of them possibly may do then do those glosses of those Pharisees who were none of the loosest nor ignorantest persons among them but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for their lives the strictest they sit in Moses Chair whatever they teach that do for their learning most considerable argue the Mosaick Precepts not to be so clear and incapable of being misinterpreted and so still Christ's were additions if not of the substance yet of light and lustre and consequently improvements of the obligation to obedience in us Christians who enjoy that light and are precluded those excuses of ignorance that a Jew might be capable of From whence I may sure conclude that the Ego autem of not retaliating or revenging of injuries for that is sure the meaning of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we render resist not evil the strict precept of loving and blessing and praying for Enemies and the like is more clearly preceptive and so more indispensably obligatory to us Christians than ever it was to the Jews before And there you have one part of the Spirit of the Gospel in opposition to a first notion of the legal Spirit And by it you may conclude that what Christian soever can indulge himself the enjoyment of that hellish sensuality that of revenge or retributing of injuries nay that doth not practise that high piece of but necessary be it never so rare perfection of overcoming evil with good and so heap those pretious melting coals of love of blessings of prayers those three species of sacred vestal fire upon all Enemies heads Nescit qualis spiritûs He knows not what kind of spirit he is of But there is another thing observable of the Law and so of the Judaical Legal Spirit to wit as it concerned the planting the Israelites in Canaan and that is the command of rooting out the nations which was a particular case upon God's sight of the filling up of the measure of the Amorites sins and a judicial sentence of his proceeding upon them not only reveal'd to those Israelites but that with a peremptory command annext to it to hate and kill and eradicate some of those Nations Which case because it seldom or never falls out to agree in all circumstances with the case of any other sinful people cannot lawfully prescribe to the eradicating of any other though in our opinion
hearts any influence on your lives whether your Conversations are not still as Heathenish as ever If you have no other grounds or motives to embrace the Gospel but only because you are born within the pale of the Church no other evidences of your Discipleship but your livery then God is little beholding to you for your service The same motives would have served to have made you Turks if it had been your chance to have been born amongst them and now all that fair Christian outside is not thank-worthy 'T is but your good fortune that you are not now at the same work with the old Gentiles or present Indians a worshipping either Jupiter or the Sun 'T was a shrewd speech of Clemens that the life of every unregenerate Man is an Heathen-life and the sins of unsanctified Men are Heathen-sins and the estate of a Libertine Christian an Heathen estate and unless our resolutions and practices are consonant to our profession of Christ we are all still Heathens and the Lord make us sensible of this our Condition The third and in sum the powerfullest Argument to prove God's willingness that we should live is that he hath bestowed his spirit upon us that as soon as he called up the Son he sent the Comforter This may seem to be the main business that Christ ascended to Heaven about so that a Man would guess from the xvi Chapter of St. John and Vers 7. that if it had not been for that Christ had tarried amongst us till this time but that it was more expedient to send the Spirit to speak those things powerfully to our hearts which often and in vain had been sounded in our ears 'T is a fancy of the Paracelsians that if we could suck out the lives and spirits of other Creatures as we feed on their flesh we should never die their lives would nourish and transubstantiate into our lives their spirit increase our spirits and so our lives grow with our years the older we were by consequence the fuller of life and so no difficulty to become Immortal Thus hath God dealt with us first sent his Son his Incarnate Son his own Flesh to feed and nourish us and for all this we die daily he hath now given us his own very Life and incorporeous Essence a piece of pure God his very Spirit to feed upon and digest that if it be possible we might live There is not a vein in our Souls unless it be quite pin'd and shrivel'd up but hath some blood produced in it by that holy nourishment every breath that ever we have breathed toward Heaven hath been thus inspired besides those louder Voices of God either sounding in his Word or thundring in his Judgments there is his calm soft voice of Inspiration like the Night Vision of old which stole in upon the mind mingled with sleep and gentle slumber He draws not out into the Field or meets us as an Enemy but entraps us by surprize and disarms us in our quarters by a Spiritual Stratagem conquers at unawares and even betrays and circumvents and cheats us into Heaven That precept of Pythagoras 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To worship at the noise and whistling of the wind had sense and divinity in it that Iamblicus that cites it never dreamt of that every sound and whispering of this Spirit which rustles either about our ears or in our hearts as the Philosopher saith Tecum est intus est when it breaths and blows within us the stoutest faculty of our Souls the proudest piece of flesh about us should bow down and worship Concerning the manner of the Spirits working I am not I need not to dispute Thus far it will be seasonable and profitable for you to know that many other Illuminations and holy Graces are to be imputed to Gods Spirit besides that by which we are effectually converted God speaks to us many times when we answer him not and shines about our eyes when we either wink or sleep Our many sudden short-winded Ejaculations toward Heaven our frequent but weak inclinations to good our ephemerous wishes that no man can distinguish from true piety but by their sudden death our every-day resolutions of obedience whilestwe continue in sin are arguments that God's Spirit hath shined on us though the warmth that it produced be soon chill'd with the damp it meets with in us For example there is no doubt beloved but the Spirit of God accompanies his Word as at this time to your ears if you will but open at its knock and receive and entertain it in your hearts it shall prove unto you according to its most glorious attribute Rom. i. The power of God unto salvation But if you will refuse it your stubborness may repel and frustrate God's Work but not annihilate it though you will not be saved by it it is God's still and so shall continue to witness against you at the day of doom Every word that was every darted from that Spirit as a beam or javelin of that piercing Sun every atome of that flaming Sword as the word is phrased shall not though it be rebated vanish the day of vengeance shall instruct your Souls that it was sent from God and since it was once refused hath been kept in store not to upbraid but damn you Many other petty occasions the Spirit ordinarily takes to put off the Cloud and open his Face towards us nay it were not a groundless doubt whether he do not always shine and the cloud be only in our hearts which makes us think the Sun is gone down or quite extinct if at any time we feel not his rays within us Beloved there be many things amongst us that single fire can do nothing upon they are of such a stubborn frozen nature there must be some material thing for the fire to consist in a sharp iron red hot that may bore as well as burn or else there is small hopes of conquering them Many men are so hardned and congealed in sin that the ordinary beam of the Spirit cannot hope to melt them the fire must come consubstantiate with some solid instrument some sound corpulent piercing judgment or else it will be very unlikely to thrive True it is the Spirit is an omnipotent Agent which can so invisibly infuse and insinuate its vertue through the inward man that the whole most enraged adversary shall presently fall to the earth Act. ix the whole carnal man lie prostrate and the sinner be without delay converted and this is a Miracle which I desire from my heart might be presently shewed upon every Soul here present But that which is to my present purpose is only this That God hath also other manners and ways of working which are truly to be said to have descended from Heaven though they are not so successful as to bring us thither other more calm and less boysterous influences which if they were received into an honest heart might prove semen
immortalitatis and in time encrease and grow up to immortality There is no such encumbrance to trash us in our Christian Progress as a fancy that some men get possessed with that if they are elected they shall be called and saved in spight of their teeth every man expecting an extraordinary call because Saul met with one and perhaps running the more fiercely because Saul was then called when he was most violent in his full speed of malice against Christians In this behalf all that I desire of you is First to consider that though our regeneration be a miracle yet there are degrees of miracles and thou hast no reason to expect that the greatest and strongest miracle in the world shall in the highest degree be shewed in thy Salvation Who art thou that God should take such extraordinary pains with thee Secondly To resolve that many precious rays and beams of the Spirit though when they enter they come with power yet through our neglect may prove transitory pass by that heart which is not open for them And then thirdly You will easily be convinced that no duty concerns us all so strictly as to observe as near as we can when thus the Spirit appears to us to collect and muster up the most lively quick-sighted sprightfullest of our faculties and with all the perspectives that spiritual Opticks can furnish us with to lay wait for every glance and glimpse of its fire or light We have ways in nature to apprehend the beams of the Sun be they never so weak and languishing and by uniting them into a burning Glass to turn them into afire Oh that we were as witty and sagacious in our spiritual estate then it were easie for those sparks which we so often either contemn or stifle to thrive within us and at least break forth into a flame In brief Incogitancy and inobservance of Gods seasons supine numbness and negligence in spiritual affairs may on good grounds be resolved on as the main or sole cause of our final impenitence and condemnation it being just with God to take those away in a sleep who thus walked in a dream and at last to refuse them whom he hath so long sollicited He that hath scorned or wasted his inheritance cannot complain if he dies a bankrupt nor he that hath spent his candle at play count it hard usage that he is fain to go to bed darkling It were easie to multiply arguments on this theme from every minute of our lives to discern some pawn and evidence of Gods fatherly will and desire that we should live Let it suffice that we have been large if not abundant in these three chief ones First The giving of his Son to the World Secondly Dispatching the Gospel to the Gentiles And lastly The sending of his Spirit We come now to a view of the opposite trenches which lie pitched at the Gates of Hell obstinate and peremptory to besiege and take it Mans resolvedness and wilfulness to die my second part Why will you die There is no one conceit that engages us so deep to continue in sin that keeps us from repentance and hinders any seasonable Reformation of our wicked lives as a perswasion that God's will is a cause of all events Though we are not so blasphemous as to venture to define God the Author of sin yet we are generally inclined for a fancy that because all things depend on God's decree whatsoever we have done could not be otherwise all our care could not have cut off one sin from the Catalogue And so being resolved that when we thus sinned we could not chuse we can scarce tell how to repent for such necessary fatal misdemeanors the same excuses which we have for having sinned formerly we have for continuing still and so are generally better prepared for Apologies than Reformation Beloved it will certainly much conduce to our edification instead of this speculation whose grounds or truth I will not now examine to fix this practical theorem in our hearts that the will of man is the principal cause of all our evil that death either as it is the punishment of sin eternal death or as it is the sin it self a privation of the life of grace spiritual death is wholly to be imputed to our wilful will It is a Probleme in Aristotle why some Creatures are longer in conceiving and bringing forth than others and the sensiblest reason he gives for it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the hardness of the Womb which is like dry earth that will not presently give any nourishment to either seed or plant and so is it in the spiritual conception and production of Christ that is of life in us The hardness and toughness of the heart the womb where he is to be born that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that dry Earth in the Philosophers or that way-side or at best stony ground in Christs phrase is the only stop and delay in begetting of life within us the only cause of either barrenness or hard travail in the Spirit Be the brain never so soft and pliable never so waxy and capable of impressions yet if the heart be but carnal if it have any thing much of that lust of the flesh 1 John ii 15. in its composition it will be hard for the spiritual life to be conceived in that man For Faith the only means by which Christ lives and dwells in us Ephes iii. 17. is to be seated in the heart i. e. the will and affections according to the express words That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith So that be your brains never so swelled and puft up with perswasions of Christ our Saviour be they so big that they are ready to ly-in and travail of Christ as Jove's did of Minerva in the Poem yet if the heart have not joyned in the conception if the seed sown have not taken root and drawn nourishment from the will it is but an aerial or phantastical birth or indeed rather a disease or tympany nay though it come to some proof and afterward extend and increase in limbs and proportions never so speciously yet if it be only in the brain neither is this to be accounted solid nourishment augmentation but such as a Camaelion may be thought to have that feeds on air and it self is little better and in sum not growth but swellings So then if the will either by nature or custom of sinning by familiarity and acquaintance making them dote on sensual objects otherwise unamiable by business and worldly ambitious thoughts great enemies to faith or by pride and contentment both very incident to noble Personages and great Wits to Courtiers and Scholars In brief if this Will the stronger and more active part of the Soul remain carnal either in indulgence to many or which is the snare of judicious men in chief of some one prime sin then cannot all the faith in the world bring that man to Heaven it may
Syriack and vulgar Latin and I will shew thee my faith by my works 'T will be but a nice distinction for thee then to say that works are to be separated from the act of justification when they are found separated à supposito from the person also But not to digress the Pharisee seems here pretty well provided No extortioner no adulterer guilty of no injustice And how many be there among you that cannot go thus far with the Pharisee Some vice or other perhaps there is that agrees not with your constitution or education drunkenness is not for one mans turn prodigality for anothers and I doubt not but that many of you are as forward as the Pharisee to thank God or rather require God to thank them that they are not given to such or such a vice But if you were to be required here to what the Pharisee undertakes if you were to be arraigned at that severe tribunal I say not concerning your thoughts and evil communications but even the gross actual nay habitual sins if a Jury or a rack were set to inquire into you throughly how many of you durst pretend to the Pharisees innocence and confidence that you are not extortioners unjust adulterers Nay how many be there that have all the Pharisees pride and censorionsness and all these other sins too into the vantage Certainly there is not one place in the Christian world that hath more reason to humble it self for two or all three of these vices than this City wherein you live I am sorry I have said this and I wish it were uncharitably spoken of me but though it will not become me to have thought it of you yet 't will concern you to suspect it of your selves that by acknowledging your guilts you may have them cancell'd and by judging your selves prevent being judged of the Lord. And here Saint Chrysostome's caution will come in very seasonably toward a conclusion of all that the Publicans sins be not preferred before the Pharisees works but only before his pride 'T is not his store of moral vertues that was like to prove the Pharisees undoing but his over-valuing them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the Stoick appliable to this also 'T is not his innocence that hath so encumbred him all this while but his opinion of it The fasting and the tithing must not be cast away because the Pharisee was proud of them this were a furious discipline which would down with all violently that had ever been abused to idolatry or sin or with him in Plutarch that because Poetry had some ill consequences sometimes would have the Muses and their favourites dispatched into Epicurus his boat His counsel was more seasonable that to prevent drunkenness appointed them to mix water with their wine that the mad god might be allay'd with a tame sober one and that is the caution that I told you of that you abstract the Pharisees works from his pride and then borrow the Publicans humility from his works that you come to the temple of God with all the provision a Pharisee can boast of and then lay it down all at the Publicans feet and take up his miserere his sighs his dejection his indignation at himself instead of it then shall you be fit to approach to that templum misericordiae which Gerson speaks of sine simulachro c. that had not a picture or image of a Saint in it no manner of ostentation or shew of works non sacrificiis sed gemitibus c. not to be visited with sacrifices but sighs not to be filled with triumphant 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 songs of rejoycing and victories but with the calm and yet ravishing Rhetorick of the Publican 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lord be merciful to me a sinner Even so O Lord deal thou with us according to thy mercies visit us with thy salvation draw us with thy mercies and enlighten us with thy spirit thy humbling spirit to season us with a sense of our sins and unworthiness thy sanctifying spirit to fill us here with all holy sincere requisite graces and in the spirit of thy power to accomplish us hereafter with that immarcessible crown of glory Now to him c. The IX Sermon MATTHEW iii. 3. Prepare ye the way of the Lord. THat our preface may afford some light to our proceeding that it may prepare the way and stand us in stead hereafter in our discourse of preparation we will imploy it to observe that natural progress and method of all things which consists in steps and degrees travelling on by those gifts which nature hath set them from one stage to another from a lower degree of perfection to an higher built upon this ground of nature that the first things are alwayes least perfect yet absolutely necessary to the perfection of the last and in sum so much the more necessary by how much less perfect Thus is the foundatin more necessary to an house than the walls and the first stone than the whole foundation because the walls are necessary only to the setting on of the roof not to the laying of the foundation the foundation necessary both to the walls and roof but not to the first stone because that may be laid without the whole foundation but the first stone necessary to all the rest and therefore of greatest and most absolute necessity The course of nature is delineated and express'd to us by the like proceedings and method of Arts and Sciences So those general principles that are most familiar to us are the poorest and yet most necessary rudiments required to any deeper speculation the first stage of the understanding in its peregrination or travel into those foreign parts of more hidden knowledge is usually very short and 't is most requisite it should be so for beginning at home with some 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and taking its rise at its own threshold thereby it advances the length and secures the success of the future voyage Thus in Politicks hath the body of Laws from some thin beginnings under Lycurgus Solon Phaleas and the like by dayly accessions and farther growth at last encreased into a fair bulk every age perfecting somewhat and by that degree of perfection making the matter capable of a farther so that the very Politicks themselves as well as each Commonwealth have been observed to have their infancy youth and manhood the last of which is the only perfect state which yet this body had never attain'd to had it not been content to submit it self to the imperfection of the former Thus also in practical Philosophy there be some praeambula operationis some common precepts which must be instill'd into us to work a consistency in our tempers firm enough for the undertaking and performing all moral tasks One excellent one Aristotle learnt from Plato in the second of the Ethicks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a skill of ordering those two passions aright joy and sorrow an
