scorne an imprisonment a penury and then upon that calamity there is laid the anger and indignation of God and then upon that the weight of mine own sinnes this is too much to settle me it is enough to sinke me it is a burden in which the danger arises from the last addition in that which is last laid on for as the sceptique Philosopher pleases himselfe in that argumentation that either a penny makes a man rich or he can never be rich for says he if he be not rich yet the addition of a penny more would make him rich or if not that penny yet another or another so that at last it is the addition of a penny that makes him rich so without any such fallacious or facetious circumvention in our case it is the last addition that that we look on last that makes our burden insupportable when upon our calamity we see the anger of God piled up and upon that our sin when I come to see my sin in that glasse in that glasse not in a Saviour bleeding for me but in a Judge frowning upon mee when my sins are so far off from me as that they are the last thing that I see for if I would look upon my sins first with a remorsefull a tearfull a repentant eye either I should see no anger no calamity or it would not seem strange to me that God should bee angry nor strange that I should suffer calamities when God is angry Therefore is sin heavy as a burden because it is the last thing that I lay upon my selfe and feel not that till a heavy load of calamity and anger be upon me before But then as when we come to be unloaded of a burden that that was lasâ— laid on is first taken off so when we come by any meanes though by the sense of a calamity or of the anger of God to a sense of our sin before the calamity it selfe be taken off the sin is forgiven When the Prophet found David in this state the first act that the Prophet came to was the Transtulit peccatum God hath taken away thy sinne but the calamity was not yet taken away The child begot in sin shall surely die though the sin be pardoned The fruit of the tree may be preserved and kept after the tree it selfe is cut down and burnt The fruit and off spring of our sin calamity may continue upon us after God hath removed the guiltinesse of the sin from us In the course of civility our parents goe out before us in the course of Mortality our parents die before us In the course of Gods mercy it is so too The sin that begot the calamity is dead and gone the calamity the child and off spring of that sin is alive and powerfull upon us But for the most part as if I would lift an iron chain from the ground if I take but the first linke and draw up that the whole chain follows so if by my repentance I remove the uppermost weight of my load my sin all the rest the declaration of the anger of God and the calamities that I suffer will follow my sin and depart from me But still our first care must be to take off the last weight the last that comes to our sense The sin You have met I am sure in old Apophtbegms an answer of a Philosopher celebrated that being asked what was the heaviest thing in the world answered Senex Tyrannus An old Tyran For a Tyran at first dares not proceed so severely but when he is established and hath continued long he prescribes in his injuries and those injuries become Laws As sin is a Tyran so he is got over our head in Dominie as we shewed you in the supergressaesunt in our former part As he is an old Tyran so he is the heaviest burden that can be imagined An inveterate sin is an inveterate sore we may hold out with it but hardly cure it we may slumber it but hardly kill it Weigh sin in heaven heaven could not beare it in the Angels They fell In the waters The Sea could not beare it in Ionas He was cast in In the earth That could not beare it in Dathan and Abiram They were swallowed And because all the inhabitants of the earth are sin it selfe The earth it selfe shall reel to and fro as a Drunkard and shall be removed like a Cottage and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it and it shall fall and notrise againe There 's the totall the finall fall proper to the wicked they shall fall so shall the godly And fall every day and fall seven times a day but they shall rise againe and stand in judgement The wicked shall not doe so They shall rise rise to judgement and they shall stand stand for judgement stand to receive judgement and then not fall but be cast out out of the presence of God and cast down down into an impossibility of rising for ever for ever for ever There is a lively expressing of this deadly weight this burden in the Prophet Zechary First there was a certaine vessell a measure shewed and the Angel said Hic est oculus This is the sight says our first translation This is the resemblance through all the earth says our second That is to this measure and to that that is figured in it every man must look this every man must take into his consideration what is it In this measure sate a woman whose name was Wickednesse At first this woman this wickednesse sate up in this vessell she had not filled the measure she was not laid securely in it she was not prostrate not groveling but her nobler part her head was yet out of danger she sate up in it But before the Vision departs she is plunged wholly into that measure into darknesse into blindnesse and not for a time for then there was a cover says the text and agreat cover and a great cover of Lead put upon that vessell and so a perpetuall imprisonment no hope to get out and heavy fetters no ease to be had within Hard ground to tread upon and heavy burdens to carry first a cover that is an excuse a great cover that is a defence and a glory at last of Lead all determines in Desperation This is when the multiplicity and indifferencie to lesser sins and the habituall custome of some particular sin meet in the aggravating of the burden for then they are heavyer then the sand of the Sea says the holy Ghost where he expresses the greatest weight by the least thing Nothing lesse then a graine of sand nothing heavyer then the sands of the Sea nothing easier to resist then a first tentation or a single sinne in it selfe nothing heavyer nor harder to devest then sinnes complicated in one another or then an old Tyran and custome in any one sin And therefore it was evermore a familiar phrase with the Prophets when they were
without a pope they have made a problematicall a disputable matter and some of their Authours have diverted towards an affirmation of it but Aufleribilitas potestatis to imagine a King without Kingly Soveraignty never came into probleme into disputation We all lamented and bitterly and justly the losse of our Deborah though then we saw a Iosiah succeeding but if they had removed our Iosiah and his Royall children and so this form of government where or who or what had been an object of Consolation to us The cause of lamentation in the losse of a good King is certainly great and so it was if Ieremy lamented Iosiah but if it were but for zedekiah an ill King as the greater part of Expositors take it yet the lamentation you see is the same How ill a King was Zedekiah As ill as Iosiah was good that 's his measure He did evill in the sight of the Lord according to all that Iehoiakim had done Here is his sinne sinne by precedent and what had Iehoiakim done He had done evill in the sight of the Lord according to all that his Fathers had done It is a great and a dangerous wickednesse which is done upon pretext of Antiquity The Religion of our Fathers the Church of our Fathers the Worship of our Fathers is a pretext that colours a great deale of Superstition He did evill as his Fathers there was his comparative evill And his positive evill I meane his particular sinne was That he humbled not himself to Gods Prophets to Ieremy speaking from the mouth of the Lord there was irreligiousnesse And then He broke the Oath which he had sworne by God there was perâ—idiousnesse faithlesnsse And lastly He stiffned his neck and hardned his heart from turning to the Lord of Israel there was impenitiblenesse Thus evill was Zedekiah irreligious to God treacherous to man impenitible to himself and yet the State and men truly religious in the State the Prophet lamented him not his spirituall defections by sinne for they did not make themselves Judges of that but they lamented the calamities of the Kingdome in the losse even of an evill King That man must have a large comprehension that shall adventure to say of any King He is an ill King he must know his Office well and his actions well and the actions of other Princes too who have correspondence with him before he can say so When Christ sayes Let your communication be yea yea and nay nay for whatsoever is more then this that is when it comes to swearing that cometh of evill Saint Augustine does not understand that of the evill disposition of that man that sweares but of them who will not beleeve him without wearing Many times a Prince departs from the exact rule of his duty not out of his own indisposition to truth and clearnesse but to countermine underminers That which David sayes in the eighteenth Psalme David speaks not of man but of God himself Cum perverso perveriêris With the froward thou wilt show thy self froward God who is of no froward nêature may be made froward with crafty neighbours a Prince will be crafty and perchance false with the false Alas to looke into no other profession but our owne how often do we excuse Dispensations and pluralities and non-residencies with an Omnes faciunt I do but as other men of my profession do Allow a King but that That he does but as other Kings do Nay but this He does but as other Kings put him to a necessity to do and you will not hastily call a King an ill King When God gives his people for old shoes and sells them for nothing and at the same time gives his and their enemies abundance when God commands Abraham to sacrifice his own and onely Sonne and his enemies have Children at their pleasure as David speaks To give your selves the liberty of humane affection you would think God an ill God but yet for all this his children are to him a Royall Priesthood and a holy Nation and all their tears are in his bottles and registred in his booke for all this When Princes pretermit in some things the present benefit of their Subjects and confer favours upon others give your selves the liberty to judge of Princes actions with the affections of private men and you may think a King an ill King But yet we are to him as David sayes His brethren his bone his flesh and so reputed by him God himselfe cannot stand upright in a naturall mans interpretation nor any King in a private mans But then how soone our adversaries come to call Kings ill Kings we see historically when they boast of having deposed Kings Quia minus utiles Because some other hath seemed to them fitter for the Government and we see it prophetically by their allowing those Indictments and Attainders of Kings which stand in their books De Syndicatu That that King which neglects the duties of his place and they must prescribe the duty and judge the negligence too That King that exercises his Prerogative without just cause and they must prescribe the Prerogative and judge the cause That that King that vexes his Subjects That that King that gives himselfe to intemperate hunting for in that very particular they instance that in such cases and they multiply these cases infinitely Kings are in their mercy and subject to their censures and corrections We proceed not so in censuring the actions of Kings we say with St. Cyrill Impium est dicere Regi Iniquè agis It is an impious thing in him who is onely a private man and hath no other obligations upon him to say to the King or of the King He governs not as a King is bound to do we remit the judgement of those their actions which are secret to God and when they are evident and bad yet we must endevour to preserve their persons for there is a danger in the losse and a lamentation due to the losse even of Zedekiah for even such are uniti Domini The anoynted of the Lord and the breath of our nostrils First as it lies in our Text The King is spiritus narium the breath of our uostrills First Spiritus is a name most peculiarly belonging to that blessed Person of the glorious Trinity whose Office it is to convay to insinuate to apply to us the Mercies of the Father and the Merits of the Sonne He is called by this Name by the word of this Text Ruach even in the beginning of the Creation God had created Heaven and Earth and then The Spirit of God susâ—labat saith Pagnins translation and so saith the Chalde Paraphrase too it breathed upon the waters and so induced or deduced particular formes So God hath made us a little World of our own This Iland He hath given us Heaven and Earth The truth of his Gospel which is our earnest of Heaven and the abundance of the Earth a
