God Let us administer our part as God doth the whole not by immersion or spilling our Souls or Affections upon the visible Creature but collectedly into God as God is collected into himself Let not our Souls cleave unto the dust nor be spilt upon the ground as the Prophet David sometimes complains but be as the Rayes of the Sun which though they reach to the Earth sink not in the Earth but being fast fixt in their fountain or not the Sun it self do alwayes move whither he carries them Let us also acknowledge our own Original which is from above and move with God and the Lamb wheresoever they go Let us be so pure as not to drown our selves in the muddy stream of this transient World Let us be so Charitable as to wade in it that others be not drown'd Let our Love to men be such that we make not our selves unprofitable members of the World Let our Love to God be such that we keep our selves pure and unspotted from the love of the World Let our whole Conversation be such that all men may see that have eyes to discern both whence and whose we are that we serve not the Will of man nor are Vassals to our own vain Desires but are the free Servants of Christ and true Worshippers of the Living God O Lord our God thou which alone art able to speak to the Hearts and Consciences of men descend we beseech thee powerfully into us by thy Holy Spirit Guide and teach us in thy ways Open our eyes that we may see the wonders of thy Law Set up thy Truth in us and the Life of thy Son above all contentious opinions and conceits of men Take away all Pride and Prejudice and Wrathfulness and Hypocrisie and grant that the whole Christian World may agree in Meekness and that sweet Candour and Simplicity that is in Christ Iesus Shew unto us and convince us of that acceptable Service thou requirest at our hands Let bitterness and heart-burning reviling and all deceit and falseness cease from amongst us and let the Scepter of thy Son bear rule over us in Peace and Truth and Righteousness Enrich us with those precious Graces of Love and Purity And let the effectual power of thy Spirit be so felt amongst us that the least of thy Church may be as David and the House of David as the Angel of the Lord before thee Hear us O Merciful Father c. DISCOURSE XI HEB. xiii 16. To do good and communicate forget not for with such sacrifices God is well pleased THE Philosophers define good to be that which all things desire Now all Desire is founded in Life And Life is twofold There is the Life of Nature and the Life of God which in men is called the Life of Grace Now both these Lives desire good But here is the difference The Life of Nature is only carried to good as it is good to it self or if it wish good to others it s for its own sake The Life of God or Life of Grace desires good too but not only for it self but simply it desires good wheresoever it can be effected in due order and right means So that the Heart of the Divine Life is enlarged toward every capable thing and would impart its good so much as any is capable and so oft any is disposed For there is neither envy want nor niggardness in the Divine Nature So then he that is thus affected whose bowels are enlarged to his fellow-creatures to every one as they are capable He that is merciful to the beast loving to men feeds the hungry clothes the naked visits the sick directs the traveller is courteous to the stranger informs the ignorant heartens the poor-spirited sheweth the proud his folly comforts him that is in sorrow ballasts him that floats in vain joy soders up enmities and stints strife flies envy and exerciseth an universal amity to all This man is like his Heavenly Father who makes his Sun to rise on the evil and the good and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust This man will neither persecute his enemy out of hatred nor acquit his friend in his fault out of fond love But deals his doals of all kinds to every one as he is fitted for receiving slips no opportunity of doing any manner of good loseth no occasion of hindering of evil His Soul is nothing but the inward Life of Charity his Life nothing but the passing from munificency to munificency from one good deed to another Out of love to God he embraceth his Neighbour after his duty to his Neighbour faithfully perform'd he is nearer united unto God He becomes a King for his bountiful liberality and royal free mind He becomes a Priest by offering these Sacrifices so acceptable to God Nay he himself is but one intire Sacrifice whom that great High-Priest Christ Jesus offers to his Father The fire of Love and Charity is the fire that consumes and wasts continually all corruption in his Soul and loosen'd every day more and more from the body of sin and iniquity ascends in holy fume up nearer unto Heaven a sweet savour unto God and all the assistants of the Divine Majesty But for a more orderly handling of this present Text of Scripture Be pleased to observe with me these three Truths contained in the same 1. That we are not to forget to do good and communicate 2. That doing or communicating good is a Sacrifice 3. That it is a Sacrifice in which God is well pleased I. That we are to do good I think no man is so devoid of reason or goodness as to deny it no not so much as in his silent thoughts Though this Truth that he is so certainly perswaded of lies not alwayes so freshly in his mind but he may easily overslip the practice of it Yea because a mans understanding cogitations and affections are so mightily taken up for his own projects and the advancement of his own private peculiar good it were somewhat strange if he did not omit too too oft this Duty of communicating good to others his fierce and eager pursuit after his private welfare so strongly and steddily directing his eyes upon his own We being therefore so subject out of the extream love of our selves to forget the good of our Neighbour it is no wonder that the Apostles Exhortation is not delivered in a bare simple manner Do good and communicate But runs thus To do good and communicate forget not As if he should say I have delivered in this my Epistle many high and Divine Mysteries concerning the Divine Nature of Christ the Office of the Angels of the Levitical Priesthood and Ceremonies of the Old Law the Sacrifice of Christ and the excellency of Faith and many other Heavenly Theories which for their profoundness may easily invite the curious to muse upon them and for their mysteriousness made me write somewhat more largely upon them But that which I speak to you
of the Truth and sincere purpose of doing what is absolutely best and of cleaving to what is absolutely best in all things without any self-relish or self-respect whatsoever A thing so lovely and desirable that even the better sort of Heathen seem vehemently to have breathed after it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 O my dear Soul when wilt thou become One and naked and simple It is the Exhortation of that excellent Emperour Marcus Antoninus to his own Soul as that brief monition also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Simplifie thy self reduce thy self to perfect Sincerity and Single-mindedness These strains I confess are so near the Spirit and Genius of Christianity it self that I half suspect the Philosopher of playing the Plagiary and that he adorned himself at a distance with the Practical Philosophy of that Religion the truth of whose Mysteries either the shortness of his Reason made him dissent from or the Reason of State hinder'd him from making profession of But it may be a just reproach to the generality of Christians who though they publickly profess the Faith of Christ yet let the Life fall to the ground But I proceed 3. Thirdly But if thine Eye be evil thy whole Body will be full of Darkness that is If thou be carnally-minded and have not that Spiritual Eye above described thy Soul will be wholly left in the dark or closely surrounded with a Cimmerian mist or Egyptian fog thou wilt have no prospect nor be able to see thy way at all thou wilt be so closely besieged by the powers of darkness The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by that spiritual relish above-mentioned But he that is spiritual discerneth all things yet he himself is discerned of no man He has a full prospect of light a large Horizon lies open to his view so that where-ever he turns himself his way is plain before him But he that has not that holy divine and unself-interested Spirit of Love that Single Eye of the Soul he walks in the dark and knows not whither he goes because the darkness hath blinded his Eyes 1 Ioh. 2. 11. But in that the Apostle S. Paul saith Yet he himself is discerned of no man that is to be understood that no carnally-minded man can discern him according to what S. Iohn writes in his Gospel And the light shined in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not For that Maxime of the Ancientest Philosophers is most assuredly true here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There must be a corresponding Principle within to be able to discern what occurs to us from without As face answers to face so the heart of man to man And hence it is I mean from this darkness that the wicked give such rude justles against the truly-good namely because they cannot discern them For if they could duely discern them it were impossible that they should hate them as being Friends to every mans person and out of mere care and compassion to them being only Enemies to their Vices Needless broils and quarrels mistake upon mistake mischief after mischief this is the necessary condition of him that by reason of the Evil Eye of the Soul cannot see his way distinctly but is ever and anon caught in unexpected Angiports and tedious Labyrinths out of which he can find no exitus but is forc'd to go backwards and forwards and to make Indentures in his gate like a sot and drunkard 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways By reason of his want of that Single Eye he has not yet discovered that one simple and indispensable object that his heart is eternally to cleave to And therefore his Eye being tainted and infected with the impurities of the Animal life as the inward Complexion of his Body changes or the Circumstances of external affairs alter he adhering to nothing upon sincere grounds may be now a Reveller anon a superstitious Bigot now a Sceptick anon an inept and unskilful Dogmatist make profession of one Religion to day of another to morrow and next day of neither and at last if it prove plausible or fashionable of none at all Such wild contrary sallies is he subject to that is under the guidance of the Double Eye But that which is Single and One can never run contrary to it self but will ever act uniformly and correspondently to one End the Express whereof is the known will of God and what is simply and absolutely the best It is that only Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Iesus according to which we must act if we would walk as Children of the Light If we mingle any thing of the self-relish or Carnal Interest this will supplant our goings and we shall most certainly stumble in the dark and if the concerns in our Interest grow high we shall reel and stagger like a drunken man and be at our wits end Be things at other times never so plain yet all must be now obscure and uncertain we abhorring from all evidence that is evidently against our own worldly advantage to acknowledge and profess it Faithfulness and Uprightness towards God towards our Prince our Countrey our Friend it cannot be deny'd will some say but they are things very commendable and that this Justice is to be performed to them so far as it will consist with our private Interest and Security And Profession of Truth such especially as is of great concern to the Church of Christ and so Exemplarity of Life are things in themselves worthy and laudable and caeteris paribus to be embraced before their corrivals But if Truth and Vertue once become ridiculous and the object of reproach and obloquy or the indispensable Duties to God our Prince our Countrey or Friend hazardous to our fortunes liberty or life then the Evil or Carnal Eye does very gravely suggest that the great point of Wisdom and Prudence is to shift for one and save a mans own silly inconsiderable self whatever suffers through so base a perfidiousness No better possibly can come of this mixt and mongrel principle of Double-mindedness This is that ugly and hateful mode of plowing with an Oxe and an Ass or of wearing a Linsy-woolsy coat not more expresly forbidden by the letter of Moses than severely prohibited by that Law of the Spirit of life which is through Christ who has plainly declared in his Gospel that he that loves Father or Mother Son or Daughter more than him is not worthy of him And that he that loveth his life shall lose it but he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal Which Law of Christ notwithstanding let the Carnal mind judge of it as it will is not so rigorous but that some of the Heathen Philosophers have utter'd what is not much removed from it Aristotle himself
Saint that he will be mis-shapen'd and transform'd into the figure of an abhorred Fiend 2. Growth As Plants and Living Creatures spread and grow in bigness in vertue of their nourishment So the Soul is enlarged by forsaking her own Will and by continual meditating upon and endeavouring to do the Will of God For our own Will and Desire is a poor narrow contracted thing pinching us down next to nothing by confining us to our selves and our own scant bottoms But the Essential Will of God is free and large even boundless as himself and the work of it upon us when we receive it is like unto it Our drawing and concentring all in our own Will is like the gathering together of the free light and warmth of the Sun into a burning glass those rayes that before lay free mild and friendly in a larger room thus forc'd together become surly ireful and scorching Or like fire half-stifled in a bundle of green wood it fumes and glowes and is sad in it self and utterly uncomfortable to others but when it breaks out into a free flame how chearfully doth it shine and laugh and look pleasant filling the whole house with lightsomeness and joy That is mans Straiten'd Will This the Free Spirit and Will of God Pride and ambition and thirst after knowledge and the glory and applause of men do puff up the Soul when these are satisfied make her look big and bloat But that this Food is not wholesome nor the growth sound every small prick of adverse fortune or frowns of men do demonstrate the tumour of the mind then shriveling up like an emptyed bladder But that bulk and breadth that the Soul gets by feeding on Gods Will is sound and permanent as the Will of God is which nothing can wash away 3. And as Strong as large doth the Soul of man become by feeding on this Celestial Food In so much that it can bear all things and endure all things What makes the miseries and misfortunes of the World so tedious and irksome to men what makes their Souls sink and faint under this burden but eating of that poysonous fruit our own Will Which would not be if we had no Will of our own but fed meerly on the good pleasure of God giving thanks for whatever he brings upon us For in all outward things and to speak more fully in all things that befall us our Soul our Body our Friends or Estate in all these the Will of God is done so far as Sin intermeddles not So that if we relish no Will but the Will of God how strong shall we be to bear all these We shall be able 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 easily to digest either Fortune Good or Ill Life or Death Honour or Dishonour Riches or Poverty all will down save our own Will This will choak the Soul or poyson its complexion make it lye in weakness and languishment that it will be weak sickly peevish and infirm the whole Creature of God will be a burden to it nay the least of them may prove an importable AEtna 4. But I go on The Fourth thing considerable in Food is the Tast. And hitherto may be refer'd those affectionate expressions in the Psalmist who speaking of the Laws of God which is the interpretation of his Will giveth abundance of sweetness and pleasantness to them Psalm 19. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether more to be desired then gold yea then much fine gold sweeter also then honey and the honey-comb And hence it is that the Holy and Happy man so meditates and ruminates on the Laws of God Psalm 1. His delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law doth he meditate day and night Psal. 63. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips when I remember thee upon my bed and meditate on thee in the night-watches And certainly if the Will of the Flesh be sweet and to be longed after so by the Carnal-minded man the Will of the Spirit when it is once come is much more sweet For there is nothing in the Sensual Life of Good not so much as of seeming good but it is really and fully in the Life Spiritual Which we must believe for we cannot know till such time as we have experience of it and that will be when we leave off our commerce and conversation with the Will of the Flesh. The lips of a strange woman drop as an honey-comb and her mouth is sweeter than oyl This is thy Carnal-mind the Will of thy Flesh as Maimonides expounds it a subtil inticing Serpent lying ever in thy bosom and yet a strange Woman thy Harlot with whom thou feastest and sportest and forgettest thy Husband Christ Iesus the Will of God the Holy Spirit the Divine Life But her end is bitter as wormwood sharp as a two-edged sword Her feet go down to death her steps take hold on Hell And here is the great difference betwixt the sweetness of our own Will and the Will of God That ends in bitter choller in wrath and vengeance and death but this is wholesome as well as toothsome and is the very nexus and vinculum whereby vve are held in Eternal Life Lust is svveet Pride is svveet Revenge is exceeding svveet and above all svveetness is the svveetness of Craft and Carnal Policy But remember that as svveetly as thou lickest thy Lips in secret thou hast svvallovved dovvn poyson and it vvill burn in conclusion as the Fire of Hell God has brought thee into the wilderness that thou mayest enjoy the Promised Land offers thee Angels food would feed thee with Manna Let not thy mouth water after the Flesh-pots of AEgypt Say not with the grumbling Israelites Who shall give us flesh to eat Lest the Lord in his anger give you Flesh to eat not two days nor five days neither ten days nor twenty days but even a whole moneth until it come out at your nostrils and it become loathsome unto you and while the Flesh is betwixt your teeth the wrath of the Lord be kindled against you That you be so far engaged in your own Will and head-strong wayes that nothing but destruction can deal with you And thus much of the Taste of this Food 5. The Fifth and last thing is the Satisfying of the Stomach Bodinus tells us of a Story of a Noble of Aspremont who used to entertain those that came to his House with all Plenty and Magnificency that may be the Tables furnished with all variety of the most rare Delicates rich Furniture excellent Attendance every thing point device from the Stable to the Dining-room above desire or expectation But that which is strange so soon as they were gone out of his House both Horse and Man was ready to dye with hunger The like Magick and Imposture is there in all those things that our deceiv'd Souls feed upon in this life It is
the Children of God elect to this Inheritance none are the Children of God but those that have the Spirit of God none have the Spirit of God but those that suffer with Christ that mortifie their own sins and are grieved for the sins of others Be not deceived Beloved with flattering dreams and phansies This is the very Truth of God and according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And this Truth being so apparently true I need not exhort in many words to those Christian Sufferings Stand fast in the true Faith of the Power of God and quit your selves like men Cast away all softness and effeminateness and be so stout-hearted as to endure the pangs of Death of the mortification of your sinful flesh and carnal mind for his sake that dyed for you Resist unto Blood even unto the effusion of the wicked Life and unrighteous devilish Spirit that resideth in you For this is the good will of your God that you be mortified that you be thoroughly sanctified that you destroy all things contrary to God in you 1 Thess. 4. And let this be the First Motive to run with patience the race that is set before us Secondly These our Sufferings though great are not comparable to the rich Reward that Glorious Inheritance in Heaven 2 Cor. 4. For which cause we faint not but though our outward man perish yet the inward man is renewed day by day For our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory Thirdly If we compare the future state of the Wicked and the Godly how all their Glory and Pleasure vanisheth and how the Children of God are received into Everlasting Happiness crown'd with Eternal Light it will more firmly establish us in our Christian resolutions It cannot be better described then it is in the Book of Wisdom The iniquities of the wicked shall convince them to their own face and they shall approach the tribunal of God with fear and quaking But then shall the righteous man stand in great boldness before the face of such as have afflicted him and made no account of his labours When they see it they shall be troubled with terrible fear and shall be amazed at the strangeness of his salvation And they repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit shall say within themselves This is he whom we had some time in derision and a proverb of reproach We fools counted his life madness and his end to be without honour How is he numbred among the children of God and his lot is among the saints Wisd. 5. You may read the whole Chapter at your leasure Fourthly and Lastly The Inheritance of Heaven is conditional If we suffer with him we shall be glorified with him which implies if we do not suffer with him we shall not be glorified with him 2 Tim. 2. 11. This is a faithful saying that if we be dead with him we shall also live with him if we suffer with him we shall also reign with him Wherefore Beloved sooth not up your selves in vain hopes and flatteries For without killing of your sinful Lusts without Mortification there is no Salvation He that hath not the Spirit of Christ is none of his Now no body hath the Spirit of Christ unless he be dead unto sin For if he be dead unto Sin then shall he be raised from Death to Life by the Spirit of Christ that quickeneth us to Righteousness But if he be dead unto Righteousness and alive unto Sin he is a son of Belial a child of the Devil a vessel of perdition a faggot for Hell and the devouring Wrath of God remains upon him No Heir of God no Coheir with Christ but he shall have his portion with those infernal Fiends to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever Wherefore Beloved awake from your beds of ease shake off your idle dreams and bewitching phansies that either the Devil or his false Prophets have buz'd at any time into your heads If you will be the Sons of God and Disciples of Christ take up the Cross of Christ afflict your own carnal minds give not way to wrath to envy to anger to revenge to lust to wantonness to back-biting to swearing to revelling to drinking to pride to contemning to reproaching to fighting to contesting to censuring to defaming or whatsoever else Flesh and Blood is easily carried out to but deny your selves in abstaining from all those evil acts and so give no encouragement to the Devil to assault you Which if you shall do in the precious Christian Patience even to the mortification of all manner of Sin in you God shall stir up in you the Spirit of his Son and enrich you with the Power and Wisdom of the Holy Ghost And the Peace of God which passeth all understanding shall fill your hearts with all joy and you shall find in your selves an unexpressible taste of the delights of Heaven and receive an infallible earnest of your Eternal Inheritance Which God grant that we may all do through Iesus Christ our Lord to whom c. DISCOURSE X. JAM i. 27. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world THE Text is a description of pure and undefiled Religion And certainly if any thing Religion it is that wants the pointing out by the most evident plain and conspicuous descriptions that may be to be writ in Capital Letters in so large and visible Characters that he that runs may read it For indeed most men are but at leasure to read it running 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the by tanquam aliud agentes still keeping on their course in that broad way that beaten path that leads to the reward of impiety and irreligiousness But yet I know not how it comes to pass that though men make not Religion their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their main business and work yet they prove most-what far more fortunate in this than in their worldly occasions and employments where though they take a great deal more pains yet we shall more ordinarily hear them complain of ill success But as for Religion how few are there that find themselves at a loss therein nay that are not suited to their own hearts liking and from these slight and transient glances cast upon it are kindled into so hot a passion and inflammation of love and zeal for it that finding their own breasts too strait and narrow for such a violent heat would even force open the hearts of other men that there may be more room and freedom for so ample a flame Not content to keep alive this Vestal fire within the walls of its own Temple but to disthrone the Sun and ordain it the sole Lamp of the Universe where all other Religions and Worships must like the lesser Stars disappear and vanish Every rash Religion is Popery