habit never to rejoyce or grieve but on just occasion which lesson we must con perfectly when we are young and then with years an easie discipline will bring on vertue of its own accord Lastly in the transcendent knowledge of Metaphysicks which Aristotle would fain call wisdom 't is the Philosophers labour which they were very sedulous in to invent and set down rules to prepare us for that study the best that Aristotle hath is in the third of Metaph. to examine and inform our selves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which things are chiefly worth doubting of and searching after in which one thing if we would observe his counsel if we would learn to doubt only of those things which are worth our knowledge we should soon prove better Scholars than we are Iamblicus beyond all the rest most to the purpose prescribes retiredness and contempt of the world that so we might 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ever live and be nourished by the excursions of the mind towards God where indeed he speaks more like a Christian than a Pythagorean as if he had learnt Christ to deny himself and the world and follow him and intended to come to that pitch and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which S. Paul speaks of Gal. ii 20. The life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith c. But to conclude this praecognoscendum there be throughout all works of nature and imitations of art some imperfect grounds on which all perfection is built some common expressions with which the understanding is first signed some ground-colours without the laying on of which no perfect effigies or pourtraicture can be drawn Nay thus it is in some measure in spiritual matters also we are men before we are Christians there is a natural life and there is a spiritual life And as in the resurrection 1 Cor. xv 46. so also in the spiritual 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the soul first that which is natural and after that which is spiritual and in the spiritual life there be also its periods the infancy the youth and virility of the spirit the first being most imperfect yet most necessary and preparing the way to the last perfection To bring all home to the business in hand thus did it not befit the Saviour of the World to come abruptly into it to put on flesh as soon as flesh had put on sin the business was to be done by degrees and after it had been a long time in working for the final production of it the fulness of time was to be expected The Law had its time of paedagogy to declare it self and to be obeyed as his Usher for many years and after all this he appears not in the World till his Baptist hath proclaimed him he makes not toward his Court till his Harbinger hath taken up the rooms He comes not to inhabit either in the greater or lesser Jewry the World or mans heart till the Praecursor hath warn'd all to make ready for him and this is the voice of the Praecursor his sermon and the words of my Text Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Instead of dividing the words I shall unite them and after I have construed them to you contrive that into one body which would not conveniently be dismembred 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies to fit to prepare to make ready Ye are all those to whom Christ should ever come The ways of the Lord are whatsoever is capable of receiving of Christ or his Gospel peculiarly the hearts of the elect The form of speech imperative notes the whole complexum to be one single duty required of all the Baptists and my Auditors sub hac formâ that every man's heart must be prepared for the receiving of Christ or punctually to imitate the order of the words in my Text the preparation of the soul is required for Christ's birth in us For there is in every elect vessel a spiritual 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or mystical incarnation of Christ where the soul like Mary is first overshadowed by the holy Ghost then conceives then carries in the womb grows big and at last falls into travail and brings forth Christ My Text goes not thus far to bring to the Birth neither will I. My discourse shall be happy if it may be his Baptist his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in your hearts to prepare them for his birth which I shall endeavour to do first by handling preparation in general 2. The preparation here specified of the soul 3. In order to Christs birth in us And first of preparation in general 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 prepare ye or make ready the necessity of this performance to any undertaking may appear by those several precedaneous methods in common life which have nothing in themselves to ingratiate them unto us but cost much toil and trouble yet notwithstanding are submitted to If the Earth would answer the farmers expectation without any culture or husbandry he would never be so prodigal towards it But seeing it hath proposed its fruitfulness under condition of our drudgery we plow and harrow and manure and drain and weed it or else we are sure to fare the worse at harvest The variety of preparations in these low affairs was by Cato and Varro and Columella accounted a pretty piece of polite necessary learning And a Christian if he will apply their rules to his spiritual Georgicks the culture of his soul shall be able to husband it the better and by their directions have a further insight into those fallow-grounds of his own heart which the Prophet speaks of 'T were a great and perhaps unnecessary journey to trace over the whole world of creatures to perfect this observation almost every passage of nature will furnish you with an example Hence is it that they that had nothing but natural reason to instruct them were assiduous in this practice and never ventured on any solemn business without as solemn endeavours to fit themselves for the work they took in hand those series of preparations before the ancient Athletica as anoynting and bathing and rubbing and dust 't were fit enough for a sermon to insist on the exercise which they prepared for being reputed sacred and parts of their solemnest worship and the moral of them would prove of good use to discipline and to bring us up to those spiritual Agones mentioned in Scripture as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eph. 4. 14. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1 Cor. ix 26. and in the same place 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and its preparative 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Wrestling cuffing and running three of the five Olympian games adopted as it were into the Church and spiritualiz'd by the Apostle for our imitation But to pass by these and the like as less apposite for our discourse what shall we think Was it superstition or rather mannerlyness that made the Graecian Priests so rub and wash and scour themselves before they would meddle with a
discerning good from evil 6. An expectation of a reward for any thing well done Lastly some gripes and twinges of the Conscience to all add a tender disposition a good Christian education common custom of the countrey where one lives where some vices are out of fashion nay at last the word of God daily preached not a love but servile fear of it These I say and the like may outwardly restrain unregenerate men from riots may curb and keep them in and consequently preserve the soul from that weight of the multitude of sins which press down other men to a desparation of mercy Thus is one unregenerate man less engaged in sin than another and consequently his soul less polluted and so in all likelihood more capable of the ordinary means of salvation than the more stubborn habituate sinner when every aversion every commission of every sin doth more harden against grace more alien and set at a greater distance from Heaven and this briefly we call a moral preparation of the soul and a purging of it though not absolutely from sin yet from some measure of reigning sin and disposing of it to a spiritual estate and this is no more than I learn from Bradwardine in his 16. de causa Dei ch 37. A servile fear a sight of some inconvenience and moral habit of vertue and the like Multum retrahunt à peccato inclinant ad opera bona sic ad charitatem gratiam opera verè grata praeparant disponunt And so I come to my last part to shew of what use this preparation of the soul is in order to Christs birth in us the ways of the Lord. I take no great joy in presenting controversies to your ears out of this place yet seeing I am already fallen upon a piece of one I must now go through it and to quit it as soon as I can present the whole business unto you in some few propositions of which some I shall only recite as conceiving them evident enough by their own light the rest I shall a little insist on and then apply and drive home the profit of all to your affections And in this pardon me for certainly I should never have medled with it had not I resolved it a Theory that most nearly concerned your practice and a speculation that would instruct your wills as well as your understandings The propositions which contain the sum of the business are these 1. No preparation in the world can deserve or challenge Gods sanctifying grace the Spirit bloweth where it listeth and cannot by any thing in us be predetermin'd to its object or its work 2. The Spirit is of power to work the conversiâ—n of any the greatest sinner at one minute to strike the most obdurate heart and soften it and out of the unnatural womb of stones infinitely more unfruitful than barrenness and age had made the womb of Sarah to raise up children unto Abraham According to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Aristotle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 diseases are sometimes cur'd when the patient is at the extremity or height of danger in an ecstasie and almost quite gone 3. 'T is an ill Consequence that because God can and sometimes doth call unprepared sinners therefore 't is probable he will deal so with thee in particular or with unprepared men in general God doth not work in conversion as a physical agent to the extent of his power but according to the sweet disposition and counsel of his Will 4. In unprepared hearts there be many profest enemies to grace ill dispositions ambition atheism pride of spirit and in chief an habit in a voluptuous settled course of sinning an indefatigable resolute walking after their own lusts And therefore there is very little hope that Christ will ever vouchsafe to be born in such polluted hardned souls For 't is Basil's observation that that speech of the fools heart There is no God was the cause that the Gentiles were given over to a reprobate sense and fell headlong 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into all manner of abominations Hence it is that Jobius in Photius observes that in Scripture some are called dogs Mat. xv 26. some unworthy to receive the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven Mat. xiii 11. that some hated the light and came not to it Joh. iii. 20. as if all those had taken a course to make themselves uncapable of mercy and by a perfect hostility frighted Christ out of their coasts In the liberal dispensation of miracles in the Gospel you would wonder to see Christ a niggard in his own countrey yet so in respect of other places he was and did not many miracles there because of their unbelief Mat. xiii 58. not that their incredulity had manacled him had shortned his hand or straitned his power but that miracles which when they met with a passive willingness a contentedness in the patient to receive and believe them were then the ordinary instruments of faith and conversion would have been but cast away upon obdurate hearts so that for Christ to have numbred miracles among his unbelieving Countrey-men no way prepared to receive them had been an injurious liberality and added only to their unexcusableness which contradicts not the Axiom of St Paul 1 Cor. xiii 22. That some signs are only for unbelievers for even those unbelievers must have within them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a proneness or readiness to receive them with belief 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. in Jobius to open to the spirit knocking by those miracles and improve them to their best profit 5. Though God needs not yet he requires moral preparation of us as an ordinary means to make us more capable of grace for although according to Saint Austin Ne ipsâ quidem justitiâ nostrâ indiget Deus yet according to Salvian's limitation Fget juxta praeceptionem suam licet non juxta potentiam eget secundum legem suam non eget secundum Majestatem We are to think that God hath use of any thing which he commands and therefore must perform whatever he requires and not dare to be confident of the end without the observation of the means prescribed 'T is too much boldness if not presumption to leave all to his omnipotent working when he hath prescribed us means to do somewhat our selves 6. Integrity and Honesty of Heart a sober moral life and chiefly humility and tenderness of spirit in summ whatever degree of Innocence either study or fear or love or natural disposition can work in us some or all of which may in some measure be found in some men not yet regenerate are good preparations for Christs birth in us so saith Clement of Philosophy that it doth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. make ready and prepare the way against Christs coming 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 cooperate with other helps that God hath given us all with this caution that it doth only prepare not perfect
it For 't is no less then atheism which the scorners of the last age are to fall upon by walking after their own lusts 2 Pet. iii. 3. And thus was the Pharisees practice here who makes use of his own authority to deny Christ 't was the Pharisees that said Have any of the Pharisees believed on him There is not a more dangerous mother of heresies in the midst of piety then this one that our phansie first assures us that we have the spirit and then that every phansie of ours is Theopneust the work of the spirit There are a multitude of deceits got altogether here 1. We make every idle perswasion of our own the evidence of Gods spirit then we joyn infallibility to the person being confident of the gift then we make every breath of our nostrils and flame that can break out of our hearts an immediate effect of the spirit and fire which hath spiritually enlivened us and then we are sure it is authentical and all this while we never examine either the ground or deductions from it but take all upon trust from that everlasting deceiver our own heart which we ought to sit upon and judge of by proofs and witnesses by comparing it with other mens dictates probably as godly perhaps more learned but certainly more impartial judges of thee then thou canst be of thy self Lastly If the word of God speak distinctly and clearly enforce as here by miracles done before all men to their astonishment and redargution then will I not stay my belief to wait on or follow the learnedst man in the world when Christ himself speaks to my eyes the proudest eminentest Pharisee in earth or hell nay if any of their sect have crowded into Heaven shall not be able to charm my ear or lay any clog upon my understanding So that you see the Pharisees argument in that case was sophistical the matter being so plain to them that they needed no advicè His works bore witness of him John v. 36. yet in the general it holds probable and learning remains a good guide still though an ill Master in matters of Religion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the first thing we undertook to demonstrate And this we should draw down yet lower to our practice and that variously but that almost every Proposition insisted on hath in part spoken to your affections and so prevented store of uses This only must not be omitted For Scholars to learn to set a value on their precious blessing which God hath vouchsafed them above all the world beside to bless God infinitely that they understand and conceive what they are commanded to believe this I am sure of there is not a greater and more blessed priviledge besides Gods spirit which our humane condition is capable of then this of learning and specially divine knowledge of which Aristotle himself witnesseth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 none is better then it As long as we have no evidence or demonstration from that which yet it most nearly concerns us to rely upon we cannot enjoy without an immediate supernatural irradiation a tranquillity and consistency of spirit we cannot peremptorily have resolved our selves that we have built upon the rock every temptation proves a discouragement to us many horrours take hold of us and sometimes we must needs fall to that low ebb not far from despair which the Apostles were in Luke xxiv 22. We had trusted but now we know not what to think of it that this was he that should have redeemed Israel But to see all the Articles of my faith ratified and confirmed to my understanding to see the greatest treasure and inheritance in the world sealed and delivered to me in my hand written in a character and language that I am perfectly skilled in O what a comfort is this to a Christian soul O what a fulness of joy to have all the mysteries of my salvation transcribed out of the book of the Lord and written in my heart where I can turn and survey and make use of them as much and as often as I will Nay where I have them without book though there were neither Father nor Bible in the world able out of my own stock to give an account nay a reason of my faith before the perversest Papist Heathen or Devil This serves me instead of having lived and conversed and been acquainted with Christ By this I have my fingers pit into the print of the nails and my hands thrust into his side and am as sure as ever Thomas was I see him as palpably as he that handled him that he is my Lord and my God 'T was observed by the Philosopher as an act generally practised among Tyrants to prohibit all Schools and means of learning and education in the Commonwealth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to suffer neither learning nor Schools nor common meetings that men being kept blind might be sure to obey and tyrannical commands through ignorance be mistaken for fair government And thus did Julian interdict the Christians all manner of literature and chiefly Philosophy for fear saith Nazianzen they should be able to grapple with the Heathen and cut off Goliah's head with his own weapon The continuance of these arts of spiritual tyranny you may observe in the prescribed stupidity and commanded ignorance of the Laity through all Italy All which must call for a superlative measure of thanks to be exprest not in our tongues and hearts only but in our lives and actions from us I say who have obteined not only a knowledge of his laws but almost a vision of his secrets and for as much as concerns our eternal bliss do even see things as they were acted having already comprehended in our reason not only in our faith the most impossible things in nature the bredth and length and depth and height of the conceived incarnate and crucified God and if all that will not serve our turn but we must press into his cabinet-secrets invade the book of life and oversee and divulge to all men abscondita Domini Dei nostri then are Gods mercies unworthily repaid by us and those indulgences which were to bestow civility upon the world have only taught us to be more rude In sum the reallest thanks we can perform to God for this inestimable prize is modestly and softly to make use of it 1. To the confirming of others faith and 2. to the expressing of our own For 1. he is the deepest scholar saith the Philosopher who is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 best able to teach other men what himself conceives and then 2. he hath the habit most radicated who hath prest it down into his heart and there sow'd a seed which shall encrease and fructify and spread and flourish laden with the fruits of a lively faith He is the truest scholar that hath fed upon learning that hath nourished and grown and walked and lived in the strength of it And till I see you thrive and