in families are therein truly learned fathers of the Church A good father at home is a S â—ugustin and a S. Ambrose in himself and such a Thomas may have governed a 〈◊〉 as shall by way of example teach children and childrens children more to this purpose then any Thomas Aquinas can Since therefore these noble persons have so good a glasse to dresse themselves in the usefull as the powerfull example of Parents I shall the lesse need to apply my selfe to them for their particular instructions but may have leave to extend my selfe upon considerations more general and such as may be applyable to all who have or shall embrace that honourable state or shall any way assist at the solemnizing thereof that they may all make this union of Mariage a Type or a remembrancer of their union with God in Heaven That as our Genesis is our Exodus our proceeding into the world is a step out of the world so every Gospell may be a Revelation unto us All good tydings which is the name of Gospel all that ministers any joy to us here may reveal and manifest to us an Interest in the joy and glory of heaven and that our admission to a Mariage here may be our invitation to the Mariage Supper of the Lamb there where in the Resurrection we shall neither mary nor be given in mariage but shall be as the Angels of God in heaven These words our blessed Saviour spake to the Sadduces who not believing the Resurrection of the Dead put him a Case that one woman hath had seven husbands and then whose wife of those seven should she be in the Resurrection they would needs suppose and prefume that there could be no Resurrection of the body but that there must be to all purposes a Bodily use of the Body too and then the question had been pertinent whose wife of the seven shall she be But Christ shews them their errour in the weaknesse of the foundation she shall be none of their wives for In the Resurrection they neither mary c. The words give us this latitude when Christ sayes In the Resurrection they mary not c. The words give us this latitude when Christ sayes In the Resurrection they mary not c. from thence flowes out this concession this proposition too Till the Resurrection they shall mary and be given in mariage no inhibition to be laid upon persons no imputation no aspersion upon the state of mariage And when Christ saies Then they are as the Angels of God in heaven from this flowes this concession this proposition also Till then we must not look for this Angelicall state but as in all other states and conditions of life so in all mariages there will be some encumbrances betwixt all maried persons there will arise some unkindnesses some mis-interpretations or some too quick interpretations may sometimes sprinkle a little sournesse and spread a little a thin a dilute and washy cloud upon them Then they mary not till then they may then their state shall be perfect as the Angels till then it shall not These are our branches and the fruits that grow upon them we shall pull in passing and present them as we gather them First then Christ establishes a Resurrection A Resurrection there shall be for that makes up Gods circle The Body of Man was the first point that the foot of Gods Compasse was upon First he created the body of Adam and then he carries his Compasse round and shuts up where he began he ends with the Body of man againe in the glorification thereof in the Resurrection God is Alpha and Omega first and last And his Alpha and Omega his first and last work is the Body of man too Of the Immortality of the soule there is not an expresse article of the Creed for that last article of The life everlasting is rather de proemio poena what the soule shall suffer or what the soule shall enjoy being presumed to be Immortall then that it is said to be Immortall in that article That article may and does presuppose an Immortality but it does not constitute an Immortality in our soule for there would be a life everlasting in heaven and we were bound to beleeve it as we were bound to beleeve a God in heaven though our soules were not immortall There are so many evidences of the immortality of the soule even to a naturall mans reason that it required not an Article of the Creed to fix this notion of the Immortality of the soule But the Resurrection of the Body is discernible by no other light but that of Faith nor could be fixed by any lesse assurance then an Article of the Creed Where be all the splinters of that Bone which a shot hath shivered and scattered in the Ayre Where be all the Atoms of that flesh which a Corrasive hath eat away or a Consumption hath breath'd and exhal'd away from our arms and other Limbs In what wrinkle in what furrow in what bowel of the earth ly all the graines of the ashes of a body burnt a thousand years since In what corner in what ventricle of the sea lies all the jelly of a Body drowned in the generall flood What cohaerence what sympathy what dependence maintaines any relation any correspondence between that arm that was lost in Europe and that legge that was lost in Afrique or Asia scores of yeers between One humour of our dead body produces worms and those worms suck and exhaust all other humour and then all dies and all dries and molders into dust and that dust is blowen into the River that puddled water tumbled into the sea and that ebs and flows in infinite revolutions and still still God knows in what Cabinet every seed-Pearle lies in what part of the world every graine of every mans dust lies and sibilat populum suum as his Prophet speaks in another case he whispers he hisses he beckens for the 〈◊〉 of his Saints and in the twinckling of an eye that body that was fcattered over all the elements is sate down at the right hand of God in a glorious resurrection A Dâ—opsie hath extended me to an enormous corpulency and unwieldinesse a Consumption hath attenuated me to a feeble macilency and leannesse and God raises me a body such as it should have been if these infirmities had not interven'd and deformed it David could goe no further in his book of Psalms but to that Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord ye saies he ye that have breath praise ye the Lord and that ends the book But that my Dead body should come to praise the Lord this is that New Song which I shall learne and sing in heaven when not onely my soule shall magnify the Lord and my Spirit rejoyce in God my Saviour but I shall have mine old eies and eares and tongue and knees and receive such glory in my body
word that is without understanding or considering the institution vertue of baptisime expressed in Gods word and so receive baptisme onely for temporall and naturall respects they are not led to the waters but they fall into them and so as a Man may be drowned in a wholsome bath so such a Man may perish eternally in baptisme if he take it for satisfaction of the State or any other by respect to which that Sacrament is not ordained in the word of God He shall lead Men of years by Instruction and he shall lead young children in good company and with a strong guard he shall lead them by the faith of his Church by the faith of their Parents by the faith of their sureties and undertakers He shall lead them and then when he hath taken them into his government for first it is Reget he shall govern them and then Deducet that is he shall lead them in his Church and therefore they that are led to baptisme any other way then by the Church they are misled nay they are miscarried misdriven Spiritu vertiginis with the spirit of giddinesse They that joyne any in commission with the Trinity though but as an asstsant for so they say in the Church of Rome baptisme may be administred in the name of the Father Sonne and holy Ghost and the virgin Mary they follow not as Christ led in his Church Non fuit sic ab initio it was not so from the beginning for quod extra hos tres est totum Conservum est though much dignity belong to the memory of the Saints of God yet whosoever is none of the three Persons Conservus est he is our fellow-servant though his service lie above staires and ours below his in the triumphant ours in the militant Church Conservus est yet he or she is in that respect but our fellow-servant and not Christs fellow-redeemer So also if we be led to Marah to the waters of bitternesse that we bring a bitter taste of those institutions of the Church for the decency and signification in Sacramentall things things belonging to Baptisme if we bring a misinterpretation of them an indisposition to them an aversnesse from them and so nourish a bitternes and uncharitablenesse towards one another for these Ceremonies if we had rather crosse one another and crosse the Church then crosse the child as God shewed Moses a tree which made those waters in the wildernesse sweet when it was cast in so remember that there is the tree of life the crosse of Christ Iesus and his Merits in this water of baptisme when we all agree in that that all the vertue proceeds from the crosse of Christ the God of unity and peace and concord let us admit any representation of Christs crosse rather then admit the true crosse of the devill which is a bitter and schismaticall crossing of Christ in his Church for it is there in his Church that he leads us to these waters Well then they to whom these waters belong have Christ in his Church to lead them and therefore they need not stay till they can come alone till they be of age and years of discretion as the Anabaptists say for it is Deducet and Deducet cos generally universally all that are of this government all that are appointed for the Seal all the one hundred and forty foure thousand all the Innumerable multitudes of all Nations Christ leads them all Be Baptized every one of you in the name of Iesus Christ for the remission of sinnes for the promise is made unto you and your children Now all promises of God are sealed in the holy Ghost To whom soever any promise of God belongs he hath the holy Ghost and therefore Nunquid aquam quis prohibere potest Can any Man forbid water that these should not be baptized which havereceived the holy Ghost as well as we says S. Peter And therfore the Children of the Covenant which have the promise have the holy Ghost all they are in this Regiment Deducet cos Christ shall lead them all But whither unto the lively says our first edition unto the living says our last edition fountaines of waters In the originall unto the fountaines of the water of life now in the Scriptures nothing is more ordianry then by the name of waters to designe and meane tribulations so amongst many other God says of the City of Tyre that he would make it a desolate City and bring the deep upon it and great waters should cover it But then there is some such addition as leads to that sense either they are called Aqua multae great waters or Profunda aquarum deep waters or Absorbebit aqua whirlepooles of waters or Tempestas aquae tempestuous waters or Aqua Fellis bitter water God bath mingled gall in our water but we shall never read fontes aquarum fountaines of waters but it hath a gratious sense and presents Gods benefits So they have forsaken me the fountaine of living waters So the water that I shall give shall be in him a well of water springing up unto everlasting life and so every where else when we are brought to the fountaines to this water in the fountaine in the institution howsover we puddle it with impertinent questions in disputation however we soule it with our finnes and all conversation the fountaine is pure Baptisme presents and offers grace and remission of sinnes to all Nay not onely this fountaine of water but the greatest water of all the flood it selfe Saint Basil understands and applies to Baptisme as the Apostle himselfe does Baptisme was a figure of the flood and the Arke for upon that place The Lord sitseth upon the flood and the Lord doth remaine King for ever he says Baptismi gratiam Diluvium nominat nam deles purgat David calls Baptisme the flood because it destroyes all that was sinfull in us and so also he referrs to Baptisme those words when David had confessed his sinnes I thought I would confesse against my selfe my wickednesse unto the Lord and when it is added Surely in the flood of great waters they shall not come near him peccato non appropinquabunt says he originall sinne shall not come neare him that is truly baptized nay all the actuall sinnes in his future life shall be drowned in this baptisme as often as he doth religiously and repentantly consider that in Baptisme when the merit of Christ was communicated to him he received an Antidote against all poyson against all sinne if he applied them together sinne and the merit of Christ for so also he says of that place God will subdue all our iniquities and cast our sinnes into the bottome of the Sea Hoc est in mare Baptismi says Basil into the Sea of Baptisme There was a Brasen Sea in the Temple and there is a golden Sea in the Church of