now it is not a thing so difficult to understand or so hard to explain you know it already only be mindful to do it To do good and communicate forget not And that we forget not God hath set over us Monitors enough it is not the voice of the Apostle alone but of the whole Creature The Clouds drop fatness upon the Earth The Earth sends up all manner of Herbs and Corn for service and Flowers for delight of men The Trees stretch out their spreading armes and offer their Fruit. The musical falls of the cooling crystal Brooks sweetly call to them the thirsty Traveller to refresh his fainting Spirit The Sun and Moon with all the Host of Heaven dance in their circuits about the Earth as being joyful to impart their Light and Influence for the procreation of things here below and their continual conservation The Sun cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber and rejoyceth as a gyant to run his race He leaves us indeed in the West but in the Morning he carefully revisits us with his chearing Countenance and rescues the World from the close cloging Vapours of the loansome Night See how readily and willingly the Creature practiseth this Precept of the Apostle and therefore become fit Preachers unto us to do the same But if we scorn to have so poor a Pattern as the visible Creature look through the Creature unto God For it 's He rather that doth this than the outward visible Creature He laid the foundations of the earth that it never should move at any time He sends his springs into the rivers which run among the hills All beasts of the field drink thereof and the wild asses quench their thirst Beside them have the fowls of the air their habitation and sing among the branches He watereth the hills from above the earth is filled with the fruits of his works He bringeth forth grass for the castle and green herb for the service of men That he may bring food out of the earth and wine that maketh glad the heart of man He appointed the moon for certain seasons and the sun knoweth his going down Psal. 104. He loveth righteousness and judgment the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. Psal. 33. The continuation of the Creature and subsistance of this mighty Universe is nothing else but a continual testification of the Nature and Goodness of God and his munificent and communicating property Wherefore we being incompassed with such a world of witnesses witnesses that so clearly testifie unto us the mind of God and Christ let us be like-minded with him and delight in doing good according to our power to shew our thankfulness to him of whom all power is received There is the same Argument for giving that there is for forgiving Mat. 18. 32. O evil servant I forgave thee all that debt because thou prayedst me Oughtest not thou also to have pity on thy fellow even as I had pity on thee So surely God will reason with us in this matter too That which thou hast I gave it thee why therefore dost thou not imitate me and impart somewhat to thy Neighbour of that I gave thee Freely you have received saith our Saviour freely give NOW for the better understanding of this point I will spend a few words by way of explication of this act of communicating of Good wherein three things are supposed and therefore to be explain'd so far forth as is necessary There is the person to whom we must communicate the matter what and the manner how we must communicate 1. The Persons to whom we are to communicate are such as the Prophet David names Psal. 112. 9. He hath dispersed abroad he hath given to the poor and his righteousness remaineth for ever his horn shall be exalted with honour Quite contrary to the garb of the World and common practice of crafty and covetous men who exalt themselves by gifts of unrighteousness and trample upon the poor and needy how just soever and contemn the weak as of little worth Whose Charity is none and Courtesie but Policy Munificency a well contrived bargain Whose Gifts are but Worms and Flies but their Expectation no worse than the best Fish they can pull up Whose Hearts are alwayes cold and their Hands ever benumb'd till mutual friction Manus manum fricat This has alwayes been the way of them the usual beaten path of the World and their Children praise their sayings But the Children of God born of the Coelestial Seed be quite of another temper Witness that true noble and Heroical Spirit in our Eldest Brother Christ Iesus With whom if the generosity and gallantry of the World be compar'd it will appear mere pageantry Or to express the truth more homely and rudely they will be found partaking more of the Huxter than the Courtier But to leave them to their petty markets let us endeavour not to degenerate but to follow the counsel of the First-born of our Fraternity Luke 14. 12. When thou makest a dinner or supper saith our Saviour call not thy friends nor thy brethren neither thy kinsmen nor thy rich neighbours lest they also bid thee again and recompence be made But when thou makest a feast call the poor the maimed the lame and the blind and thou shalt be blessed because they cannot recompence thee for thou shalt be recompenced at the resurrection of the just But what needs so ample a testimony in a case so plain Even ordinary Reason will tell us to whom Good should be imparted Not to them that have enough already but those that want Physick is proper to him that is sick already or is inclining to sickness To whom should Drink be given but to the thirsty To whom Meat but to the hungry Clothes to the naked and warm harbour to him that is afflicted with cold So that whatsoever Good it is that a man is in want of that Good is to be administred unto him by him that is not in that want 2. Good is to be administred which is the matter that is to be communicated If any ask Bread we are not to offer him a Stone or if a Fish a Scorpion Which though we do not in that gross manner yet too oft we do lapides loqui we mall the poor indigent man in the head with some stonish or hard-hearted answer and deal such liberal lashes of sharp reproof that bites and stings him as the whips of a Scorpion But that we straiten not the sense of this Text more than needs This communicating of good is not confin'd to outward Bread and Meat and such necessary things for the natural sustentation of man but stretcheth also to that of the Soul So that this good which we are to impart may be divided into these two general kinds In rem consilium A supply of outward necessaries or seasonable and friendly advice Both these are good and so both to be communicated where we see there is
God The righteous Nation in whom there is no guile As our Saviour saith of Nathanael Behold a true Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile And thus the Psalmist Surely God is good unto Israel even to such as are of an upright heart God continue his Goodness to them and encrease it sevenfold And encrease them in number above the Sands of the Sea and the Stars of Heaven that none may be able to count the dust of Jacob or to number the fourth part of Israel That the Heathen may be swallowed up of them and that the very memorial of wickedness may perish from off the Earth To the King of Saints the Holy one of Israel who inhabits Immortality and the Light inaccessible to the only Wise and All-powerful God be ascribed as is most due all Honour c. DISCOURSE XIII 1 PET. i. 22 23. Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently Being born again not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible by the word of God which liveth and abideth for ever THE Text is an Exhortation to Christian Love The Duty is enforced from a double Argument 1. From the end of our Sanctification in those words Seeing ye have purified your Souls in obeying the Truth through the Spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unto or for unfeigned brotherly love And this ushers in the Precept or Duty Love one another with a pure heart fervently 2. The other Argument follows of no less force than the former which is drawn from the condition of our new Birth Being born again not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible by the word of God which liveth and abideth for ever THE several Truths or Doctrines contained in the First Argument are these viz. Doctrine I. That the Christian mans Soul is Purified Purified 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the word synonymous to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 both imply a purging or cleansing from filth They are both used together Iames 4. 8. in one signification But yet there is a more special sense belonging to them both they both signifie a Sacred and Ceremonial kind of cleansing and purification and after appropriation to God as Titus 2. 14. where the word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with allusion to the Consecration of the Levites Numb 8. and their washing of their Cloths and sprinkling the Water of Purification is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So that the purifying of the Soul in the Text implies cleansing and appropriation But the Objects are not here express'd yet very safely supposed we cannot miss of them if we would For from what should the Soul be purified but from its filth What is the filth of the Soul but Sin To whom should the Soul thus purg'd be appropriated or consecrated To it self It is not purg'd if not purg'd from it self To the Creature It is the height of Impiety palpable Idolatry To Sin It is not Sense To what then but to God its Creator and Redeemer who gave himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he might purifie unto himself a peculiar people Tit. 2. 14. Thus is purified the Christians Soul which is true not only in that narrower sense of taking the Soul but also as it includes the Body or the Beast as the Platonists call it even the very Passions and more fiery motions which those Philosophers resemble to Horses drawing the Chariot of the Soul these also shall be Sanctified So that upon the reins of the Horses if I may speak with Zechary there is inscrib'd Holiness to the Lord. But certainly more properly and chiefly this Purification belongs to the Soul her self and from thence will sink through all the powers and faculties of the Body taking hold of them wielding them and ruling them at its own pleasure or at least not suffering it self to be over-ruled by them Now this purifying of a Christian implies that he was unholy and foul before And not only the whole man but also whole mankind is in this sinful state till wash'd and purified Rom. 3. 12. 1 Ioh. 1. 8 9 10. where we have both these points confirm'd 1. That we all have sinned and stand obnoxious before God 2. That by the worth and merit of Christ and the effectual working of the Divine Spirit we have forgiveness and that God doth cleanse us from all unrighteousness And this is the true Christian Mystery If we be Christians we must be as certainly purified as its certain we were once impure Doct. II. That the Christians Soul is purified in obeying the Truth Here meets us the unwelcome visage of Obedience but with its face turn'd upon a safe object the Truth Where we may note that it is not any Obedience that purifies but the Obedience to the Truth A man may toil like a Mill-horse in a circuir of Ceremonies and outward performances and yet but take his walk with the wicked unless the Truth be obey'd Again it is such a Truth as Obedience belongs to not an high aery speculative Truth not a Truth only to be believed but to be put in practice for we cannot be said properly to obey speculative Truth because the Soul there has no power to resist or disobey For the Devil himself would glady embrace and assent to all pure and inoffensive speculation that doth not touch his own interest and present condition and so would all his and Natures children the most wicked men that are And that the Devil is cast into a fit of trembling at this grand speculative Maxime There is a God is because his quick memory doth presently recollect that he is Just and that himself stands obnoxious to his Justice here is his interest toucht The Truth therefore here meant is not so much those general speculations of the Infinite Power and Wisdom of God the Incomprehensible Trinity c. which both good and bad men do easily spend their time in and promiscuously believe and yet sit securely upon their lees their hearts being untoucht unbroken unstir'd But the Truths which we are said most properly to obey are the Practical Truths such as Matth. 5. Chap. 16. 24. Chap. 11. ult Chap. 7. 13. c. The Purification of a Christian is in obedience to such Truths and Christ admits none for his that be disobedient workers of iniquity Matth. 7. 23. Doct. III. That the purified and obedient Soul is thus purged and obedient through the Spirit This is he of whom Malachi 3. 2 3. But who may abide the day of his coming and who shall stand when he appeareth for he is like a refiners fire and like fullers sope And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver and he shall purifie the sons of Levi and purge them as gold and silver that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness We having then so powerful a Purifier what hinders but the Christian
Shield of Faith in the power of God whereby we are enabled to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked And we must take the Helmet of Hope and sure expectation of Everlasting Life which will keep us from being easily knock'd down to the Earth by the fiercest Assaults of our Adversaries And lastly we must take to us the Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God whereby we may divide betwixt Good and Evil and admit the one and reject the other And being thus appointed we must pray alwaies with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit watching thereunto with all perseverance And especially to watch in such a sense as this as to be extremely shy and careful how we admit any thing under the colour or upon the rellish of Animal pleasure but rather eo nomine to decline it Which is an impregnable Bulwark against the assaults of the Flesh and such as will ever defeat them If we do these things we shall never fall let the assaults of the Fleshly Lusts be as violent as they will 3. But if we be overcome let us now see what a lamentable spoil they will make of us and how cruelly and tyrannically they will use us For First They will rob us of whatever is precious that we have They will take down and carry away with them that chearful and delightful furniture of the Soul Peace and Tranquillity of mind For the mind of man is not of so base an Original as to enjoy it self in things so much below it self as are the Fleshly Lusts Whence it must needs be that she will be ever and anon disturbed with loathings and regrets of Conscience amidst her so base condition and practices and instead of that steady peace and chearfulness of Spirit which are enjoyed in our adherence to Holiness and Vertue be exposed to many horrours and distractions and confusions of thoughts and an ungrateful sense of inward shame and reproach which accompanies such unworthy actions Secondly They will disarm the Soul of that honest activity and diligence which we ought to have in our Affairs and make us more uncareful and more unable to pursue and manage our Business with that discretion and faithfulness we ought to do to the scandal of the World as well as to our own detriment This Lucretius notes of that notorious kind of Fleshly Lusts the being addicted to Women Languent officia atque aegrotat fama vacillans But takes place also in Gluttony in Drunkenness and whatever other pleasure has once overcome the Soul and subdued her to it self Thirdly These Fleshly Lusts rob a man of the safe use of his Reason They will make it wonderfully prevaricate in the behalf of themselves and commit such Paralogisms as the Soul cannot but be ashamed of so soon as she has got out of the reach of their power And they will in the conclusion so weaken the Faculties of the Mind that they shall very fondly dote in their Verdicts even touching such things as the Fleshly Lusts themselves are unconcerned in For these Lusts bereaving the Mind of her purity must needs dim and obscure her Faculties more or less in all uses of them where there is ordinarily any difference of Sentiments amongst men Fourthly and lastly These Lusts deprive us of the Life and Influence of the Divine Spirit and most dismally damp and dead the Power of Faith and Sense of Religion in the Soul which is of more consequence than even Reason it self which proves very weak in the assurance of these things when the sagacity of a better Life is extinguished or smothered by the soul impurities of the Lusts of the Flesh. But the Soul being once purged from these ipso facto unites with the Spirit of God and by an Holy and Divine Instinct is in a proneness and readiness to believe such things as God is truly said to have done or to intend to do concerning the sons of men by vertue of her union with the Divine Spirit or that Eternal Mind that immutably contains the whole Counsel of God touching things past present and to come This miserable spoil do the Fleshly Lusts make of the poor Soul when they overcome her and not only so but they use her cruelly to boot That they put out her Eyes I have already intimated in that I noted that they bereave her both of Faith and Reason And that they pluck all her Feathers out of her Wings it is as manifest since our being captivated with Fleshly Lusts keeps down the Soul and hinders all Holy and Heavenly Aspires and extinguishes the pure Flames of Devotion Nor are they content with this but they also crucifie and nail the captive Soul to this Earthly Body as Plato complains 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All Pleasure and Grief nails saith he the Soul to the Body Nor is it impertinent to name enormous Grief amongst the Lusts of the Flesh since no Grief is enormous but out of the enormity of Self-love or inordinate love of this Corporeal Personality of ours which if we could be sufficiently unconcerned for and love and esteem nothing but the Almighty Lord of Heaven and Earth and those Divine Laws and Holy Sentiments he has implanted in our Souls Enormity of Grief would not be able to seize upon us Nor do they only thus crucifie and kill that higher and Diviner Life of the Soul but by the exorbitant excitations of the contrary Life into several enormous modes and forms metamorphose men into so many abhorred Monsters whom they keep in the chains of this base servility and captivity and then let them loose upon the most villainous outrages or the basest and most contemptible actions imaginable Wrath and Revenge like a Bear robb'd of her Whelps makes them tear apieces and destroy all they meet with in their way Ambition and Avarice like an Evening-Wolf makes them fall upon the Sheepfolds and suck the blood of innocent Lambs to satisfie their thirst Superstition and false Zeal turnes them into such Furies or Devils that they destroy whole Cities and Countries with Fire and Sword out of pride and impatience that others do not submit to their Wisdom and give themselves up to their Guidance who yet have no Light but those Infernal Torches of an ignorant and bitter Zeal devoid of all Christian Charity which they could light no where but from the Flames of Hell nor conduct a Soul by this Light any whither but to the place of those Infernal Flames The sting of Lust transforms them into such Satyrs and Baboons that they fly upon all promiscuously not sparing their own Mothers Sisters nor Daughters Gluttony and Drunkenness as Circe did Vlysses his Companions changes their shapes into foul dirty Swine To say nothing of those ugly indecorums of Effeminacy that brings some into as base a Servility as Omphale did Hercules who made him put off his Lyons-Skin and sit amongst her Maids at the Distaff and Spindle Not to add what one would
more particular degrees of their Progress And 6. What welcome they find at their Journeys end 1. The Country through which they travel is expresly set down in the Psalm Ver. 6. Who going through the valley of Baca make it a well which is ordinarily interpreted the Valley of Tears Which though it has a sad Appellation yet bears with it a good Omen according to that in 126 Psalm They that sow in tears shall reap in joy But Baca signifying also a Mulberry-Tree some would have it denominated from thence and also that it is so described to set out the sterility and dryness of the Soil as if as well the passage to as the place where the House of God is situated were all dry ground For such indeed is Mount Sion it self as its very name also imports which signifies aridity or ficcity Which any one will admit to bear without forcing an important signification who reflects on that Philosophical Aphorism Anima sicca anima pura or Anima sicca sapientissima And David whose mind was so hugely taken up with the projecting for a place for the House of God Psalm 132. ver 3 4 5. I will not come into the tabernacle of my house nor go up into my bed I will not give sleep to mine eyes or slumber to mine eye-lids until I find out a place for the Lord an habitation for the mighty God of Iacob immediately in the following Verse he in the Spirit of Prophecy delivers this great Arcanum Lo saith he we heard of it at Ephratah but we found it in the fields of the wood The common rumour indeed and conceit was that it should be built in Ephratah that is in regione frugiferâ in a fat rich fertile Soil but we find it in the fields of the wood in loco non tam culto nec amoeno as Calvin notes in a dry barren mountainous place indeed on Mount Moriah which some would have so called as if it were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 alluding to that in the Canticles as if it were a Myrrhiferous Mountain And such Wood indeed is a special demonstration of a dry and barren Ground which is congenerous with the signification of Mount Sion as also with what is observable in Philadelphia a type of the best State of the House of God in a collective sense it was placed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in a region dry barren and burnt up with heat As David professeth that the Zeal of Gods House had even eaten him up or consumed him But as the outward man perisheth the inward man is renewed day by day But we had got to our Journeys-end the place of Gods House before we were well entred into our Journey That which I would observe is That the Region through which we pass to this State which is called the Holy Temple or House of God is no Ephratah it is not a Country of green Fields rich Pastures and rank Flowry Meadows but it is the Valley of Baca a dry barren Soil far from being fat fulsom and luscious And therefore all the self-favouring sweetnesses and caressings of this Terrestrial Body or Carnal Personality are driven far from this Region with all that false Wisdom or Prudence which arises from the Flesh or from corrupt Reasonings touching the Sovereign Goodness of God the doctrine of Love being abusable to the corruption of Life as well as the doctrine of Faith if men wander out of the Valley of Baca into Fools-Paradises made by their own Carnal Phansie and Reason And this for the present shall serve briefly for the Description of the Country through which these Travellers to the House of God pass 2. Now how well they are provided for their Iourney is intimated also in this Psalm and mainly it is in three things Knowledge Faith and Sincerity Knowledge Namely of the wayes of God that they are to walk in Ver. 5. Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee in whose heart are thy wayes For so that Translation of the Psalms which is appointed by our Church to be read every day has it and that that Pronoun This is understood as if it were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I do not doubt and therefore rightly expressed in this Translation Who have the Journey they are to take the wayes and passages predelineated as it were in their hearts which denotes the best kind of Knowledge even that which is accompanied with Affection and hearty Conviction And surely it is not for nought that the Spirit of God so frequently in Scripture names the Heart for the chief seat of Wisdom which is yet the less marvellous considering that the Wisdom which the Scripture driveth at is Practical Wisdom Moral or Divine wherein the Heart is much concerned And the sense and touch of those Truths must pass the Heart as the Colours do the Eye before the Mind can give a steady assent to them For what the Eye is in reference to Colours that is the Heart in reference to the discrimination of Moral Good and Evil. And for this reason it is that as Seeing is attributed to the Eye so is Vnderstanding to the Heart so frequently in the Scripture The thing is so plain I need alledge no places Out of the Heart proceed evil thoughts saith our Saviour and consequently good ones too For the Heart is the Fountain of the Life and Spirits and according as they are so are our Imaginations whether sleeping or waking such our Ideas thoughts and propensions to belief especially in matters of Life whether Natural or Divine And therefore we must be very careful how we let our pragmatical light-minded Reason make laws of Life for us while our Hearts have not undergone the due measures of Purification because the thoughts and imaginations of our Hearts will certainly impose upon that Mercurial Faculty till the Soul be made more judiciously discerning in vertue of her Purity But our safest way is with these Travellers in the Valley of Baca to have Gods ways written in our Hearts for a Map to guide us by To the Law and to the Testimony If they speak not according to this word there is no light in them Whatever private suggestions arise in us and how featly soever managed by that slight Advocate carnal or unregenerate Reason we are to guide our Life by the Commandments of Christ whom God has exhibited to the World as our infallible Guide confirming his Authority and Doctrine by Signs and Miracles and by such wonderful Prophecies as it were madness in any man to prefer his own corrupt Reasonings imposed upon by an unsanctify'd Heart before those Divine Oracles and unerring Laws of Life which are given unto us by the Son of God so declared and manifested to the World The first requisite point therefore which is Knowledge is an hearty admittance of those Laws of Life which are prescribed us by Christ and his Apostles to take up these for Principles to walk by and not what our own self-favouring
open the door I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me Rev. 3. 20. See how friendly and familiarly they are entertained by Christ as if they feasted one another at a mutual Collation I will delight my self by the possession and actuation of the Humane Nature by my Holy Spirit and they shall be delighted and transported by the comfortable and enravishing influence of my Divine Nature when they shall be filled with all the fulness of God Of such infinite consequence is it to attain to that Body which is the proper House of God or his Holy Temple that when he knocks and calls we may yield obedience to that voice in the Psalmist who prophesies of this Mystery Lift up your heads O ye gates and be ye lifted up ye everlasting doors that the King of Glory may come in that the Lord of Hosts with all his glorious retinue may fill his own House For he is not there alone as it appear'd by that voice heard in the Temple of the Iews 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but by his residence in us replenisheth us with all Heavenly Graces We are strengthened with all might according to the glorious power of this Lord of Hosts unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness as the Apostle speaks And that is most eminently verify'd to us which occurs in S. Iohn Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world And as for being rooted in Love as S. Paul speaks in another place this glorious Lord of Hosts is also the God of Love For God is Love and he that abideth in Love abideth in God and God in him as touching Holy and Divine things This Heavenly Love has his abode in this AEthereal Tabernacle And as for Truth and Knowledge as S. Iohn witnesses where is it to be seen or heard but in this Lucid Temple of God While we are out of this condition we know but in part or rather quite miss the mark by the giddiness and distortedness of an unpurify'd mind we hear and understand but faintly and unsetledly like Thunder afar off but in this Holy Temple we do as it were distinctly from his own mouth receive the Living Oracles of God And briefly as for Truth this is that state wherein all Figures and Shadows do fly away This is that grand Mystery reserved more especially for these last approaching Ages and witnessed by a great Voice out of Heaven Behold the Tabernacle of God is with men Apoc. 21. 3. These are some few strictures or faint obscure strokes of the admirable and ineffable Happy Condition of the Travellers through the Valley of Baca when once they have arrived to their Journeys end and appear before the God of Gods in Sion DISCOURSE III. MAT. vi 22 23. The light of the Body is the Eye if therefore thine Eye be single thy whole Body shall be full of light But if thine Eye be evil thy whole Body shall be full of darkness If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness how great is that darkness THE Text seems to be a Syllogistical Parable The Argument is contained in those first words The light of the Body is the Eye From whence is this double Inference That if the Eye be single the whole Body is full of light But if the Eye be evil the whole Body is full of darkness with this Porisma or Corollary annexed to the latter Inference If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness how great is that darkness That is It is wonderfully and unspeakably great The force of the Argument for the inferring the Conclusions is so conspicuous that it is altogether needless to say any thing toward the further clearing it And therefore we will only take notice of the Truths in several manifestly comprized in the Text. 1. The First whereof is That the Eye is the light of the Body 2. The Second That a Single Eye makes the whole Body full of light 3. The Third That an Evil Eye makes the whole Body full of darkness 4. The Fourth and Last That if the Eye it self be dark the Body is left in most wretched and miserable darkness such as the presence of no Light no not of the Sun it self can chase away Non radii solis nec lucida tela Diei Discutient These are the external Truths of the letter of the Parable But hitherto we do but lambere vitreum vas sed pultem non attingimus We must know therefore that every part of this Parable is but the Protasis of a Similitude and that all the skill will be to find out the true Apodosis in every particular And if our Judgment fail us not in the first we shall not easily mistake in the following parts of the Parable Wherein I mean in the First if we make out this Analogy viz. That as the Eye is to the Body so the Vnderstanding is to the Soul it would be neither inept in it self nor unsupported by very great Authorities Aristotle sayes expresly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Which may embolden us to make the Soul the Homologous term to the Body Which Galen does expresly as Grotius cites him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And to this purpose several other Philosophers speak and not without truth though not so precisely accommodate to our purpose This Apodosis would be over-dry and Philosophical and such as will not reach that Diviner meaning of our Saviour This Analogy was obvious enough to the Natural man I mean the comparing the Intellectual or Rational faculty of the Soul with the Sight or Visive faculty in the Eye of the Body But having regard to our Saviours Discourse in this place it is plain he intends not so much that which the Philosophers call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the Homologous term to that of the Eye as what S. Paul stiles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is not meer notion or perception but implies with it a savour and relish of what is perceived Get thee behind me Satan said Christ to Peter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because thou savourest not the things that be of God And the Apostle expresly mentions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In brief therefore respecting the scope of our Saviour as we shall see more clearly anon the Analogy must run thus 1. What the Eye is for enlightning the Body that is this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this relish savour sense or sapience in this peculiar sense for the illuminating the Soul that is this being so or so minded or affected And this is the first Analogy hinted in this Parable 2. The 2d is That as the Single Eye enlightens thoroughly the Body so Single-mindedness does thoroughly illuminate the Soul And this is that great and important Arcanum of Life that this Parable affords us That that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the Apostle speaks of 2 Cor. 1. 12. that godly simplicity and sincerity is the Eye