offer of himself in the not taking home and applying Christ to our souls And this is done either by denying to take him at all or by taking him under a false person or by not performing the conditions required or presumed in the making of the match They that deny to take him at all are the prophane negligent presumptuous Christians who either never hearken after him or else are so familiar with the news as to underprize him have either never cheapned Heaven or else will not come to Gods price like Ananias and Sapphira perhaps offer pretty fair bring two parts of their estate and lay them at the Apostles feet but will give no more fall off at last for a trifle and peremptorily deny Christ if they may not have him on their own Conditions Some superfluities some vanities some chargeable or troublesom sins perhaps they can spare and those they will be inclinable to part withal but if this will not serve Christ must seek for a better Chapman they stand not much upon it they can return as contentedly without it as they came And this arises from a neglect and security a not heeding or weighing of Gods justice and consequently undervaluing of his mercies They have never felt God as an angry Judge and therefore they now scorn him as a Saviour they have liv'd at such ease of heart that no legal terrour no affrightments or ghastly representations of sin can work upon them and if the reading of the law that killing letter have been sent by God to instruct them in the desperateness of their estate to humble these libertine souls to the spirit of bondage and so school them to Christ they have eyes but see not ears but hear it not they are come to this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. i. 28. a reprobate sense or as it may be rendred an undiscerning mind not able to judge of that which is thus read and proposed to it or again a sense without sense not apprehensive of that which no man that hath eyes can be ignorant of nay in Theod. phrase 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an heart that will reverberate any judgement or terrour receiving no more impression from it then the Anvil from the hammer violently returns it again smooth'd somewhat over perhaps by often-beating but nothing softned Nay if the law cry too loud and by an inward voice preach damnation in their bowels and resolve to be heard before it cease then do they seek out some worldly employment to busie themselves withal that they may not be at home at so much unquietness they will charm it with pleasures or overwhelm it with business as Gain when his Conscience was too rough and rigid for him Gen. iv went out from the presence of the Lord ver 16. and as 't is observed built Cities v 17. got some of his progeny to invent Musick v. 21. perhaps to still his tumultuous raving Conscience that the noise of the hammers and melody of the Instruments might outsound the din within him as in the sacrifices of Molock where their children which they offered in an hollow brazen vessel could not choose but howl hideously they had timbrels and tabrets perpetually beating whereupon Tophet where these sacrifices were kept is by Grammarians deduced from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tympanum to drown the noise of the childrens cry these I say which will not be instructed in their misery or better'd by the preaching of the law which labour only to make their inward terrors insensible to skin not cure the wound are Infidels in the first or highest rank which deny to take him at all will not suffer themselves to be perswaded that they have any need of him and therefore let him be offered for ever let him be proclaimed in their ears every minute of their lives they see nothing in him worth hearkning after and the reason is they are still at home they have not gone a foot abroad out of themselves and therefore cannot lay hold on Christ He that never went to school to the law he that was never sensible of his own damned estate he that never hated himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will never receive never accept of Christ Secondly some are come thus far to a sense of their estate and are twing'd extremely and therefore fly presently to the Gospel hearing of Christ they fasten are not patient of so much deliberation as to observe whether their hands be empty they are in distress and Christ must needs save them suddenly they lay hold as soon as ever they hear a promise and are resolved to be saved by Christ because they see otherwise they are damned And these take Christ indeed but under a false person either they take the promises only and let Christ alone or take Christ the Saviour but not Christ the Lord. Are willing to be saved by him but never think of serving him are praying for ever for Heaven and glory but never care how little they hear of grace the end they fasten on the Covenant they hug and gripe with their embraces but never take the condition of repentance and obedience this is not for their turn they abstract the cheap and profitable attributes of Christ his Priestly office of satisfaction and propitiation but never consider him as a King and so in a word lay hold of the estate before they have married the husband which they have yet no more right to then a meer stranger for the communicating the riches of a husband being but a consequence of marriage is therefore not yet made over till the marriage which is the taking of the husbands person be consummate And this I say is a second degree of infidelity somewhat more secret and less discernable when by an Errour of the person by taking Christ the Saviour for Christ the Lord or his promises abstracted from his person we believe we shall be saved by him but deny to be ruled desire to enjoy all the priviledges but substract all the obedience of a Subject In the third place they which have accepted and received the true person of Christ as a Master as well as a Jesus they which have taken him on a resolved vow of performing this condition of homage and obedience are not in event as good as their engagements when they think the match is fast and past danger of recalling when they seem to have gotten a firm title to the promises and are in a manner entred upon the goods and estate of their husband they do begin to break Covenant and either wholly substract or else divide their love they married him for his wealth and now they have that they are soon weary of his person they came with the soul of an harlot looking only what they should get by him and now they have many other old acquaintances they must needs keep league with their self-denial their humility their vows of obedience were but arts and stratagems that
appear some difficulties in the practice to be overcome before it prove a possible duty if self-denial be incompetible with flesh and blood if delights and worldly contentments if an hardned heart in sin and a world of high Imaginations refuse to submit or humble themselves to the poverty of Christ if we cannot empty our hands to lay hold or unbottom our selves to lean wholly on Christ then must we fly and pray to that spirit of power to subdue and conquer and lead us captive to it self to instruct us in the baseness the nothingness nay the dismal hideous wretchedness of our own estate that so being spiritually shaken and terrified out of our carnal pride and security we may come trembling and quaking to that Throne of Grace and with the hands of Faith though feeble ones with the eye of Faith though dimly with a hearty sincere resigning up of our selves we may see and apprehend and fasten and be united to our Saviour that we may live in Christ and Christ in us and having begun in the life of grace here we may hope and attain to be accomplished with that of Glory hereafter Now to him which hath elected us c. The XII Sermon Acts XVII 30. And the times of this ignorance God winked at but now commandeth all men every where to repent THE words in our English Translation carry somewhat in the sound which doth not fully reach the importance of the Original and therefore it must be the task of our Preface not to connect the Text but clear it not to shew its dependence on the precedent words but to restore it to the integrity of it self that so we may perfectly conceive the words before we venture to discuss them that we may 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Aristotle phrases it first represent them to you in the bulk then describe them particularly in their several lineaments Our English setting of the words seems to make two Propositions and in them a direct opposition betwixt the condition of the ancient and present Gentiles that God had winked at i.e. either approved or pitied or pardoned the ignorance of the former Heathens but now was resolved to execute justice on all that did continue in that was heretofore pardonable in them on every one every where that did not repent Now the Original runs thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. that is in a literal construction God therefore passing over the times of ignorance as if he saw them not doth now command all men every where to repent Which you may conceive thus by this kind of vulgar 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or sensible proceeding in God God always is essentially and perfectly every one of his Attributes Wisdom Justice Mercy c. but yet is said at one time to be peculiarly one Attribute at another time another i. e. to be at one time actually just at another time actually merciful according to his determination to the object As when God fixes his eyes upon a rebellious people whose sins are ripe for his justice he then executes his vengeance on them as on Sodom when he fixes his eyes upon a penitent believing people he then doth exercise his mercy as on Nineveh Now when God looks upon any part of the lapsed world on which he intends to have mercy he suffers not his eye to be fixed or terminated on the medium betwixt his eye and them on the sins of all their ancestors from the beginning of the world till that day but having another accompt to call them to doth for the present 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 look over all them as if they were not in his way and imputing not the sins of the fathers to the children fixeth on the children makes his covenant of mercy with them and commandeth them the condition of this covenant whereby they shall obtain mercy that is every one every where to repent So that in the first place 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 must not be rendred by way of opposition he winked then but now commands as if their former ignorance were justifiable and an account of knowledge should only be exacted from us And in the second place 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a word read but this once in all the New Testament must be rendred not winking at but looking over or not insisting upon as when we fix our eyes upon a hill we suffer them not to dwell on the valley on this side of it because we look earnestly on the hill Now if this be not the common Attical acception of it yet it will seem agreeable to the penning of the New Testament in which whosoever will observe may find words and phrases which perhaps the Attick purity perhaps Grammar will not approve of And yet I doubt not but Classick authorities may be brought where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 shall signifie not a winking or not taking notice of but a looking farther a not resting in this but a driving higher for so it is rendred by Stephanus Ad ulteriora oculos convertere and then the phrase shall be as proper as the sense the Greek as authentical as the doctrine that God looking over and not insisting upon the ignorance of the former Heathen at Christs coming entred a covenant with their successors the condition of which was that every man every where should repent And this is made good by the Gr. Schol. of the N. T. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. that is spoken not that the former heathen should be unpunished but that their successors to whom St. Paul preached if they would repent should not be called to an accompt of their ignorance should not fare the worse for the ignorance of their fathers and at this drives also Chrysostome out of whom the Scholiasts may seem to have borrowed it their whole 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 gleanings out of the Fathers before them I might farther prove the necessity of this interpretation if it were required of me and thus far I have stay'd you to prove it because our English is somewhat imperfect in the expression of it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Aristotle Two cubes are not a cube but another figure very different from it and indeed our English Translations by making two Proposition of this Verse have varied the native single Propositions in that regard and made it unlike it self which briefly if I can inform my self aright should run thus by way of one simple Enunciation God therefore not insisting on but looking over those times of ignorance doth now command all men every where to repent of which those three lines in Leo his fourth Sermon de Passione Domini are a just Paraphrase Nos sub veteris ignorantiae profunda nocte pereuntes in Patriarcharum societatem sortem electi gregis adoptavit So then the words being represented to you in this scheme or single diagram are the covenant of mercy made with the progeny of
it self without any care to direct our studies to the advancement either of Gods glory in other or graces kingdom in our selves For this is the thing no doubt here aimed at and the performance of it as strictly required of us Christians and that not some only of us but as many as the commandment is here given to every man every where So I come to my last particular the extent and latitude of the persons with whom this covenant is made and from whom this condition is exacted All men every where Now the universality of the persons reflects either to the preceding words Commands or to the subsequent the matter of these commands Repentance From the first the point is that Gods Commands were made known by the preaching of the Gospel to all men every where From the 2. that the Repentance here meant is necessary to every man that will be saved For the first it hath been already proved out of Scripture that the vocal articulation of Gods commands the sound and preaching of the Gospel hath gone out into all the World and that not Universis but singulis directed and promulged at least to every creature Mar. XVI 15. Mar. xvi 15. the whole Gentile world has title to it Now for the spiritual efficacy of this voice 1 Cor. 11. 4. the demonstration of the spirit and of power hath not this also waited on the voice and in some kind or other evidenced it self in the like extensive latitude Yes no doubt for there being two effects of the preaching of the Word either converting or hardening either dissolving the wax or stiffening the clay you shall in every man be sure to meet with one of them For the conversion what a multitude came in at the first noise of it primo manè as soon as ever the Sun of righteousness began to dawn In the ancient Sea-fights they had their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 little light ships 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Zenophon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 say Thucydides and Polybius which they sent out as spyes in the night or at day break to bring word how the Seas were cleared that so they might dare to make use of the first opportunity to go out with their whole Navy Thus was Job and some few other Gentiles before the Gospel and Cornelius at the dawning of it sent before in a manner ut lembi ante classem to spy and bring word whether the Gentiles might enter and be received and these returning to them like Noahs Dove in Gen. viii 11. Gen. VIII 11. with an olive leaf in her mouth as a token of peace and safety to all that would venture then did the whole Navy and Troop follow then did the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the many the root the common people of the world out of all Nations and conditions some hasten and run and croud for a part in this salvation and the Glory of the Lord was revealed and all flesh saw it together as it is in the phrase of the Prophecy Isa xl 5. or in the words of the Story Isa XL. 5. There were daily added to the Church such as should be saved Look but on the Doctor of the Gentiles as he sits in his chair in Tyrannus his School Acts XIX 10. Acts xix 10. and you shall find that at that one Lecture which indeed was two years long all the lesser Asia heard the Word of the Lord Jesus both Jews and Greeks The 3000 souls which were added to the Church at St. Peters Sermon Acts ii 4. was a sufficient hours work Acts 11. 4. and a thing so admired by the wise men of the Gentiles that they imputed it magicis Petriartibus veneficis carminibus De Civ l. 18. c. 53. saith Austin to some incantations and magical tricks which Peter used And they got the dying oracle to confirm it with some supposâ—â—itious verses to the purpose forged by them that the Christian Religion was raised by Peters witchcraft and by it should last 365 years and then be betrayed and vanish But had these same Gentiles in this humour of malice and prejudice seen a third part of the Roman world all the Proconsular Asia converted by one Pauls disputations they would certainly have resolved that all the sorcery of Hell or Chaldaea could never have yielded such miraculous enchantments And this the Sons of Sceva had experience of Acts xix 14. Acts XIX 14. who with all their exorcisms and the name of Jesus added to them could not yet imitate the Apostles in any one miracle but the devil was too hard for them wounded overcame prevail'd against them Briefly 't was more then the magick either of men or devils which so convinced the artificers of hell that they brought out their Books and burnt them openly Act. XIX 19. which beside the price of their most profitable skill were rated at 50000 pieces of silver which is computed to be about 6250 l. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed and the first effect of it conversion was miraculously manifest though not on all yet on many of all people every where Now for the other effect of it the hardning of obdurate Atheists Act. XIX 9. look on xix Acts. 9. where it is plain that for all Pauls Logick and Rhetorick disputing and perswading for the space of three moneths many were hardned and believed not They had within them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Theodoret calls it a heart that would reverberate either precept or instruction and make it rebound against the hand that sent it Philip. l. 1. de Anima 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Philoponus phrases it in his 1. l. de animâ their spirits fatned and incrassated within them stal'd up and fed to such a brawniness that neither the understanding nor the affections were capable of any impression and so their condition proved like that of the Anvil which by many strokes is somewhat smoothed but no whit softned all they got by one days preaching was to enable them the better to resist the second Every Sermon of a Paul or Peter was but an alarum to set them on their guard of defence to warn them to cast up some more trenches and bulwarks to fortifie themselves stronger against any possible invasion of Gods spirit according to that of the Aegyptian Hermes P. 5. speaking 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is in a Christian phrase the power of the Scripture they have saith he this property in them that when they meet with evil men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they do more sharpen and egg them on to evil Thus was the preaching of the word to all men every where attended with some effects or other according to the materials it met with never returned unprofitably but either was the power of God to salvation unto all that believed or the witness of God to condemnation to those which were hardned Now if this
