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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A64137	XXVIII sermons preached at Golden Grove being for the summer half-year, beginning on Whit-Sunday, and ending on the xxv Sunday after Trinity, together with A discourse of the divine institution, necessity, sacredness, and separation of the office ministeriall / by Jer. Taylor.; Sermons. Selections	Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667.	1651 (1651)	Wing T405; ESTC R23463	389,930	394

not so perfectly renounced or hated as they ought the parts of repentance which are left unfinished do sometimes fall upon the heads or upon the fortunes of the children I do not say this is regular and certain but sometimes God deals thus For this thing hath been so and therefore it may be so again we see it was done in the case of Ahab he humbled himself and went softly and lay in sackcloth and called for pardon and God took from him a judgement which was falling heavily upon him but we all know his repentance was imperfect and lame The same evil fell upon his sons for so said God I will bring the evil upon his house in his sons dayes Leave no arreares for thy posterity to pay but repent with an integral a holy and excellent repentance that God being reconciled to thee thoroughly for thy sake also he may blesse thy seed after thee And after all this adde a continual a servent a hearty a never ceasing prayer for thy children ever remembring when they beg a blessing that God hath put much of their fortune into your hands and a transient formal God blesse thee will not out-weigh the load of a great vice and the curse that scatters from thee by virtual contact and by the chanels of relation if thou beest a vicious person Nothing can issue from thy fountain but bitter waters And as it were a great impudence for a condemned Traitor to beg of his injured Prince a province for his son for his sake so it is an ineffective blessing we give our children when we beg for them what we have no title to for our selves Nay when we can convey to them nothing but a curse The praier of a sinner the unhallowed wish of a vit●ous Parent is but a poor donative to give to a childe who suck'd poison from his nurse and derives cursing from his Parents They are punished with a double torture in the shame and paines of the damned who dying Enemies to God have left an inventary of sins and wrath to be divided amongst their children But they that can truely give a blessing to their children are such as live a blessed life and pray holy prayers and perform an integral repentance and do separate from the sins of their Progenitors and do illustrious actions and begin the blessing of their family upon a new stock for as from the eyes of some persons there shoots forth a visible influence and some have an evil eye and are infectious some look healthfully as a friendly planet and innocent as flowers and as some fancies convey private effects to confederate and allayed bodyes and between the very vital spirits of friends and Relatives there is a cognation and they refresh each other like social plants and a good man is a * friend to every Good man and they say that an usuter knows an usurer and one rich man another there being by the very manners of men contracted a similitude of nature and a communication of effects so in parents and their children there is so great a society of nature and of manners of blessing and of cursing that an evil parent cannot perish in a single death and holy parents never eat their meal of blessing alone but they make the roome shine like the fire of a holy sacrifice and a Fathers or a Mothers piety makes all the house festivall and full of joy from generation to generation Amen Sermon V. THE Invalidity of a late or death-bed Repentance 13. Jeremy 16. Give glory to the Lord your God before he cause darknesse and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains and while ye look for light or left while ye look for light he shall turn it into the shadow of death and make it grosse darknesse GOd is the eternall fountain of honour and the spring of glory in him it dwells essentially from him it derives originally and when an action is glorious or a man is honourable it is because the action is pleasing to God in the relation of obedience or imitation and because the man is honoured by God or by Gods Vicegerent and therefore God cannot be dishonoured because all honour comes from himself he cannot but be glorified because to be himself is to be infinitely glorious And yet he is pleased to say that our sins dishonour him and our obedience does glorifie him But as the Sun the great eye of the world prying into the recesses of rocks and the hollownesse of valleys receives species or visible forms from these objects but he beholds them onely by that light which proceeds from himself So does God who is the light of that eye he receives reflexes and returns from us and these he calls glorifications of himself but they are such which are made so by his own gracious acceptation For God cannot be glorified by any thing but by himself and by his own instruments which he makes as mirrours to reflect his own excellency that by seeing the glory of such emanations he may rejoyce in his own works because they are images of his infinity Thus when he made the beauteous