signifie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What a dismal darkness will there be then For the blind then leading the blind both will fall into the Infernal Pit THE meaning of the Text I conceive is now abundantly plain and that the scope and end of our Saviours uttering this Parable to his Disciples was to stir them up to a constant and earnest endeavour of utterly disentangling themselves from all the attractions of the relish of the Flesh or Spirit of the World and of joyning themselves entirely and cordially with and of dwelling wholly in the relish sense and life of the Spirit of God or of that Divine Spirit whose suggestions are no dictates of self-love or partial interest but the substantial concerns of the Kingdom of God and the good of the whole World For which he who has this Divine relish will not stick to lay down his Life if need require according to that endearing Example of our ever-blessed and adored Saviour Let it be therefore my task at this time to exhort you earnestly to endeavour after this great and indispensable attainment of this Single Eye this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Wisdom of the Spirit which this Parable of our Saviour points to and is indeed the proper Spirit of Christ concerning which S. Paul expresly declares He that hath not the Spirit of Christ is none of his Which ought to be a rousing Argument to awaken us into a due sense of so great a want For unless we regain this Single Eye we shall never see the right way to Heaven There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Iesus namely to such as walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Iesus hath freed me from the law of sin and of death For the relish of the flesh or carnal-mindedness is death But the relish of the spirit or spiritual-mindedness is life and peace But the carnal mind is enmity against God because it cannot submit it self to the law of God but is in perpetual opposition against it ever suggesting what is contrary to it Wherefore we must wholly withdraw our selves out of that Principle as we hope to attain to the glorious liberty of the Sons of God And assuredly whosoever has that Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Iesus it will free him and rid him from the power of all the urgings suggestions or subtil insinuations of that Law of the sinful flesh of self-love and self-interest Though he may feel these self-savouring suggestions and the more clearly discern them to be such by the perspicuity of the Single Eye the Spirit of Christ yet he is so freed from their power that he will never act according to them but constantly act according to the relish and suggestion of that pure Principle of the Spirit which has not the least tincture of self-love or carnal interest And there is a neceffity of perfectly clearing up at last into this Single-mindedness by reason of the war and enmity betwixt the Carnal Principle and this of the Spirit for without this there is no peace nor joy nor enjoyment in this Life nor in that which is to come The Law of the sinful life of the Flesh therefore is utterly to be abrogated nulled and annihilated and we are to judge and act in all things according to the discernments of that Single Eye or pure Principle of the Spirit of Christ. But I will rather confine the Arguments of my Exhortation to the Text and content my self with what it will afford namely the four Analogies I have produced and explained and so conclude 1. The light of the Body is the Eye What therefore the Eye is to the Body that is some vital and sensible leading Principle in the Soul to the Soul Is it not therefore of infinite consequence what this leading Principle is when it is of as much consequence to the Soul as the Eye is to the Body and the Soul of incomparably more worth than the Body What man would have the Eye of a Batt of an Owl or of a Mole for the guidance of his Body unless he were to have his abode under the Earth with the Mole or to venture abroad only in the Night with the Batt and Owl Every Animal is to have an Eye congenerous to its own Nature And therefore that Divine Animal which we call Man I mean the inward man the Soul is to have an Eye congenerous to hers she is to have this Single Spiritual Eye unless she will converse only with Brutes or Devils in their Kingdom of Darkness 2. Again The Single Eye makes the whole Body full of light that is it is a fit and faithful guide to it which way soever it goes And that is the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Iesus to the Soul Which assuredly is the Law of Divine love which is not the love of a mans self or any particular or partial Interest but the hearty love of God and a mans Neighbour that is of all mankind when with a single heart he wishes them and is ready to do them all the good they are capable of and himself in a capacity to administer to them This is that pure and lovely Eye of the Soul indeed which fills her full of Celestial light and enrolls her in the Book of Life and of the Children of Light This is that Vnction from the Holy one even from the Father of Lights whereby we know all things appertaining to Life and Godliness and that Iesus that stupendious Pattern of this Divine Love is the Lord and Christ And that that man of sin that exalts himself above all that is called God and supports his Power Pride and Pomp with gross Imposture and barbarous Bloodshed is that notorious Antichrist he that has this Single Eye easily discerns this and can hardly forbear to suspect that they that do not see it are blind through the Spirit of the World or else drunk with the steames of that Cup of abominations and see double This Simple and Unself-interested Spirit of Love is that Anointing of which S. Iohn saith that if it abide in us we need not that any man teach us but the same Anointing will teach us of all things and is truth and is no lie It is very Truth substantial and essential without any shadow of vanity or imposture in it and such as will seal our hearts with an eternal adhesion to our ever-blessed Saviour as being the communication of his own Spirit to us and be evermore a safe guide to us in our passage thorough this present life He that loveth his brother abideth in the light and there is no occasion of stumbling in him Wherefore as we tender our safe conduct through the wilderness of this World through all the dangers and perils of so difficult a journey we must earnestly endeavour the recovering of this Single-mindedness this amiable Eye of the pure love
delight is with the sons of men as Solomon witnesseth of her And S. Iames bids us pray for her If any man want Wisdom let him ask it of God So that when the Prophet Baruch saith No man knoweth her way nor thinketh on her path is as much as if he should say No man by the Natural Spirit of a man can reach so far But S. Peter faith that we have precious promises of being made partakers of the Divine Nature And our Blessed Saviour argueth thus in the 11th of S. Luke If so be that men being evil know how to give good gifts to their children How much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him But what Shall therefore every one that saith Lord Lord or that can repeat their Pater noster receive the Holy Spirit of Wisdom No in no wise Only they that do the will of my Father which is in Heaven saith our Saviour If I encline to wickedness in my heart saith the Psalmist the Lord will not hear my prayer And indeed the old blind Poet could see so far into Divinity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He that obeys God God hears him So that we see that the foundation or beginning of this great work of Wisdom is that which the present Text points at viz. The fear of God The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom The words are plain and without ambiguity In the English especially The Hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is not of so a determinate sense but that it may signifie the principal the first best or chiefest of Wisdom as well as the beginning of Wisdom But the latter I take to be the better if not the only sense For Fear hath torment saith the Apostle but perfect love casteth out fear Wherefore this Fear is not the choicest or chiefest of true Wisdom But if we compare this place with its parallel we shall yet more plainly see that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies merely a beginning or entrance Prov. 9. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The entrance or first impenetration into Wisdom is the fear of God For the word comes from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying to boar or pierce So that it is evident that the English Translation is the only sense of this place of Scripture In the handling whereof I will endeavour these two things 1. To shew somewhat more largely out of other places of Scripture the truth of this present Text That the Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom 2. Why there is no other entrance than this into true Wisdom THE former is manifest out of many places of Scripture 1. Ecclesiastie 4. 17. For first she will walk with him by crooked wayes and bring him unto fear and dread and torment him with her discipline until she have tryed his soul and have proved him by her judgments Then will she return the streight way unto him and comfort him and shew him her secrets and heap upon him her treasures of Knowledge 2. Also Esai 66. at the beginning of the Chapter Thus saith the Lord The heaven is my throne and the earth is my foot-stool Where is that house that you will build unto me And where is that place of my rest Presently after he subjoineth To him will I look even to him that is of a poor and contrite spirit and trembleth at my words He therefore that fears the Lord shall become the Temple of God And it should seem no strange thing to us being the Apostle makes mention of the same more than once or twice Know you not that your bodies are the Temples of the Holy Ghost in the first Epistle to the Corinthians And in the same Epistle Know you not that you are the Temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you Now what Benefit accrues to us by being the Temple of God we may gather by the nature and use of these Material Temples these Temples made with hands In these we know amongst the Heathen were the Initiations into the Mysteries of whatsoever Deity the place was Consecrate to But we need not straggle We see the use of outward Temples dayly here among our selves They are for Prayers Hymns and for Instruction out of the Word of God the literal Word of God in a gross material Temple Therefore in analogy in the Temple of our Souls and Spirits shall the essential word the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Eternal Word of God or God himself teach and instruct us And who teacheth like him as is said in Iob. There was so great Vertue in the very presence of the Person of Socrates as you may see in Plato that his Scholars profited very much merely by being in the same Room with him though he spake not unto them How much more shall they profit with whom the Spirit of Christ abideth as in his own proper House and Temple With what joy and admiration shall they be taken when in the Synagogue of their Hearts he shall stand up and read as in that Synagogue at Nazareth He hath sent me that I should heal the broken-hearted that I should preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind When he shall begin to say This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears Then shall all the powers and faculties of a mans Soul bear him witness and wonder at the gracious words that proceed out of his mouth Such a Teacher shall all such have that truly fear God 3. Again That Wisdom is usherd in by terrour fear and horrour seems to be the subject of the 29th Psalm The voice of the Lord is upon the waters the God of glory maketh it to thunder the Lord is upon the great waters Now that Waters are an Emblem of the moveable and tumultuous flowings of the Earthly Nature that Learned Iew doth teach us when as he calls the Waters of Edom 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Waters towards which the King of Egypt made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And the Platonists make but a sliding passing dream of corporeal and sensible things saying of them that they do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That they slide continually from the true essence by perpetual flowing So the Soul being united cum rebus fluxis caducis dissolved as it were and incorporate after a manner into their Watery nature and lost amongst it The mighty energy of the All-powerful Voice of God or Word of God doth operate upon these Waters for the producing of Light in them as in the first Creation And according to this Analogy speaks the Apostle 2 Cor. 4. For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Iesus Christ. But to proceed further in the Psalm The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars yea the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon The voice of the Lord maketh
such inestimable treasures of durable Wisdom before a fearful tryal hath been upon it Deut. 8. Thou shalt remember the way which the Lord thy God led thee in the wilderness that he might afflict thee and humble thee that he might try thee 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the most secret penetrates of thy Heart might be laid open to discern whether thou wouldst keep the Commandments or no. Now if the Heart of a man be not right toward God nor endued with requisite previous dispositions if this great gift of God were confer'd upon them they would either Swine-like prefer dirt and mire before this precious Pearl and so quench the good Grace of God by Beastly Sensuality which God will not suffer he having taught Nature not prodigally to cast away any thing of hers that is good whose best things are not comparable to the meanest of the gifts of the Holy Spirit of God Or else if they did affect and could retain this exceeding great Grace they would notwithstanding wax excessively proud Gellius in his Noctes Atticae tells us of a Grammarian disputing of Genders and Cases of Nouns tam arduis superciliis with his Eye-brows so highly display'd and with so grave a composure of Voice and Countenance as though he had been interpreting some dark weighty Prophesie out of the Sibylline Oracles Now if the taking in of such superficial Learning as this doth so swell and puff up vain man surely more solid Knowledge would burst him If we be naturally given to conceit highly of our selves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Philosopher speaks so greatly to overvalue our selves for some small petty Notions how could we bear such a qualification of mind as that no sooner any obscurity or difficulty could appear in our Souls but the brightness of our Understanding would consume it as those thinner kind of Clouds vanish before the face of the Sun A third Inconvenience may be added to these There being no means so pregnant for the obtaining any end as a clear subtil quick Understanding a wicked man which makes Himself his End in all his actions besides this abuse he would make of Wisdom viz. that he might strut and take upon him with more confidence and be pointed at with an Hic est ille Demosthenes he might further abuse it for the obtaining of more mischievous and Divelish ends But be we assured that that Spirit that doth assert men into the glorious liberty of the Sons of God will not brook so unreasonable a bondage it self as to become vassal to the will of corrupt man So we see it strong enough from these inconveniences that the all-disposing power will not bestow this precious endowment upon unprepared persons 2. But here is another Argument that seems to strike deeper which is Incompossibility 1 Cor. 2. 14. The natural man perceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God For they are foolishness unto him Neither can he know them because they are Spiritually discerned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the Platonist in the VI Book of his I. Ennead The Eye sees not the Sun unless it bear the image of the Sun in it nor could it receive that impression were it covered with dirt and filth So that it is plain that the necessary foundation of true Wisdom is unfeigned Righteousness and Pureness The Lights of Heaven were made on the fourth day Now it is observable saith that Learned Iew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That the quaternary number is the first quadrate pariter par or equally equal the measure of Iustice and Equity And the Heavenly Light surely is begot in its holy quaternary as those Lights of Heaven on the fourth day But a further Illustration for this purpose might be gathered if we would further follow the explanation of this Symbol Which I am the bolder with because I make account it is no strange one it being Aristotles own expression of a good man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Homo quadratus sine culpa Now a Quadrate you know consisting of Right Angles is a very useful Instrument for taking the height depth length and breadth of bodies and all in vertue of a Right Angle which is nothing else but the demission of one streight Line upon another perpendicular so that it encline no way but stand exactly upright And there is an uprightness of heart and life resembled by this which is when a man enclines neither to the right hand nor to the left no less needful for the inabling us to comprehend with all Saints what is that spiritual breadth and length and depth and heigth as the Apostle speaks than that other is in Geometrical measurings So we see though in brief that both Ethicks Physicks and Mathematicks have conspired together for the establishing and confirming of this so wholesome and useful a Truth That clearness of Knowledge proceeds out of Purity of Life To descend to a more particular handling of this matter as to shew you how the purging of a mans Soul takes away those main impediments to truth of Knowledge as are Self-admiration doting upon that which we our selves conceive of before the apprehension of others Anger Envy Impatiency a pusillanimous over-estimation of others desire of Victory rather than of Truth blindness proceeding out of the love of Riches or Honour an heavy adhension of our minds to the sluggish inertness of Sense suffocation or smothering the active spark of Reason by Luxury and Intemperancy with many others which be general Impediments to whatsoever kind of Knowledge a man aimes at to descend I say to such particulars would ask more time than I am able to speak in or you have the patience to hear Wherefore I omit them and will only add this one Argument more to prove the Incompossibility of true Knowledge and Iniquity in one Subject And that is the Antipathy betwixt the Holy Spirit of Discipline and Unrighteousness What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness saith the Apostle and what communion hath light with darkness And what concord hath Christ with Belial There is such a mutual abhorrency in their Nature that they chace one another as the Night and Day about the Orb of the Earth the approach of one is the putting to flight of the other Wisdom cannot enter into a wicked heart nor dwell in a body that is subject unto sin For the Holy Spirit of Discipline fleeth from deceit and withdraweth himself from thoughts that are without understanding and is rebuked when wickedness cometh in By this time I hope it is sufficiently evicted That Piety is the only Key of true Knowledge And indeed I fear not but that all with one consent will confess it so they may have the interpretation of it and restrict it to that vvhich they call Saving Knovvledge vvhich they say simple ignorant Idiots are capable of Now what a conceit they frame out in their minds of Saving Knowledge I will not here discourse But if it be granted of all
sides that Obedience and the Fear of God is the Begetter of Saving Knowledge surely the practice of a Godly Life and Conversation will notwithstanding be exceeding abundantly worth our labour though it had not the promise of this Life as well as that which is to come But if I shall shew plainly that there is a further abundant luxuriancy of the goodness of God upon an Obedient mans Understanding intimated in this word Wisdom I hope there will be nothing wanting for the inflaming of our desires to a Godly Life and Conversation Prov. cap. 8. Wisdom is said there to cry and Vnderstanding to utter her voice to speak to men from the high places and by the way of the places of the path to cry unto them beside the gates of the city to speak unto them at the entry of the doors to take all occasions to be acquainted with them She would salute them at every turn For the good Spirit of Wisdom is loving and sincere aud would fain clasp with our Souls if they were pure that she might discourse with us of the wonders of the Almighty and shew unto us his Everlasting Glory Now that this Blessed Spirit would reside with us is plain What be her operations when she doth reside will anon be as plain I wisdom dwell with prudence and I find forth knowledge and counsels I have counsel and wisdom I am understanding and I have strength I love them that love me and they that seek me early shall find me This Wisdom therefore will make a man no Idiot when it stores a man with Prudence and Counsels But it affords not this only to the Souls of Holy men but it gives them a Theory of the hidden things of God This Wisdom was at the making of the World and so can best unfold the Mysteries of the whole Creation When he prepared the Heavens I was there when he set the compass upon the deep when he established the clouds above when he confirmed the fountains of the deep when he gave his decree to the sea when he laid the foundations of the earth then was I with him as his darling I was dayly his delight rejoycing alway before him and took my solace in the compass of his earth and my delight is with the sons of mens But it is yet more evident out of the 7th of Wisdom For he hath given me saith Solomon the true knowledge of the things that are So that I know how the World was made and the powers of the Elements the beginning and the end and the middes of times how the times alter and the change of seasons the course of the year and the situation of the stars the nature of living things the furiousness of beasts the powers of the winds and the imaginations of men the diversity of plants and the vertue of roots and all things both secret and known do I know For Wisdom the worker of all things hath taught me it It is very apposite to this purpose that which is in Philo Iudeus in his Tractate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 upon these words of Moses And God saw all that he made and behold it was very good 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. For none else were able to discern and judge accurately of the things that were made but he that was the Maker of them Go to now saith he you seeming wife ones full-fraught with Pride Ostentation and Ignorance You that say not only you know every thing but dare so boldly and confidently avouch this or that to be the Causes of them as though you had been present at the making of the World and had seen the composure of all things as they were put together as though the Creator had consulted with you about the means and contrivements of his work A just increpation of the bold and blind attempts of those that pursue after Wisdom without the guidance of God the Giver of it Why What you will say must we think to get Wisdom as Solomon did Nay but I say rather is it to be thought that we are already wiser than Solomon that we should have found out a better way to trafick for Wisdom than he could light on Prayer and a serious seeking after God with industrious study was the way that he went to compass it And surely it is a way no whit mis-becoming any good Christian Neither ought we to be inwardly ashamed of doing of that which the Apostle openly exhorts us to Iames 1. 5. If any of you lack wisdom let him ask it of God that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not and it shall be given him But what true Christian can with patience think upon the stupid Atheism that is so rife in these wicked ungodly dayes When as in the highest attempts of men the power of Heaven is held but for a Cypher Their Philosophy certainly hath removed God into so high and remote an Excelsis that they think him out of the call of mans voice and man out of the reach of his sight He must sit upon the primum mobile 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so speaks Aristotle Afraid forsooth that the Godhead should be defiled if his Presence should be among men on the Earth So he confines him to that fine phantastick place the Eighth Sphere O goodly and profound Mystery Like to that of Mahomet that makes God clamber back to Heaven when he had finished here his six days work O high Divinity And now who shall rule among men I know well enough who doth rule among men Verily the Devil or that Devilish Natural Spirit of man who sets it self up for a Deity attributing all to its self with detestable arrogancy Our good Natural parts are our Gods Or if they chance to fail and not answer our desire in their performance whither go we Right readily to some Temple of Bacchus to the Sacred Tavern Where we do devoutly magnifie the miraculous power of that sparkling Deity enthron'd in his Crystalline Heaven and somewhat more largely partaking of that fiery aethereal Spirit our Eyes no question are so illuminated that vve see double All things are then augmented and seem bigger as the Horizontal Sun by reason of muddy Vapours We find then our selves and our Comrades such notable Wiselins as not vve our selves nor others could ever have suspected O the deplorable vanity of misled Youth When it hath cast off the memory of God and due respect to its careful Tutors and faithful Governours Is not this Idolatry in preferring the povver of Sack before the Spirit of God a greater shame than a timely practice of true Piety and adorning our minds vvith all manner of Vertues in the highest degree Fighting manfully against all manner of Passions to the utter suppression of that Life of Darkness in our lovver Spirit that the Spirit of Truth may shine in our purged Souls as the Sun in a pure diaphanous substance And what hurt can come of this Why surely