precious receipt administred to all find not in all the like effect of recovering yet from hence is neither the Physick to be under-prized nor the Prescriber the matter is to be imputed sometimes to the weakness and peevishness of the Patient 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he cannot or will not perform the prescriptions sometimes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the fault is to be laid on the stubbornness and stoutness of the disease which turns every medicine into its nourishment and so is not abated but elevated by that which was intended to asswage it as Hippocrates defines it medicinally in his Book 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So then by way of Use Pag. 2. If we desire that these commands this covenant offered to all men every where may evidence it self to our particular souls in its spiritual efficacy we must with all the industry of our spirits endeavour to remove those hindrances which may any way perturb or disorder or weaken it in its working in us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hippoc. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. saith Hippocrates you must furnish your self before-hand with a shop of several softning plaisters and take some one of them as a preparative before every Sermon you come to that coming to Church with a tender mollified waxy heart you may be sure to receive every holy character and impression which that days exercise hath provided for thee lest otherwise if thou should'st come to Church with an heart of ice that ice be congealed into Crystal and by an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the warmth of Gods word not abate but encrease the coldness of a chill frozen spirit and finding it hard and stubborn return it obdurate O what a horrid thing is it that the greatest mercy under Heaven should by our unpreparedness be turned into the most exquisite curse that Hell or malice hath in store for us That the most precious Balm of Gilead should by the malignity of some tempers be turned into poyson that the leaves which are appointed for the healing of the Nations should meet with some such sores which prove worse by any remedy that the most soveraign 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or lenitive in the world should only work to our obduration and the preaching of the word of mercy add to the measure of our condemnation this is enough to perswade you by an horror into some kind of sollicitude to prepare your souls to a capability of this cure to keep your selves in a Christian temper that it may be possible for a Sermon to work upon you that that breath which never returns in vain may be truly Gospel happy in its message may convert not harden you to which purpose you must have such tools in store Hippocrat ibidem which the Physician speaks of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 instruments of spiritual surgery to cut and prune off all luxuriant cumbersom excrescences all rankness and dead flesh which so oppress the soul that the vertue of medicine cannot search to it And for this purpose there is no one more necessary of more continual use for every man every where then that which here closeth my Text Repentance And so I come to the second respect the universality of the persons as it refers to the matter of the command repentance every man every where to repent And here I should shew you that repentance both generally taken for a sorrow for sin containing in it virtually saith also so the Baptism of repentance is interpreted Acts XIX 4. Acts xix 4. John baptized with the Baptism of repentance saying unto the people that they should believe c. and more specially in this place taken for the directing of our knowledge to practice and both to Gods glory as hath been shewn is and always was necessary to every man that will be saved 1 â—â—st c. 4. For according to Aristotles rule 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 noting both an universality of subject and circumstance is a degree of necessity and therefore repentance being here commanded 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is to be judged a condition necessary to every man who answers at the command i. e. who expects his part in the covenant of salvation this I say I might prove at large and to that purpose vindicate the writings of some of the Fathers especially of Clemens who I am almost confident is groundlesly cited for bestowing salvation on the Heathen without exacting the condition of faith and repentance which now 't were superfluous to insist on 2. Urge it both to your brains and hearts and by the necessity of the duty rouse and enforce and pursue you to the practice of it But seeing this Catholick duty is more the inspiration of the Holy Ghost then the acquisition of our labours seeing this fundamental Cardinal gift comes from the supreme donor seeing nature is no more able spiritually to reinliven a soul then to animate a carcass our best endeavour will be our humiliation our most profitable directions will prove our prayers and what our frailty cannot reach to our devotions shall obtain And let us labour and pray and be confident that God which hath honoured us with his commands will enable us to a performance of them and having made his covenant with us will fulfil in us the condition of it that the thundering of his word being accompanied with the still voice of his spirit may suffer neither repulse nor resistance that our hearts being first softned then stamped with the spirit may be the images of that God that made them that all of us every where endeavouring to glorifie God in our knowledg in our lives in our faith in our repentance may for ever be glorified by him and through him and with him hereafter Now to him that hath elected us hath created redeemed c. The XIV Sermon Rom. I. 26. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections IN this most accurate Epistle that ever the Pen of man could lay title to in which all the counsels and proceedings and methods of God in the work of our salvation are described our Apostle in his discourse goes on the same way that God is said to do in his Decree lays the foundation of it as low and deep as possible begins with them as it were in Massa and though they were already Romans and Christians yet before he openeth Heaven gates to them and either teaches or suffers them to be Saints he stays them a while in the contemplation of their impurity and damn'd neglected estate of the stock they come from looks upon them as polluted or troden down in their own blood as the phrase is Ezek. xvi 6. He plows and harrows and digs as deep as possible that the seed which he meant to sow might be firm rooted that their Heaven might be founded in the Center of the earth and their faith being secur'd by the depth of its foundation might encrease miraculously both in height and fruitfulness
of it to be for ever a solliciting and worshipping of darkness as Socrates was said to adore the clouds this is such a sottishness that the stupidst element under Heaven would naturally scorn to be guilty of for never was the Earth so peevish as to forbid the Sun when it should shine on it or to slink away or subduce it self from its rayes And yet this is our case beloved who do more amorously and flatteringly court and woo and sollicite darkness then ever the Heathens adored the Sun Not to wander out of the sphere my Text hath placed me in to shew how the light of the Gospel and Christianity is neglected by us our guilt will lie heavy enough on us if we keep us to the light only of natural reason within us How many sins do we daily commit which both nature and reason abhor and loath How many times do we not only unman but even uncreature our selves Aristotle observes that that by which any thing is known first that which doth distinguish one thing from another à priore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is to be called the beginning or cause of that thing and that the light of reason distinguishing one action from another being the first thing that teaches me that this is good that otherwise may from thence be termed the beginning of every reasonable action in us and then where ever this cause or beginning is left out and wanting there the thing produced is not so called a positive act or proper effect but a defect an abortion or still-born frustrate issue and of this condition indeed is every sin in us Every action where this law within us is neglected is not truly an action but a passion a suffering or a torment of the creature Thus do we not so much live and walk which note some action as lie entranced asleep nay dead in sin by this perversness 't is perpetual night with us nay we even die daily our whole life is but a multiplyed swoon or lethargie in which we remain stupid breathless sensless till the day of death or judgment with a hideous voice affrights and rouses us and we find our selves awake in Hell and so our dark souls having a long while groped wilfully in the Sun are at last lead to an everlasting inevitable darkness whither the mercy or rayes of the Sun can never pierce where it will be no small accession to our torment to remember and tremble at that light which before we scorn'd Thus I say do we in a manner uncreate our selves and by the contempt of this law of our creation even frustrate and bring to nothing our creation it self and this is chiefly by sins of sloth and stupid sluggish unactive vices which as I said make our whole life a continued passion never daring or venturing or attempting to act or do any thing in Church or Commonwealth either toward God or our Neighbour and of such a condition'd man no body will be so charitable as to guess he hath any soul or light of reason in him because he is so far from making use of it unless it be such a soul as Tully saith a Swine hath which serves it only instead of salt to keep it from stinking For 't is Aristotles observation that every one of the elements besides the earth was by some Philosopher or other defin'd to be the soul Some said the soul was fire some that 't was air some water but never any man was so mad as to maintain the earth to be it because 't was so heavy and unweildy So then this heavy motionless unactive Christian this clod of earth hath as I said uncreatured himself and by contemning this active reason within him even deprived himself of his soul Again how ordinary a thing is it to unman our selves by this contempt of the directions of reason by doing things that no man in his right mind would ever have patience to think of Beloved to pass by those which we call unnatural sins 1. so in the highest degree as too horrid for our nature set down in the latter end of this Chapter for all Christian ears to glow and tingle at and I had hoped for all English spirits to abhor and loath To pass these I say our whole life almost affords minutely sins which would not argue us men but some other creatures There be few things we do in our Age which are proper peculiar acts of men one man gives himself to eating and drinking and bestows his whole care on that one faculty which they call the vegetative growing faculty and then what difference is there betwixt him and a tree whose whole nature it is to feed and grow Certainly unless he hath some better imployment he is at best but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a plant-animal whose shape would perhaps persuade you that it hath some sense or soul in it but its actions betray it to be a meer plant little better then an Artichoak or Cabbage another goes a little higher yet not far doth all that his sense presents to him suffers all that his sensitive faculties lust and rage to exercise at freedom is as fierce as the Tyger as lustful as the Goat as ravenous as the Wolf and the like and all the beasts of the field and fowls of the air be but several Emblemes and Hieroglyphicks concurring to make up his character carries a wilderness about him as many sins as the nature of a sensitive creature is capable of and then who will stick to compare this man to the beasts that perish For 't is Theophilus his note that the cattle and beasts of the field were created the same day with man Gen. i. 25. to note 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the brutish condition of some men and that therefore the blessing was not bestowed on them but reserved for the man which should have the dominion over them verse 26 28. In sum every action which Reason or Scripture or Gods spirit guides not in us is to be called the work of some other creature of one of these three sorts either earthly the work of a plant or sensual the work of a brute or thirdly above the condition of both these devillish Thus do you see the sin of the contempt of the light of nature which although it be dimm'd in us by our corruption yet shined so bright in the Heathen that they were left without excuse in the Jews that even their own hearts accused them for their rebellions and in us Christians that unless we move according to its directions we are fallen below the condition of men almost of creatures 'T were now superfluous farther to demonstrate it our time will be better spent if we close with some use of it and that will prove manifold 1. by way of caution not to deifie or exalt too high or trust in this light of nature It was once a perfect glorius rule but is now
distorted and defaced it once was light in the Lord almost an Angel of light it shone as the Sun in the Firmament in majesty and full brightness but is now only as the Moon pale and dim scarce able to do us any service unless it borrows some rays from the Sun of Righteousness The fall hath done somewhat with it I know not what to call it either much impaired it and diminisht its light in its essence or else much incumbred or opprest it in its operations as a candle under a vail or lanthorn which though it burn and shine as truly as on a candlestick yet doth not so much service in enlightning the room the soul within us is much changed either is not in its essence so perfect and active and bright as once it was or else being infused in a sufficient perfection is yet terribly overcast with a gloom and cloud of corruptions that it can scarce find any passage to get through and shew it self in our actions for the corruptible body presseth down the soul c. Wisd ix 15. And from this caution grow many lower branches whence we may gather some fruit as in the second place infinitely to humble our selves before God for the first sin of Adam which brought this darkness on our souls and account it not the meanest or slightest of our miseries that our whole nature is defiled and bruised and weakned to aggravate every circumstance and effect of that sin against thy self which has so liberaâ—ly afforded fâ—el to the flames of lust of rage and wild desire and thereby without Gods gracious mercy to the flames of Hell This is a most profitable point yet little thought on and therefore would deserve a whole Sermon to discuss to you 3. To observe and acknowledge the necessity of some brighter light then this of nature can afford us and with all the care and vigilancy of our hearts all the means that Scripture will lend us and at last with all the importunities and groans and violence of our souls to petition and sollicit and urge Gods illuminating spirit to break out and shine on us To undertake to interpret any antient Author requires say the Grammarians a man of deep and various knowledge because there may be some passage or other in that book which will refer to every sort of learning in the world whence 't is observed that the old Scholiasts and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were most exquisit Scholars Thus certainly will not any ordinary skill serve turn to interpret and explain many dark sayings which were at first written in the book of our hearts but are now almost past reading only that omniscient Spirit that hath no shadow of ignorance the finger that first writ must be beseeched to read and point out the riddle We must make use of that rotten staffe of nature as far as its strength will bear and that very gingerly too never daring to lean or lay our whole weight upon it lest it either wound with its splinter or else break under us our help and stay and subsistence and trust must be in the Lord our eyes must wait on his inlightning Spirit and never lose a ray that falls from it Fourthly to clear up as much as we can and reinliven this light within us And that first By stirring up and blowing and so nourishing every spark we find within us The least particle of fire left in a coal may by pains be improved into a flame 't is held possible to restore or at least preserve for a time any thing that is not quite departed If thou findest but a spark of Religion in thee which saith A God is to be worship't care and â—edulity and the breath of prayers may in time by this inflame the whole man into a bright fire of Zeal towards God In brief whatever thou dost let not any the least atome of that fire which thou once feelest within thee ever go out quench not the weakest motion or inclination even of reason towards God or goodness how unpolish't soever this Diamond be yet if it do but glissen 't is too pretious to be cast away And then 2. By removing all hindrances or incumbrances that may any way weaken or oppress it and these you have learnt to be corrupt affections That democracy and croud and press and common people of the soul raises a tumult in every street within us that no voice of law or reason can be heard If you will but disgorge and purge the stomach which hath been thus long opprest if you will but remove this cloud of crudities then will the brain be able to send some rayes down to the heart which till then are sure to be caught up by the way anticipated and devoured For the naked simplicity of the soul the absence of all disordered passions is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Aphrodiseus that kindly familiar good temper of the soul by which it is able to find out and judge of truth In brief if thou canst crop thy luxuriant passions if thou canst either expel or tame all the wild beasts within thee which are born to devour any thing which is weak or innocent then will that mild voice within thee in the cave take heart and shew it self In the mean time this hurry of thy senses drowns that reason and thou canst not hope to see as long as like old Tobit the dung and white film doth remain upon thine eyes If thou canst use any means to dissolve this dung of affections which an habit of sin hath baked within thee the scales will fall off from thine eyes and the blind Tobit shall be restored to his sight In brief do but fortifie thy reasonable soul against all the undermining and faction and violence of these sensual passions do but either depose or put to the sword that Atheistical Tyrant and Usurper as Iamblichus calls the affections do but set reason in the chair and hear and observe his dictates and thou hast disburthened thy self of a great company of weights and pressures thou wilt be able to look more like a man to hold thy head more couragiously and bend thy thoughts more resolutely toward Heaven and I shall expect and hope and pray and almost be confident that if thou dost perform sincerely what thy own soul prompts thee to Gods spirit is nigh at hand to perfect and crown and seal thee up to the day of redemption In the next place thou maist see thine own guilts the clearer call thy self to an account even of those things which thou thinkest thou art freest from that which the Apostle in this chapter and part of my discourse hath charged the Heathens with and if thou lookest narrowly I am afraid thou wilt spy thine own picture in that glass and find thy self in many things as arrant a Gentile as any of them For any sincere care of God or Religion how few of us are there that ever entertained so unpleasant
