THE
WHOLE WORKS
OF THE
RIGHT REV. JEREMY TAYLOR, D. D.
LORD BISHOr OF DOWN, CONNOR, AND DROMORF.
VOLUME VI.
CONTAINING
SERMONS.
/
J. MOYES, GREVILLE STREET, LONDON.
THE
WHOLE WORKS
OF
THE RIGHT REV. JEREMY TAYLOR, D.D.
LORD BISHOP OF DOWN, CONNOR, AND DROMORE :
WITH
A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR,
AND
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF HIS WRITINGS,
BY
REGINALD HEBER, A.M.
CANON OF ST. ASAPH, RECTOR OF HODNET, AND LATE FELLOW OF ALL souls' COLLEGE, OXFORD.
IN FIFTEEN VOLUMES. VOL. VL
LONDON:
OGLE, DUNCAN, AND CO. 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, AND 295, HOLBORN ; AND RICHARD PRIESTLEY, 143, HIGH HOLBORN ; J. PARKER, OXFORD ; AND DEIGHTON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.
1822.
CONTENTS
OF
THE SIXTH VOLUME.
TITLES OF FOURTEEN SERMONS,
(being part of the Twenty-seven Sermons); THEIR ORDER, NUMBER, AND TEXTS.
SERMON XIV. XV.
PAGE
Of Growth in Grace, with its proper Instruments and Signs • lyj,4
2 Pet. iii. 18. But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory, both now and for ever. Amen.
SERMON XVI. XVII.
Of Growth in Sin: or, the several States and Degrees of Sinners,
with the Manner how they are to be treated • • • • • ♦ 30, 45
Jude Epist. ver. 22, 23.
And of some have compassion, making a difference: and others save with
fear, pulling them out of the fire.
SERMON XVIII. XIX. The Foolish Exchange • 62, 78
Matth. xvi. 26. For what is a man profited, f he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ? or, what shall a man give in exchangefor his soul ?
SERMON XX, XXI. XXII.
The Serpent and the Dove : or, a Discourse of Christian Pru- dence 95, 108, 121
Matth. X. 16; latter part. jBe ye therefore wise as serpents, u)id harmless as doves.
iv CONTENTS.
SERMON XXIII. XXIV.
PACE
Of (Christian Simplicity ' 140, 154
Mattli. X. 16 ; latter part. And harudcss as doves.
SERMON XXV. XXVI. XXVII.
The Miracles of the Divine Mercy 168, 184, 200
Psal. Ixxxvi. 5. For thou, Lord, art good and ready to forgive, and plenteous in mercy to all
them that call upon thee.
TITLES OF THE TEN SERMONS,
^ BEING A
Supplement of the eniattos.
SERMON I.
The Righteousness Evangelical ^23
Matt. V. 20. For I say unto you, that except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall, in no case, enter into the kingdom of heaven.
SERMON II.
The Christian's Conquest over the Body of Sin • 245
Rom. vii. 19. For the good that I would, I do not ; but the evil which I would not, that
I do.
SERMON III.
Faith working by Love 267
James, ii. 24. Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.
CONTENTS.
SERMON IV.
PAGE
Preached at an Episcopal Consecration 301
Luke, xii. 42, 43,
And the Lord said, Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his Lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season ? Blessed is that servant whom his Lord, when he cotneth, shall Jind so doing.
SERMON V. Preached at the Opening of the Parliament of Ireland • • • • 843
1 Sam. XV. 22, 23.
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams: — For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.
SERMON VI. Via Intelligentiae • 373
John, vii. 17.
If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself
SERMON VII. Preached at the Funeral of the Lord Primate of Ireland 411
1 Cor. XV. 23.
But every man in his own order ; Christ the first-fruits, afterward they that are Christ's at his coming.
SERMON VIII. Countess of Carbery's Funeral Sermon 453
2 Sam. xiv. 14.
For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again : neither doth^God respect any person; yet doth he devise means that his banished be not expelled from him.
vi CONTENTS.
SERMON IX. X.
PARE
The INIinister's Duty in Life and Doctrine 483, 307
Tit. ii. 7, 8.
In all things sbaiing thyself a pattern of good works : in doctrine shewing uncorruptness, graviti/, sincerilj/ ; sound speech that cannot be con- demned, that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of yon.
SERMON XI. Sir George Dalston's Funeral Sermon • 535
1 Cor. XV. 19. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are, of all men, most miserable.
SERMON XII. Preached upon the Anniversary of the Gun-Powder Treason 577
Luke, ix. 34.
But when James and John saw this, they said. Lord, wilt thou thai we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?
SERMONS.
SERMON XIV.
OF GROWTH IN GRACE.
But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, to ivhom be glory both now and for ever. Ameti. —2 Pet. iii. 18. •
When Christianity, like the day-spring from the east, with a new Hght, did not only enhghten the world, but amazed the minds of men, and entertained their curiosities, and seized upon their warmer and more pregnant affections, it was no wonder, that whole nations were converted at a sermon, and multitudes were instantly professed, and their understandings followed their affections, and their wills followed their under- standings, and they were convinced by miracle, and overcome by grace, and passionate with zeal, and wisely governed by their guides, and ravished with the sanctity of the doctrine, and the holiness of their examples. And this was not only their duty, but a great instance of providence, that by the great religion and piety of the first professors, Christianity might be firmly planted, and unshaken by scandal, and hardened by persecution ; and that these first lights might be actual precedents for ever, and copies for us to transcribe in all descending ages of Christianity, that thither we might run to fetch oil to enkindle our extinguished lamps. But then piety was so universal, that it might well be enjoined by St. Paul, that " if a brother walked disorderly," the Christ- ians should avoid his company : he forbade them not to accompany with the heathens that walked disorderly ; " for then a man must have gone out of the world ;'' but they were not to endure so much as " to eat with," or " to salute, a disorderly brother," and ill-living Christian. But now, if
VOL. VI. B
2 OF GROWTH IN GRACE.
we should observe this canon of St. Paul, and refuse to eat or to converse with a fornicator, or a drunkard, or a perjured person, or covetous, we must also " go out of the world :" for a pious or a holy person is now as rare as a disorderly Christian was at fust; and as Christianity is multiplied every where in name and title, so it is destroyed in life, essence, and proper operation ; and we have very great reason to fear, that Christ's name will serve us to no end but to upbraid our baseness, and his person only to be our judge, and his laws as so many bills of accusation, and his graces and helps offered us but as aggravations of our unworthiness, and our baptism but an occasion of vow-breach, and the holy com- munion but an act of hypocrisy, formality, or sacrilege, and all the promises of the Gospel but as pleasant dreams, and the threatenings but as arts of affrightment. For Christianity lasted pure and zealous ; it kept its rules, and observed its own laws for three hundred years, or thereabouts ; so long the church remained a virgin ; for so long they were warmed with their first fires, and kept under discipline by the rod of persecution : but it hath dechned almost fourteen hundred years together ; prosperity and pride, wantonness and great fortunes, ambition and interest, false doctrine npon mistake and upon design, the malice of the devil and the arts of all his instruments, the want of zeal, and a weariness of spirit, filthy examples and a disreputation of piety and a strict life, seldom precedents and infinite discouragements have caused so infinite a declension of piety and holy living, that what Papirius Massonius, one of their own, said of the popes of Eome, " In pontificibus nemo hodie sanctitatem requirit ; optimi putantur, si vel leviter mali sint, vel minus boni quam caeteri mortales esse solent :" " No man looks for hohness in the bishops of Rome ; those are the best popes who are not extremely wicked :" the same is too true of the greatest part of Christians ; men are excellent persons, if they be not traitors, or adulterous, oppressors, or injurious, drunkards, or scandalous, if they be not ' as this publican,' as the vilest person with whom they converse.
Nunc, si depositum non infitietur amicus,
Si reddat veterem cum tota aBrugine follem ;
Prodigtosa fides, et Tuscis digna libellis,
Qusque coronata lustrari debeat agna. — Juten. Sat. 13. 60.
OF GROWTH IN GRACE. ^
, He that is better than the dregs of his own age, whose religion is something above profaneness, and whose sobriety is %} step or two from downright intemperance, whose dis- course is not swearing, nor yet apt to edify, whose charity is set out in piety, and a gentle yearning and saying * God help,' whose alms are contemptible, and his devotion infre- quent ; yet, as things are now, he is * unus e millibus,' * one of a thousand,' and he stands eminent and conspicuous in the vallies and lower grounds of the present piety ; for a bank is a mountain upon a level : but what is rare and eminent in the manners of men this day, would have been scandalous, and have deserved the rod of an apostle, if it had been con- fronted with the fervours and rare devotion and religion of our fathers in the Gospel.
Men of old looked upon themselves as they stood by the examples and precedents of martyrs, and compared their piety to the life of St. Paul, and estimated their zeal by flames of the Boanerges, St. James and his brother ; and the bishops were thought reprovable, as they fell short of the ordinary government of St. Peter and St. John ; and the assembhes of Christians were so holy, that every meeting had rehgion enough to hallow a house, and convert it to a church ; and every day of feasting was a communion, and every fasting-day was a day of repentance and alms, and every day of thanksgiving was a day of joy and alms ; and religion began all their actions, and prayer consecrated them, and they ended in charity, and were not polluted with design: they despised the world heartily, and pursued after heaven greedily ; they knew no ends but to serve God, and to be saved ; and had no designs upon their neighbours, but to lead them to God and to felicity ; till Satan, full of envy to see such excellent days, mingled covetousness and ambition within the throngs and conventions of the church, and a vice crept into an office ; and then the mutual confidence grew less, and so charity was lessened ; and heresies crept in, and then faith began to be sullied ; and pride crept in, and then men snatched at offices, not for the work, but for the dignity; and then they served themselves more than God and the church ; till at last it came to that pass where now it is, that the clergy live lives no better than the laity, and the laity are stooped to imitate the evil customs of strangers and
4 OF GROWTH IN GRACE.
enemies of Christianity ; so that we should think religion in a good condition, il' that men did oiler up to God but the actions of an ordinary, even, and just life,, without the scandal and allays of a <2,reat impiety. But because such is the nature of things, that either they grow towards perfection, or decline towards dissolution ; there is no proper way to secure it but by setting its growth forward : for religion hath no station or natural periods ; if it does not grow better, it grows much worse ; not that it always returns the man into scandalous sins, but that it establishes and fixes him in a state of indifference and lukewarmness ; and he is more averse to a state of improvement, and dies in an incurious, ignorant, and unrelentino- condition.
" But grow in grace:" — That is the remedy, and that would make us all wise and happy, blessed in this world, and sure of heaven : concerning which, we are to consider, first, What the state of grace is, into which every one of us must be entered, that we may " grow" in it: secondly. The proper parts, acts, and offices of " growing in grace :" thirdly, The signs, consequences, and proper significations, by which if we cannot perceive " the growing," yet afterwards we may perceive that " we are grown," and so judge of the state of our duty, and concerning our final condition of being saved.
1. Concerning the state of grace, I consider that no man can be said to be in the state of grace, who retains an affec- tion to any one sin. The state of pardon and the Divine favour begins at the first instance of anger against our crimes, when we leave our fondnesses and kind opinions, when we excuse them not, and will not endure their shame, when we feel the smarts of any of their evil consequents : for he that is a perfect lover of sin, and is sealed up to a reprobate sense, endures all that sin brings along with it ; and is reconciled to all its mischiefs ; he can suffer the sick- ness of his own drunkenness, and yet call it pleasure ; he can wait like a slave to serve his lust, and yet count it no dis- paragement ; he can suffer the dishonour of being accounted a base and dishonest person, and yet look confidently, and think himself no worse. But when the grace of God begins to work upon a man's spirit, it makes the conscience nice and tender ; and although the sin, as yet, does not displease the man, but he can endure the flattering and alluring part,
OF GROWTH IN GRACE. j5
yet he will not endure to be used so ill by his sin; he will not be abused and dishonoured by it. But because God hath so allayed the pleasure of his sin, that he that drinks the sweet, should also strain the dregs through his throat ; by degrees God's grace doth irreconcile the convert, and dis- covers, first, its base attendants, then its worse consequents, then the displeasure of God ; that here commence the first resolutions of leaving the sin, and trying if, in the service of God, his spirit and the whole appetite of man may be better entertained. He that is thus far entered, shall quickly per- ceive the difference, and meet arguments enough to invite him farther : for then God treats the man as he treated the spies, that went to discover the land of promise ; he ordered the year in plenty, and directed them to a pleasant and a fruitful place, and prepared bunches of grapes of a miraculous and prodigious greatness, that they might report good things of Canaan, and invite the whole nation to attempt its con- quest : so God's grace represents to the new converts, and the weak ones in faith, the pleasures and first deliciousnesses of religion ; and when they come to spy the good things of that way that leads to heaven, they presently perceive them- selves eased of the load of an evil conscience, of their fears of death, of the confusion of their shame; and God's Spirit gives them a cup of sensible comfort, and makes them to rejoice in their prayers, and weep with pleasures mingled with innocent passion and religious changes. And although God does not deal with all men in the same method, or in manners that can regularly be described, and all men do not feel, or do not observe, or cannot, for want of skill, discern, such accidental sweetnesses and pleasant grapes at their first entrance into religion ; yet God to every man does minister excellent arguments of invitation ; and such, that if a man will attend to them, they will certainly move either his affections or his will, his fancy or his reason, and most commonly both. But while the Spirit of God is doing this work in man, man must also be a-uvs^yog tou @£oS, ' a fellow- worker with God;' he must entertain the Spirit, attend his inspirations, receive his whispers, obey all his motions, invite him farther, and truly renounce all confederacy with his enemy, sin ; at no hand suffering any ' root of bitterness to spring up,' not allowing to himself any reserve of carnal
6 OF GUOWTH IN GRACE.
pleasure, no clancular lust, no private oppressions, no secret covetousness, no love to this world, that may discompose his duty. For if a man prays all day, and at night is intempe- rate ; if he spends liis time in reading, and his recreation be sinful; if he studies religion, and practises self-interest; if he leaves his swearing, and yet retains his pride; if he be- comes chaste, and yet remains peevish and imperious : this man is not changed IVom the state of sin into the first stage of the state of grace, he does at no hand belong to God ; he Iiath suffered himself to be scared from one sin, and tempted from another by interest, and hath left a third by reason of his inclination, and a fourth for shame or want of oppor- tunity ; but the Spirit of God hath not yet planted one perfect plant there : God may make use of the accidentally-prepared advantages ; but as yet the Spirit of God hath not begun the proper and direct work of grace in his heart. But when we leave every sin, when we resolve never to return to the chains, when we have no love for the world but such as may be a servant of God ; then I account that we are entered into a state of grace, from whence I am now to begin to reckon the commencement of this precept, " Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."
2. And now the first part of this duty is, — to make religion to be the business of our lives ; — for this is the great instru- ment which will naturally produce our growth in grace, and the perfection of a Christian. For a man cannot, after a state of sin, be instantly a saint ; the work of Heaven is not done by a flash of lightning, or a dash of affectionate rain, or a few tears of a relenting pity : God and his church have appointed holy intervals, and have taken portions of our time for religion, that we may be called off from the world, and remember the end of our creation, and do honour to God, and think of heaven with hearty purposes and peremptoiy designs to get thither. But as we must not neglect those times, which God hath reserved for his service, or the church hath prudently decreed ; nor yet act religion upon such days with forms and outsides, or to comply with customs, or to seem religious : so we must take care, that all the other portions of our time be hallowed with little retirements of our thoughts, and short conversations with God, and all along be guided with holy intention; that even our works
OF GROWTH IN GRACE. 7
of nature may pass into the relations of grace, and the actions of our calhng may help towards the * obtaining the prize of our high calling ;' while our eatings are actions of temperance, our labours are profitable, our humiliations are acts of obedience, and our alms of charity, and our marriages are chaste ; and, ' whether we eat or drink/ sleep or wake, we may ' do all to the glory of God,' by a direct intuition, or by a reflex act ; by design, or by supplement ; by foresight, or by an after-election. And to this purpose we must not look upon religion as our trouble and our hinderance, nor think alms chargeable or expensive, nor our fastings vexa- tious and burdensome; nor our prayers a weariness of spirit: but we must make these, and all other the duties of religion, our employment, our care, the work and end for which we came into the Vvorld ; and remember that we never do the work of men, nor serve the ends of God, nor are in the proper employment and business of our life, but when we worship God, or live like wise or sober persons, or do benefit to our brother.
I will not turn this discourse into a reproof, but leave it represented as a duty. Remember that God sent you into the world for religion ; we are but to pass through our pleasant fields, or our hard labours ; but to lodge a little while in our fair palaces, or our meaner cottages ; but to bait in the way at our full tables, or with our spare diet ; but then only man does his proper employment, when he prays and does charity, and mortifies his unruly appetites, and restrains his violent passions, and becomes like to God, and imitates his holy Son, and writes after the copies of apostles and saints. Then he is dressing himself for eternity, where he must dwell or abide, either in an excellent beatifical country, or in a prison of amazement and eternal horror : and after all this, you may, if you please, call to mind how much time you allow to God and to your souls every day, or every month, or in a year, if you please, for I fear the account of the time is soon made ; but the account for the neglect will be harder ; and it will not easily be answered, that all our days and years are little enough to attend perishing things, and to be swallowed up in avaricious and vain attendances, and we shall not attend to religion with a zeal so great as is our revenge, or as is the hunger of one meal. Without
8 OF GROWTH IN GRACE.
much time, and a wary life, and a diligent circumspection, we cannot mortify our sins, or do the first works of grace. I pray God we be not found to have grown like the sinews of old age, from strength to remissness ; from thence to dissolution, and infirmity, and death. Menedemus was wont to say, * that the young boys that went to Athens, the first year were wise men, the second year philoso])hers, the third orators, and the fourth were but plebeians, and under- stood nothing but their own ignorance.' And just so it happens to some in the progresses of religion ; at first they are violent and active, and then they satiate all the appetites of religion; and that which is left is, that they were soon weary, and sat down in displeasure, and return to the world, and dwell in the business of pride or money ; and, by this time/ they understand that their religion is declined, and passed from the heats and follies of youth, to the coldness and infirmities of old age: the remedy of which is only a diligent spirit and a busy religion ; a great industry, and a full portion of time in'holy offices ; that, as the oracle said to the Cirrhaeans, * noctes diesque belligerandum,' they could not be happy ' unless they waged war night and day ;' so, unless we perpetually fight against our own vices, and repel our ghostly enemies, and stand upon our guard, we must stand for ever in the state of babes in Christ ; or else return to the first imperfections of an unchristened soul, and an imsanctified spirit. — That is the first particular.
2. The second step of our growth in grace is, — when virtues grow habitual, apt, and easy, in our manners and dispositions ; — for, although many new converts have a great zeal, and a busy spirit, apt enough, as they think, to contest against all the difficulties of a spiritual life ; yet they meet with such powerful oppositions from without, and a false heart within, that their first heats are soon broken ; and either they are for ever discouraged, or are forced to march more slowly, and proceed more temperately for ever after.
PirJiaj, oXi'yo fxiv o5o;, fxaKa, J' iyyi&i vaiei-
' It is an easy thing to commit a wickedness, for tempta- tion and infirmity are always too near us ;' but God hath made care and sweat, prudence and diligence, experience and
OF GROWTH IN GRACE. 9
watchfulness, wisdom and labour at home, and good guides abroad, to be instruments and means to purchase virtue.
The way is long and difficult at first ; but in the progress and pursuit, we find all the knots made plain, and the rough ways made smooth.
^jam monte potitus
Ridet-
Now the spirit of grace is like a new soul within him, and he hath new appetites and new pleasures, when the things of the woild grow unsavoury, and the things of religion are delicious : v/hen his temptations to his old crimes return but seldom, and prevail not at all, but are reproached with a penitential sorrow and speedy amendment; when we do actions of virtue quickly, frequently, and with delight, then we have grown in grace, in the same degree in which they can perceive these excellent dispositions. Some persons there are who dare not sin ; they dare not omit their hours of prayer, and they are restless in their spirits till they have done ; but they go to it as to execution ; they stay from it as long as they can, and they drive, hke Pharaoh's chariots, with the wheels off, sadly and heavily ; and, besides that, such persons have reserved to themselves the best part of their sacrifice, and do not give their will to God ; they do not love him with all their heart ; they are, also, soonest tempted to retire and fall off. Sextius Romanus resigned the honours and offices of the city, and betook himself to the severity of a philosophical life ; but when his unusual diet and hard labour began to pinch his flesh, and he felt his pro- positions smart ; and that, which was fine in discourse at a symposiac or an academical dinner, began to sit uneasily upon him in the practice, he so despaired, that he had like to have cast himself into the sea, to appease the labours of his relio-ion : because he never had o'one farther than to think it a fine thing; to be a wise man : he would commend it, but he was loath to pay for it at the price, that God and the philosopher set upon it. But he that is ' grown in grace,' and hath made religion habitual to his spirit, is not at ease but when he is doing the works of the new man: he rests in religion, and comforts his sorrows with thinking of his prayers; and in all crosses of the world he is patient, because
10 ()!• t. UOWTJl IN C.RACE.
his joy is at hand to refresh liim when he list, for he cares not so he may serve God; and if you make him poor here, he is rich tliere, and he counts that to be his proper service, his work, his recreation, and reward.
3. But because in the course of holy living, although the duty be regular and constant, yet the sensible relishes and the flowerings of affection, the zeal and the visible expressions, do not always make the same emission ; but sometimes by design, sometimes by order, and sometimes by affection, we are more busy, more entire, and more intent upon the actions of religion : in such cases we are to judge of our growth in grace, — if after every interval of extraordinary piety, the next return be more devout, and more affectionate; — the labour be more cheerful and more active, and if religion returns oftener, and stays longer in the same expressions, and leaves more satisfaction upon the spirit. Are your com- munions more frequent ? and, when they are, do you approach nearer to God ? Have you made firmer resolutions, and entertained more hearty purposes of amendment? Do you love God more dutifully, and your neighbour with a greater charity? Do you not so easily return to the world as formerly ? Are not you glad when the thing is done ? Do you go to your secular accounts with a more weaned affection than before ? If you communicate well, it is certain that you will still do it better; if you do not communicate well, every opportunity of doing it is but a new trouble, easily excused, readily omitted ; done because it is necessary, but not because we love it; and we shall find that such persons, in their old age, do it worst of all. And it was observed by a Spanish confessor, who was also a famous preacher, that in persons not very religious, the confessions, which they made upon their death-bed, were the coldest, the most imperfect, and with less contrition than all that he had observed them to make in many years before. For so the canes of Egypt, when they newly arise from their bed of mud and slime of Nilus, start up into an equal and continual length, and are interrupted but with few knots, and are strong and beauteous, with great distances and intervals ; but when they are grown to their full length, they lessen into the point of a pyramid, and multiply their knots and joints, inter- rupting the fineness and smoothness of its body ; so are
OF GROWTH IN GRACE. 11
the steps and declensions of him that does not grow in grace. At first, when he springs up from his impurity by the waters of baptism and repentance, he grows straight and strong, and suffers but few interruptions of piety ; and his constant courses of religion are but rarely intermitted, till they ascend up to a full age, or towards the ends of their life ; then they are weak, and their devotions often intermitted, and their breaches are frequent, and they seek excuses, and labour for dispensations, and love God and religion less and less, — till their old age, instead of a crown of their virtue and perse- verance, ends in levity and unprofitable courses; hght and useless as the tufted feathers upon the cane, every wind can play with it and abuse it, but no man can make it useful. When, therefore, our piety interrupts its greater and more solemn expressions, and, upon the return of the greater offices and bigger solemnities, we find them to come upon our spirits like the wave of a tide, which retired only because it was natural so to do, and yet came farther upon the strand at the next rolling ; when every new confession, every succeeding communion, every time of separation, for more solemn and intense prayer is better spent, and more affec- tionate, leaving a greater relish upon the spirit, and pos- sessing greater portions of our affections, our reason, and our choice ; then we may give God thanks, who hath given us more grace to use that grace, and a blessing to endeavour our duty, and a blessing upon our endeavour.
4. To discern our growth in grace, — we must inquire con- cerning our passions, whether they be mortified and quiet, complying with our ends of virtue, and under command ; — for since the passions are the matter of virtue and vice respect- ively, he that hath brought into his power all the strengths of the enemy, and the forts from whence he did infest him, he only hath secured his holy walking with God. But because this thing is never perfectly done, and yet must always be doing, grace grows according as we have finished our portions of this work. And in this we must not only in- quire concerning our passions, whether they be sinful and habitually prevalent, for if they be, we are not in the state of grace ; but whether they return upon us in violences and un- decencies, in transportation, and unreasonable and imprudent expressions ; for although a good man may be incident to
12 or (;iio\\Tii in (.race.
a violent passion, and tliat. witliout sin, yet a perfect man is not ; a Avell-<2;ro\vn Cin-istian hath seldom such sufferings. To surt'er such things sometimes may stand with the being of virtue, hut not with its security; lor if passions range uj) and down, and transport us ffecpiently and violently, we may keep in oin- forts and in our dwellings; but our enemy is master of the field, and our virtues are restrained, and apt to be starved, and will not hold out long. A good man may be spotted with a violence, but a wise man will not ; and lie tliat does not add wisdom to his virtue, the knowledge of .lesus Christ to his virtuous habits, will be a good man but till a storm come. But, beyond this, inquire after the state of your passions in actions of religion. Some men fast to mortify tiieir lust, and their fasting makes them peevish ; some reprove a vice, but they do it with much impatience ; some charitably give excellent counsel, but they do that, also, with a pompous and proud spirit; and passion, being driven from open hostilities, is forced to march along in the retinue and troops of virtue. And, although this be rather a deception and a cozenage than an imperfection, and supposes a state of sin, rather than an imperfect grace; yet, because it tacitly and secretly creeps along among the circumstances of pious actions, — as it spoils a virtue in some, so it lessens it in others, and, therefore, is considerable, also, in this question.
And, although no man must take accounts of his being in or out of the state of grace, by his being dispassionate, and free from all the assaults of passion ; yet, as to the securing his being in the state of grace, he must provide that he be not a slave of passion : so, to declare his growth in grace, he must be sure to take the measures of his affections, and see that they be lessened, more apt to be suppressed ; not breaking out to inconvenience and imprudences ; not rifling our spirit, and drawing us from our usual and more sober tempers. Try, therefore, if your fear be turned into caution ; your lust, mto chaste friendships ; your imperious spirit, into prudent government; your revenge, into justice; your anger, into charity ; and your peevishness and rage, into silence and suppression of language. Is our ambition changed into virtuous and noble thoughts? Can we emulate without envy ? Is our covetousness lessened into good husbandry.
OF GROWTH IN GRACE. 13
and mingled with alms, that we may certainly discern the love of money to be gone ? Do we leave to despise our inferiors ? and can we willingly endure to admit him that excels us in any gift or grace whatsoever, and to commend it without abatement, and mingling allays with the commend- ation, and disparagements to the man ? If we be arrived but thus far, it is Avell, and we must go further. But we use to think that all disaffections of the body are removed, if they be changed into the more tolerable, although we have not an athletic health, or the strength of porters or wrestlers. For, although it be felicity to be quit of all pas- sion that may be sinful or violent, and part of the happiness of heaven shall consist in that freedom ; yet our growth in grace consists in the remission and lessening of our pas- sions : only he that is incontinent in his lust, or in his anger ; in his desires of money, or of honour; in his revenge, or in his fear; in his joys, or in his sorrows ; that man is not grown at all in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. This only : in the scrutiny and consequent judgment concerning our passions, it will concern the cu- riosity of our care to watch against passions in the reflex act, against pride or lust ; complacency and peevishness attending upon virtue. For he was noted for a vain person, who, being* overjoyed for the cure (as he thought) of his pride, cried out to his wife ; " Cerne, Dionysia, deposui fastum ;" " Behold, I have laid aside all my pride :" and of that very dream the silly man thought he had reason to boast; but considered not that it was an act of pride and levity besides. If thou hast given a noble present to thy friend; if thou hast rejected the unjust desire of thy prince; if thou hast endured thirst and hunger for religion or continence; if thou hast refused an offer like that which was made to Joseph ; sit down and rest in thy good conscience, and do not please thyself in opinions and fantastic noises abroad ; and do not despise him that did not do so, as thou hast done, and reprove no man with an upbraiding circumstance ; for it will give thee but an ill return, and a contemptible reward, if thou shalt overlay thy infant virtue, or drown it with a flood of breast-milk.
14 OF CROW III IN GRACE.
SERMON XV.
PART II.
5. He is well grown in or towards the state of grace, who is more patient of a sharp reproof than of a secret flattery. For a reprehension contains so much mortification to the pride and complacencies of a man, is so great an affront to an easy and inidisturbed person, is so empty of pleasure and so full of profit, that he must needs love virtue in a great decree, who can take in that which only serves her end, and is displeasant to himself and all his gaieties. A severe repre- hender of another's vice comes dressed like Jacob, when he went to cozen his brother of the blessing ; his outside is " rough and hairy," but " the voice is Jacob's voice :" rough hands and a healthful language get the blessing, even against the will of him that shall feel it; but he that is patient and even, not apt to excuse his fault, that is less apt to anger, or to scorn him that snatches him rudely from the flames of hell, he is virtue's confessor, and suffers these lesser stripes for that interest, which will end in spiritual and eternal bene- dictions.
They who are furious against their monitors, are incor- rigible; but it is one degree of meekness to suffer disciphne ; and a meek man cannot easily be an ill man, especially in the present instance ; he appears, at least, to have a healthful constitution ; he hath good flesh to heal ; his spirit is capable of medicine ; and that man can never be despaired of, who hath a disposition so near his health as to improve all physic, and whose nature is relieved from every good ac- cident from without. But that which I observe is, that this is not only a good disposition towards repentance and resti- tution, but is a sign of growth in grace, according as it becomes natural, easy, and habitual. Some men chide them- selves for all their misdemeanors, because they would be represented to the censures and opinions of other men with a fair character, and such as need not to be reproved : others, out of inconsideration, sleep in their own dark rooms, and, until the charity of a guide or of a friend draws the curtain, and lets in a beam of light, dream on, until the grave opens.
OF GROWTH IN GRACE. 15
and hell devours them : but if they be called upon by the grace of God, let down with a sheet of counsels and friendly precepts, they are presently inclined to be obedient to the heavenly monitions ; but unless they be dressed with cir- cumstances of honour and civility, with arts of entertain- ment and insinuation, they are rejected utterly, or received unwillingly. Therefore, although upon any terms to endure a sharp reproof be a good sign of amendment, yet the growth of grace is not properly signified by every such sufferance : for when this disposition begins, amendment also begins, and goes on in proportion to the increment of this. To endure a reproof without adding a new sin is the first step to amend- ment ; that is, to endure it without scorn, or hatred, or indig- nation. 2. The next is to suffer reproof without excusing ourselves; for he that is apt to excuse himself, is only desirous, in a civil manner, to set the reproof aside, and to represent the charitable monitor to be too hasty in his judg- ment, and deceived in his information ; and the fault to dwell there, not with himself. 3. Then he that proceeds in this instance, admits the reprover's sermon or discourse without a private regret : he hath no secret murmurs or unwillingnesses to the humiliation, but is only ashamed that he should deserve it ; but for the reprehension itself, that troubles him not, but he looks on it as his own medicine, and the other's charity. 4. But if to this he adds, that he voluntarily con- fesses his own fault, and, of his own accord, vomits out the loads of his own intemperance, and eases his spirit of the infection ; then it is certain he is not only a professed and hearty enemy against sin, but a zealous, and a prudent, and an active person against all its interest ; and never counts himself at ease but while he rests upon the banks of Sion, or at the gates of the temple ; never pleased but in virtue and religion : then he knows the state of his soul and the state of his danger ; he reckons it no abjection to be abased in the face of man, so he may be gracious in the eyes of God : and that is a sign of a good grace and a holy wisdom ; that man is "grown in the grace of God, and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." " Justus in principio sermonis est accusator sui," said the wise man ; " The righteous accuseth himself in the beginning;" that is, quickly, lest he be pre- vented. And certain it is, he cannot be either wise or good,
IG or (iROWTIl IN CJKACE.
tliat had rather have a real sin within him, than that a good man sliould beheve him to be a rej)enting; sinner ; that had rather keep his crime than lose his- reputation ; that is, rather to he so than to be l/ioii<i/it so : rather be without the favour of Cod than of his neighbour. Diogenes once spied a young man coming out of a tavern or place of entertain- ment, who, perceiving himself observed by the philosopher, with some confusion stepped back again, that he might, if possible, preserve his fame with that severe person. But Diogenes told him, " Quanto raagis intraveris, tanto magis eris in caupona :" " The more you go back, the longer you are in the place where you are ashamed to be seen." And he that conceals his sin, still retains that which he counts his shame and his burden. Hippocrates was noted for an in- genuous person, that he published and confessed his error concerning the sutures of the head : and all ages since St. Austin have called him pious, for writing his book of retract- ations, in which he published his former ignorances and mistakes, and so set his shame off to the world invested with a garment of modesty, and above half changed before they were seen. I did the rather insist upon this particular, because it is a consideration of huge concernment, and yet much neolected in all its instances and desrees. We neither confess our shame nor endure it ; we are privately troubled, and publicly excuse it ; we turn charity into bitterness, and our reproof into contumacy and scorn ; and who is there amongst us that can endure a personal charge, or is not to be taught his personal duty by general discoursings, by parable and apologue, by acts of insinuation and wary distances ? But by this state of persons we know the estate of our own spirits.
When God sent his prophets to the people, and " they stoned them with stones, and sawed them asunder, and cast them into dungeons, and made them beggars," the people fell into the condition of Babylon, " Quam curavimus, et non est sanata :" " We healed her," said the prophets, " but she would not be cured:" " Derehnquamus earn," that is her doom ; let her enjoy her sins, and all the fruits of sin laid up in treasures of wrath against the day of vengeance and retribution.
6. He that is grown in grace and the knowledge of
OF GROWTH IN GRACE. 17
Christ esteems no sin to be little or contemptible, none fit to be cherished or indulged to. For it is not only incon- sistent with the love of God, to entertain any indecency or beginning of a crime, any thing that displeases him ; but he always remembers how much it cost him to arrive at the state of good things, whither the grace of God hath already brought him : he thinks of his prayers and tears, his restless nights and his daily fears, his late escape and his present danger, the ruins of his former state, and the difficulty and imperfect reparations of this new, his proclivity and aptness to vice, and natural averseness and uneasy inclinations to the strictness of holy living ; and when these are considered truly, they naturally make a man unwilling to entertain any beginnings of a state of life contrary to that, which, with so much danger and difficulty, through so many objections and enemies, he hath attained. And the truth is, when a man hath escaped the dangers of his first state of sin, he cannot but be extremely unwilling to return again thither, in which he can never hope for heaven. And so it must be ; for a man must not flatter himself in a small crime, and say, as Lot did, when he begged a reprieve for Zoar, " Alas ! Lord, is it not a little one, and my soul shall live ?" And it is not, therefore, to be entertained because it is little ; for it is the more without excuse, if it be little : the temptations to it are not great, the allurements not mighty, the promises not insnaring, the resistance easy ; and a wise man considers it is a greater danger to be overcome by a little sin, than by a great one : a greater danger, I say ; not directly, but acci- dentally ; not in respect of the crime, but in relation to the person: for he that cannot overcome a small crime, is in the state of infirmity, so great, that he perishes infallibly, when he is arrested by the sins of a stronger temptation : but he that easily can, and yet will not, he is in love with sin, and courts his danger, that he may at least kiss the apples of paradise, or feast himself with the parings, since he is, by some dis- pleasing instrument, affrighted from glutting himself with the forbidden fruit in ruder and bigger instances. But the well-grown Christian is curious of his newly-trimmed soul ; and, like a nice person with clean clothes, is careful that no spot or stain sully the virgin-whiteness of his robe ; whereas another, whose albs of baptism are sullied in many places
VOL. VI. C
IS OF GROWTH IN GRACE.
witli the smoke and filth of Sodom and unclcanness, cares not in what paths he treads; and a shower of dirt changes not his state, who already lies wallowing in the puddles of impurity. It makes men negligent and easy, when they have an opinion, or certain knowledge, that they are persons extraordinary in nothing, that a little care will not mend them, that another sin cannot make them much worse : but it is a sign of a tender conscience and a reformed spirit, when it is sensible of every alteration, when an idle word is troublesome, when a wandering thought puts the whole spirit upon its guard, when too free a merriment is wiped off with a sigh and a sad thought, and a severe recollection, and a holy prayer. Polycletus was wont to say, ' That they had work enough to do, who were to make a curious picture of clay and dirt, when they were to take accounts for the handling of mud and mortar.' A man's spirit is naturally careless of baser and uncostly materials ; but if a man be to work in gold, then he will save the filings of his dust, and suffer not a grain to perish : and when a man hath laid his foundations in precious stones, he will not build vile matter, stubble, and dirt, upon it. So it is in the spirit of a man ; if he have built upon the Rock, Christ Jesus, and is grown up to a good stature in Christ, he will not easily dishonour his building, or lose his labours, by an incurious entertainment of vanities and little instances of sin ; which as they can never satisfy any lust or appetite to sin, so they are like a fly in a box of ointment, or Hke little follies to a wise man ; they are ex- tremely full of dishonour and disparagement, they disarray a man's soul of his virtue, and dishonour him for cockle- shells and baubles, and tempt to a greater folly ; which every man, who is grown in the knowledge of Christ, therefore carefully avoids, because he fears a relapse with a fear as great as his hopes of heaven are ; and knows that the entertainment of small sins does but entice a man's reso- lutions to disband ; they unravel and untwist his holy pur- poses, and begin in infirmities, and proceed in folly, and end in death.