we may come to be temperate to be sober to be chast to be modest to be humble to study mortification of all wickedness in Flesh and Spirit being so persuaded that Wisdom will not inhabit where these be absent and in conclusion a dreadful thing to think of we may fall into the same Heresie with S. Iames and Solomon That Wisdom is the gift of God and that it is a point of Wisdom to think so But that no men rashly and arrogantly take upon them this gift before it be given I could wish that all that are forward to profess themselves the Scholars of God nay his Secretaries his Closet-counsel his only Children born and brought up of him the only wise and holy Off-spring of God full of Wisdom and Celestial Understanding that they would examine themselves by that Rule in S. Iames chap. 3. Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge amongst you Let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom But if you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts glory not an lye not against the Truth This wisdom descendeth not from above but is earthly sensual devilish For where envying and strife is there is contention and every evil work But the wisdom that is from above is first pure then peaceable gentle and easie to be entreated full of mercy and good fruits without partiality and without hypocrisie Whosoever therefore is fervent and vehement in maintaining the Truth let him first be assured that he has the right Knowledge and the true mind of the Spirit of God And before he ascribes this Spirit of Wisdom or Heavenly Understanding to himself let him try if he have the qualifications of that Celestial Wisdom which are Meekness Purity Peaceableness Gentleness Affability Mercy Bounty Impartialness and Simplicity He that hath not these hath not the Truth but is liable to be made the habitation of seducing Devils and to create mischief to men and shame and eternal confusion to his own self As sure as God doth impart his Spirit of Truth and Divine Knowledge to his Children so surely true it is that that Spirit suggesteth no Cruelty nor Unrighteousness but Patience Benignity Compassion and boundless and unlimited Charity And if men otherwise qualified pretending to the Spirit as Histories testifie have plainly shewn that they were led by some Fanatick erroneous Fury lodging in spiritual pride and infernal bitterness and distemper yet this is no sufficient excuse of that common Civil Atheism in the World that excludeth the operation of Gods Spirit in the hearts of men and attributes all to Nature and Humane Industry For as nihil generat seipsum is true in Philosophy so that no man can regenerate himself is as true in Divinity But now that this New Creature born at this Second Birth should have its old Eyes and the same sight with the Earthly Adam seems to me a thing monstrous and prodigious Surely there is a renovation of the Understanding as well as the Will and both by the Divine Spirit the Wisdom of God that worketh all in all I but here some mischievous piece of modesty will object Can that Spirit be communicable to us also that hath such magnificent Titles in the 7th of Wisdom She is the breath of the power of God and a pure influence that floweth from the glory of the Almighty She is the brightness of the everlasting light the undefiled mirrour of the majesty of God and the image of his Goodness I Answer Here is the treasure of those precious promises S. Peter speaks of And hitherto may be referr'd that in the Psalms Glorious things are spoken of thee O thou city of God But I need not have gone out of the same Chapter an answer being so nigh at hand As there be many Epithets of Height and Majesty so there is one of Humanity and Courtesie But these words are too weak to express that affection which is attributed there to this good Spirit of Wisdom It is said in the Greek Text to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a lover of men Therefore you shall find this Spirit descending in the 27th of that Chapter even sliding down into the Souls of Holy and Humble men And that not once or twice as if it were afraid of such debasement but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from age to age But there is yet a more plentiful Testimony of this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the 6th Chapter ver 16. She goeth about seeking such as are meet for her and sheweth her self chearfully unto them in the wayes and meeteth them in every thought And at the 12th Verse Wisdom shineth and never fadeth away and is easily seen of them that love her and found of such as seek her She preventeth them that desire her that she may first shew her self unto them Whoso awaketh to her betimes shall have no great travail For he shall find her sitting at his doors Blessed is the man that exerciseth himself in her and he that layeth up her commandments in his heart shall be wise If he do them he shall be strong in all things For he setteth his steps in the light of the Lord which giveth wisdom to the godly The Lord be praised for evermore So be it So be it AND here I should willingly end did I not suspect that that which hath been spoken might move some Scruples in the minds of the Younger Auditors As whether wicked men have any Knowledge at all or no whether this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 exclude the use of Books with such others as misapprehension is the most ready and plentiful suggestor of doubts and difficulties But I will meddle only with these two I have named 1. And first with the former It would be a very distastful position to Flesh and Blood to say that wicked men are mere Ignaroes For there being not many that are not conscious to themselves of some dearly fosterd wickedness in their breast they would be put to a shreud strait for they must either undergo the doleful death of dying to their beloved Corruption or else be content to count themselves Fools so long as they live Both which are Gall and Wormwood to Natural Pride and Concupiscency But let us brook it as we can that Spirit in Esaiah dares give Sentence in this cause Behold all you that kindle a fire and are compassed about with sparks walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks that you have kindled This shall you have at my hand you shall lye down in sorrow 'T is true the Prophet here allowes them some light but a light of their own kindling And if Foolishness be the School-Mistress the Scholars are not likely to be very wise Weak quickly-dying sparks they have blindly and boldly mounting up though their Vehicle be but a filthy fuliginous vapour of darkness But the Sun of Righteousness hath not yet shone upon them Gross fire
they have for their light as lame and deformed as the Poets Vulcan It is fain to be underpropt with ill rubbish crass fewel to be fed with the foul oyl that sweats from that active body of sinful corruption and having so course a pabulum it is no wonder that it is as all Sublunary fires are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Bitter ebullitions and gross injuriousness are the proper effects of such illumination And although this fewel and blaze may transmit some strange steam into their Brains that they be drunkenly merry yet surely if they ever come to themselves they will fall into as deep and dull a Melancholly to see how horribly they have been deceived They shall lye down in sorrow An Emblem of this Knowledge may be that Egypt from which the Israelites were delivered This is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Earthly Wisdom as S. Iames stiles it and indeed it sutes well with the Emblem For AEgypt is watered by Nilus whose name is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Dionysius intimates in his Geographical Poem A River ever affording new mud For although it be as that Verse in Strabo calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a River come from Heaven as indeed every thing as much as is good of it is from the First Being yet it abounds so with the admixture of earthly filth that by its overflowing it begets nothing but half-formed or rather deform'd monsters glued to the slimy cloth of the earth Here is that numerous progeny of dirty ridiculous Opinions This is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the same Apostle calls it no better indeed than the uncertain conjectures of misty-minded Devils Whom I must needs confess I cannot conceive to be so great Clerks as they are vulgarly taken to be but rather wonder what madness possesseth mens minds that they should either say that the perversness of corruption is stronger than Gods Grace or the Devil wiser than Holy men But I fear such as cry up the power of Evil and the wisdom of that wicked Spirit so partially as if they had sworn confederacy with them ar become slaves to them magnifying them above the light and strength of God will then become Wise themselves when the Devil becomes Honest What commission or authority these men have to set him at liberty and enjoyment of the light of the Sun whom God hath prison'd up in the darkest dungeon I know not Sure I am they are not able to procure him bail they themselves being but fetter'd Vassals of foulest Ignorance But see how basely Disobedience contracts a mans Spirits that through the pusillanimity of his Soul he casts himself down before every petty Creature How doth honour riches or the dull and languid beauty of sensible forms subjugate and enslave him Nay how highly doth he admire and reverendly adore with more than American Superstition that piece of darkness and deformity the Devil So we see what small hope we have of attaining to Wisdom by any other means than that which that Wise King hath prescribed us The Fear of God 2. As for that other Query about Books I will dispatch it in a word It is said in Wisdom That it is not the increase of fruit that feedeth men But it is the Word that preserveth them that trust in God And yet no man abstains from these outward ordinary helps for his preservation Therefore that this Discourse beget in no man a lazy superstitious phrensie let them be Active in good and read such Books as conduce best for the finding of the truth of such Theories as they aim at having alwayes a special care that they never disjoin Knowledge from Righteousness but that they ever prize such Treatises as point a man to Obedience and purging a mans Soul from wickedness far above those that do but vex a mans Mind and consume his Body with unfruitful subtilties Which indeed would be no subtilties at all did not our dull and slow apprehension make them so for we are rather weak-brain'd than they hard Theories Or if you will they are so subtil that if a man could see clearly he would not see them at all they being indeed nothing or else worse And therefore rather to seek to have our eye-sight strengthen'd and clear'd by Purity of life than to weary and weaken them still more by unprofitable objects And alwayes to consider this That our Labour is nothing without the Benediction of God and his direction Nostra haec in literarum studiis peregrinatio sine supernâ luce miserabilis quaedam erratio est is the ingenuous Confession of that Great Scholar Scaliger And O! that we could sensibly feel as well as imagine that the Subsistence of all things is but liberum spiraculum a free breathing out of the mouth of the Almighty which if he revoke Things are closely again locked up and gathered in into their Centre of Darkness And that true Knowledge is nothing else but an arbitrarious emission of the pure rayes of God upon impolluted Souls And therefore wholly to depend upon him and wait upon him in Righteousness even upon the Fountain of all Truth and Father of Lights the only Wise God to whom be all Honour Glory Power Praise henceforth for ever Amen DISCOURSE V. JOHN iv 31. 32 33 34. In the mean time his disciples prayed him saying Master eat But he said unto them I have meat to eat that you know not of Therefore said the disciples one to another Hath any man brought him ought to eat Iesus saith unto them My meat is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work OUR Saviour Christ here in the Text propounds a Riddle or Parable to his Disciples I have meat to eat that you know not of Whatever is in the Text may be hither refer'd as the Occasion or Consequent thereof The Occasion of the proposal of this AEnigma is in Ver. 31. In the mean time his disciples prayed him saying Master eat i. e. So soon as he had broken off his serious Discourse with the Samaritan Woman his Disciples then took occasion to invite him to his seasonable repast Which gives him occasion to propound something to them aenigmatically of more concernment and of an higher nature than this outward perishable food Ver. 32. I have meat to eat that you know not of There 's the proposal of the Riddle Of which there is a double Consequent The Disciples misinterpretation or false collection and then our Saviours own true solution Their misinterpretation Ver. 33. Has any man brought him ought to eat His true solution Ver. 34. My meat is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work These parts I shall prosecute in the same order that they lye in the Text without further preface or more curious division First therefore of the Occasion In the mean time his disciples prayed him saying Master eat In the mean time i. e. in the Interim betwixt
abstain from fleshly and bodily Desires from their accomplishment I mean has some hidden Contentment within undiscover'd to the World The Heart knoweth his own bitterness and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy Our Saviour Christ himself could not with such ease have slighted the cravings of Nature for He was a man like to us in all things Sin only excepted and disregarded his seasonable Sustenance had it not been so as he professes it was in his Answer to his Disciples I have meat to eat you know not of AND thus much of the Occasion and Proposal of the Parable I come now to the double Consequent thereof viz. First The Disciples misapprehension or false collection Hath any man brought him to eat Secondly Our Saviours true interpretation of the Parable My meat is to do the will of him that sent me c. Hath any man brought him to eat It was obvious to think so I confess but not at all necessary 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Has any man The Ravens fed Elijah the Tisbite by the Brook Cherith which is before Iordan They brought him bread and flesh in the morning and bread and flesh in the evening 1 Kings 17. 6. And not the Fowls of the Air only but the winged Host of Heaven might have been employed for this purpose They owe more than this to the Son of God But the mistake was not so much in the manner of the conveyance of this Meat as in the nature of the Meat it self 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Meats for the belly and the belly for meats but God will destroy both it and them He breaks and weakens that strong influence they have upon the minds of men that Circean Magick that metamorphozes the Souls of men into meer Beasts and changes their Understandings By the power of These the Disciples themselves seem stupid and are at a loss when their great Teacher utters himself in Heavenly Parables I have meat to eat you know not of For the unfolding of this dark Riddle They look no higher than a Sun-dyal or at farthest on the Sun and read there past Twelve and without any great subtilty can easily collect that it is Dinner-time which now compar'd with their lately bought Provision in the Cities of Samaria and the savoury suggestions of their own Stomachs their thoughts are circumscribed within the margins of a Platter they have animam in patinis as the Proverb goes and are not at leasure to think of any thing higher than Bodily Food Has any man brought him to eat I will observe two things from this passage and so leave it First The slowness of the Earthly Mind to apprehend Spiritual Mysteries There be two notable Instances of it One in those two Disciples that went to Emaus to whom Christ appeared and part of whose discourse was Luke 24. Concerning Iesus of Nazareth a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people And how the Chief Priests and their Rulers delivered him to be condemned to death and have crucified him But they trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel viz. from the Roman yoke according to that meer Terrene apprehension the Iewes it should seem then had and at this time have concerning the Messias making him a Temporal Prince and expecting a Temporal Happiness from him The other Instance is Iohn 6. 51 52. I am the living bread that came down from Heaven If any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever and the bread that I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world The Iews therefore strove amongst themselves saying How can this man give us his flesh to eat But the words our Saviour Christ here speaks are as he himself professes they are spirit and they are life and therefore Spiritually to be discerned and not by Carnal Eyes The other point that I would observe is the Vneffectualness of our Saviours presence according to the Flesh. If his Spirit had been in them as his Body was with them I make no question but their Minds had been so Heavenly disposed that our Saviours Speeches would not have proved such AEnigma's unto them It is true the very touch of Christs Garments healed the Bodies of the Sick sometime but nothing under his Spirit is effectual for recuring the Soul It is the Spirit that quickeneth the flesh profiteth nothing Ioh. 6. 63. I have many things to say unto you but you cannot bear them now Howbeit when the Spirit of Truth is come he will guide you into all truth Iohn 16. 12 13. Our Saviours Bodily presence could not convey those Divine Truths unto his Disciples that an inward principle of life when they were partakers thereof would convey to them And therefore he prefers the mission of the Holy Ghost before his own Bodily conversing with them at the 7th Verse of that Chapter I tell you the truth it is expedient for you that I go away for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you But if I depart I will send him unto you And this was S. Pauls pious boast 2. Cor. 5. 16 17. Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh yea though we have known Christ after the flesh yet now henceforth know we him no more Therefore if any man be in Christ he is a new creature viz. if he be in Christ not after the Flesh but be regenerate of the Spirit I HAST on now to the last part of the Text our Saviours own Solution of this Parable proposed by him to his Disciples and by them misunderstood Therefore said the disciples one to another Hath any man brought him to eat There 's the Misinterpretation Iesus saith unto them My meat is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work There 's our Saviours explication of his own mind The great Truth and Mystery not inferiour to any Mystery contained in this interpretation is this That the will of God is the food of the Soul This I conceive to be plainly exhibited to us in this Text. For the Divinity of Christ it cannot be said to feed of any thing it is self-sufficient and immutable according to those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Mankind has of God Such Spiritual food as the will of God cannot belong to the Body for those Bodies grow fat that have no relish thereof It remains therefore the Soul of Christ was that which was fed with the will of God And his Soul and ours are ejusdem speciei Christ being utterly like us in all things Sin only excepted Wherefore I conclude this Doctrine The will of God is the food of mans Soul I mean of Regenerate man I know the Carnal appetite will pronounce it a very slight and slender Sallet But I will answer that Objection in short The natural man is uncapable of the things of the Spirit of God 1. Cor. 2. 14. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
that Tyrannick Prince that rules in the Sons of Disobedience he shall be excluded from the everlasting light of God and his Holy Truth And thus briefly under one we have seen how we are said to deceive our selves and the way to escape this self-deceit God that commanded the light to shine out of darkness shine in our hearts and give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Iesus Christ that we may walk before him in the truth of Life To Him with the Father and the Blessed Spirit c. DISCOURSE VII PROV xv 15. All the dayes of the afflicted are evil but a good conscience is a continual feast THE Text is a description of the estate of the wicked man and the righteous man Which will be more evident if we consult with the Septuagints Translation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. The eyes of the wicked continually expect evil but the Godly or good men are alwayes at rest Here do the LXX Interpreters express plainly that opposition of those persons and of their conditions Vngodly and good or godly unquietness of mind and perpetual rest As I pronounced concerning this Text at first that it is a description of the opposite conditions of those ever opposite off-springs of God and the Devil the Sons of Christ and the Sons of Belial the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness This Sense have the LXX put upon this portion of Scripture though the words themselves answer not so fitly to the Hebrew Text. To devise the occasion of their variation would be more easie though curious than profitable I intend not to mispend time or abuse your attention with the husks of words or fruitless discourse of Translations I will follow Symmachus in the first part of the Verse exactly answering to the Hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All the dayes of the poor are evil in the second part the Hebrew it self But a good heart is a continual feast or as the words will bear He that hath a good heart feasts continually Now therefore that this Poverty is not to be understood of outward poverty is plain out of the Text. Continual feasting and constant poverty or affliction are contrary So that we must either exclude the poor man from having a good Heart and Conscience whereby all sorrow is dispell'd and continual joy and chearfulness obtained or else if he hath these joyes make him rich in outward wealth But sith the poor upright honest man through the continual comfort of his own good Conscience Dives like fares deliciously every day though poor in estate then surely none of his dayes are evil though he poor outwardly in them all So that this present Text is to be understood of an inward kind of poverty that makes a mans life full of evil and misery This evil poverty and miserable want is described in the Revelation of S. Iohn Ch. 3. Thou sayest I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing and knowest not how thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked I counsel thee to buy of me gold tryed in the fire that thou mayst be made rich and white rayment that thou mayst be clothed and that thy filthy nakedness do not appear and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve that thou mayst see Here 's good store of penury a wardrobe of want want of Money want of Clothes to cover their shame want of Eye-sight to be able to do that which is but a misery to go from door to door to beg But hear what 's said Verse 21. To him that overcometh will I give to sit with me in my Throne even as I overcame and sit with my Father in his Throne See what a change From a Begger to a King from a Dunghil to a Throne from a blind Wretch to a Judge upon a Throne that shall discern the right that shall judge the Twelve Tribes of Israel He that is spiritual judgeth all things yet he himself is judged of no man We have by this time plainly seen what this poor man is whose dayes are said all to be full of evil That he is one that wants those white Robes which is the Righteousness of the Saints wants that old precious coin whose image and superscription is Righteousness and true Holiness the figure of Christ the Son of God the express Portraiture of his Father He wants his Eye-sight the true Spiritual Wisdom holy Discretion the sense of Spirits and discovery of the mysterious working of that Prince of Darkness and Deceit He 's plainly destitute though not of the necessaries of this Life yet of that main one and only necessary thing as our Saviour calls it that better part that Mary chose and could not be taken from her Virtus nec eripi nec surripi◠potest Nor force nor fraud can deprive a man of that inward good And now I have described this poor man I think it is not hard to prove that all his dayes are evil By how much better the Soul is than the Body by so much worse are the Defects of the Soul than those of the Body 1. Is an Vlcer or Wound grievous in the Body Much more grievous is it then in the Soul or Spirit The Spirit of a man will sustain his infirmities but a wounded Spirit who can bear Prov. 18. 14. 2. Is Blindness or Darkness an horrid thing to the Body then is Ignorance much more to the Soul As may appear from that excellent description of this AEgyptian darkness in the Book of Wisdom Chap. 17. When the unrighteous people thought to have thy holy people in subjection they were bound with the bands of darkness and long night and being shut up under the roof did lye there to escape the eternal providence But now that we think not only of outward darkness in the Air see what followes And while they thought to be hid in their dark sins they were scattered abroad in the dark covering of forgetfulness fearing horribly and troubled with visions For the den that hid them kept them not from fear But the sounds that were about them troubled them and terrible visions and horrible sights did appear No power of the fire might give light neither might the clear flames of the stars lighten the dreadful night And a few Verses after For it is a fearful thing when malice is condemned by her own testimony and a conscience that is touched doth ever forecast cruel things Thus having their eyes closed in misty sleep it doth not secure them from the trouble of fear For they that endure this intolerable night breath'd out of the dungeon of Hell as they sleep the same sleep so are they in like manner tortured with the same monstrous visions sounding for fear and perplexity of Spirit as is largely described in that Chapter But that this evil condition may appear more evil I will set the contrary by it God is light and in him
possessions He that overcomes shall be clothed in white shall feed of the hidden manna Not as the Children of Israel in the Wilderness who lived of Manna so many years and then perished I am the bread of life saith our Saviour your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead But this is the bread that cometh down from Heaven that he that eateth of it should not dye John 6. 48 49 50. and Ver. 32 33. Moses gave you not bread from Heaven but my Father giveth you the true bread from Heaven For the bread of God is he that cometh down from Heaven and giveth life unto the world Now what Life is this A vertuous honest Life a Life devoid of filthy lusts of base concupiscence of envy hatred and bitterness of idolatrous self-love for self-love is perfect idolatry Or is it an hypocritical false ungodly Life not escap'd the corruption of the Flesh that is by lust Surely it is the former or else our Heavenly Father instead of Bread giveth us a Stone which no Natural Father would do to his Son He therefore that lives not an honest godly and upright Life hath not been at this doal of Heavenly Bread and is but as one that dreameth he eateth and he eateth not as the Prophet Esay speaketh but when he waketh he is hungry and dreameth that he drinketh but when he waketh his soul is faint But he that cometh to me shall never hunger and he that believeth in me shall never thirst saith our Blessed Saviour So here 's Meat Drink and Clothes sufficient if we perform the condition of overcoming Now overcoming presupposeth a fight and fighting an Adversary And God knows we have enough and strong ones too The three Captains of them be these the Flesh the World and the Devil To whom we are sworn Enemies from our very Baptism I am sure they are to us from the very beginning of the World I will briefly tell you a way to foyl them and so conclude the First part of my Text. Sobriety and Temperance will overcome the Flesh. Humility and Lowliness of mind will defeat the World Self-denyal which is the blessed Cross of Christ will keep off all the pestilent plots and devices the Devil can frame against us The Apostle doth harness us very surely and strongly for this great conflict Ephes. 6. Take unto you the whole armour of God that you may be able to resist in the evil day and having finished all things stand fast Stand therefore having your loins girt with verity and having on the breast-plate of righteousness and your feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace Above all taking the shield of Faith wherewith you may quench all the fiery darts of the wicked And take the helmet of Salvation and the sword of the Spirit that is the word of God Here 's compleat furniture for a Christian Souldier only he sets down no Back-piece because he intends not we should ever run away But he commends to us above all the shield of Faith which if we hold fast and become not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 cowardly Souldiers such as cast away their Shield and take themselves to flight he warrants it of such proof as no shaft or brand of Hell can enter it What great deeds have been done and brave atchievments wrought by this Armature the Apostle in his Epistle to the Hebrews at the 11th Chapter doth largely discourse and at last more roundly and summarily conclude thus What shall I say more for the time would be too short for me to tell of Gideon of Barak and of Sampson and of Iephte also of David and Samuel and of the Prophets Which through Faith subdued kingdoms wrought righteousness obtained promises stopped the mouth of lions quenched the violence of fire escaped the edge of the sword of weak were made strong waxed valiant in battle turned to flight the armies of the aliens All these exploits are done by keeping fast the shield of Faith which is a sure Trust and Perswasion that God is able and ready to fight on our side The want of this Faith is that which makes the Devils Camp so victorious against us We are loth to believe that God can or will enable us to resist unto Blood even unto the effusion of that wicked Life and mortification of all Fleshly-mindedness But this is required and if we will believe that God would as heartily have it done as he doth plainly command it it would be done in good time Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee the crown of life Rev. 2. If we dye with him then shall we also live with him For if we be grafted with him into the similitude of his death even so shall we be into the similitude of his resurrection Rom. 6. 5. THUS we have seen the evil afflicted case of him that is destitute of the true riches of the mind Temperance Piety Wisdom and all other Vertues as also the way to attain unto those durable riches and affluency of all good I will now go on to the Second part of my Text viz. A good Heart or a good Conscience is a continual Feast The Heart is the seat of Conscience i. e. of Desire or bent of Will and Knowledge Knowledge of things Moral or Divine So in Scripture we have oft mention of a wise and understanding Heart And surely if a man observe in Moral and Pious matters a man communeth with his Heart and discovereth deceit and hypocrisie there as he doth incongruities and falsities in his Brain where imagination is placed in Natural and Mathematical Theories Conscience therefore is nothing but the Censure of the Soul upon the guize of the Heart accusing or excusing its drifts intentions and acts And is called quiet or troubled Not that that light is alwayes so but that it causeth such a perturbation in the Spirit of man conscious to it self of evil committed Or otherwise thus Conscience is the impression of the true light of things Moral or Divine upon the Heart where Will and Intention and Motion of Life is As Reason Natural is the impression of the clear light of Truth in Natural Theories These true lights never vary but the impressions are more or less perfect sometime plainly false as the image of the Sun in the water when it appeareth broken or of a long form or in a mist when it appears red Hence is falshood and correction of falshood both in Heart and Brain For the clearer and more exact impression confuteth the imperfect if displaced or confirmeth it if only dim before But that common and vulgar apprehension of Conscience such as every man conceives when the word is named shall be sufficient for my Discourse And this is nothing but a certain disposition or condition of mind from the knowledge or remembrance of its acts and intentions which if they be represented as good simple and sincere Ioy and Rest follows if otherwise Disturbance