dead in trespasses and sins the making of a carcass walk the natural old man to spring again and move spiritually is as great a miracle as that Now the soul in that it produces life and motion the exercise of life in the body is called a principle that is a spring or fountain of life because all comes from it in like manner that which moves this soul and enables it to do that which naturally it could not that which gives it a new life which before it lived not furnisheth it with spiritual powers to quell and subdue all carnal affections which were before too hard for it this I say is called properly an inward principle and an inward because it is inwardly and secretly infused doth not only outwardly assist us as an auxiliary at a dead lift but is sown and planted in our hearts as a soul to the soul to elevate and enable it above it self hath its seat and palace in the regenerate heart and there exercises dominion executes judgment and that is commonly either by prison or banishment it either fetters or else expels all insolent rebellious lusts Now the new principle by which not the man but the new man the Christian lives is in a word the spirit of God which unites it self to the regenerate heart so that now he is said to be a godly man a spiritual man from the God from the spirit as before a living reasonable man from the soul from the reason that inform'd and ruled in him which is noted by that distinction in Scripture betwixt the regenerate and unregenerate exprest by a natural or animal and a spiritual man Those creatures that have no soul in them are called naturals having nothing but nature within to move them others which have a soul animals or living creatures by both which the unregenerate is signified indifferently because the soul which he hath stands him in little stead his flesh rules all and then he is also called a carnal man for all his soul he is but a lump of flesh and therefore whether you say he hath a soul and so call him an animal or hath not a soul and so call him a meer natural there is no great difference in it But now the regenerate man which hath more then a soul Gods spirit to enliven him he is of another rank 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a spiritual man nay only he properly a Christian because he lives by Christ He lives yet not he but Christ liveth in him Gal. ii 20. This being premised that now you know what this new creature is he that lives and moves by a new principle all that is behind will be clearliest presented to you by resolving these four questions 1. whence it comes 2. where it lodges 3. when it enters 4. what works it performs there To the first whence it comes the answer is clear and punctual John iii. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from above from whence comes every good and especially every perfect gift James i. 17. but this most peculiarly by a several and more excellent way then any thing else Since Christs ascension the Holy Ghost of all the persons in the Trinity is most frequently employed in the work of descending from Heaven and that by way of mission from the Father and the Son according to the promise of Christ John xv 26. The comforter whom I will send from the Father Now this spirit being present every where in its essence is said to come to us by communication of his gifts and so to be peculiarly resident in us as God is in the Church from which Analogy our bodies are called the Temples of the Holy Ghost which is in us 1 Cor. vi 19. God sends then his Spirit into our hearts and this I said by a peculiar manner not by way of emission as an arrow sent out of a bow which loses its union which it had with the bow and is now fastned in the But or white nor properly by way of infusion as the soul is in the body infus'd from God yet so also that it is in a manner put into our hands and is so in the man's possession that hath it that it is neither in any mans else nor yet by any extraordinary tye annext to God from whom it came but by way of irradiation as a beam sent from the Sun that is in the air indeed and that substantially yet so as it is not separated from the Sun nay consists only in this that it is united to the Sun so that if it were possible for it to be cut off from the Sun it would desist to be it would illuminate no longer So that you must conceive these beams of Gods Spirit at the same time in the Christians heart and in the spirit and so uniting that Spirit to the heart as you may conceive by this proportion I have a javelin or spear in my hand if I would mischief any thing or drive it from me I dart it out of my hand at it from which Gods judgments are compared to shooting and lightning He hath bent his bow he hath sent forth his arrows he cast forth lightnings Psal xviii 14. But if I like any thing that I meet with if I would have it to me I reach out my spear and fasten in it but still hold the spear in my hand and having pierct it draw it to me Thus doth God reach forth his graces to us and as I may so say by keeping one end in his hand and fastning the other in us plucks and unites us to himself from which regeneration is ordinarily called an union with Christ and this union by a strong able band 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Euseb his phrase which no man can cut asunder 'T is impossible to divide or cut a spirit and this bond is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a spiritual one and that made St. Paul so confident That no creature should ever separate him Rom. viii 39. And this God does by way of emanation as a loadstone sending out its effluvia or magnetick atomes draws the iron to it self which never stays till it be united Thus do you see from whence this principle comes to me and in what manner from Gods Spirit by this means uniting me to himself To the second question where it lodges my answer is in the heart of man in the whole soul not in the understanding not in the will a distinction of faculties invented by Philosophers to puzzle and perplex Divines and put them to needless shifts but I say in the whole soul ruling and guiding it in all its actions enabling it to understand and will spiritually conceived I say and born in the soul but nursed and fed and encreased into a perfect stature by the outward Organs and actions of the body for by them it begins to express and shew it self in the world by them the habit is exerted and made perfect the seed shot
grace into holy spiritual acts of Faith and Obedience from which 't is ordinarily said that Infants baptized have habitual Faith as they may be also said to have habitual repentance and the habits of all other graces because they have the root and seed of those beauteous healthful flowers which will actually flourish then when they come to years And this I say is so frequent to be performed at Baptism that ordinarily 't is not wrought without that means and in those means we may expect it as our Church doth in our Liturgies where she presumes at every Baptism that it hath pleased God to regenerate the Infant by his holy Spirit And this may prove a solemn piece of comfort to some who suspect their state more then they need and think 't is impossible that they should be in a regenerate condition because they have not as yet found any such notable change in themselves as they see and observe in others These men may as well be jealous they are not men because they cannot remember when their soul came to them if they can find the effects of spiritual life in themselves let them call it what they will a religious education or a custom of well doing or an unacquaintedness with sin let them comfort themselves in their estate and be thankful to God who visited them thus betimes let it never trouble them that they were not once as bad as other men but rather acknowledge Gods mercy who hath prevented such a change and by uniting them to him in the cradle hath educated and nursed them up in familiarity with the Spirit Lastly the Spirit sometimes enters into our hearts upon occasional emergencies the sense of Gods judgments on our selves or others the reflexion on his mercies the reading good Books falling into vertuous acquaintance but most eminently at and with the preaching of the Word and this by degrees as it seems to us but indeed at some one especial season or other which yet perhaps we are not able to discern and here indeed are we ordinarily to expect this guest if we have not yet found him here doth it love to be cherished and refreshed and warm'd within us if we have it for even it is the power of God unto salvation Rom. i. 16. The 3. condition in which this Spirit comes into our hearts is as an inhabitant or house-keeper The Spirit saith Austin first is in us then dwels in us before it dwels it helps us to believe when it dwels it helps and perfects and improves our faith and accomplishes it with all other concomitant graces So I say here the Spirit is then said to inhabit and keep house in us not as soon as it is entertained and received but when it breaks forth into acts and declares it self before all men When men see our good works and glorifie our Father Matth. v. 16. Before we were said to live in the Spirit now to walk as you shall see the phrases used distinctly Gal v. 25 〈◊〉 walk that is to go about conspicuously in the sight of all men breaking forth into works as the Sun after the dispersions of a mist or cloud whereby all men see and acknowledge his faith and obedience and find their own evil wayes reprehended and made manifest by his good as is noted in the 13. verse All things that are reproved are made manifest by the light Semblable to which is that of the Atheists repining at the godly man 2 Wisd ii 14. He is made to reprove our thoughts Thus is the third Quere resolved also when this inward principle enters 1. It comes as an harbenger in every outward restraint by which God keeps us from sinning 2. It enters as a guest in some season or other once for all In the womb at Baptism at some Sermon sometimes at a notable tempest shaking and stirring us violently ordinarily and for the most part not to be discerned by us and lastly it comes and dwels with us and shews it self in its works yet that not at any set time after his entrance not constantly without ever covering his face but when and as often as it pleases and the flesh resisteth not To the last Quere What works it performs the answer shall be brief every thing that may be called spiritual Faith Repentance Charity Hope Self-denial and the rest but these not promiscuously or in an heap altogether but by a wise dispensation in time and by degrees The soul being enabled by this inward principle is equally disposed to the producing of all these and as occasions do occur doth actually perform and produce them so that in my conceit that question concerning the priority of Repentance or Faith is not either of such moment or difficulty as is by some disputers pretended The seeds of them both are at one time planted in the soul and then there is no Faith in any subject but there is Repentance also nor Repentance without Faith So that where it is said Without Faith 't is impossible to please God in any thing else 't is true but argues no necessary precedence of it before other graces for the habits of them all are of the same age in us and then also will it be as true that without Repentance or without Love Faith it self cannot please God for if it be truly acceptable Faith there is both Repentance and Love in the same womb to keep it company Thus are we wont to say that only Faith justifieth but not Faith alone and the reason these promises in Scripture are made sometimes to one grace precisely sometimes to another is because they are all at once rooted in the man and in their habits chain'd together inseparably Faith saves every man that hath it and yet the believing'st man under Heaven shall not be saved without Charity Charity hides a multitude of sins and yet the charitablest man in the world shall never have his score cross't without Repentance A catalogue of these fruits of the Spirit you may at your leisure make up to your selves for your tryal out of the fifth to the Gal. from the 22. verse and 1 Peter i 5. All these graces together though some belonging to one some to another faculty of the soul are yet all at once conceived in it at once begin their life in the heart though one be perhaps sooner ready to walk abroad and shew it self in the world then another As in the 2 of Kings iv 34. Elisha went up on the bed and lay on the child and put his mouth on his mouth and eyes upon his eyes and hands upon his hands and stretched himself upon the child and the flesh of the child waxed warm and verse 35. the child sneezed seven times and opened his eyes Thus I say doth the Spirit apply it self unto the soul and measure it self out to every part of it and then the spiritual life comes at once into the soul
as motion beginning in the centre diffuses it self equally through the whole sphere and affecteth every part of the circumference and the flesh of the child waxed warm where the flesh indefinitely signifieth every part of it together and in the spiritual sense the whole soul and this is when the inward principle when the habit enters Then for acts of life one perhaps shews it self before another as the child first sneezed seven times a violent disburthening it self of some troublesom humors that tickle in the head to which may be answerable our spiritual clearing and purging our selves by Self-denial the laying aside every weight Heb. xii 1. then opened his eyes which in our spiritual creature is spiritual illumination or the eye of Faith these I say may first shew themselves as acts and yet sometimes others before them yet all alike in the habit all of one standing one conception one plantation in the heart though indeed ordinarily like Esay and Jacob the rougher come out first We begin our spiritual life in Repentance and contrition and with many harsh twinges of the Spirit and then comes Faith like Jacob at the heels smooth and soft applying all the cordial promises to our penitent souls In brief if any judgment be to be made which of these graces is first in the regenerate man and which rules in chief I conceive Self denial and Faith to be there first and most eminent according to that notable place Matth xvi 24. where Christ seems to set down the order of graces in true Disciples Let him deny himself and take up his cross that is forgo all his carnal delights and embrace all manner of punishments and miseries prepare himself even to go and be crucified and then follow me that is by a lively faith believe in Christ and prize him before all the world besides and indeed in effect these two are but one though they appear to us in several shapes for Faith is nothing without Self-denial it cannot work till our carnal affections be subjected to it Believe a man may and have flesh and fleshly lust in him but unless Faith have the pre-eminence Faith is no Faith The man may be divided betwixt the law of his members and the law of his mind so many degrees of flesh so many of spirit but if there be constantly but an even balance or more of flesh then spirit if 3 degrees of spirit and 5 of flesh then can there not be said to be any true Self-denial and consequently any Faith no more then that can be said to be hot which hath more degrees of cold then heat in it In brief 't is a good measure of Self-denial that sets his faith in his Throne and when by it faith hath conquered though not without continual resistance when it hath once got the upper hand then is the man said to be regenerate whereupon it is that the regenerate state is called the life of Faith Faith is become a principle of the greatest power and activity in the soul And so much for these 4 Queries from which I conceive every thing that is material and directly pertinent to instruct you and open the estate of a new creature may be resolved And for other niceties how far we may prepare our selves how co-operate and joyn issue with the spirit whether it work irresistibly by way of physical influence or moral perswasion whether being once had it may totally or finally be lost again and the like these I say if they are fit for any I am resolved are not necessary for a Countrey Auditory to be instructed in 'T will be more for your profit to have your hearts raised then your brains puft up to have your spirits and souls inwardly affected to an earnest desire and longing after it which will perhaps be somewhat performed if we proceed to shew you the necessity of it and unavailableness of all things else and that by way of Use and Application And for the necessity of renewedness of heart to demonstrate that I will only crave of you to grant me that the performance of any one duty towards God is necessary and then it will prove it self for it is certain no duty to God can be performed without it For 't is not a fair outside a slight performance a bare work done that is accepted by God if it were Cain would deserve as much thanks for his sacrifice as his brother Abel for in the outside of them there was no difference unless perhaps on Cain's side that he was forwardest in the duty and offered first Gen. iv 3. But it is the inside of the action the marrow and bowels of it that God judges by If a sum in gross or a bag sealed up would pass for payment in Gods audit every man would come and make his accounts duly enough with him and what he wanted in gold for his payment should be made up in counters But God goes more exactly to work when he comes to call thee to an account of thy stewardship he is a God of thoughts and a searcher of the heart and reins and 't will then be a harder business to be found just when he examines or clear when he will judge The least spot and blemish in the face of it the least maim or imperfection in the offering the least negligence or coldness in the performance nay the least corruption in the heart of him that doth it hath utterly spoiled the sacrifice Be the bulk and skin of the work never so large and beautiful to the eye if it come not from a sanctified renewed gracious heart it will find no acceptance but that in the Prophet Who hath required it at your hands This is not it that God is taken with or such as he commanded it may pass for a complement or a work of course but never be valued as a duty or real service Resolve thy self to dwell no where but in the Church and there like Simeon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Euseb plant thy self continually in a Pillar with thy eyes and words fixt and shot up perpetually towards Heaven If there be not a spirit within thee to give light to the eyes to add sighs and groans to the voice all this that thou hast done is nothing but as a blind mans pretensions to sight and a dumb mans claim to speech and so in like manner in all our duties which the world and carnal men set a price on And the reason is because every spiritual seeming work done by a natural man is not truly so 't is nothing less then that which it is said to be his prayers are not prayers lip-labour perhaps but not devotion his serving of God is formality not obedience his hope of Heaven not a hope but a phancy If God or Satan a judge or a tempter should come to reason with him about it he would soon be worsted never be able to maintain his title to it