7. He that is grown in grace, pursues virtue for its own interest, purely and simply, without the mixture and allay of collateral designs and equally-inclining purposes. God, in the beginning of our returns to him, entertains us with
OF GROWTH IN GRACE. 19
promises and threatenings, the apprehensions of temporal advantages, with fear and shame, and with reverence of friends and secular respects, with reputation and coercion of human laws ; and at first, men snatch at the lesser and lower ends of virtue ; and such rewards as are visible, and which God sometimes gives in hand, to entertain our weak and imperfect desires. The young philosophers were very forward to get the precepts of their sect, and the rules of severity, that they might discourse with kings, not that they might reform their own manners ; and some men study to get the ears and tongues of the people, rather than to gain their souls to God ; and they obey good laws for fear of punishment, or to preserve their own peace ; and some are worse, they do good deeds out of spite, and " preach Christ out of envy," or to lessen the authority and fame of others. Some of these lessen the excellency of the act, others spoil it quite : it is in some imperfect, in others criminal ; in some it is consistent with a beginning infant-grace, in others it is an argument of the state of sin and death ; but in all cases, the well-grown Christian, he that improves or goes forward in his way to heaven, brings virtue forth, not into discourses and pane- gyrics, but into his life and manners. His virtue, although it serves many good ends accidentally, yet, by his intention, it only suppresses his inordinate passions, makes him tempe- rate and chaste, casts out his devils of drunkenness and lust, pride and rage, malice and revenge ; it makes him useful to his brother and a servant of God. And although these flowers cannot choose but please his eye and delight his smell, yet he chooses to gather honey, and licks up the dew of heaven, and feasts his spirit upon the manna, and dwells not in the collateral usages and accidental sweetnesses, which dwell at the gates of other senses; but, like a bee, loads his thighs with wax and his bag with honey, that is, with the useful parts of virtue, in order to holiness and felicity ; of which the best signs and notices we can take, will be ; — if we as earnestly pursue virtues which are acted in private, as those whose scene lies in pubhc ; if we pray in private, under the only eye of God and his ministering angels, as in churches ; if we give our alms in secret, rather than in pubhc ; if we take more pleasure in the just satisfaction of our consciences, than securing our reputation ; if we rather pursue innocence
20 OF GROWTH IN GRACE.
than seek an excuse ; if we desire to please God, though we lose our fame with men ; if we be just to the poorest servant as to the ij;reatest prince ; if we choose to be among the jewels of God, thougli we be the 'sji^tKada^fxara, * the off- scouring ' of the world ; if, when we are secure from witnesses and accusers, and not obnoxious to the notices of the law, we think ourselves obliged by conscience and practice, and live accordingly : then our services and intentions in virtue are right; then we are past the twilights of conversion, and the umbrages of the world, and walk in the light of God, of his word, and of his Spirit, of grace and reason, as becometh not babes, but men in Christ Jesus. In this progress of grace I have not yet expressed, that perfect persons should serve God out of mere love of God and the Divine excel- lencies, without the considerations of either heaven or hell ; such a thing as that is talked of in mystical theology. And I doubt not but many good persons come to that growth of charity, that the goodness and excellency of God are more incumbent and actually pressing vipon their spirit than any considerations of reward. But then I shall add this, that when persons come to that height of gTace, or contemplation rather, and they love God for himself, and do their duties in order to the fruition of him and his pleasure ; all that is but heaven in another sense, and under another name : just as the mystical theology is the highest duty, and the choicest part of obedience under a new method. But in order to the present, that which I call a signification of our growth in grace is, a pursuance of virtue upon such reasons as are pro- pounded to us as motives in Christianity, (such as are to glorify God, and to enjoy his promises in the way and in our country, to avoid the displeasure of God, and to be united to his glories ;) and then to exercise virtue in such parts and to such purposes as are useful to good life, and profitable to our neighbours ; not to such only where they serve reputation or secular ends. For though the great Physician of our souls hath mingled profits and pleasures with virtue, to make its chalice sweet and apt to be drank off"; yet he that takes out the sweet ingredient, and feasts his palate with the less wholesome part, because it is delicious, serves a low end of sense or interest, but serves not God at all, and as httle does benefit to his soul. Such a person is like Homer's bird,
OF GROWTH IN GRACE. 21
deplumes himself to feather all the naked callows that he sees, and holds a taper that may light others to heaven, while he burns his own fingers : but a well-grown person, out of habit and choice, out of love and virtue and just intention, goes on his journey in straight ways to heaven, even when the bridle and coercion of laws, or the spurs of interest or reputation, are laid aside ; and desires witnesses of his actions, not that he may advance his fame, but for reverence and fear, and to make it still more necessary to do holy things.
8. Some men there are in the beginning of their holy walking with God, and while they are babes in Christ, who are presently busied in delights of prayers, and rejoice in public communion, and count all solemn assemblies festi- val ; but as they are pleased with them, so they can easily be without them. It is a sign of a common and vulgar love, only to be pleased with the company of a friend, and to be as well without him : " Amoris at morsum qui vere senserit,'* " He that has felt the sting of a sharp and very dear affec- tion," is impatient in the absence of his beloved object: the soul that is sick and swallowed up with holy fire, loves nothing else ; all pleasures else seem unsavoury ; company is troublesome, visitors are tedious, homilies of comfort are flat and useless. The pleasures of virtue to a good and perfect man, are not like the perfumes of nard-pistic, which is very delightful when the box is newly broken, but the want of it is no trouble, we are well enough without it : but virtue is like hunger and thirst, it must be satisfied or we die. And when we feel great longings after religion, and faintings for want of holy nutriment, when a famine of the word and sacraments is more intolerable, and we think ourselves really most miserable when the church-doors are shut a2:ainst us, or hke the Christians, in the persecution of the Vandals, — who thought it worse than death that their bishops were taken from them : if we understand excommunication or church- censures, (abating the disreputation and secular appendages,) in the sense of the Spirit, to be a misery next to hell itself; then we have made a good progress in the charity and grace of God : till then we are but pretenders, or infants, or imper- fect, in the same degree in which our affections are cold and our desires remiss. For a constant and prudent zeal is the best testimony of our masculine and vigorous heats, and an
22 OF GROWTH IN GRACE.
hour of fervour is more pleasing to God than a month of lukewarmness and indiiftTence.
9. But as some are active only in the presence of a good object, but remiss and careless for the want of it; so, on the other side, an infant-grace is safe in the absence of a temp- tation, but falls easily when it is in presence. He, therefore, that would understand if he be grown in grace, may consider if his safety consists only in peace, or in the strength of the Spirit. It is good that we will not seek out opportunities to sin ; but are not we too apprehensive of it, when it is pre- sented ? or do we not sink under it when it, presses us ? Can we hold our tapers near the flames, and not suck it in greedily like naphtha or prepared nitre ? or can we, like the children of the captivity, walk in the midst of flames, and not be scorched or consumed ? Many men will not, like Judah, go into highways, and untie the girdles of harlots ; but can you reject the importunity of a beauteous and an imperious lady, as Joseph did? We had need pray that we be * not led into temptation :' that is, not only into the possession, but not into the allurements and neighbourhood of it, lest by little and little, our strongest resolutions be untwist, and crack in sunder, like an easy cord severed into single threads ; but if we, by the necessity of our lives and manner of living, dwell where a temptation w^ill assault us, then to resist is the sign of a great grace ; but such a sign, that without it the grace turns to wantonness, and the man into a beast, and an ano;el into a devil. R. Moses will not allow a man to be a true penitent, until he hath left all his sin, and in all the like circumstances refuses those temptations, under which formerly he sinned and died ; and indeed it may happen, that such a trial only can secure our judgment concerning ourselves. And although to be tried in all the same accidents be not safe, nor always contingent, and in such cases it is sufficient to resist all the temptations we have, and avoid the rest, and decree against all ; — yet if it please God we are tempted, as David was by his eyes, or the martyre by tortures, or Joseph by his wanton mistress, then to stand sure, and to ride upon the temptation like a ship upon a wave, or to stand like a rock in an impetuous storm, that is the sign of a great grace, and of a well-grown Christian.
10. No man is grown in grace but he that is ready for
OF GROWTH IN GRACE. 23
every work, that chooses not his employment, that refbses no imposition from God or his superior. A ready hand, an obedient heart, and a willing cheerful soul, in all the work of God, and in every office of religion, is a great index of a good proficient in the ways of godliness. The heart of a man is like a wounded hand or arm, which, if it be so cured that it can only move one way, and cannot turn to all postures and natural uses, it is but imperfect, and still half in health and half wounded : so is our spirit ; if it be apt for prayer and close-fisted in alms, if it be sound in faith and dead in charity, if it be religious to God and unjust to our neighbour, there wants some integral part, or there is a lameness ; and ' the deficiency in any one duty implies the guilt of all,' said St. James ; and, " Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex qua- libet particulari :" every fault spoils a grace, but one grace alone cannot make a good man. But as to be universal in our obedience is necessary to the being in the state of grace, so, readily to change employment from the better to the worse, from the honourable to the poor, from useful to seem- ingly unprofitable, is a good character of a well-grown Chris- tian, if he takes the worst part with indifference, and a spirit equally choosing all the events of the Divine providence. Can you be content to descend from ruling of a province to the keeping of a herd, from the work of an apostle to be confined in a prison, from disputing before princes to a conversation with shepherds ? Can you be willing to all that God is wilhng, and suffer all that he chooses, as willingly as if you had chosen your own fortune ? In the same degree in which you can conform to God, in the same you have approached towards that perfection, whither we must, by degrees, arrive, in our journey towards heaven.
This is not to be expected of beginners ; for they must be enticed with apt employments ; and, it may be, their office and work so fits their spirits, that it makes them first in love with it, and then with God for giving it. And many a man goes to heaven in the days of peace, whose faith, and hope, and patience, would have been dashed in pieces, if he had fallen into a storm of persecution. " Oppression will make a wise man mad," saith Solomon : there are some usages that will put a sober person out of all patience, such which are besides the customs of this Ufe, and contrary to all his hopes,
24 OF GROWTH IN GRACE.
and unworthy of a person of his quahty. And when Nero durst not die, yet when his servants told him, that the senators had condeumed him to be put to death, * more niajorum,' that is, * by scourginc^ hke a slave/ he was forced into preternatural confidence, and fell upon his own sword. But when God so changes thy estate, that thou art fallen into accidents, to which thou art no otherwise disposed but by grace and a holy spirit, and yet thou canst pass through them with quietness, and do the work of suffering as well as the works of prosperous employment; — this is an argument of a great grace and an extraordinary spirit. For many persons, in a change of fortune, perish, who, if they had still been prosperous, had gone to prison, being tempted in a per- secution to perjuries, and apostasy, and unhandsome com- pliances, and hypocrisy, and irreligion : and many men are brought to virtue, and to God, and to felicity, by being per- secuted and made unprosperous. And these are effects of a more absolute and irrespective predestination. But w^hen the grace of God is great and prudent, and masculine, and well-grown, it is unaltered in all changes ; save only that every accident that is new and violent, brings him nearer to God, and makes him, with greater caution and severity, to dwell in virtue.
11. Lastly : Some there are, who are firm in all great and foreseen changes, and have laid up in the store-houses of the spirit, — reasow and religion, — arguments and discourses enough to defend them against all violences, and stand at watch so much, that they are safe, where they can consider and deli- berate ; but there may be something wanting yet ; and in the direct line, and in the straight progress to heaven, I call that an infaUible sign of a great grace, and indeed the greatest degree of a great grace, when a man is prepared against sudden invasions of the spirit, surreptitious and extemporary assaults. Many a valiant person dares fight a battle, who yet will be timorous and surprised in a midnight alarm, or if he falls into a river. And how many discreet persons are there, who, if you offer them a sin, and give them time to consider, and tell them of it beforehand, will rather die than be perjured, or tell a deliberate lie, or break a promise ; who, it may be, tell many sudden lies, and excuse themselves, and break their promises, and yet think themselves safe enough,
OF GROWTH IN GRACE. 25
and sleep without either affrightments or any apprehension of dishonour done to their persons or their religion ! Every- man is not armed for all sudden arrests of passions. Few men have cast such fetters upon their lusts, and have their passions in so strict confinement, that they may not be over- run with a midnight flood or an unlooked-for inundation. He that does not start, when he is smitten suddenly, is a constant person. And that is it which I intend in this instance ; that he is a perfect man, and well-grown in grace, who hath so habitual a resolution, and so unhasty and wary a spirit, as that he decrees upon no act, before he hath con- sidered maturely, and changed the sudden occasion into a sober counsel. David, by chance, spied Bathsheba washing herself; and, being surprised, gave his heart away, before he could consider ; and when it was once gone, it was hard to recover it ; and sometimes a man is betrayed by a sudden opportunity, and all things fitted for his sin ready at the door ; the act stands in all its dress, and will not stay for an answer ; and inconsideration is the defence and guard of the sin, and makes that his conscience can the more easily swallow it : what shall the man do then ? Unless he be strong by his old strengths, by a great grace, by an habitual virtue, and a sober unmoved spirit, — he falls and dies the death, and hath no new strengths, but such as are to be employed for his recovery ; none for his present guard, unless upon the old stock, and if he be a well-grown Christian.
These are the parts, acts, and oflices of our growing in grace ; and yet I have sometimes called them signs : but they are signs, as eating and drinking are signs of life ; they are signs so as also they are parts of life ; and these are parts of our growth in grace, so that a man can grow in grace to no other purpose but to these or the like improvements.
Concerning which I have a caution or two to interpose. 1. The growth of grace is to be estimated as other moral things are, not according to the growth of things natural. Grace does not grow by observation, and a continual efflux, and a constant proportion ; and a man cannot call himself to an account for the growth of every day, or week, or month : but, in the greater portions of our life, in which we have had many occasions and instances to exercise and improve our virtues, we may call ourselves to account ; but it is a
26 OF GROWTH IN GRACE.
snare to our consciences to be examined in the growth of grace in every short revolution of solemn duty, as against every communion or great festival.
2. Growth in grace is not always to be discerned, either in single instances or in single graces. Not in single in- stances : for every time we are to exercise a virtue, we are not in the same natural dispositions, nor do we meet with the same circumstances ; and it is not always necessary that the next act should be more earnest and intense than the former : all single acts are to be done after the manner of men, and, therefore, are not always capable of increasing, and they have their times, beyond which they cannot easily swell ; and, therefore, if it be a good act and zealous, it may proceed from a well-grown grace ; and yet a younger and weaker person may do some acts as great and as religious as it. But neither do single graces always afford a regular and certain judgment in this affair. For some persons, at the first, had rather die than be unchaste or perjured; and " greater love than this no man hath, that he lay down his life" for God : he cannot easily grow in the substance of that act ; and if other persons, or himself, in process of time, do it more cheerfully or with fewer fears, it is not always a sign of a greater grace, but sometimes of greater collateral assistances, or a better habit of body, or more fortunate circumstances : for he that goes to the block trembling for Christ, and yet endures his death certainly, and endures his trembling too, and runs through all his infirmities and the bigger temptations, looks not so well many times in the eyes of men, but suffers more for God, than those confident martyrs that courted death in the primitive church ; and, therefore, may be much dearer in the eyes of God. But that which I say in this particular, is, that a smallness in one is not an argument of the imperfection of the whole estate : because God does not always give to every man occasions to exercise, and, therefore, not to improve, every grace ; and the passive virtues of a Christian are not to be expected to grow so fast in prosperous as in suffering Christians. But in this case we are to take accounts of ourselves by the improvement of those graces, which God makes to happen often in our lives ; such as are charity and temperance in young men ; liberality and religion in aged persons; ingenuity and humiUty in
OF GliOWTIl IN GRACE. 27
scholars; justice in merchants and artificers; forgiveness of injuries in great men and persons tempted by law-suits : for since virtues grow like other moral habits, by use, diligence, and assiduity, — there where God hath appointed our work and our instances, there we must consider concerning our growth in grace ; in other things we are but beginners. But it is not likely that God vv'ill try us concerning degrees hereafter, in such things, of which, in this world, he was sparing to give us opportunities.
3. Be careful to observe that these rules are not all to be understood negatively, but positively and affirmatively : that is, that a man may conclude that he is grown in grace, if he observes these characters in himself, which I have here discoursed of; but he must not conclude negatively, that he is not grown in grace, if he cannot observe such signal testimonies : for sometimes God covers the graces of his servants, and hides the beauty of his tabernacle with goat's hair and the skins of beasts, that he may rather suffer them to want present comfort than the grace of humility. For it is not necessary to preserve the gaieties and their spiritual pleasures ; but if their humility fails (which may easily be under the sunshine of conspicuous and illustrious graces), their virtues and themselves perish in a sad declension. But sometimes men have not skill to make a judgment ; and all this discourse seems too artificial to be tried by, in the hearty purposes of religion. Sometimes they let pass much of their life, even of their better days, without ob- servance of particulars ; sometimes their cases of conscience are intricate, or allayed with unavoidable infirmities ; some- times they are so uninstructed in the more secret parts of rehgion, and there are so many illusions and accidental miscarriages, that if we shall conclude negatively in the present question, we may produce scruples infinite, but understand nothing more of our estate, and do much less of our duty.
4. In considering concerning our growth in grace, let us take more care to consider matters that concern justice and charity, than that concern the virtue of religion ; be- cause in this there may be much, in the other there cannot easily be any, illusion and cozenage. That is a good religion that believes, and trusts, and hopes in God, through Jesus
28 OF GROWTH. IN GRACE.
Christ, and for his srike does nil justice and all charity that he can ; and our blessed Lord ^ives no other description of * love' to God, but obedience and ' keeping his command- ments.' Justice and charity are like the matter, religion is the form, of Christianity : but although the form be more noble and the principle of life, yet it is less discernible, less material, and less sensible ; and we judge concerning the form by the matter, and by material accidents, and by actions : and so we must of our religion, that is, of our love to God, and of the efficacy of our prayers, and the usefulness of our fVistings ; we must make our judguients by the more material parts of our duty, that is, by sobriety, and by justice, and by charity.
I am much prevented in my intention for the perfecting of this so very material consideration : I shall therefore only tell you, that to these parts and actions of a good life, or of our growth in grace, some have added some accidental considerations, which are rather signs than parts of it. Such are : 1. To praise all good things, and to study to imitate what we praise. 2. To be impatient that any man should excel us ; not out of envy to the person, but of noble emulation to the excellency. For so Themistocles could not sleep, after the great victory at Marathon purchased by Miltiades, till he had made himself illustrious by equal services to his country. 3. The bearing of sickness pa- tiently, and ever with improvement, and the addition of some excellent principle, and the fum pursuing it. 4. Great devotion, and much delight in our prayers. 5. Frequent inspirations, and often whispers, of the Spirit of God, prompting us to devotion and obedience ; especially if we add to this a constant and ready obedience to all those holy invitations. 6. Offering peace to them that have injured me, and the abating of the circumstances of honour or of right, when either justice or charity is concerned in it. 7. Love to the brethren. 8. To behold our companions, or our inferiors, full of honour and fortune ; and if we sit still at home and murmur not, or if we can rejoice both in their honour and our own quiet, that is a fair work of a good man. And now, 9. After all this, I will not trouble you with reckoning a freedom from being tempted, not only from being overcome, but from being tried : for though that
OF GROWTH IN GRACE. 29
be a rare felicity, and hath in it much safety ; yet it hath less honour, and fewer instances of virtue, unless it proceed from a confirmed and heroical grace ; which is indeed a little image of heaven and of a celestial charity, and never happens signally to any, but to old and very eminent persons. 10. But some also add an excellent habit of body and ma- terial passions, such as are chaste and virtuous dreams ; and suppose, that, as a disease abuses the fancy, and a vice does prejudice it, so may an excellent virtue of the soul smooth and calcine the body, and make it serve perfectly, and without rebellious indispositions. 11. Others are in love with Mary Magdalen's tears, and fancy the hard knees of St. James, and the sore eyes of St. Peter, and the very recreations of St. John; " Proh ! quam virtute prseditos omnia decent !" thinking *' all things become a good man," even his gestures and little incuriosities. And though this may proceed from a great love of virtue, yet because some men do thus much and no more, and this is to be attributed to the lustre of virtue, which shines a little through a man's eye-lids, though he perversely winks against the light; yet (as the former of these two is too metaphysical, so is the latter too fantastical,) he, that, by the foregoing material parts and proper significations of a growing grace, does not understand his own condition, must be content to work on still ' super totam materiam,' without considerations of particulars ; he must pray earnestly, and watch diligently, and consult with prudent guides, and ask of God great measures of his Spirit, and " hunger and thirst after right- eousness :" for he that does so, shall certainly " be satisfied." And if he understands not his present good condition, yet if he be not wanting in the downright endeavours of piety, and in hearty purposes, he shall then find that he is grown in grace, when he springs up in the resurrection of the just, and shall be engrafted upon a tree of paradise, which beareth fruit for ever, glory to God, rejoicing to saints and angels, and eternal felicity to his own pious, though undiscerning soul. " Prima sequentem, honestum est in secundis aut tertiis consistere^."
* Cicero.
30 OF (.JiiowTH IN sin: or, the several
SERMON XVI.
ov r.HowTU IN sin: ok, tmk sf.veral states and
DKCUE KS or SINNF.US, WITH THE MANNER HOW THEY ARE TO BE TUEATED.
j-itid of M)/in' have compassion, mahiiig a fJIJfermce : And ot/iers save uitlt fear, pulling them out of the fire. — Jude Epist. ver. 22, 23.
Man hath but one entrance into the world ; but a thousand ways to pass from thence. And as it is in the natural, so it is in the spiritual : nothing but the union of faith and obe- dience can secure our regeneration, and our new birth, and can brintr us to see the lioht of heaven ; but there are a thousand passages of turning into darkness. And it is not enough, that our bodies are exposed to so many sad infirmities and dishonourable imperfections, unless our soul also be a subject capable of so many divseases, irregular passions, false principles, accursed habits and degrees of perverseness, that the very kinds of them are reducible to a method, and make up the part of a science. There are variety of stages and descents to death, as there are diversity of torments, and of sad regions of misery in hell, which is the centre and king- dom of sorrows. But that we may a little refresh the sadnesses of this consideration ; for every one of these stages of sin, God hath measured out a proportion of mercy : for, " If sin abounds, grace shall much more abound ;" and *' God hath concluded all under sin," not with purposes to destroy us, but " ut omnium misereatur," " that he might have mercy upon all ;" that light may break forth from the deepest enclosures of darkness, and mercy may rejoice upon the recessions of justice, and grace may triumph upon the ruins of sin, and God may be glorified in the miracles of our conversion, and the wonders of our preservation, and glories of our being saved. There is no state of sin, but, if we be persons capable (according to God's method of healing) of receiving antidotes, we shall find a sheet of mercy spread over our wounds and nakedness. If our diseases be small,
STATES AND DEGREES OF SINNERS, &C. 31
almost necessary, scarce avoidable ; then God does, and so we are commanded to cure them, and cover them with a veil of pity, compassion, and gentle remedies : if our evils be violent, inveterate, gangrened, and incorporated into our nature by evil customs, they must be pulled from the flames of hell with censures, and cauteries, and punishments, and sharp remedies, quickly and rudely ; their danger is present and sudden, its effect is quick and intolerable, and there are no soft counsels then to be entertained ; they are already in the fire, but they may be saved for all that. So great, so infinite, so miraculous is God's mercy, that he will not give a sinner over, though the hairs of his head be singed with the flames of hell. God's desires of having us to be saved con- tinue, even when we begin to be damned 5 even till we will not be saved, and are gone beyond God's method, and all the revelations of his kindness. And certainly that is a bold and a mighty sinner, whose iniquity is swelled beyond all the bulk and heap of God's revealed loving-kindness : if sin hath swelled beyond grace, and superabounds over it, that sin is gone beyond the measures of a man ; such a person is removed beyond all the malice of human nature, into the evil and spite of devils and accursed spirits ; there is no greater sadness in the world than this. God hath not appointed a remedy in the vast treasures of grace for some men, and some sins ; they have sinned like the fallen angels, and having overrun the ordinary evil inclinations of their nature, they are without the protection of the Divine mercy, and the conditions of that grace, which was designed to save all the world, and was sufficient to have saved twenty. This is a condition to be avoided with the care of God and his angels, and all the whole industry of man. In order to which end, my purpose now is to remonstrate to you the several states of sin and death, together with those remedies which God had proportioned out to them ; that we may observe the evils of the least, and so avoid the intolerable mischiefs of the greater, even of those sins which still are within the power and possibilities of recovery ; lest insensibly we fall into those sins, and into those circumstances of person, for which Christ never died, which the Holy Ghost never means to cure, and which the eternal God never will pardon : for there are of this kind more than commonly men imagine.
32 OF GROWTH IN SIN: OU, THE SEVERAL
whilst they amuse their s])irits witli gaieties and false prin- ciples, till they have run into horrible impieties, from whence they are not willing to withdraw theij foot, and God is resolved never to snatch and force them thence.
I. " Of some have compassion." — And these I shall reduce to four heads or orders of men and actions ; all which have their proper cure ])roportionable to their proper state, gentle remedies to the lesser irregularities of the soul. 1. The first are those, that sin without observation of their particular state ; either because they are uninstructed in the special cases of conscience, or because they do an evil, against which there is no express commandment. It is a sad cala- mity, that there are so many millions of men and women that are entered into a state of sickness and danger, and yet are made to believe they are in perfect health ; and they do actions, concerning which they never made a question whether they were just or no, nor were ever taught by what names to call them. For while they observe that modesty is sometimes abused by a false name, and called clownishness and want of breeding ; and contentedness and temperate living is sus- pected to be want of courage and noble thoughts ; and severity of life is called imprudent and unsociable ; and simplicity and hearty honesty is counted foolish and impo- litic : they are easily tempted to honour prodigality and foolish dissolution of their estates with the title of liberal and noble usages. Timorousness is called caution, rashness is called quickness of spirit, covetousness is frugality, amo- rousness is society and gentile, peevishness and anger is courage, flattery is humane and courteous : and under these false veils virtue slips away (like truth from under the hand of them that fight for her), and leaves vice dressed up with the same imagery, and the fraud not discovered till the day of recompences, when men are distinguished by their rewards. But so men think they sleep freely, when their spirits are laden with a lethargy ; and they call a hectic fever the vigour of a natural heat, till nature changes those less discerned states into the notorious images of death. Very many men never consider, whether they sin or no in ten thousand of their actions, every one of which is very disputable, and do not think they are bound to consider : these men are to be pitied and instructed, they are to be called upon to use
STATES AND DEGREES OF SINNERS, &C. 33
religion like a daily diet ; their consciences must be made tender, and their catechism enlarged ; teach them, and make them sensible, and they are cured.
But the other sins in this place are more considerable : men sin without observation, because their actions have no restraint of an express commandment, no letter of the law to condemn them by an express sentence. And this happens, when the crime is comprehended under a general notion, without the instancing of particulars : for if you search over all the Scripture, you shall never find incest named and marked with the black character of death ; and there are divers sorts of uncleanness to which Scripture therefore gives no name, because she would have them have no being. And it had been necessary that God should have described all particulars, and all kinds, if he had not given reason to man : for so it is fit that a guide should point out every turning, if he be to teach a child or a fool to return unto his father's roof. But he that bids us avoid intemperance for fear of a fever, supposes you to be sufficiently instructed that you may avoid the plague ; and, when to look upon a woman with lust is condemned, it will not be necessary to add, ' You must not do more,' when even the least is for- bidden : and when to uncover the nakedness of Noah brought an universal plague upon the posterity of Cham, it was not necessary that the lawgiver should say, ' You must not ascend to your father's bed, or draw the curtains from your sister's retirements.' When the Athenians forbade to transport figs from Athens, there was no need to name the gardens of Alcibiades ; much less was it necessary to add, that Chabrias should send no plants to Sparta. What- soever is comprised under the general notion, and partakes of the common nature and the same iniquity, needs no special prohibition ; unless we think we can mock God, and elude his holy precepts with an absurd trick of mistaken logic. I am sure that will not save us harmless from a thunderbolt.
2. Men sin without an express prohibition, when they commit a thing, that is like a forbidden evil. And when St. Paul had reckoned many works of the flesh, he adds, ' and such like,' all that have the same unreasonableness and carnality. For thus polygamy is unlawful : for if it be
VOL. VI. D
34 OF C.HOWTII IN SIN : OU, Tin: SEVERAL
not lawful for a Christian ' to ])ut away liis wife, aiul marry aiinthrr, unless for adultory,' niuch less may lie keep a first, and take a second, when the first is jiot put away. If a C'hristian may not be drunk with wine, neither may he be drunk with passion ; if he may not kill his neighbour, neither then must he tempt him to sin, for that destroys him more ; if he may not wound him, then he may not persuade him to intemperance, and a drunken fever ; if it be not lawful to cozen a man, much less is it permitted that he make a man a fool, and a beast, and exposed to every man's abuse, and to all ready evils. And yet men are taught to start at the one half of these, and make no conscience of the other half; whereof some have a greater baseness than the other that are named, and all have the same unreasonableness.
3. A man is guilty, even when no law names his action, if he does any thing that is a cause or an effect, a part or unhandsome adjunct, of a forbidden instance. lie that forbade all intemperance, is as much displeased with the infinite of foolish talk that happens at such meetings, as he is at the spoiling of the drink, and the destroying the health. If God cannot endure wantonness, how can he suffer lascivious dressings, tempting circumstances, wanton eyes, high diet? If idleness be a sin, then all immoderate mispending of our time, all long and tedious games, all absurd contrivances how to throw away a precious hour, and a day of salvation also, are against God, and against religion. He that is commanded to be charitable, it is also intended he should not spend his money vainly, but be a good husband and provident, that he may be able to give to the poor, as he would be to purchase a lordship, or pay his daughter's portion. And upon this stock it is that Christian religion forbids jeering and immoderate laughter, and reckons * jestings' amongst the ' things that are unseemly.' This also would be considered.
4. Besides the express laws of our religion, there is an universal line and limit to our passions and designs, which is called ' the analogy of Christianity;' that is, the proportion of its sanctity, and the strictness of its holy precepts. This is not forbidden ; but, does this become you ? Is it decent to see a Christian live in plenty and ease, and heap up money,
STATES AND DEGREES OF SINNERS, &C. 35
and never to partake of Christ's passions ? There is no law against a judge's being a dresser of gardens, or a gatherer of sycamore fruits ; but it becomes him not, and deserves a reproof. If I do exact justice to my neighbour, and cause him to be punished legally for all the evils he makes me suffer, I have not broken a fragment from the stony tables of the law^ : but this is against the analogy of our religion ; it does not become a disciple of so gentle a Master to take all advantages that he can. Christ, that quitted all the glories that vi'ere essential to him, and that grew up in his nature when he lodged in his Father's bosom ; Christ, that suffered all the evils due for the sins of mankind, himself remaining most innocent; Christ, that promised persecution, injuries, and affronts, as part of our present portion, and gave them to his disciples as a legacy, and gave us his Spirit to enable us to suffer injuries, and made that the parts of suffering evils should be the matter of three or four Christian graces, of patience, of fortitude, of longanimity, and perseveran<;e ; he that of eight beatitudes, made that five of them should be instanced in the matter of humiliation and suffering temporal inconvenience ; — that blessed Master was certainly desirous that his disciples should take their crowns from the cross, not from the evenness and felicities of the world ; he in- tended we should give something, and suffer more things, and forgive all things, all injuries whatsoever. And though together with this may consist our securing a just interest; yet, in very many circumstances, we shall be put to consider, how far it becomes us to quit something of that, to pursue peace ; and when we have secured the letter of the lav/, that we also look to its analogy ; when we do what we are strictly bound to, then also we must consider what becomes us, who are disciples of such a Master, who are instructed with such principles, charmed with so severe precepts, and invited with the certainty of infinite rewards. Now, although this dis- course may seem new and strange and very severe, yet it is infinitely reasonable, because Christianity is a law of love and voluntary services ; it can in no sense be confined with laws and strict measures : well may the ocean receive its limits, and the whole capacity of fire be glutted, and the grave have his belly so full that it shall cast up all its bowels, and disgorge the continued meal of so many thousand years ;
36 or (iRowTH IN sin: or, the several
but love can never have a limit ; and it is indeed to be swallowed up, but nothinp; can fill it but God, who hath no bound. Christianity is a law for sons, not for servants ; and Ciod, that oives his grace without measure, and rewards without end, and acts of favour beyond our askings, and provides for us beyond our needs, and gives us counsels beyond commandments, intends not to be limited out by the just evennesses and stricken measures of the words of a commandment. Give to God " full measure, shaken together, pressed down, heaped up, and running over ;" for God does so to us : and when we have done so to him, we are infinitely short of the least measure of what God does for us ; " we are still unprofitable servants." And therefore, as the breaking any of the laws of Christianity provokes God to anger, so the prevaricating in the analogy of Christianity stirs him up to jealousy. He hath reason to suspect our hearts are not right with him, when we are so reserved in the matter and measures of our services ; and if we will give God but just what he calls for by express mandate, it is just in him to require all of that at our hands without any abate- ment, and then we are sure to miscarry. And let us re- member, that when God said he was " a jealous God," he expressed the meaning of it to be, he did " punish to the third and fourth generation." " Jealousy is like the rage of a man :" but if it be also like the anger of God, it is insup- portable, and will crush us into the ruins of our grave.
But because these things are not frequently considered, there are very many sins committed against religion, which, because the commandment hath not marked, men refuse to mark, and think God requires no more. I am entered into a sea of matter, which I must not now prosecute ; but I shall only note this to you, that it is but reasonable we should take accounts of our lives by the proportions, as well as by the express rules, of our rehgion, because in human and civil actions all the nations of the world use to call their subjects to account. For that which in the accounts of men is called reputation and public honesty, is the same which in religion we call analogy and proportion ; in both cases there being some things which are besides the notices of laws, and yet are the most certain consignations of an excellent virtue. He is a base person that does any thing against public
STATES AND DEGREES OF SINNERS, 8cC. 37
honesty ; and yet no man can be punished, if he marries a wife the next day after his first wife's funeral : and so he that prevaricates the proportions and excellent reasons of Christianity, is a person without zeal and without love ; and, unless care be taken of him, he will quickly be without religion. But yet these, I say, are a sort of persons, which are to be used with gentleness, and treated with compassion : for no man must be handled roughly to force him to do a kindness ; and coercion of laws and severity of judges, Ser- jeants, and executioners, are against offenders of command- ments ; but the way to cure such persons is the easiest and gentlest remedy of all others. They are to be instructed in all the parts of duty, and invited forward by the consideration of the great rewards which are laid up for all the sons of God, who serve him without constraint, without measures and allays, even as fire burns, and as the roses grow, even as much as they can, and to all the extent of their natural and artificial capacities. For it is a thing fit for our compassion, to see men fettered in the iron bands of laws, and yet to break the golden chains of love ; but all those instruments, which are proper to enkindle the love of God and to turn fear into charity, are the proper instances of that compassion, which is to be used towards these men.
2. The next sort of those who are in the state of sin, and yet to be handled gently and with compassion, are those, who entertain themselves with the beginnings and little entrances of sin : which as they are to be more pitied, be- cause they often come by reason of inadvertency, and an unavoidable weakness in many degrees ; so they are more to be taken care of, because they are undervalued, and undis- cernibly run into inconvenience. When we see a child strike a servant rudely, or jeer a silly person, or wittingly cheat his play-fellow, or talk words hght as the skirt of a summer garment ; we laugh, and are delighted with the wit and confidence of the boy, and encourage such hopeful begin- nings : and in the meantime we consider not, that from these beginnings he shall grow up, till he become a tyrant, an oppressor, a goat, and a traitor. " Nemo simul malus fit, et malus esse cernitur ; sicut nee scorpiis turn innascuntur stimuli, cum pungunt :" " No man is discerned to be vicious so soon as he is so ;" and vices have their infancy and their
38 OF GROWTH IN SIN : OR, THE SEVKUAL
childhood ; and it cannot be expected that in a child's age sliould be the vice of a man ; that were monstrous, as if he wore a beard in his cradle ; " and we do not believe that a serpent's sting does just then grow, when he strikes us in a vital part;" the venom and the little spear was there, when it first began to creep from his little shell. And little bold- nesses and looser words, and wranglings for nuts, and lying for trifles, are of the same proportion to the malice of a child, as impudence, and duels, and injurious law-suits, and false witness in judgment, and perjuries, are in men. And the case is the same when men enter upon a new stock of any sin : the vice is at first apt to be put out of countenance, and a little thing discourages it, and it amuses the spirit with words, and fantastic images, and cheap instances of sin ; and men think themselves safe, because they are as yet safe from laws, and the sin does not as yet outcry the healthful noise of Christ's loud cryings and intercession with his Father, nor call for thunder or an amazing judgment : but, according to the old saying, " The thorns of Dauphine will never fetch blood, if they do not scratch the first day ;" and we shall find that the little indecencies and riflings of our souls, the first openings and disparkings of our virtue, differ only from the state of perdition, as infancy does from old age, as sickness from death ; it is the entrance into those regions, whither whosoever passes finally, shall he down and groan with an eternal sorrow. Now in this case it may happen, that a compassion may ruin a man, if it be the pity of an indiscreet mother, and nurse the sin from its weakness to the strength of habit and impudence. The compassion that is to be used to such persons, is the compassion of a physician or a severe tutor : chastise thy infant-sin by disciphne, and acts of virtue ; and never begin that way, from whence you must return with some trouble and much shame ; or else, if you proceed, you finish your eternal ruin.
He that means to be temperate, and avoid the crime and dishonour of being a drunkard, must not love to partake of the songs, or to bear a part in the foolish scenes of laughter, which distract wisdom, and fright her from the company. And Laivina, that was chaster than the elder Sabines, and severer than her philosophical guardian, was well instructed in the great lines of honour and cold justice to her husband :
STATES AND DEGUEES OF SINNERS, 8CC. 39
but when she gave way to the wanton ointments and looser circumstances of Baiee, and bathed often in Avernus, and from thence hurried to the companies and dressings of Lucri- nus, she quenched her honour, and gave her virtue and her body as a spoil to the follies and intemperance of a young gentleman =». For so have I seen the little purls of a spring sweat through the bottom of a bank, and intenerate the stubborn pavement, till it hath made it fit for the impression of a child's foot ; and it was despised, like the descending purls of a misty morning, till it had opened its way, and made a stream large enough to carry away the ruins of the inidermined strand, and to invade the neighbouring gardens; but then the despised drops were grown into an artificial river, and an intolerable mischief. So are the first entrances of sin stopped with the antidotes of a hearty prayer, and checked into sobriety by the eye of a reverend man, or the counsels of a single sermon : but when such beginnings are neglected, and our religion hath noi in it so much philosoph|f as to think any thing evil as long as we can endure it, they grow up to ulcers and pestilential evils ; they destroy the soul by their abode, who, at their first entry, might have been killed with the pressure of a little finger.