compelled to come as it is expressed in the Gospell when the Master of the feast sends into the streets and to the hedges to compell blind and lame to come in to his feast A fountaine breaks out in the wildernesse but that fountaine cares not whether any Man come to fetch water or no A fresh and fit gale blowes upon the Sea but it cares not whether the Mariners hoise saile or no A rose blowes in your garden but it calls you not to smell to it Christ Jesus hath done all this abundantly he hath bought an Hospitall he hath stored it with the true balme of Palestine with his bloud which he shed there and he calls upon you all to come for it Hoe every one that thirsteth you that have no money come buy Wine and Milke without money eate that which is good and let your soules delight in fatnesse and I will make an everlasting Covenant with you even the sure mercies of David This Hospitall this way and meanes to cure spirituall diseases was all that Christ had for himselfe but he improved it he makes it a Church and a glorious Church which is our last consideration Quis sinis to what end he bestowed all this cost His end was that he might make it to himselfe a glorious Church not having spot or wrinkle but that end must be in the end of all here it cannot be Cum tot a dicat ecclesia quamdiu hîc est Dimitte debita nostra non utique hîc est sine macula et ruga Since as yet the whole Church says forgive us our Trespasses the Church as yet is not without spots or wrinkles The wrinkles are the Testimonies of our age that is our sinne derived from Adam and the spots are the sinnes which we contract our selves and of these spots and wrinkles we cannot be delivered in this world And therefore the Apostle says here that Christ hath bestowed all this cost on this purchase ut sisteret sibi Ecclesiam that he might setle such a glorious and pure Church to himselfe first ut sisteret that he might setle it which can onely be done in heaven for here in Earth the Church will always have earthquakes Opartet haereses esse stormes and schismes must necessarily be the Church is in a warfare the Church is in a pilgrimage and therefore here is no setling And then he doth it ut sisteret sibi to setle it to himselfe for in the tyranny of Rome the Church was in some sort setled things were carried quietly enough for no Man durst complaine but the Church was setled all upon the Vicar and none upon the Parson the glory of the Bishop of Rome had eclipsed and extinguished the glory of Christ Iesus In other places we have seen the Church setled so as that no man hath done or spoken any thing against the government thereof but this may have been a setling by strong hand by severed discipline and heavy Lawes we see where Princes have changed the Religion the Church may be setled upon the Prince or setled upon the Prelates that is be serviceable to them and be ready to promote and further any purpose of theirs and all this while not be setled upon Christ this purpose ut sisteret sibi to setle such a glorious Church without spot or wrinkle holy to himselfe is reserved for the Triumphant time when she shall be in possession of that beauty which Christ foresaw in her long before when he said Thou art all faire my love and there is no spot in thee and when we that shall be the Children of the Mariage Chamber◠shall be glad and rejoice and give glory to him because the Mariage of the Lambe is come and his wife hath made her selfe ready that is we that are of that Church shall be so clothed as that our own clothes shall not defile us againe as Io◠complaines that they doe as long as we are in this world for though I make me never so cleane yet mine own clothes defile me againe as it is in that place But yet Beloved Christ hath not made so improvident a bargaine as to give so great a rate himselfe for a Church so farre in reversion as till the day of Judgement That he should enter into bonds for this payment from all eternity even in the eternall decree between the Father and him that he should really pay this price his precious bloud for this Church one thousand six hundred years agoe and he should receive no glory by this Church till the next world◠Here was a long lease here were many lives the lives of all the men in the world to be served before him But it is not altogether so for he gave himselfe that he might settle such a Church then a glorious and a pure Church but all this while the Church is building in heaven by continuall accesse of holy Soules which come thither and all the way he workes to that end He sanctifies it and cleanses it by the washing of water through the word as we find in our Text. He therefore stays not so long for our Sanctification but that we have meanes of being sanctified here Christ stays not so long for his glory but that he hath here a glorious Gospell his Word and mysterious Sacraments here Here then is the writing and the Seale the Word and the Sacrament and he hath given power and commandement to his Ministers to deliver both writing and Seale the Word and Baptisme to his children This Sacrament of Baptisme is the first It is the Sacrament of inchoation of Initiation The Sacrament of the Supper is not given but to them who are instructed and presum'd to understand all Christian duties and therefore the Word if we understand the Word for the Preaching of the Word may seeme more necessary at the administration of this Sacrament then at the other Some such thing seems to be intimated in the institution of the Sacraments In the institution of the Supper it is onely said Take and eate and drinke and doe that in remembrance of me and it is onely said that they sand a Pslame and s◠departed In the institution of Baptisme there is more solemnity more circumstance for first it was instituted after Christs Resurrection and then Christ proceeds to it with that majesticall preamble All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth◠and therefore upon that title he gives power to his Apostles to joine heaven and earth by preaching and by baptisme but here is more then singing of a Psalme for Christ commands them first to teach and then to baptize and then after the commandement of Baptisme he refreshes that commandement againe of teaching them whom they baptized to observe all things that he had commanded them I speake not this as though Baptisme were uneffectuall without a Sermon S. Angustines words Accedat yerbum fiat Sacramentum when the Word is
before his Gospell was written principally and purposely against the opposers of Christs humanity but occasionally also in defence of his divine nature too Because there is Solutio Iesu a dissolving of Jesus a taking of Jesus in peeces a dividing of his Natures or of his Offices which overthrowes all the testimonies of these six great witnesses when Christ said Solvite templum hoc destroy dissolve this temple and in three dayes I will raise it he spoke that but of his naturall body there was Solutio corporis Christs body and soule were parted but there was not Solutio Iesu the divine nature parted not from the humane no not in death but adhered to and accompanied the soule even in hell and accompanied the body in the grave And therefore says the Apostle Omnis spiritus qui solvit Iesum ex deo non est for so Irenaeus and Saint Augustine and Saint Cyrill with the Grecians read those words That spirit which receives not Jesus intirely which dissolves Jesus and breakes him in peeces that spirit is not of God All this then is the subject of this testimony first that Christ Jesus is come in the flesh there is a Recognition of his humane nature And then that this Jesus is the sonne of God there is a subscription to his divine nature he that separates these and thereby makes him not able or not willing to satisfie for Man he that separates his Nature or he that separates the worke of the Redemption and says Christ suffered for us onely as Man and not as God or he that separates the manner of the worke and says that the passive obedience of Christ onely redeemed us without any respect at all to his active obedience onely as he died and nothing as he died innocently or he that separates the perfection and consummation of the worke from his worke and findes something to be done by Man himselfe meritorious to salvation or he that separates the Prince and the Subject Christ and his members by nourishing Controversies in Religion when they might be well reconciled or he that separates himselfe from the body of the Church and from the communion of Saints for the fashion of the garments for the variety of indifferent Ceremonies all these do Solvere Iesum they slacken they dissolve that Jesus whose bones God provided for that they should not be broken whose flesh God provided for that it should not see Corruption and whose garments God provided that they should not bee divided There are other luxations other dislocations of Jesus when we displace him for any worldly respect and prefer preforment before him there are other woundings of Jesus in blasphemous oathes and exerations there are other maimings of Jesus in pretending to serve him intirely and yet retaine one particular beloved sinne still there are other rackings and extendings of Jesus when we delay him and his patience to our death-bed when we stretch the string so farre that it cracks there that is appoint him to come then and he comes not there are other dissolutions of Jesus when men will melt him and powre him out and mold him up in a waser Cake or a peece of bread there are other annihilations of Jesus when Men will make him and his Sacraments to be nothing but bare signes but all these will be avoided by us if we be gained by the testimony of these six witnesses to hold fast that integrity that intirensse of Jesus which is here delivered to us by this Apostle In which we beleeve first Iâ—sum a Saviour which implies his love and his will to save us and then we beleeve Christum the anointed that is God and man able and willing to doe this great worke and that he is anointed and sealed for that purpose and this implies the decree the contract and bargaine of acceptation by the Father that Pactum salis that eternall covenant which seasons all by which that which he meant to doe as he was Iesus should be done as he was Christ. And then as the intirenesse of Jesus is expressed in the verse before the text we beleeve Quod venit that as all this might be done if the Father and Sonne would agree as all this must be done because they had agreed it so all this was done Quâ—a venit because this Jesus is already come and that for the father intirenesse