meat and do all drink of the same spiritual drink and are all incorporate into one Body all quickened by the same Spirit all conspire into one Will through unity of the same Life so that all 's in peace and good order And thus much for the Persons assembled Which if you doubt of or are perswaded that you shall not continually enjoy their company yet I will shew you an assembly that so long as you enjoy a pure Conscience you shall alway enjoy their company in a true Paradise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 An Holy Paradise where are assembled Vertue Wisdom and all Decency and Discretion And these are excellent companions tho' they were known to no body but him that lives with them And He lives with them that hath a pure Heart for the Father of them abides in the sincere Spirit 2. But it were time now to speak of the Provision had I not spoke already somewhat of it almost before due time But no tongue can declare it I will rather use the Psalmists words O taste ye and see how gracious the Lord is For they that fear him shall lack nothing The lyons do lack and suffer hunger but they that do seek the Lord shall want no manner of thing that is good So then here is apparatus non neglectus at least no want if not redundancy Ay but it 's a poor Feast you 'll say where there is no overplus If any man suspect he shall come to such a slender Dinner I will use the words of our Saviour Mat. 16. O ye of little faith why think you thus within your selves Do you not perceive neither remember the five loaves when there were five thousand men and how many baskets were taken up neither the seven loaves when there were four thousand men and how many baskets were taken up If Christ could satisfie such multitudes of men with so few loaves so that so many fragments were left Surely we need not fear but when he feeds us with himself who is that Heavenly Bread and the foecundity or fulness of God but that we shall be unspeakably satisfied and superabundantly refreshed So we have plainly seen how excellent our company how good our chear shall be I will interfeit one accomplishment which Varro omits in his Feast And that is Musick The concent of Musicians at a Banquet is as a Signet of Carbunoles set in Gold As the Signet of an Emerald well trimmed with Gold so is the melody of Musick in a pleasant banquet Ecclesiasticus 32. 5 6. Now that this Feast is not devoid of Musick will thus appear For Righteousness is nothing else but an harmony of the lower parts of a mans Soul with the upper of the Affections with Reason as the Pythagorists define it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Polus the Pythagorean When as the inclinations of a mans Will or Desire answer the dictates of true Reason these are Heavenly responses indeed fit for a Celestial Quire When Reason begins the point and all the Affections chearfully follow it as Philo comments upon that Song of Moses and Miriam I will sing unto the Lord for he hath triumphed gloriously the horse and his rider he hath over-thrown in the Sea The Lord is my strength and praise and he is become my salvation Who is like unto thee O Lord among the gods Who is like unto thee so glorious in holiness fearful in praises doing wonders Then Miriam the rest of the women following her with Timbrels and with Dances takes up her Timbrel in her hand and answers Sing unto the Lord for he hath triumphed gloriously the horse and the rider hath he over-thrown in the Sea Such 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as these such Triumphal Songs against our Spiritual Enemies will become this Feast well The same exultation of Spirit you shall find in the blessed Psalmist The Lord is my strength and my shield my heart hath trusted in him and I am helped Therefore my heart danceth with joy and in my song will I praise him Psalm 28. This is that which the Apostle exhorts to Eph. 5. Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess but be filled with the Spirit speaking unto your selves with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts Hitherto then is this Feasting very compleat good Companions good Chear good Musick 3. But what is all this if not in a good convenient place Iobs Children you know as they were making merry at their elder Brothers a strong Whirlwind took a corner of the house and buried them with the ruins in the midst of their merriment But whosoever dwelleth under the defence of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty that is under the protection of him that is able to keep them safe Ps. 91. And at the 90th Psalm Lord thou hast been our habitation from generation to generation Before the mountains were made and before thou hadst formed the earth even from everlasting to everlasting 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thou art the strong God a more sure sustentation than the steddy Earth a more strong safeguard than the massy Hills So then this Holy Assembly feast under a safe roof far from the reach of any tumult or tempest God is our hope and strength a very present help in trouble Therefore will we not fear though the earth be moved and though the hills be carryed into the midst of the sea Though the waters thereof rage and swell and though the mountains shake at the tempest of the same Yet there is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God the holy place of the tabernacle of the most high In all this danger and stir you see here 's secure Feasting and Joy in the Tabernacle of the most High The voice of joy and gladness is in the dwelling of the righteous safe pleasure and never fading delight in the habitation of the upright in Heart and pure in Conscience But if any man be not contented with the Safeness of the place but would curiously inquire into the Beauty of it that Description is done to our hands in the 21th of S. Iohns Revelation Gold and pearl and precious stones is a slight glimpse of the Glory of that Habitation and the Beauty of God 4. I will pass now to the fourth thing considerable in a Feast The convenience of time And no time surely is inconvenient to these Feasters who have the preeminence exceedingly above them that enjoy any outward delight For these men be confined to Seasons and Opportunities which be but poor small parcels of time But all Time and Eternity too is but one entire Opportunity for those Spiritual Feasters to enjoy themselves in A good Heart or a pure Spirit is one continual everlasting Feast It was well said of Diogenes to one that was too much taken with the seldom solemnity of an outward Feast 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What saith
good But we may have a kind of communicated Omnipotency as to the affairs of our own Sphere in our own Microcosm or little World where we ought to rule with an absolute hand and never to be quiet till we can profess with S. Paul I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me Wherefore as God is Omnipotent in the great Universe and does curb and keep up the whole Corporeal Creation within the limits of certain Natural Laws which they cannot pass So also we are to set bounds and limits to our Bodily Passions and keep them in constant subjection to the Laws of right Reason or to the Rule of the Spirit of God And again in the second place Though we cannot be Omniscient yet we may become in a manner entirely Intellectual and throughly understand and as affectionately relish the true interest of our own Souls and perfectly discern all the concerns thereof and be accompanied with all those Divine Truths and Blissfull Speculations which are requisite for the perfecting of Humane Happiness which in our Sphere is an imitation of the Divine Omnisciency And lastly Though it is impossible that any Creature should be infinitely good yet it is capable of being filled with a Spirit of unexpressible Benignity and to be a faithful well-willer to the happiness and prosperity of every Creature of God and therefore to be in a perpetual promptness and readiness to help them that are in any distress and to rejoyce in the good and wellfare of every parcel of the Creation And this is briefly the amiable Face or Image of God as it is visible or communicable to us which we see by the beams of its own brightness as we see the Sun by its own Light though not in that real lustre nor bigness that it is And I hope now it will plainly appear That the recuperation of this Divine Image is the true expergefaction or resuscitation of the Soul from a state of Sleep or Death into the most full and ample functions of Life Of which the first degree was self-motion or self-activity For meer passivity or to be moved or acted by another either without a mans will or against it this is the condition of such as are either dead or asleep as to go of a mans self is a Symptom of one alive or awake Wherefore whatever is done in us by meer Passion or Ignorance seems rather to be acted upon us than acted by us and to be a defect of that degree of Life which we call self-motion or self-activity in such cases we seeming rather to be carried by surprize than to go of our own accords as men that are dead drunk may be haled or disposed of where others please And every one that is acted by Passion is drunk or if acted upon through Ignorance asleep and so are deprived of that degree of Life which is self-activity a doing things from an inward or thorough assent to them Which no man does in a wicked action because every one that commits wickedness does it to his own infinite disinterest and wrong which no man did ever yet nor even can assent to Whence it is plain that he is not in this regard self-active and that therefore he is in the state of Death out of which the Image of God awakes him namely the power of Christ in him which shews him his way clearly that he may make a choice never to be repented of and enables him to walk in that way and to bear strongly and victoriously against all the assaults of the Body or suggestions of this Worldly Life And so by the self-activity of that spiritual or immaterial Principle in him he rules this little World of his by irresistible Laws as God himself does the great one And this I think is one considerable degree of the evigilation of the Soul through the Divine Image And the Second is no less considerable and which we have touched upon already in the former For if Ignorance be Sleep the Intellectual state of the Soul must needs be an eminent evigilation of her And if to grow Corporeal be to become more inert more unactive and drousie then surely to become more Spiritual must be joyned with a greater measure of Life and Activity And what actions are more Spiritual than those which the Soul exerts her self into in rational disquisitions and divine speculations and in the search of the most noble and momentous Truths concerning God and Nature When she unravels all into certain immutable and indelible Ideas of things which she was taught by no touch from external matter but are the most inward hidden Life of the Soul that Adytum or Oracle that speaks truth from the deepest recess of her Essence into which she cannot enter but by a lusty rowzing up and rubbing her Eyes clean of all those mists and fumes that arise from Corporeal Phantasms or accustomary prejudices These operations certainly must be very intellectual and incorporeal and therefore very much raised above the Body that Sepulchre or Dormitory of the Soul and not to be performed but by the excitation of such kind of Spirits as are in some measure congenerous to that Heavenly Body that Luminous or AEthereal Vehicle in which the Soul shall ride as in her Triumphal Chariot at the general Appearance in the last day I say the closer and more noble intellectual Operations of the Soul are not to be performed but by the assistance of more tenuious and fiery Spirits whence the Oracles call the mind 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mentem igneam which are contrary to that phlegmatick sluggishness and drownedness that the Worldly and Carnally-minded are overflown with But besides that the Principle from whence these Intellectual actions flow argues a notorious excitation or expergefaction of the mind therein that which is Intellectual being plainly Divine or Godlike whom the Schools rightly define to be Actus purissimus pure Life and Essential Energy That the Soul in her Intellectual Operations is roused as it were out of a Sleep will farther appear if we compare the functions of the Terrestrial Life with those of the Intellectual The largest Operation of the former of which is that of our Eye which takes in but this Visible Hemisphere of the World and if it could take in the whole according to this contracted proportion it were a pitiful scant thing such as is infinitely lesser than what our Understanding conceives the Universe to be nay many thousand times less than the Earth which is but as a Mathematical point in comparison of the body of the World How contracted then is Touch and Taste and the other Senses For the love of which when the Soul is immersed into the Body and wholly given up to them it is plain that her functions of Life are infinitely contracted and that she lies asleep or dead to her largest Faculties and that therefore the excitation of them is her expergefaction into infinitely a more ample Sphere
in us And Israel is called the inheritance of God Wherefore God in a kind of Gratitude as I may so say will provide us an Inheritance sith that we as he himself testifieth are an Inheritance to him Now if any man be desirous to know what an Inheritance this is that God hath prepared It is no less than a Kingdom And how great an esteem is put upon an Earthly Kingdom is very well known to you all Which if it be so desirable how much more desirable is the Kingdom of Heaven that nor time nor tumult can ever demolish This Kingdom of Heaven of God or Christ is the Inheritance of the Sons of God with Christ. But if any one rest unsatisfied yet and would further know what the Kingdom of God is Let him listen to S. Paul Rom. 14. 17. The kingdom of God is not meat nor drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost But this will seem even nothing to him that hath not the Spirit of Righteousness Peace and Joy Wherefore saith the Apostle 1 Cor. 2. 7. c. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory Which none of the princes of this world knew for had they known it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory But as it is written Eye hath not seen nor ear heard neither have entred into the heart of man the things that God hath prepared for them that love him But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit For the Spirit searcheth all things even the deep things of God For what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of a man that is in him Even so the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God Now we have received not the spirit of the world but the spirit that is of God that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God In a word therefore Beloved the Inheritance of the Children of God is the Spirit of God and all that it doth discover as the Sun is the lot and the inheritance of the Natural Eye and all visibles laid open by it in Nature And can any thing be wanting to them that are sharers in that Inheritance If I may call them sharers where every one is full possessour of the whole as the Sun is alike wholly in every eye Can our Souls be larger than the Life of God Or our Understanding not filled and satisfied by his all-knowing Spirit Can our Will wax restless or anxious where the Understanding finds out and feels the greatest good that any thing is capable of where the pure and undefiled Affection baths her silver plumes in eternal love and delight What is the Soul more than infinite that it should desire any Inheritance greater than God But it were now more seasonable to make some Vse to our selves from this Doctrine so infinitely plain or infinitely inexplainable First Who cannot hence condemn all Avarice Drunkenness Fleshly Lust Voluptuousness the bartering away this Glorious Inheritance of the Everlasting Kingdom of God for the Muck of this World choak'd with the Cares of this World undermining our Neighbours by false and treacherous practices over-reaching them in bargainings and cheating indeed our selves of Eternal LIfe by our own couzenages Instead of being filled with the Spirit to be full of base liquor drowning our Reason and Conscience and laying our selves open to the despight of the Devil and the shame of the World Chaffering away for a light momentany fit of Pleasure or some seducing wanton Lust the Inheritance of the good Spirit of God the sweet and comfortable Fellowship of the Holy Ghost the Joyes of Heaven the full Contentments and unspeakable Delights of that hidden Paradise that Garden of all sweetness and deliciousness Secondly The consideration of this future excellent state and glorious royal condition may afford much comfort to men of low degree and meaner fortune What though our Means be small our Calling base and dishonourable before men This time vvill certainly over and that quickly Though I be poor here a Servant and Bond-slave a Beggar Yet hereafter I shall be rich free noble a Prince a King an Emperour Then shall I be Lord not of a larger spot of Ground consisting of Dirt and Gravel and vvithering Grass and perishing Trees the sight of vvhich every nights sleep takes from me but of the boundless Heavens the everlasting Beauty of God vvhere vvith never-vvaking Eyes I shall alvvayes behold his excellent Glory This I say may comfort the poorer sort they being as capable if not more capable of this precious Inheritance than Lords and Princes of the Earth than Kings and Caesars than Dukes and Emperours Gal. 3. 26 c. For you are all the children of God by faith in Christ Iesus For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Iew nor Greek there is neither bond nor free there is neither male nor female For ye are all one in Christ Iesus And if ye be Christs then are you Abrahams seed and heirs according to promise But Thirdly and Lastly Is it so indeed that there is prepared for men of all conditions of Life such a rich Inheritance Let then all men of what condition soever examine themselves and try what assurance they find in themselves in their own Souls of this future Happiness What then is the Sign That brings me to my Second Doctrine viz. II. That the heirs of the Kingdom must suffer So saith the Text Heirs of God and joynt-heirs with Christ if so be that we suffer with him that we may be also glorified with him Which Truth is manifest out of sundry places of Scripture I will name only two Acts 14. 22. We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God And Coloss. 1. 10 11 12. That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God Strengthened with all might according to his glorious power unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness Giving thanks unto the Father which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light What Shall we think Beloved to obtain Heaven at a more easie rate than we purchase any Temporal Honour or Estate Multa tulit fecitque puer Those that are designed for some special piece of Earthly Preferment sweat and toil for it even from their very Childhood by industrious Education But we think to have Heaven for an old song as they say or for a lazily repeated Pater Noster for a word for an imagination for a phansie a thought an empty faith for nothing Who in the name of God told us so My Text contradicts it And Scripture will not contradict my Text because my Text is Scripture No verily It confirms it Be not deceived God is
and claims title to all must be Catholick None must stand before it A true Vr of the Chaldees eating up and devouring all other Deities Whatsoever is not This is Idolatry Blasphemy and Impiety And therefore we can admit of none but our own Or if we should by chance or unawares we recoyl back with more than Caunian zeal and indignation We are no where so lavish of our affection as in point of Religion and the more because no where more safe For who can love God too much and Religion immediately referrs to God This I would say that in the many and manifold distractions and divisions which the sons of men exercise one another with on this blind and dark spot the Earth where there is a great deal more talk of God than true knowledge of him all Religions every where agree in this one that nothing ought to be more precious and dear unto us than our Religion And in this also which I must again note with greater admiration that ordinary Religionists are in nothing so superficially and perfunctorily satisfied in as in what they do so devoutly love whence it comes to pass that many thousands of men Ixion-like embrace not Iuno but a Cloud Wherefore we cannot sufficiently commend the sober care and prudence of the blessed Apostle who hath so amply and fully set out to us that which few men have the patience to peruse in a closer Character And therefore out of neglect and carelesness very subject to mistake and if mistaken mistake more dangerously than in any thing else possibly they can do spending their most serious and dearest affections upon falshood their very hearts and souls upon unprofitable lyes and not only forfeiting their own happiness but as much as in them lyes pulling in others also into the same whirl-pool or dangerous pit of destruction But Beloved that we be not led away with the same errour of the wicked nor serve the phansies of men let us again cast our eyes on the Text and learn the truth of Religion Pure Religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep a mans self unspotted of the world The Text as I intimated before is a definition of Pure and Vndefiled Religion I might resolve it into these two Logical terms of Definitum and Definitio Pure Religion and undefiled before God and the Father that 's the Definitum or thing defin'd The Definition this To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep a mans self unspotted from the world But I shall handle the Text more roughly and fetch out though not force out these four Particulars 1. That there is a pure and undefiled Religion 2. That God the Father is judge of this pure and undefiled Religion 3. That to visit the Fatherless and Widows in their affliction and to keep ones self unspotted of the World this is pure and undefiled Religion 4. That it is pure and undefiled Religion even in the judgment and sight of God I. That there is a pure and undefiled Religion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It will not be amiss to make some short stay upon the unfolding of the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies properly Cultus divinus Orpheus the Thracian and great Mystagogue of the Graecians gave occasion to this term For they being taught the manners and rites of serving the Gods by him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Nonnus tells us They called the worshiping of the Gods 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as being a Thracian invention Beza translates it very well and significantly Cultus Religiosus and our English not amiss Religion in the proper sense as it is taken for the Worship of God and not extended to both Tables as S. Austin and Lactantius would have it For beside the propriety of the Greek word the quality of those to whom the Apostle wrote is no small Argument that that Religion which consists in Gods immediate Worship is here meant or alluded to they being the dispersed Iews to whom he wrote as is manifest in the beginning of the Epistle whose Native Religion consisted in multitude of Rites and Ceremonies and was eminent for the outward Form of Worship and Service of God These were all but a cloud a veil and mist and was to be drawn aside and vanish at the approach of the Sun of Righteousness that was to rise with healing in his wings that is our Saviour God blessed for ever And according to this notion the two following terms viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will not only admit of but call for this Exposition viz. pure and unpainted as the words are sufficiently capable thereof The true pure refin'd unsophisticated Religion is this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plato in his Sophista And Plotinus Lib. 2. Ennead 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So that according to the idiom of the tongue Pure Religion is that which is unbared of all heterogeneal admixture purg'd and separated from all ascititious additaments cleansed and refined from that palpable gross luggage of unweildy Ceremonies being pure Extraction mere Essence or Quintessence perfect Life and Spirit Again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 undyed unpainted with the pencil of Humane Art or Device a naked and bare Truth Which though it hath been diversly figur'd and shap'd by the outward dress of Ceremonies yet it has been from everlasting to everlasting Christ the same yesterday to day and for ever 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Gospel of Eternal Truth the Law of Life the perfect Law of Liberty 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is most true of this everlasting Law of Life whose Original is as deep as the Divine Abyss But I am afraid that I have by this Exposition though very true and genuine so spiritualiz'd Religion and unbared the Truth that Carnal eyes accustomed to Shadows and gross Ceremonies will doubt whether there be any thing of Religion left after so much sifting and cleansing But I hold it no hard task to answer these men If they mean by no Religion left no Ceremony left I grant it But if by no Religion no truth of Religion I say there is nothing but the truth of Religion left And that the truth of Religion should not deserve the name of Religion as well as the Shadow or Type I know no reason no more than Caesar himself should not be called Caesar as well as his Picture be it drawn with never so much art and cunning Mistake me not I speak not as if the kernel must of necessity be without a shell but led on by my Text I speak of the kernel without the shell and exalt it far above the dry shell Psal. 50. 13. Will I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats Psal. 51. 17. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit a broken and a contrite