Those men are in a condition, in which they may, if they please, pity themselves ; keep their green wound from festering and uncleanness, and it will heal alone : " Non procul absunt," " They are not far" from the kingdom of heaven, but they are not within its portion. And let me say this, that although little sins have not yet made our condition desperate, but left it easily recoverable ; yet it is a condition that is quite out of God's favour : although they are not far advanced in their progress to ruin, yet they are not at all in the state of grace ; and, therefore, though they are to be pitied and relieved accordingly, yet that supposes the in- cumbency of a present misery.
3. There are some very much to be pitied and assisted, because they are going into hell, and, as matters stand with them, they cannot, or they think they cannot, avoid it. " Quidam ad alienum dormiunt sojnnum, ad alienum edunt
•' "■ Casta ncc," Sec— Martial, lib. i.
40 OF {;uowTH i\ si\ : or, the skveraj.
appctituin : amarc vt odisse (res omnium maxiino liberas) jubentur :" " There are some persons whose hfe is so wholly in dependence from otliers, that they- sleep when others ]ilease, they eat and drink according to their master's ap- petite or intemperance : they are commanded to love or hate, and are not left free in the very charter and privileges of nature." ** Miserum est, servire sub dominis parum feli- cibus." For suppose the prince or the patron be vicious; suppose he calls his servants to bathe their souls in the goblets of intemperance ; if he be also imperious, (for such persons love not to be contradicted in their vices,) it is the loss of that man's fortune not to lose his soul ; and it is the servant's excuse, and he esteems it also his glory, that he can tell a merry tale, how his master and himself did swim in drink, till they both talked like fools, and then did lie down like beasts. " Facinus quos inquinat, sequat :" There is then no difference, but that the one is the fairest bull, and the master of the herd. And how many tenants and relatives are known to have a servile conscience, and to know no affirmation or negation but such as shall serve their landlord's interest ! Alas ! the poor men live by it, and they must beg their bread, if ever they turn recreant, or shall offer to be honest. There are some trades whose very foundation is laid in the vice of others ; and in many others, if a thread of deceit do not quite run through all their negotiations, they decay into the sorrows of beggary ; and, therefore, they will support their neighbour's vice, that he may support their trade. And what would you advise those men to do, to whom a false oath is offered to their lips and a dagger at their heart? Their reason is surprised, and their choice is seized upon, and all their consultation is arrested ; and if they did not prepare beforehand, and stand armed with religion and perfect resolution, would not any man fall, and think that every good man will say his case is pitiable ? Although no temptation is bigger than the grace of God, yet many temptations are greater than our strengths ; and we do not live at the rate of a mighty and a victorious grace.
Those persons which cause these vicious necessities upon their brethren, will he low in hell ; but the others will have but small comfort in feeling a lesser damnation.
Of the same consideration it is, when ignorant people are catechized into false doctrine, and know nothing but
STATES AND DEGREES OE SINNERS, &C. 41
such principles which weaken the nerves and enfeeble the joints of holy living; they never heard of any other. Those that follow great and evil examples, the people that are engaged in the public sins of a kingdom, which they under- stand not, and either must venture to be undone upon the strength of their own little reasonings and weak discoursings, or else must go ' qua itur, non qua eundum est,' there where the popular misery hath made the way plain before their eyes, though it be uneven and dangerous to their con- sciences. In these cases I am forced to reckon a catalogue of mischiefs ; but it will be hard to cure any of them. Aris- tippus, in his discourses, was a great flatterer of Dionysius of Sicily, and did own doctrines which might give an easiness to some vices, and knew not how to contradict the pleasures of his prince, but seemed like a person disposed to partake of them, that the example of a philosopher and the practice of a king might do countenance to a shameful life. But when Dionysius sent him two women-slaves, fair and young, he sent them back, and shamed the easiness of his doctrine by the severity of his manners ; he daring to be virtuous when he was alone, though, in the presence of him whom he thought it necessary to flatter, he had no boldness to own the virtue. So it is with too many : if they be left alone, and that they stand unshaken with the eye of their tempter, or the authority of their lord, they go whither their education or their custom carries them ; but it is not in some natures to deny the face of a man and the boldness of a sinner, and, which is yet worse, it is not in most men's interest to do it. These men are in a pitiable condition, and are to be helped by the following rules.
1. Let every man consider that he hath two relations to serve, and he stands between God and his master and his nearest relative ; and in such cases it comes to be disputed whether interest be preferred, which of the persons is to be displeased, God or my master, God or my prince, God or my friend. If we be servants of the man, remember also that I am a servant of God : add to this, that if my present service to the man be a slavery in me, and a tyranny in him, yet God's service is a noble freedom. And Apollonius said well, * It was for slaves to lie, and for freemen to speak the truth.* " If you be freed by the blood of the Son of God, then you
42 OF (MiOWTll IN SIN": OH, TflK SKVERAL
are free indeed :" and then consider how dishonourahle it is to lie, to the displeasure of CJod, and only to j)lease your fellow-servant. The diflerence here is so great, that it might be sulUcient only to consider the antithesis. Did the man make you what you are ? Did he pay his blood for you, to save you from death? Does he keep you from sickness? True : you eat at his table ; but they are of God's provisions that he and you feed of. Can your master free you from a fever, when you have drunk yourself into it ; and restore your innocence, when you have forsworn yourself for his interest ? Is the charge reasonable ? He gives you meat and drink, for Avhich you do him service : but is not he a tyrant and un usurper, an oppressor and an extortioner, if he will force thee to give thy soul for him, to sell thy soul for old shoes and broken bread ? But when thou art to make thy accounts of eternity, will it be taken for an answer. My patron or my governor, my prince or my master, forced me to it? or, if it will not, will he undertake a portion of thy flames? or, if that may not be, will it be, in the midst of all thy torments, any ease to thy sorrows to remember all the re- wards and clothes, all the money and civilities, ail the cheer- ful looks and familiarity and fellowship of vices, which, in your lifetime, made your spirit so gay and easy ? It will, in the eternal loads of sorrow, add a duplicate of groans and indi2:nation, when it shall be remembered for how base and trifling an interest, and upon what weak principles, we fell sick and died eternally.
2. The next advice to persons thus tempted is, that they would learn to separate duty from mistaken interest, and let them be both served in their just proportions, when we have learned to make a difference. A wife is bound to her husband in all his just designs, and in all noble usages and Christian comportments : but a wife is no more bound to pursue her husband's vicious hatreds, than to serve and promote his unlawful and wandering loves. It is not always a part of duty to think the same propositions, or to curse the same persons, or to wish him success in unjust designs: and yet the sadness of it is, that a good woman is easily tempted to believe the cause to be just ; and when her affection hath forced her judgment, her judgment for ever after shall carry the affection to all its erring and abused determinations. A
STATES AND DEGREES OF SINNERS, &C. 43
friend is turned a flatterer, if he does not know that the limits of friendship extend no farther than the pale and enclosures of reason and religion. No master puts it into his covenant that his servant shall be drunk with him, or give in evidence in his master's cause, according to his master's scrolls : and, therefore, it is besides and against the duty of a servant to sin by that authority ; it is as if he should set mules to keep his sheep, or make his dogs to carry burdens ; it is besides their nature and design. And if any person falls under so tyrannical relation, let him consider how hard a master he serves, where the devil gives the employment, and shame is his entertainment, and sin is his work, and hell is his wages. Take, therefore, the counsel of the son of Sirach : " Accept no person against thy soul, and let not the reverence of any man cause thee to fall ^."
3. When passion mingles with duty, and is a necessary instrument of serving God, let not passion run its own course, and pass on to liberty, and thence to license and dissolution ; but let no more of it be entertained than will just do the work. For no zeal of duty will warrant a violent passion to prevaricate a duty. I have seen some officers of war, in passion and zeal of their duty, have made no scruple to com- mand a soldier with a dialect of cursino- and accents of swearing, and pretended they could not else speak words eft'ective enough, and of sufficient authority : and a man may easily be overtaken in the issues of his government, while his authority serves itself with passion ; if he be not curious in his measures, his passion also will serve itself upon the authority, and overrule the ruler.
4. Let every such tempted person remember, that all evil comes from ourselves, and not from others ; and, there- fore, all pretences and prejudices, all commands and temp- tations, all opinions and necessities^ are but instances of our weakness, and arguments of our folly ; for, unless we listed, no man can make us drink beyond our measures ; and if I tell a lie for my master's or my friend's advantage, it is because I prefer a little end of money or flattery before my honour and my innocence. They are huge follies which go up and down in the mouths and heads of men. ' He that knows
•» Eccliis. iv. 22.
44 OF CKOWTll I\ SIX : ou, tiik sf.vkkal
not how to dissemble, knows not how to reign :' He that will not do as his company does, must go out of the world, and quit all society of men. We create necessities of our own, and then think we have reason to serve their impor- tunity. " Non ego sum ambitiosus, sed nemo aliter RomiE potest vivere ; non ego sumptuosus, sed urbs ipsa magnas impensas exigit. Non est meum vitium quod iracundus sum, q»K)d nondum constitui certuni vitic genus ; adolescentia ha?c facit :" * The place we live in makes us expensive, the state of life I have chosen renders me ambitious, my age makes me angry or lustful, proud or peevish.' These are nothing else but resolutions never to mend as long as we can have excuses for our folhes, and until we can cozen our- selves no more. There is no such thing as necessity for a prince to dissemble, or for a servant to lie, or for a friend to flatter, for a civil person and a sociable to be drunk : we cozen ourselves with thinking the fault is so much derivative from others, till the smart and the shame falls upon ourselves, and covers our heads with sorrow. And unless this gap be stopped, and that we build our duty upon our own bottoms, as supported with the grace of God, there is no vice but may find a patron, — and no age, or relation, or state of life, but will be an engagement to sin ; and we shall think it necessary to be lustful in our youth, and revengeful in our manhood, and covetous in our old age ; and we shall perceive that every state of men, and every trade and profession, lives upon the vices of others, or upon their miseries, and, therefore, they will think it necessary to promote or to wish it. If men were temperate, physicians would be poor ; and unless some princes were ambitious, or others injurious, there would be no employment for soldiers. The vintner's retail supports the merchant's trade, and it is a vice that supports the vintner's retail ; and if all men were wise and sober persons, we should have fewer beggars and fewer rich. And if our lawgivers should imitate Demades of Athens, who condemned a man that lived by selling things belonging to funerals, as sup- posing he could not choose but wish the death of men, by whose dying he got his living ; we should find most men accomited criminals, because vice is so involved in the affairs of the world, that it is made the support of many trades, and the business of great multitudes of men. Certainly from
STATES AND DEGREES OF SINNERS, &C. 45
hence it is that iniquity does so much abound ; and unless we state our questions right, and perceive the evil to be designed only from ourselves, and that no such pretence shall keep off the punishment or the shame from ourselves, w^e shall fall into a state which is only capable of compassion, because it is irrecoverable ; and then we shall be infinitely miserable, when we can only receive a useless and ineffective pity. Whatsoever is necessary cannot be avoided ; he, therefore, that shall say, he cannot avoid his sin, is out of the mercies of this text : they who are appointed guides and physicians of souls, cannot, to any purposes, do their offices of pity. It is necessary that we serve God, and do our duty, and secure the interest of our souls, and be as careful to preserve our relations to God as to our friend or prince. But if it can be necessary for any man, in any condition, to sin, it is also necessary for that man to perish.
SERMON XVII.
PART II.
4. The last sort of them that sin, and yet are to be treated with compassion, is of them that interrupt the course of an honest life with single acts of sin, stepping aside and *■ start- ing like a broken bow ;' whose resolution stands fair, and their hearts are towards God, and they sojourn in religion, or rather dwell there ; but that, like evil husbands, they go abroad, and enter into places of dishonour and unthriftiness. Such as these all stories remember with a sad character ; and every narrative conceining David, which would end in honour and fair report, is sullied with the remembrances of Bathsheba; and the Holy Ghost hath called him " a man after God's own heart, save in the matter of Uriah :" there, indeed, he was a man after his own heart ; even then, when his reason was stolen from him by passion, and his religion was suUied by the beauties of a fair woman. I wish we lived in an age, in which the people were to be treated with con- cerning renouncing the single actions of sin, and the seldom interruptions of piety. Men are taught to say, that every
40 OF c;iio\VTii IN SIN : ou, tiiE several
man sins in every action he does ; and this is one of the doctrines, lor tlio believing* of which lie shall be accounted a Li;ood nr.in : and upon tliis ground it is Cjisy for men to allow themselves some sins, when, in all cases and in every action, it is imavoidable. 1 shall say nothing of the question, save that the Scriptures reckon otherwise ; and in the accounts of David's life reckon but one great sin ; and in Zachary and Elizabeth give a testimony of an unblamable conversation; and llczekiah did not make his confession when he prayed to Clod in his sickness, and said, " he had walked uprightly before God :" and, therefore, St. Paul, after his conversion, designed and laboured hard, and therefore, certainly, with hopes to accomplish it, that " he might keep his conscience void of offence, both towards God and towards man ;" and one of Christ's great purposes is, " to present his whole church pure and spotless to the throne of grace ;" and St. John the Baptist offended none but Herod ; and no pious Christian brought a bill of accusation against the holy virgin- mother. Certain it is, that God hath given us precepts of such a holiness and such a purity, such a meekness and such humility, as hath no pattern but Christ, no precedent but the purities of God : and, therefore, it is intended we should live with a life, whose actions are not chequered with white and black, half sin and half virtue. God's sheep are not like Jacob's fiock, * streaked and spotted ;' it is an entire holiness tiiat God requires, and will not endure to have a holy course interrupted by the dishonour of a base and ignoble action. I do not mean that a man's life can be as pure as the sun, or the rays of celestial Jerusalem ; but like the moon, in which there are spots, but they are no deformity ; a lessening only and an abatement of light, no cloud to hinder and draw a veil before its face, but sometimes it is not so serene and bright as at other times. Every man hath his indiscretions and infirmities, his arrests and sudden incursions, his neis^h- bourhoods and semblances of sin, his little violences to reason, and peevish melancholy, and humorous, fantastic discourses ; unaptness to a devout prayer, his fondness to judge favourably in his own cases, little deceptions, and voluntary and involuntary cozenages, ignorances, and inad- vertences, careless hours, and unwatchful seasons. But no good man ever commits one act of adultery ; no godly man
STATES AND DEGREES OF SINNERS, 8CC. 47
will, at any time, be drunk ; or if he be, he ceases to be a godly man, and is run into the confines of death, and is sick at heart, and may die of the sickness, die eternally. This happens more frequently in persons of an infant-piety, when the virtue is not corroborated by a long abode, and a con- firmed resolution, and an usual victory, and a triumphant grace ; and the longer we are accustomed to piety, the more infrequent will be the little breaches of folly, and a returning to sin. But as the needle of a compass, when it is directed to its beloved star, at the first addresses waves on either side, and seems indifferent in his courtship of the rising or declining sun ; and when it seems first determined to the north, stands awhile trembling, as if it suffered inconvenience in the first fruition of its desires, and stands not still in full enjoyment till after first a great variety of motion, and then an undisturbed posture ; so is the piety and so is the con- version of a man, wrought by degrees and several steps of imperfection : and at first our choices are wavering ; con- vinced by the grace of God, and yet not persuaded ; and then persuaded, but not resolved ; and then resolved, but deferring to begin ; and then beginning, but, as all begin- nings are, in weakness and uncertainty ; and we fly out often into huge indiscretions, and look back to Sodom, and long to return to Egypt •, and when the storm is quite over, we find little bubblings and unevennesses upon the face of the waters, we often weaken our own purposes by the returns of sin ; and we do not call ourselves conquerors, till by the long possession of virtues it is a strange and unusual, and, there- fore, an uneasy and unpleasant thing, to act a crime. When Polemon of Athens, by chance coming into the schools of Xenocrates, was reformed upon the hearing of that one lecture, some wise men gave this censure of him : " Pere- grinatus est hujus animus in nequitia, non habitavit :" " His mind wandered in wickedness, and travelled in it, but never dwelt there." The same is the case of some men ; they make inroads into the enemy's country, not like enemies to spoil, but like Dinah, to be satisfied with the stranger beau- ties of the land, till their virtues are deflowered, and they enter into tragedies, and are possessed by death and intole- rable sorrows. But because this is like the fate of Jacob's daughter, and happens not by design, but folly ; not by
48 OF GROWTH IN SIN : OH, THE SEVERAL
malice, but surprise; not by the strength of will, but by the weakness of grace ; and yet carries a man to the same place whither a great vice usually does ; it is liugely pitiable, and the persons are to be treated with compassion, and to be assisted by the following considerations and exercises.
First, let us consider, that for a good man to be overtaken in a single crime is the greatest dishonour and unthriftiness in the whole world. " As a fly in a box of ointment, so is a little folly to him who is accounted wise," said the son of Sirach. No man chides a fool for his weaknesses, or scorns a child for playing with flies, and preferring the present appetite before all the possibilities of to-morrow's event: but men wondered when they saw Socrates ride upon a cane ; and when Solomon laid his wisdom at the foot of Pharaoh's daughter, and changed his glory for the interest of wanton sleep, he became the discourse of heaven and earth : and men think themselves abused, and their expectation cozened, when they see a wise man do the actions of a fool, and a good man seized upon by the dishonours of a crime. But the loss of his reputation is the least of his evil. It is the greatest improvidence in the world to let a healthful con- stitution be destroyed in the surfeit of one night. For al- though when a man, by the grace of God and a long en- deavour, hath obtained the habit of Christian graces, every single sin does not spoil the habit of virtue, because that cannot be lost but as it was gotten, that is, by parts and succession ; yet every crime interrupts the acceptation of the grace, and makes the man to enter into the state of enmity and displeasure with God. The habit is only les- sened naturally, but the value of it is wholly taken away. And in this sense is that of Josephus, To yaf ett) //.ifc^oTg nai IJi.iya'hoig Tra^avo/jLeTv lao^uvaiJ.ov karr which St. James well renders, " He that keeps the whole law, and offends in one point, is guilty of all*;" that is, if he prevaricates in any commandment, the transgression of which, by the law, was capital, — he shall as certainly die as if he broke the whole law. And the same is the case of those single actions which the school calls deadly sins, that is, actions of choice in any sin that hath a name ; and makes a kind, and hath a
" Chap. ii. 10.
STATES AXD DEGREES OF SINNERS, ^C. 49
distinct matter. And sins once pardoned return again to all the purposes of mischief, if we, by a new sin, forfeit God's former loving-kindness. " When the righteous man turneth from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, all his righteousness that he hath done, shall not be remembered : in the trespass that he hath trespassed, and in the sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he die''.' Now then consider how great a fool he is, who, when he h th, with much labour and by suffering violence, contradicted his first desires ; when his spirit hath been in agony and care, and, with much uneasiness, hath denied to please the lower man ; when, with many prayers and groans, and innumerable sighs, and strong cryings to God, with sharp sufferances and a long severity, he hath obtained of God to begin his pardon and restitution, and that he is in some hopes to return to God's favour, and that he shall become an heir of heaven ; when some of his amazing fears and distracting cares begin to be taken off*; when he begins to think that now it is not certain he shall perish in a sad eternity, but he hopes to be saved, and he considers how excellent a condition that is ; he hopes when he dies, to go to God, and that he shall never enter into the possession of devils ; and this state, which is but the twilight of a glorious felicity, he hath obtained with great labour, and much care, and infinite danger : that this man should throw all this structure down, and then, when he is ready to reap the fruits of his labours, by one indiscreet action to set fire upon his corn-fields, and destroy all his dear-earned hopes, for the madness and loose wanderings of an hour : this man is an indiscreet gamester, who doubles his stake as he thrives, and, at one throw, is dispossessed of all the prosperities of a lucky hand.
Tliey thaj; are poor, as Plutarch observes, are careless of little things ; because, by saving them, they think no great moments can accrue to their estates; and they, despairing to be rich, think such frugality impertinent : but they that feel their banks swell, and are within the possibilities of wealth, think it useful if they reserve the smaller minutes of expense, knowing that every thing will add to their heap. But then, after long sparing, in one night to throw away the wealth of
'' Ezck. xviii. 24. V()[.. VI. E
50 OF GROWTH IN SIN: OK, THE SEVKUAL
a long purchase, is an imprudence becoming' none but such persons who are to be kept under tutors and guardians, and such as are to be chastised by their servants, and to be punished by them whom they clothe and feed.
aXXtt xai EjUTTnf
These men sow much and gather little, stay long and return empty ; and after a long voyage they are dashed in pieces, when their vessels are laden with the spoils of pro- vinces. Every deadly sin destroys the rewards of a seven- years' piety. I add to this, that God is more impatient at a sin committed by his servants, than at many by persons that are his enemies ; and an uncivil answer from a son to a father, from an obliged person to a benefactor, is a greater indecency, than if any enemy should storm his house, or revile him to his head. Augustus Csesar taxed all the world, and God took no public notices of it; but when David taxed and numbered a petty province, it was not to be expiated without a plague ; because such persons, besides the direct sin, add the circumstance of ingratitude to God, who hath redeemed them from their vain conversation, and from death, and from hell, and consigned them to the inheritance of sons, and given them his grace and his Spirit, and many periods of comfort, and a certain hope, and visible earnests of immor- tality. Nothing is baser than that such a person, against his reason, against his interest, against his God, against so many obligations, against his custom, against his very habits and acquired inclinations, should do an action
Quam nisi seductis neqneas committeie divis ;
which a man must for ever be ashamed of, and, like Adam, must run from God himself to do it, and depart from the state in which he had placed all his hopes, and to which he had designed all his labours. The consideration is effective enough, if we sum up the particulars ; for he that hath lived w'ell, and then falls into a deliberate sin, is infinitely dis- honoured, is most imprude-at, most unsafe, and most un- thankful.
« Horn. 11. e. 297.
STATES AXD DEGREES OF SINNERS, &e. 51
2. Let persons tempted to the single instances of sin in the midst of a laudable life, be very careful that they suffer not themselves to be drawn aside by the eminence of great examples. For some think drunkenness hath a little honesty derived unto it by the example of Noah ; and adultery is not so scandalous and intolerably dishonourable, since Bathsheba bathed, and David was defiled ; and men think a flight is no cowardice, if a general turns his head and runs :
" Pompeio fugiente timent. "—Lucan. 1. 522.
Well might all the gowned " Romans fear, when Pompey fled." And who is there that can hope to be more righteous than David, or stronger than Sampson, or have less hypo- crisy than St. Peter, or be more temperate than Noah? These great examples bear men of weak discourses and weaker resolutions from the severity of virtues. But, as Diagoras, to them that showed to him the votive garments of those that had escaped shipwreck, upon their prayers and vows to Neptune, answered, that they kept no account of those that prayed and vowed, and yet were drowned : so do these men keep catalogues of those few persons, who broke the thread of a fair life in sunder with the violence of a great crime, and, by the grace of God, recovered, and repented, and lived ; but they consider not concerning those infinite numbers of men, who died in their first fit of sickness, who, after a fair voyage, have thrown themselves over-board, and perished in a sudden wildness. One said well, " Si quid Socrates aut Aristippus contra morem et consuetudinem fecerunt, idem sibi ne arbitretur quis licere : magnis enini illi et divinis bonis banc licentiam assequebantur :" " If Socrates did any unusual thing, it is not for thee, who art of an ordinary virtue, to assume the same license ; for he, by a divine and excellent life, hath obtained leave or pardon re- spectively" for what tliou must never hope for, till thou hast arrived to the same glories. First, be as devout as David, as good a Christian as St. Peter, and then thou wilt not dare, with design, to act that which they fell into by surprise ; and if thou dost fall as they did, by that time thou hast also repented like them, it may be said concerning thee, that thou didst fall and break thy bones, but God did heal thee and pardon thee. Remember that all the damned souls shall
52 OF (JROWTH IN SIN I OR, TIli: SEVERAL
bear an eternity of torments for the pleasures of a short sinfuhiess ; but for a single transient action to die for ever, is an intolerable exchange, and tlie effect of so great a folly, that whosoever falls into it, and then considers it, it will make him mad and distracted for ever.
3. Remember, that since no man can please God, or be partaker of any promises, or reap the reward of any actions in the returns of eternity, imless he performs to God an entire duty, according to the capacities of a man so taught, and so tempted, and so assisted ; such a person must be curious, that he be not cozened with the duties and perform- ances of any one relation. 1. Some there are, that think all our religion consists in prayers and public or private offices of devotion, and not in moral actions, or intercourses of justice and temperance, of kindness and friendships, of sin- cerity and liberality, of chastity and humility, of repentance and obedience. Indeed no humour is so easy to be counter- feited as devotion ; and yet no hypocrisy is more common among men, nor any so useless as to God : for it being an address to him alone, who knows the heart and all the secret purposes, it can do no service in order to heaven, so long as it is without tlie power of godliness, and the energy and vivacity of a holy life. God will not suffer us to commute a duty, because all is his due ; and religion shall not pay for want of temperance. If the devoutest hermit be proud; or he that ' fasts thrice in the week,' be uncharitable once; or he that gives much to the poor, gives also too much liberty to himself; he hath planted a fair garden, and invited a wild boar to refresh himself under the shade of the fruit-trees ; and his guest, being something rude, h^th disordered his paradise, and made it become a wilderness. 2. Others there are, that judge themselves by the censures that kings and princes give concerning them, or as they are spoken of by their betters ; and so make false judgments concerning their condition. For, our betters, to whom we show our best parts, to whom we speak with caution and consider what we represent, they see our arts and our dressings, but nothing of our nature and deformities : trust not their censures concerning thee; but to thy own opinion of thyself, whom thou knowest in thy retire- ments, and natural peevishness^ and unhandsome inclinations, and secret baseness. 3. Some men have been admired
STATES AND DEGREES OF SINNERS, &C. 53
abroad, in whom the wife and the servant never saw any- thing excellent : a rare judge and a good commonwealth's man in the streets and public meetings, and a just man to his neighbour, and charitable to the poor ; for in all these places the man is observed, and kept in awe by the sun, by hght, and by voices : but this man is a tyrant at home, an unkind husband, an ill father, an imperious master. And such men are like ' prophets in their own countries, not honoured at home ; and can never be honoured by God, who will not endure that many virtues should excuse a few vices, or that any of his servants shall take pensions of the devil, and in the profession of his service do his enemy single advantages.
4. He that hath passed many stages of a good life, to prevent his being tempted to a single sin, must be very careful that he never entertain his spirit with the remem- brances of his past sin, nor amuse it with the fantastic apprehensions of the present. When the Israehtes fancied the sapidness and relish of the flesh-pots, they longed to taste and to return.
So when a Libyan tiger, drawn from his wilder foragings, is shut up, and taught to eat civil meat, and suffer the autho- rity of a man, he sits down tamely in his prison, and pays to his keeper fear and reverence for his meat : but if he chance to come again, and taste a draught of warm blood, he pre- sently leaps into his natural cruelty. He scarce abstains from eating those hands, that brought him discipline and food''. So is the nature of a man made tame and gentle by the grace of God, and reduced to reason, and kept in awe by religion and laws, and, by an awful virtue, is taught to forget those alluring and sottish relishes of sin : but if he diverts from his path, and snatches handfuls from the wanton vineyards, and remembers the lasciviousness of his unwhole- some food, that pleased his childish palate ; then he grows sick again, and hungry after unwholesome diet, and longs for
<i Sic ubi, desuetae sylvis, in carcere c;lanso, Mansiievere fera;, et vultiis posuere minaces, Atque liominein didicere pati ; si tonida parvus Venit in oia cmor, redeunt rabiesque furorque, Admonita-que tumcnt gnstato sanguine fauces ; Fervct, et a tiepido vix abstinet ira magistio :— /'Aajs. 4. 237.
54 OF GKOWTM IN SIN : OR, THE 8EVERAI-
the apples of Sodom. A man must walk througli the world without eyes or ears, fancy or appetite, but such as are created and sanctified by the grace of (iod; and being once made a new man, he must serve all the needs of nature by the appetites and faculties, of grace ; nature must be wholly a servant : and we must so look, towards the de- liciousness of our religion and the ravishments of heaven, that our memory must be for ever useless to the affairs and perceptions of sin. We cannot stand, we cannot live, unless we be curious and watchful in this particular.
By these, and all other arts of the spirit, if we stand upon our guard, never indulging to ourselves one sin be- cause it is but one, as knowing that one sin brought in death upon all the world, and one sin brought slavery upon the posterity of Cham ; and always fearing lest death surprise us in that one sin; we shall, by the grace of God, either not need, or else easily perceive the effects and blessings of that compassion which God reserves, in the secrets of his mercy, for such persons whom his grace hath ordained and disposed with excellent dispositions unto life eternal.
These are the sorts of men which are to be used with compassion, concerning whom we are to make a difference ; " making a difference," so says the text. And it is of high concernment that we should do so, that we may relieve the infirmities of the men, and relieve their sicknesses, and transcribe the copy of the Divine mercy, who loves not to *' quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed." For although all sins are against God's commandments directly, or by certain consequents, by line, or by analogy ; yet they are not all of the same tincture and mortality.
Nee vincit ratio hoc, tantiiudeni nt peccet idemque, Qui tcncros caules alieni fiegerit horti, Et qui noctiiinus divOm sacra legerit.
* He that robs a garden of coleworts, and carries away an armful of spinage, does not deserve hell, as he that steals the chalice from the church, or betrays a prince ;' and therefore men are distinguished accordingly.
Est inter Taiiaim qiiiddatn soceniniqiie \"iseil\.— Hor. S. l. l. 105.
The poet that Sejanus condenmed for dishonouring the memory of xAgamemnon, was not an equal criminal with
STATES AND DEGREES OF SINNERS, &C. 55
Catiline or Gracchus : and Simon Magus and the Nicolaitans committed crimes which God hated more than the complying of St. Barnabas, or the dissimulation of St. Peter ; and therefore God does treat these persons severally. Some of these are restrained with a fit of sickness, some with a great loss, and in these there are degrees ; and some arrive at death. And in this manner God scourged the Corinthians, for their irreverent and disorderly receiving the holy sacra- ment. For although even the least of the sins that I have discoursed of, will lead to death eternal, if their course be not interrupted, and the disorder chastised ; yet because we do not stop their progress instantly, God many times does, and visits us with proportionable judgments ; and so not only checks the rivulet from swelling into rivers and a vastness, but plainly tells us, that although smaller crimes shall not be punished with equal severity as the greatest, yet even in hell there are eternal rods as well as eternal scorpions ; and the smallest crime that we act with an infant malice and manly deliberation, shall be revenged with the lesser strokes of wrath, but yet with the infliction of a sad eternity. But then that we also should make a difference, is a precept concerning church-discipline, and therefore not here proper to be considered, but only as it may concern our own parti- culars in the actions of repentance, and our brethren in fraternal correction.
adsit
Regiila, peccatis quae poenas irroget asqiias,
Nc scutica dignum horribili sectere tiagello. — Hor. S. 1. 3. H5.
Let us be sure that we neglect no sin, but repent for every one, and judge ourselves for every one, according to the proportion of the malice, or the scandal, or the danger. And although in this there is no fear that we would be excessive ; yet, when we are to reprove a brother, we are sharp enough, and, either *by pride or by animosity, by the itch of government or the indignation of an angry mind, we run beyond the gentleness of a Christian monitor. We must remember, that by Christ's law some are to be admonished privately, some to be shamed and corrected publicly ; and, beyond these, there is an abscission, or a cutting off from the communion of faithful people, " a del'vering over to Satan." And to this purpose is that old reading of the
56 OF CiKOWTII IN sin: ok, TliE SEVERAL
words of my text, which is still in some copies, kui roug /uev c^eyXtTs ^lax^m/xevoug, " Reprove them sharply, when they are convinced," or " separate by sentence." But because tliis also is a design of mercy acted with an instance of discipline, it is a punishment of the flesh, that the soul may be saved in the day of the Lord ; it means the same with the usual reading, and with the last words of the text, and teaches us our usaoe towards the worst of recoverable sinners.
II. " Others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire." Some sins there are, which in their own nature are damnable, and some are such as will certainly bring a man to damna- tion : the first are curable, but with much danger ; the second are desperate and irrecoverable. When a man is violently tempted, and allured with an object that is proportionable and pleasant to his vigorous appetite, and his unabated, unmortified nature, this man falls into death ; but yet we pity him, as we pity a thief that robs for his necessity : this man did not tempt himself, but his spirit suffers violence, and his reason is invaded, and his infirmities are mighty, and his aids not yet prevailing. But when this single temptation hath prevailed for a single instance, and leaves a relish upon the palate, and this produces another, and that also is fruitful, and swells into a family and kindred of sin, that is, it grows first into approbation, then to a clear assent, and an un- troubled conscience, thence into frequency, from thence unto a custom, and easiness, and a habit; this man is fallen into the fire. There are also some single acts of so great a malice, that they must suppose a man habitually sinful, before he could arrive at that height of wickedness. No man begins his sinful course with killing of his father or his prince : and Simon Magus had preambulatory impieties ; he was covetous and ambitious long before he offered to buy the Holy Ghost. " Nemo repente fuit turpissimus." And although such ac- tions may have in them the malice and the mischief, the disorder and the wrong, the principle and the permanent effect of a habit and a long course of sin ; yet because they never, or very seldom, go alone, but after the predisposition of other ushering crimes, we shall not amiss comprise them under the name of habitual sins : for such they are, either formally or equivalently. And if any man hath fallen into a sinful habit, into a course and order of sinning, his case is
STATES AND DEGREES OF SINNERS, &C. 67
little less than desperate ; but that little hope that is rema- nent, hath its degree, according to the infancy or the growth of the habit.
1. For all sins less than habitual, it is certain a pardon is ready to penitent persons ; that is, to all that sin in ignorance or in infirmity, by surprise or inadvertency, in smaller in- stances or infrequent returns, with involuntary actions or imperfect resolutions. 'EkteIvixts rag x^^^^i "M-^^ '^P°i '''°^ auro- K^ccro^a @£0V, iKSTsuovreg auTov (^eojv ysvEcrBcci, si ri anovTsg ^^afTSTS, said Clemens in his epistle : " Lift up your hands to al- mighty God, and pray him to be merciful to you in all things, when you sin unwillingly ;" that is, in which you sin with an imperfect choice. For no man sins against his will directly, but when his understanding is abused by an inevitable or an intolerable weakness, or their wills follow their blind guide, and are not the perfect mistresses of their own actions ; and therefore leave a way and easiness to repent, and be ashamed of them, and therefore a possibility and readiness 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 St. James ; that is, in many smaller matters, in matters of sur- prise or inevitable infirmity. And therefore Possidonius said, that St. Austin was used to say, that " he would not have even good and holy priests go from this world without the susception of equal and worthy penances :" and the most innocent life in our account is not a competent instrument of a peremptory confidence, and of justifying ourselves. " I am guilty of nothing," said St. Paul ; that is, of no ill intent, or negligence, in preaching the Gospel ; "' yet I am not hereby justified;" for God, it may be, knows many little irregularities and insinuations of sin. In this case we are to make a difference ; but humility, and prayer, and watch- fulness, are the direct instruments of the expiation of such sins.
But then, secondly, whosoever sins without these abating circumstances, that is, in great instances, in which a man's understanding cannot be cozened, as in drunkenness, murder, adultery ; and in the frequent repetitions of any sort of sin whatsoever, in which a man's choice cannot be surprised, and in which it is certain there is a love of the sin, and a
5S OF (iROWTll IN- SIN ! OR, IHE SEVKllAF.
delight in it, and ii power over a man's resolutions; in these cases it is a niiraciilous grace, and an extraordinary change, that nnist tm-n tlie current and the stream of" the iniquity ; and when it is begun, the pardon is more uncertain, and the repentance more ditlicult, and the effect much abated, and the man must be made miserable, that he may not be ac- cursed for ever.
1. I say, his pardon is uncertain; because there are some sins which are unpardonable (as I shall show), 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 i'ear and trembling;. It was the case of Simon Magus : *' Repent, and ask pardon for thy sin, if per- adventure the thought of thy heart may be forgiven thee*." If peradce lit lire ; 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. Cain's sin w as of the same nature : " It is ";reater than it can be forgiven :" his passion and his fear was too severe and decretory ; it was pardonable, but truly we never find that God did pardon it.
2. But besides this, it is uncertain in the pardon, because it may be the time of pardon is past; 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, apostasy, and ingratitude ; and it may be, ' thy day is past,' as was Jerusalem's 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 ' necessario 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 only condition of getting pardon. So that you may perceive,
' Act!!, viii. 22.
STATES AND DEGREES OF SINNERS, &C. 59
that not only 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 : ex ToS TTufoi aoTra^ovTeg. If you stay a day, it may be, you stay too long.
4. To which I add 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 hver, wheel themselves upon the wound, and with anger and malicious revenge strike the deadly barb 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 vicious person struck with a deadly wound, and his own hands force it into the entertainments of the heart ; and because it is painful to draw it forth by a sharp and salutary repentance, he still rolls 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 judgments and an unalterable decree.
But as the pardon of these sins is uncertain, so the con- ditions 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 niniium faciles, qui tiistia ciimina caedis Tolli fluminea posse piitatis aqua !
Bion, seeing a prince weep and tearing his hair for sorrow, asked if baldness would cure his grief? Such pompous sor- rows may be good indices, but no perfect instruments of restitution. St. 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 fifth chapter s, he
' Chap, iv.l, S. « Ver. nlf.
CO OT GROWTH IN SIN ; OR, THE SEVERAL
ini])lies also a possibility of pardon to an habitual sinner, whom he calls tov 7r>^a.vyiBBVTx ano rijf b^ou rvq aXYiSeiag, " one that ens from thr truth," that is, fr(un the life of a Cin-istian, the life of the Spirit of truth : and he adds, 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 restitu- tion of such persons, is humility and humiliation, penances and sharp penitential sorrows, and afflictions, resisting the devil, returning to God, weeping and mourning, confessions, and prayers, as you may read at large in the fourth and fifth chapters : and there it is that you shall find it a duty, that such persons should * be afflicted,' and should ' confess to their brethren :' and these are harder conditions than God requires in the former cases ; these are a kind of fiery trial.