for the perfection and consummation and declaration of all venit per aquam sanguinem He came by water and bloud Which words Saint Bernard understands to imply but a difference between the comming of Christ and the comming of Moses who was drawen out of the water and therefore called by that name of Moses But before Moses came to be a leader of the people he passed through bloud too through the bloud of the Egyptian whom he slew and much more when he established all their bloudy sacrifices so that Mases came not onely by water Neither was the first Testament ordained without bloud Others understand the words onely to put a difference between Iohn Baptist and Christ because Iohn Baptist is still said to baptize with waterâ— Because he should be declared to Israel therefore am I come baptizing with water but yet Iohn Baptists baptisme had not onely a relation to bloud but a demonstration of it when still he pointed to the Lambe Ecce Agnus for that Lambe was slâ—ine from the beginning of the world So that Christ which was this Lambe came by water and bloud when he came in the risuall types and figures of Moses and when he came in the baptisme of Iohn for in the Law of Moses there was so frequent use of water as that we reckon above fifty severall Immunditi as uncleannesses which might receive their expiation by washing without being put to their bloudy sacrifies for them And then there was so frequent use of bloud that almost all things are by the Law purged with bloud and without shedding of bloud is no Remission But this was such water and such bloud as could not perfect the worke but therefore was to be renewed every day The water that Jesus comes by is such a water as he that arinketh of it shall thirst no more nay there shall spring up in him a well of water that is his example shall worke to the satisfaction of others we doe not say to a satisfaction for others And then this is that bloud that perfected the whole worke at once By his own bloud entred he once into the holy place and obtained eternall Redemption for us So that Christ came by water and bloud according to the old ablutions and old sacrifices when he wept when he sweat when he powred out bloud pretious incorruptible inestimable bloud at so many channels as he did all the while that he was upon the altar sacrificing himselfe in his passion But after the immolation of this sacrifice after his Consummatum est when Christ
was come and gone for so much as belonged to the accomplishing of the types of the old law then Christ came againe to us by water and bloud in that wound which he received upon his side from which there flowed out miraculously true water true bloud This wound Saint Augustine calls Ianuam utriusque Sacramenti the doore of both sacraments where we see he acknowledges but two and both presented in this water and bloud and so certainely doe most of the fathers make this wound if not the foundation yet at least a sacrament of both the sacraments And to this water and bloud doth the Apostle here without doubt aime principally which he onely of all the Evangelists hath recorded and with so great asseveration and assurednesse in the recording thereof He that saw it bare record and his record is true and he knoweth that he saith truth that yee might beleeve it Here then is the matter which these six witnesses must be beleeved in here is Integritas Iesu quae non solvenda the intirenesse of Christ Jesus which must not be broken That a Saviour which is Iesus appointed to that office that is Christ figured in the law by ablutions of water and sacrifices of bloud is come and hath perfected all those figures in water and bloud too and then that he remaines still with us in water and bloud by meanes instituted in his Church to wash away our uncleannesses and to purge away our iniquities and to apply his worke unto our Soules this is Integritas Iesu Iesus the sonne of God in heaven Jesus the Redeemer of man upon earth Jesus the head of a Church to apply that to the end this is Integritas Iesu all that is to be beleeved of him Take thus much more that when thou comest to hearken what these witnesses shall say to this purpose thou must finde something in their testimony to prove him to be come not onely into the world but into thee He is a mighty prince and hath a great traine millions of ministring spirits attend him and the whole army of Martyrs follow the Lambe wheresoever he goes Though the whole world be his Court thy soule is his bedchamber there thou maist contract him there thou maist lodge and entertaine Integrum Iesum thy whole Saviour And never trouble thy selfe how another shall have him if thou have him all leave him and his Church to that make thou sure thine owne salvation When he comes to thee he comes by water and by bloud If thy heart and bowels have not yet melted in compassion of his passion for thy soule if thine eyes have not yet melted in tears of repentancâ— and contrition he is not yet come by water into thee If thou have suffered nothing for sinne nor found in thy selfe a chearfull disposition to suffer if thou have found no wresting in thy selfe no resistance of Concupiscences he that comes not to set peace but to kindle this war is not yet come into thee by bloud Christ can come by land by purchases by Revenues by temporall blessings for so he did still convey himselfe to the Jewes by the blessing of the land of promise but here he comes by water by his owne passion by his sacraments by thy tears Christ can come in a mariage and in Musique for so he delivers himselfe to the spouse in the Canticles but here he comes in bloud which comming in water and bloud that is in meanes for the salvation of our soules here in the militant Church is the comming that he stands upon and which includes all the Christian Religion and therefore he proves that comming to them by these three great witnesses in heaven and three in earth For there are three which beare record in heaven The Father the word and the holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which bear record in the earth The spirit and the water and the bloud and these three agree in one By the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be confirmed says Christ out of the law That 's as much as can be required in any Civill or Criminall businesse and yet Christ gives more testimony of himselfe for here he produces not Duos testes but Duas Classes two rankes of witnesses and the fullest number of each not two but three in heaven and three in earth And such witnesses upon earth as are omni exceptione majores without all exception It is not the testimony of earthly men for when Saint Paul produces them in abundance The Patriarch the Iudges the Prophets the elders of the old times of whom he exhibits an exact Catalogue yet he calls all them but Nubes testium cloudes of witnesses for though they be cloudes in Saint Chrysostomes sense that they invest us and enwrap us and so defend us from all diffidence in God we have their witnesse what God did for them why should we doubt of the like though they be cloudes in Athanasius sense they being in heaven showre downe by their prayers the dew of Gods grace upon the Church Though they be cloudes they are but cloudes some darkenesse mingled in them some controversies arising from them but his witnesses here are Lux inaccessibilis that light that no eye can attaine to and Pater Luminum the father of lights from whom all these testimonies are derived When God imployed a man to be the witnesse of Christ because men might doubt of his testimony God was content to assigne him his Compurgators when Iohn Baptist must preach that the kingdome of God was at hand God fortifies the testimony of his witnesse then Hic enim est for this is he of whom that is spoken by the prophet Esay and lest one were not enough he multiplies them as it is written in the prophets Iohn Baptist might be thought to testifie as a man and therefore men must testifie for him but these witnesses are of a higher nature these of heaven are the Trinity and those of earth are the sacraments and seales of the Church The prophets were full of favor with God Abraham full of faith Stephen full of the Holy Ghost many full of grace and Iohn Baptist a prophet and more then a prophet yet never any prophet never any man how much soever interessed in the favor of Almighty God was such an instrument of grace as a sacrament or as Gods seales and institutions in his Church and the least of these six witnesses is of that nature and therefore might be beleeved without more witnesses To speake then first of the three first the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost it was but a poore plot of the devill to goe about to rob us of their testimony for as long as we have the three last the spirit the water and bloud we have testimony enough of Christ because God is involved in his ordinance and though he be not tyed to the worke of the
there is ablutiâ— pedum a washing of our feet of our steps and walkes in this world and that 's by repentance sealed in the other Sacrament and properly that is for actuall sinnes Thirdly in this ablution there is an Ego lavi there is a washing and I my selfe doe something towards this cleansing of my selfe And fourthly it is Lavi it is I have washed not Lavabo it is not I will wash it is already done it is not put off to mine age nor to my death bed but Lavi I have washed And lastly it is Pedes meas I have washed mine owne feet for if by my teaching I cleanse others and remaine by my bad life in foule ways my selfe I am not within this text Lavi pedes meos I have not washed my feet But if we have sincerely performed the first part we shall performe the other too Quomodo we shall come into a religious detestation and indignation of falling into the same foulenesse againe To passe then through all these for of all these that 's true which Saint Basil says of all words in the Scriptures Habent minutissime particulae suae mysteria Every word hath force and use as in Pearle every seed Pearle is as medicinall as the greatest so there is a restorative nature in every word of the Scriptures and in every word the soule findes a rise and help for her devotion To begin with the first the necessity of washing consider us in our first beginning Concepti in peccatis our Mothers conceived us in sin and being wrapped up in uncleannesse there can any Man bring a cleane thing out of filthinesse There is not one for as we were planted in our Mothers wombe in conception so we were transplanted from thence into this world in our Baptisme Nascimur filii â—rae for we are by nature the children of wrath as well as others And as in the bringing forth and bringing up of the best and most precious and most delicate plants Men employ most dung so the greatest persons where the spirit and grace of God doth not allay that intemperance which naturally arises out of abundance and provocation and out of vanity and ambitious glory in outward oftentations there is more dung more uncleannesse more sinne in the conception and birth of their children then of meaner and poorer parents It is a degree of uncleannesse to fixe our thoughts too earnestly upon the uncleannesse of our conception and of our birth when wee call that a testimony of a right comming if we come into the world with our head forward in a head-long precipitation and when we take no other testimony of our being alive but that we were heard cry and for an earnest and a Prophecy that we shall be viri sanguinum et dâ—losi bloudy and deceitfull Men false and treacherous to the murdering of our owne soules we come into this world as the Egyptians went out of it swallowed and smothered in a red sea Pueri sanguinum infirmi weake and bloudy infants at our birth But to carry our thoughts from materiall to sptrituall uncleannesses In peccatâ— concepti we were conceived in sinne but who can tell us how That flesh in our mothers wombe which we are having no sinne in it selfe for that masse of flesh could not be damned if there never came a soule into it and that soule which comes into that flesh from Godâ— having no