frame of heaven and earth he rejoyced in it and glorified himself because it was the glasse in which he beheld his wisedom and Almighty power And when God destroyed the old world in that also he glorified himself for in those waters he saw the image of his justice they were the looking glasse for that Attribute and God is said to laugh at and rejoyce in the destruction of a sinner because he is pleased with the Oeconomy of his own lawes and the excellent proportions he hath made of his judgements consequent to our sins But above all God rejoyced in his Holy Son for he was the image of the Divinity the character and expresse image of his person in him he beheld his own Essence his wisedom his power his justice and his person and he was that excellent instrument designed from eternall ages to represent as in a double mirrour not onely the glories of God to himself but also to all the world and he glorified God by the instrument of obedience in which God beheld his own dominion and the sanctity of his lawes clearly represented and he saw his justice glorified when it was fully satisfied by the passion of his Son and so he hath transmitted to us a great manner of the Divine glorification being become to us the Authour and the Example of giving glory to God after the manner of men that is by well-doing and patient suffering by obeying his lawes and submitting to his power by imitating his holinesse and confessing his goodnesse by remaining innocent or becoming penitent for this also is called in the Text GIVING GLORY TO THE LORD OUR GOD. For he that hath dishonoured God by sins that is hath denied by a morall instrument of duty and subordination to confesse the glories of his power and the goodnesse of his lawes and hath

but when his understanding is abused by an inevitable or an intolerable weaknesse our wills follow their blind guide and are not the perfect mistresses of their own actions and therefore leave a way and easinesse to repent and be ashamed of it and therefore a possibility and readinesse for pardon And these are the sins that we are taught to pray to God that he would pardon as he gives us our bread that is every day For in many things we offend all said Saint James that is in many smaller matters in matters of surprize or inevitable infirmity And therefore Posidices said that Saint Austin was used to say That he would not have even good and holy Priests go from this world without the susception of equall and worthy penances and the most innocent life in our account is not a competent instrument of a peremptory confidence and of justifying our selves I am guilty of nothing said Saint Paul that is of no ill intent or negligence in preaching the Gospel yet I am not hereby justified for God it may bee knows many little irregularities and insinuations of sin In this case we are to make a difference but humility and prayer and watchfulnesse are the direct instruments of the expiation of such sinnes But then secondly whosoever sins without these abating circumstances that is in great instances in which a mans understanding cannot be cozened as in drunkennesse murder adultery and in the frequent repetitions of any sort of sin whatsoever in which a mans choice cannot be surprized and in which it is certain there is a love of the sin and a delight in it and a power over a mans resolutions in these cases it is a miraculous grace and an extraordinary change that must turn the current and the stream of the iniquity and when it is begun the pardon is more uncertain and the repentance more difficult and the effect much abated and the man must be made miserable that he may be accursed for ever 1. I say his pardon is uncertain because there are some sins which are unpardonable as I shall shew and they are not all named in particular and the degrees of malice being uncertain the salvation of that man is to be wrought with infinite fear and trembling It was the case of Simon Magus Repent and ask pardon for thy sin if peradventure the thought of thy heart may be forgiven thee If peradventure it was a new crime and concerning its possibility of pardon no revelation had been made and by analogy to other crimes it was very like an unpardonable sin for it was a thinking a thought against the Holy Ghost and that was next to speaking a word against him Cains sin was of the same nature It is greater then it can be forgiven his passion and his fear was too severe and decretory it was pardonable but truly we never finde that God did pardon it 2. But besides this it is uncertain in the pardon because it may be the time of pardon is passed and though God hath pardoned to other people the same sins and to thee too sometimes before yet it may be he will not now he hath not promised pardon so often as we sin and in all the returns of impudence apostacy and ingratitude and it may be thy day is past as was Jerusalems in the day that they crucified the Saviour of the world 3. Pardon of such habitual sins is uncertain because life is uncertain and such sins require much time for their abolition and expiation And therefore although these sins are not necessariò mortifera that is unpardonable yet by consequence they become deadly because our life may be cut off before we have finished or performed those necessary parts of repentance which are the severe and yet the onely condition of getting