I have now done with my text ; and should add no more, but that the nature of these sins is such, that they may increase in their weight, and duration, and malice, and then they increase in mischief and fatality, and so go beyond the text. Cicero said well, " Ipsa consuetudo assentiendi peri- culosa esse videtur et lubrica'':" " The very custom of con- senting in the matters of civility is dangerous and slippery," and will quickly engage us in error : and then we think we are bound to defend them; or else we are made flatterers by it, and so become vicious : and we love our own vices that we are used to, and keep them till they are incurable, that is, till we will never repent of them : and some men resolve never to repent, that is, they resolve they will not be saved, they tread under foot the blood of the everlasting covenant. Those persons are in the fire too, but they will not be pulled out : concerning whom God's prophets must say as once concerning Babylon, " Curavimus, "et non est sanata ; dere- linquamus eam :" — 'We would have healed them, but they w ouid not be healed ; let us leave them in their sins, and they shall have enough of it.' Only this : those that put themselves out of the condition of mercy, are not to be endured in Christian societies ; they deserve it not, and it is not safe that they should be suffered.
•> Acad. Qii. lib. iv. 68.
STATES AND DEGREES OF SINNERS, &C. 61
But besides all this, I shall name one thing more unto
you ; for
nimquam adeo foedis adeoqne pudendis
Utimiir exeniplis, ut non pejora supersint.— Jwr. 8. 183.
There are some single actions of sin of so great a malice, that in their own nature they are beyond the limit of Gospel pardon : they are not such things, for the pardon of which God entered into covenant, because they are such sins which put a man into perfect indispositions and incapacities of entering into or being in the covenant. In the first ages of the world atheism was of that nature, it was against their whole relioion ; and the sin is worse now, ao;ainst the whole religion still, and against a brighter light. In the ages after the flood, idolatry was also just such another : for God was known first only as the Creator ; then he began to manifest himself in special contracts with men, and he quickly was declared the God of Israel ; and idolatry perfectly destroyed all that religion, and therefore was never pardoned entirely, but God did visit it upon them that sinned ; and when he pardoned it in some degrees, yet he also punished it in some : and yet rebellion against the supreme power of Moses and Aaron was worse ; for that also was a perfect destruction of the whole religion, because it refused to submit to those hands, upon which God had placed all the relioion and all the government. And now, if we would know in the Gospel what answers these precedent sins ; I answer, first, the same sins acted by a resolute hand and heart are worse now than ever they were : and a third or fourth is also to be added ; and that is apostasy, or a volun- tary malicious renouncing the faith. The church hath often declared that sin to be unpardonable. Witchcraft, or final impenitence and obstinacy in any sin, are infallibly despe- rate; and in general, and by a certain parity of reason, whatsoever does destroy charity, or the good life of a Christian, with the same general venom and deletery as apostasy destroys faith : and he that is a renegado from charity, is as unpardonable as he that returns to solemn atheism or infidelity ; for all that is directly the sin against the Holy Ghost, that is, a throwing that away whereby only we can be Christians, whereby only we can hope to be saved. To " speak a word against the Holy Ghost," in the Pharisees was declared unpardonable, because it was such a word.
62 THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE.
which, if it had been true or beheved, would have destroyed the whole relii:;ion ; for they said that Christ wrought by Beelzebub, and by consequence did not come from God. He that destroys all the whole order of priesthood, destroys one of the greatest parts of the religion, and one of the greatest effects of the Holy Ghost : he that destroys govern- ment, destroys another part. But that we may come nearer to ourselves: To " quench the Spirit of God" is worse than to speak some words against him ; to " grieve the Spirit of God" is a part of the same impiety; to " resist the Holy Ghost" is another part : and if we consider that every great sin does this in proportion, it would concern us to be careful lest we fall into " presumptuous sins, lest they get the domi- nion over us." Out of this that I have spoken you may easily gather what sort of men those are, who cannot be * snatched from the fire ;' for whom, as St. John says, " we are not to pray ;" and how near men come to it, that con- tinue in any known sin. If I should descend to particulars, I might lay a snare to scrupulous and nice consciences. This only : every confirmed habitual sinner does manifest the Divine justice in punishing the sins of a short life with a never-dying worm and a never-quenched flame ; because he hath an affection to sin, that no time will diminish, but such as would increase to eternal ages ; and accordingly, as any man hath a degree of love, so he hath lodged in his soul a spark, which, unless it be speedily and effectively quenched, will break forth into unquenchable fire.
SERMON XVIII.
THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE.
Tor what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in ex- change for his soul? — Matt. xvi. 26.
When the eternal mercy of God had decreed to rescue mankind from misery and infelicity, and so triumphed over his own justice ; the excellent wisdom of God resolved to
THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE. 63
do it in ways contradictory to the appetites and designs of man, that it also might triumph over our weaknesses and imperfect conceptions. So God decreed to glorify his mercy by curing our sins, and to exalt his wisdom by the reproof of our ignorance, and the representing upon what weak and false principles we had built our hopes and expectations of felicity ; pleasure and profit, victory over our enemies, riches and pompous honours, power and revenge, desires according to sensual appetites, and prosecutions violent and passionate of those appetites, health and long life, free from trouble, without poverty or persecution.
Vitani quiE faciunt beatiorcm,
Juciindissinie Maitialis, baec sunt. — Mart x. 47.
These are the measures of good and evil, the object of our hopes and fears, the securing our content, and the portion of this world ; and for the other, let it be as it may. But the blessed Jesus, — having made revelations of an immortal duration, of another world, and of a strange restitution to it, even by the resurrection of the body, and a new investiture of the soul with the same upper garment, clarified and made pure, so as no fuller on earth can whiten it; — hath also preached a new philosophy, hath cancelled all the old prin- ciples, reduced the appetites of sense to the discourses of reason, and heightened reason to the sublimities of the Spirit, teaching us abstractions and immaterial conceptions, giving us new eyes, and new objects, and new proportions : for now sensual pleasures are not delightful, riches are dross, honours are nothing but the appendages of virtue, and in relation to it are to receive their account. But now if you would enjoy life, you must die ; if you would be at ease, you must take up Christ's cross, and conform to his sufferings ; if you would * save your life,' you must ' lose it ;' and if you would be rich, you must abound in good works, you must be ' poor in spirit,' and despise the world, and be rich unto God : for whatsoever is contrary to the purchases and affections of this world, is an endearment of our hopes in the world to come. And, therefore, he having stated the question so, that either we must quit this world or the other ; our affections, I mean, and adherences to this, or our interest and hopes of the other : the choice is rendered very easy by the words of my
64 THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE.
text, because the distance is not less than infinite, and the com|)aiison hath leniis of a vast difference ; lieaven and hell, eternity and a moment, vanity and real feUcity, life and death eternal, all that can be hoped for, and all that can be feared ; these are the terms of our choice : and if a man have his wits about him, and be not drunk with sensuality and senselessness, he need not much to dispute before he pass the sentence. For nothinn" can be given to us to recom- pense the loss of heaven; and if our souls be lost, there is nothing remaining to us whereby we can be happy.
' What sluxU it profit a man V or, ' What shall a man give ?' Is there any exchange for a man's soul ? The question is an auiria-ii of the negative. Nothing can be given for an aI'Ta^^a7^a, or * a price,' to satisfy for its loss.
The blood of the Son of God was given to recover it. Or as an avicoo^ayyia, to God ; and when our souls were forfeit to him, nothing less than the life and passion of God and man could pay the price, I say, to God ; who yet was not con- cerned in the loss, save only that such was his goodness, that it pitied him to see his creature lost. But to us what shall be the avrax\ayixa 1 what can make us recompense when we have lost our own souls, and are lost in a miserable eternity ? What can then recompense us ? Not all the world, not ten thousand worlds : and of this that miserable man whose soul is lost, is the best judge. For the question is ot^uvr]TiKov, and hatli a potential signification, and means TToaa av ^uavi' that is. Suppose a man ready to die, condemned to the sentence of a horrid death, heightened with the cir- cumstances of trembling and amazement, ' what would he give' to save his life? " Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and all that a man hath, will he give for his life." And this turned to a proverb among the Jews ; for so the last words of the text are, t/ ^ucrei avO^uTrog awaKKayfji.a T>?f -i^v/y^q ; which proverb being usually meant concerning a temporal death, and in- tended to represent the sadnesses of a condemned person, our blessed Saviour fits to his own purpose, and translates to the signification of death eternal, which he first revealed clearly to the world. And because no interest of the world can make a man recompense for his life, because to lose that makes him incapable of enjoying the exchange, (and he were a strange fool, who, having no design upon immortality or
THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE. 65
virtue, should be willing to be hanged for a thousand pounds ^ per annum,') this argument increases infinitely in the purpose of our blessed Saviour ; and to gain the world, and to lose our souls, in the Christian sense, is infinitely more madness, and a worse exchange, than when our souls signify nothing but a temporal life. And although possibly the indefinite hopes of Elysium, or an honourable name, might tempt some hardy persons to leave this world, hoping for a better con- dition, even among the heathens ; yet no excuse will acquit a Christian from madness, if, for the purchase of this world, he lose his eternity.
Here, then, first, we will consider the propositions of the exchange, the " world and a man's soul," by way of sup- position, supposing all that is propounded were obtained, " the whole world." Secondly, we will consider, what is likely to be obtained ^ really' and ' indeed' of the world, and what are really the miseries of a lost soul. For it is pro- pounded in the text, by way of supposition, " if a man should gain the world," which no man ever did nor ever can; and he that gets most, gets too little to be exchanged for a temporal life. And, thirdly, I shall apply it to your practice, and make material considerations.
1. First, then, suppose a man gets all the world, what is it that he gets ? It is a bubble and a fantasm, and hath no reality beyond a present transient use ; a thing that is im- possible to be enjoyed, because its fruits and usages are transmitted to us by parts and by succession. He that hath all the world, (if we can suppose such a man,) cannot have a dish of fresh summer-fruits in the midst of winter, not so much as a green fig : and very much of its possessions is so hid, so fugacious, and of so uncertain purchase, that it is like the riches of the sea to the lord of the shore ; all the fish and wealth within all its hoUownesses are his, but he is never the better for what he cannot get : all the shell-fishes that pro>-. duce pearl, produce them not for him ; and the bowels of the earth shall hide her treasures in undiscovered retirements.: so that it will signify as much to this great purchaser to be entitled to an inheritance in the upper region of the air ; he is so far from possessing all its riches, that he does not so much as know of them, nor understand the philosophy of her minerals.
VOL. VI. V
ijG THK FOOLISH liXCIIANGE.
2. I consider, that he that is the greatest possessor in the world, enjoys its best and most noble parts, and those which are of most excellent perfection, but in common with the inferior persons, and the most despicable of his kingdom. Can tiie greatest prince enclose the sun, and set one little star in his cabinet for his own use, or secure to himself the gentle and benign influences of any one constellation ? Are not liis subjects' fields bedewed with the same showers that water his gardens of pleasure ?
Nay, those things which he esteems his ornament, and the singularity of his possessions, are they not of more use to others than to himself? For suppose his garments splen- did and sl'.ining, like the robe of a cherub, or the clothing of the fields, all that he that wears them enjoys, is, that they keep him warm, and clean, and modest ; and all this is done by clean and less pompous vestments ; and the beauty of them, which distinguishes him from others, is made to please the eyes of the beholders ; and he is like a fair bird, or the meretricious painting of a Avanton woman, made wholly to be looked on, that is, to be enjoyed by every one but himself: and the fairest face and the sparkling eye cannot perceive or enjoy their own beauties but by reflection. It is I that am pleased with beholding his gaiety ; and the gay man, in his greatest bravery, is only pleased because I am pleased with the sight ; so borrowing his little and imaginary complacency from the delight that I have, not from any inherency of his own possession.
The poorest artisan of Rome, walking in Ceesar's gardens, had the same pleasures which they ministered to their lord : and although it may be, he was put to gather fruits to eat from another place, yet his other senses were delighted equally with Caesar's : the birds made him as good music, the flowers gave him as sweet smells ; he there sucked as good air, and delighted in the beauty and order of the place, for the same reason and upon the same perception as the prince himself; save only that Caesar paid, for all that plea- sure, vast sums of money, the blood and treasure of a pro- vince, which the poor man had for nothing.
3. Suppose a man lord of all the world (for still we are but in supposition); yet since every thing is received, not according to its own greatness and worth, but according to
THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE. 67
the capacity of the receiver, it signifies very little as to our content or to the riches of our possession. If any man should give to a lion a fair meadovi^ full of hay, or a thousand quince trees ; or should give to the goodly bull, the master and the fairest of the whole herd, a thousand fair stags ; if a man should present to a child a ship laden with Persian carpets, and the ingredients of the rich scarlet ; all these, being dis- proportionate either to the appetite or to the understanding, could add nothing of content, and might declare the freeness of the presenter, but they upbraid the incapacity of the receiver. And so it does if God should give the whole world to any man. He knows not v/hat to do with it ; he can use no more but according to the capacities of a man ; he can use nothing but meat, and drink, and clothes ; and infinite riches, that can give hira changes of raiment every day and a full table, do but give him a clean trencher every bit he eats; it signifies no more but wantonness and variety, to the same, not to any new purposes. He to whom the world can be given to any purpose greater than a private estate can minister, must have new capacities created in him: he needs the understanding of an angel, to take the accounts of his estate ; he had need have a stomach like fire or the grave, for else he can eat no more than one of his healthful subjects; and unless he hath an eye like the sun, and a motion like that of a thought, and a bulk as big as one of the orbs of heaven, the pleasures of his eye can be no greater than to behold the beauty of a little prospect from a hill, or to look upon the heap of gold packed up in a little room, or to dote upon a cabinet of jewels, better than which there is no man that sees at all, but sees every day. For, not to name the beauties and sparkling diamonds of heaven, a man's, or a woman's, or a hawk's eye, is more beauteous and excellent than all the jewels of his crown. And when we remember that a beast, who hath quicker senses than a man, yet hath not so great delight in the fruition of any object, because he wants understanding and the power to make reflex acts upon his perception ; it will follow, that understanding and knowledge is the greatest instrument of pleasure, and he that is most knowing, hath a capacity to become happy, which a less knowing" prince, or a rich person, hath not ; and in this only a man's capacity is capable of enlargement. But
G8 THK lOOLlSll EXCHANGE.
thru, nlthounh lliey only have power to relish any pleasure rightly, who rightly understand the nature, and degrees, and essences, and ends of things ; yet they that do so, under- stand also the vanity and the unsatisfyingness of the things of this world, so that the relish, which could not be great but in a great understanding, appears contemptible, because its vanity appears at the same time ; the understanding sees all, and sees through it.
4. The greatest vanity of this world is remarkable in this, that all its joys summed up together are not big enough to counterpoise the evil of one sharp disease, or to allay a sorrow. For imagine a man great in his dominion as Cyrus-, rich as Solomon, victorious as David, beloved like Titus-, learned as Trismegist, powerful as all the Roman greatness-; all this, and the results of all this, give him no more pleasure, in the midst of a fever or the tortures of the stone, than if he were only lord of a little dish, and a dishful of fountain water. Indeed the excellency of a holy conscience is a comfort and a magazine of joy, so great, that it sweetens the most bitter potion of the world, and makes tortures and death, not only tolerable, but amiable ; and, therefore, to part with this, whose excellency is so great, for the world, that is of so inconsiderable a worth, as not to have in it recompense enough for the sorrows of a sharp disease, is a bargain fit to be made by none but fools and madmen. Antiochus Epiphanes, and Herod the Great, and his grand- child, Agrippa, were sad instances of this great truth ; to every of which it happened, that the grandeur of their fortune, the greatness of their possessions, and the increase of their estate, disappeared and expired like camphire, at their arrest by those several sharp diseases, which covered their heads with cypress, and hid their crowns in an inglo- rious grave.
For what can all the world minister to a sick person, i-f it represents all the spoils of nature, and the choicest deli- cacies of land and sea ? Alas ! his appetite is lost, and to see a pebble-stone is more pleasing to him : for he can look upon that without loathing, but not so upon the most deli- cious fare that ever made famous the Roman luxury. Per- fumes make his head ache ; if you load him with jewels, you press him with a burden as troublesome as his grave-stone :
THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE. 69
and what pleasure is in all those possessions that cannot make his pillow easy, nor tame the rebellion of a tumultuous humour, nor restore the use of a withered hand, or straighten a crooked finger? Vain is the hope of that man, whose soul rests upon vanity and such unprofitable possessions.
5. Suppose a man lord of all this world, a universal monarch, as some princes have lately designed ; all that cannot minister content to him; not that content which a poor contemplative man, by the strength of Christian philo- sophy, and the support of a very small fortune, daily does enjoy. All his power and greatness cannot command the sea to overflow his shores, or to stay from retiring to the opposite strand : it cannot make his children dutiful or wise. And though the world admired at the greatness of Philip the Second's fortune, in the accession of Portugal and the East Indies to his principalities, yet this could not allay the in- felicity of his family, and the unhandsomeness of his con- dition, in having a proud, and indiscreet, and a vicious young prince, likely to inherit all his greatness. And if nothing appears in the face of such a fortune to tell all the world that it is spotted and imperfect ; yet there is, in all conditions of the world, such weariness and tediousness of the spirits, that a man is ever more pleased with hopes of going off from the present, than in dwelling upon that condition, which, it may be, others admire and think beauteous, but none knoweth the smart of it hut he that drank off the little pleasure, and felt the ill relish of the appendage. How many kings have groaned under the burden of their crowns, and have sunk down and died 1 How many have quitted their pompous cares, and retired into private lives, there to enjoy the pleasures of philosophy and religion, which their thrones denied !
And if we consider the supposition of the text, the thing will demonstrate itself. For he who can be supposed the owner and purchaser of the whole world, must either be a king or a private person, A private person can hardly be supposed to be the man ; for if he be subject to another, how can he be lord of the whole world? But if he be a king, it is certain that his cares are greater than any man's, his fears are bigger, his evils mountainous, the accidents that discom- pose him, are more frequent, and sometimes intolerable ; and
70 thl: foolish lxchaxgi:.
of all his great possessions he hath not the greatest use and benefit ; but they are hke a great harvest, which more hibourers must bring in, and more must eat of; only he is the centre of all the cares, and tliey tix upon him, but the proHts run out to all the lines of the circle, to all that are about him, whose good is therefore greater than the good of the prince, because what they enjoy, is the purchase of the prince's care ; and so they feed upon his cost.
Privatiisqne magis vivam te rcge beatus".
Servants live the best hves ; for their care is single, only how to please their lord ; but all the burden of a troublesome providence and ministration makes the outside pompous and more full of ceremony ; but intricates the condition and disturbs the quiet of the great possessor.
And imagine a person as blest as can be supposed upon the stock of worldly interest; when all his accounts are cast up, he differs nothing from his subjects or his servants but in mere circumstance, nothing of reality or substance. He hath more to wait at his tables, or persons of higher rank to do the meanest offices ; more ceremonies of address, a fairer escutcheon, louder titles : but can this multitude of dishes make him have a good stomach, or does not satiety cloy it? when his high diet is such, that he is not capable of being feasted, and knows not the frequent delights and oftener possibilities a poor man hath of being refreshed, while not only his labour makes hunger, and so makes his meat deli- cate (and then it cannot be ill fare, let it be what it will); but also his provision is such, that every little addition is a direct feast to him, while the greatest owner of the world, giving to himself the utmost of his desires, hath nothing left beyond his ordinary, to become the entertainment of his festival days, but more loads of the same meat*". And then let him consider how much of felicity can this condition con- tribute to him, in which he is not farther gone beyond a pei'son of a little fortune in the greatness of his possession, than he is fallen short iii the pleasures and possibility of their enjoyment.
And that is a sad condition, when, like Midas, all that
• Horat. lib. i. Sat. 3. •* Rare volte ha fame chista sempre a tsrvoli.
THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE. 7'X
the man touches shall turn to gold : and his is no better, to whom a perpetual full table, not recreated with fasting, not made pleasant with intervening scarcity, ministers no more good than a heap of gold does ; that is, he hath no benefit of it, save the beholding of it with his eyes. Cannot a man quench his thirst as well out of an urn or chalice as out of a whole river ? It is an ambitious thirst, and a pride of draught, that had rather lay his mouth to Euphrates than to a petty goblet ; but if he had rather, it adds not so much to his content as to his danger and his vanity.
• CO fit.
Plenior lit si qnos delcctct copia justo, Cum ripa simiil avulsos feiat Aufidus acer'^.
For so I have heard of persons whom the river hath swept away, together with the turf they pressed, when they stooped to drown their pride rather than their thirst.
6. But this supposition hath a lessening term. If a man could be born heir of all the world, it were something ; but no man ever was so, except him only who enjoyed the least of it, the Son of Man, that * had not where to lay his head.' But in the supposition it is, " If a man could gain the whole world," which supposes labour and sorrow, trouble and ex- pense, venture and hazard, and so much time expired in its acquist and purchase, that, besides the possession is not secured to us for a term of hfe, so our lives are almost expired before we become estated in our purchases. And, indeed, it is a sad thing to see an ambitious or a covetous person make his life unpleasant, troublesome, and vexatious, to grasp a power bigger than himself, to fight for it with infinite hazards of his life, so that it is a thousand to one but he perishes in the attempt, and gets nothing at all but an untimely grave, a reproachful memory, and an early damnation. But suppose he gets a victory, and that the unhappy party is put to begin a new game ; then to see the fears, the watchfulness, the diligence, the laborious arts to secure a possession, lest the desperate party should recover a desperate game. And sup- pose this, with a new stock of labours, danger, and expense, be seconded by a new success ; then to look upon the new emergencies, and troubles, and discontents, among his friends,
• Hor.i. Sat. 1.53.
72 rilK FOOMSII KXCHANOE.
about parting the spoil ; the envies, the jeulousicK, tlic sh\n- tlers, the uiulerniiiiings, and the perpetual insecurity of his condition: all this, I say, is to see a man take infinite pains to make himself miserable. But if he will be so unlearned as to call this gallantry or a splendid fortune ; yet, by this time, when he remembers he hath certainly spent much of his time in trouble, and how long he shall enjoy this he is still uncertain ; he is not certain of a month ; and suppose it be seven years, yet when he comes to die, and cast up his accounts, and shall find nothimr remaininj]: but a sad remem- brance of evils and troubles past, and expectations of worse, infinitely worse, he must acknowledge himself convinced, that to gain all this world is a fortune not worth the labour and the dangers, the fears and transportations of passions, though the soul's loss be not considered in the bargain.
II. But I told you all this while that this is but a sup- position still, the putting of a case, or like a fiction of law ; nothing real. For if we consider, in the second place, how much every man is likely to get really, and how much it is possible for any man to get, we shall find the account far shorter yet, and the purchase most trifling and inconsiderable. For, first, the world is at the same time enjoyed by all its inhabitants, and the same portion of it by several persons in their several capacities. A prince enjoys his whole kingdom, not as all his people enjoy it, but in the manner of a prince ; the subject in the manner of subjects. The prince hath certain regalia beyond the rest ; but the feudal right of sub- jects does them more emolument, and the regaha does the prince more honour : and those that hold the fees in sub- ordinate right, transmit also it to their tenants, beneficiaries, Jind dependents, to public uses, to charity, and hospitality ; all which is a lessening of the lord's possessions, and a cut- ting his river into little streams, not that himself alone, but that all his relatives, may- drink to be refreshed. Thus the well where the woman of Samaria sat, was Jacob's well, and he drank of it ; but so did his wives, and his children, and his cattle. So that what we call ours, is really ours but for our portion of expense and use ;. we have so little of it, that opr servants have far more ; and that which is ours, is no- thing but the title, and the care, and the trouble of securing arjd dispensing ; save ojaly that God, whose stewards we all
THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE. 73
are, will call such owners (as they are pleased to call them- selves) to strict accounts for their disbursements. And by this account, the possession or dominion is but a word, and serves a fancy, or a passion, or a vice, but no real end of nature. It is the use and spending it that makes a man, to all real purposes of nature, to be the owner of it; and in this the lord and master hath but a share.
2. But, secondly, consider how far short of the whole world the greatest prince that ever reigned, did come. Alex- ander, that wept because he had no more worlds to conquer, was, in his knowledge, deceived and brutish as in his passion : he overran much of Asia; but he could never pass the Ganges, and never thrust his sword in the bowels of Europe, and knew nothing of America. And the ctHou/ji.£vn, or * the whole world,' began to have an appropriate sense ; and was rather put to the Roman greatness, as an honourable appellative, than did signify that they were lords of the world, who never went beyond Persia, Egypt, or Britain.
But why do I talk of great things in this question of the exchange of the soul for the world ? Because it is a real bargain which many men (too many, God knows,) do make, we must consider it as applicable to practice. Every man that loses his soul for the purchase of the world, must not look to have the portion of a king. How few men are princes ; and of those that are not born so, how seldom instances are found in story of persons, that, by their in- dustry, became so ! But we must come far lower yet. Thousands there are that damn themselves ; and yet their purchase, at long-running, and after a base and weary life spent, is but five hundred pounds a year : nay, it may be, they only cozen an easy person out of a good estate, and pay for it at an easy rate, which they obtain by lying, by drink- ing, by flattery, by force ; and the gain is nothing but a thousand pound in the whole, or, it may be, nothing but a convenience. Nay, how many men hazard their salvation for an acre of ground, for twenty pound, to please a master, to get a small and a kind usage from a superior ! These men get but little, though they did not give so much for it : so little, that Epictetus thought the purchase dear enough, tliough you paid nothing for it but flattery and observance : Ow 5rf ocr£«A)i-&Hj etp' lurioifjlv rivog ; oO yap e^utcai tw KaXovvri ttojou
/4 Till. lOOI.lSll KXCllANGK.
'TT.ilXii TO OilTTVOV BTTaiVOV 5"' auTO TTUXll, ^i^aTTtlui TTajXE?''" ' Ob-
servance was the price of his meal ;' and he paid too dear for one that tiave his birthri;Li;ht for it; but l)e that exchanges his soul for it, knows not the vanity of his purchase nor the value of his loss. He that gains the piu'chase and spoil of a kingdom, hath got that, which to all, that are placed in heaven, or to a man that were seated in the paths of the sun, seems but like a spot in an eye, or a mathematical point, so without vastness, that it seems to be without dimensions. Vtwi he whose purchase is but his neighbour's field, or a few unjust acres, hath got that which is inconsiderable, below the notice and description of the map : for by such hierogly- phical representments, Socrates chid the vanity of a proud Athenian.
3. Although these premises may suffice to show that the supposed purchase is but vain, and that all which men use really to obtain, is less than trifles; yet even the possession of it, whatsoever it be, is not mere and unmixed, but allayed with sorrow and uneasiness; the gain hath but enlarged his ap- petite, and, like a draught to an hydropic person, hath enraged his thirst; and still that which he hath not, is in- finitely bigger than what he hath, since the first enlargement of his purchase was not to satisfy necessity, but his passion, his lust or his avarice, his pride or his revenge. These things cease not by their fuel; but their flames grow bigger, and the capacities are stretched, and they want more than they did at first. For who wants most, he that wants five pounds, or he that wants five thousand? And supposing a man naturally supported and provided for, in the dispensations of nature there is no difference, but that the poor hath enough to fill his bellv, and the rich man can never have enoug-h to fill his eye. The poor man's wants are no greater than what may be supplied by charity; and the rich man's wants are so big that none but princes can relieve them; and they are left to all the temptations of great vices and huge Qares to make their reparations.
Dives eget gemiiiis, Cereali mnnere pauper: Sed cum egeant anibo, pauper egens minus est*.
If the greatness of the world's possessions produce such fruits, vexation, and care, and want; the ambitious requiring
•• Enc. c. 32. • Auson. 134. 3.
THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE. 75
of great estates is but like the selling of a fountain to buy a fever, a parting Math content to buy necessity, and the pur- chase of an unhandsome condition at the price of infelicity.
4. He that enjoys a great portion of this world, hath most commonly the allay of some great cross, which, although sometimes God designs in mercy, to wean his affections from the world, and for the abstracting them from sordid adherences and cohabitation, to make his eyes like stars, to fix them in the orbs of heaven and the regions of felicity, yet they are an inseparable appendant and condition of humanity. Solo- mon observed the vanity of some persons, that heaped up great riches for their heirs, and yet " knew not whether a wise man or a fool should possess them ; this is a great evil under the sun." And if we observe the great crosses many times God permits in great families, as discontent in mar- riages, artificial or natural bastardies, a society of man and wife like the conjunction of two politics, full of state, and ceremony, and design, but empty of those sweet caresses, and natural hearty complications and endearments, usual in meaner and innocent persons ; the perpetual sickness, fulness of diet, fear of dying, the abuse of flatterers, the trouble and noise of company, the tedious ofliciousness of impertinent and ceremonious visits, the declension of estate, the sadness of spirit, the notoriousness of those dishonours which the meanness of lower persons conceals, but their eminency makes as visible as the spots in the moon's face; we shall find him to be most happy that hath most of wisdom and least of the world, because he only hath the least danger and the most security.
5. And lastly, his soul so gets nothing that wins all this world, if he loses his soul, that it is ten to one but he that gets the one, therefore shall lose the other; for to a great and opulent fortune, sin is so adherent and insinuating, that it comes to him in the nature of civility. It is a sad sight to see a great personage undertake an action passionately and upon great interest; and let him manage it as indiscreetly, let the whole design be unjust, let it be acted with all the malice and impotency in the world, he shall have enow to tell him that he proceeds wisely enough, to be servants of his interest, and promoters of his sin, instruments of his malice, and actors of revenge. But which of all his relatives shall dare to tell him
7G THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE.
of his indiscretion, of his rage, and of his folly? He had need be a bold man and a severe person that shall tell him of his dansxer, and that he is in a direct proi;ress towards hell. And indeed such persona<j;es have been so long nourished up in softness, flattery, and efleminacy, that too often themselves are impatient of a monitor, and think the charity and duty of u modest reprehension to be a rudeness and incivility- That prince is a wise man that loves to have it otherwise; and, certainly, it is a strange civility and dutifulness in friends and relatives, to suffer him to go to hell micontrolled, rather than to seem unmannerly towards a great sinner. But, cer- tainly, this is none of the least infelicities of them who are lords of the world, and masters of great possessions.
I omit to speak of the habitual intemperance which is too commonly annexed to festival and delicious tables, where there is no other measure or restraint upon the appetite, but its fulness and satiety, and when it cannot or dare not eat more. Oftentimes it happens, that the intemperance of a poor table is more temperate and hath less of luxury in it than the temperance of a rich. To this are consequent all the evil accidents and effects of fulness, pride, lust, wanton- ness, softnesses of disposition, and dissolution of manners, huge talking, imperiousness, despite and contempt of poor persons; and, at the best, it is a great temptation fpr a man to have in his power whatsoever he can have in his sensual desires. Who then shall check his voracity, or calm his revenge, or allay his pride, or mortify his lust, or humble his spirit? It is like as when a lustful young and tempted person lives perpetually with his amorous and delicious mistress : if he escapes burning that is inflamed from within and set on fire from without, it is a greater miracle than the escaping from the flames of the furnace by the three children of the captivity. And just such a thing is the possession of the world; it fur- nishes us with abilities to sin and opportunities of ruin, and it makes us to dwell with poisons, and dangers, and enemies.
And although the grace of God is sufficient to great per- sonages and masters of the world, and that it is possible for a young man to be tied upon a bed of flowers, and fastened by the arms and band of a courtesan, and tempted wantonly, and yet to escape the danger and the crime, and to triumph gloriously; (for so St. Jerome reports of a son of the king
THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE. 77
of Nlcomedia;) and riches and a free fortune are designed by- God to be a mercy, and an opportunity of doing noble things, and excellent charity, and exact justice, and to protect inno- cence, and to defend oppressed people: yet it is a mercy mixed with much danger; yea, it is like the present of a whole vintage to a man in an hectic fever; he will be shrewdly tempted to drink of it, and, if he does, he is inflamed, and may chance to die with the kindness. Happy are those persons who use the world, and abuse it not; who possess a part of it, and love it for no other ends but for necessities of nature, and conveniences of person, and discharge of all their duty and the offices of religion, and charity to Christ and all Christ's members. But since he that hath all the world, cannot command nature to do him one office extraordinary, and enjoys the best part but in common with the poorest man in the world, and can use no more of it but according to a limited and a very narrow capacity; and whatsoever he can use or possess, cannot outweigh the present pressure of a sharp disease, nor can it at all give him content, without which there can be nothing of felicity; since a prince, in the matter of using the world, differs nothing from his subjects, but in mere accidents and circumstances, and yet these very many trifling differences are not to be obtained but by so much labour and care, so great expense of time and trouble, that the possession will not pay thus much of the price; and, after all this, the man may die two hours after he hath made his troublesome and expensive purchase, and is certain not to enjoy it long. Add to this last, that most men get so little of the world, that it is altogether of a trifling and inconsiderable interest; that they who have the most of this world, have the most of that but in title and in supreme rights and reserved privileges, the real use descending upon others to more sub- stantial purposes; that the possession of this trifle is mixed with sorrow upon other accidents, and is allayed with fear; and that the greatness of men's possessions increases their thirst, and enlarges their wants, by swelling their capacity; and, above all, is of so great danger to a man's virtue, that a great fortune and a very great virtue are not always observed to grow together. He that observes all this, and much more he may observe, will see that he that gains the whole world, hath made no such great bargain of it, although he had it for
78 THE FOOr.TSII F.XCIIANOF..
notliiiif^ but the necessary unaA-oidable troubles in getting it. But how great a folly is it to buy so great a trouble, so great a vanity, Avitli the loss of our precious souls, remains to be considered in the following parts of the text.
SERMON XIX.
PART II.
"And lose his own soul?" or, " What shall a man give in exchange for his soul.'" — And now the question is finally stated, and the dispute is concerning the sum of affairs.
De morte honiinis nulla est ciinctatio longa^
And, therefore, when the soul is at stake, not for its temporal, but for its eternal interest, it is not good to be hasty in determining, without taking just measures of the exchange. Solomon had the good things of the world actually in posses- sion; and he tried them at the touchstone of prudence and natural value, and found them allayed with vanity and im- perfection; and we that see them ' weighed in the balance of the sanctuary,' and tried by the touchstone of the Spirit, find them not only light and unprofitable, but pungent and do- lorous. But now we are to consider what it is that men part with and lose, when, with passion and impotency, they get the world ; and that will present the bargain to be an huge infelicity. And this I observe to be intimated in the word, lo^e. For he that gives gold for cloth, or precious stones for bread, serves his needs of nature, and loses nothing by it; and the merchant that found a pearl of great price, and sold all that he had to make the purchase of it, made a good venture ; he was no loser : but here the case is otherwise ; when a man gains the whole world, and his soul goes in the exchange, he hath not done like a merchant, but like a child or prodigal ; he hath given himself away, he hath lost all that can distinguish him fi'om a slave or a miserable person, he loses his soul in the exchange. For the soul of a man all the world cannot be a just price; a man may lose it, o}: throw it away, but he can never make a good exchange when he parts
' Jiiv. vi. S21.
THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE. 79
with this jewel : and, therefore, our blessed Saviour rarely- well expresses it by ^nixiouv, which is fully opposed to nz^^og, * gain;' it is such an ill market a man makes, as if he should proclaim his riches and goods vendible for a garland of thistles decked and trimmed up with the stinking poppy.
But we shall better understand the nature of this bargain if we consider the soul that is exchanged ; what it is in itself, in order, not of nature, but to felicity and the capacities of joy; secondly, what price the Son of God paid for it; and, thirdly, what it is to lose it; that is, what miseries and tortures are signified by losing a soul.
I. First, if we consider what the soul is in its own capacity to happiness, we shall find it to be an excellency greater than the sun, of an angelical substance, sister to a cherubim, an image of the Divinity, and the great argument of that mercy whereby God did distinguish us from the lower form of beasts, and trees, and minerals.
For, so it was, the Scripture affirms that " God made man after his own image," that is, ' secundum illam imaginem et ideam quam concepit ipse;' not according to the likeness of any of those creatures which were pre-existent to man's pro- duction, not according to any of those images or ideas whereby God created the heavens and the earth, but by a new form, to distinguish him from all other substances ; ' he made him by a new idea of his own,' by an uncreated exem- plar. And besides, that this was a donation of intelligent faculties, such as we understand to be perfect and essential, or rather the essence of God, it is also a designation of him to a glorious immortality, and communication of the rays and reflections of his own essential felicities.
But the soul is all that whereby we may be, and without which we cannot be, happy. It is not the eye that sees the beauties of the heaven, nor the ear that hears the sweetness of music, or the glad tidings of a prosperous accident, but the soul that perceives all the relishes of sensual and intellectual perfections ; and the more noble and excellent the soul is, the greater and more savoury are its perceptions. And, if a child beholds the rich ermine, or the diamonds of a starry night, or the order of the world, or hears the discourses of an apostle; because he makes no reflex acts upon himself, and sees not that he sees, he can have but the pleasure of a fool, or the
80 TIIK FOOLISH EXCHANGE.
dcliciousness of a mule. But, although the reflection of its own acts be a rare instrument of pleasure or pain respectively, yet the soul's excellency is, upon the same reason, not per- ceived by us, by which the sapidness of pleasant things of nature arc not understood by a child; even because the soul cannot reflect far enough. For as the sun, which is the fountain of light and heat, makes violent and direct emissions of his rays from himself, but reflects them no farther than to the bottom of a cloud, or the lowest imaginary circle of the middle region, and, therefore, receives not a duplicate of his own heat: so is the soul of man; it reflects upon its own inferior actions of particular sense, or general understanding; but, because it knows little of its own nature, the manners of volition, the immediate instruments of understanding, the way how it comes to meditate; and cannot discern how a sudden thought arrives, or the solution of a doubt not de- pending upon preceding premises; therefore, above half its pleasures are abated, and its own worth less understood ; and, possibly, it is the better it is so. If the elephant knew his strength, or the horse the vigorousness of his own spirit, they would be as rebellious against their rulers as unreason- able men against government; nay, the angels themselves, because their light reflected home to their orbs, and they understood all the secrets of their own perfection, they grew vertiginous, and fell from the battlements of heaven. But the excellency of a human soul shall then be truly under- stood, when the reflection will make no distraction of our faculties, nor enkindle any irregular fires; when we may understand ourselves without danger.