In brief the fairest part of a natural man that which is least counterfeit his desire and good affections to spiritual things which we call favourably natural desires of spiritual obedience these I say are but false desires false affections 1. They have no solidity or permanency in the will only fluid and transitory some flight sudden wishes tempests and storms of a troubled mind soon blown over the least temptation will be sure to do it They are like those wavering prayers without any stay of faith Jam. 1. 6. like a wave of the sea driven by the wind and tost 2. That being which they have is counterfeit they are not that which they are taken for We are wont to say that acts are distinguished by their objects he sees truly which judges the thing to be that that it is 't is true indeed that another man sees he that takes blew for green but he does not see truly so also he only willeth a good thing that wills that in it which is truly good Now the natural man when he is said to chuse spiritual things as Heaven Happiness and the like he desires not a spiritual but a carnal thing in desiring Heaven he desires somewhat that would free him from misery in happiness a natural or moral good that would be acceptable to any creature under Heaven and so a Turk will desire paradise and that very impatiently in hope that he shall have his fill of lust there Generally you may mark that in such desires of spiritual things 't is some carnality that moves unregenerate men somewhat it is that may please the flesh and then 't is not the spiritual but the carnal part of it that is their object which they woo and make love too which you may judge of by this that they are frequent and importunate in their wishes for glory seldom or never for grace though that also may be wished for carnally to make us more renowned and better esteemed in the world For the most part I say they desire glory for that will make them happy and out of danger of worldly misfortunes remission of sins for these lie heavy on their consciences and give them many a twinge that they would fain be eased of but seldom petition for grace as if holiness without other conveniencies or gains were not worth the having And this arises from hence that our love of Christ grows by sending out and fastning our affections on him as an object fittest for our turns that will advantage us most but not by receiving in his Image and shape into our souls this indeed would make us not only love but imitate him and having once tasted long after him this would sanctifie our souls whereas the other doth but only satisfie our greedy affections By what hath been said 't is plain enough though it might be much more amplified that grace is of absolute necessity to performance of any holy work acceptable to God that without it whatsoever is done in spiritual matters is carnal not indeed spiritual but equivocally and absurdly so called The natural mans desires of Heaven are not desires of Heaven his faith no faith his believing of the Scripture infidelity because he doth not apply them particularly to himself to obey them In sum when he prayes hopes or give alms he does somewhat indeed and 't is well done of him but he doth not truly either pray or hope or give alms there is some carnality in them that hath poysoned them and quite altered the complexion the constitution and inward qualities of the work And then indeed how impatient should every Christian be of this Coloquintida within him There 's mors in ollâ as the Prophet once spake that 's death in the pot that so infects and kills every thing that comes out of it How should we abhor and loath and detest this old leaven that so besowres all our actions this Heathenism of ungenerate carnal nature which makes our best works so unchristian To insist longer upon this were but to encrease your thirst not to satisfie it to make you sensible of that marasmus and desperate drought that hath gone over your souls but not to help you to any waters for the cure that shall come next as the last work of this exercise to be performed in a word Having learnt what this new creature is and how absolutely necessary to a Christian O let us not defer one minute longer to examine our estates whether we are yet renewed or no and by the acts which we daily perform observe whether the sanctifying habit be as yet infused into our souls If the grounds of our best duties that which moves us in our holiest actions be found upon search to be but carnal if a careful religious education custom of the place which we live in fear of humane laws nay perhaps a good soft tender disposition and the like be the things that make thee love God and perform holy duties and not any inward principle of sanctity within thee I counsel thee to think better of thine estate and consider whether the like motives had it so hapned that thou hadst been born and brought up in Turky might not have made thee worship Mahumet I would be sorry to be rigid I fear thou wilt find they might well then a new course must be taken all thy former heathen carnal or at best good moral life all thy formal performances the best of thy natural desires must be content to be rank't here with circumcision and uncircumcision availing nothing there is no trust or confidence to be placed on these Aegyptian staves of reed Es xxxvi 6. And then if thou wilt not live heartless for ever if ever thou meanst to move or walk or do any thing you must to that Creator of Spirits and Lover of Souls and never leave solliciting till he hath breathed another breath into your nostrils another Soul into your Soul you must lay your self at his feet and with all the violence and Rhetorick and humility that these wants will prompt thee to and woo and importune the Holy Spirit to overshadow thee to conceive all holy graces spiritually in thee and if thou canst not suddenly receive a gracious answer that the Holy Ghost will come in unto thee and lodge with thee this night yet learn so much patience from thy beggarly estate as not to challenge him at thy own times but comfortably to wait his leisure There is employment enough for thee in the while to prepare the room against his coming to make use of all his common graces to cleanse and reform thy foul corruptions that when the Spirit comes it may find thee swept and garnish't All the outward means which God hath afforded thee he commands thee to make use of and will require it at thy hands in the best measure even before thou art regenerate though thou sin in all thy unregenerate performances for want of inward sanctitie yet 't is
better to have obeyed imperfectly then not at all the first is weakness the other desperate presumption the first material partial obedience the second total disobedience Yet whilst thou art preparing give not over praying they are acts very competible thou maist do them both together Whilst thou art a sortifying these little kingdoms within thee send these Embassadors abroad for help that thou maist be capable of it when it comes But above all things be circumspect watch and observe the Spirit and be perpetually ready to receive its blasts let it never have breathed on thee in vain let thine ear be for ever open to its whisperings if it should pass by thee either not heard or not understood 't were a loss that all the treasures upon earth could not repair and for the most part you know it comes not in the thunder Christ seldom speaks so loud now adayes as he did to Saul Acts ix 't is in a soft still voice and I will not promise you that men that dwell in a mill that are perpetually engaged in worldly loud employments or that men asleep shall ever come to hear of it The sum of all my exhortation is after examination to cleanse and pray and watch carefully to cleanse thy self incessantly to pray and diligently to watch for the Sun of Righteousness when he shall begin to dawn and rise and shine in thy heart by grace And do thou O Holy Lord work this whole work in us prepare us by thy outward perfect us by thy inward graces awaken us out of the darkness of death and plant a new seed of holy light and life in us infuse into our heathen hearts a Christian habit of sanctity that we may perform all spiritual duties of holiness that we may glorifie thee here by thy Spirit and be glorified with thee by thy Christ hereafter Now to him that hath elected us hath c. The XVI Serm. 2 Pet. III. 3. Scoffers walking after their own lusts THat we may take our rise luckily and set out with the best advantage that we may make our Preface to clear our passage to our future discourse and so spend no part of our precious time unprofitably we will by way of introduction examine what is here meant 1. by scoffers 2. by walking after their own lusts And first scoffers here do not signifie those whom confidence joyn'd to a good natural wit hath taught to give and play upon every man they meet with which in a moderate use is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 facetiousness in an immoderate scurrility But scoffers here are of a more special stamp those who deal out their scoffs only on God and Religion The word in the original signifies to mock to abuse and that either in words and then 't is rendred scoffing or in our actions when we promise any man to perform a business and then deceive his expectation and then 't is rendred deluding So Matth. ii 16. when Herod saw he was mocked 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he was deluded by the magicians So that in the first primitive sense scoffers must signifie those who either laugh at God or else delude him in not performing what he expects and they by their profession promised In the secondary notion to scoff is by way of argument to oppose any truth contumeliously or bitterly as Solomon begins his discourse of the Atheists scoffs Wisd ii 1. The ungodly said reasoning with themselves and these are said to set their mouth against Heaven managing disputes which have both sting and poyson in them the first to wound and overthrow the truth spoken of the other to infect the auditors with a contrary opinion And these rational scoffs for which Socrates antiently was very famous are ordinarily in form of question as in the Psalmist often Where is now their God i. e. Certainly if they had a God he would be seen at time of need he would now shew himself in their distress In which they do not only laugh at the Israelites for being such fools as to worship him that will not relieve them but implicitely argue that indeed there is no such God as they pretend to worship And just in this manner were the scoffers in my Text who did not only laugh but argue saying Where is the promise of his coming verse 4. perswading themselves and labouring to prove to others that what is spoken of Christs second coming to judgment was but a meer dream a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a bugbear or fable to keep men in awe and therefore laugh at it as the Athenians did at the resurrection Acts xvii 32. and when they heard of the resurrection of the dead some mocked c. i. e. disputed sarcastically and contumeliously against it that certainly there was no such matter And thus also is the same word used of those which joyned their reason and malice to disprove Christs omnipotence Matth. xxvii 42. where they reviled and mocked him saying He saved others himself he cannot save In which speech the bitterest part of the scoff was the reason there used plausible enough amongst ignorant Jews that surely if he had any power he would make use of it for himself Thirdly to scoff is sometimes without words or actions to shew a contempt or neglect of any body So Herods mocking of Christ is set as an expression that he did not think him worthy talking with Luke xxiii 11. He set him at nought and mockt him and sent him back to Pilate he would not vouchsafe to take notice of him nor to be troubled with the examination of so poor contemptible a fellow And so in Aristotle not to know a mans name not to have taken so much notice of him as to remember what to call him is reckoned the greatest neglect the unkindest scoff in the world and is ordinarily taken very tenderly by any one who hath deserved any thing at our hands So that in brief to gather up what we have hitherto scatter'd the scoffers here meant are those who promising themselves to Gods service do delude him when he looks to find them amongst his servants i. e. remain errand Atheists under a Christian profession who by letting loose either their wits to prophane jests or their reason to heathenish conceits and disputings or their actions to all manner of disobedience demonstrate that indeed they care not for God they scarce remember his name Neither is he in all their thoughts Psalm x. 4. In the next place walking afâ—er their own lusts is giving themselves liberty to follow all the directions of corrupt polluted nature in entertaining all conceits and practises which the pride of their understadings and rankness of their affections shall propose to them in opposition to God And this without any reluctancy or twinge of conscience walking on as securely and confidently as if it were indeed the right high-way So that now you have seen the outside of the Text and
go about to make our selves capable of receiving this mercy conditionally offer'd us Nay do we not by our wilful stupidity and pertinacious continuing in sin nullifie in respect of us all that satisfaction of Christ and utterly abandon those means which must bring home this remission to us The truth is our faith runs only on general terms we are willing to lay all our sins on Christs shoulders and perswade our selves somewhat slightly and coldly that he will bear them in the root and in the fruit in the bullion and in the coyn in the gross and in the retail i. e. both our original and our actual transgressions but we never take any course to rest satisfied that we in particular shall participate of this happiness This requires the humiliation of the whole man the spirit of bondage for a while afterwards a second purity and virginity of the soul recovered by repentance and then a soberly grounded faith and confidence and an expressing of it by our own forgiving of others And till this piece of our Creed be thus explained and interpreted in our conversation we remain but confident Atheists not able to perswade any body that hears us that indeed we believe what we profess Sixthly and lastly The resurrection of the body and its consequent everlasting life is the close of our Faith and end and prop and encouragement and consummation of our hope and yet we take most pains of all to prove our selves Infidels in this our whole carriage both in the choice and observance of our Religion shew that we do not depend on it that we put no confidence in the resurrection If we went on this assurance we should contemn any worldly encouragement and make the same thing both the object and end of our service We should scorn to take notice of so poor a thing as profit or convenience is in a matter of so high importance knowing and expecting that our reward shall be great in Heaven This one thought of a resurrection and an infinite reward of any faithful undertaking of ours would make us disdain and almost be afraid of any temporal recompense for our worship of God for fear it should by paying us before-hand deprive us of that everlasting one We should catch and be ambitious of that expression of devotion which were most painful and least profitable as to worldly advantage and yet we in the stupidity of Atheistical hearts are so improvidently covetous so hasty and impatient in our Religion that unless some present gain allure and draw us we have no manner of life or spirit or alacrity to this as we count it unprofitable service of God The least incumbrance in the world will fright us from the greatest forwardness and nimbleness and activity in Religion and the least appearance of promotion or other like encouragement will produce and raise in us these affections and expressions of zeal which the expectation of the resurrection could never work in us Our Religion is somewhat like that of the Samaritans before Christs time either Jews or Heathens according as their King Antiochus would have them after Christs time were perpetually either Jews or Christians according as the Romans their new Lords and Masters either threatned or granted priviledge to the Jews If there were any thing to be gotten by the profession they would be as solemn Christians as any So when the Goths and Vandals over-run Italy and whether upon good affection or compulsion from God I know not spared them that fled to the Basilica in Rome the place where the Christians exercised then I say they which formerly persecuted the Christians now bore them company very friendly to their Churches and to save their lives fled to the Temple for a refuge which before they abomin'd and made use of Christianity for their safe-guard which they would not own for their Religion and hurried to that Sanctuary for their lives which they would not visit for their Souls The condition of our Religion is like that which is upbraided to Ephraim Hos X. 11. Ephraim is like an Heifer that loveth to tread out the Corn. 'T was prohibited by the law to muzzle the Ox or Heifer that treadeth out the Corn 't was allowed them to feed as long as they did the work and that made Ephraim love the toil so well because that at the very time he performed the labour he enjoy'd the fruit of it had as we say his wages in his hand had some present emolument that would ingratiate his work to him was not left to such a tedious expectation to so long a date as to wait for his reward till the resurrection those were too hard terms for him he could not endure to be ty'd so long up to the empty rack or feed upon the bit And thus hasty are we in the exacting of our reward for our service of God we will never set our hands to it unless we may make our conditions we are resolved not to be such fools as to serve God for nought to spend the quickest of our spirits in a sowre crabbed profession and expect our thanks at dooms-day This plainly demonstrates that however our theory be possest our practice places no trust no confidence no assurance in that part of our Creed the resurrection Again 't was an excellent argument to perswade doubtful Christians in the youth and non-age of the Church of the certainty of the resurrection that religious men and those whom undoubtedly God loved were full of sufferings in this world and lived and died many of them without any expression of Gods favour to them which made them certainly to conclude that no doubt God hath some other course to exhibit himself in the riches of his mercy to them and seeing there was no hope but in another world Verily there should be a reward for the righteous doubtless there is a God that judgeth the Earth and by this argument we may try our selves for the sincerity of our faith in this business If we can be patient to endure afflictions here and not complain or grumble for a respite and deliverance but keep all our hopes to be accomplisht defer all our happiness to be performed to us at the resâ—rrection and though God kill us yet trust in him and be able to see through death in a trust That our Redeemer lives and that with these eyes we shall behold him then may we chear up and perswade our selves on good grounds that our hearts and lives do assent to the resurrection which our tongues brag of Take no heaviness to heart but drive it away and remember the end But if this consideration cannot digest the least oppression of this life cannot give us patience for the lightest encumbrance but for all our Creed we still fly out into all outrages of passion and extacies of impatience we plainly betray our selves men of this present world whose happiness or misery is only that which is temporary and