sinne in it neither for God creates nothing infected with sinne neither should that soule be damned if it came not into that body The body being without sinne and the soule being without sinne yet in the first minute that this body and soule meet and are united we become in that instant guilty of Adams sinne committed six thousand years before Such is our sinne and uncleannesse in Originall sinne as the subtillest Man in the Schooles is never able to tell us how or when we contracted that sinne but all have it And therefore if there be any any any-where of that generation that are pure in their owne eyes and yet are not washed from their filthinesse as Solomon speakes Erubesce vas stercorum says good Saint Bernard If it be a vessell of gold it is but a vessell of excrements if it be a bed of curious plants it is but a bed of dung as their tombes hereafter shall be but glorious covers of rotten carcasses so their bodies are now but pampered covers of rotten soules Erubescat vas stercorum let that vessell of uncleannesse that barrell of dung confesse a necessity of washing and seeke that and rejoyce in that for thus farre that is to the pollution of Originall sinne in peccato concepti and nasâ—imur filii iraâ— wee are conceived in sinne first and then we are borne the children of wrath But where 's our remedy Why for this for this originall uncleannesse is the water of Baptisme Opâ—rtet nos renasci we must be borne againe we must There is a necessity of Baptisme As we are the children of Christian parents we have Ius ad rem a right to the Covenant we may claime baptisme the Church cannot deny it us And as we are baptized in the Christian Church we have Ius in re a right in the Covenant and all the benefits thereof all the promises of the Gospell we are sure that we are conceived in sinne and sure that we are borne children of wrath but not sure that we are cleansed or reconciled to God by any other meanes then that which he hath ordained Baptisme The Spirit of God moved first upon the water and the spirit of life grew first in the water Primus liquor quod viveret edidit The first living creatures in the first creation were in the waters and the first breath of spirituall life came to us from the water of baptisme In the Temple there was Mare aeneum a brasen sea In the Church there is Mare aureum a golden sea which is Baptisterium the font in which we discharge our selves of all our first uncleannesses of all the guiltinesse of Originall sinne but because we contract new uncleannesses by our uncleane ways here therefore there must bee Ablutio pedum a washing of our feet of our ways of our actions which is our second branch Cecidimus in lutum super acervum lapidum says Saint Bernard we fell by Adams fall into the durt but from that we are washed in baptisme but we fell upon a heape of sharpe stones too and we feel those wounds and those bruises all our lives after Impingimus meridie we stumble at noone day In the brightest light of the Gospell in the brightest light of grace in the best strength of Repentance and our resolutions to the contrary yet we stumble and fall againe Duo nobis pedes says that Father Natura Consâ—eâ—â—do we stand says he upon two feet Nature and Custome and we are lame of one foot hereditarily
conscience There is a washing then absolutely generally necessary the water of Baptisme and a washing occasionally necessary because we fall into actuall sinnes the bloud of our Saviour in the Sacrament and there is a washing between these preparatory to the last washing the water of Contrite and repentant teares in opening our selves to God and shutting up of our selves against future tentations of the two first the two Sacraments sons in Ecclesia the whole spring and river is in the Church there is no baptisme no bloud of Christ but in the Church And of this later which is most properly ablutio pedum the washing of the feet that is teares shed in repentance of our sinfull lives of this water there is Pelvis in Ecclesia the Bason is in the Church for our best repentance though this repentance be at home in our owne hearts doth yet receive a Seale from the absolution of Gods Ministers in the Church But yet though there be no cleansing but from the spirit of God no ordinary working of Gods spirit but in the Church and his ordinances there yet we our selves are not so left out in this work but that the spouse here and every carefull soule here says truly Ego lavi I my selfe have washed my feet which is our third branch It is said often in Philosophy Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu till some sense apprehend a thing the Iudgment cannot debate it nor discourse it It may well be said in Divinity too Nihil in gratia quod non prius in natura there is nothing in grace that was not first in nature so farre as that grace always finds nature and naturall faculties to work on though that nature be not disposed to the receiving of grace when it comes yet that nature and those faculties which may be so disposed by grace are there before that grace comes And the grace of God doth not work this cleansing but where there is a sweet and souple and tractable and ductile disposition wrought in that soule This disposition is no cause why God gives his grace for there is no cause but his own meer and unmeasurable goodnesse But yet without such a disposition God would not give that and therefore let us cleanse our selves from all filthinesse says the Apostle There is something which we ourselves may doe A Man that had powred out himselfe in a vehement and corrupt solicitation of the chastity of any woman if he found himselfe surprized by the presence of a husband or a father he could give over in the midst of a protestation A Man that had set one foot into a house of dangerous provocations if he saw â— bill of the plague upon the doore he could goe backe A Man that had drawne his sword to rob a passenger if he saw a hue and cry come could give over that and all this is upon the Ego lavi I have washed without use of grace his owne naturall reason declines him from that sinne then How long shall we make this bad use of this true doctrine that because we cannot doe enough for our salvation therefore we will doe nothing Shall I see any Man shut out of heaven that did what he could upon earth Thou that canst mourne for any worldly losse mourne for thy sinne Thou that lovest meetings of company for society and conversation love the meeting of the Saints of God in the Congregation and communion of Saints Thou that lovest the Rhetorique the Musique the wit the sharpnesse the eloquence the elegancy of other authors love even those things in the Scriptures in the word of God where they abound more then in other authors Put but thy affections out of their ordinary sinfull way and then Lavasti pedes thou hast washed thy feet and God will take thy work in hand and raise a building farre beyond the compasse and comprehension of thy foundation that which the soule began but in good nature shall be perfected in grace But doe it quickly for the glory of this soule here was in the Lavi It is not Lavabo that she had already not that she would wash her feet since thou art come to know thy naturall uncleannesse and baptisme for that and thine actuall uncleannesse and that for that there is a River that brings thee into the maine Sea the water of repentance leads thee to the bottomelesse Sea of the bloud of thy Saviour in the Sacrament continue not in thy foulenesse in confidence that all shall be drowned in that at last whensoever thou wilt come to it It was a common but an erroneous practise even in the Primitive Church to defer their baptisme till they were old because an opinion prevailed upon them that baptisme discharged them of all sinnes they used to be baptized then when they were past sinning that so they might passe out of this world in that innocency which their baptisme imprinted in them And out of this custome Men grew to be the more carelesse all their lives because all was done at once in baptisme But says Saint Augustine in that case and it was his owne case It were uncharitably said Vulneretur amplius that if we saw a Man welter in his bloud and wounded in divers places it were uncharitably said Vulneretur amplius give him two or three wounds more for the Surgeon is not come yet It is uncharitably said to thine owne soule Vulneretur amplius take thy pleasure in sinne yet when I come to receive the Sacrament I will repent altogether doe not thinke to put off all to the washing weeke all thy sinnes all thy repentance to Easter and the Sacrament then There may be a washing then and no drying thou maist come to weep the teares of desperation to seek mercy with teares and not find it teares for worldly losses teares for sinne teares for bodily anguish may overflow thee then and whereas Gods goodnesse to those that are his is ut abstergat omnem Lachrymam to wipe all teares from their eyes absterget nullam Lachrymam he may leave all unwiped upon thee he may leave thy soule to sinke and to shipwracke under this tempest and inundation and current of divers tides teares of all kinds and ease of none for those of whom it is said Deus absterget omnem lachrymam God shall wipe all teares from their eyes are they Qui laverunt Stolas as we see there who have already washed their long robes and made them white in the bloud of the Lambe who have already by teares of repentance become worthy receivers of the seale of reconciliation in the Sacrament of his body and bloud To them God shall wipe all teares from their eyes but to the unrepentant sinner he shall multiply teares from teares for the losse of a horse or of a house to teares for the losse of a soule and wipe no teare from his eyes But yet though this Lavi exclude the Lavabo as it
not enough for us to minister it to you except every one of you help himself in a faithfull application and help one another in a holy and exemplar conversation Quà m exactè accuratè usus dictionibus How exact and curious was the holy Ghost in David in choice of words he does not say Non sanitas mihi sed non in car ne not that there is no health for me but none in me non in carne mea not in my flesh but in carne ejus in the flesh and bloud of my Saviour there is health and salvation In ossibus ejus in his bones in the strength of his merits there is rest and peace à facie peccati what face soever my sin have had in my former presumptions or what face soever they put on now in my declination to desperation The Lord waitâ—th that he may have mercy upon you He stays your leisure and therefore will he be exalted says that Prophet there that hee may have mercy upon you He hath chosen that for his way of honour of exaltation that he may have mercy upon you And then Quare moriemini If God bee so respective towards you as to wait for you if God be so aâ—bitions of you as to affect a kingdome in you why will ye die since he will not let ye die of Covetousnesse of adultery of ambition of prophanenesse in your selves why will yee die of jealousie of suspition in him It was a mercifull voice of David Is there yet any man left of the house of Saul that I may shew mercy for Jonathans sake It is the voice of God to you all Is there yet any man of the house of Adam that I may shew mercy for Christ Iesus sake that takes Christ Jesus in his arms and interposes him between his sins and mine indignation and non morietur that man shall not die We have done Est ars â—anandorum morborum medicina non rhetorica Our physick is not eloquence not directed upon your affections but upon your conscienâ—os To thus wee present this for physick The whole need not a Physician but the sick doe If you mistake your selves to be well or think you have physick enough at home knowledge enough divinity enough to save you without us you need no Physician that is a Physician can doe you no good but then is this Gods physick and Gods Physician welcome unto you if you be come to a remorsefull sense and to an humble and penitent acknowledgement that you are sick and that there is no soâ—ndnesse in your flesh because of his anger nor any rest in your bones because of your sins till you turn upon him in whom this anger is appeas'd and in whom these sins are forgiven the Son of his love the Son of his right hand at his right hand Christ Jesus And to this glorious Sonne of God c. SERMON XXI Preached at Lincolns Inne PSALME 38. 