In the mean this consideration is gone high enough, when we understand the soul of a man to be so excellently perfect, that we cannot understand how excellently perfect it is ; that being the best way of expressing our conceptions of God himself. And, therefore, I shall not need by distinct discourses to represent that the will of man is the last resort and sanctuary of true pleasure, which, in its formality, can be nothing else but a conformity of possession or of being to the will ; that the understanding, being the channel and con- veyance of the noblest perceptions, feeds upon pleasures in all its proportionate acts, and unless it be disturbed by inter-
THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE. 81
vening sins and remembrances derived hence, keeps a per- petual festival; that the passions are every of them fitted with an object, in which they rest as in their centre; that they have such dehght in these their proper objects, that too often they venture a damnation rather than quit their interest and possession. But yet from these considerations it would follow, that to lose a soul, which is designed to be an immense sea of pleasure, even in its natural capacities, is to lose all that whereby a man can possibly be, or be supposed, happy. And so much the rather is this understood to be an insup- portable calamity, because losing a soul in this sense is not a mere privation of those felicities, of which a soul is naturally designed to be a partaker, but it is an investing it with con- trary objects, and cross effects, and dolorous perceptions : for the will, if it misses its desires, is afflicted ; and the un- derstanding, when it ceases to be ennobled with excellent things, is made ignorant as a swine, dull as the foot of a rock ; and the affections are in the destitution of their perfective actions made tumultuous, vexed and discomposed to the height of rage and violence. But this is but the af%^ oj^lvcov, ' the beffinnino- of those throes,' which end not but in eternal infelicity.
2. Secondly : If we consider the price that the Son of God paid for the redemption of a soul, we shall better esti- mate of it, than from the weak discourses of our imperfect and unlearned philosophy. Not the spoil of rich provinces, not the estimate of kingdoms, not the price of Cleopatra's draught, not any thing that was corruptible or perishing; for that which could not one minute retard the term of its own natural dissolution, could not be a price for the redemption of one perishing soul. And if we hst but to remember, and then consider, that a miserable, lost, and accursed soul, does so infinitely undervalue and disrelish all the goods and riches that this world dotes on, that he hath no more gust in them, or pleasure, than the fox hath in eating a turf; that, if he could be imagined to be the lord of ten thousand worlds, he would give them all for any shadow of hope of a possi- bility of returning to life again; that Dives in hell would have willingly gone on embassy to his father's house, that he might have been quit a little from his flames, and on that condition would have given Lazarus the fee-simple of all his
VOL. VI. G
82 THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE.
temporal possessions, though he had once denied to relieve him with the superHiiities of his table; we shall soon confess that a moment of time is no good exchange for an eternity of duration; i.nd a light unprofitable possession is not to be put in the balance against a soul, which is the glory of the crea- tion ; a soul, with whom God had made a contract, and con- tracted excellent relations, it being one of God's appellatives, that he is ' the Lover of souls.'
When God made a soul, it was only, " Faciamus hominem ad imaginem nostram." He spake the word, and it was done. But, when man had lost this soul which the Spirit of God breathed into him, it was not so soon recovered. It is like the resurrection, which hath troubled the faith of many, who are more apt to believe that God made a man from nothing, than that he can return a man from dust and corruption. But for this resurrection of the soul, for the reimplacing the Divine image, for the rescuing it from the devil's power, for the re- entitling it to the kingdoms of grace and glory, God did a greater work than the creation ; he was fain to contract Divinity to a span, to send a person to die for us, who, of himself, could not die, and was constrained to use rare and mysterious arts to make him capable of dying; he prepared a person instrumental to his purpose, by sending his Son from his own bosom, a person both God and man, an enigma to all nations and to all sciences; one that ruled over all the angels, that walked upon the pavements of heaven, whose feet were clothed with stars, whose eyes were brighter than the sun, whose voice is louder than thunder, whose understanding is larger than that infinite space, which we imagine in the uncircumscribed distance beyond the first orb of heaven; a person to whom felicity was as essential as life to God : this was the only person, that was designed, in the eternal decrees of the Divine predestination, to pay the price of a soul, to ransom us from death ; less than this person could not do it. For although a soul in its essence is finite, yet there were many infinites which were incident and annexed to the condition of lost souls. For all which because pro- vision was to be made, nothing less than an infinite excellence could satisfy for a soul who was lost to infinite and eternal ages, who was to be aflflicted with insupportable and undeter- mined, that is, next to infinite, pains; who was to bear the
THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE. 83
load of an infinite anger from the provocation of an eternal God. And yet if it be possible that infinite can receive de- grees, this is but one-half of the abyss, and I think the lesser. For that this person, who was God eternal, should be lessened in all his appearances to a span, to the little dimensions of a man; and that he should really become very contemptibly little, although, at the same time, he was infinitely and unal- terably great; that is, essential, natural, and necessary felicity should turn into an intolerable, violent, and immense calamity to his person ; that this great God should not be admitted to pay the price of our redemption, unless he would suffer that horrid misery, which that lost soul should suffer; as it repre- sents the glories of his goodness, who used such rare and admirable instruments in actuating the designs of his mercy, so it shows our condition to have been very desperate, and our loss invaluable.
A soul in God's account is valued at the price of the blood, and shame, and tortures of the Son of God; and yet we throw it away for the exchange of sins., that a man naturally is ashamed *to own; we lose it for the pleasure, the sottish beastly pleasure, of a night. I need not say, we lose our soul to save our lives ; for, though that was our blessed Saviour's instance of the great unreasonableness of men, who by ' saving their lives, lose them,' that is, in the great account of doomsday; though this, I say, be extremely un- reasonable, yet there is something to be pretended in the bargain; nothing to excuse him with God, but something in the accounts of timorous men; but to lose our souls with swearing, that unprofitable, dishonourable, and unpleasant vice; to lose our souls with disobedience or rebellion, a vice that brings a curse and danger all the way in this hfe; to lose our souls with drunkenness, a vice which is painful and sickly in the very acting it, which hastens our damnation by shortening our lives; are instances fit to be put in the stories of fools and madmen. And all vice is a degree of the same unreasonableness ; the most splendid temptation being nothing but a pretty well-weaved fallacy, a mere trick, a sophism, and a cheating and abusing the understanding. But that which I consider here is, that it is an affront and contradiction to the wisdom of God, that we should so slight and undervalue a soul, in which our interest is so concerned; a soul, which
84 THE FOOLISH LXCIIANOE.
he who made it, and who delighted not to see it lost, did account a fit pnrcliase to be made by the exchange of his Son, the eternnl Son of God. To which also I add this addi- tional accoiHit, fhat a sonl is so greatly valued by God, that we are not to venture the loss of it to save all the world. For, therefore, whosoever should commit a sin to save king- doms from perishing ; or, if the case could be put, that all the good men, and good causes, and good things in this world, were to be destroyed by tyranny, and it were in our power by perjury to save all these; that doing this sin would be so far from hallowing the crime, that it were to offer to God a sacrifice of what he most hates, and to serve him with swine's blood ; and the rescuing all these from a tyrant, or a hangman, could not be pleasing to God upon those terms, because a soul is lost by it, which is, in itself, a greater loss and misery than all the evils in the world put together can outbalance, and a loss of that thing for which Christ gave his blood a price. Persecutions and temporal death in holy men, and in a just cause, are but seeming evils, and, therefore, not to be brought off with the loss of a soul, which is a' real, but an intolerable, calamity. And if God, for his own sake, would not have all the world saved by sin, that is, by the hazarding of a soul, we should do well, for our own sakes, not to lose a soul for trifles, for things that make us here to be miserable, and even here also to be ashamed.
3. But it may be, some natures, or some understandings, care not for all this ; therefore, I proceed to the third and most material consideration as to us, and I consider what it is to lose a soul. Which Hierocles thus explicates, * fig olov rs rn aBavaToi oucria Bavarou fxoipag /XETccXax^^v, ou rri dg to fx-n elvai BK^aasi, axxa rfi rou su eivcxi aTroTTTuasi, " An immortal substance can die, not by ceasing to be, but by losing all being well," by be- coming miserable. And it is remarkable, when our blessed Saviour sfave us caution that we should " not fear them that can kill the body only, but fear him" (he says not that can kill the sold, but tov ^uva-ixtvov xa) if^'^/C*''-' ^^^^ crafxa a.'K0>k(TOi\ h yEeyvrj,) " that is able to destroy the body and soul in hellS;" which word signifieth not ' death,' but ' tortures.' For some have chosen death for sanctuary, and fled to it to avoid
r Matt. xix. 28.
THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE. 85
intolerable shame, to give a period to the sense of a sharp grief, or to cure the earthquakes of fear; and the damned perishing souls shall wish for death with a desire impatient as their calamity ; but this shall be denied them, because death were a deliverance, a mercy, and a pleasure, of vi'hich these miserable persons must despair for ever.
I shall not need to represent to your considerations those expressions of Scripture, which the Holy Ghost hath set down to represent to our capacities the greatness of this perishing, choosino; such circumstances of character as were then usual in the world, and which are dreadful to our understanding as any tiling; ' hell-fire,' is the common expression; for the Eastern nations accounted burnings the greatest of these miserable punishments, and burning malefactors was frequent. " Brimstone and fire," so St. John*^ calls the state of punish- ment, " prepared for the devil and all his servants ;" he added the circumstance of briiustone, for, by this time, the devil had taught the world more ingenious pains, and himself was newly- escaped out of boiling oil and brimstone, and such bituminous matter; and the Spirit of God knew right well the worst expression was not bad enough. 2«otoj l|wT£fo?, so our blessed Saviour calls it, " the outer darkness ;" that is, not only an abjection from the beatific regions, where God, and his angels, and his saints, dwell for ever ; but then there is a positive state of misery expressed by darkness, ^6(pov a-Koroug, as two apostles, St. Peter and St. Jude, call it, " the blackness of darkness for ever." In which, although it is certain that God, whose justice there rules, will inflict but just so much as our sins deserve, and not superadd degrees of undeserved misery, as he does to the saints of glory, (for God gives to blessed souls in heaven more, infinitely more, than all their good works could possibly deserve ; and, therefore, their glory is infinitely bigger glory than the pains of hell are great pains ;) yet because God's justice in hell rules alone, without the allays and sweeter abatements of mercy, they shall have pure and unmingled misery; no pleasant thought to refresh their weariness, no comfort in another accident to alleviate their pressures, no waters to cool their flames. But because when there is a great calamity upon a man, every such man
h Kcvel. xiv. 10.
86 THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE.
thinks himself tlie most miserable ; and thou<]:;h there are great degrees of pain in hell, yet there are none perceived by him that thinks he suffers the greatest ; it follows, tliat every man tiiat loses his soul in this darkness, is miserable beyond all those expressions, which the tortures of this world could furnish to the writers of the holy Scripture.
But I shall choose to represent this consideration in that expression of our blessed Saviour, Mark, ix. 44. which himself took out of the prophet Isaiah, Ixvi. 24. " Where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." This is the (TuvTsXsiag E^yifxacng spoken of by Daniel the prophet : for although this expression was a prediction of that horrid calamity and abscission of the Jewish nation, when God poured out a full phial of his wrath upon the crucifiers of his Son, and that this, which was the greatest calamity which ever did, or ever shall, happen to a nation, Christ, with great reason, took to describe the calamity of accursed souls, as being the greatest instance to signify the greatest torment : yet we must observe that the difference of each state makes the same words in the several cases to be of infinite distinction. The worm stuck close to the Jewish nation, and the fire of God's wrath flamed out till they were consumed with a great and unheard-of destruction, till many millions did die accursedly, and the small remnant became vagabonds, and were reserved, like broken pieces after a storm, to show the greatness of the storm and misery of the shipwreck : but then this being translated to signify the state of accursed souls, wL jse dying is a continual perishing, who cannot cease to be, it must mean an eternity of duration, in a proper and natural signification.
And that we may understand it fully, observe the place in Isa. xxxiv. 8, &c. The prophet prophesies of the great destruction of Jerusalem for all her great iniquities : " It is the day of the Lord's vengeance, and the year of recom- penses for the controversy of Sion. And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brim- stone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night or day, the smoke thereof shall go up for ever ; from generation to generation it shall lie waste, none shall pass through it, for ever and ever." This Is the final destruction of the nation ; but this destruction
THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE. 87
shall have an end, because the nation shall end, and the anger also shall end in its own period, even then when God shall call the Jews into the common inheritance with the Gentiles, and all ' become the sons of God.' And this also w^as the period of their ' worm/ as it is of their * fire,' the fire of the Divine vengeance upon the nation ; which was not to be extinguished till they were destroyed, as we see it come to pass. And thus also in St. Jude, " the angels who kept not their first state," are said to be " reserved" by God " in everlasting chains under darkness :" which word, ' ever- lasting,' signifies not absolutely to eternity, but to the utmost end of that period ; for so it follows, " unto the judgment of the great day 5" that ' everlasting' lasts no longer. And in ver. 7. the word * eternal' is just so used. The men of " Sodom and Gomorrah are set forth for an example, suf- fering the vengeance of eternal fire ;" that is, of a fire which burned, till they were quite destroyed, and the cities and the country with an irreparable ruin, never to be rebuilt and reinhabited as long as this world continues. The effect of which observation is this :
That these words, " for ever,' — 'everlasting, — eternal, — the never-dying worm, — the fire unquenchable," being words borrowed by our blessed Saviour and his apostles from the style of the Old Testament, must have a signification just proportionable to the state in which they signify : so that as this worm, when it signifies a temporal infliction, means a worm that never ceases giving torment till the body is consumed ; so when it is translated to an immortal state, it must signify as much in that proportion : that ' eternal,' that ' everlasting,' hath no end at all ; because the soul cannot be killed in the natural sense, but is made miserable and perishing for ever; that is, 'the worm shall not die' so long as the soul shall be unconsumed ; ' the fire shall not be quenched' till the period of an immortal nature comes. And that this shall be absolutely for ever, without any re- striction, appears unanswerable in this, because the same ' for ever' that is for the blessed souls, the same * for ever' is for the accursed souls : but the blessed souls, " that die in the Lord, henceforth shall die no more, death hath no power over them ; for death is destroyed, it is swallowed up in victory," saith St. Paul ; and " there shall be no more
88 THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE.
deatli," saith St. John '. So that, because 'for ever' hath no end, till the thino; or the duration itself have end, in the same sense in which the saints and angels " give glory to God for ever," in the same sense the lost souls shall suffer the evils of their sad inheritance : and since, after this death of nature, which is a separation of soul and body, there remains no more death, but this second death, this eternal perishing of miserable accursed souls, whose duration nmst be eternal ; it follows, that ' the worm of conscience,' and * the unquenchable fire' of hell, have no period at all, but shall last as long as God lasts, or the measures of a proper eternity ; tliat they who provoke God to wrath by their base, unreasonable, and sottish practices, may know what their ]>ortion shall be in the everlasting habitations. And yet, suppose that Origen's opinion had been true, and that accursed souls should have ease and a period to their tortures after a thousand years ; I pray, let it be considered, whether it be not a great madness to choose the pleasures or the wealth of a few years here, with trouble, with danger, with uncertainty, with labour, with intervals of sickness ; and for this to endure the flames of hell for a thousand years together. The pleasures of the world no man can have for a hundred years ; and no man hath pleasure a hundred days together, but he hath some trouble inter- vening, or at least a weariness and a loathing of the pleasure : and therefore, to endure insufferable calamities, suppose it be for a hundred years, without any interruption, without so much comfort as the light of a small candle, or a drop of water amounts to in a fever, is a bargain to be made by no man that loves himself, or is not in love with infinite affliction.
If a man were condemned but to lie still, or to lie in bed in one posture without turning, for seven years together, would he not buy it off" with the loss of all his estate ? If a man were to be put upon the rack for every day for three months together (suppose him able to live so long), what would not he do to be quit of his torture ? Would any man curse the king to his face, if he were sure to have both his hands burnt off, and to be tormented with torments three years
' Rev. xxi. 'i.
THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE. 89
together ? Would any man in his wits accept of a hundred pounds a year for forty years, if he were sure to be tormented in the fire for the next hundred years together without inter- mission? Think then what a thousand years signify; ten ages, the age of two empires. But this account, I must tell you, is infinitely short, though I thus discourse to you how great fools wicked men are, though this opinion should be true. A goodly comfort, surely, that for two or three years' sottish pleasure, a man shall be infinitely tormented but for a thousand years ! But then when we cast up the minutes, and years, and ages of eternity, the consideration itself is a great hell to those persons, who by their evil lives are consigned to such sad and miserable portions.
A thousand years is a long while to be in torment : we find a fever of one and twenty days to be like an age in length ; but when the duration of an intolerable misery is for ever in the height, and for ever beginning, and ten thousand years have spent no part of its term, but it makes a perpetual efflux, and is like the centre of a circle, which ever transmits lines to the circumference : this is a consideration so sad, that the horror of it, and the reflection upon its abode and duration, make a great part of the hell : for hell could not be hell without the despair of accursed souls; for any hope were a refreshment, and a drop of water, which would help to allay those flames, which as they burn intolerably, so they must burn for ever.
And I desire you to consider, that although the Scripture uses the word ' fire' to express the torments of accursed souls, yet fire can no more equal the pangs of hell than it can torment an immaterial substance; the pains of perishing souls being as much more afllictive than the smart of fire, as the smart of fire is troublesome beyond the softness of Persian carpets, or the sensuality of the Asian luxury. For the pains of hell, and the perishing or losing the soul, is, to sufl'er the wrath of God : na) yap b ©so; rifyi,uv ttu^ karavaXta-KOV, " our God is a consuming fire," that is, the fire of hell. When God takes away all comfort from us, nothing to support our spirit is left us ; when sorrow is our food, and tears our drink ; when it is eternal night, without sun, or star, or lamp, or sleep ; when we burn with fire without light, that is, are laden with sadness, without remedy, or
90 THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE.
hope of ease ; and that this wrath is to be expressed and to fall upon us in spiritual, immaterial, but most accursed, most pungent, and dolorous emanations ; then we feel what it is to lose a soul.
We may guess at it by the terrors of a guilty conscience, those ' verbera et Iviniatus,' those secret * lashings and whips' of the exterminating angel, those thorns in the soul, when a man is haunted by an evil spirit; those butcheries, — which the soul of a tyrant, or a violent or a vicious person, when he falls into fear or any calamity, does feel, — are the infinite arguments, that hell,' — which is the consummation of the torment of conscience, just as manhood is the consummation of infancy, or as glory is the perfection (f grace, — is an affliction greater than the bulk of heaven and earth ; for there it is that God pours out the treasures of his wrath, and empties the whole magazine of thunderbolts, and all the armoury of God is employed, not in the chastising, but in the tormenting, of a perishing soul. Lucian brings in Radamanthus, telling the poor wandering souls upon the banks of Elysium, 'Omoaa av t/j h^jim Trovn^a k^yaa-rnai TTctpa Tov ^lov, xctd BKacrrov ocuruv afavrt ariyixara k'ss) tj?? if'^^J)? TCS^itps^si '^, " For every wickedness that any man commits in his life, when he comes to hell, he hath stamped upon his soul an invisible brand" and mark of torment, and this begins here, and is not cancelled by death, but there is enlarged by the greatness of infinite, and the abodes of eternity. How great these torments of conscience are here, let any man imagine that can but understand what despair means ; despair upon just reason : let it be what it will, no misery can be greater than despair. And because I hope none here have felt those horrors of an evil conscience v.-hich are consignations to eternity, you may please to learn it by your own reason, or else by the sad instances of story. It is reported of Petrus Ilosuanus, a Polonian schoolmaster, that havino; read some ill-managed discourses of absolute decrees and Divine reprobation, began to be fantastic and melancholic, and apprehensive that he might be one of those many whom God had decreed for hell from all eternity. From possible to probable, from probable to certain, the
'' KaraTrXotij, c. 24.
THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE. 91
temptation soon carried him : and when he once began to believe himself to be a person inevitably perishing, it is not possible to understand perfectly what infinite fears, and agonies, and despairs, what tremblings, what horrors, what confusion and amazement, the poor man felt within him, to consider that he was to be tormented extremely, without remedy, even to eternal ages. This, in a short continuance, grew insufferable, and prevailed upon him so far, that he hanged himself, and left an account of it to this purpose in writing in his study : ' I am gone from hence to the flames of hell, and have forced my way thither, being impatient to try what those great torments are, which here I have feared with an insupportable amazement.' This instance may suffice to show what it is to lose a soul. But I will take off from this sad discourse ; only I shall crave your attention to a word of exhortation.
That you take care, lest for the purchase of a little, trifling, inconsiderable portion of the world, you come into this place and state of torment. Although Homer was pleased to compliment the beauty of Helena to such a height, as to say, ' it was a sufficient price for all the evils which the Greeks and Trojans suffered in ten years :'
Oil v£jUEa-t; TgSaf xal l'Cxmy,i^ag 'Ap^aioii;
ToijiS' ay,<f>l ■yvvaix) TToXuv p^govov ei'h.yia nffacr^Siv '.
Yet it was a more reasonable conjecture of Herodotus, that, during the ten years' siege of Troy, Helena, for whom the Greeks fought, was in Egypt, not in the city ; because it was unimaginable but the Trojans would have thrown her over the walls, rather than, for the sake of such a trifle, have endured so great calamities. We are more sottish than the Trojans, if we retain our Helena, any one beloved lust, a painted devil, any sugared temptation, with (not the hazard,^ but) the certainty of having such horrid miseries, such inva- luable losses. And certainly, it is a strange stupidity of spirit that can sleep in the midst of such thunder ; when God speaks from heaven with his loudest voice, and draws aside his curtain, and shows his arsenal and his armoury^ full of arrows steeled with wrath, headed and pointed, and
' liiad. y. 156.
92 Tin: FOOLISH exchange.
hnrdciUHl with venp;eance, still to snatch at those arrows, if tlioy canio but in the rrtinue of" a rich fortune or a vain mistress, if they wait but upon pleasure or profit, or in the rear of an ambitious (lesis;n.
But let us not have such a hardiness against the threats and representments of the Divine vengeance, as to take the little imposts and revenues of the world, and stand in de- fiance against God and the fears of hell ; unless we have a charm that we can be ao^arot tw npnyi, * invisible to the Judge' of heaven and earth, and are impregnable against, or are sure we shall be insensible of, the miseries of a perishing soul.
There is a sort of men, who, because they will be vicious and atheistical in their lives, have no way to go on with any plaisance and without huge disturbances, but by being also atheistical in their opinions ; and to believe that the story of hell is but a bugbear to affright children and fools, easy- believing people, to make them soft and apt for government and designs of princes. And this is an opinion that befriends none but impure and vicious persons. Others there are, that believe God to be all mercy, that he forgets his justice;. beUeving that none shall perish with so sad a ruin, if they do but at their death-bed ask God forgiveness, and say they are sorry, but yet continue their impiety till their house be ready to fall : being like the Circassians, whose gentlemen enter not in the church till they be threescore years old, that is, in effect, till by their age they cannot any longer use rapine ; till then they hear service at their windows, dividing un- equally their life between sin and devotion, dedicating their youth to robbery, and their old age to a repentance without restitution.
Our youth, and our manhood, and old age, are all of them due to God, and justice and mercy are to him equally es- sential ; and as this life is a time of the possibilities of mercy, so to them that neglect it, the next world shall be a state of pure and unmingled justice.
Remember the fatal and decretory sentence which God hath passed upon all mankind : " It is appointed to all men once to die, and after death comes judgment." And if any of us were certain to die next morning, with what ear- nestness should we pray ! with what hatred should we re-
THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE. 93
member our sins ! with what scorn should we look upon the licentious pleasures of the world ! Then nothing could be welcome unto us but a prayer-book, no company but a comforter and a guide of souls, no employment but repent- ance, no passions but in order to religion, no kindness for a lust that hath undone us. And if any of you have been arrested with alarms of death, or been in hearty fear of its approach, remember what thoughts and designs then pos- sessed you, how precious a soul was then in your account, and what then you would give that you had despised the world, and done your duty to God and man, and lived a holy life. It will come to that again ; and we shall be in that condition in which we shall perfectly understand, that all the things and pleasures of the world are vain, and unprofitable, and irksome, and that he only is a wise man who secures the interest of his soul, though it be with the loss of all this world, and his own hfe into the bargain. When we are to depart this life, to go to strange company and stranger places, and to an unknown condition, then a holy conscience will be the best security, the best possession ; it will be a horror, that every friend we meet shall, with triumph, upbraid to us the sottishness of our folly : * Lo, this is the goodly change you have made ! you had your good things in your hfetime, and how like you the portion, that is reserved to you for ever?' The old rabbins, those poets of religion, report of Moses, that when the courtiers of Pharaoh were sporting with the child Moses, in the chamber of Pharaoh's daughter, they presented to his choice an ingot of gold in one hand and a coal of fire in the other ; and that the child snatched at the coal, thrust it into his mouth, and so singed and parched his tongue, that he stammered ever after. And certainly it is infinitely more childish in us, for the glittering of the small glow-worms and the charcoal of worldly pos- sessions, to swallow the flames of hell greedily in our choice : such a bit will produce a worse stammering than Moses had : for so the accursed and lost souls have their ugly and horrid dialect; they roar and blaspheme, blaspheme and roar, for ever. And suppose God should now, at this instant, send the great archangel with his trumpet, to summon all the world to judgment, would not all this seem a notorious visible truth, a truth which you will then wonder that every
94 Tlli; FOOLISH KXCHANGE.
man did not lay to his heart and preserve there, in actual, pious, and effective consideration? Let the trumpet of" God perptUially sound in your ears, " Surgite, mortui, et venite ad judicium:" ])lace yourselves, by meditation, every day upon your deatii-bed, and remember what thoughts shall then possess you, and let such thoughts dwell in your under- standing for ever, and be the parent of all your resolutions and actions. The doctors of the Jews report, that when Absalom hanged among the oaks by the hair of the head, he seemed to see under him iiell gaping wide ready to receive him ; and lie dmst not cut off the hair that entangled him, for fear he should fall into the horrid lake, whose portion is flames and torment, but chose to protract his miserable life a tew minutes in that pain of posture, and to abide the stroke of his pursuing enemies : his condition was sad when his arts of remedy were so vain.
©v^iTxeiv 0 /xiWiiY toS p^govou xljSof <f Egei ; — Soph.
A condemned man hath but small comfort to stay the singing of a long psalm ; it is the case of every vicious person. Hell is wide open to every impenitent persevering sinner, to every unpurged person.
Noctes atque dies patet atri jarnia Ditis ™.
And although God hath lighted his candle, and the lantern of his word and clearest revelations is held out to us, that we can see hell in its worst colours and most horrid representments ; yet we run greedily after baubles, into that precipice which swallows up the greatest part of mankind ; and then only we begin to consider, when all consideration is fruitless.
He, therefore, is a huge fool, that heaps up riches, that greedily pursues the world, and at the same time (for so it must be) " heaps up wrath to himself against the day of wrath ;" when sickness and death arrest him, then they ap- pear unprofitable, and himself extremely miserable ; and if you would know how great that misery is, you may take account of it by those fearful words and killing rhetoric
" JEu. vi. 127.
OF CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE. 95
of Scrij3ture : " It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God ;" and, " Who can dwell with the everlasting- burnings ?" That is, no patience can abide there one hour, where they must dwell for ever.
SERMON XX.
OF CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE,
Be ye therefore ivise as serpents, and harmless as doves. — Matt. X. latter part of verse 16.
When our blessed Saviour entailed a law and a condition of sufferings, and promised a state of persecution to his servants ; and withal had charmed them with the bands and unactive chains of so many passive graces, that they should not be able to stir against the violence of tyrants, or abate the edge of axes, by any instrument but their own blood ; being * sent forth as sheep among wolves,' innocent and silent, harmless and defenceless, certainly exposed to sorrow, and uncertainly guarded in their persons ; their condition seemed nothing else but a designation to slaughter : and when they were drawn into the folds of the church, they were betrayed into the hands of evil men, infinitely and unavoidably : and when an apostle invited a proselyte to come to Christ, it was in effect a snare laid for his life ; and he could neither conceal his rehgion, nor hide his person, nor avoid a captious question, nor deny his accusation, nor elude the bloody arts of orators and informers, nor break prisons, nor any thing but die. If the case stood just thus, it was well eternity stood at the outer days of our life, ready to receive such harmless people : but surely there could be no art in the design, no pitying of human weaknesses, no complying with the condition of man, no allowances made for customs and pre- judices of the world, no inviting men by the things of men, no turning nature into religion ; but it was all the way a direct violence, and an open prostitution of our lives, and a throw- ing away our fortune into a sea of rashness and credulity.
[)C) oi' ("iiiiis ri AN purnKNcr,.
But, therefore, Cod ordered the affairs and necessities of religion in other ways, and to other purposes. Although Cod bound our hands behind us, yet he did not tie our understau(Hngs uj) : altliough we might not use our swords, yet we might use our reason : we were not suli'ered to be violent, but we might avoid violence by all the arts of pru- dence and innocence: if we did take heed of sin, we might also take heed of men. And because in all contentions between wit and violence, prudence and rudeness, learning and the sword, the strong hand took it first, and the strong head possessed it last ; the strong man first governed, and the witty man succeeded him, and lasted longer; it came to pass, that the wisdom of the Father hath so ordered it, that all his disciples should overcome the power of the Roman legions by a wise religion ; and prudence and innocence should become the mightiest guards ; and the Christian, altliough exposed to persecution, yet is so secured that he shall never need to die, but when the circumstances are so ordered, that his reason is convinced that then it is fit he should ; fit, I say, in order to God's purposes and his own.
For he that is innocent, is safe against all the rods and the axes of all the consuls of the world, if they rule by justice ; and he that is prudent, will also escape from many rudenesses and irregular violences that can come by injustice : and no wit of man, no government, no armies, can do more. For Caesar perished in the midst of all his legions and all his honours ; and against chance and irregularities there is no provision less than infinite that can give security. And although prudence alone cannot do this, yet innocence gives the greatest title to that Providence which only can, if he pleases, and will, if it be fitting. Here, then, are the two arms defensive of a Christian : prudence against the evils of men, innocence against the evils of devils and all that relates to his kingdom.
Prudence fences against persecution and the evil snares, against the opportunities and occasions of sin; it prevents surprises, it fortifies all its proper weaknesses, it improves our talents, it does advantage to the kingdom of Christ and the interests of the Gospel, it secures our condition, and instructs our choice in all the ways and just passages to felicity, it makes us to live profitably and die wisely ; and without it, simplicity would turn to silliness, zeal into passion,
OF CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE. 97
passion into fury, religion into scandal, conversation into a snare, civilities into temptation, courtesies into danger ; and an imprudent person falls into a condition of harmless, rich, and unwary fools, or rather of birds, sheep, and beavers, who are hunted and persecuted for the spoils of their fleece or their flesh, their skins or their entrails, and have not the foresight to avoid a snare, but by their fear and undefending follies are driven thither where they die infallibly. 'Luacioia-i 'Tto'K'Ko'iz els aoipog ^loxxurai^. Every good man is encircled with many enemies and dangers ; and his virtue shall be rifled, and the decency of his soul and spirit shall be discomposed, and turned into a heap of inarticulate and disorderly fancies, unless, by the methods and guards of prudence, it be managed and secured.
But in order to the following discourse and its method, we are first to consider, whether this be, or, indeed, can be, a commandment, or what is it. For can all men that give up their names in baptism, be enjoined to be wise and pru- dent? It is as if God would command us to be eloquent or witty men, fine speakers, or straight-bodied, or excellent scholars, or rich men : if he please to make us so, we are so. And prudence is a gift of God, a blessing of an excellent nature, and of great leisure, and a wise opportunity, and a severe education, and a great experience, and a strict ob- servation, and good company ; all which, being either wholly or in part out of our power, may be expected as free gifts, but cannot be imposed as commandments.
To this I answer, that Christian prudence is, in very many instances, a direct duty ; in some, an instance and advice, in order to degrees and advantages. Where it is a duty, it is put into every man's power ; where it is an advice, it is only expected according to what a man hath, and not according to what he hath not : and even here, although the events of prudence are out of our power, yet the endeavours and the observation, the diligence and caution, the moral part of it, and the plain conduct of our necessary duty, (which are portions of this grace,) are such things which God will demand in proportion to the talent which he hath in- trusted into our banks. There are, indeed, some Christians
» Stobasus, Flovil. tit. 3. p. 17. VOL. VI. II
98 OF CHUISTIAN PRUDENCE.
very unwary and unwise in the conduct of their religion; and they cannot all help it, at least not in all degrees ; but yet they may be taugl)t to do prudent things, though not to be prudent persons : if they have not the prudence of advice and conduct, yet they may have the prudence of obedience and of disciples. And the event is this : without ])rudence their virtue is unsafe, and their persons defenceless, -and their interest is unguarded ; for prudence is a handmaid waiting at the production and birth of virtue ; it is a nurse to it in its infancy^ its patron in assaults, its guide in temptations, its security in all portions of chance and contingencies; and he that is imprudent, if he have many accidents and varieties, is in great danger of being none at all; or, if he be, at the best he is but a * weak and an unprofitable servant,' useless to his neighbour, vain in himself, and as to God, ' the least in the kingdom :' his virtue is contingent and by chance, not proportioned to the reward of wisdom, and the election of a wise religion.
Ke^Joj XaSsTv anAEivov, oiSe vov a'o<foZ ''.
No purchase, no Avealth, no advantage, is great enough to be compared to a wise soul and a prudent spirit ; and he that wants it, hath a less virtue, and a defenceless mind, and will suffer a mighty hazard in the interest of eternity. Its parts and proper acts consist in the following particulars.
1. It is the duty of Christian prudence to choose the end of a Christian, that which is perfective of a man, satisfactory to reason, the rest of a Christian, and the beatification of his spirit ; and that is, to choose and desire, and propound to himself heaven, and the fruition of God, as the end of all his acts and arts, his designs and purposes. For, in the nature of things, that is most eligible and most to be pursued, which is most perfective of our nature, and is the acquiescence, the satisfaction, and proper rest of our most reasonable appe- tites. Now the things of this world are difficult and uneasy, full of thorns and empty of pleasures ; they fill a diseased faculty or an abused sense, but are an infinite dissatisfaction to reason and the appetites of the soul ; they are short and transient, and they never abide, unless sorrow, like a chain,
*> Sophocl.ap. Stob. Floril. tit. 3. p. 15.
OF CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE. 99
be bound about their leg, and then they never stir till the grace of God and religion breaks it, or else that the rust of time eats the chain in pieces ; they are dangerous and doubt- ful, few and difficult, sordid and particular, not only not communicable to a multitude, but not diffusive upon the whole man, there being no one pleasure or object in this world that delights all the parts of man : and, after all this, they are originally from earth and from the creatures, only that they oftentimes contract alliances with hell and the grave, with shame and sorrow ; and all these put together make no great amabihty or proportion to a wise man's choice. But, on the other side, the things of God are the noblest satisfactions to those desires which ought to be cherished and swelled up to infinite ; their deliciousness is vast and full of relish, and their very appendant thorns are to be chosen ; for they are gilded, they are safe and medicinal, they heal the wound they make, and bring forth fruit of a blessed and a holy life. The things of God and of religion are easy and sweet, they bear entertainments in their hand, and reward at their back ; their good is certain and perpetual, and they make us cheerful to-day and pleasant to-morrow; and spiritual songs end not in a sigh and a groan : neither, like unwholesome physic, do they let loose a present hu- mour, and introduce an habitual indisposition ; but they bring us to the felicity of God, " the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever:" they do not give a private and parti- cular delight, but their benefit is public ; like the incense of the altar, it sends up a sweet smell to heaven, and makes atonement for the religious man that kindled it, and de- lights all the standers-by, and makes the very air wholesome. There is no blessed soul goes to heaven, but he makes a general joy in all the mansions where the saints do dwell, and in all the chapels where the angels sing : and the joys of religion are not univocal, but productive of rare, and acci- dental, and preternatural pleasures ; for the music of holy hymns delights the ear, and refreshes the spirit, and makes the very bones of the saint to rejoice. And charity, or the giving alms to the poor, does not only ease the poverty of the receiver, but makes the giver rich, and heals his sick- ness, and delivers from death : and temperance, though it be in the matter of meat, and drink, and pleasures, yet hath
100 OF ClIIUSTIAX PRUDENCE.
an efti?ct upon the understandin*::;, and makes the reason sober, and the will orderly, and the affections regular, and does things beside and beyond their natural and proper efficacy : for all the parts of our duty are watered with the showers of blessing, and bring forth fruit according to the influence of Heaven, and beyond the capacities of nature.
And now let the vohiptuous person go and try whether putting his wanton hand to the bosom of his mistress will get half such honour as Scavola put upon his head, when he put his hand into the fire. Let him see whether a drunken meeting will cure a fever or make him wise : a hearty and a persevering prayer will. Let him tell me, if spending great sums of money upon his lusts will make him sleep soundly, or be rich : charity will ; alms will increase his fortune, and a good conscience shall charm all his cares and sorrows into a most delicious slumber. Well may a full goblet wet the drunkard's tongue, and then the heat rising from the stomach will dry the sponge, and heat it into the scorchings and little images of hell ; and the follies of a wanton bed will turn the itch into a smart, and empty the reins of all their lustful powers: but can they do honour or satisfaction in any thing that must last, and that ought to be provided for? No; all the things of this world are little, and trifling, and limited, and particular, and sometimes necessary, because men are miserable, wanting, and imper- fect ; but they never do any thing toward perfection, but their pleasure dies like the time in which it danced awhile ; and when the minute is gone, so is the pleasure too, and leaves no footstep but the impression of a sigh, and dwells no where but in the same house where you shall find yester- day, that is, in forgetfulness and annihilation ; unless its only child, sorrow, shall marry, and breed more of its kind, and so continue its memory and name to eternal ages. It is, therefore, the most necessary part of prudence to choose well in the main stake : and the dispute is not much ; for if eternal things be better than temporal, the soul more noble than the body, virtue more honourable than the basest vices, a lasting joy to be chosen before an eternal sorrow, much to be preferred before little, certainty before danger, public good things before private evils, eternity before moments ; then let us sit down in rehgion, and make heaven to be our
OF CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE. lOl
end, God to be our Father, Christ our elder Brother, the Holy Ghost the earnest of our inheritance, virtue to be our employment ; and then we shall never enter into the portion of fools and accursed ill-choosing spirits. Nazianzen said well, " Malini prudentise guttam quam foecundioris fortunes pelagus :" " One drop of prudence is more useful than an ocean of a smooth fortune :" for prudence is a rare instrument towards heaven ; and a great fortune is made oftentimes the highway to hell and destruction. However, thus far prudence is our duty ; every man can be so wise, and is bound to it, to choose heaven, and a cohabitation with God, before the possessions and transient vanities of the world.