heart O God thou wilt not despise And Psal. 4. 5. Offer the sacrifice of righteousness and put your trust in the Lord. And Rom. 12. 1. I beseech you brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice holy acceptable to God which is your spiritual service So Beza They were not to offer any dead or unclean Beast under the Law wherefore are we here under the Gospel to offer our selves a living and holy Sacrifice impolluted of the World and alive to Righteousness and to God Give me leave here a little to enlarge my self Who can doubt but that the Heart of a Christian from whence sweet odours of Prayers and Praises ascend up is a better Altar of Incense than that in Moses's Temple that God is more truly fed by relieving his living Members true and sincere Christians than by feeding the unsatiable fire by thousands of Holocausts that the seven Spirits the Spirit of the Lord the Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding the Spirit of Counsel and Might the Spirit of Knowledge and the Fear of the Lord are a truer and clearer light than the Seven Golden Candlesticks of Moses that the Iewish Temple was but a strait prison in comparison of the enlarged Soul of man So many load of Sand or Gravel would have filled that up to the top but no less than God himself can fill the Heart of man which therefore is the meetest Temple or Mansion for him In brief what is this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but as Nonnus speaks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to honour and worship God and what doth that consist in but in appropriating or consecrating unto him times or places or things persons also and solemnity of actions Is not this therefore to worship God in spirit and in truth truly and unfeignedly to devote our selves and dedicate all we have to the God of Heaven seeking his Will in all our actions and denying our selves and our own desires What comparison is there betwixt the offering the Firstlings of our Flock or the Fruit of our Ground whereby we acknowledge we hold all these things of God the great Lord of Heaven and Earth what comparison is there I say betwixt this and the not arrogating any thing to our selves of either knowledge and power but very sensibly and affectionately ascribing all to God whatsoever we can do think or speak which is the right Christian Humility and Spiritual Decimation to the true Melchizedek Christ Jesus And let me be yet bolder if there be any boldness in it What is Baptism or the washing of Water in respect of the real cleansing by the Spirit the being Baptized with the Holy Ghost and with Fire What is Bread and Wine in comparison of that true Bread from Heaven the Flesh and Blood of Christ Tell me therefore now is nothing of Religion left when I only consider the inward essence or substance of it abstracting from shell or husk Is the very heart or kernel of it nothing The pure and unpainted Religion is truly Religion if not the only true Religion And pardon me if I seem too careful and curious in reserving the name of Religion to it because that word strikes more powerfully upon the ears of men and summons at the very first alarm all the power we have both of Soul and Body to assist countenance and maintain it Wherefore I would under the name as the notion it self doth most eminently deserve it commend unto my self and all men this truth of Godliness that we may as heartily and zealously both aspire unto our selves and endeavour the same in others as ever we did or can do the opinions and institutions of men or yet the opposing of them For this will not be found pure and undefiled Religion in his eyes who is the judge thereof viz. God the Father Which is the Second Particular and upon which I would now fall did not another sense step between which must awhile hold me back 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hitherto 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 have signified the pure and un-colour'd truth of Religion without Show or Ceremony The words are not incapable of another sense which our English Translation favours Pure impolluted or undefiled Religion is this Which implies that there are impure filthy and impious Religions in the World How it would make a noise to speak of the obscene Ceremonies of Baal-Peor the cruel Rites of Moloch and that most ridiculous Devil-service in India But we need not run back so much in time or travel to so remote places I do not see but the Invocation of Saints and Worshipping of Idols is impious enough and the relying on any one man or a multitude for infallible guides of his Faith and Religion mere Idolatry and Irreligiousness For what is this but to cut our selves off from the living God and free guidance of his gracious Spirit and to give up our selves to men blind guides to the sons of men that are found deceitful upon the weights lighter than vanity it self Is it not the Lord that hath made Heaven and Earth and filleth all things with his spirit and power Behold the nations are as a drop of a bucket and are counted as the small dust of the ballance All nations are before him even as nothing and they are counted of him less than nothing and vanity It is he alone that has established the mountains and has given laws to the measureless deep that has stretched out the Heavens as a curtain and spreadeth it out as a tent to dwell in that sitteth upon the circle of the earth and the inhabitants thereof are as grashoppers Which of these will you chuse for your God Or what number of them for the stay of your hearts Will you worship a Fly instead of your Maker Will you ask counsel of the God of Ekron Will you advise with Baal-Zebub concerning your Salvation Is not Christ the only Healer the only Saviour the only Recoverer of fallen man Is his Holiness at Rome infallible Or may not a many gray heads joyn'd together go astray together 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Elihu in Iob And I said days should speak and multitude of years should teach wisdom But there is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding Great men are not alwayes wise neither do the aged understand judgment Iob 32. It is the Lord that is the only wise God that Auncient of dayes alone it is that can instruct us in Prudence 't is God the Father alone that can guide us safely in his Truth And thus am I again cast upon the Second Particular viz. II. That God the Father is judge of what is true pure and undefiled Religion And indeed there is very good reason for it For what is Religion but the worship and service of God He therefore knows best how he would be worshipped and served And here it will not be unseasonable to
to the Second requisite in our Beneficency which is the Vniversality thereof Gal. 6. 10. While we have time let us do good to all men especially to them of the houshold of faith Here 's no evasion out of this injunction If so be the Apostle had said Do good to all some cavilling Sophister would have said I to all Christians or to all true Professours As every Sect will be found to stile themselves so Thus this All is to be restricted But the Apostles command or rather the manner of it prevents all such self-seeking Sophistry Do good to all men whatsoever so far as they are capable though in the first place I could wish you to have a special tender care of them of the Holy Faith and upright Godly Life I but will Flesh and Blood reply to our Enemy Yes to our Enemy If a man find his enemy will he let him go This was that that amased Saul so mightily That David a Type of the Divine Love a Symbol of the very Life and Spirit of Christ that David whom he had sought to kill should let him escape when he was in his power It wrought so upon Sauls Spirit that it forced tears from his eyes and made his heart in his body like melting wax When David had made an end of expostulating with Saul about his unjust pursuit of him and had shewed how dear his Masters Life was in his sight Saul said Is this the voice of my son David And Saul lift up his voice and wept And said to David thou art more righteous than I For thou hast rendered me good and I have rendered thee evil 1 Sam. 24. I will only add the Apostles Exhortation Rom. 12. 26. If thine enemy hunger feed him if he thirst give him drink 3. And so I go on to the Third requisite which is the Qualification of the mind of the giver which consists chiefly in these two things 1. In chearfulness and willingness of mind 2. In an honest and humble simplicity of heart without any reference to the applause and approbation of men but in an unfeigned obedience unto God and tender heartedness toward his Neighbour 1. That Chearfulness S. Paul speaks of 2 Cor. 9. As every man wisheth in his heart so let him give not grudgingly or of necessity for God loveth a chearful giver And Rom. 12. 8. He that sheweth mercy let him do it with chearfulness It should seem that in time past the Holy Saints of God distributed their Alms to men with such a loving and kind Spirit that they out of the abundance of their good affection added sweet and comfortable words to their Christian Bounty whence in the New Testament in the original Beneficency is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 good-speaking blessing or well-wishing to the party to whom they do communicate And the Hebrew word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hath the same notion which signifies both benediction and a gift 2. The Second qualification of mind is the Sincereness of communicating without respect to popular applause but merely out of love to God and our Neighbour Take heed that you give not your almes before men to be seen of men or else you shall have no reward of your father which is in heaven Not that it is unlavvful to give Alms in the sight of men but unlawful it is to give Alms in the sight of men of a purpose to be seen of them A man among other Gifts and Graces of God may let this light of Mercy shine also before men that they seeing his good works may glorifie his Father which is in Heaven I say with this proviso we may do our works in publick that it be not for our own proper ostentation but for the Glory of God HITHERTO I have declared To what persons we are to give what we are to give to these persons and after what manner we are to give I will now set down some Motives to stir us up to give our Beneficence to due Objects of our Beneficence 1. The First Motive may be drawn from the things themselves that we communicate For such is the nature of them that no man can assure himself the possession of them no not an hour Wilt thou cast thine eyes upon that which is nothing For riches taketh her to her wings as an eagle and flyeth into heaven Prov. 23. Here 's a double Argument to unty our hearts from that which Flesh and Blood so easily cleaveth to The most envious and nigardly man that is will be very well content to give nothing or to part with that which he conceives to be worth little or nothing And such is Riches in themselves unless made good use of for further happiness instead of being of our substance they are nothing if Solomons judgment be better than ours But grant they be something I and some great thing too and very desirable Yet it being so uncertain how long we shall enjoy them being they are so suddenly stone as an Eagle that in a moment gets upon her wing surely we would do wisely to follow our Saviours counsel Make you friends with the mammon of unrighteousness that when you fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations Luke 16. The Covetous man holds his Wealth so fast as if he was perswaded whensoever his Riches take their flight as an Eagle and mount to Heaven they will draw him up with them I but if he hold so fast how shall they fly Or if they get from him he holds not fast then and so is disappointed of his post But to let this pass and fall more seriously upon Instruction There 's no way of making Riches serviceable for our journey to Heaven but willingly to let them fly thither before us And that is by giving them to poor honest necessitous people to them that are as poor in Spirit as in Purse Thus may your Liberality happily arrive at Heaven For Heaven is where God is and God is there if any where In so much as you did it to any of these little ones you did it unto me as you heard before out of the 25th of S. Matthews Gospel He that gives unto these doth rather purchase than part with his Means He doth but remove his goods to another house whither he himself shall follow after a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens 2. And this is the Second Motive viz. The profit which doth accrue to us from our liberal distributions But if we be so sharp set that we cannot wait till that great payment That we have no excuse to hold our hands from doing good God hath promised even a Temporal Reward too Prov. 28. 27. He that giveth to the poor shall not lack And elsewhere in the Proverbs He that giveth to the poor lendeth unto the Lord. And the borrower you know returns the same kind to the lender So we lending Temporal things to God God will return to us Temporal things here and
Eternal Spiritual Riches he will endue us with hereafter 3. The Third Motive is taken from the persons to whom we are to communicate The rich and the poor meet together and the Lord enlightens both their eyes Prov. 29. No difference between the greatest Prince and the poorest Beggar but the goods of Fortune or rather of Providence For they come not to us by chance but by the good will of God who hath made out of his Wisdom some Poor and some Rich that we may have occasion to exercise the acts of Mercy and tender Compassion to our Brethren who live by the same Air vvalk in the light of the same Sun vvere created by the same God are to be saved by the same Christ. There is one Body and one Spirit even as you are called in one hope of your calling One Lord one Faith one Baptism One God and Father of all which is above all and through all and in you all Eph. 4. What One Body and one Member despise and disregard another One Spirit and not sympathize one vvith another One Hope and not help one another One Lord and not one fellovv-servant acknovvledge another One Father and Brethren not relieve one another One God above all over-seeing us all in all our actions vvho though he be so high yet beholdeth things here belovv upon earth and vve poor earthly vvorms overlook one another One God in us all and no goodness in us all God vvho is Love it self pierce through us all and yet not those lovely shafts of holy Charity vvound any of our hearts God forbid If vve abide not in Love God abideth not in us If our hearts be contracted and darkened by frozen rigidness the light of God shineth not through us If our poor contemptible Neighbour be so far under us that vve disdain to stretch forth our armes to help him vve forget God above us If vve love not as Brethren God is not our Father If vve be asham'd of our Fellovv-servants the Lord is not our Master If vve be cold in mutual affection our Faith is dead and Hypocrisie is our Religion If vve have no sympathy or fellovv-feeling the Spirit vve boast of is but vanity or empty air If vve favour not one another as Members of the same Body vve are not Members of the same Body but disunited Dust vvhich the Wind blovves to and fro upon the face of the Earth and the Angel of God scatters it Community is but a name vvhere there is no communication of good Vnity but a deceivable phansie vvhere there is no real Mercy He that will endanger the Soul of his Brother by with-holding the sustenance of his Body which out of Brotherly affection he is to administer to him surely that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Brotherly Love which the Apostle calls for dwelleth not in him The very shame of Poverty will force a man to do or suffer any thing How much more will pinching hunger scorching thirst benumming cold Necessity hath no Law or at least necessitous persons are easily drawn to think so Give me not poverty saith the Wise Man Prov. 30. 8 9. lest I be poor and steal and take the name of my God in vain A good man is merciful to his beast and shall not we be so good as to have compassion upon men The miserable and penurious condition of the Poor man would afford me great store or plenty of Arguments to plead his cause but I will only name them Hunger thirst nakedness rags filth deformity pensiveness sickness torture contempt sighs tears groans fear despair disconsolateness assaults of the Devil hard-heartedness of the World dejectedness of his spirit weak and vain looks loss of limbs blindness and deafness I cannot name them all Poverty is attended with such a numerous regiment of defects and infirmities that they may win the most strong and stony heart to compassionate their miseries But because we are fallen into these ill latter times in which the Apostle hath foretold that the love of many or rather of most if not almost of all shall wax cold Mercy and Pity are not passions easily to be stirred up out of the representation of our Neighbours misery and ill plight These are poor contemptible vertues befitting the weak womanish sect A strong vigorous faith I would to God it were so or if you will a deep conceited phansie that we are Gods Children though we be not merciful as our Heavenly Father is merciful is altogether in request and fashion amongst us Christians So this conceit makes us abound with Love toward God as vve think But when all comes to all it will prove but false and adulterate Love It will not abide that touchstone If you love me keep my commandements Or that of S. Iohns Epistle Chap. 3. Whosoever hath this worlds good and seeth his brother have need and shutteth up his compassion from him how dwelleth the love of God in him 4. But if we do love God so much and our Neighbour so little yet we may not evade or escape this duty of doing good for all that For say that all our time is to be spent in the duties of the First Table all our Piety to be shewed in performances toward God If I shew that these acts of Mercy and Bounty be acts of the First Table too I hope we will not shew our selves so ungrateful and impious as to decline this manner of Worship which he requires at our hands Now that acts of Mercy are duties of the First Table I need go no farther for proof than my Text which tells us that doing good and communicating is a sacrifice And Sacrificing you know is a duty of the First Table even the immediate service of God How fitly the Apostle hath framed his Argument for convincing of mens corrupt Consciences and discovering that mysterious hidden wickedness that lurks in our hypocritical hearts a strong perswasion that we are Gods though there be little of the inward power of Godliness in us This holy kind of irreligiousness that is so immerse and lost as it were in a false counterfeit love of God that it quite forgets all respect and duty to our Neighbour That foolish impudent Spirit that would so confidently father it self upon God and perswade him that he is his Child when it s nothing but the deceitful breath of the Devil A handsome slight to travel to Heaven at least charges The service of God that is a strong perswasion that we are one of them that God hath sign'd to be his though there be no other sure argument or sign saving that we do strongly perswade our selves so The hearing of the Word the saying of Prayers and such outward performances or outward deceivable phansies is a Religion so cheap and easie that it asks a man neither cost nor labour But to be crucified with Christ to suffer with him to undergo the deadly dolorous pangs of mortification to sweat drops of Blood and endure
Pet. 2. 5. And ye as living stones be made a spiritual house and holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Iesus Christ. Ver. 9. You are a chosen generation a royal priesthood And if we consider the qualification of the righteous man the unfeigned Christian we shall find him fit for this employment Who more gracious with God than he Who more loving to men than he Who therefore more fit to make Prayers and Supplications for the People than he That Life which is in him even the Spirit of Christ doth adopt him into an higher Order than the Order of Aaron Or rather Christ whose Spirit of Life is in him is that High-Priest higher than the Order of Aaron A Priest after the Order of Melchizedek A Kingly Priest who officiates in Everlasting Righteousness Here 's a Priest without exception above all commendation worthy all honour and admiration worthy to be heard of God worthy to be obeyed by Men worthy to be attended by Angels worthy to whom all power should be given in Heaven and Earth worthy of that Glorious Throne even the Right-hand of God the Father in the height of Heaven where he makes intercession for us his poor members wandering and toyling in the mire and mud of this wicked earth That vve being redeemed vvith his most precious Blood may be made Kings and Priests to his Father to offer Spiritual Sacrifices and first of all our selves in a sensible apprehension that vve are vvholly from him nothing at all of our selves and then an open and free-hearted love to our Neighbour in acknovvledgment that our fulness is not of our selves but of God And this contains the last and best requisite in that description of a Sacrifice the acknowledgment of our Humane infirmity and the praise and profession of the Divine Majesty HITHERTO we have compared this Christian Sacrifice with the general notion of a Sacrifice We will now see how it fits with the kinds of Sacrifice Which according to the Schoolmens Division are three 1. Sacrificing or slaying of living Creatures which is most properly called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and is the word in my Text. 2. Immolation which is a Sacrifice of inanimate things as of Meal Bread Salt Frankincense and such like Or 3. Libamentum a Drink-offering as of Wine or other liquid things How well some kinds of doing good will agree with that first kind of Sacrifice we should easily understand if we did but rightly apprehend how that the sundry lives of beasts lurk in the bodies of men as in some the Fox in others the Lyon in others the Bull in some one in some other in others many Our Saviour calls Herod Fox S. Paul his Persecutors Lyons So Eccles. 6. Be not proud in the device of thine own mind lest thy soul rend thee as a bull Where there is the living property of a Beast in a man no wonder that the Spirit of Truth that pierceth through the surface of things into the depth of Life calls them by that which they are within not by that which they seem without He therefore that can kill the Oxe the Bull the Goat in any mans Soul that is a stupid laborious toyl in the dirt an high raving unquietness of mind or that goatish nature that brutish sensual lust He that can exhibit these animalities dead before God who is Judge of the Quick and the Dead he offers of the first kind of Sacrifice which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the mortification of some Life that God was displeased with He that doth this either in himself or others doth sacrifice in this kind He that gives his Bread to the hungry sacrificeth an Immolation He that gives his Drink to the thirsty offers a Drink-offering As much as you did it to one of these little ones you did it unto me He that goes about doing good as our Saviour Christ that is He that lives not to himself but according to the Command of God and Example of his Son spends all his time power and ability in diffusing of that good which God hath bestowed on him offers Frankincense Or rather that precious composition of sweet odours which is mentioned Exod. 30. 34 35. And the Lord said unto Moses Take unto thee sweet spices Stacte and Onicha and Galbanum sweet spices with pure Frankincense of each like weight And thou shalt make of it a perfume c. Philo Iudaeus will have these four ingredients to be Emblems of the four general Principles or Elements of which this World consists and the evaporation of this fume to be that acceptable re-ascending of the Creature to God in holy thankfulness and evacuation of it self into that great ocean His words are very significant 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is a Life saith he well befitting the World to give uncessant thanks to its Father and Maker even quite exhausting it self in a continual ascent and grateful fume and simplifying it self into its Elements that all may see that it hoards up nothing for it self but consecrates it self wholly unto God that made it Such a Sacrifice doth every Microcosm or little World every particular man offer dayly unto God when he spends all his dayes and employes all the strength and faculties of his Soul and Body It is a thankful acknowledgment of what he hath received resunding that goodness that he is partaker of back again to God through those sure conduits or conveiances the poor necessitous Brethren But there is yet another Division of Sacrifices into three kinds as before 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So Philo Which our Modern Writers call thus Holocausta Hostias pacificas Hostias pro peccato The reason of this Division Philo thus unfolds The two main and general causes of Sacrificing be these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The latter consists in two things The participation of good and the removing or preventing of evil Hence that Sacrifice that respects the profit of the Sacrificer is twofold A Sin-offering for the preventing the just punishment thereof and a Peace-offering which was either pro beneficio accepto or accipiendo for a benefit received or at least hoped for 1. That the doing or communicating good appertains to the first sort which Philo calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an Holocaust which respects merely the Glory of God and not the Profit of the Sacrificer will appear out of places of Scripture concerning this Duty of communicating Let your light so shine before men that they seeing your good works may glorifie your Father which is in heaven Matth. 5. 16. There 's the Honour of God Now that we are not to participate our selves in this but that it be wholly to God and for God a true Holocaust Our Saviour shews Matth. 6. 3. When thou doest thine almes let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doth That is We must not have any sinister respect but do it simply in obedience to God and for his Glory Consult