pardon So that you may perceive that not onely every great single crime but the habit of any sin is dangerous and therefore these persons are to be snatched from the fire if you mean to rescue them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if you stay a day it may be you stay too long 4. To which I adde this fourth consideration that every delay of return is in the case of habitual sins an approach to desperation because the nature of habits is like that of Crocodiles they grow as long as they live and if they come to obstinacy or confirmation they are in hell already and can never return back For so the Pannonian Bears when they have clasped a dart in the region of their Liver wheel themselves upon the wound and with anger and malicious revenge strike the deadly barbe deeper and cannot be quit from that fatal steel but in flying bear along that which themselves make the instrument of a more hasty death So is every vitious person struck with a deadly wound and his own hands forced it into the entertainments of his heart And because it is painfull to draw it forth by a sharp and salutary repentance he still rouls and turns upon his wound and carries his death in his bowels where it first entered by choice and then dwelt by love and at last shall finish the tragedy by divine judgements and an unalterable decree But as the pardon of these sins is uncertain so the conditions of restitution are hard even to them who shall be pardoned their pardon and themselves too must be fetched from the fire water will not do it tears and ineffective sorrow cannot take off a habit or a great crime O nimium faciles qui tristia crimina cadis Tolli flumineâ posse putatis aquâ Bion seeing a Prince weep and tearing his hair for sorrow asked if baldnesse would cure his grief such pompous sorrows may bee good indices but no perfect instruments of restitution Saint James plainly declares the possibilities of pardon to great sins in the cases of contention adultery lust and envy which are the four great indecencies that are most contrary to Christianity and in the 5. Chap. he implies also a possibility of pardon to an habitual sinner whom he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one that erres from the truth that is from the life of a Christian the life of the Spirit of truth and he addes that such a person may be reduced and so be pardoned though he have sinned long he that converts such a one shall hide a multitude of sins But then the way that he appoints for the restitution of such persons is humilty and humiliation penances and sharp penitentiall sorrows and afflictions resisting the Devil returning to God weeping and mourning confessions and prayers as you may read at large in the 4. and 5. Chapters and there it is that you shall finde it a duty that such persons should be afflicted and should confesse to their brethren and these are harder conditions then God requires in the former cases these are a kinde of fiery tryall I have now done with my Text and should adde no more but

Jesus seated in the East called the sides or obliquity of the North and as the seating of his humane nature in that glorious seat brought to him all adoration and the Majesty of God and the greatest of his exaltation So it was so great an advancement to us that all the Angels of heaven take notice of it and feel a change in the appendage of their condition not that they are lessened but that we who in nature are lesse then Angels have a relative dignity greater and an equall honour of being fellow-servants This mystery is plain in Scripture and the reall effect of it we read in both the Testaments When Manoah the father of Sampson saw an Angel he worshipped him and in the old Testament it was esteemed lawfull for they were the lieutenants of God sent with the impresses of his Majesty and took in his Name the homage from us who then were so much their inferiours But when the man Christ Jesus was exalted and made the Lord of all the Angels then they became our fellow servants and might not receive worship from any of the servants of Jesus especially from Prophets and Martyrs and those that are ministers of the testimony of Jesus And therefore when an Angel appeared to Saint John and he according to the Custom of the Jews fell down and worshipped him as not yet knowing or not considering any thing to the contrary the Angell reproved him saying see thou do it not I am thy fellow servant and of thy brethren the prophets and of them which keep the sayings of this book worship God or as Saint Cyprian reads it worship Jesus God and man are now onely capable of worship but no Angel God essentially Man in the person of Christ and in the exaltation of our great Redeemer but Angels not so high and therefore not capable of any religious worship and this dignity of man Saint Gregory explicates fully Quid est quod ante Redemptoris adventum adorantur ab hominibus Angeli tacent postmodum vero adorarirefugiunt why did the Angels of old receive worshippings and were silent but in the new testament decline it and fear to accept it Nisi quod naturam nostram quam prius despexerant postquam hanc super se assumptam aspiciunt prostratam sibi videre pertimescunt nec jam sub se velut infirmam contemnere ausi sunt quam super se viz. in caeli Rege venerantur the reason is because they seeing our nature which