2. It is a duty of Christian prudence to pursue this great end with apt means and instruments in proportion to that end. No wise man will sail to Ormus in a cock-boat, or use a child for his interpreter ; and that general is a Cyclops without an eye, who chooses the sickest men to man his towns and the weakest to fight his battles. It cannot be a vigorous prosecution, unless the means have an efficacy or worth commensurate to all the difficulty, and something of the excellency of that end which is designed. And, indeed, men use not to be so weak in acquiring the possessions of their temporals ; but in matters of religion they think any thing effective enough to secure the greatest interest : as if all the fields of heaven and the regions of that kingdom were waste ground, and wanted a colony of planters ; and that God invited men to heaven upon any terms, that he might rejoice in the multitude of subjects. For certain it is, men do more to get a little money than for all the glories of heaven : men ' rise up early/ and ' sit up late,' and *■ eat the bread of carefulness,' to become richer than their neighbours ; and are amazed at every loss, and impatient of an evil ac- cident, and feel a direct storm of passion if they suffer in their interest. But in order to heaven they are cold in their religion, undevout in their prayers, incurious in their walking, unwatchful in their circumstances, indifferent in the use of their opportunities, infrequent in their discoursings of it, not inquisitive of the way, and yet think they shall surely go to heaven. But a prudent man knows, that by the greatness of the purchase he is to make an estimate of the value and the
102 OK CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE.
price. When we ask of God any f^reat thing, — as wisdom, delivery from sickness, his Holy Spirit, tlie forgiveness of sins, tlie grace of chastity, restitution to his favour, or the hke, — do we hope to obtain them without a liigh opinion ot the things we ask? and if we value them highly, must we not desire them earnestly? and if we desire them earnestly, must we not beg for them fervently ? and whatsoever we ask for fervently, must not we beg for frequently ? And then, because prayer is but one hand toward the reaching a blessing, and God requires our co-operation and endeavour, and we must work with both hands, are we not convinced that our prayers are either faint, or a design of laziness, when we either ask coldly, or else pray loudly, hoping to receive the graces we need without labour? A prudent person, that knows to value the best object of his desires, will also know that he must observe the degrees of labour, according to the excellency of the reward. That prayer must be effectual,- — 'fervent, — frequent, — continual, — holy, — passionate, — that must get a grace or secure a blessing : the love that we must have to God, must be such as to keep his commandments, and make us wilhng to part with all our e"State, and all our honour, and our life, for the testimony of a holy conscience : our charity to our neighbour must be expressive in a language of a real friendship, aptness to for- give, readiness to forbear, in pitying infirmities, in reheving necessities, in giving our goods and our lives, and quitting our privileges to save his soul, to secure and support his virtue : our repentance must be full of sorrows and care, of diligence and hatred against sin ; it must drive out all, and leave no affections towards it ; it must be constant and per- severing, fearful of relapse, and watchful of all accidents : our temperance must sometimes turn into abstinence, and most commonly be severe, and ever without reproof : " He that striveth for masteries is temperate," saith St. Paul, " in all things." He that does all this, may, with some pretence and reason, say, he intends to go to heaven. But they that will not deny a lust, nor restrain an appetite ; they that will be drunk when their friends do merrily constrain them, or love a cheap religion, and a gentle and lame prayer, short and soft, quickly said and soon passed over, seldom returning and but little observed ; how is it possible that they should
OF CHRISTIAJSf PRUDENCE. 103
think themselves persons disposed to receive such glorious crowns and sceptres, such excellent conditions, which they have not faith enough to believe, nor attention enough to consider, and no man can have wit enough to understand? But so might an Arcadian shepherd look from the rocks, or through tiie clefts of the valley where his sheep graze, and wonder that the messenger stays so long from coming to him to be crowned king of all the Greek islands, or to be adopted heir to the Macedonian monarchy. It is an infinite love of God that we have heaven upon conditions which we can perform with greatest diligence ; but truly the lives of men are generally such, that they do things in order to heaven, things, I say, so few, so trifling, so unworthy, that they are not proportionable to the reward of a crown of oak or a yellow riband, the slender reward with which the Romans paid their soldiers for their extraordinary valour. True it is, that heaven is not, in a just sense of a commutation, a reward, but a gift, and an infinite favour: but yet it is not reached forth but to persons disposed by the conditions of God, which conditions when we pursue in kind, let us be very careful we do not fail of the mighty prize of our high calling, for want of degrees aind just measures, the measures of zeal and a mighty love,
3. It is an office of prudence to serve God so that we may, at the same time, preserve our lives and our estates, our in- terest and reputation, for ourselves and our relatives, so far as they can consist together. St. Paul, in the beginning of Christianity, was careful to instruct the forwardness and zeal of the new Christians into good husbandry, and to catechize the men into good trades, and the women into useful employ- ments, that they might not be unprofitable. For Christian religion, -carrying us to heaven, does it by the way of a man, and by the body it serves the soul, as by the soul it serves God; and, therefore, it endeavours to secure the body and its interest, that it may continue the opportunities of a crown, and prolong the stage in which we are to run for the mighty * prize of our salvation:* and this is that part of prudence which is the defensativ€ and guard of a Christian in the time of persecution, and it hath in it much of duty. He that, through an indiscreet zeal, casts himself into a needless danger, hath betrayed his life to tyranny, and tempts the si»
104 OF CHRISTIAN PltUDExNCE.
of an enemy; he loses to God the service of mnny yenrs, and cuts off himself from a fair opportunity of workins^ his salva- tion, in the main parts of which we shall find a lonp; life and very many years of reason to he little enough; he betrays the interest of his relatives, which he is bound to preserve ; he disables himself of making ' provision for them of his own house ;' and he that fails in this duty by his own fault * is worse than an infidel ;' and denies the faith, by such unseasonably dying, or being undone, which by that testimony he did intend gloriously to confess ; he serves the end of ambition and popular services, but not the sober ends of religion ; he discourages the weak, and weakens the hands of the strong, and by upbraiding their weariness, tempts them to turn it into rashness or despair ; he affrights strangers from entering into religion, while by such imprudence he shall represent it to be impossible, at the same time, to be wise and to be religious; he turns all the whole religion into a frowardness of dying or beggary, leaving no space for the parts and offices of a holy life, which, in times of persecution, are infinitely necessary for the advantages of the institution. But God hath provided better things for his servants : " Quern fata cogunt, ille cum venia est miser ;" " he whom God by an inevitable necessity calls to sufferance, he hath leave to be undone ;" and that ruin of his estate or loss of his life shall secure first a providence, then a crown.
At si qnis ultro se malis offert volens, Seqiie ipse torqnet, perdeie est dignns bona, Qneis nescit uti : Sen. Hipp, 440, Schr.
* But he that invites the cruelty of a tyrant by his own follies, or the indiscretions of an insignificant and impertinent zeal, suffers as a wilful person, and enters into the portion and reward of fools.' And this is the precept of our blessed Saviour, next after my text, " Beware of men." Use your prudence to the purposes of avoiding their snare. T^v BrjpSiv fiporog /xaxxov avyifMB^o?. " Man is the most harmful of all the wild beasts." " Ye are sent as sheep among wolves ; be, therefore, wise as serpents :" when you can avoid it, suffer not men to ride over your heads, or trample you under foot ; that is the wisdom of serpents. And so must we; that is, by all just compliances, and toleration of all indifferent changes
OF CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE. 105
in which a duty is not destroyed, and in which we are not active, ^ preserve ourselves, that we might be permitted to hve, and serve God, and to do advantages to rehgion ; so purchasing tune to do good in, by bending in all those flexures of fortune and condition which we cannot help, and which we do not set forward, and which we never did procure. And this is the direct meaning of St. Paul : " See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil "^ ;" that is, we are fallen into times that are troublesome, dangerous, persecuting, and afflictive ; purchase as much respite as you can ; buy or * redeem the time' by all honest arts, by humility, by fair carriage and sweetnesses of society, by civility and a peaceful conversation, by good words and all honest offices, by praying for your persecutors, by patient sufferance of what is unavoid- able. And when the tyrant draws you forth from all these guards and retirements, and offers violence to your duty, or tempts you to do a dishonest act, or to omit an act of obliga- tion, then come forth into the theatre, and lay your necks down to the hangman's axe, and fear not to die the most shameful death of the cross or the gallows. For so have I known angels ascending and descending upon those ladders ; and the Lord of glory suffered shame and purchased honour upon the cross. Thus we are " to walk in wisdom towards them that are without, redeeming the time'' :"for so St. Paul renews that permission or commandment; give them no just cause of offence ; with all humility, and as occasion is offered, represent their duty, and invite them sweetly to felicities and virtue, but do not, in ruder language, upbraid and reproach their baseness ; and, when they are incorrigible, let them alone, lest, like cats, they run mad with the smell of delicious ointments. And, therefore, Pothinus, bishop of Lyons, being asked by the unbaptized president, ' Who was the God of Christians ?' answered 'Eav ^^ aiiog yvcoa-rj, ' If you be disposed with real and hearty desires of learning, what you ask you shall quickly know;' but, if your purpose be indirect, I shall not preach to you, to my hurt, and your no advantage. — Thus the wisdom of the primitive Christians was careful not to profane the temples of the heathen, not to revile their false
« Eph. V. 15, 16. d Col. iv. 5.
lOG Ol- CIIKISTIAN IMlliDEiXCE.
gods ; and, when they were in duty to reprehend the follies of their religion, they chose to do it from their own writings, and us relators oi" their own records : they fled from the fury of a persecution, they iiid themselves in caves, and wandered about in disguises, and preached in private, and celebrated their synaxes and communions in grottos and retirements ; and made it appear to all the world they were peaceable and obedient, charitable and patient, and at this price bought their time.
Miyiff-Toc ejya Trarroc la-r Wta-riTnf".
As knowing that, even in this sense, time was very pre- cious, and the opportunity of giving glory to God by the offices of an excellent religion was not too dear a purchase at that rate. But then when the wolves had entered into the folds, and seized upon a lamb, the rest fled, and used all the innocent arts of concealment. St. Athanasius being overtaken by his persecutors, but not known, and asked whether he saw Athanasius passing that way, pointed out forward with his finger, " Non longe abest Athanasius," " the man is not far off," a swift footman will easily overtake him. And St. Paul divided the counsel of his judges, and made the Pharisees his parties by a witty insinuation of his own belief of the resur- rection, which was not the main question, but an incident to the matter of his accusation. And when Plinius Secvaidus, in the face of a tyrant court, was pressed so invidiously to give his opinion concerning a good man in banishment, and under the disadvantage of an unjust sentence, he diverted the snare of Marcus Regulus, by referring his answer to a com- petent judicatory, according to the laws : being pressed again, by offering a direct answer upon a just condition, which he knew they would not accept; and, the third time, by turning .the envy upon the impertinent and malicious orator; that he won great honour, the honour of a severe honesty, and a witty man, and a prudent person. The thing I have noted, because it is a good pattern to represent the arts of honest evasion, and religious, prudent honesty ; which any good man may transcribe and turn into his own instances, if any equal case should occur.
e Sopli. Elcctr. 75. Musgr.
OF CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE. 107
For, in this case, the rule is easy ; if we are commanded to be ' wise ' and ' redeem our time,' that we serve God and religion, we must not use unlawful arts which set us back in the accounts of our time, no lying subterfuges, no betraying of a truth, no treachery to a good man, no insnaring of a brother, no secret renouncing of any part or proposition of our rehgion, no denying to confess the article when we are called to it. For when the primitive Christians had got a trick to give money for certificates that they had sacrificed to idols, though indeed they did not do it, but had corrupted the officers and ministers of state, they dishonoured their rehgion, and were marked with the appellative of ' libellatici/ * libellers ;' and were excommunicated, and cast off from the society of Christians, and the hopes of heaven, till they had returned to God by a severe repentance. " Optandum est, ut, quod hbenter facis, diu facere possis ;" " It is good to have time long to do that which we ought to do :" but to pretend that which we dare not do, and to say we have when we have not, if we know we ought not, is to dishonour the cause and the person too ; it is expressly against confession of Christ, of which St. Paul saith, " By the mouth, confession is made unto salvation;" and our blessed Saviour, " He that confesseth me before men, I will confess him before my heavenly Father;" and if here he refuseth to own me, I will not own him hereafter. It is also expressly against Christian fortitude and nobleness, and against the simplicity and sin- cerity of our religion, and it turns prudence into craft, and brings the devil to wait in the temple, and to minister to God; and it is a lesser kind of apostasy. And it is well that the man is tempted no farther; for, if the persecutors could not be corrupted with money, it is odds but the complying man would ; and though he would, with the money, hide his shame, yet he will not, with the loss of all his estate, redeem his religion. Av7rr]^S)i; 5"' £%E(, d Toig kixaurrii tov Qiov uu^u Kanoig' *■ Some men will lose their lives, rather than a fair estate :' and do not almost all the armies of the world (I mean those that fight in the justest causes) pretend to fight and die for their lands and liberties ? apd there are too many also, that will die twice, rather than be beggars once, although v/e all know that the second death is intolerable. Christian prudence forbids us to provoke a danger; and they were fond persons
108 OF rnuisTiAN prudenck.
that ran to persecution, and, \vhen the proconsul sat on the life and death, and made strict inquisition after Christians, went and oft'ered themselves to die ; and he was a fool, that, being in Portugal, ran to the priest as he elevated the host, and overthrew tli(^ mysteries, and openly defied the rites of that religion. God, when he sends a persecution, will pick out such persons whom he will have to die, and whom he will consign to banislnnent, and whom to poverty. In the mean time, let us do our duty when we can, and as long as we can, and with as much strictness as we can ; walking anpiSug (as the apostle's phrase is), * not prevaricating ' in the least tittle : and then, if we can be safe with the arts of civil, innocent, inoflensive compliance, let us bless God for his permissions made to us, and his assistances in the using them. But if either we turn our zeal into the ambition of death, and the follies of an unnecessary beggary ; or on the other side turn our prudence into craft and covetousness ; to the first I say, that ' God hath no pleasure in fools ;' to the latter, ' If you gain the whole world, and lose your own soul,' your loss is infinite and intolerable.
SERMON XXI.
PART XL
4. It is the office of Christian prudence so to order the affairs of our life, as that, in all the offices of our souls and conversa- tion, we do honour and reputation to the religion we profess. For the follies and vices of the professors give great advantages to the adversary to speak reproachfully, and do alienate the hearts, and hinder the compliance of those undetermined persons, who are apt to be persuaded, if their understandings be not prejudiced.
But as our necessary duty is bound upon us by one liga- ment more, in order to the honour of the cause of God, so it particularly binds us to many circumstances, adjuncts, and parts of duty, which have no other commandment but the law of prudence. There are some sects of Christians which have some one constant indisposition, which, as a character, divides them from all others, and makes them reproved on all hands.
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OF CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE. 109
Some are so suspicious and ill-natured, that, if a perl5on of a facile nature and gentle disposition fall into their hands, he is presently soured, and made morose, unpleasant, and uneasy in his conversation. Others there are, that do things so like to what themselves condemn, that they are forced to take sanc- tuary and labour in the mine of insignificant distinctions, to make themselves believe they are innocent; and, in the mean time, they offend all men else, and open the mouths of their adversaries to speak reproachful things, true or false (as it happens). And it requires a great wit to understand all the distinctions and devices thought of for legitimating the wor- shipping of images ; and those people that are liberal in their excommunications, make men think they have reason to say, ' their judges are proud, or self-willed, or covetous, or ill- natured people.' These that are the faults of governors, and continued, are quickly derived upon the sect, and cause a disreputation to the whole society and institution. And Avho can think thatconsreo-ation to be a true branch of the Christian, which makes it their profession to kill men to save their souls against their will, and against their understanding ? who, calling themselves disciples of so meek a Master, do live like bears upon prey, and spoil, and blood? It is a huge dishonour to the sincerity of a man's purposes, to be too busy in fingering money in the matters of religion ; and they that are zealous for their rights, and tame in their devotion, furious against sacrilege, and companions of drunkards, implacable against breakers of a canon, and careless and patient enough with them that break the fifth or sixth commandments of the decalogue, tell all the world their private sense is to preserve their own interest with scruple and curiosity, and leave God to take care for his.
Thus Christ reproved the Pharisees for * straining at a gnat, and swallowing a camel;' the very representation of the manner and matter of fact discovers the vice by reproving the folly of it. They that are factious to get a rich proselyte, and think the poor not worth saving, dishonour their zeal, and teach men to call it covetousness: and though there may be a reason of prudence to desire one more than the other, because of a bigger efficacy the example of the one may have more than the other ; yet it will quickly be discovered, if it
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be done by secular design ; and the Scripture, that did not allow the preferring of a gay man before a poor saint in the matter of place, will not be pleased, that in the matter of souls, which are all equal, there should be a faction, and design, and an acceptation of persons. Never let sins pollute our religion with arts of the world, nor offer to support the ark with unhallowed hands, nor mingle false propositions with true, nor make religion a pretence to profit or prefer- ment, nor do things which are like a vice ; neither ever speak things dishonourable of God, nor abuse thy brother for God's sake; nor be solicitous and over-busy to recover thy own little things, neither always think it fit to lose thy charity by forcing thy brother to do justice; and all those things which are the outsides and faces, the garments and most discerned parts of religion, be sure that they be dressed according to all the circumstances of men, and by all the rules of common honesty and public reputation. Is it not a sad thing that the Jew should say, the Christians worship images ? or that it should become a proverb, that ' the Jew spends all in his passover, the Moor in his marriage, and the Christian in his law-suits?' that what the first sacrifice to religion, and the second to public joy, we should spend in malice, covetous- ness, and revenge ?
-Pudet liaec opprobria nobis
Et dici potuisse, et non potuisse lefelli.
But among ourselves also we serve the devil's ends, and minister to an eternal disunion, by saying and doing things which look unhandsomely. One sort of men is superstitious, fantastical, greedy of honour, and tenacious of propositions to fill the purse, and his religion is thought nothing but policy and opinion. Another says, * he hath a good religion,' but he is the most indifferent and cold person in the world either to maintain it, or to live according to it. The one dresses the images of saints with fine clothes;. the other lets the poor go naked, and disrobes the priests that minister in the religion. A third uses God worse than all this, and says of him such things that are scandalous even to an honest man, and such which would undo a good man's reputation. And a fourth, yet, endures no governor but himself, and pretends to set up Christ, and make himself his lieutenant. And a fifth hates
OF CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE. Ill
all government. And from all this it comes to pass, that it is hard for a man to choose his side ; and he that chooses wisest, takes that which hath in it least hurt; but some he must endure, or live without communion : and every church of one denomination is, or hath been, too incurious of preventing infamy or disreputation to their confessions.
One thing I desire should be observed, that here the question being concerning prudence, and the matter of doing reputation to our religion, it is not enough to say, we can with learning justify all that we do, and make all whole with three or four distinctions : for possibly that man that went to visit the Corinthian Lais, if he had been asked why he dis- honoured himself with so unhandsome an entrance, might find an excuse to legitimate his act, or at least to make himself believe well of his own person ; but he that intends to do himself honour, must take care that he be not suspected, that he give no occasion of reproachful language ; for fame and honour is a nice thing, tender as a woman's chastity, or like the face of the purest mirror, which a foul breath, or an unwholesome air, or a watery eye can sully, and the beauty is lost, although it be not dashed in pieces. When a man, or a sect, is put to answer for themselves in the matter of reputa- tion, they, with their distinctions, wipe the glass, and at last can do nothing but make it appear it was not broken ; but their very abstersion and laborious excuses confess it was foul and faulty. We must know that all sorts of men, and all sects of Christians, have not only the mistakes of men and their prejudices to contest withal, but the calumnies and aggrava- tion of devils ; and, therefore, it will much ease our account of doomsday, if we are now so prudent that men will not be offended here, nor the devils furnished with a libel in the day of our great account.
To this rule appertains, that we be curious in observing the circumstances of men, and satisfying all their reasonable expectations, and doing things at that rate of charity and religion, which they are taught to be prescribed in the insti- tution. There are some things which are indecencies rather than sins, such which may become a just heathen, but not a holy Christian; a man of the world, but not a man ' professing godliness :' because when the greatness of the man, or the
112 OF CIIIUSTIAV PRUDENCE.
excellency of the law, hatli enga<2;ed us iipon great severity or an exemplary virtue, whatsoever is less than it, renders the man unworthy of" the religion, or the religion unworthy its fame. Men think themselves abused, and, therefore, return shame for payuient. We never read of an apostle that went to law ; and it is but reasonable to expect, that, of all men in the world, Christians should not be such fighting people, and clergymen should not command armies, and kings shpuld not be di'unk, and subjects should not strike princes for justice, and an old man should not be youthful in talk or in his habit, and women should not swear, and great men should not lie, and a poor man should not oppress; for, besides the sin of some of them, there is an indecency in all of them; and by being contrary to the end of an office, or the reputation of a state, or the sobrieties of a graver or sublimed person, they asperse the religion as insufficient to keep the persons within the bounds of fame and common reputation.
But, above all things, those sects of Christians whose professed doctrine brings destruction and diminution to government, give the most intolerable scandal and dishonour to the institution; and it had been impossible that Christianity should have prevailed over the wisdom and power of the Greeks and Romans, if it had not been humble to superiors, patient of injuries, charitable to the needy, a great exactor of obedience to kings, even to heathens, that they might be won and convinced ; and to persecutors, that they might be sweetened in their anger, or upbraided for their cruel injustice : for so doth the humble vine creep at the foot of an oak, and leans upon its lowest base, and begs shade and protection, and leave to grow under its branches, and to give and take mutual refreshment, and pay a friendly influence for a mighty patronage ; and they grow and dwell together, and are the most remarkable of friends and married pairs of all the leafy nation. Religion of itself is soft, easy, and defenceless; and God hath made it grow up with empire, and lean upon the arms of kings, and it cannot well grow alone ; and if it shall, like the ivy, suck the heart of the oak, upon whose body it grew and was supported, it will be pulled down from its usurped eminence, and fire and shame shall be its portion. We cannot complain, if princes arm against those Christians,
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who, if they were suffered to preach, will disarm the princes; and it will be hard to persuade that kings are bound to protect and nourish those that will prove ministers of their own ex- auctoration : and no prince can have juster reason to forbid, nor any man have greater reason to deny, communion to a family, than when they go about to destroy the power of the one, or corrupt the duty of the other. The particulars of this rule are very many : I shall only instance in one more, because it is of great concermnent to the public interest of Christendom.
There are some persons, whose religion is hugely dis- graced, because they change their propositions, according as their temporal necessities or advantages do return. They that, in their weakness and beginning, cry out against all violence as against persecution, and from being sufferers swell up till they be prosperous, and from thence to power, and at last to tyranny, and then suffer none but themselves, and trip up those feet which they humbly kissed, that them- selves should not be trampled upon; — these men tell all the world, that, at first, they were pusillanimous, or at last out- rageous ; that their doctrine at first served their fear, and at last served their rage, and that they did not at all intend to serve God : and then who shall believe them in any thing else ? Thus some men declaim against the faults of governors, that themselves may govern ; and when the power is in their hands, what was a fault in others, is in them necessity ; as if a sin could be hallowed for coming into their hands. Some Greeks, at Florence, subscribed the article of purgatory, and condemned it in their own dioceses : and the king's supremacy in causes ecclesiastical was earnestly defended against the pretences of the bishop of Rome ; and yet when he was thrust out, some men were, and are, violent to submit the king to their consistories ; as if he were supreme in defiance of the pope, and yet not supreme over his own clergy. These articles are managed too suspiciously.
Omnia si perdas, famam servare memento :
'■ You lose all the advantages to your cause, if you lose your reputation.'
5. It is a duty also of Christian prudence, that the teachers of others by authority, or reprovers of their vices
VOL. VI. 1
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by chanty, should also make their persons apt to do it Avithout objection.
Loripc«lcm rectus deriilcat, jT.thiopcm albnsV
' No man can endure the Gracchi preaching against sedition, nor Verres prating against thievery,' or Milo against homi- cide : and if Herod had made an oration of humility, or Antiochus of mercy, men would have thouglit it had been a design to evil purposes. He that means to gain a soul, must not make his sermon an ostentation of liis eloquence, but the Kiw of his own life. If a grammarian should speak solecisms, or a musician sing like a bittern, he becomes ridi- culous for offending in the faculty he professes. So it is in them who minister to the conversion of souls : if they fail in their own life, when they profess to instruct another, they are defective in their proper part, and are unskilful to all their purposes ; and the cardinal of Crema did, with ill suc- cess, tempt the English priests to quit their chaste marriages, when himself was deprehended in unchaste embraces. For good counsel seems to be unhallowed, when it is reached forth by an impure hand ; and he can ill be believed by another, whose life so confutes his rules, that it is plain he does not believe himself. Those churches that are zealous for souls, must send into their ministries men so innocent, that evil persons may have no excuse to be any longer vicious. When Gorgias went about to persuade the Greeks to be at peace, he had eloquence enough to do advantage to his cause, and reason enough to press it : but Melanthius was glad to put him off, by telling him that he was not fit to persuade peace, who could not agree at home with his wife, nor make his wife agree with her maid ; and he that could not make peace between three single persons, was unapt to prevail for the reuniting fourteen or fifteen commonwealths. And this thing St. Paul remarks, by enjoining that a bishop should be chosen such a one as knew well to rule his own house ; or else he is not fit to rule the church of God. And when thou persuadest thy brother to be chaste, let him not deride thee for thy intemperance ; and it will ill become thee to be severe against an idle servant, if thou thyself beest
» Juv. ii. 23,
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useless to the public ; and every notorious vice is infinitely against the spirit of government, and ' depresses the man to an evenness' with common persons: " Facinus quos inqui- nat aequat." To reprove belongs to a superior ; and as inno- cence gives a man advantage over his brother, giving him an artificial and adventitious authority ; so the follies and scandals of a public and governing man, destroy the efficacy of that authority that is just and natural. Now this is directly an office of Christian prudence, that good offices and great authority become not ineffective by ill conduct.
Hither also it appertains, that in public or private reproofs we observe circumstances of time, — of place, — of person, — of disposition. The vices of a king are not to be opened publicly, and princes must not be reprehended as a man reproves his servant; but by categorical propositions, by abstracted declamations, by reprehensions of a crime in its single nature, in private, with humility and arts of insinua- tion ; and it is against Christian prudence, not only to use a prince or great personage with common language, but it is as great an imprudence to pretend, for such a rudeness, the examples of the prophets in the Old Testament. For their case was extraordinary, their calling peculiar, their commis- sion special, their spirit miraculous, their authority great as to that single mission ; they were like thunder or the trump of God, sent to do that office plainly, for the doing of which in that manner, God had given no commission to any ordi- nary minister. And, therefore, we never find, that the priests did use that freedom, which the prophets were com- manded to use, whose very words being put into their mouths, it was not to be esteemed a human act, or a lawful manner of doing an ordinary office ; neither could it become a precedent to them, whose authority is precarious and without coercion, whose spirit is allayed with Christian graces and duties of humility, whose words are not pre- scribed, but left to the conduct of prudence, as it is to be advised by public necessities and private circumstances, in ages where all things are so ordered, that what was fit and pious amongst the old Jews, would be uncivil and intolerable to the latter Christians. He also that reproves a vice, should also treat the persons with honour and civilities, and by fair opinions and sweet addresses place the man in the regions of
116 OF CHRISTIAN PUUDENCK.
modesty, and tlie confines of n;race, and the frinoes of repentance. For some men are more restrained by an im- perfect feared shame, so long as tliey tliink there is a reserve of reputation whicli they may secure, than they can be with all tiie furious declamations of the world, when themselves are represented ugly and odious, full of shame, and actually punished with the worst of temporal evils, beyond which he fears not here to suffer, and from whence, because he knows it will be hard for him to be redeemed by an after-game of reputation, it makes him desperate and incorrigible by frater- nal correption.
A zealous man hath not done his duty, when he calls his brother ' drunkard' and ' beast;' and he may better do it by telling him he is a man, and sealed with God's Spirit, and honoured with the title of a Christian, and is, or ought to be, reputed as a discreet person by his friends, and a governor of a family, or a guide in his country, or an example to many, and that it is huge pity so many excellent things should be sullied and allayed with what is so much below all this. Then a reprover does his duty, when he is severe against the vice, and charitable to the man, and careful of "his reputa- tion, and sorry for his real dishonour, and observant of his circumstances, and watchful to surprise his affections and resolutions there, where they are most tender and most tenable : and men will not be in love with virtue, whither they are forced with rudeness and incivilities; but they love to dwell there whither they are invited friendly, and where they are treated civilly, and feasted liberally, and led by the hand and the eye to honour and felicity.
6. It is a duty of Christian prudence not to suffer our souls to walk alone, unguarded, unguided, and more single than in other actions and interests of our lives, which are of less concernment. " Vae soli et singulari," said the wise man : " Wo to him that is alone." And if we consider, how much God hath done to secure our souls, and after all that, how many ways there are for a man's soul to miscarry, we should think it very necessary to call to a spiritual man to take us by the hand to walk in the ways of God, and to lead us in all the regions of duty, and through the labyrinths of danger. For God, who best loves and best knows how to value our soul, set a price no less upon it than the life-blood
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of his holy Son ; he hath treated it with variety of usages, according as the world had new guises and new necessities ; he abates it with punishment, to make us avoid greater ; he shortened our life, that we might live for ever; he turns sickness into virtue ; he brings good out of evil, he turns enmities to advantages, our very sins into repentances and stricter walking ; he defeats all the follies of men and all the arts of the devil, and lays snares and uses violence to secure obedience ; he sends prophets and priests to invite us and to threaten us to felicities ; he restrains us v/ith laws, and he bridles us with honour and shame, reputation and society, friends and foes ; he lays hold on us by the instruments of all the passions ; he is enough to fill our love ; he satisfies our hope ; he affrights us with fear ; he gives us part of our reward in hand, and entertains all our faculties with the promises of an infinite and glorious portion ; he curbs our affections ; he directs our wills ; he instructs our under- standings with scriptures, with perpetual sermons, with good books, with frequent discourses, with particular observations and great experience, with accidents and judgments, with rare events of providence and miracles ; he sends his angels to be our guard, and to place us in opportunities of virtue, and to take us off from ill company and places of danger, to set us near to good examples ; he gives us his Holy Spirit, and he becomes to us a principle of a mighty grace, descend- ing upon us in great variety and undiscerned events, besides all those parts of it which men have reduced to a method and an art: and, after all this, he forgives us infinite irre- gularities, and spares us every day, and still expects, and passes by, and waits all our days, still watching to do us good, and to save that soul which he knows is so precious, one of the chiefest of the works of God, and an image of Divinity. Now from all these arts and mercies of God, besides that we have infinite reason to adore his goodness, we have also a demonstration that we ought to do all that possibly we can, and extend all our faculties, and watch all our opportunities, and take in all assistances, to secure the interest of our soul, for which God is pleased to take such care, and use so many arts for its security. If it were not highly worth it, God would not do it: if it were not all of it necessary, God would not do it. But if it be worth it, and
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all of it be necessary, Avhy should we not labour in order to this great end? If it be worth so much to God, it is so much more to us : for if we perish, his felicity is undis- turbed ; but we arc undone, infinitely undone. It is, there- fore, worth taking in a sj)iritual guide ; so far we are gone.
But because we are in the question of i>rudence, we must consider whether it be necessary to do so : for every man thinks himself wise enough as to the conduct of his soul, and managing of his eternal interest ; and divinity is every man's trade, and the Scriptures speak our own language, and the commandments are few and plain, and the laws are the measure of justice ; and if I say my prayers, and pay my debts, my duty is soon summed up ; and thus we usually make our accounts for eternity, and at this rate only take care for heaven. But let a man be questioned for a portion of his estate, or have his life shaken with diseases ; then it will not be enough to employ one agent, or to send for a good woman to minister a potion of the juices of her country-garden ; but the ablest lawyers, and the skilfullest physicians, and the advice of friends, and huge caution, and diligent attendances, and a curious watching concerning all the accidents and little passages of our disease. And truly a man's life and health is worth all that and much more, and, in many cases, it needs it all.
But then is the soul the only safe and the only trifling thing about us? Are there not a thousand dangers, and ten thousand difficulties, and innumerable possibilities of a mis- adventure? Are not all the congreg-ations in the world divided in their doctrines, and all of them call their own way necessary, and most of them call all the rest damnable ? We had need of a wise instructor and a prudent choice, at our first entrance and election of our side ; and when we are well in the matter of faith for its object and institution, all the evils of myself, and all the evils of the church, and all the good that happens to evil men, every day of danger, the periods of sickness, and the day of death, are days of tem- pest and storm, and our faith will suffer shipwreck, unless it be strong, and supported and directed. But who shall guide the vessel, when a stormy passion or a violent imagination transports the man? Who shall awaken his reason, and charm his passion into slumber and instruction? How shall
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a man make his fears confident, and allay his confidence with fear, and make the allay with just proportions, and steer evenly between the extremes, or call upon his sleeping purposes, or actuate his choices, or bind him to reason in all his wanderings and ignorances, in his passions and mistakes? For suppose the man of great skill and great learning in the ways of religion ; yet if he be abused by accident or by his own will, who shall then judge his cases of conscience, and awaken his duty, and renew his holy principle, and actuate his spiritual powers ? for physicians, that prescribe to others, do not minister to themselves in cases of danger and violent sicknesses ; and in matter of distemperature we shall not find that books alone will do all the work of a spiritual physician, more than of a natural. I will not go about to increase the dangers and difficulties of the soul, to represent the assistance of a spiritual man to be necessary. But of this I am sure, our not understanding and our not consider- ing our soul, makes us first to neglect, and then many times to lose it. But is not every man an unequal judge in his own case ? and, therefore, the wisdom of God and the laws hath appointed tribunals, and judges, and arbitrators. And that men are partial in the matter of souls, it is infinitely certain, because amongst those millions of souls that perish, not one in ten thousand but believes himself in a good con- dition ; and all the sects of Christians think they are in the right, and few are patient to inquire whether they be or no. Then add to this, that the questions of souls, being clothed with circumstances of matter and particular contingency, are or may be infinite ; and most men are so unfortunate, that they have so entangled their cases of conscience, that there where they have done something good, it may be they have mingled half a dozen evils : and, when interests are con- founded, and governments altered, and power strives with right, and insensibly passes into right, and duty to God would fain be reconciled with duty to our relatives, will it not be more than necessary, that we should have some one that we may inquire of after the way to heaven, which is now made intricate by our foUies and inevitable accidents ? But by what instrument shall men alone, and in their own cases, be able to discern the spirit of truth from the spirit of illusion, just confidence from presumption, fear from
120 OF CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE.
pusillanimity ? Arc not all the things and assistances in the world little onounh to defend us against ])leasurc and pain, the two great fountains of temptation? Is it not harder to cure a lust tlian to cure a fever .' And are not the deceptions and follies of men, and the arts of the devil, and enticements of the world, and the deceptions of a man's own heart, and the evils of sin, more evil and more numerous than the sick- nesses and diseases of any one man ? And if a man perishes in hi)s soul, is it not infinitely more sad than if he could rise from his grave and die a thousand deatlis over? Thus we are advanced a second step in this prudential motive : God used many arts to secure our soul's interest ; and there are infinite dangers and infinite ways of miscarriage in the soul's interest : and, therefore, there is great necessity God should do all those mercies of security, and that we should do all the under-ministries we can in this great work.
But what advantage shall we receive by a spiritual guide? Much, every way. For this is the way that God hath ap- pointed, who, in every age, hath sent a succession of spiritual persons, whose office is to minister in holy things, and to be * stew^ards of God's household/ * shepherds of the flock/ ' dispensers of the mysteries/ under-mediators, and ministers of prayer; preachers of the law, expounders of questions, monitors of duty, conveyances of blessings ; and that which is a good discourse in the mouth of another man, is, from them, an ordinance of God ; and besides its natural efficacy and persuasion, it prevails by the way of blessing, by the reverence of his person, by Divine institution, by the excel- lency of order, by the advantages of opinion and assistances of reputation, by the influence of the Spirit, who is the pre- sident of such ministries, and who is appointed to all Chris- tians, according to the dispensation that is appointed to them; to the people, in their obedience and frequenting of the ordinance ; to the priest, in his ministry and public and private offices. To which also I add this consideration, that as the holy sacraments are hugely' effective to spiritual purposes, not only because they convey a blessing to the worthy suscipients, but because men cannot be worthy sus- cipients unless they do many excellent acts of virtue, in order to a previous disposition ; so that in the whole con- junction and transaction of aftairs, there is good done by way
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of proper efficacy and Divine blessing : so it is in following the conduct of a spiritual man, and consulting with him in the matter of our souls ; we cannot do it unless we consider our souls, and make religion our business, and examine our present state, and consider concerning our danger, and watch and design for our advantages, which things of themselves will set a man much forwarder in the way of godliness : besides that naturally every man will less dare to act a sin for which he knows he shall feel a present shame in his dis- coveries made to the spiritual guide, the man that is made the witness of his conversation : Toug en Aiog yap eiKog kan Travd' o^av " Holy men ought to know all things from God *"," and that relate to God, in order to the conduct of souls. And there is nothing; to be said ag-ainst this, if we do not suffer the devil in this affair to abuse us, as he does many people, in their opinions, teaching men to suspect there is a design and a snake under the plantain. But so may they suspect kings when they command obedience, or the Levites when they read the law of tithes, or parents when they teach their children temperance, or tutors when they watch their charge. However, it is better to venture the worst of the design, than to lose the best of the assistance; and he that guides himself, hath much work and much danger ; but he that is under the conduct of another, his work is easy, little, and secure ; it is nothing but diligence and obedience : and though it be a hard thing to rule well, yet nothing is easier than to follow and be obedient.
SERMON XXII.
PART III.
7. As it is a part of Christian prudence to take into the conduct of our souls a spiritual man for a guide ; so it is also of great concernment that we be prudent in the choice of him, whom we are to trust in so great an interest.
Concerning which it will be impossible to give characters
'' Sophocl.
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and significations particular enough to enable a choice, with- out the interval-assistances of prayer, experience, and the grace of God. He that describes a man, can tell you the colour of his hair, his stature and proportion, and describe some general lines, enough to distinguish him from a Cyclops or a Saracen; but when you chance to see the man, you will discover figures or little features, of which the description had produced in you no fantasm or expectation. And in the ex- terior significations of a sect, there are more semblances than in men's faces, and greater uncertainty in the signs ; and what is faulty, strives so craftily to act the true and proper images of things ; and the more they are defective in cir- cumstances, the more curious they are in forms; and they also use such arts of gaining proselytes, which are of most advantage towards an effect, and, therefore, such which the true Christian ought to pursue, and the apostles actually did; and they strive to follow their patterns in arts of persuasion, not only because they would seem like them, but because they can have none so good, so effective to their purposes ; that it follows, that it is not more a duty to take care that, we be not corrupted with false teachers, than that we be not abused with false signs : for we as well find a good maa teaching a false proposition, as a good cause managed by ill men \ and a holy cause is not always dressed with healthful symptoms, nor is there a cross always set upon the doors of those congregations, who are infected with the plague of heresy.