4. For mine iniquities are gone over my head as a heavy burden they are too heavy for mee DAvid having in the former verses of this Psalm assign'd a reason why he was bound to pray because he was in misery O Lord rebuke me not in thine anger for thine arrows stick fast in mee And a reason why hee should be in misery because God was angry Thy hand presseth 〈◊〉 v. 2. And there is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine anger 〈◊〉 And a reason why God should be angry because he had finn'd There is no 〈◊〉 my bones because of my sin in the same verse He proceeds to a reason why this prayer of his must be vehement why these miseries of his are so violent and why Gods anger is permanent and he findes all this to be because in his sins all these venimous qualities vehemence violence and continuance were complicated and enwrapp'd for hee had sinn'd vehemently in the rage of lust and violently in the effusion of bloud and permanently in a long and senslesse security They are all contracted in this Text into two kinds which will be our two parts in handling these words first the supergressa super Mine iniquities are gone over my head there 's the multiplicity the number the succession and so the continuation of his sin and then the Gravatae super My sins are as a heavy burden too heavy for me there 's the greatnesse the weight the insupportablenesse of his sin S. Augustine cals these two distinctions or considerations of sin Ignorantiam Difficultatem first that David was ignorant that he saw not the Tide as it swell'd up upon him Abyssus Abyssum Depth call'd upon Depth and all thy watâ—rs and all thy billows are gone ever me says he in another place hee perceiv'd them not coming till they were over him he discern'd not his particular sins then when he committed them till they came to the supergressae super to that height that he was overflowed surrounded his iniquities were gone over his head and in that S. Aug. notes Ignorantiâ—m his in-observance his inconsideration of his own case and then he notes Difficultatem the hardnesse of recovering because he that is under water hath no aire to see by no aire to hear by he hath nothing to reach to he touches not ground to push him up he feels no bough to pull him up and therein that Father notes Difficultatem the hardnesse of recovering Now Moses expresses these two miseries together in the destruction of the Egyptians in his song after Israels deliverance and the Egyptians submersion The Depths have covered them there 's the supergressa super their iniquities in that punishment of their iniquities were gone over their heads And then They sank into the bottome as a stone says Moses there 's the gravata super they depressed them suppressed them oppressed them they were under them and there they must lie The Egyptians had David had we have too many sins to swim above water and too great sins to get above water again when we are sunk The number of sins then and the greatnesse of sin will be our two parts the dangers are equall to multiply many lesser sins or to commit a few more hainous except the danger be greater as indeed it may justly seem to be in the multiplication and custome and habit of lesser sins but how great is the danger then how desperate is our state when our sins are great in themselves and multiplied too In his many sins we shall touch thus many circumstances First they were peccaâ—a sins iniquities and then peccata sua his sins his iniquities which intimates actuall sins for though God inflict miseries for originall sin death and that that induces it sicknâ—sse and the like yet those are miseries common to all because the sin is so too But these are his punishments personall calamities and the sins are his own sins And then which is a third circumstance they are sins in the plurall God is
covered himself with a cloud so that prayer could not passe thorough That was the misery of Ierusalem But in the acts and habits of sin we cover our selves with a roof with an arch which nothing can shake nor remove but Thunder and Earthquakes that is the execution of Gods fiercest judgments And whether in that fall of the roof that is in the weight of Gods judgments upon us the stones shall not brain us overwhelm and smother and bury us God only knows How his Thunders and his Earthquakes when we put him to that will work upon us he onely knows whether to our amendment or to our destruction But whil'st we are in the consideration of this arch this roof of separation between God and us by sin there may be use in imparting to you an observation a passage of mine own Lying at Aiâ— at Aquisgrane a well known Town in Germany and fixing there some time for the benefit of those Baths I found my self in a house which was divided into many families indeed so large as it might have been a little Parish or at least a great lim of a great one But it was of no Parish for when I ask'd who lay over my head they told me a family of Anabaptists And who over theirs Another family of Anabaptists and another family of Anabaptists over theirs and the whole house was a nest of these boxes severall artificers all Anabaptists I ask'd in what room they met for the exercise of their Religion I was told they never met for though they were all Anabaptists yet for some collaterall differences they detested one another and though many of them were near in bloud alliance to one another yet the son would excommunicate the father in the room above him and the Nephew the Uncle As S. Iohn is said to have quitted that Bath into which Cerinthus the Heretique came so did I this house I remembred that Hezekiah in his sicknesse turn'd himself in his bed to pray towards that wall that look'd to Ierusalem And that Daniel in Babylon when he pray'd in his chamber opened those windows that look'd towards Ierusalem for in the first dedication of the Temple at Ierusalem there is a promise annext to the prayers made towards the Temple And I began to think how many roofs how many floores of separation were made between God and my prayers in that house And such is this multiplicity of sins which we consider to be got over us as a roof as an arch many arches many roofs for though these habituall sins be so of kin as that they grow from one another and yet for all this kindred excommunicate one another for covetousnesse will not be in the same roome with prodigality yet it is but going up another stair and there 's the tother Anabaptist it is but living a few years and then the prodigall becomes covetous All the way they separate us from God as a roof as an arch then an arch will bear any weight An habituall sin got over our head as an arch will stand under any sicknesse any dishonour any judgement of God and never sink towards any humiliation They are above our heads sicus tectum as a roofe as an arch and they are so toe sicut clamor as a voice ascending not stopping till they come to God O my God I am confounded and ashamed to lift up mine eyes to ther O my God why not thine eyes there is a cloud a clamour in the way for as it follows Our iniquities are encreased over our heads and our trespasse is grown up to the heaven I think to retain a learned man of my counsell and one that is sute to be heard in the Court and when I come to instruct him I finde mine adversaries name in his book before and he is all ready for the other party I think to finde an Advocate in heaven when I will and my sin is in heaven before mee The voice of Abels bloud and so of Cains sin was there The voice of Sodomes transgression was there Bring down that sin again from heaven to earth Bring that voice that cries in heaven to speake to Christ here in his Church upon earth by way of confession bring that clamorous sin to his bloud to be washed in the Sacrament for as long as thy sin cries in heaven thy prayers cannot be heard there Bring thy sinne under Christs feet there when hee walks amongst the Candlesticks in the light and power of his Ordinances in the Church and then thine absolution will be upon thy head in those seals which he hath instituted and ordained there and thy cry will be silenced Till then supergrâ—sse caput thine iniquities will be over thy head as a roof as a cry and in the next place sicut aqua as the overflowing of waters We consider this plurality this multiplicity of habituall sinnes to bee got over our heads as waters especially in this that they have stupefied us and taken from us all sense of reparation of our sinfull condition The Organ that God hath given the naturall man is the eye he sees God in the creature The Organ that God hath given the Christian is the ear he hears God in his Word But when we are under water both senses both Organs are vitiated and depraved if not defeaâ—ed The habituall and manifold sinner sees nothing aright Hee sees a judgement and cals it an accident He hears nothing aright He hears the Ordinance of Preaching for salvation in the next world and he cals it an invention of the State for subjection in this world And as under water every thing seems distorted and crooked to man so does man himself to God who sees not his own Image in that man in that form as he made it When man hath drunk iniquity like water then The flouds of wickadnesse shall make him afraid The water that he hath swum in the sin that he hath delighted in shall appear with horrour unto him As God threatens the pride of Tyrus I shall bring the deep upon thee and great waters shall cover thee That God will execute upon this sinner And then upon every drop of that water upon every affliction every tribulation he shall come to that fearfulnesse Waters flowed over my head then said I I am câ—â— off Either he shall see nothing or see no remedy no deliverance from desperation Keep low these waters as waters signifie sin and God shall keep them low as they signifie punishments And his Dove shall return to the Ark with an Olive leaf to shew thee that the waters are abated he shall give thee a testimony of the return of his love in his Oyle and Wine and Milk and Honey in the temporall abundances of this life And si impleat Hydrias aqua if he doe fill all your vessels with water with water of bitternesse that is fill and exercise all your patience and