not with thy left hand that is thy natural false Spirit that will counsel for it self But let thy right hand act by it self that strong Arm of God the Spirit of Christ that the action may be wholly to God the evil principle of that wicked life of falseness nothing at all intermingling it self with it And thus this communication of good will be an Holocaust totally consecrated and consummated in the service of God alone But for the other two kinds Though the Christian Sacrifice hath not finem Sacrificantis the end of the Iewish Sacrificant yet hath it finem Sacrificii For so thanks is rendered to God for his goodness and further goodness obtained and future evils prevented as is manifest out of Scripture 2. The end of the Peace-offering was to procure the Blessing and Favour of God See now what the Wisdom of God teacheth us Prov. 11. The liberal person shall have plenty and he that watereth shall also have rain And in the Psalms He hath dispersed abroad and hath given to the poor His righteousness shall remain for ever his horn shall be exalted with honour Cornelius his Prayers and Alms how well were they rewarded with the service of Men and Angels and the descent of the Holy Ghost For as he was Fasting and Praying in his House one in the shape of a man in white clothing stood before him and said Cornelius Thy prayer is heard and thine alms had in remembrance in the sight of God So he directs him to send for S. Peter who came and in requital of his Alms fed him with the Bread of Life at whose Preaching the Spirit of Life the Holy Ghost fell upon all his Auditors amongst whom was Cornelius Thus we see how meet a Sacrifice this is pro beneficio accipiendo for the procuring a benefit from God And as fit it is pro accepto to manifest our thankfulness for favours received Freely you have received freely give saith our Saviour This is all the requital I desire all the thanks I expect 3. The last Sacrifice is a Sin-offering The reward of sin is death But mercifulness and doing good delivers from this Prov. 20. 2. The treasures of wickedness profit nothing but righteousness delivers from death That is The covetous hoarding of the wicked man or Riches wickedly and unlawfully heaped and scraped up together shall not profit in the conclusion But Righteousness that is bountifulness acts of Mercy For so the original will signifie the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is sometime turned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an act of Mercy As also appears out of the Inscription of the Poor mans Box in the Iewes Temple which was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The chest of Iustice as we would Translate it following the first signification of the word but according to the signification of the word in that place the chest of Alms. This Righteousness Goodness of Mercifulness will deliver from Death That of our Saviour Christ is more plain and without exception Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy So whether we compare this Duty of communicating good with the general notion of a Sacrifice or with the kinds thereof we see correspondency enough it falls short in nothing of a Sacrifice under the Old Law but in not being a shadow which you might bear withal Though to say the truth it hath that in it too the outward act which I have intimated before But the inward principle it self whence those good acts flow nothing is greater than it nothing more divine nothing more sublime the Everlasting Life of Charity the Glory and Image of God the Beauty of Man the Lamp of Knowledge the Sun of Paradise the Seal of Eternity the Pledge and Crown of Everlasting Happiness NOW that I may not seem to have lost my time in inculcating this Truth so long let us see what useful Inferences will flow from the same First then If doing good be a Sacrifice let us remember that which R. Moses the AEgyptian conceives their Wise and Holy Law-giver to have bound them to Vt quisquis utilitatem aliquam ceperit ex re sanctificatâ pro praevaricatore habeatur c. Whosoever doth take to himself any profit out of Consecrated things as Oblations or Sacrifices or whatsoever is Consecrated to God he is a Transgressour and hath need of an Atonement to be made for him although he commits the act out of error Our doing good therefore to other men if we do it not simply in obedience to God and love of our Neighbour but in hope of requital by his friends or himself or out of desire of applause or vain glory or any other sinister respects it is a making use of a thing Consecrated a sharing with God in the Holocaust and makes our action sinful and unsavoury before God Wherefore vve are to endeavour to the utmost that vve be not guilty of this Sacrilege Secondly In omni Oblatione tuâ offeres sal Lev. 2. 13. All thy meat-offerings shalt thou season with salt neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat-offering Vpon all thy oblations thou shalt offer salt See hovv this Precept is inculcated for offering of Salt with every Oblation and Sacrifice That Salt is an enblem of Wisdom and Discretion is so well known that I need not speak of it I will only name our Saviours words You are the salt of the earth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If the salt become foolish c. So that by Salt is understood Wisdom or Knowledge as it presently follows You are the light of the world So the seasoning our Christian Sacrifice of Bounty will prove nothing else but distributing our good things with discretion whether pertaining to Body or Mind Rebuke not a scorner for he will hate thee but rebuke a wise man and he will love thee saith Solomon And our blessed Saviour instill'd his words of Wisdom into his Disciples ears according as they were capable Iohn 16. 12. I have yet many things to say unto you but you cannot bear them now Howbeit when he is come which is the spirit of truth he will lead you into all truth As the Apostle 1 Cor. 2. The natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God And Chap. 3. 1. I could not speak unto you brethren as to spiritual men but as unto carnal I fed you with milk and not with meat for you were not able to bear it This is the discretion in imparting Spiritual Alms. Nor is every man a fit object of our Bounty as concerning things belonging to the Body If Strength and Health be joyned to their Poverty the best Charity is to set them to work Thirdly Leaven was not to be offered in Sacrifice So these Christian Oblations are to be offered in sincerity of heart without pride without hypocrisie Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees which is Hypocrisie And 1 Cor. 5. the Apostle makes
mention of the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth But this is included in the first Inference Wherefore I will let it pass Fourthly If communicating of good be a Sacrifice then it is a Duty of the First Table and respects the Worship of God From whence we may learn to set a true estimate upon this Duty We applaud our selves in the frequent Hearing of the Word of God and praying to God and the like We highly esteem I say our performances in this kind because they be of the First Table and respect God so nearly But that we may with as great zeal and diligence exercise the acts of Charity as well as of that kind of Devotion The Apostle tells us that when we distribute our Goods to others relieving them either in Body or in Soul we then worship God we then sacrifice to God which is an act of service and worship proper and peculiar to him which consideration is worthy our thinking of and more worthy our practising of Cursed is he that doth the work of God negligently The Fifth and last Inference shall be this That which Philo the Iew speaks of in his Tractate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Of them that sacrifice of their washing and sprinkling that kind of sprinkling of water mingled with the ashes of a red heiser Numb 19. Which is saith he to put us in mind whereof we be made that we are but dust and ashes water and earth mingled together This is our composure such our frailty this our poor condition capable of so many miseries by reason of this tempered dirt we carry about with us And therefore being all of one mould we may the more heartily commiserate one another and help one another This sprinkling is a fit Consecration of every Christian Sacrificer that in all humility and compassion he may relieve his fellow-member The Summ is this That with all sincerity discretion diligence humility and tender sympathy we may offer unto God this Christian Oblation even the Charitable communication of such good things as God hath imparted to us AND thus I have dispatched the Second branch of my Text viz. That doing of good is a Sacrifice III. The Third and last is That doing of good is a sacrifice in which God is well pleased It is not improbable that the Apostle hath here an eye to those many testimonies in the Prophets of Gods displeasure against the Iewish Sacrifices Esa. 1 11 13. What have I to do with the multitude of your sacrifices saith the Lord I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams and of the fat of fed beasts and I desire not the blood of bullocks nor of lambs nor of goats Bring no more oblations in vain Incense is an abomination unto me My soul hateth your new-moons and appointed feasts So Chap. 66. 3. He that kills a bullock is as if he slew a man He that sacrificeth a sheep as if he cut off a dogs neck What is it therefore that God would have Wherein is his delight I desired mercy and not sacrifice saith he Hosea 6. 6. And in the first of Esay he nameth the relieving of the oppressed And Chap. 66. Ver. 2. He speaks of a poor and contrite Spirit and such a Spirit is also merciful For it's pride and high-mindedness that makes us forget the evil plight of our Neighbour I will add a Reason or two to confirm this Truth and so conclude God is Truth and Essence it self therefore his delight is in the truth of every thing and not in their empty shadows He loves the truth in the inward parts as the Psalmist saith Therefore doing good out of pure Charity cannot but please him it being the substance of the Iewish Ceremony of Sacrificing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the Pious Iew True Sacrificing what can it be but the Piety of the Soul that loves God And he that loves him must needs love his Neighbour also And he that loves his Neighbour will do good to him so far as he is able Therefore the same Author saith very truly in another place 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Humanity or forwardness to do all good offices to our Neighbour and Piety are twins He thinks not the term of Cousin or Sister fit enough but calls them Twins to shew that they be born both at a time So soon as true Piety is born in us Humanity strait springs up with it Now this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or love of our Neighbour being so like the Nature of God whom the Apostle calls Love This principle and the effects of it doing good to our Neighbour must needs be acceptable to God The Heathens had so much Reason in them to offer that to their Deities which was most consonant to their Nature So the Persians Sacrificed on Horse to the Sun Ne detur celeri victima tarda Deo But I will not insist upon the proof of a thing so plain I doubt not but that you are thoroughly perswaded of the truth of these tvvo latter parts of my Text That doing good is a Sacrifice and that it is a Sacrifice wherein God is well pleased The Inference and Conclusion of all is that vvhich I begun vvith viz. To do good and communicate forget not And that vve forget not He that hath set his eyes upon the hearts of men and mindeth all their wayes He strengthen us and stir us up by the powerful working of his all-quickening Spirit that we constantly endeavour to fulfil the dictates thereof through Iesus Christ our Lord to whom with the Father and the Blessed Spirit be all Honour Glory Power Praise henceforth and for ever Amen DISCOURSE XII GAL. vi 14 15 16. But God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Iesus Christ by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world For in Christ Iesus neither circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircumcision but a new creature And as many as walk according to this rule peace be on them and mercy and upon the Israel of God THE drift of this Epistle to the Galatians is to reduce them again to the Truth of Christianity that were almost apostatizing to Iudaism and the Ceremonial Lavv of Moses Ye observe days and months and times and years I am afraid of you lest I have bestowed labour on you in vain Chap. 4. Ver. 10 11. But the main scope of the Apostle is against Circumcision as is plain upon the very first perusal of the Epistle Which he beating dovvn together vvith all the Lavv of Moses and extolling the Faith in Christ seems sometime to excuse a man from walking in the Lavv under the pretence of Faith in Christ. But as S. Peter hath well observed there be many things in S. Pauls Epistles hard to be understood which foolish men pervert to their own destruction And that we be not led into the same error and mischief I hold it not from my purpose to trace the footsteps of S.
in thy Heart and sweetly shine in thee with her mild light Give not thine Anger vent it will be extinct like smothered fire Answer not thy Lust or Lasciviousness and it will cease to call unto thee but dye as a Weed kept under in the ground Dare to do good though thy base heart gainsay it God will look upon thee in pity and repay thee with a more noble Spirit and Covetousness being oft crost will even out of discontent quite leave thee But if thou be false to God and thine own Soul in these things which he hath put in thy power and he hath put the outward man plainly in thy power and neglectest the performance of them and yet doest complain of want of strength thou art in plain English an Hypocrite and the Devil and thy own false heart have deceived thee A man I confess cannot generate himself but he may kill himself So though we cannot regenerate our selves yet we may mortifie our own corruption if we be not wanting to our selves And this is the Cross that we with S. Paul are to bear and to dye upon that when we have suffered and been buried with Christ in this Baptism God may raise us up with him to Life and endue us with his Holy Spirit And this is the New Creature which is spoken of in the next Verse For in Christ Iesus neither circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircumcision but a new creature In Christ Iesus i. e. When we have taken upon us the Profession of Christ have been made Members of the Christian Church by Baptism Circumcision availeth nothing And verily there is no reason why it should for it is a badge of Judaism not of Christianism and cannot no not in Judaism do much without the inward Circumcision of the heart and observation of the Commandments of God Rom. 2. 25. to the end For circumcision verily profiteth if thou keep the law But if thou be a breaker of the law thy circumcision is made uncircumcision Therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision And shall not uncircumcision which is by nature if it fulfil the law judge thee who by the letter and circumcision dost transgress the law For he is not a Iew which is one outwardly neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh But he is a Iew which is one inwardly and circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit and not in the letter whose praise is not of men but of God And this also was known and propounded to the Iews under the Law Deut. 10. 16. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart and be not refractory And in Chap. 3. ver 6. And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart and the heart of thy seed to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul that thou mayst live And what else indeed doth God require of thee O man but that thou wouldst love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy strength and thy neighbour as thy self This if thou perform in thy Circumcision thy Circumcision is effectual to thee If thou do not it is but Concision and cutting off a piece of Flesh which God and Nature was not so overseen in making but it might well be left uncut off And if Circumcision without Obedience and an Holy Life availeth them nothing that are under the Law how could it possibly be any thing to us that live under the Gospel But to what purpose is this to us that do not bear the outward Circumcision nor are likely to prove so giddy as to revolt to Judaism Wherefore let us here turn aside awhile from the Circumcision of the Iews to that which is its 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that answers to it among us Christians And that is Baptism Will that avail any thing without the New Creature What it may do to Children before they be actually sinful by their own misdeeds I leave to the censure of the Schools to dispute That concerns not us who are past Children were we got as far out of Foolishness as Childishness The Question is how much Baptism availeth us of grown Age without the New Creature Just as much as Circumcision without the keeping of the Law availeth a Iew. Can Water wash without the Spirits operation Doth the Spirit operate and effect nothing Are we suppressors and choakers of the Christian Life that should revive in us and yet stand justified before God Can we kill Christ within us and persist in that obstinate cruelty and yet be clean from the guilt or punishment of so hainous transgression by the sprinkling of that outward Water upon us in Baptism Ah nimiùm faciles qui tristia crimina caedis Flumineâ tolli posse putatis aquâ Foolish and too too credulous men they are indeed that think their being dipt in the Font shall vvash out the deep stain of this so horrible murder Yet there is a Baptism that vvill do it and vvithout it nothing is done It is Mortification If the Murderer dye that is that man of Sin the Old Adam or the blood-red Edom and Christ revive all is vvell Rom. 6 3 4. Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Iesus Christ were baptized into his death Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death That like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father even so we also should walk in newness of life Ver. 6 7. Knowing this that our old man is crucified with him that the body of sin might be destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin For he that is dead is freed from sin Believe it though vve are called to Liberty vve are not invited to Libertinism But our true Liberty or Freedom is to become free from sin So you see that Outvvard Baptism vvithout the Invvard is as little available as Circumcision in the Flesh vvithout that in the Spirit If any here as it is not plainly immaterial ask of the efficacy of the Lords Supper So far it is from doing good vvithout an invvard qualification that it is Poyson to the unvvorthy Receiver or vvorse even Damnation it self as the Apostle vvitnesseth It is the New Creature then only or at least chiefly that a Christian must rest upon sith nothing is available without it The New Creature It is worth the enquiring into what this New Creature is that is of such efficacy and power and worth and price It is no more certainly than the New man Ephes. 4. 22 23 24. That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts And be renewed in the spirit of your mind And that ye put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness that is not in external Ceremonial holiness or outward Sanctimonious show but in the
Soul may be purified No doubt of this Refiners Art or Skill Is his Will doubted of It is one with the Will of God and Gods Will is that we be purified 1 Thess. 4. 3. And Christ is no teacher of loosness but of the height of Righteousness 'T is not the privilege of the Gospel that we may sin securely because Christus solvit but that we may live more exactly because Christ requires it and doth inwardly enable us to perform it See also Rom. 8. 1 2 3 4. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Iesus who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Iesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin condemned sin in the flesh That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit Here we will acknowledge that God is able his Spirit is willing but we are uncapable of so great a good by reason of the infirmity of the Flesh But answer me O vain man what is this infirmity of the Flesh is it not the strength of Sin And is there any strength that can withstand the powerful operation of the Spirit of God The weakness or strength if you will of the Body bears it towards the Earth but the fire and activity of the Natural Spirits bears it above and enables it to walk upright on the Earth contrary to be bend of its own Essence and Nature Shall not the Spirit of God then be as able to actuate and lead the Soul contrary to its accidental and ascititious Principles as the Natural Spirits to actuate the Body contrary to its innate and essential Principles Certainly if it be not effectual in us we our selves are in fault who abuse our shuffling Phansie and Reason to fend off the stroke and power of Truth that at once would cleave our hearts that 's a tender place the seat of Life it self and any Religion but that which kills us and mortifies us The Devil knew well enough what he said and his Children make it good Skin for skin and all that a man has will he give for his life This is the shuffling hypocrisie of the Natural Spirit of man and the root of infidelity But let us make better use of this precious Scripture Seeing ye obeyed the Truth through the Spirit 1 st For the encrease of Faith and Confidence and Courage in the wayes of Obedience sith we have so strong assistance as the Spirit of our God with true Christian Fortitude to conflict with all our Spiritual Enemies wearing that Motto in our Minds 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2 dly For hearty Thankfulness to God when ever we find our selves successful in our Spiritual Warfare as to the only giver of Victory 3 dly and lastly For Humility AEquanimity and Christian Patience and expectancy towards our Neighbours that are not yet reclaim'd from their evil ways being compassionate over them not to insult in other mens weaknesses and miscarriages sith we our selves stand not by our own power but by the gracious assistance of our Saviour Jesus Christ And certainly Purification arrived at its full end will easily afford us this for the end of Purification is Brotherly Love which is the Fourth Doctrine Doct. IV. That this Purification of the Soul and Obedience to the Truth through the Spirit is for this end viz. the eliciting of Brotherly Love and Sincerity in the Soul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I know sometimes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are distinguished as 2 Pet. 1. 7. But that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here may be as large as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I know nothing considerable to the contrary The word is capable of that Sense 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being used in as great a latitude as Proximus and Alter including all that descended from our Father Adam So that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the love of our Neighbour and this Love is the end and height of our Purification and Obedience the aim and scope of it as much as concerns the Second Table Rom. 13. 9 10. and 1 Tim. 1. 5. Who is able to express so Divine an excellency For certainly the unfeigned Love of men is the very Divine Love it self whereby God loves himself and all things and we also love God and all things in reference to him This is that Love of whom the whole Universe was begotten and that rock'd the cradle of the Infant World the very Spirit of God whose Splendour none can behold and live for he must first be dead to himself and extinguish the love of himself before he can be touch'd and quickened by this Spirit of Life and Love THUS much for the Doctrines included in the First main Argument In the Second are these viz. Doctrine I. That there is a Regeneration of the Soul By understanding what Generation is we may better know what is Regeneration 1. The notion in general of Generation according to Aristotle implies no more than a right and fit union of a form substantial with some capable subject whether that form be elicited of the subject or matter or be brought in from elsewhere 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Aristotle speaks of the Rational Soul 2. There may be more Forms substantial than one in one subject so they be but subordinate one to the other and that a new Species doth not arise so much from the destruction of the pre-existent Form as by addition of a new one which might actuate the whole that doth pre-exist As the numerus ternarius is not made by taking from the numerus binarius but by adding an Unite thereto Thus Aristotle seems to speak Metaph. 7. Cap. 3. 3. Observe That one Soul actuating a Body if any part of that Body be cut off and lose the benefit of information suppose an Hand or Foot that is then said to be but equivocally what it was before which implies it is then of another Nature or Species as much of it as there is though it be not an entire substance if compared with the whole and consequently that the Soul actuating it did then specificate it another way We have now a tolerable insight into Generation and Regeneration is but this twice told That which is this specifical substance now by adding a new substantial Form thereto becomes something else This is Regeneration And to apply it to our selves We are already once born according to Nature our Bodies and Souls being fitly united together by him that is the Father of all Life and the Lord of Nature But though we be thus specificated yet we are not thence perfected but this Binary of Body and Soul the Pythagoreans would
we will take in a more full narration of it And Israel abode in Shittim and the people began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab and they called the people unto the sacrifice of their Gods and Israel joined himself unto Baal-Peor Ver. 1 2 3. of that Chapter That which is here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sacrificia Deorum is in my Text 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sacrificia mortuorum Which makes further for that I drove at before viz. That the Gods of the Heathen are mostwhat the Souls of dead men THUS I have dispatched the two former Parts of my task viz. the Explication and Confirmation of the truth of this Text so far as was needful III. The Inferences following are these First From those words They joined themselves to Baal-Peor we may observe That it is long of a mans self when he sins Thus Ecclesiasticus 15. 11 12. Say not thou that it is through the Lord that I fell away For thou oughtest not to do the thing that he hateth Say not thou that he hath caused me to err For he hath no need of the sinful man So Iam. 1. 13 14. Let no man say when he is tempted I am tempted of God For God cannot be tempted with evil neither tempteth he any man But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed To say therefore that it is the all-swaying Providence of God that bore men to this or that evil action is to blaspheme the Sacred Name of God and contradict Reason and Scripture Or which seems more plausible to say the Devil ought us a spight is but to be gull'd by the Devil and to add a new errour to our former misdeed The Devil may suggest but not compel But to exalt the strength of the evil Spirit above the dominion and power of him that is the Prince of Spirits as tho' they were stronger than he is to cast God out of his Throne and to place Satan in his stead Surely God who hateth Sin with a perfect hatred will not let the Devil prevail against that Will in us that is conformable to his If we be against Sin God will aid us If we fall into Wickedness it is long of our selves Yea though the greatest of Wickednesses For they joined themselves to Baal-Peor c. Not forced or necessitated by the Devil against a good Will and sincere aversation of Sin for this is the Will of God and he will help his own Will Nor led on by God for God will not beget to life that which he hates to see But the truth is God who is the God of Love and Freedom would have us to serve him out of a free Principle and so neither constrains us to good nor over-sways us to evil Secondly They joined themselves also to Baal-Peor The Calf in Horeb their envying and murmuring against Moses and Aaron their lusting after the flesh-pots of Egypt all these did not satisfie but as if these were a light matter they add Whoredom and Idolatry in this business of Baal-Peor Hence we may observe That the wickedness of a mans heart knows no bounds but his evil desires are enlarged like Hell Thirdly If we compare the greatness of this transgression with the great experience they had of the Power and Love of God to them who had done great things for them in Egypt wondrous works in the Land of Ham and fearful things by the Red Sea who had given them from Mount Sinai an express Law against Idolatry in Thunder and Lightning Clouds and Vapours of Smoke to the utter dismaying of them from Sin who had given them Manna in the Wilderness and fed them with Angels food who had guided them by two mighty Pillars a Cloudy Pillar by day and a Pillar of Fire to give light by night who had made them eye-witnesses of so many Miracles of his Almighty Arm That these People should so fouly Apostatize argues plainly an excessive weakness in the Children of Adam And the best Use we can make of it is this To be vigilant over our own wayes and merciful to our Brother when he slides Fourthly and Lastly We may gather also a kind of disability in all outward stays and props of our Souls in goodness all visible helps for Piety if something stronger within do not sustain us and keep us What more forcible outward means could have been used than Israel had experience of But all the terrour upon Mount Sinai and all that tempest and dread in giving of the Law all the Miracles that were wrought by the hand of Moses and the visible presence of God or his Angel all those passed out of their minds like a dream and vanished as a vision of the night all those failed them when the present object possessed their Eyes when the beauty of the Daughters of Moab had ensnared their Hearts and captivated their Souls to the commiting of folly The Young man in Macarius who in an high Rapture beheld glorious sights 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Faces of Light and the shining Lustre of Heaven after fell into the filth of the Flesh and deplorable deformity of Life The best use we can make of this is Not to satisfie our selves with any outward or momentany Worships or Ceremonies as to rest in them but to seek an inward Principle of never failing Life Else so soon as we are departed the Church and that honour we do there to God we may be easily carried into the service of the Devil the committing any wickedness Whereas if we had the living Spring of Truth and Righteousness in us we should also have a perpetual sense of what is good or evil And as our Natural Life is tender of it self and perceives the least touch of harm that approacheth it so would that Spirit of Life and Truth be exceeding sensible of whatsoever is contrary to it or the Will of God which would always be very fresh and vivid in our Minds and Will But to attain to this Spirit of Life and Righteousness there is no way but Mortification a death to Sin and our own selves that the Life of God may alone rule in us Then shall not the Daughters of Moab inveigle us that is as Philo the Iew interpreteth it the false allurements of the bewitching Senses Nor shall we then worship Baal-Peor or partake of his Sacrifices that is according to the same Author 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. We shall not dilate all the openings of our Bodies for receiving the influx or strong impressions the unwholesome vapours of this intoxicating World and the pleasures thereof and so drown our Souls in the bottom of Corruption For so he interpreteth the name of this Idol as if it were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 intimating his power to lye in all the openings of the Body or rather outward Skin through which the influences of this sensible World if they be not kept out by due vigilancy stream