they did so lightly value raised up above them they fear to see humbled under them neither do they any more despise the weaknesse which themselves worship in the King of heaven The same also is the sense of the Glosse of Saint Ambrose Ansbertus Haymo Rupertus and others of old and Ribera Salmeron and Lewis of Granada of late which being so plainly consonant to the words of the Angel and consigned by the testimony of such men I the rather note that those who worship Angels and make religious addresses to them may see what priviledge themselves lose and how they part with the honour of Christ who in his nature relative to us is exalted far above all thrones and principalities and dominions I need not adde lustre to this It is like the Sun the biggest body of light and nothing can describe it so well as its own beams and there is not in nature or the advantages of honour any thing greater then that we have the issues of that mercy which makes us fellow servants with Angels too much honoured to pay them a religious worship whose Lord is a man and he that is their King is our Brother 4. To this for the likenesse of the matter I adde that the divine mercy hath so prosecuted us with the enlargement of his favours that we are not onely fellow ministers and servants with the Angels and in our nature in the person of Christ exalted above them but we also shall be their Judges and if this be not an honour above that of Joseph or Mordecai an honour beyond all the measures of a man then there is in honour no degrees no priority or distances or characters of fame and noblenesse Christ is the great Judge of all the world his humane nature shall then triumph over evil men and evil spirits then shall the Devils those Angels that fel from their first originals be brought in their chains from their dark prisons and once be allowed to see the light that light that shall confound them while all that follow the lamb and that are accounted worthy of that resurrection shall be assessors in the judgment Know ye not saith S. Paul that ye shall judge Angels And Tertullian speaking concerning Devils and accursed spirits de cultu foeminarum saith Hi sunt Angeli quos judicaturi sumus Hi sunt Angeli quibus in lavacro renunciavimus Those Angels which we renounced in baptisme those we shall judge in the day of the Lords Glory in the great day of recompences And that the honour may be yet greater the same day of sentence that condemns the evil Angels shal also reward the good and increase their glory which because they derive from their Lord and ours from their King and our elder Brother the King of glories whose glorious hands shall put the crown upon all our heads we who shall be servants of that judgement and some way or other assist in it have a part of that honour to be judges of all Angels and of all the world The effect of these things ought to be this that we do not by base actions dishonour that nature that sits upon the throne of God that reigns over Angels that shall sit in judgement upon all the world It is a great undecency that the son of a King should bear water upon his head and dresse vineyards among the slaves or to see a wise man and the guide of his country drink-drunk among the meanest of his servants but when members of Christ shall be made members of an harlot and that which rides above a rain-bow stoopes to an imperious whorish woman when the soul that is sister to the Lord of Angels shall degenerate into the foolishnesse or rage of a beast being drowned with the blood of the grape or made mad with passion or ridiculous with weaker follies we shall but strip our selves of that robe of honour with which Christ hath invested and adorned our nature and carry that portion of humanity which is our own and which God had honoured in some capacities above Angels into a portion of an eternal shame and became lesse in all senses and equally disgraced with Devils The shame and sting of this change shall be that we turned the glories of the Divine mercy into the basenesse of ingratitude and the amazement of suffering the Divine vengeance But I passe on 5. The next order of Divine mercies that I shall remark is also an improvement of

the drinkings of the children and it is a long time before nature makes them capable of help for there are many deaths and very many diseases to which poor babes are exposed but they have but very few capacities of physick to shew that infancy is as liable to death as old age and equally exposed to danger and equally uncapable of a remedy with this onely difference that old age hath diseases incurable by nature and the diseases of child-hood are incurable by art and both the states are the next heirs of death 3. But all the middle way the case is altered Nature is strong and art is apt to give ease and remedy but still there is no security and there the case is not altered 1 For there are so many diseases in men that are not understood 2 So many new ones every year 3 The old ones are so changed in circumstance and intermingled with so many collateral complications 4 The Symptoms are oftentimes so alike 5 Sometimes so hidden and fallacious 6 Somtimes none at all as in the most sudden and the most dangerous imposthumations 7 And then the diseases in the inward parts of the body are oftentimes such to which no application can be made 8 They are so far off