again as fast as he in obedience to his Father dranke of it more and worse miseries succeeding and exceeding those which hee had born before They were above him in clamore in that voice in that clamour which was got up to heaven and in possession of his Fathers ears before his prayer came Father forgive them for they are not forgiven that sinne of crucifying the Lord of life yet They were above his head tanquam aquae as an inundation of waters then when he swet water and bloud in the Agony when hee who had formerly passed his Israel thorough the Red Sea as though that had not been love large enough was now himself overflowed with a Red Sea of his owne bloud for his Israel again And they were over his head in Dominio in a Lordship in a Tyranny then when those marks of soveraign honour a robe and a scepter and a Crown of thorns were added to his other afflictions And so is our first part of this Text the supergressae sunt the multiplicity of sin appliable to Christ as well as to his Type to David and to us the members of his body And so is the last part that which we handled to day too the gravata sunt the weight and insupportablenesse of sin They were heavy they weighed him down from his Fathers bosome they made God Man That one sin could make an Angel a Devill is a strange consideration but that all the sins of the world could make God Man is stranger Yet sinne was so heavy Too heavy sayes the Text. It did not onely make God Man in investing our nature by his birth but it made him no Man by devesting that body by death and but for the vertue and benefit of a former Decree submitting that body to the corruption and putrefaction of the grave But this was the peculiar the miraculous glory of Christ Jesus He had sin all our sin and yet never felt worme of conscience He lay dead in the grave and yet never felt worm of corruption Sin was heavy It made God Man Too heavy It made Man no Man Too heavy for him even for him who was God and Man together for even that person so composed had certain velleitates as wee say in the School certain motions arising sometimes in him which required a veruntamen a review a re-consideration Not my will O Father but thine be done and such as in us who are pushed on by Originall sinne and drawn on by sinfull concupiscences in our selves would become sins though in Christ they were farre from it Sin was heavy even upon him in all those inconveniences which wee noted in a burden Incurvando when he was bowed down and gave his back to their scourges Fatigando when his soul was heavy unto death Retardando when they brought him to think it long Viquid dereliquisti Why hast thou forsaken mee And then praecipitando to make that haste to the Consummatum est to the finishing of all as to die before his fellows that were crucified with him died to bow down his head and to give up his soul before they extorted it from him Thus we burdned him And thus he unburdned us Et cum exonerat nos onerat when he unburdens us he burdens us even in that unburdening Onerat beneficio cum exonerat peccato He hath taken off the obligation of sinne but he hath laid upon us the obligation of thankfulnesse and Retribution Quid retribuam What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me is vox onerati a voyce that grones under the burden though not of sinne yet of debt to that Saviour that hath taken away that sinne Exi à me Domine that which Saint Peter said to Christ Lord depart from me for I am a sinfull man is says that Father vox onerati the voyce of one oppressed with the blessings and benefits of God and desirous to spare and to husband that treasure of Gods benefits as though he were better able to stand without the support of some of those benefits then stand under the debt which so many so great benefits laid upon him Truly he that considers seriously what his sins have put the Son of God to cannot but say Lord lay some of my sinnes upon me rather then thy Sonne should beare all this that devotion that says after Spare thy people whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious bloud would say before spare that Son that must die spare that precious bloud that must be shed to redeeme us And rather then Christ should truely really beare the torments of hell in his soule which torments cannot be severed from obduration nor from everlastingness I would I should desire that my sins might return to me and those punishments for those sins I should be ashamed to be so farre exceeded in zeal by Moses who would have been blotted out of the book of life or by Paul who would have been separated from Christ for his brethren as that I would not undertake as much to redeem my redeemer and suffer the torments of Hell my selfe rather then hee should But it is an insupportable burden of debt that he hath laid upon me by suffering that which he suffered without the torments of Hell Those words Vis sanus fieri hast thou a desire to be well and a faith that I can make thee well are vox exâ—nerantis the words of him that would take off our burden But then the Tolle grabatum ambula Take up thy bed and walke this is vox oncrantis the voyce of Christ as he lays a new burden upon us ut quod prius suave jam onerosum sit that bed which he had ease in before must now be born with pain that sin which was forgotten with pleasure must now be remembred with Contrition Christ speaks not of a vacuity nor of a levity when he takes off one burden he lays on another nay two for one He takes off the burden of Irremediablenesse of irrecoverablenesse and he reaches out his hand in his Ordinances in his Word and Sacraments by which we may be disburdened of all our sins but then he lays upon us Onus resipiscentiae the burden of Repentance for our selves and Onus gratitudinis the burden of retribution and thankfulnesse to him in them who are his by our relieving of them in whom he suffers The end of all that we may end all in endlesse comfort is That our word in the originall in which the holy Ghost spoake is Iikkebedu which is not altogether as we read them graves sunt but graves fieri not that they are but that they were as a burden too heavy for me till I could lay hold upon a Saviour to sustaine me they were too heavy for me And by him I can runne through a troop through the multiplicity of my sins and by my God I can leap over a wall
fruitfull Land but then he who is the Spirit of the Lord he who is the breath of our nostrills Incubat aquis as it is said there in the Creation he moves upon the waters by his royall and warlike Navy at Sea in which he hath expressed a speciall and particular care And by the breath and influence of his providence throughout the Land he preserves he applies he makes usefull those blessings unto us If this breath that is this power be at any time sourd in the passage and contract an il savor by the pipes that convay it so as that his good intentions are ill executed by inferiour Ministers this must not be imputed to him That breath that comes from the East the bed and the garden of spices when it is breathed out there is a persume but by passing over the beds of Serpents and puâ—refied Lakes it may be a breath of poyson in the West Princes purpose some things for ease to the people and as such they are sometimes presented to them and if they prove grievances they tooke their putrefaction in the way that is their corruption from corrupt executors of good and wholesome intentions The thing was good in the roote and the ill cannot be removed in an instant But then we carry not this word Ruach Spirit so high though since God hath said that Kings are Gods the Attribute of the Holy Ghost and his Office which is to apply to man the goodnesse of God belongs to Kings also for God gives but they apply all blessings to us But here we take the word literally as it is in the Text Ruach spirit is the Breath that we breathe the Life that we live The King is that Breath that Life and therefore that belongs to him First our Breath that is serme our speech belongs to him Be faithfull unto him and speake good of his Name is commanded by David of God To Gods Anointed we are not faithfull if we doe not speake good of his Name First there is an internall speech in the heart and God lookes to that the foole hath said in his heart there is no God though he say it but in his heart yet he is a foole for as wise as a Politician would thinke him for saying it in his heart and comming no further yet even that is an overt act with God for God seeth the heart It is the foole that saith in his heart there is no God and it is the foole that saith in his heart I would there were no King That enormous that infamous Tragedy of the Levites Concubins and her murder of which it is said there There was no such thing seen nor done before and many things are done which are never seen with that emphaticall addition Consider of it advise and say your minde hath this addition too In those dayes there was no King in Israel If there had beene any King but a Zedekiah it could not have been so Curse not the King not in thy thoughts for they are sinnes that tread upon the heels of one another and that induce one another to conceive ill of Gods Lievtenant and of God himselfe for so the Prophet joyneth them They shall fret themselves and curse their King and their God He that beginneth with the one will proceed to the other Thus then he is our Breath our Breath is his our speech must be contained not expressed in his dishonour not in misinterpretations of his Actions jealousies have often made women ill incredulitie suspiciousnesse jealousie in the Subject hath wrought ill effects upon Princes otherwise not ill We must not speake ill but our duty is not accomplished in that abstinence we must speake well And in those things which will not admit a good interpretation we must be apt to remove the perversenesse and obliquity of the act from him who is the first mover to those who are inferiour instruments In these divers opinions which are ventilated in the Schoole how God concurreth to the working of second and subordinate causes that opinion is I think the most antient that denies that God workes in the second cause but hath onely communicated to it a power of working and rest himselfe This is not true God does work in every Organ and in every particular action but yet though he doe work in all yet hee is no cause of the obliquity of the perversenesse of any action Now earthly Princes are not equall to God They doe not so much as work in particular actions of instruments many times they communicate power to others and rest wholly themselves and then the power is from them but the perversenesse of the action is not God does work in ill actions and yet is not guilty but Princes doe not so much as worke therein and so may bee excusable at least for any cooperation in the evill of the action though not for countenancing and authorising an evill instrument but that is another case They are our breath then Our breath is theirs in good interpretations of their actions and it is theirs especially in our prayers to Almighty God for them The Apostle exhorts us to pray for whom first for all men in generall but in the first particular that hee descends to for Kings And both Theodoret and Theophylact make that the onely reason why the Apostle did not name Kings first Vt non videatur adulari lest hee should seeme to flatter Kings Whether mankinde it selfe or Kings by whom mankinde is happy here be to be preferred in prayer you see both Theodoret and Theophylact make it a probleme And those prayers there enjoyned were for Infidel Kings and for persecuting Kings for even such Kings were the breath of their nostrils their breath their speech their prayers were due to them But then beloved a man may convey a Satir into a Prayer a man may make a prayer a Libell If the intention of the prayer be not so much to incline God to give those graces to the King as to tell the world that the King wants those graces it is a Libell We say sometimes in scorn to a man God help you and God send you wit and therein though it have the sound of a prayer wee call him foole So wee have seen of late some in obscure Conventicles institute certain prayers That God would keep the King and the Prince in the true Religion The prayer is always good always usefull but when that prayer is accompanied with circumstances as though the King and the Prince were declining from that Religion then even the prayer it selfe is libellous and seditious Saint Paul in that former place apparels a Subjects prayer well when hee sayes Let prayers bee given with thanks Let our prayers bee for continuance of the blessings which wee have and let our acknowledgement of present blessings bee an inducement for future pray and praise together pray thankfully pray not suspiciously for beloved in the bowels of Christ