When St. John was to separate false teachers from true, he took no other course but to mark the doctrine which was of God, and that should be the mark of cognizance to distin- guish right shepherds from robbers and invaders : " Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God ; he that denieth it, is not of God." By this, he bids his scholars to avoid the present sects of Ebion, Cerin- thus, Simon Magus, and such other persons as denied that Christ was at all before he came, or that he came really in the flesh and proper humanity. This is a clear note; and they that conversed with St. John, or believed his doctrine, were s\ifficiently instructed in the present questions. But this note will signify nothing to us ; for all sects of Christians • confess Jesus Christ come in the flesh,' and the following
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sects did avoid that rock, over which a great apostle had hung out so plain a lantern.
In the following: acres of the church, men have been so curious to signify misbelievers, that they have invented and observed some signs, which, indeed, in some cases were true, real appendages of false believers ; but yet such which were also, or might be, common to them with good men and members of the catholic church. Some few I shall remark, and give a short account of them, that by removing the uncertain, we may fix our inquiries and direct them by certain significations, lest this art of prudence turn into folly and faction, error and secular design.
1. Some men distinguish error from truth by calling their adversaries' doctrine, * new and of yesterday.' And certainly this is a good sign, if it be rightly applied ; for since all Christian doctrine is that which Christ taVight his church, and the Spirit enlarged or expounded, and the apostles deli- vered ; we are to begin the Christian era for our faith, and parts of religion by the period of their preaching; our account begins then, and whatsoever is contrary to what they taught is new and false, and whatsoever is besides what they taught, is no part of our religion ; — and then no man can be prejudiced for believing it or not ; — and if it be adopted into the confessions of the church, the proposition is always so uncertain, that it is not to be admitted into the faith ; and, therefore, if it be old in respect of our days, it is not, therefore, necessary to be believed ; if it be new, it may be received into opinion ac- cording to its probability, and no sects nor interests are to be divided upon such accounts. This only I desire to be ob- served, that when a truth returns from banishment bv a ' postliminium,' if it was from the first, though the holy fire hath been buried, or the I'iver ran under ground, yet we do not call that new ; since newness is not to be accounted of by a proportion to our short-lived memories, or to the broken records and fragments of story left after the inundation of barbarism and war, and change of kingdoms, and corruption of authors ; but, by its relation to the fountain of our truths, and the birth of our religion under our fathers in Christ, the holy apostles and disciples. A camel was a new thing to them that saw it in the fable, but yet it was created as soon as a cow or the domestic creatures ; and some people are apt
124 OF CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE.
to call every thiiv^ new which they never lieiird of before, as if all religion wero to be measured by the standards of their observation or country customs. Whatsoever was not taught by Christ or his apostles, though it came in by Papias or Dionysius, by Arius or Liberius, is certainly new as to our account; and whatsoever is taught to us by the doctors of the present age, if it can show its test from the beginning of our period for revelation, is not to be called new, though it be pressed with a new zeal, and discoursed of by unheard-of arguments; that is, though )nen be ignorant and need to learn it, yet it is not therefore new or unnecessary.
2. Some would have false teachers sufficiently signified by a name, or the owning of a private appellative, as of Papist, Lutheran, Calvinist, Zuinglian, Socinian ; and think it enough to denominate them not of Christ, if they are called by the name of a man. And, indeed, the thing is in itself ill : but then, if by this mark we shall esteem false teachers suffi- ciently signified, we must follow no man, no church, nor no communion ; for all are, by their adversaries, marked with an appellative of separation and singularity, and yet themselves are tenacious of a good name, such as they choose, or such as is permitted to them by fame, and the people, and a natural necessity of making a distinction. Thus the Donatists called themselves * The Flock of God,' and the Novatians called the Catholics ' Traditors,' and the Eustathians called themselves * Catholics;' and the worshippers of images ' made Iconoclast' to be a name of scorn ; and men made names as they listed, or as the fate of the market went. And if a doctor preaches a doctrine which another man likes not, but preaches the contradictory, he that consents, and he that refuses, have each of them a teacher ; by whose name, if they please to wrangle, they may be signified. It was so in the Corinthian church, with this only difference, that they divided themselves by names which signified the same rehgion ; * I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I am of Peter, and I of Christ.' These apostles were ministers of Christ, and so does every teacher, new or old, among the Christians pretend himself to be. Let that, therefore, be examined ; if he ministers to the truth of Christ and the religion of his Master, let him be entertained a servant of the Lord ; but, if an appellative be taken from his name, there is a faction commenced in it, and there is a fault
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in the man, if there be none in the doctrine ; but that the doctrine be true or false, to be received or to be rejected, because of the name, is accidental and extrinsical, and, there- fore, not to be determined by this sign.
3. Amongst some men a sect is sufficiently thought to be reproved, if it subdivides and breaks into little fractions, or changes its own opinions. Indeed, if it declines its own doctrine, no man hath reason to believe them upon their word, or to take them upon the stock of reputation, which (themselves being judges) they have forfeited and renounced in the changing that, which at first they obtruded passionately. And, therefore, in this case there is nothing to be done, but to believe the men so far as they have reason to believe them- selves ; that is, to consider when they prove what they say : and they that are able to do so, are not persons in danger to be seduced by a bare authority unless they list themselves ; for others that sink under an unavoidable prejudice, God will take care for them, if they be good people, and their case shall be considered by and by. But for the other part of the sign, when men fall out among themselves for other interests or opinions, it is no argument that they are in an error concern- ing that doctrine, which they all unitedly teach or condemn respectively ; but it hath in it some probability, that their union is a testimony of truth, as certainly as that their frac- tions are a testimony of their zeal, or honesty, or weakness, — as it happens. And if we Christians be too decretory in this instance, it will be hard for any of us to keep a Jew from making use of it against the whole religion, which, from the days of the apostles, hath been rent into innumerable sects and undersects, springing from mistake or interest, from the arts of the devil or the weakness of man. But from hence we may make an advantage in the way of prudence, and become sure that all that doctrine is certainly true, in which the generality of Christians who are divided in many things, yet do constantly agree : and that that doctrine is also sufficient, since it is certain, that, because in all communions and churches there are some very good men, that do all their duty to the getting of truth, God will not fail in any thing that is necessary to them, that honestly and heartily desire to obtain it ; and, therefore, if they rest in the hearti- ness of that, and live accordingly, and superinduce nothing
12G OF CHRISTIAN PRLDF.XCE.
to the destruction of that, they have nothnig to do but to rely upon God's goodness, and if they perisli, it is certain they cannot help it; and that is demonstration enough that they cannot perish, considering the justice and goodness of our Lord and Judge.
4. Whoever break the bands of a society or communion, and go out from that congregation in whose confession they are baptized, do an intolerable scandal to their doctrine and persons, and give suspicious men reason to decline their assemblies, and not to choose them at all for any thing of their authority or outward circumstances. And St. Paul bids the Romans to " mark them that cause divisions and offences :" but the following words make their caution prudent and practicable, " contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned, and avoid them :" they that recede from the doctrine which they have learned, they cause the offence, and if they also obtrude this upon their congregations, they also make the division. For it is certain, if we receive any doctrine contrary to what Christ gave and the apostles taught, for the authority of any man, then we ' call men master,' and leave ' our Master which is in heaven ;' and in that case we must separate from the congregation, and adhere to Christ. But this is not to be done, unless the case be evident and notorious. But as it is hard that the public doctrine of a church should be rifled, and misunderstood, and reproved, and rejected, by any of her wilful or ignorant sons and daughters ; so it is also as hard, that they should be bound not to see, when the case is plain and evident. There may be mischiefs on both sides : but the former sort of evils, men may avoid if they will; for they may be humble and modest, and entertain better opinions of their superiors than of themselves, and, in doubtful things, give them the honour of a just opinion ; and if they do not do so, that evil will be their own private ; for, that it become not public, the king and the bishop are to take care. But for the latter sort of evil, it will certainly become universal : if, I say, an authoritative false doctrine be imposed, and is to be ac- cepted accordingly ; for then all men shall be bound to profess against their conscience, that is, •* with their mouths not to confess unto salvation, what with their hearts they believe unto righteousness." The best way of remedying both the evils is, that governors lay no burden of doctrines or laws
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but what are necessary or very profitable ; and that inferiors do not contend for things unnecessary, nor call any thing necessary that is not; till then there will be evils on both sides. And although the governors are to carry the question in the point of law, reputation, and public government, yet as to God's judicature they will bear the bigger load, who in his right do him an injury, and by the impresses of his authority, destroy his truth. But, in this case also, although separating be a suspicious thing, and intolerable, unless it be when a sin is imposed ; yet to separate is also accidental to truth, for some men separate with reason, some men against reason. Therefore, here all the certainty that is in the thing, is when the truth is secured, and all the security to the men will be in the humihty of their persons, and the heartiness and simplicity of their intention, and dihgence of inquiry. The Church of England had reason to separate from the confession and practices of Rome in many particulars ; and yet, if her children separate from her, they may be unreason- able and impious.
5. The ways of direction which we have from holy Scrip- ture, to distinguish false apostles from true, are taken from their doctrine, or their lives. That of the doctrine is the more sure way, if we can hit upon it ; but that also is the thing signified, and needs to have other signs. St. John and St. Paul took this way, for they were able to do it infallibly. " All that confess Jesus incarnate, are of God," said St. John. Those men that deny it, are heretics ; avoid them. And St. Paul bids to " observe them that cause divisions and offences against the doctrine delivered ;" them also avoid that do so. And we might do so as easily as they, if the world would only make their ' depositum ' that doctrine which they delivered to all men, that is, ' the creed ;' and superinduce nothing else, but suffer Christian faith to rest in its own perfect simplicity, unmingled with arts, and opinions, and interests. This course is plain and easy, and I will not intricate it with more words, but leave it directly in its own truth and certainty, with this only direction, that when we are to choose our doctrine or our side, we take that which is in the plain unexpounded words of Scripture; for in that only our religion can consist. Secondly, choose that which is most advantageous to a holy life, to the proper graces of a
128 OF niUISTIAX PRUDENCE.
Christian, to huniility, to cliarity, to foroiveness and alms, to obedience, and complying with oovernments, to the lionour of God and the exaltation of his attributes, and to the conservation and advantages of the pubhc societies of men ; and tliis U\st St. Paul directs, '* Let us be careful to maintain <Jcood works for necessary uses :" for he tiiat lieartily pursues these proportions, cannot be an ill man, though he were accidentally, and in the particular explica- tions, deceived.
6. But, because this is an act of wisdom rather than prudence, and supposes science or knowledge rather than experience, therefore, it concerns the prudence of a Christian to observe the practice and the rules of practice, their lives and pretences, the designs and colours, the arts of conduct, and gaining proselytes, which their doctors and catechists do use in order to their purposes, and in their ministry about souls. For although many signs are uncertain, yet some are infallible, and some are highly probable.
7. Therefore, those teachers that pretend to be guided by a private spirit, are certainly false doctors. I remember what Simmias in Plutarch tells concerning Socrates, that if he heard any man say he saw a divine vision, he presently esteemed him vain and proud ; but, if he pretended only to have heard a voice, or the word of God, he listened to that religiously, and would inquire of him with curiosity. There was some reason in his fancy; for God does not communicate himself by the eye to men, but by the ear : " Ye saw no figure, but ye heard a voice," said Moses to the people con- cerning God. And, therefore, if any man pretends to speak the word of God, we will inquire concerning it; the man may the better be heard, because he may be certainly re- proved if he speaks amiss; but, if he pretends to visions and revelations, to a private spirit, and a mission extraor- dinary, the man is proud and unlearned, vicious and im- pudent. " No Scripture is of private interpretation," saith St. Peter, that is, ' private emission ' or ' declaration.' God's words were delivered indeed by single men, but such as were publicly designed prophets, remarked with a known character, approved of by the high priest and Sanhedrim, endued with a public spirit, and his doctrines were always agreeable to the other Scriptures. But, if any man pretends now to the Spirit,
OF CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE. 129
either it must be a private or public. If it be private, it can but be useful to himself alone, and it may cozen him too, if it be not assisted by the spirit of a public man. But if it be a public spirit, it must enter in at the public door of ministerings and Divine ordinances, of God's grace and man's endeavour ; it must be subject to the prophets; it is discernible and judicable by them, and, therefore, may be rejected, and then it must pretend no longer. For he that will pretend to an extraordinary spirit, and refuses to be tried by the ordinary ways, must either prophesy or work miracles, or must have a voice from heaven to give him testimony. The prophets in the Old Testament, and the apostles in the New, and Christ between both, had no other way of extraordinary probation ; and they that pretend to any thing extraordinary, cannot, ought not to be believed, unless they have something more than their own word : " If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true," said Truth itself, our blessed Lord. But, secondly, they that intend to teach by an extraordinary spirit, if they pretend to teach according to Scripture, must be examined by the measures of Scripture, and then their extraordinary must be judged by the ordinary spirit, and stands or falls by the rules of every good man's religion, and public government; and then we are well enough. But if they speak any thing against Scripture, it is the spirit of Antichrist, and the spirit of the devil : " For if an angel from heaven " (he certainly is a spirit) " preach any other doctrine, let him be accursed."
But this pretence of a single and extraordinary spirit is nothing else but the spirit of pride, error, and delusion; a snare to catch easy and credulous souls, which are willing to die for a gay word and a distorted face ; it is the parent of folly and giddy doctrine, impossible to be proved, and, therefore, useless to all purposes of religion, reason, or sober counsels; it is like an invisible colour, or music without a sound ; it is, and indeed is so intended to be, a direct over- throw of order, and government, and public ministries : it is bold to say any thing, and resolved to prove nothing; it imposes upon willing people after the same manner that oracles and the lying demons did of old time, abusing men, not by proper efficacy of its own, but because the men love to be abused : it is a great disparagement to the sufficiency <^f
VOL. VI. K "'
130 OF CHUISTIAN PRUDENCE.
Scripture, and asperses the Divine Providence, for giving so
many ages of the church an imperfect rehgion, expressly
against the truth of their words, who said, they ' had declared
the whole truth of God,' and ' told all the will of God :' and
it is an affront to the Spirit of God, the S]):rit of wisdom and
knowledge, of order, and public ministries. But the will
furnishes out malice, and the understanding sends out levity,
and they marry, and produce a fantastic dream; and the
daughter, sucking wind instead of* the milk of the word,'
grows up to madness, and the spirit of reprobation. Besides
all this, an extraordinary spirit is extremely unnecessary; and
God does not give emissions and miracles from heaven to no
purpose, and to no necessities of his church ; for the supplying
of which he hath given apostles and evangehsts, prophets
and pastors, bishops and priests, the spirit of ordination and
the spirit of instruction, catechists and teachers, arts and
sciences. Scriptures, and a constant succession of expositors,
the testimony of churches, and a constant line of tradition, or
delivery of apostolical doctrine, in all things necessary to
salvation. And, after all this, to have a fungus arise from
the belly of mud and darkness, and nourish a glow-worm,
that shall challenge to outshine the lantern of God's word,
and all the candles which God set upon a hill, and all that
the Spirit hath set upon the candlesticks, and all the stars of
Christ's right hand, is to annul all the excellent, established,
orderly, and certain effects of the Spirit of God, and to
worship the false fires of the night. He, therefore, that will
follow a guide that leads him by an extraordinary spirit, shall
go an extraordinary way, and have a strange fortune, and a
singular religion, and a portion by himself, a great way off
from the common inheritance of the saints, who are all led
by the Spirit of God, and have one heart and one mind, one
faith and one hope, the same baptism, and the helps of the
ministry, leading them to the common country, which is the
portion of all that are the sons of adoption, consigned by the
Spirit of God, the earnest of their inheritance.
Concerning the pretence of a private spirit for interpreta- tion of the confessed doctrine of God, (the holy Scriptures,) it will not so easily come into this question of choosing our spiritual guides ; because every person that can be candidate in this office, that can be chosen to guide others, must be a
OF CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE. 131
public man, that is, of a holy calling, sanctified or separate publicly to the office ; and then to interpret is part of his calling and employment, and to do so is the work of a public spirit; he is ordained and designed, he is commanded and enabled to do it: and in this there is no other caution to be interposed, but that the more public the man is, of the more authority his interpretation is ; and he comes nearer to a law of order, and in the matter of government is to be observed: but the more holy and the more learned the man is, his inter^- pretation in matter of question is more likely to be true ; and, though less to be pressed as to the public confession, yet it may be more effective to a private persuasion, provided it be done without scandal, or lessening the authority, or disparao-er ment to the more public person.
8. Those dure to be suspected for evil guides, who, to get authority among the people, pretend a great zeal, and use a bold liberty in reproving princes and governors, nobility and prelates ; for such homilies cannot be the effects of a holy religion, which lay a snare for authority, and undermine power, and discontent the people, and make them bold against kings, and immodest in their own stations, and trouble the government. Such men may speak a truth, or teach a true doctrine ; for every such design does not un- hallow the truth of God : but they take some truths, and force them to minister to an evil end. But, therefore, mingle not in the communities of such men ; for they will make it a part of your religion, to prosecute that end openly, which they, by arts of the tempter, have insinuated privately.
But if ever you enter into the seats of those doctors that speak reproachfully of their superiors, or detract from govern- ment, or love to curse the king in their heart, or slander him with their mouths, or disgrace their person, bless yourself and retire quickly; for there dwells the plague, but the Spirit of God is not president of the assembly. And, therefore, you shall observe in all the characters which the blessed apostles of our Lord made for describing and avoiding societies of heretics, false guides, and bringers in of strange doctrines, — still they reckon treason and rebellion. So St. Paul : *' In the last days perilous times shall come ; then men shall have the form of godliness, and deny the power of it; they shall be
132 OF Clini.STIAN PUmENCE.
traitors, hoa(ly,hi<j:li-iTiiiidc(l«;" that is the characteristic note. So St. Peter : " The Lord knowetli how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to he punished : l)ut chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of luicleanness, and desjiise government; presumptuous are they, self-willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities'"." — The same also is recorded and observed by St. Jude: " Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dig- nities ^ ." These three testimonies are but the declaration of one great contingency ; they are the same prophecy, declared by three apostolical men that had the gift of prophecy ; and by this character the Holy Ghost in all ages hath given us caution to avoid such assemblies, where the speaking and ruling man shall be the canker of government, and a preacher of sedition, who shall either ungird the prince's sword, or unloose the button of their mantle.
9. But the apostles in all these prophecies have remarked lust to be the inseparable companion of these rebel prophets : " They are filthy dreamers, they defile the flesh," so St. Jude ; " They walk after the flesh, in the lust of uncleanness," so St. Peter ; " They are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, incontinent and sensual," so St. Paul. And by this part of the character, as the apostles remarked the Nicolaitans, the Gnostics, the Carpocratians, and all their impure branches, which began in their days, and multiplied after their deaths; so they prophetically did fore-signify all such sects to be avoided, who, to catch silly women laden with sins, preach doctnnes of ease and licentiousness, apt to countenance and encourage vile things, and not apt to restrain a passion, or mortify a sin: — such as these: that God sees no sin in his children; that no sia will take us from God's favour; that all of such a party are elect people; that God requires of us nothing but faith ; and that fiiith which justifies is nothing but a mere believing that we are God's chosen ; that we are not tied to the law of commandments ; that the law of grace is a law of liberty, and that liberty is to do what we list ; that divorces are to be granted upon many and slight causes ; that
» 2Tim. iii. 1,&c. i- 2 Pet. ii. 9, lO. « Jndc, 5. 8.
OF CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE. 133
simple fornication is no sin. These are such doctrines, that upon the behef of them men may do any thing, and will do that which shall satisfy their own desires, and promote their interests, and seduce their she-disciples. And, indeed, it was not without great reason that these three apostles joined lust and treason together; because the former is so shameful a crime, and renders a man's spirit naturally averse to govern- ment, that if it falls upon the person of a ruler, it takes from him the spirit of government, and renders him diffident, pusil- lanimous, private, and ashamed : if it happen in the person of a subject, it makes him hate the man that shall shame him and punish him ; it hates the light and the sun, because that opens him, and, therefore, is much more against government, because that publishes and punishes too. One thing I desire to be observed, that though the primitive heresies now named, and all those others, their successors, practised and taught horrid impurities, yet they did not invade government at all ; and, therefore, those sects that these apostles did signify by prophecy, and in whom both these are concentered, — were to appear in some later times, and the days of the prophecy were not then to be fulfilled. What they are since, every age must judge by its own experience, and for its own interest. But Christian religion is so pure and holy, that chastity is some- times used for the whole religion; and to do an action chastely signifies purity of intention, abstraction from the world, and separation from low and secular ends, the vir- ginity of the soul, and its union with God''; and all deviations and estrangements from God, and adhesion to forbidden ob- jects, is called fornication and adultery. Those sects, there- fore, that teach, encourage, or practise impious or unhallowed mixtures, and shameful lusts, are issues of the impure spirit, and most contrary to God, who can behold no unclean thing. 10. Those prophets and pastors, — that pretend severity and live loosely, or are severe in small things, and give liberty in greater, or forbid some sins with extreme rigour, and yet practise or teach those that serve their interest or constitute their sect, — are to be suspected and avoided accordingly : " Nihil est hominum inepta persuasione falsius, nee ficta severitate ineptius." All ages of the church were extremely
^ Eloquia Doinaii casta eloqiiia.
134 OF CHRl'STIAN PRUDKNCE.
curious to observe, when any new teachers did arise, what kind of lives they hved ; and if tliey pretended severely and to a strict life, then they knew their danger doubled ; for it is certain all that teach doctrines contrary to the established religion delivered by the ajiostles, all they are evil men. God will not sutler a good man to be seduced damnably, much less can he be a seducer of others : and, therefore, you shall still observe the false apostles to be furious and vehement in their reproofs, and severe in their animadversions of others : but then if you watch their private, or stay till their numbers are full, or observe their spiritual habits, you shall find them indulgent to themselves, or to return from their disguises, or 80 spiritually wicked, that their pride or their revenge, their envy or their detraction, their scorn or their complacency in themselves, their desire of pre-eminence and their impatience of a rival, shall place them far enough in distance from a poor carnal sinner, whom they shall load with censures and an upbraiding scorn ; but themselves are like devils, the spirits of darkness, " the spiritual wickednesses, in high places." Some sects of men are very angry against servants for recreating and easing their labours with a less prudent and unsevere refreshment : but the patrons of their sects shall oppress a wicked man and unbelieving person ; they shall chastise a drunkard and entertain murmurers ; they shall not abide an oath, and yet shall force men to break three or four. This sect is to be avoided, because although it is good to be severe against carnal or bodily sins, yet it is not good to mingle with them who chastise a bodily sin to make way for a spiritual ; or reprove a servant, that his lord may sin alone ; or punish a stranger and a beggar, that will not approve their sin, but will have sins of his own. Con- cerning such persons, St. Paul hath told us, that " they shall not proceed far, but their folly shall be manifest ;" 'Ohiyov Xfovov ^ijvixn' av Tig TrXaTacr^M rov t^ottov rov auTOu, said Lysias : " Cito ad naturam ficta reciderunt suam." They that dis- semble their sin and their manners, or make severity to serve looseness, and an imaginary virtue to minister to a real vice ; they that abhor idols, and would commit sacrilege ; chastise a drunkard, and promote sedition ; declaim against the vanity of great persons, and then spoil them of their goods; reform manners, and engross estates ; talk godly, and do impiously;
OF CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE. 135
these are teachers which the Holy Spirit of God hath, by- three apostles, bid us to beware of and decline, as we would run from the hollowness of a grave, or the despairs and sorrows of the damned.
11. The substance of all is this : that we must not choose our doctrine by our guide, but our guide by the doctrine ; and if we doubt concerning the doctrine, we may judge of that by the lives and designs of the teachers : " By their fruits you shall know them ;" and by the plain words of the Scripture, by the apostles' creed, and by the commandments, and by the certain known and established forms of govern- ment. These are the great indices, and so plain, apt, and easy, that he that is deceived, is so because he will be so ; he is betrayed into it by his own lust, and a voluntary chosen folly.
12. Besides these premises, there are other little candles that can help to make the judgment clearer; but they are such as do not signify alone, but in conjunction with some of the precedent characters, which are drawn by the great lines of Scripture. Such as are : I . When the teachers of sects stir up unprofitable and useless questions. 2. When they causelessly retire from the universal customs of Christ- endom. 3. And cancel all the memorials of the greatest mysteries of our redemption. 4. When their confessions and catechisms and their whole religion consists h yvaiasi, ' in speculations' and ineffective notions, in discourses of angels and spirits, in abstractions and raptures, in things they understand not, and of which they have no revelation. 5. Or else if their religion spends itself in ceremonies, outward guises, and material solemnities, and imperfect forms, draw^ ing the heart of the vine forth into leaves and irregular fruitless suckers, turning the substance into circumstances, and the love of God into gestures, and the effect of the Spirit into the impertinent offices of a burdensome cere- monial: for by these two particulars the apostles reproved the Jews and the Gnostics, or those that from the school of Pythagoras pretended conversation with angels, and great knowledge of the secrets of the spirits, choosing tutelar angels, and assigning them offices and charges, as in the church of Rome, to this day, they do to saints. To these add, 6. That we observe whether the guides of souls avoid to
136 OF CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE.
suflcr for their religion ; for then the matter is foul, or the man not fit to lead, that dares not die in cold blood for his religion. Will the man lay his life and his soul upon the jiroposition ? If so, then you may consider him upon his proper grounds ; but if he refuses that, refuse his conduct sure enough. 7. You may also watch whether they do not choose their proselytes among the rich and vicious ; that they may serve themselves upon his wealth, and their disciple upon his vice. 8. If their doctrines evidently and greatly serve the interest of wealth or honour, and are ineffective to piety. 0. If they strive to gain any one to their confession, and are negligent to gain them to good life. 10. If, by pre- tences, they lessen the severity of Christ's precepts, and are easy in dispensations and licentious glosses. 11. If they invent suppletories to excuse an evil man, and yet to recon- cile his bad life with the hopes of heaven ; you have reason to suspect the whole, and to reject these parts of error and design, which in themselves are so unhandsome always, and sometimes criminal. He that shall observe the church of Rome so implacably fierce for purgatory and the pope's supremacy, for clerical immunities and the superiority of the ecclesiastical persons to secular, for indulgences and precious and costly pardons, and then so full of devices to reconcile an evil life with heaven, requiring only contrition even at the last for the abolition of eternal guilt, and having a thousand ways to commute and take off the temporal ; will see he hath reason to be jealous that interest is in these bigger than the religion, and yet that the danger of the soul is greater than that interest ; and, therefore, the man is to do accord- ingly.
Here, indeed, is the great necessity that we should have the prudence and discretion, the o^uh^nsg of serpents,
■ magis ut cernamus acutum
Quam aut aquila, aut serpens Epidatirius « .
For so serpents, as they are curious to preserve their heads from contrition or a bruise, so also to safeguard them- selves that they be not charmed with sweet and enticing words of false prophets, who charm not wisely but cunningly,
e Hor. Sat. 1, 3. 36.
OF CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE. 137
leading aside unstable souls : against these we must stop our ears, or lend our attention, according to the foregoing measures and significations. But here also I am to insert two or three cautions.
1. We cannot expect that by these or any other signs we shall be enabled to discover concerning all men, whether they teach an error or no : neither can a man by these reprove a Lutheran or a Zuinghan, a Dominican or a Franciscan, a Russian or a Greek, a Muscovite or a Georgian; because those that are certain signs of false teachers, do signify such men who destroy an article of faith or a commandment. God was careful to secure us from death by removing the lepers from the camp, and giving certain notices of distinc- tion, and putting a term between the living and the dead : but he was not pleased to secure every man from innocent and harmless errors, from the mistakes of men and the fail- ings of mortality: the signs which can distinguish a living man from a dead, will not also distinguish a black man from a brown, or a pale from a white : it is enough that we dechne those guides that lead us to hell, but not to think that we are enticed to death by the weaknesses of every disagreeing brother.
2. In all discerning of sects, we must be careful to dis- tinguish the faults of men from the evils of their doctrine ; for some there are that say very well and do very ill ; sla-) yap
Multos thyrsigeros, paucos est cernere Bacclios ;
Many men of holy calling and holy religion, that are of unholy lives : " Homines ignavi opera, philosophi sententia." But these must be separated from the institution : and the evil of the men is only to be noted, as that such persons be not taken to our single conduct and personal ministry. I will be of the man's rehgion if it be good, though he be not ; but I will not make him my confessor, Mktw a-o(piaryiv, ocTTtg oL^y avTco aocpoi^. If he be not wise for himself, I will not sit down at his feet, lest we mingle filthiness instead of being cleansed and instructed.
3. Let us make one separation more, and then we may
* Euiip. Beck. torn. ii. p. 487.
138 or CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE.
consider and act according to the premises. If we espy a design or an evil mark upon one doctrine, let us divide it from the other that are not so spotted. For indeed the public communions of men are at this dny so ordered, that they are as fond of their errors as of their truths, and some-, times most zealous for what they have least reason to be so. And if we can, by any arts of prudence, separate from an evil jiroposition, and connnunicate in all the good, then we may love colleges of religious persons, though we do not worship images; and we may obey our prelates, though we do no injury to princes; and we may be zealous against a crime, though we be not imperious over men's persons ; and we may be diligent in the conduct of souls, though we be ' not rapacious of estates : and we may be moderate exactors of obedience to human laws, though we do not dispense with the breach of the Divine ; and the clergy may represent their calling necessary, though their persons be full of modesty and humility ; and we may preserve our lights, and not lose our charity. For this is the meaning of the apostle, " Try all things, and retain that which is good :" from every sect and community of Christians take any thing that is good, that advances holy religion and the Divine honour. For one hath a better government, a second a better confession, a third hath excellent spiritual arts for the conduct of souls, a fourth hath fewer errors ; and by what instrument soever a holy life is advantaged, use that, though thou grindest thy spears and arrows at the forges of the Philistines; knowing thou hast no master but Christ, no religion but the Christian, no rule but the Scriptures, and the laws, and right reason : other things that are helps, are to be used accordingly.
These are the general rules of Christian prudence, which I have chosen to insist upon : there are many others more particular indeed, but yet worth not only the enumerating, hut observing also, and that they be reduced to practice. For the prudence of a Christian does oblige and direct respectively all the children of the institution, that we be careful to decline a danger, watchful against a temptation, always choosing that that is safe and fitted to all circum- stances ; that we be wise in choosing our company, reserved and wary in our friendships, and communicative in our cha- rity ; that we be silent, and retentive of what we hear and
OF CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE* 139
tvhat we think, not credulous, not inconstant ; that we be dehberate in our election and vigorous in our prosecutions ; that we suffer not good nature to discompose our duty, but that we separate images from substances, and the pleasing of a present company from our religion to God and our eternal interest : for sometimes that which is counselled to us by Christian prudence, is accounted folly by human prudence, and so it is ever accounted when our duty leads us into a persecution. Hither also appertain, that we never do a thing, that we know we must repent of; that we do not admire too many things, nor any thing too much ; that we be even in prosperity and patient in adversity, but trans- ported with neither into the regions of despair or levity, pusillanimity or tyranny, dejection or garishness ; always to look upon the scar we have impressed upon our flesh, and no more to handle dangers and knives ; to abstain from am- bitious and vexatious suits ; not to contend with a mighty man ; ever to listen to him, who, according to the proverb, " hath four ears, reason, religion, wisdom, and experience ;" rather to lose a benefit, than to suffer a detriment and an evil; to stop the begimiings of evil; to pardon and not to observe all the faults of friends or enemies ; of evils to choose the least, and of goods to choose the greatest, if it be also safest ; not to be insolent in success, but to proceed accord- ing to the probability of human causes and contingencies ; ever to be thankful for benefits, and profitable to others, and useful in all that we can ; to watch the seasons and circum- stances of actions ; to do that willingly which cannot be avoided, lest the necessity serve another's appetite, and it be lost to all our purposes . " Insignis enini est prudentise ut quod non facere non possis, id ita facere ut libenter fecisse videaris ;" not to pursue difficult, uncertain, and obscure things with violence and passion. Tiiese if we observe, we shall do advantage to ourselves and to the religion; and avoid those evils which fools and unwary people suffer for nothing, dying or bleeding without cause and without pity. I end this with the saying of Socrates : Xa^n^of^Eva d's ip^ovYia-Ecoi, Koi a>iXa.TT6fj(,Bva avrl ahM'Xuv, (xn (JKiay^a<pia. tjj >5 r\ lotaurri a^errij
*' Virtue is but a shadow and a servile employment, unless
140 OF CHRISTIAN SIMPLICITY.
it be adorned and instructed with prudence ?;" which gives motion and conduct, spirits and vigorousness, to rehgion, making it not only human aiul reasonable, but Divine and celestial.
SERMON XXIII.
OF CHRISTIAN SIMPLICITY.
And harmless as doves. — Matt. x. latter part of verse 16.
Our blessed Saviour having prefaced concerning prudence, adds to the integrity of the precept, and for the conduct of our rehgion, that we be simple as well as prudent, innocent as well as wary. Harmless and safe together do well : for without this blessed union, prudence turns into craft, and simplicity degenerates into folly. ' Prudens simplicitas' is Martial's character of a good man ; a wary and cautious inno- cence, a harmless prudence and provision ; * Vera simplici- tate bonus.' A true simplicity is that which leaves to a man arms defensive, his castles and strong forts ; but takes away his swords and spears, his anger and his malice, his peevish- ness and spite. But such is the misery and such is the iniquity of mankind, that craft hath invaded all the contracts and intercourses of men, and made simplicity so weak a thing, that it is grown into contempt, sometimes with, and sometimes without reason: " Et homines simplices, minime malos," the Romans called " parum cautos, ssepe stohdos ;" unwary fools and defenceless people were called simple. And when the innocence of the old simple Romans in Junius Brutus's time, in Fabricius and Camillus's began to dege- nerate, and to need the Aquihan law to force men to deal honestly ; quickly the mischief increased, till the Aquilian law grew as much out of power as honesty was out of coun- tenance ; and there, as every where else, men thought they
s Plat. Phaedo. Fischer, p. 268.
OF CHRISTIAN SIMPLICITY. 141
got a purchase, when they met with an honest man : and ri>d^iov Aristotle calls x^vjcttov, and tov o^ylhov koI rov /j,avi)cov, aTTXoov " A fool is a profitable person, and he that is simple is little better than mad :" and so it is when simplicity- wants prudence. He that, because he means honestly him- self, thinks every man else does so, and therefore is unwary in all or any of his intercourses, is a simple man in an evil sense : and therefore St. Gregory Nazianzen remarks Con- stantius with a note of folly, for suffering his easy nature to be abused by Georgius, OiKsioorai tyiv ^aaiT^sug a.Tr'hornra' ovra; ya.^ iyco KaXco ahv Kov(pormaj cxld'ov/xsvos rm Ei/xd^eiav '' The pmice's simplicity, so he calls it for reverence^;" but indeed it was folly, for it was zeal without knowledge. But it was a better temper which he observed in his own father, n aTrXorvs kcu to rou ri^oug a^oxov, such " a simplicity which only wanted craft or deceit," but wanted no prudence or caution : and that is truly Christian simplicity, or the sincerity of an honest, and ingenuous, and a fearless person ; and it is a rare band, not only of societies and contracts, but also of friendships and advantages of mankind.
We do not live in an age in which there is so much need to bid men be wary, as to take care that they be innocent. Indeed in religion we are usually too loose and ungirt, exposing ourselves to temptation, and others to offence, and our name to dishonour, and the cause itself to reproach, and we are open and ready to every evil but persecution : from that we are close enough, and that alone we call prudence ; but in the matter of interest we are wary as serpents, subtle as foxes, vigilant as the birds of the night, rapacious as kites, tenacious as grappling -hooks and the weightiest anchors, and, above all, false and hypocritical as a thin crust of ice spread upon the face of a deep, smooth, and dissembling pit; if you set your foot, your foot slips, or the ice breaks, and you sink into death, and are wound in a sheet of water, descending into mischief or your grave, suffering a great fall, or a sudden death, by your confidence and unsuspecting foot. There is a universal crust of hypocrisy, that covers the face of the greatest part of mankind. Their religion consists in forms
a Oiat. 21.
142 OF CHRISTIAN SIMPLICITY.
and oiitsides, and serves reputation or a design, but does not serve God. Their promises are but fair language, and the civilities of the piazzas or exchanges, and disband and untie like the air that beat upon their teeth, when they spake the delicious and hopeful words. Their oaths are snares to catch men, and make them confident ; their contracts are arts and stratagems to deceive, measured by profit and possibility; and every thing is lawful that is gainful. And their friendships are trades of getting; and their kindness of watching a dying friend is but the office of a vulture, the gaping for a legacy, the spoil of the carcass. And their sicknesses are many times policies of state; sometimes a design to show the riches of our bedchamber. And their funeral tears are but the paranymphs and pious solicitors of a second bride. And every thing that is ugly must be hid, and every thing that is handsome must be seen ; and that w\\\ make a fair cover for a huge deformity. And therefore it is, as they think, necessary, that men should always have some pretences and forms, some faces of religion or sweetness of language, confident affirmatives or bold oaths, protracted treaties or multitude of words, affected silence or grave deportment, a good name or a good cause, a fair relation or a worthy calling, great power or a pleasant wit ; any thing that can be fair or that can be useful, any thing that can do good or be thought good, we use it to abuse our brother, or promote our interest. Leporina re- solved to die, being troubled for her husband's danger; and he resolved to die w'ith her that had so great a kindness for him, as not to outlive the best of her husband's fortune, it was agreed ; and she tempered the poison, and drank the face of the unwholesome goblet ; but the weighty poison sunk to the bottom, and the easy man drank it all off, and died, and the woman carried him forth to funeral ; and after a little illness, which she soon recovered, she entered upon the inheritance, and a second marriage.