that the effects of all medicines can no otherwise come to them then the effect and juices of all meats that is not till after two or three alterations and decoctions which change the very species of the medicament 9 And after all this very many principles in the art of Physick are so uncertain that after they have been believed seven or eight ages and that upon them much of the practise hath been established they come to be considered by a witty man and others established in their stead by which men must practise and by which three or four generations of men more as happens must live or die 10. And all this while the men are sick and they take things that certainly make them sicker for the present and very uncertainly restore health for the future that it may appear of what a large extent is humane calamity when Gods providence hath not onely made it weak and miserable upon the certain stock of a various nature and upon the accidents of an infinite contingency but even from the remedies which are appointed our dangers and our troubles are certainly increased so that we may well be likened to water our nature is no stronger our aboad no more certain If the sluces be opened it falls away and runneth apace if its current be stopped it swells and grows troublesome and spils over with a greater diffusion If it be made to stand still it putrefies and all this we do For 4. In all the processe of our health we are running to our grave we open our own sluces by vitiousnesse and unworthy actions we pour in drink and let out life we increase diseases and know not how to bear them we strangle our selves with our own intemperance we suffer the feavers and the inflammations of lust and we quench our souls with drunkennesse we bury our understandings in loads of meat and surfets and then we lie down upon our beds and roar with pain and disquietnesse of our souls Nay we kill one anothers souls and bodies with violence and folly with the effects of pride and uncharitablenesse we live and die like fools and bring a new mortality upon our selves wars and vexatious cares and private duels and publike disorders and every thing that is unreasonable and every thing that is violent so that now we may adde this fourth gate to the grave Besides Nature and Chance and the mistakes of art men die with their own sins and then enter into the grave in haste and passion and pull the heavy stone of the monument upon their own heads And thus we make our selves like water spilt on the ground we throw away our lives as if they were unprofitable and indeed most men make them so we let our years slip through our fingers like water and nothing is to be seen but like a showr of tears upon a spot of ground there is a grave digged and a solemn mourning and a great talk in the neighbourhood and when the dayes are finished they shall be and they shall be remembred no more And that 's like water too when it is spilt it cannot be gathered up again There is no redemption from the grave inter se mortales mutua vivunt Et quasi cursores vitäi lampada tradunt Men live in their course and by turns their light burns a while and then it burns blew and faint and men go to converse with Spirits and then they reach the taper to another and as the hours of yesterday can never return again so neither can the man whose hours they were and who lived them over once he shall never come to live them again and live them better When Lazarus and the widows son of Naim and Tabitha and the Saints that appeared in Jerusalem at the resurrection of our blessed Lord arose they came into this world some as strangers onely to make a visit and all of them to manifest a glory but none came upon the stock of a new life or entred upon the stage as at first or to perform the course of a new nature and therefore it is observable that we never read of any wicked person that was raised from the dead Dives would fain have returned to his brothers house but neither he nor any from him could be sent but all the rest in the New Testament one onely excepted were expressed to have been holy persons or else by their age were declared innocent Lazarus was beloved of Christ those souls that appeared at the resurrection were the souls of Saints Tabitha raised by Saint Peter was a charitable and a holy Christian and the maiden of twelve years old raised by our blessed Saviour had not entred into the regions of choice and sinfulnesse and the onely exception of the widows son is indeed none at all for in it the Scripture is wholly silent and therefore it is very probable that the same processe was used God in all other instances having chosen to exemplifie his miracles of nature to purposes of the Spirit and in spirituall capacities So that although the Lord of nature did break the bands of nature in some instances to manifest his glory to succeeding great and never failing purposes yet besides that this shall be no more it was also instanced in such persons who were holy and innocent and within the verge and comprehensions of the eternall mercy We never read that a wicked person felt such a miracle or was raised from the grave to try the second time for a Crown but where he fell there he lay down dead and saw the light no more This consideration I intend to you as a severe Monitor and an advice of carefulnesse that you order your affairs so that you may