in and drown the Soul and choak all Life of Vertue and Goodness This is that great Deity of the Heaten This is the Idol of the Daughters of Moab whose stay and confidence is in this visible World whose joy and pleasure is in the Life of the Flesh. I will conclude with the Conclusion of the Psalmist Save us O Lord our God and gather us from among the Heathen to give thanks unto thy holy name and to triumph in thy praise Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting and let all the people say Amen Praise ye the Lord. DISCOURSE XV. COL iii. 1. If you then be risen with Christ seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God THIS Text contains in it that precious mystery of the internal or inward Resurrection of Christ in our Hearts or Souls which is the chief if not only saving Knowledge of that part of our Christian Religion For alas Beloved what will that outward Resurrection of our Saviour according to the flesh profit us though we have the History of it never so accurately nay though we had seen it with our own eyes We may lye in the grave of sin our selves for all that We may sink like a dead stone into the bottomless pit and have our portion with the damned Devils who have an Historical Faith of all the passages of Christs doings or sufferings here on Earth it may be better than our selves And those wicked Souldiers that watched his Sepulchre were perfectly convinced that he had escaped the jawes of Death But what was this to them who were yet dead in their trespasses and sins Surely nothing at all And as little is it to us Beloved if we be dead in sin and have not risen from the strong holding bands of iniquity and vanity Wherefore it is not enough to say Christ dyed for our sins and rose again for our justification and so to imagine his Resurrection to be our raising from wickedness and corruption But we our selves also really and in truth are to rise from the grave of sin by the power of the enlivening Spirit of Jesus Christ. And whether we be thus risen indeed or no this present Text of Scripture will teach us If you be risen with Christ seek those things or you do seek those things which are above For the Greek Text will bear both senses I will first briefly run through the Sense of the words and then raise such Doctrines and Uses as shall most naturally flow from the Text and shall be most profitable for the promotion of that main work of our Salvation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If then you be risen with Christ That is If you be risen in your Souls as Christ in Body rose from the grave If your Souls have scaped the bands of the Spiritual Death which is the nature and life of Sin for that maketh us truly dead unto Righteousness and unto God as Christs Body broke from the Prison of the Sepulchre Then you seek those things that are above It must needs be understood of the Resurrection of the Soul from Sin because the Apostle did not Preach to dead men departed this Life once and again clothed with this Fleshly Tabernacle but to men who were alwayes alive from their first being born into this visible World In vain then had he taught them a sign of that which he knew would never come to pass till the Colossians were past his Preaching to to wit at the last day the time of the Resurrection of our Bodies And according to this manner doth the Apostle speak also of the Crucifixion of Christ making the outward Passion and Death of Christ a sign or resemblance of something in our Souls viz. our dying to Sin as here he hath made his Resurrection an emblem of our rising to Righteousness Rom. 6. 2 c.. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein Know you not that all we that have been baptised into Iesus Christ have been baptised into his death We are buried then with him by baptism into his death that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father so we also should walk in newness of life For if we be grafted with him into the similitude of his death even so shall we be into the similitude of his resurrection Knowing this that our old man is crucified with him that the body of sin might be destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin The Apostle there plainly compares our dying to Sin to the Crucifixion of our Saviour and that as he dyed on the Cross Corporally so we ought to crucifie the body of Sin in us by the power of God in our Spirits Thus have we good warrant from the example of the Apostle to look upon the Mystery of Christianity with Spiritual eyes The Birth the Death the Resurrection and Ascension of our Saviour Bodily have their similitude Spiritually in our Souls The Birth of Christ a resemblance of Christs being born in us Gal. 4. 19. My little children of whom I travail in the birth again till Christ be formed in you His Death of our dying to Sin as I have already declared Or of Christs being dead in us For we are also said to crucifie Christ by our ungodliness and by extinguishing his Spirit of power and illumination in us Heb. 6. 4. For it is impossible that they which were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted of the good word of God and of the powers of the world to come If they fall away that they should be renewed by repentance seeing they have crucified again to themselves the Son of God and put him to an open shame Crucified again For verily Beloved from our very youth up we have laid dead the Son of God the suggestions of the Holy Life in our Consciences But yet it pleaseth God to raise his Son in us and recover him to Life by the Preaching of the powerful Messengers of God and the secret working of his Holy Spirit upon the Heart And here is Christ risen as it were from the grave But if we by loose and negligent courses destroy this Life of Christ in us and extinguish the Spirit of God in our Souls then do we crucifie the Son of God afresh and shame the profession of Regeneration and the Spirit of God and the true and living Christianism by our open revolting from the living God and taking part with the wicked of this World and their ungodly and sensual courses But now as Christ is thus in a Spiritual manner killed and crucified so when he is in us restor'd to Life it must needs be fittingly termed his Resurrection from Death And according to this sense may those words of my Text be understood also If you be risen with Christ That is If your Souls have become living
by that Spirit of Christ being alive in you then you seek those things that be above For it is as impossible that the Spirit of Christ should be alive in us and not we alive by it to him as it is that light should be let into a room and the air in the room not enlightened Wherefore if Christ be risen in us we are also risen with him But the Sign that we are thus risen with Christ is that we seek those things that be above But how above What Is the contemplation of the Stars or the knowledge of Meteors viz. of Comets of Rainbows of falling Stars of Thunder of Lightning of Hail of Snow or such like commended to us Nor Astronomy nor Astrology nor Meteorology seem considerable things in the eyes of God Those things that be above That is in Heaven But how in Heaven Or what is Heaven We are therefore to understand that this word Heaven has a threefold signification in Holy Writ First It signifies the Air. Psal. 79. 2. The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat to the fowls of Heaven That is of the Air. Secondly It signifies that space where the Stars the Sun and the Moon and the rest of the Host of Heaven do move Isa. 13. 10. For the stars of heaven and the planets thereof shall not give their light the sun shall be darkened in his going forth and the moon shall not cause her light to shine Thirdly It signifies that aboad of the holy spirits of men where the eternal light and lustre of God is present where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God At the right hand of God That is the Power Majesty or Glory of God For God hath neither a Right hand nor a Left because he hath not a Body or any palpable distinct Members Wherefore when any sensible parts of a Body are ascribed to him they are to be understood by way of Analogy or resemblance So when his eyes are said to be upon the hearts of men and his eye-lids to try their wayes when his ear is said to be open to the prayers of the faithful these signifie nothing else but that God doth perfectly both know and discern and approve or disallow as certainly and as clearly nay infinitely more clearly than we see or hear any thing with our eyes or ears Now as by the organs of sense attributed to God the Knowledge of God is set forth so by the organs or instruments of action or operation is his Power decyphered And most eminently by this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the instrument of instruments or best of all instruments the Hand The hand of God is the Power of God ordinarily in Scripture So is he said to deliver the Israelites with a mighty hand and stretched-out arm that is by exceeding great Power Now the Right hand being more active than the Left the more usual instrument in outward works or manufactures it may intimate the exceeding abundance of the Power of God Or the Right-hand of his Power may intimate the Power of God to good the more large effusion or pouring out of Benignity the enlargement and exaltation of the Soul of Christ and his Fellow-members as many as have been conformable to him in the death or mortification of the Old Man For these also God will raise up with him to Eternal Riches and Glory and irresistible Power which the Devil Death and Sin shall never be able to overcome But the Power of his Left-hand is the Power of destruction the fury and wrath and strong tempest of God which doth sieze the Children of Disobedience which abideth in Hell for them for an endless woe and toil and torment for ever And this is the distinction of the Sheep and the Goats on the Right hand and the Left these shall be plagued with the vengeance and anger of God in the power and dominion of Hell but those shall be strengthened and comforted with those pleasures that flow at the Right-hand of God for evermore Thou wilt not leave my soul in the grave neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption Thou wilt shew me the path of life In thy presence is the fulness of joy and at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore What therefore the Right-hand of God is we plainly see viz. the full and strong stream of his Goodness and Divine Benignity To sit here what can it be but to remain in this Happiness unshaken unmov'd steadily and securely But he that stands is next going or departing AND thus much by way of Explication of the words which will afford us these Doctrines 1. That there is a Spiritual Resurrection of the Soul belonging to every true Christian 2. That those that do partake of this Spiritual Resurrection seek those things that be above that is Divine and Heavenly things 3. That they seek them where Christ sitteth at the Right-hand of God First of the first viz. That there is a Spiritual Resurrection of the Soul in this Life I will not go far for my first Proof I will only step back into the Chapter foregoing my Text viz. the Second Chapter of this Epistle to the Colossians at the 11th and 12th Verses In whom i. e. in Christ also ye are circumcised with circumcision made without hands by putting off the sinful body of the flesh through the circumcision of Christ in that you are buried with him through baptism In whom ye are also raised up together through the faith of the operation of God which raised him from the dead And ye which were dead in sins and in the uncircumcision of the flesh hath he quickened together with him forgiving you all your trespasses And then follows my Text for all the residue of that Chapter may be very well Parenthetical If ye then be risen with Christ c. which he doth assert or affirm in the forenamed Verses when as he saith they are buried with him in Baptism There 's the Death we are to imitate in our Soul that is to have the body of Sin dead and buried In whom you are also raised up by the operation of God There 's the Spiritual Resurrection of the Soul And in the next Verse Ye which were dead in sins There 's the Death of the Soul hath he quickened together with him There 's the Resurrection of the Soul from its Death which is Sin For Sin is the Death of the Soul as Obedience Righteousness or the Holy Spirit of God is the Life thereof But for further and more manifest proof of this point it will not be amiss to rehearse again to you that place at the 6th of Romans for it suits exceeding well with the place I expounded to you just now Ver. 3 c. Know you not that all we that have been baptised into Iesus Christ have been baptized into his death We are buried then with him by baptism into his death that like as Christ was raised
Christian such a State I say as the Resurrection from Death Then it is worth our pains to try our selves whether we be in that state or no. We have seen many Easter-Mornings God be praised but if the Sun of Righteousness hath not yet risen upon us with healing in his Wings all those solemnizations of the Resurrection of Christs Body from the grave is but Death and Darkness unto us is no Health no Light nor Life It was the manner of Primitive Christians to salute one another with this Salutation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Lord is risen If we could this Easter-Sunday and every Lords-day make such Salutations as this in the very Spiritual Truth The Lord is risen That is is risen from Death in our Souls and we by him become enlivened to all Righteousness O what Mutual Rejoycing and true Spiritual Triumph would there be in the Church of God! Verily Beloved if you partake not of the Mysteries of Christianity in the Spirit and Truth of them as well as in the History and Ceremony your Profession is but vain you are still in your Sins and dismal Sentence of Damnation remaineth still upon you DISCOURSE XVI Appendix to DISCOURSE XIII 1 PET. 1. 22 23. Seeing ye have purified your Souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren See that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently Being born again not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible by the word of God which liveth and abideth for ever I Have already insisted upon the Doctrines or Truths which are as so many enforcements to the great Duty in the Text 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That which may be observed out of this Precept is a fourfold Doctrine 1. That we are to love one another 2. That we are to love one another out of a pure Heart 3. That we are to love one another fervently 4. That we are to love one another universally and continually The First of these I have done with I come now to Doct. II. That we are to love one another out of a pure Heart This Purity may be set out in these three Constitutives or at least Consecutives of Love viz. Complacentia Benevolentia Beneficentia 1. The Purity of Complacency consists in this that we love and like that of a man that is the adequate object of honest Love and that is Divine Beauty which is not in the Body but in the Soul adorn'd with all Moral and Divine Vertues He that loves not according to this in a man he loves after the same manner he may love an horse a dog or any beast that is fitted for the satisfying of his natural or extravagant humours For if there be no ground of right Friendship but Vertue then is there no Love in vain and leud men but after the manner of Brutes that is eating together as Sheep and Kine in one pasture or sporting together like young Greyhounds at their going out into the fields or better natur'd Spaniels or such like fond Animals I but the gaudes of Phansie and queint toyes of Wit or at least the subtilty thereof Art and accomplishment of the Intellectual parts these all of them put together at least may make up an object of Complacency and friendly delight Verily as much as a well proportioned Body clear Complexion a vigorous Eye gentle Deportment c. which are so far from that living object of Pure Love that by the same Law we may join Friendship with a well wrought Statue or some more curious Picture Complacency in any person saving for Vertues sake is as far removed from pure and Divine Love as the affections of Xerxes Glauca the Youth of Athens and that others of Sparta who loved trees statues rams geese c. were distant from Natural Vid. AElian lib. 1. cap. 39. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And as ridiculous and absurd will their Love prove in respect of that more pure and holy affection that can take Complacency in the person of men that have but the outward accomplishment of parts and abilities or outward artifice or natural well-favouredness their Souls being dead to Vertue and Righteousness For beside that these are as helpless to the best things as a dumb statue or a dead picture they are also very dangerous for either hindering the first shooting out of divine worth in the Soul of man or for corrupting and destroying what already is grown up of Vertue and Goodness For so it is with man that so soon as he is capable of Vertue he must either have it or the contrary Mans Nature is no barren Soil it brings forth or good grain or stinking weeds And where once corruption has taken hold it is even worse than a Gangrene it catches hold on the companion and is the very pest of the Souls of men But if the Love and Complacency of those be not pure that can love notwithstanding the foulness of their friends what pollution is there in theirs that can love for foulness it self viz. whose society pleaseth one another for some bad quality as for being a vain Gamester Swearer for their Lasciviousness or that delicious condiment of Friendship good Fellowship which some loving Souls are so taken with When as it s nothing but the similitude of their evil manners or equality of their enlarged bellies do thus joyn their affections Fellow-wine-bottles of the same size or Ale-tap-urinals c. And as this Impurity in Love is Bestial so there is also that is Devilish as when men like one another the better for being alike imbittered against this or the other party Such complyance as this is but like the twining together of Snakes and venomous Serpents in one bed A Paradox That that which is the most ugly of all the affections viz. embittering Malice and Hatred should make men so amiable one to another Thus Hags and Imps love one another And there is a knot of Friendship that is as Fond at least as this is Devilish viz. endearment from Identity of opinion Fellow-Thomist Fellow-Scotist c. And when it riseth no higher than Scholastick siding or Philosophical altercations it is not much worse than fondness or childishness But when this unskillful affection interweaves it self with matters of Religion and toucheth upon the Attributes actions or designs of the highest God where men are very loth to be deceiv'd though no where more subject to err Fondness is then too mild a term for that which is boil'd up to Fury and Fanaticalness For here men of the same Sect are not content with the pleasure and good-will they exhibit one to another but they grow to that heat as to scorch all gainsayers as well as warm themselves at these misguided flames God forbid that I should go about to slack any mans affection in the pursuit and profession of Divine Truth such as is plainly contained in the Scripture or evidenced by palpable experience in his heart But that which is but
modification which to us are so many distinct Colours But take away the Light and all these Colours cease to be As if there were a way to intercept the Suns light from coming to the Cloud where the Rainbow is figured all the Colours of the Rainbow would soon vanish and disappear So if Love be not no other Passion can be but that first supposed the other occasionally will arise from it As from the hitting of the Sun-beams against several Objects several Colours arise which are nothing else but the Beams or Light it self variously modify'd according to the variety of surfaces against which it doth impinge and is reverberated from So in like manner the Passion of Love in a mans Soul being one is variously transformed into several shapes and modes according as the occurrences and occasions it meets with And this we may sensibly perceive in the love of our selves which Domestick fire is kept alive in us with more superstition and care than that more Sacred flame of Divine Love but in a multifarious transfiguration as we may easily observe For Example When a man has committed any thing against his own Profit or Interest through some carelesness or mistake and so grows vext at it what is this but Self-love appearing in the disguise of Anger Sadness and discontent at the death or displeasure of some potent friend what is this but Self-love mufled up in the sad attirements of Sorrow Those pleasing motions and prefigurations of the mind upon the promise of future Honours and Preferments what is that but Self-love putting on the smiling countenance of hope And so of the rest But now to transfer all this to the present purpose That Love which I have defined to you is one simple and uniform thing like the visible Light And this is a perpetual well-liking of or benign affection to the Divine Beauty communicable to man which is as one still Sun-shine day or if you will as the Sun shining in silence and solitude there being no Earth or any opake part of the World to reflect and variegate his Rays Such is the mind of him that is possest with this Divine Love as it is freely and uncurb'dly working in it self But lighting upon several objects is after several manners modified and transfigured into several shapes This Love at the Conversion of a Sinner shines forth in that chearful aspect of Heavenly Ioy and Exultation of Spirit at the unworthy usage of good and holy men it burns with Anger and Indignation looking as red and purpled as the Horizontal Sun at the doubtful carriages of men is broken into distractful thoughts careful Fear and Anxiety at the sight of Solomons Fool devoid of understanding is struck with Forlornness and Sadness of Spirit such a one being as a lonesome desolate Cottage where no man inhabits For as he that is in the Wilderness though he have the company of Beasts yet being destitute of the society of men finds himself really in sadness and solitude so certainly he that is regenerate into the Image of the true man the Heavenly Adam i. e. Christ even in a crowd of acquaintance devoid of that Image perceives himself but in solitude And whensoever he converses or meets with any in whom that Heavenly inhabitant is wanting it is to him as forlorn a spectacle as a lonesome and empty Lodge in the midst of a Desart whither when the weary Traveller diverts he finds no man to refresh him with a morsel of Bread or a dish of Water For certainly they that once have a right sense and esteem of the lovely Image of Christ out of a kind of a Divine dotage as I may so speak can not endure to find it missing any where would have it hung up in every room would have it inhabit every house that they may meet with it at every turn And therefore where they miss of it it is as sad a chance as Divorce or Exile from our dear Friend as discomfortable as close Imprisonment and seclusion from all Conversation with men Thus we see Divine Love ceases not by other Passions but remains still the same though in several postures And that it is the several operations of one simple Nature about one and the same Object that is the Image of God or Divine Accomplishments communicable to man Which when they begin to spring and flourish in men this Love is figur'd into Ioy when they decay or are lost into Sorrow when despightfully used into Anger and the like So that if we know what we chiefly love and for whose cause man is to be loved we shall find it not impossible to have our Souls work according to this Principle of Love upon what Object soever So that we may without contradiction fulfil these Duties in the Text of Vniversal and Perpetual Love And now that the Thing is understood feasible it will not be hard to fetch out Arguments for the enforcement of the same The present Text will afford them And the First is From the State of Purification which every Christian is bound to be in and is in if he be truly a Christian. For the Soul of man being a kind of Flame or Fiery Essence Igneus est olli vigor Coelestis origo whereas that foulness and rubbish which it lies in to wit sensual and corruptible Pleasure the instrument whereof is this faeculent and misgoverned Body makes the Soul wrathful lustful self-will'd impetuously given to petty interests and particular poor contentations and delights Surely the purging of it from this foul dross and dregs must needs wing it free it universalize it and make it as generally benign to all men as the Sun is universally courteous to all the World in lending Light and Heat to all For by how much the Soul doth purge her self by so much nearer she approaches to that Primogeneal or Original Fire which is God himself that lets his sun rise on the evil and good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust Matth. 5. 45. This is the Chaldaean 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 out of which proceeds all things 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as those Oracles speak And the Soul of man the Image of God is in the same said also to be Fire which Psellus more expresly defines in his Notes upon those Oracles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the Soul is an immaterial and incorporeal Fire which withdrawing it self from the thickness and foulness of this low Corruption incorporates with that Original Fire even God himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the same Author upon those Oracles hath it Wherefore mingling Essences as it were with the Divinity it must be of the same sense and mind with God and therefore never ceases from loving all men as God himself refuses none The Publishers POST-SCRIPT THree things I shall here advertise the Reader of 1. The First is That the Appendix to Discourse XIII th should not have been Printed apart but that most of it was wanting till that other part was Printed off 2. The Second is That what is still wanting to complete that Discourse as also the Continuation of Discourse XV th never came into my hands 3. The Third is That if those Papers or any other of the Authors be sent to me all due care shall be taken for the making of them Publick FINIS A Catalogue Books Published by His Grace JOHN Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury THirty Sermons and Discourses upon several Occasions in three Volumes in Octavo The Rule of Faith or an Answer to the Treatise of Mr. I. Sergeant Octavo Since which is Published Nine several Sermons on several Occasions in Quarto Books writ by the Learned Dr. Isaac Barrow late Master of Trinity College in Cambridge And Published by His Grace JOHN Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury in Four Volumes in Folio The First Volume containing Thirty Two Sermons Preached upon several Occasions An Exposition of the Lords Prayer and the Ten Commandments also the Doctrine of the Sacraments A Learned Treatise of the Popes Supremacy With some Account of the Authors Life The Second Volume containing Sermons and Expositions upon the Apostles Creed The Third Volume containing Forty Five Sermons upon several Occasions Compleating his English Works The Fourth Volume being his Opuscula Viz. Determinationes Conc. ad Clerum Orationes Poemata c. Any of the said Volumes may be had alone All Sold by Brabazon Ayliner at the Three Pigeons in Cornhil