before our eyes are not able by the perspective of faith to behold that which easily we might all our wants relieved all our injuries revenged all our wounds bound up in the day of the resurrection but all our life long we repine and grumble and are discontented as men without hope and whilst we do thus what do we but act the part of these Atheists here in my Text scoffing and saying Where is the promise of his coming in the next verse to my Text. This very impatience and want of skill in bearing the brunts of this our warfare is but a piece of cowardly Atheism either a denying or mocking at the resurrection Every sigh is a scoff every groan a gibe every fear a sly art of laughing at the stupidity of those who depend upon the fulfilling of the promise of his coming Lastly say we what we will we live as if there were no resurrection as Sadduces if not as Atheists all our designs look no further then this life all our contrivances are defeated and frustrate in the grave we manage our selves with so little understanding that any spectator would judge by our actions that 't is no injury to compare us to the beasts that perish and never return again Certainly if we had any design upon Heaven or another life we would here make some provision for it Make our selves friends of our unrighteous Mammon that when we fail they may receive us into everlasting habitations i. e. use those good things that God hath given us with some kind of providence that they may stand us in stead when we have need of them i. e. not only as instruments to sin for that is to get us more enemies but as harbingers to be sent before us to Heaven 'T was a bitter Sarcasm of the fool to the Abbot on his death-bed that the Abbot deserved his staff as being the verier fool of the two that being straight to die to remove his Tent to another world he had sent none of his houshold-stuff before him The truth is we live generally as men that would be very angry much displeased if any should perswade us there were a resurrection the very mentioning of it to us might seem to upbraid our ordinary practices which have nothing but the darkness of death and silence of the grave to countenance them I may justly say that many ignorant Heathens which were confident there was nothing beyond this life expected certainly with death to be annihilated and turn again into a perpetual nothing yet either for the awe they bore to vertue or fear of disgrace after death kept themselves more regularly lived more carefully then many of us Christians And this is an horrid accusation that will lye very heavy upon us that against so many illuminated understandings the ignorance of the Gentiles should rise up in judgment and the learned Christian be found the most desperate Atheist I have been too large upon so rigid a Doctrine as this and I love and pray God I may always have occasion to come up to this place upon a more merciful Subject but I told you even now out of Lev. xix 17. that 't was no small work of mercy 't was the most friendly office that could be performed any man to reprehend and as the Text saith Not to suffer sin upon thy neighbour especially so sly a covert lurking sin as this of Atheism which few can discern in themselves I shall now come to Application which because the whole Doctrine spoke morally to your affections and so in a manner prevented Uses shall be only a recapitulation and brief knitting up of what hitherto hath been scattered at large Seeing that the Devils policy of deluding and bewitching and distorting our Understandings either with variety of false gods or heresies raised upon the true is now almost clearly out-dated and his skill is all bent to the deforming of the Will and defacing the character of God and the expression of the sincerity of our faith in our lives we must deal with this enemy at his own weapon learn to order our munition according to the assault and fortifie that part most impregnably toward which the tempest binds and threatens There is not now so much danger to be feared from the inrode of Hereticks in opinion as in practice not so much Atheism to be dreaded from the infidelity of our brains as the Heathenism and Gentilism of our lusts which even in the midst of a Christian profession deny God even to his face And therefore our chiefest Frontiers and Fortifications must be set up before that part of the soul our most careful Watch and Centinel placed upon our affections lest the Devil enter there and depopulate the whole Christian and plant the Atheist in his room To this purpose we must examine what seeds are already sown what treachery is a working within and no doubt most of us at the first cast of the eye shall find great store unless we be partial to our selves and bring in a verdict of mercy and construe that weakness which indeed signifies Atheism When upon examination we find our lives undermining our belief our practices denying the authority of Scripture and no whit forwarder to any Christian duty upon its commands When we find Gods essence and Attributes reviled and scoffed at in our conversation his omnipresence contemned by our confidence in sinning and argued against by our banishing God out of all our thoughts his all sufficiency doubted of by our distrusts and our scorn to depend upon it When we perceive that our carriages do fall off at this part of our belief in Christ that he shall come again to be our Judge and by our neglect of those works especially of mercy which he shall then require of us shew that indeed we expect him not or think of him as a Judge but only as a Saviour When we observe our Wills resisting the gifts and falsifying the Attribute whilst our Creed confesses the Person of the Holy Ghost and see how little how nothing of the sanctifying spirit of the earnest of our regeneration is in our hearts and we still stupidly sensless of the want When we believe forgiveness of sins and that only upon condition of repentance and yet abhor so much as to hear or think of the performing of it or to make good that mercy to others which our selves challenge of God Lastly when we prove to our selves and all the world beside by our requiring of a present reward for all our goodness and ruling our Religion to our earthly profit by our impatience of any affliction by our heathenish neglect and stupidity and riot that we do not in earnest look for the resurrection to life When I say by a just but exact survey and inquest we find these so many degrees of secret Atheism in us then must we shrift and purge and cleanse and rinse our souls from these dregs of Heathenism then must we humble
among all other moral vertues they have purchased humility the best if there be any preparative for the receiving of grace Mean while we are not to be mistaken as if we thought Gods purposes tyed to mans good behaviour or mans moral goodness to woo and allure Gods Spirit as that the Almighty is not equally able to sanctifie the foulest soul by his converting grace and the less polluted or that he requires mans preparation but our position is that in ordinary charitable reason we ought to judge more comfortably and hope more confidently of a meer moral man naturally more careful of his wayes that he shall be both called and saved that God will with his Spirit perfect and crown his morally good though imperfect endeavours then of another more debauch't sinner utterly negligent of the commands of either God or Nature Which position I have in brief proved though nothing so largely as I might in confutation of them who do utterly condemn unregenerate morality and deject it below the lowest degree of prophaneness as if they would teach a man his way to Heaven by boasting arrogantly what Paul converted confesses humbly I am the nearer to Christs Salvation because of all sinners I am the chief The Use in brief of this Thesis shall be for those who not as yet find the power of the regenerating spirit in them for I am to fear many of my auditors may be in this case and I pray God they feel and work and pray themselves out of it the Use I say is for those who are not yet full possessors of the spirit to labour to keep their unregeneracy spotless from the greater offence that if they are not yet called to the preferment of Converts and Saints the second part of Heaven that earthly City of God that yet they will live orderly in that lower regiment wherein they yet remain and be subject to the law of nature till it shall please God to take them into a new Common-wealth under the law of grace to improve their natural abilities to the height and bind their hands and hearts from the practice and study of outragious sins by those ordinary restraints which nature will afford us such as are a good disposition education and the like not to leave and refer all to the miraculous working of God and to encrease our sins for the magnifying of the vertue in recalling us God requires not this glory at our hands that we should peremptorily over-damn our selves that he may be the more honoured in saving us His mercy is more known to the world then to need this woful foil to illustrate it God is not wont to rake Hell for converts to gather Devils to make Saints of the Kingdom of Heaven would suffer great violence if only such should take it If Saul were infinitely sinful before he proved an Apostle though by the way we hear him profess he had lived in all good conscience yet expect not thou the same miracle nor think that the excess of sins is the cue that God ordinarily takes to convert us The Fathers in an obedience to the discipline and pedagogy of the old Law possest their soule in patience expecting the prophecied approach of the new did not by a contempt of Moses precipitate and hasten the coming of the Messias Cornelius liv'd a long while devoutly and gave much alms till at last God call'd him and put him in a course to become a Christian and do thou if thou art not yet called wait the Lords leisure in a sober moral conversation and fright not him from thee with unnatural abominations God is not likely to be wooed by those courses which nature loaths or to accept them whom the world is ashamed of In brief remember Saul and Cornelius Saul that he not many were called from a profest blasphemer Cornelius that before he was called he prayed to God alway and do thou endeavour to deserve the like mercy and then in thy prayer confess thine undeserving and petition grace as grace that is not as our merit but as his free-will favour not as the desert of our morality but a stream from the bounty of his mercy who we may hope will crown his common graces with the fulness of his Spirit And now O powerful God on those of us which are yet unregenerate bestow thy restraining grace which may curb and stop our natural inordinacy and by a sober careful continent life prepare us to a better capability of thy sanctifying Spirit wherewith in good time thou shalt establish and seal us up to the day of redemption And thus much concerning Saul unconverted how of all sinners he was the chief not absolutely that he surpassed the whole world in rankness of sin but respectively to his later state that few or none are read to have been translated from such a pitch of sin to Saint-ship Now follows the second consideration of him being proceeded Paul i. e. converted and then the question is Whether and how Paul converted may be said the chief of all sinners 'T were too speculative a depth for a popular Sermon to discuss the inherence and condition of sin in the regenerate the business will be brought home more profitably to our practice if we drive it to this issue That Paul in this place intending by his own example to direct others how to believe the truth and embrace and fasten on the efficacy of Christs Incarnation hath no better motive to incite himself and others toward it then a recognition of his sins that is a survey of the power of sin in him before and a sense of the relicks of sin in him since his conversion Whence the note is That the greatness of ones sins makes the regenerate man apply himself more fiercely to Christ This faithful saying was therefore to Paul worthy of all acceptation because of all sinners he was the chief St. Paul as every regenerate man is to be observed in a treble posture either casting his eyes backward or calling them in upon himself or else looking forward and aloof and accordingly is to be conceived in a treble meditation either of his life past or present state or future hopes In the first posture and meditation you may see first Paul alone who was before a blasphemer a persecuter and injurious secondly all the regenerate together For when we were in the flesh the motions of sin did work in our members c. and many the like In the second posture and meditation you may observe him retracting an error Acts xxiii deprecating a temptation with earnest and repeated intercessions 2 Cor. xii 7. fighting with and harrasing himself beating down his body and keeping it in subjection lest while he preacht to others he himself might be a cast-away 1 Cor. ix 27. c. In the third posture we find him Rom. vii 25. where after a long disguise he cries out I thank God through Jesus Christ our
Lord. And again Phil. iii. 13. most evidently Forgetting those things that are behind and reaching out to those things which are before I press toward the mark c. like a racer in the heat of his course whose eyes desires to anticipate his feet and enjoy the goal before he reach it These three carriages of the regenerate man fully prove our observation for if either of the two former sights could afford him any content if either his former or present state did not sufficiently terrifie him he would not be so eager on the third it being the folly of humane pride and self-love to contemn any forraign aid as long as it finds either appearance or hope of domestick If in the view of his former life he should find any thing either good or not extremely bad and sinful he would under-prize the mercy of that Saviour that redeem'd him from so poor a guilt if he could observe in his present state any natural firmness or stability any inherent purity any essential justice he might possibly sacrifice to his own nets and reckoning himself in perfect peace with God neither invoke and seek nor acknowledge a Mediatour But when in his former life he shall find nothing but the matter and cause of horrour and amazement nothing but hideous ghastly affrightments yea and a body of damnation when in hope to mend himself and ease his fears he shall fly to the comfort of his present converted state and yet there also espy many thorns of temptations how can he but be frighted out of himself How can he but fly from the scene of those his torments and seek out and importune the mercy of a Saviour which may deliver him out of all his fears After the example of our Apostle in my Text where he does more peremptorily apprehend Christ and more bodily believe That he came into the world to save sinners because of all sinners he was chief making his own sinfulness being the object and external motive of Gods mercy an argument and internal motive of his own faith and confidence The plain meaning of this Thesis is that among men things are not alway valued according to the merit of their nature for then each commodity should be equally prized by all men and the man in health should bestow as much charges on physick as the diseased but each thing bears its several estimation by its usefulness and the riches of every merchandize is encreased accordingly as men to whom it is proferred do either use or want it Moreover this usefulness is not to be reckoned of according to truth but opinion not according to mens real wants but according to the sense which they have of their wants so a man distracted because he hath not so much reason about him as to observe his disease will contemn Hellebore or any other the most precions Recipe for this cure and generally no man will hasten to the Physician or justly value his art and drugs but he whom misery hath taught the use of them So then unless a man have been in some spiritual danger and by the converting Spirit be instructed into a sense and apprehension of it he will not sufficiently observe the benefit and use of a deliverer unless he feel in himself some stings of the relicks of his sin some pricks of the remaining Amorite he will not take notice of the want and necessity which he hath of Christs mediation But when he shall with a tenderness of memory survey the guilt of his former state from the imputation not importunity whereof he is now justified when he shall still feel within him the buffetings of Satan and sensibly observe himself not fully sanctified then and not before will he with a zealous earnestness apprehend the profit yea necessity of a Saviour whose assistance so nearly concerns him The second ground of this position is That an extraordinary undeserved deliverance is by an afflicted man received with some suspition the consideration of the greatness of the benefit makes him doubt of the truth of it and he will scarce believe so important an happiness befaln him because his misery could neither expect nor hope it Hence upon the first notice of it he desires to ascertain it unto his sense by a sudden possession of it and not at all to defer the enjoying of that mercy which his former misery made infinitely worthy of all acceptation Thus may you see a ship-wrackt man recovered to some refuge cling about and almost incorporate himself unto it because the fortune of his life depends on that succour The new regenerate man finding in the Scripture the promise of a Redeemer which shall free him from those engagements which his former bankrupt estate had plung'd him in cannot delay so great an happiness but with a kind of tender fear and filial trembling runs and strives as the Disciples to the Sepulchre to assure his necessitous soul of this acceptable salvation even sets upon his Saviour with a kind of violence and will seem to distrust his promise till his seal shall authorize and confirm it Thus did the greatness of the work of the unexpected resurrection beget in Thomas a suspition and incredulity I will not believe c. where our charity may conjecture that he above all the rest was not absolutely resolved not to believe the resurrection but that he being absent at the first apparition would not take so important a miracle upon trust but desired to have that demonstrated to his sense which did so nearly concern his faith that so by putting his finger into the print of the nails and thrusting his hand into his side he might almost consubstantiate and unite himself unto his Saviour and at once be assured of the truth and partake of the profit of the resurrection Hear but the voice of the Spouse and any further proofs shall be superfluous where in violence and jealousie of love she importunes the Eternal presence of the Beloved Set me as a seal upon thy heart as a seal upon thine arm for love is strong as death jealousie as cruel as the grave the coals thereof are coals of fire which hath a vehement flame She had before often lost her beloved which made her so fiercely fasten on him for having roused him ruit in amplexus she rusht into his embraces she held him and would not let him go Thus you see the jealousie and eagerness of love produc'd by either a former loss or present more then ordinary want of the object both which how pertinent they are to the regenerate man either observing his past sins or instant temptations this discourse hath already made manifest The Use of this Thesis to wit that the greatness of ones sins makes the regenerate man apply himself more fiercely to Christ is first by way of caution that we mistake not a motive for an efficient an impulsive for a principal cause For where we say