And then lastly by way of condoling and of instructing we shall make it appear to our weak brethren that our departing from Rome can be no example no justification of their departing from us Our branches then from whence we are to gather our fruit being thus many it is time to lay hold upon the first which is Manebant Though these sheep were thus ill fed yet they did stay Optimis ovibus pedes breves The best sheep have-shortest leggs Their commendation is not to make hast in straying away He that hasteth with his feet sinneth that is from the station in which God hath placed him Si innumera bona fecerimus If we have abounded in good works and done God never so good service Non minores Poenas dabimus quà m qui Christi corpus proscindebant si integritatem Ecclesiarum discerpserimus we are as guilty in the eies of God as they that crucifyed the Lord of life himselfe if we violate his spouse or rent the intirenesse of his Church Vir quidam sanctus dixit says the same father of another Chrysostome of Cyprian A certaine holy man hath ventured to say Quod audaciùs sapere videtur attamen dixit That which perchance may seem bodily sayd but yet he sayd it what was it This peccatum istud nec martyrio deleri That this sin of schisme of renting the unity of the Church cannot be expiated no not by Martyrdome it self When God had made but a hedge about Iob yet that hedge was such a â—ence as the Devill could not break in when God hath carryed Murum aeneum a wall of brasse nay Murum igneum a wall of fire about his Church wilt thou break out through that wall that brasse that fire Paradise was not walled nor hedged and there were serpents in Paradise too yet Adam offered not to goe out of Paradise till God drove him out and God saw that he would have come in againe if the Cherubims and the flaming sword had not been placed by God to hinder him Charme the Charmer never so wisely as David speaks he cannot utter a sweeter nor a more powerfull charme â—hen that Ego te baptizo I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the Sonne and of the Holy Ghost And Nos admittimus we receive this child into the congregation of Christs slock There is a sweet and a powerfull charm in the Ego te absolvo I absolve thee from all thy sins But this blessed charm I may heare from another if I stray into another Church But the Ego te baptizo I can heare but once and to depart from that Church in which I have received my baptism and in which I have made my Contracts and my stipulations with God and pledged and engaged my sureties there deserve a mature consideration for I may mistake the reasons upon which I goe and I may finde after that there are more true errours in the Church I goe to then there were imaginary in that that I left Truly I have been sorry to see some persons converted from the Roman Church to ours because I have known that onely temporall respects have moved them and they have lived after rather in a nullity or indifferency to either religion then in a true and established zeale Of which kinde I cannot forbeare to report to you so much of the story of a French gentleman who though he were of good parts and learned yet were not worthy to be mentioned in this place but that he soar'd so high as to write against the learnedst King that any age hath produc'd our incomparable King Iames. This man who was turned from the Reformed to the Roman religion being asked halfe in jest Sir which is the best religion you must needs know that have been of both answered Certainely the religion I left the reformed religion must needs be the best religion for when I changed I had this religion the Romans religion for it and three hundred Crowns a year to boot which was a pension given him upon his conversion Neither truely doth any thing more loosen a mans footing nor slacken his hold upon that Church in which he was baptized nor open him more to an undervaluation of all Churches then when he gives himselfe leave to thinke irreverently slightly negligently of the Sacraments as of things at best indifferent and many times impertinent I should thinke I had no bowels if they had not earn'd and melted when I heard a Lady whose child of five or sixe daies being ready to die every minute she being mov'd often that the child might be christened answered That if it were Gods will that the child should live to the Sabbath that it might be baptized in the Congregation she should be content otherwise Gods will be done upon it for God needs no Sacrament With what sorrow with what holy indignation did I heare the Sonne of my friend who brought me to that place to minister the Sacrament to him then upon his death-bed and almost at his last gaspe when my service was offered him in that kinde answer his Father Father I thanke God I have not lived so in the sight of my God as that I need a Sacrament I name a few of these because our times abound with such persons as undervalue not onely all rituall and ceremoniall assistances of devotion which the wisdome and the piety of the Church hath induced but even the Sacraments themselves of Christs owne immediate institution and are alwaies open to solicitations to passe to another Church upon their own surmises of errours in their own Whereas there belongs much consideration and a well grounded assurance of fundamentall errours in one Church and that those errours are repayred and no other as great as those admitted in the other Church before upon any collaterall pretences we abandon that Church in which God hath sealed us to himselfe in Baptisme Our Fathers stayd in Rome Manebant They stayd and Edebant they eat that grasse and they drunke that water which was troden and troubled Alasse what should they have eaten what should they have drunke should a man strangle himselse rather then take in an ill ayre Or forbear a good table because his stomach cannot digest every dish We doe not call money base money till the Allay exceed the pure metall and if it doe so yet it may be currant and serve to many offices Those that are skilfull in that art know how to sever the base from the pure the good parts of the religion from the bad and those that are not will not cast it away for all the corrupt mixture It is true they had been better to have stayd at home and served God in private then to have communicated in a superstitious service Domum vestram Christi Ecclesian deputamus I shall never doubt to call your House the Church of Christ. But this was not permitted to our Fathers to
serve God at home to Church they must come and there all their grasse was troden and all their water troubled What should they doe God never brings us to a perplexity so as that we must necessarily do one sinne to avoyd another Neverâ— It seemes that the Apostles had been traduced and insimulated of teaching this Doctrine That in some cases evill might be done that good might follow and therefore doth S. Paul with so much diligence discharge himself of it And yet long after this when those men who attempted the Reformation whom they called Pauperes de Lugduno taught that Doctrine That no lesse sinne might he done to escape a greater this was imputed to them then by the Roman Church for an Heresie That that was Orthodox in Saint Paul was Heresie in them that â—studyed a Reformation But the Doctrine stands like a rocke against all waves That nothing that is naturally ill intrinsecally sinne may upon any pretence be done not though our lifes nor the lifes of all the Princes in the world though the frame and beeing of the whole world though the salvation of our souls lay upon it no sinne naturally intrinsecally sinne might be done for any respect Christus peccatum factus est sed non fesit peccatum Though Christ pursued our redemption with hunger and thirst yet he would have left us unredeemed rather then have committed any sinne Of this kinde therefore naturally intrinsecally sinne and so known to be to them that did it certainely our Fathers coming to the superstitious service in the Church of Rome was not for had it been naturally sinne and so known to them when they did it they could not have been saved otherwise then by repentance after which we cannot presume in their behalfe for there are not testimonies of it If any of them had invested at any time a scruple a doubt whether they did well or no alasse how should they devest and overcome that scruple To whom durst they communicate that doubt They were under an invincible ignorance and sometimes under an indevestible scruple They had heard that Christ commanded to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadduces and so of the Herodians that is of the doctrines of those particular sects of affirming Fate and Destiny and Stoicall necessity with the Pharisees of denying Spirits and Resurrection with the Sadduces of mis-applying the prophesies concerning the Messias to the person of Herod or any earthly King But yet after all this he commands them to observe and performe the doctrine of the Pharisees because they sate in Moses chaire Though with much vehemence and bitternesse he call them Hypocrites though with many ingeminations upon every occasion he reiterate that name though he aggravate that name with other names of equall reproach Fools blinde guides painted tombes and the like yet he commands to obey them and which is most remarkable this is sayd not onely to the common sort but even to his own disciples too Christ had begunne his work of establishing a Church which should empty their Synagogues but because that worke was not yet perfected he would not withdraw the people from their Synagogues for there wrought Gods Ordinance though corrupted by the workmen which Ordinance was that the law should be publiquely expounded to the people and so it was there There God was present And though the Devill by their corruption were there too yet the Devill came in at the window God at the dore the Devill by stealth God by his declared Ordinance and Covenant And this was the case of our Fathers in the Roman Church They must know that all that hath passed between God and man hath passed Ex pacto by way of contact and covenant The best works of the best man have no proportion with the kingdome of heaven for I give God but his own But I have it Ex pacto God hath covenanted so Fac hoc vives Doe this and thou shalt live and at the last judgement Christ shall ground his Venite benedicti Come ye blessed and his Ite maledicti Goe ye accursed upon the Quia and upon the Quia non Because you have and Because you have not done this and this Faith that is of infinite value above works hath yet no proportion to the kingdome of heaven Faith saves mee as my hand feeds mee It reaches the food but it is not the food but faith saves Ex pacto by vertue of that Covenant which Christ hath made Tantummodo crede Onely beleeve To carry it to the highest the merit of Christ Iesus himselfe though it bee infinite so as that it might have redeemed infinite worlds yet the working thereof is safeliest considered in the School to be Ex pacto by vertue of that contract which had passed between the Father and him that all things should thus and thus be transacted by Christ and so man should be saved for if we shall place it meerely onely in the infinitenesse of the merit Christs death would not have needed for his first drops of bloud in his Circumcision nay his very Incarnation that God was made man and every act of his humiliation after being taken singly yet in that person God and man were of infinite merit and also if it wrought meerly by the infinitnesse of the merit it must have wrought not onely upon all men but to the salvation of the Devill for certainely there is more merit in Christ then there is sinne in the Devill But the proceeding was Ex pacto according to the contract made and to the conditions given Ipse conteret caput tuum That the Messias should bruise the Serpents head for us included our redemption That the Serpents head should be bruised excluded the Serpent himselfe This contract then between God and man as it was able to put the nature of a great fault in a small offence if we consider onely the eating of an apple and so to make even a Trespass High-Treason because it was so contracted so does this contract the Ordinance of God infuse a great vertue efficacie in the instruments of our reconciliation how mean in gifts or how corrupt in manners soever they be Circumcision in it self a low thing yea obscene subject to mis-interpretation yet by reason of the covenant He that is not circumcised that person shall be cut off from my people So also Baptism considered in it selfe a vulgar and a familiar thing yet except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdome of heaven The Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ a domestique a dayly thing if we consider onely the breaking of the bread and participation of the Cup but if we ascend up to the contract in the institution it is to every worthy receiver the seale and the Conduit of all the merits of Christ to his soule God threw down the walls of Jericho with