and nourishment from the spirit is rather opprest then improved by such an overflow The Christian is thereby much hindred in his progress of good works and cannot serve the Lord with alacrity that so perpetually hangs down his head like a Bulrush Wherefore the Country rule is that that ground is best which is mellow which being crusht will break but not crumble dissolve but not excessively Hence I say the habituate believer need not suspect his estate if he find not in himself such an extremity of violent grief and humiliation as he observes in others knowing that in him such a measure of tears would both soil the face of his devotion and clog the exercise of it His best mediocrity will be to be habitually humbled but actually lively and alacrious in the wayes of godliness not to be too rigid and severe a tyrant over his soul but to keep it in a temper of Christian softness tender under the hand of God and yet man-like and able both in the performance of Gods worship and his own calling And whensoever we shall find our selves in either extreme either too much hardned or too much melted too much elevated or too much dejected then to pray to that Holy Spirit so to fashion the temper of our souls that we neither fail in humbling our selves in some measure for our sins nor yet too cowardly deject and cast down our selves below the courage and comfort and spiritual rejoycing which he hath prescribed us O Holy Lord we are the greatest of sinners and therefore we humble our selves before thee but thou hast sent thy Christ into the world to save sinners and therefore we raise up our spirits again and praise and magnifie thy name And thus much of this point and in brief of the first consideration of these words to wit as they are absolutely a profession of Paul himself to which end we beheld him in his double estate converted and unconverted In his unconverted state we found though a very great sinner yet not absolutely greater then those times brought forth and therefore we were to think of him relatively to his future estate and so we found him the greatest sinner that ever was called in the New Testament into so glorious a Saint Whence we observe the rarity of such conversions that though Saul were yet every blasphemous sinner could not expect to be called from the depth of sin to regeneracy and salvation and this we proved both against the ancient Romans and modern Censors of morality and applied it to the care which we ought to have of keeping our unregeneracy spotless from any reigning sin Afterward we came to Paul converted where we balk't the discourse of the condition of sin in the regenerate and rather observed the effect of it and in it that the greatness of his sin made as Paul so every regenerate man more eagerly to fasten on Christ Which being proved by a double ground we applied first by way of caution how that proposition was to be understood 2. by way of character how a great sinner may judge of his sincere certain conversion 3. by way of comfort to others who find not the effects of humiliation and the like in themselves in such measure as they see in others and so we have past through the first consideration of these words being conceived absolutely as St. Pauls profession of himself we should come to the other consideration as they are set down to us as a pattern or form of confessing the estate and applying the salvation of sinners to our selves which business requiring the pains and being worthy the expence of an entire hour we must defer to a second exercise Now the God which hath created us hath elected redeemed called justified us will sanctifie us in his time will prosper this his ordinance will direct us by his grace to his glory To him be ascribed due the honour the praise the glory the dominion which through all ages of the world have been given to him that sitteth on the Throne to the Holy Spirit and Lamb for evermore The XIX Sermon 1 Tim. I. 15. Of whom I am the chief IN all Humane writings and Learning there is a kind of poverty and emptiness which makes them when they are beheld by a judicious reader look starved and crest-faln their speeches are rather puft up then fill'd they have a kind of boasting and ostentation in them and promise more substance and matter to the ear then they are able to perform really to the understanding whence it falls out that we are more affected with them at the first hearing and if the Orator be clear in his expression we understand as much at the first recital as we are able to do at the hundredth repetition But there is a kind of Excellency in the Scripture a kind of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or sublimity above all other writings in the world The reading of every section of it leaves a sting in the mind and a perpetual conceit of a still imperfect understanding of it An intelligent man at every view finds in it a fresh mystery and still perceives that there is somewhat beyond not yet attain'd to like men digging in mines the deeper he dives he finds the greatest treasure and meets with that under ground which looking on the outward turf or surfice he never imagined to have been there This I observe unto you to shew you the riches both of all and especially of this Scripture whereinto the deeper I dig the more oar I find and having already bestowed one hour in the discussing of it without any violence or wresting or wire-drawing find plenty of new materials We have already handled the Words at large in one consideration as they are a profession of Paul himself I will not repeat you the particular occurrents We now without any more delay of preface come to the second consideration of them as they are spoken by Paul respectively to us i. e. as they are prescribed us for a form of confessing the estate and applying the salvation of sinners unto ourselves teaching each of us for a close of our Faith and Devotion to confess Of all c. Where first the cadence or manner how Paul falls into these words is worthy to be both observed and imitated the chief and whole business of this verse being the truth the acceptable truth of Christs Incarnation with the end of it the saving of sinners He can no sooner name this word sinners but his exceeding melting tenderness abruptly falls off and subsumes Of all sinners c. If there be any thing that concerns sinners I am sure I have my part in that for of that number I am the chief The note by the way briefly is That a tender conscience never hears of the name of sinner but straight applies it to it self It is noted by Aristotle the master of Human Learning that that Rhetorick was very thin and unprofitable very poor and like
is so rich in heads each to be cut off by the work of a several repentance Now in the last place as this sin of all mankind in Adam is considered in its effects so it becomes to us a body of sin and death a natural disorder of the whole man an hostility and enmity of the flesh against the spirit and the parent of all sin in us as may appear Rom. vii and Jam. i. 14. Which that you may have a more compleat understanding of consider it as it is ordinarily set down consisting of three parts 1. A natural defect 2. A moral affection 3. A legal guilt 1. A guiltiness of the breach of the law for these three whatsoever you may think of them are all parts of that sin of our nature which is in and is to be imputed to us called ordinarily original sin in us to distinguish it from that first act committed by Adam of which this is an effect And first that natural defect is a total loss and privation of that primitive justice holiness and obedience which God had furnisht the creature withal a disorder of all the powers of the soul a darkness of the understanding a perversness of the will a debility weakness and decay of all the senses and in sum a poverty and destruction and almost a nothingness of all the powers of soul and body And how ought we to lament this loss with all the veins of our heart to labour for some new strain of expressing our sorrow and in fine to petition that rich grace which may build up all these ruines to pray to God that his Christ may purchase and bestow on us new abilities that the second Adam may furnish us with more durable powers and lasting graces then we had but forfeited in the first The following part of this sin of our nature viz. A moral evil affection is word for word mentioned Rom. vii 5. For there the Greek words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ordinarily translated motions of sins and in the margin the passions of sins are more significantly to be rendred affections of sins i. e. by an usual figure sinful affections That you may the better observe the encumbrances of this branch of this sin which doth so overshadow the whole man and so sence him from the beams and light of the spiritual invisible Sun I am to tell you that the very Heathen that lived without the knowledge of God had no conversation with and so no instruction from the Bible in this matter that these very Heathens I say had a sense of this part of original sin to wit of these evil moral lusts and affections which they felt in themselves though they knew not whence they sprang Hence is it that a Greek Philosopher out of the ancients makes a large discourse of the unsatiable desire and lust which is in every man and renders his life grievous unto him where he useth the very same word though with a significant Epithet added to it that St. James doth c. i. ver 15. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 infinite lust with which as St. James saith a man is drawn away and enticed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so saith he that part of the mind in which these lusts dwell is perswaded and drawn or rather falls backward and forward 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which lust or evil concupiscence he at last defines to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an unsattable intemperance of the appetite never filled with a desire never ceasing in the prosecution of evil and again he calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our birth and nativity derived to us by our parents i. e. an evil affection hereditary to us and delivered to us as a legacy at our birth or nativity all which seems a clear expression of that original lust whose motions they felt and guest at its nature Hence is it that it was a custom among all of them I mean the common Heathen to use many ways of purgations especially on their children who at the imposition of their names were to be lustrated and purified with a great deal of superstition and ceremony such like as they used to drive away a plague or a cure for an house or City As if nature by instinct had taught them so much Religion as to acknowledge and desire to cure in every one this hereditary disease of the soul this plague of mans heart as 't is called 1 Kings viii 38. And in sum the whole learning of the Wisest of them such were the Moralists was directed to the governing and keeping in order of these evil affections which they called the unruly Citizens and common people of the soul whose intemperance and disorders they plainly observed within themselves and laboured hard to purge out or subdue to the government of reason and vertue which two we more fully enjoy and more Christianly call the power of grace redeeming our souls from this body of sin Thus have I briefly shewed you the sense that the very Heathen had of this second branch of original sin which needs therefore no farther aggravation to you but this that they who had neither Spirit nor Scripture to instruct them did naturally so feelingly observe and curse it that by reason of it they esteemed their whole life but a living death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and their body but the Sepulchre of the soul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 both which together are but a Periphrasis of that which St. Paul calls in brief the body of death And shall we who have obtained plenty of light and instruction besides that which nature bestowed on us with them shall we I say let our eyes be confounded with abundance of day shall we see it more clearly to take less notice of it Shall we feel the stings of sin within us which though they do but prick the regenerate prove mortal to the rest of us and shall we not observe them Shall we not rather weep those fountains dry and crop this luxury of our affections with a severe sharp sorrow and humiliation Shall we not starve this rank fruitful mother of Vipers by denying it all nourishment from without all advantages of temptations and the like which it is wont to make use of to beget in us all manner of sin let us aggravate every circumstance and inconvenience of it to ourselves and then endeavour to banish it out of us and when we find we are not able importune that strong assistant the Holy Spirit to curb and subdue it that in the necessity of residing it yet may not reign in our mortal bodies to tame and abate the power of this necessary Amorite and free us from the activity and mischief and temptations of it here and from the punishment and imputation of it hereafter And so I come to the third part or branch of this original sin to wit its legal guilt and this we do contract by such an early
prepossession that it outruns all other computations of our life We carry a body of sin about us before we have one of flesh have a decrepit weak old man with all his crazy train of affections and lusts before even infancy begins Behold saith the Psalmist Psal li. 5. I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me as if guilt were the plastick power that formed us and wickedness the Minera and Element of our being as if it were that little moving point which the curious enquirers into nature find to be the rudiment of animation and pants not then for life but lust and endless death So that the saying of St. James chap. i. 15. seems a description of our natural birth When lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death Nor does this hasty inmate leave us when grown up no it improves its rancour against God and goodness mixes with custom passion and example and whatever thing is apt to lead us unto mischief somenting all the wild desires of our inferior brutal part till it become at last an equal and profest enemy making open hostility setting up its sconces fortifying it self with munition and defence as meaning to try the quarrel with God and pretending right to man whom God doth but usurp Thus shall you see it encampt and settingup its banners for tokens under that proud name of another law Rom. vii 23. I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and as if it had got the better of the day bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in the members i. e. unto its self And shall we feel such an enemy within us laying siege at God and grace in us and fiercely resolving whether by deceit or battery to captivate us unto himself and shall we not take notice of him Shall we not think it worthy our pains and expence to defeat him or secure our selves Beloved that will be the best stratagem for the taking of this enemy which is now adays most ordinary in sieges to block up all passages and hinder all access of fresh provision and so by denying this greedy devourer all nourishment from without to starve and pine him into such a tameness that he may be taken without resistance which how really you may perform by these means of mortification and repentance prescribed you in Scripture you shall better learn by your own practice then my discourse The fourth aggravation of this guilt is that is that its minera and fewel lurks even in a regenerate man wretched c. and enforceth Paul into a conflict a war against himself And is it possible for one otherwise happy as the regenerate man inwardly surely is to sleep securely and never to try a field with the Author of its so much misery or finding it to be within its self part of it self not to think it a sin worthy repentance and sorrow by which Gods Holy Spirit is so resisted so affronted and almost quelled and cast out Fifthly and lastly the guilt of it appears by the effects of it 1. inclination 2. consent to evil for even every inclination to sin without consent is an irregularity and kind of sin i. e. an aversion of some of our faculties from God all which should directly drive amain to him and goodness That servant which is commanded with all speed and earnestness to go about any thing offends against his Masters precept if he any way incline to disobedience if he perform his commands with any regret or reluctancy Now secondly consent is so natural a consequent of this evil inclination that in a man you can scarce discern much less sever them No man hath any inordinate lust but doth give some kind of consent to it the whole will being so infected with this lust that that can no sooner bring forth evil motions but this will be ready at hand with evil desires and then how evident a guilt how plain a breach of the law it is you need not mine eyes to teach you Thus have I insisted somewhat largely on the branches of Original sin which I have spread and stretcht the wider that I might furnish you with more variety of aggravations on each member of it which I think may be of important use for this or any other popular Auditory because this sin ordinarily is so little thought of even in our solemnest humiliations When you profess that you are about the business of repentance you cannot be perswaded that this common sin which Adam as you reckon only sinned hath any effect on you I am yet afraid that you still hardly believe that you are truly and in earnest to be sorry for it unless the Lord strike our hearts with an exact sense and profest feeling of this sin of our nature and corruption of our kind And suffer us not O Lord to nourish in our selves such a torpor a sluggishness and security lest it drive us headlong to all manner of hard-heartedness to commit actual sins and that even with greediness And so I come briefly to a view of each mans personal sins I am the chief where I might rank all manner of sins into some forms or seats and then urge the deformity of each of them single and naked to your view but I will for the present presume your understandings sufficiently instructed in the hainousness of each sin forbidden by the Commandments For others who will make more or less sins then the Scripture doth I come not to swatisfie them or decide their Cases of Conscience In brief I will propose to your practice only two forms of confessing your sins and humbling your selves for them which I desire you to aggravate to your selves because I have not now the leisure to beat them low or deep to your consciences Besides original sin already spoken of you are to lay hard to your own charges 1. your particular chief sins 2. all your ordinary sins in gross For the first observe but that one admirable place in Solomons Prayer at the dedication of the Temple If there be in the land famine c. Whatsoever plague whatsoever sickness what prayer or supplication soever be made by any man or by all thy people Israel which shall know every man the plague of his own heart and spread forth his hand to this house then hear thou in Heaven c. Where the condition of obtaining their requests from God is excellently set down if they shall know i. e. be sensible of be sorry for and confess to God every man the plague of his own heart that is in the bulk and heap of their sins shall pick the fairest loveliest sin in the pack the plague i. e. the pestilential reigning sweeping offence on which all the lower train of petty faults do wait and depend do minister and suppeditate matter to work If I say they shall take this