Tiita fiequensqiie via est
It is a usual and a safe way to cozen, upon colour of friendship or rehgion ; but that is hugely criminal : to tell a lie to abuse a man's belief, and by it to enter upon any thing of his possession to his injury, is a perfect destruction of all
OF CHRISTIAN SIMPLICITY. 143
human society, the most ignoble of all human follies, per- fectly contrary to God, who is truth itself, the greatest argument of a timorous and a base, a cowardly and a private mind, not at all honest, or confident to see the sun, "a vice fit for slaves ;" avoriTov kcu ^ouxo'ST^ETrU, as DioChrysostomus'' calls it ; o^uv Kai OTi ^npicov ra ^siXorocra rnxi aysvvears^a ra EHsTva -il^eu^srai Travruv /uaXio-rcc, Jta) k^ccTrara.' " for the most timorous and the basest of beasts use craft," and he in wait, and take their prey, and save their lives by deceit. And it is the greatest injury to the abused person in the world : for, besides that it abuses his interest, it also makes him for ever insecure, and uneasy in his confidence, which is the period of cares, the rest of a man's spirit ; it makes it necessary for a man to be jealous and suspicious, that is, to be troublesome to himself and every man else : and above all, lying, or craftiness, and unfaithful usages, rob a man of the honour of his soul, making his understanding useless and in the con- dition of a fool, spoiled, and dishonoured, and despised. TLaa-a ^y%r) anovaa u'Vi^Cirai tv? aM^da;, said Plato : " Every soul loses truth very unwillingly." Every man is so great a lover of truth, that if he hath it not, he loves to believe he hath, and would fain have all the world to believe as he does ; either presuming that he hath truth, or else hating to be deceived, or to be esteemed a cheated and an abused person. " Non licet sufFurari mentem hominis etiam Sama- ritani," said R. Moses '^; " sed veritatem loquere, atque age ingenue :" " If a man be a Samaritan, that is, a hated person, a person from whom you differ in matter of religion, yet steal not his mind away, but speak truth to him honestly and ingenuously." A man's soul loves to dwell in truth, it is his resting-place ; and if you take him from thence, you take him into strange regions, a place of banishment and dishonour. " Qui ignotos Isedit, latro appellatur; qui amicos, paulo minus quam parricida :" " He that hurts strangers is a thief; but he that hurts his friends, is little better than a parricide." That is the brand and stigma of hypocrisy and lying : it hurts our friends, ' Mendacium in damnum potens ;' and makes the man that owns it guilty of a crime, that is to be punished by the sorrows usually suffered in the most
*> Dissert. 1, de Regno. c Can. Elh.
144 OF CHUISTIAN .SIMPLICITY.
execrable places of the cities. But I must reduce the duty to particulars, and discover the contrary vice by the several parts of its proportion.
1. The first olKce of a Christian simplicity consists in our relioion and manners ; that they be o})cn and honest, public and justifiable, the same at home and abroad ; for, besides the ingenuity and honesty of this, there is an indispensable and infinite necessity it should be so ; because whoever is a hypocrite in his religion, mocks God, presenting to him the outside, and reserving the inward for his enemy ; which is either a denying God to be the searcher of our hearts, or else an open defiance of his omniscience and of his justice. To provoke God, that we may deceive men ; to defy his almightiness, that we may abuse our brother; is, to destroy all that is sacred, all that is prudent ; it is an open hostility to all things human and divine, a breaking from all the bands of all relations ; and uses God so cheaply, as if he were to be treated or could be cozened like a weak man, and an undis- cerning and easy merchant. But so is the life of many men :
O vita fallax ! abditos sensus geris, Auimisque pulcliiam turpibus facicm induis. Piidor inipiidenteni celat, aiidacem quics, Pietas nefandiim ; vera fallaces probant; Simiilantqne molles dura^.
It is a crafty life that men live, carrying designs, and living upon secret purposes. Men pretend modesty, and under that red veil are bold against superiors ; saucy to their betters upon pretences of religion ; invaders of others' rights by false propositions in theology ; pretending humi- lity, they challenge superiority above all orders of men ; and for being thought more holy, think that they have title to govern the world : they bear upon their face great religion, and are impious in their relations, false to their trust, unfaithful to their friend, unkind to their dependents ; 6(Pfog sTTYi^KOTEi, Ha: TO <p^6vi/^ov ^rjToi/i/TEj EV To7g wspiwaToig, " turning up the white of their eye, and seeking for reputation in the streets :" so did some of the old hypocrites, the Gentile Pharisees ; " Asperum cultum, et intonsum caput, negli- gentiorem barbam, et nitidum argento odium, et cubile humi
^ Senec. Hippol. Schroder, p. 285.
OF CHRISTIAN SIMPLICITY. 145
positum, et quicquid aliiid ambitionem via perversa sequitur ;" being- the softest persons under an austere habit, the loosest livers under a contracted brow, under a pale face having the reddest and most sprightly livers. This kind of men have abused all ages of the world, and all religions ; it being so easy in nature, so prepared and ready for mischiefs, that men should creep into opportunities of devouring the flock upon pretence of defending them, and to raise their estates upon colour of saving their souls.
Introrsuni turpes, speciosi pclle decora*.
Men that are like painted sepulchres, entertainment for the eye, but images of death, chambers of rottenness, and repositories of dead men's bones. It may, sometimes, con- cern a man to seem religious ; God's glory may be shown by fair appearances, or the edification of our brother, or the reputation of a cause ; but this is but sometimes : but it always concerns us, that we be religious ; and we may reasonably think, that, if the colours of rehgion so well do advantage to us, the substance and reality would do it much more. For no man can have a good by seeming rehgious, and another by not being so ; the power of godliness never destroys any well-built fabric, that was raised upon the re- putation of rehgion and its pretences. " Nunquara est pec- care utile, quia semper est turpe," said Cicero : " It is never profitable to sin, because it is always base and dishonest." And if the face of religion could do a good turn, which the heart and substance does destroy, then religion itself were the greatest hypocrite in the world, and promises a blessing which it never can perform, but must be beholden to its enemy to verify its promises. No : we shall be sure to feel the blessings of both the worlds, if we serve in the ofiices of religion, devoutly and charitably, before men and before God : if we ask of God things honest in the sight of men, ixbto. (pcovHi ei'XoVEvoj, (as Pythagoras gave in precept) ' praying to God with a free heart and a public prayer,' and doing before men things that are truly pleasing to God, turning our heart outward and our face inwards, that is, conversing with men as in the presence of God ; and in our private towards God,
« Hor. Ep. i. 16. 43, VOL. VI. U
14C OF CHRISTIAN SIMPLICITY.
being as holy and devout as if we prayed in public, and in the corners of the streets. Pliny, praisinp; Ariston, gave him the title of an honest and hearty religion : " Ornat hac inagnitudo aninii, qux nihil ad ostentationem, omnia ad conscientiam refert; recteque facti, non ex populi sermone, mercedem, sed ex facto petit ^." And this does well state the question of a sincere religion, and an ingenuous goodness: it requires that we do nothing for ostentation, but every thing for conscience ; and we may be obliged in conscience to publish our manner of lives ; but then it must be, not that we may have a popular noise for a reward, but that God may be glorified by our pub- lic worshippings, and others edified by our good examples.
Neither doth the sincerity of our religion require, that we should not conceal our sins ; for he that sins, and dares to own them publicly, may become impudent : and, so long as in modesty we desire our shame should be hid, and men to think better of us than we deserve, I say, for no other reason but either because we would not derive the ill examples to others, or the shame to ourselves ; we are within the pro- tection of one of virtue's sisters, and we are not far from the gates of the kingdom of heaven; easy and apt to be invited in, and not very unworthy to enter.
But if any other principle draws the veil, if we conceal our vices because we would be honoured for sanctity, or because we would not be hindered in our designs, we serve the interest of pride and ambition, covetousness or vanity. If an innocent purpose hides the ulcer, it does half heal it ; but if it retires into the secrecy of sin and darkness, it turns into a plague, and infects the heart, and it dies infallibly of a double exul- ceration. The Macedonian boy, — that kept the coal in his flesh, and would not shake his arm, lest he should disturb the sacrifice, or discompose the ministry before Alexander the Great, — concealed his pain to the honour of patience and religion : but the Spartan boy, who suffered the little fox to eat his bowels, rather than confess his theft, when he was in danger of discovery, paid the price of a bold hypocrisy ; that is the dissimulation reprovable in matter of manners, which conceals one sin to make way for another. O/ xcxi ixaxcx. as/jtvol KM anud^aiTTOi TO, i^u KM Tu Ori//.ocria (paivofXEVot, si Traioog uoaia n
f Lib. i. ep. 22. Gicrig. p. 93.
OF CHRISTIAN SIMPLICITY. 147
yuvaixog xa^uvTai, ocra ttoiouctiv ; Lucian notes it of his philo- sophical hypocrites, dissemblers in matter of deportment and religion; they seem severe abroad, but they enter into the vaults of harlots, and are not ashamed to see a naked sin in the midst of its ugliness and undressed circumstances. A mio-hty wrestler, that had won a crown at Olympia for con- tending prosperously, was observed to turn his head and go forward with his face upon his shoulder, to behold a fair woman that was present ; and he lost the glory of his strength, when he became so weak, that a woman could turn his head about, which his adversary could not. These are the follies and weaknesses of man, and dishonours to religion, when a man shall contend nobly, and do handsomely, and then be taken in a base or dishonourable action, and mingle venom with his delicious ointment.
Quid ? quod olet graviiis mistnm diapasmate virus, Atque duplex aniiiiBe longius exit odorS?
When Fescennia perfumed her breath, that she might not smell of wine, she condemned the crime of drunkenness ; but grew ridiculous, when the wine broke through the cloud of a tender perfume, and the breath of a lozenge. And that, indeed, is the reward of an hypocrite ; his laborious arts of concealment furnish all the world with declamation and severity against the crime, which himself condemns with his caution. But when his own sentence too is prepared against the day of his discovery,
Notas ergo nimis fraudes deprensaqne furta Jam toUas, et sis ebria simpliciter >>.
A simple drunkard hath but one fault : but they that avoid discovery, that they may drink on without shame or restraint, add hypocrisy to their vicious fulness ; and for all the amaze- ments of their consequent discovery have no other recom- pense, but that they pleased themselves in the security of their crime, and their undeserved reputation.
Sic, quae nigrior est cadente moro, Cerussata sibi placet Lycoris':
For so the most easy and deformed woman, whose girdle e Martial, i. 88. " Ibid. ' Martial, i. 75.
148 OF CHRISTIAN SIMPLICITY.
no foolisli young; mtiu will unloose, because '' she is blacker than the falling mulberry, may please herself under a skin of ceruse," and call herself fairer than Pharaoh's daughter, or the hinds living upon the snowy mountains.
One thing more there is to be added as an instance to the simplicity of religion, and tliat is, that we never deny our religion, or lie concerning our faith, nor tell our propositions and articles deceitfully, nor instruct novices or catechumens with fraud ; but that when we teach them, we do it honestly, justly, and severely; not always to speak all, but never to speak otherwise than it is, nor to hide a truth from tliem, whose souls are concerned in it that it be known. " Neque enim id est celare, quidqnid reticeas ; sed cCmi, quod tu scias, id ignorare emolumenti tui causa velis eos, quorum intersit id scire :" so Cicero ^ determines the case of prudence and simplicity. The discovery of pious frauds, and the disclaim- ing of false, but profitable and rich propositions ; the quitting honours fraudulently gotten, and unjustly detained; the reducing every man to the perfect understanding of his own religion, so far as can concern his duty; the disallowing false miracles, legends, and fabulous stories, to cozen the people into awfulness, fear, and superstition ; these are parts of Christian simplicity which do integrate this duty. For religion hath strengths enough of its own to support itself; it needs not a devil for its advocate ; it is the breath of God ; and, as it is purer than the beams of the morning, so it is stronger than a tempest, or the combination of all the winds, though united by the prince that ruleth in the air. And we find that the Nicene faith prevailed upon all the world, though some Arian bishops went from Ariminum to Nice, and there decreed their own articles, and called it the faith read at Nice, and used all arts, and all violence, and all lying, and diligence, to discountenance it ; yet it could not be ; it was the truth of God; and, therefore, it was stronger than all the gates of hell, than all the powers of darkness. And he that tells a lie for his religion, or goes about by fraud and imposture to gain proselytes, either dares not trust his cause, or dares not trust God. True religion is open in its articles, honest in its prosecutions, just in its conduct, innocent when it is accused,
'' Offic. iii. IS. Heiisinger. p. 665.
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ignorant of falsehood, sure in its truth, simple in its sayings, and (as Julius Capitolinus said of the emperor Verus) it is " morum simplicium, et quae adumbrare nihil possit : " it covers, indeed, a multitude of sins, by curing them, and obtaining pardon for them ; but it can dissemble nothing of itself, it cannot tell or do a lie : but it can become a sacrifice ; a good man can quit his life, but never his integrity. That is the first duty ; the sum of which is that which Aquilius said concerning fraud and craft ; " bona fides," " the honesty of a man's faith and religion is destroyed," " ciim aliud simulatum, aliud actum sit," " when either we conceal what we ought to publish, or do not act what we pretend."
2. Christian simplicity, or the innocence of prudence, relates to laws both in their sanction and execution ; that they be decreed with equity, and proportioned to the capacity and profit of the subjects, and that they be applied to practice with remissions and reasonable interpretations, agreeable to the sense of the words and the mind of the lawgiver. But laws are not to be cozened and abused by contradictory glosses, and fantastic illusions ; as knowing that if the majesty and sacredness of them be once abused, and sub- jected to contempt, and unreasonable and easy resolutions, their girdle is unloosed, and they suffer the shame of prosti- tution and contempt. When Saul made a law, that he that did eat before night, should die, the people persuaded him directly to rescind it in the case of Jonathan ; because it was unequal and unjust, that he who had wrought their deliver- ance, and, in that working it, was absent from the promulga- tion of the law, should suffer for breaking it, in a case of violent necessity, and of which he heard nothing, upon so fair and probable a cause. And it had been well that the Persian had been so rescued, who, against the laws of his country, killed a Hon to save the life of his prince. In such cases it is fit the law be rescinded and dispensed withal, as to certain particulars ; so it be done ingenuously, with competent authority, in great necessity, and without partiality. But that which I intend here is, that in the rescission or dispensa- tion of the law, the process be open and free, and such as shall preserve the law and its sacredness, as well as the person and his interest. The laws of Sparta forbade any man to be twice admiral ; but, when their affairs required it, they made Arseus
150 OF CHIUSTIAN SIMPLICITY.
titular, and Lysander supravisor of him, and admiral to all real and ertective purposes : this wanted inn;enuity, and laid a way open for them to despise the law, which was made patient of such a weak evasion. The Lacedemonian ambas- sador persuaded Pericles to turn the tables of the law, which were forbidden to be removed ; and another ordained in a certain case, that the laws should sleep twenty-four horns : a third decreed that June should be called May, because the time of an election ap|)ointed by the law was elapsed. These arts are against the ingenuity and simplicity of laws and law- givers, and teach the people to cheat in their obedience, when their judges are so fraudulent in the administration of their laws. Every law should be made plain, open, honest, and significant ; and he that makes a decree, and intricates it on purpose, or by inconsideration lays a snare or leaves one there, is either an imprudent person, and, therefore, unfi^t to govern, or else he is a tyrant and a vulture. It is too much that a man can make a law by an arbitrary power. But when he shall also leave the law, so that every of the ministers of justice and the judges shall have power to rule by a loose, by an arbitrary, by a contradictory interpretation, it is intolerable. They that rule by prudence, should, above all things, see that the patrons and advocates of innocence should be harmless, and without an evil sting.
3. Christian simplicity relates to promises and acts of grace and favour; and its caution is, that all promises be simple, ingenuous, agreeable to the intention of the promiser, truly and eifectually expressed, and never going less in the performance than in the promises and words of the expression : concerning which the cases are several. 1. First, all promises in which a third or a second person hath no interest, that is, the promises of kindness and civilities, are tied to pass into performance ' secundum aequum et bonum ;' and though they may oblige to some small inconvenience, yet never to a great one : as, I will visit you to-morrow morning, because I pro- mised you, and, therefore, I will come,' etiamsi non concoxero,' ' although I have not slept my full sleep;' but ' si febricitavero,' ' if I be in a fever,' or have reason to fear one, I am disobliged. For the nature of such promises bears upon them no bigger burden than can be expounded by reasonable civilities, and the common expectation of kind, and the ordinary perform-
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ances of just men, who do excuse and are excused respectively by all rules of reason proportionably to such small inter- courses : and, therefore, although such conditions be not expressed in making promises, yet to perform or rescind them by such laws is not against Christian simplicity. 2. Promises in matters of justice or in matters of grace, as from a superior to an inferior, must be so singly and ingenuously expressed, intended and performed accordingly, that no con- dition is to be reserved or supposed in them to warrant their non-performance but impossibility, or, that which is next to it, an intolerable inconvenience ; in which cases we have a natural liberty to commute our promises, but so that we pay to the interested person a good at least equal to that which we first promised. And to this purpose it may be added, that it is not against Christian simplicity to express our promises in such words, which weknow the interested man will understand to other purposes than I intend, so it be not less that I mean than that he hopes for. When our blessed Saviour told his disciples that ' they should sit upon twelve thrones,' they presently thought they had his bond for a kingdom, and dreamed of wealth and honour, power and a splendid court ; and Christ knew they did, but did not disentangle his promise from the enfolded and intricate sense, of which his words were naturally capable : but he performed his promise to better purposes than they hoped for ; they were presidents in the conduct of souls, princes of God's people, the chief in sufFerino;s, stood nearest to the cross, had an elder brother's portion in the kingdom of grace, were the founders of churches, and dispensers of the mysteries of the kingdom, and ministers of the Spirit of God, and channels of mighty blessings, under- mediators in the priesthood of their Lord, and ' their names were wa-itten in heaven :' and this was infinitely better than to groan and wake under a head pressed with a golden crown and pungent cares, and to eat alone, and to walk in a crowd, and to be vexed with all the public and many of the private evils of the people: which is the sum total of an earthly kingdom.
When God promised to the obedient, that they should live long in the land which he would give them, he meant it of the land of Canaan, but yet reserved to himself the liberty of taking them quickly from that land and carrying them to
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a better. He that promises to lend me a stall" to walk withal, and instead oi" that gives me a horse to carry me, hath not broken his promise nor dealt deceitfully. And this is God's dealin<]^ with mankind ; he promises more than we could hope for ; and when he hath done that, he gives us more than he hath promised. God hath promised to give to them that fear him, all that they need, food and raiment : but he adds, out of the treasures of his mercy, variety of food and changes of raiment ; some to get strength, and some to refresh ; something for them that are in health, and some for the sick. And though that skins of bulls, and stags, and foxes, and bears, could have drawn a veil thick enough to hide the apertures of sin and natural shame, and to defend us from heat and cold ; yet when he addeth the fleeces of sheep and beavers, and the spoils of silkworms, he hath pro- claimed, that although his promises are the bounds of our certain expectation, yet they are not the limits of his lovmg- kindness ; and if he does more than he hath promised, no man can complain that he did otherwise, and did greater things than he said. Thus God does ; and, therefore, so also must we, imitating that example, and transcribing that copy of Divine truth, always remembering, that ' his promises are yea and amen.' And although God often goes more, yet he never goes less ; and, therefore, we must never go from our promises, unless we be thrust from thence by dis- ability, or let go by leave, or called up higher by a greater intendment and increase of kindness. And, therefore, when Solyman had sworn to Ibrahim Bassa, that he would never kill him so long as he were alive, he quitted himself but ill, when he sent an eunuch to cut his throat when he slept, because the priest told him that sleep was death. His act was false and deceitful as his great prophet.
But in this part of simplicity we Christians have a most special obligation : for our rehgion being ennobled by the most and the greatest promises, and our faith made confident by the veracity of our Lord, and his word made certain by miracles and prophecies, and voices from heaven, and all the testimony of God himself; and that truth itself is bound upon us by the efficacy of great endearments and so many precepts ; if we shall suffer the faith of a Christian to be an instrument to deceive our brother, and that he must either
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be incredulous or deceived, uncharitable or deluded like a fool, we dishonour the sacredness of the institution, and become strangers to the spirit of truth and to the eternal word of God. Our blessed Lord would not have his dis- ciples to swear at all, — no, not in public judicature, if the necessities of the world would permit him to be obeyed. If Christians will live according to the religion, the word of a Christian were a sufficient instrument to give testimony, and to make promises, to secure a faith ; and upon that supposi- tion oaths were useless, and, therefore, forbidden, because there could be no necessity to invoke God's name in pro- mises or affirmations if men were indeed Christians, and therefore, in that case, would be a taking it in vain : but because many are not, and they that are in name, oftentimes are in nothing else, — it became necessary that man should swear in judgment and in pubhc courts. But consider who it was that invented and made the necessity of oaths, of bonds, of securities, of statutes, extents, judgments, and all the artifices of human diffidence and dishonesty. These things were indeed found out by men ; but the necessity of these was from him that is the father of lies, from him that hath made many fair promises, but never kept any ; or if he did, it was to do a bigger mischief, to cozen the more. For so does the devil : he promises rich harvests, and blasts the corn in the spring ; he tells his servants they shall be rich, and fills them with beggarly qualities, makes them base and indigent, greedy and penurious ; and they that serve him entirely, as witches and such miserable persons, never can be rich : if he promises health, then men grow confident and intemperate, and do such things whereby they shall die the sooner, and die longer; they shall die eternally. He deceives men in their trust, and frustrates their hopes, and eludes their expectations ; and his promises have a period set, beyond which they cannot be true ; for wicked men shall enjoy a fair fortune but till their appointed time, and then it ends in perfect and most accomplished misery : and there- fore, even in this performance, he deceives them most of all, promising jewels, and performing coloured stones and glass gems, that he may cozen them of their glorious inheritance. All fraudulent breakers of promises dress themselves by his glass, whose best imagery is deformity and lies.
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SERMON XXIV.
PART II.
4. Chiusiian simplicity teaches openness and ingenuity in contracts, and matters of buying and selling, covenants, associations, and all such intercourses, which suppose an equality of persons as to the matter of right and justice in the stipulation. Mera t«v dyo^av d^Eu^elvy was the old Attic law ; and nothing is more contrary to Christian religion, than that the intercourses of justice be direct snares, and that we should deal with men as men deal with foxes, and wolves, and vermin ; do all violence : and when that cannot be, use all craft, and every thing whereby they can be made miserable.
There are men in the world who love to smile ; but that smile is more dang-erous than the furrows of a contracted brow, or a storm in Adria; for their purpose is only to deceive : they easily speak what they never mean ; they heap up many arguments to persuade that to others which themselves believe not ; they praise that vehemently which they deride in their hearts ; they declaim against a thing which themselves covet; they beg passionately for that which they value not, and run from an object, which they would fain have to follow and overtake them ; they excuse a person dexterously where the man is beloved, and watch to surprise him where he is unguarded ; they praise that they may sell, and disgrace that they may keep. And these hypocrisies are so interwoven and embroidered with their whole design, that some nations refuse to contract, till their arts are taken off by the society of banquets, and the good- natured kindnesses of festival chalices : for so Tacitus observes concerning the old Germans : " De adsciscendis principibus, de pace et bello, in conviviis consultant; tanquam nuUo magis tempore aut ad simplices cogitationes pateat animus, aut ad magnas incalescat : " " As if then they were more simple when they were most valiant, and were least deceitful when they were least themselves *."
* c. 22.
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But it is an evil condition, that a man's honesty shall be owing to his wine, and virtue must live at the charge and will of a vice. The proper band of societies and contracts is justice and necessities, religion and the laws ; the measures of it are equity, and ourselves, and our own desires in the days of our need, natural or forced : but the instruments of the exchange and conveyance of the whole intercourses is words and actions, as they are expounded by custom, con- sent, or understanding of the interested person, in which, if simplicity be not severely preserved, it is impossible that human society can subsist, but men shall be forced to snatch at what they have bought, and take securities that men swear truly, and exact an oath that such is the meaning of the word ; and no man shall think himself secure, but shall fear he is robbed, if he has not possession first ; and it shall be disputed who shall trust the other, and neither of them shall have cause to be confident upon bands, or oaths, or witnesses, or promises, or all the honour of men, or all the engagements of religion. OwSeij ya^ av eti Tna-TsSa-ai ^vvairo
Kovra, said Cyrus in Xenophon ^ : A man, though he desires it, cannot be confident of the man that pretends truth, yet tells a lie, and is deprehended to have made use of the sacred name of friendship or religion, honesty or reputation, to deceive his brother.
But because a man may be deceived by deeds and open actions as well as words, therefore it concerns their duty, that no man, by an action on purpose done to make his brother believe a lie, abuse his persuasion and his interest. When Pythius*^, the Sicilian, had a mind to sell his garden to Canius, he invited him thither, and caused fishermen, as if by custom, to fish in the channel by which the garden stood, and they threw great store of fish into their arbours, and made Canius believe it was so every day ; and the man grew greedy of that place of pleasure, and gave Pythius a double price, and the next day perceived himself abused. Actions of pretence and simulation are like snares laid, into which the beasts fall though you pursue them not, but walk in the inquiry for their necessary provisions : and if a man
•> 1. 8. c. 7. ^. 23. Schn. « Cicer. Off. iii. 14. Heusing.
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fall into a snare that you have laid, it is no excuse to say, you did not tempt him thither. To lay a snare is against the ingenuity of a good man and a Christian, and from thence he ought to be drawn ; and, therefore, it is not fit we should place a danger, which ourselves are therefore bound to liinder, because from thence we are obliged to rescue him. " \\r bonus est,qui prodestquibus potest, nocet autem nemini :" * When we do all the good we can, and do an evil to no man, then only we are accounted good men.' But this pretence of an action signifying otherwise than it looks for, is only forbidden in matter of contract, and the material interest of a second person. But when actions are of a double signifi- cation, or when a man is not abused or defeated of his right by an uncertain sign, it is lawful to do a thing to other pur- poses than is commonly understood. Flight is a sign of fear ; but it is lawful to fly when a man fears not. Circum- cision was the seal of the Jewish religion ; and yet St. Paul circumcised Timothy, though he intended he should live like the Gentile Christians, and ' not as do the Jews.' But because that rite did signify more things besides that one, he only did it to represent that he was no enemy of Moses's law, but would use it when there was just reason, which was one part of the things which the using of circumcision could signify. So our blessed Saviour pretended that he would pass forth beyond Eramaus ; but if he intended not to do it, yet he did no injury to the two disciples, for whose good it was that he intended to make this offer : and neither did he prevaricate the strictness of simplicity and sincerity, because they were persons with whom he had made no contracts, to whom he had passed no obhgation : and in the nature of the thing, it is proper and natural, by an offer to give an occasion to another to do a good action ; and in case it succeeds not, then to do what we intended not; and so the otfer was conditional. But in all cases of bargaining, although the actions of them- selves may receive naturally another sense, yet I am bound to follow that signification which may not abuse my brother, or pollute my own honesty, or snatch or rifle his interest : because it can be no ingredient into the commutation, if I exchange a thing which he understands not, and is, by error, led into this mistake, and I hold forth the fire, and delude him, and amuse his eye ; for by me he is made worse.
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But, secondly, as our actions must be of a sincere and determined signification in contract, so must our words ; in which the rule of the old Roman honesty was this : " Uterque, si ad eloquendum venerit, non plus quam semel eloquetur :" " Every one that speaks, is to speak but once ;" that is, * but one thing,' because commonly that is truth ; truth being but one, but error and falsehood infinitely various and changeable : and we shall seldom see a man so stiffened with impiety as to speak little and seldom, and pertinaciously adhere to a single sense, and yet that at first, and all the way after, shall be a lie. Men use to go about when they tell a lie, and devise circumstances, and stand off at distance, and cast a cloud of words, and intricate the whole affair, and cozen themselves first, and then cozen their brother, while they have minced the case of conscience into little particles, and swallowed the lie by crumbs, so that no one passage of it should rush against the conscience, nor do hurt, until it is all got into the belly, and unites in the effect ; for by that time two men are abused, the merchant in his soul, and the con- tractor in his interest : and this is the certain effect of much talking and little honesty. But he that means honestly, must speak but once, that is, one truth, — and hath leave to vary within the degrees of just prices and fair conditions, which because they have a latitude, may be enlarged or restrained according as the merchant pleases ; save only he must never prevaricate the measures of equity, and the pro- portions of reputation, and the public. But in all the parts of this traffic, let our words be the signification of our thoughts, and our thoughts design nothing but the advan- tages of a permitted exchange. In this case the severity is so great, so exact, and so without variety of case, that it is not lawful for a man to tell a truth with a collateral design to cozen and abuse; and, therefore, at no hand can it be permitted to he or equivocate, to speak craftily, or to deceive by smoothness, or intricacy, or long discourses.
But this precept of simplicity in matter of contract, hath one step of severity beyond this : in matter of contract it is not lawful so much as to conceal the secret and undiscernible faults of the merchandise ; but we must acknowledge them, or else affix prices made diminute and lessened to such pro- portions and abatements as that fault should make. 'Caveat
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emptor' is a good caution for liiin that buys, and it secures the seller in pubhc judicature, but not in court of conscience ; and the old laws of the TJomans were as nice in this affair, as the conscience of a Christian. Titus Claudius Centumalus'' was commanded by the augurs to pull down his house in the Ccelian mountain, because it hindered their observation of the flight of birds. He exposes his house to sale; Publius Cal- purnius buys it, and is forced to pluck it down ; but com- plaining to the judges, he had remedy, because Claudius did not tell him the true state of the inconvenience. He that sells a house infected with the plague, or haunted with evil spirits, sells that which is not worth such a price which it might be put at, if it were in health and peace ; and tlierefore cannot demand it, but openly, and upon publication of the evil. To which also this is to be added, — That in some great faults, and such as have danger (as in the cases now specified), no diminution of the price is sufficient to make the merchant just and sincere, unless he tells the appendant mischief; because to some persons in many cases, and to all persons in some cases, it is not at all valuable ; and they would not possess it, if they might, for nothing. Marcus Gratidianus'= bought a house of Sergius Orata, which himself had sold before ; but because Sergius did not declare the appendant vassalage and service, he was recompensed by the judges: for although it was certain that Gratidianus knew it, because it had been his own, yet '* oportuit ex bona fide denunciari," said the law ; * it concerned the ingenuity of a good man to have spoken it openly.' In all cases it must be confessed in the price, or in the words : but when the evil may be personal, and more than matter of interest and money, it ought to be confessed, and then the goods prescribed, lest by my act I do my neighbour injury, and I receive profit by his damage. Certain it is, that ingenuity is the sweetest and easiest way ; there is no difficulty or case of conscience in that ; and it can have no objection in it, but that possibly sometimes we lose a little advantage, which, it may be, we may lawfully acquire, but still we secure a quiet conscience ; and if the merchandise be not worth so much to me, then neither is it to him ; if it be to him, it is also to me ; and therefore I have no loss, no hurt to keep it, if it be refused. But he that secures his own
•* Cicero. Off. iii. 16. 4. Hciis. « Off. iii. 16. 9.
OF CHRISTIAN SIMPLICITY. 159
profit, and regards not the interest of another, is more greedy of a full purse than of a holy conscience, and prefers gain before justice, and the wealth of his private before the neces- sity of public society and commerce, — being a son of earth, whose centre is itself, without relation to heaven, that moves upon another's point, and produces flowers for others, and sends influence upon all the world, and receives nothing in return but a cloud of perfume, or the smell of a fat sacrifice.-
God sent justice into the world, that all conditions, in their several proportions, should be equal ; and he that receives a good, should pay one; and he whom I serve, is obliged to feed and to defend me in the same proportions as I serve ; and justice is a relative term, and supposes two persons obliged ; and though fortunes are unequal, and estates are in majority and subordination, and men are wise or foolish, honoured or despised, yet in the intercourses of justice God hath made that there is no difference. And therefore it was esteemed ignoble to dismiss a servant, when corn was dear ; in dangers of shipwreck, to throw out an unprofitable boy, and keep a fair horse ; or for a wise man to snatch a plank from a drowning fool ; or if the master of the ship should challenge the board, upon which his passenger swims for his life ; or to obtrude false monies upon others, which we first took for true, but at last discovered to be false ; or not to discover the gold, which the merchant sold for alchymy. The reason of all these is, because the collateral advantages are not at all to be considered in matter of rights ; and though I am dearest to myself, as my neighbour is to himself, yet it is necessary that I permit him to his own advantages, as I desire to be permitted to mine. Now, therefore, simplicity and ingenuity in all contracts is perfectly and exactly necessary, because its contrary destroys that equality which justice hath placed in the affairs of men, and makes all things private, and makes a man dearer to himself, and to be preferred before kings and republics, and churches ; it destroys society, and it makes multitudes of men to be but like herds of beasts, without proper instruments of exchange, and securities of possession ; without faith, and without propriety ; concerning all which there is no other account to be given, but that the rewards of craft are but a little money, and a great deal of dishonour, and much suspicion, and proportionable scorn ; watches and
160 OF CHRISTIAN SIMPLICITY.
guards, spies and jealousies, are his portion. But the crown of justice is a fair hfe, and a clear reputation, and an inherit- ance there where justice dwells since she left the earth, even * in the kingdom of the Just,' who shall call us to 'judgment for every word, and render to every man according to his works.' And what is the hope of the hypocrite, though he hath gained, when the Lord takcth away his soul ? " ToUen- dum est ex rebus contrahendis omne mendaciuin'^;" that is the sum of this rule. ' No falsehood or deceit is to be endured in any contract.'
5. Cliristian simplicity hath also its necessity, and passes obligation upon us towards enemies, in questions of law or war. Plutarch commends Lysander and Philopcemen for their craft and subtlety in war ; but commends it not as an ornament to their manners, but that which had influence into prosperous events: just as Ammianus affirms, " Nullo dis- crimine virtutis ac doli, prosperos omnes laudari debere bello- rum eventus ;" " whatsoever in war is prosperous, men use to commend." But he that is a good soldier, is not always a good man. Callicratidas was a good man, and followed the old way of downright hostility, cc^XoSv koI ysvva7ov rm yiyE/j>.6mv TpoTTOV. Bui Lysander was Travoi/^yog, km ao<pia-Tr\g aTraraig ^lac- TTomx^uv TO. rou ttot^s/xou, ' a crafty man, full of plots, but not noble in the conduct of his arms s.' I remember Euripides brings in Achilles, commending the ingenuity of his breeding, and the simplicity and nobleness of his heart :
" The good old man, Chiron, was my tutor, and he taught me to use simplicity and honesty in all my manners''." It was well and noble. — But yet some wise men do not condemn all soldiers, that use to get victories by deceit : St. Austin allows it to be lawful ; and St. Chrysostom commends it'. These good men supposed that a crafty victory was better than a bloody war; and certainly so it is, if the power gotten by craft be not exercised in blood. But this business, as to the case of conscience, wall quickly be determined. Enemies are no persons bound by contract and society, and therefore are
f Cic. Off. iii. 15. 5. Hcusing. * In Lysand.
h Iphig. in An). 927. Beck. vol. i. p. 520.
' Qnap. 10. super Joslmam, lili. i. de Saccrdotio.
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not obliged to open hostilities and ingenuous prosecutions of the war; and if it be lawful to take by violence, it is not unjust to take the same thing by craft. But this is so to be understood, that, where there is an obhgation, either by the law of nations or by special contracts, no man dare to violate his faith or honour, but in these things deal with an ingenuity equal to the truth of peaceful promises, and acts of favour, and endearment to our relatives. Josephus tells of the sons of Herod, that in their enmities with their uncle Pheroras, and Salome, they had disagreeing manners of prosecution, as they had disagreeing hearts "^ : some railed openly, and thought their enmity the more honest, because it was not concealed ; but, by the ignorance and rude untutored malice, lay open to the close designs of the elder brood of foxes. In this, because it was a particular and private quarrel, there is no rule of conscience, but that it be wholly laid aside, and appeased with charity ; for the openness of the quarrel was but the rage and indiscretion of the malice ; and the close design, was but the craft and advantage of the malice. But in just wars, on that side where a competent authority, and a just cause, warrants the arms, and turns the active opposition into the excuse and license of defence, there is no restraint upon the actions and words of men in the matter of sincerity, but that the laws of nations be strictly pursued, and all parties, pro- mises, and contracts, observed religiously, and by the propor- tion of a private and Christian ingenuity. We find it by wise and good men mentioned, with honour, that the Romans threw bread from the besieged capitol into the stations of the Gauls, that they might think them full of corn ; and that Agesilaus discouraged the enemies, by causing his own men to wear crowns, in token of a naval victory gotten by Pisander, who yet was at that time destroyed by Conon ; and that Flaccus said the city was taken by Jiimilius ; and that Joshua dissem- bled a flight at Ai ; and the consul, Quinctius, told aloud that the left wing of the enemies was fled, and that made the right wing fly ; and that Valerius Laevinus bragged prudently that he had killed Pyrrhus ; and that others use the ensigns of enemies' colours and garments. Concerning which sort of actions and words, Agesilaus, in Plutarch \ said, ou /movov to
^ Hist. lib. xvi. c. 6. 'Riialdi, torn. i. p. 600.
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JVjiaiov, dxxa Koi ^o^a TToAAri, nai to (xeO' xiJonif *£f Ja/vEiv evejti, ** It 18 just and pleasant, profitable and glorious." But to call a parley, and ftill in upon the men that treat ; to swear a peace, and watch advantage ; to entertain heralds, and then to tor- ment them, to get from tiiem notices of their party ; these are such actions which are dishonourable and unjust, con- denuied by the laws of nations, and essential justice, and by all the world. And the Hungarian army was destroyed by a Divine judgment, at the prayer and appeal of the Mahometan' enemy, for their violating their faith and honour, and pro- faning the name of Christ, by using it in a solemn oath to deceive their enemies : To fxev iTrEiaaiJiivov o^ikuv, tuv 6euv eo-ti xaraip^ovETv ' This is to despise God, when men first swear by him, and then violate their oaths or leagues, their treaties or promises.' In other cases liberty hath been taken by all men, and it is reproved by no man, since the first simplicity of fighting and downright blows did cease, by the better instructed people of the world, which was, as is usually com- puted, about the end of the second Carthaginian war. Since that time, some few persons have been found so noble as to scorn to steal a victory, but had rather have the glory of a sharp sword than of a sharp wit.
But their fighting-gallantry is extrinsical to the question of lawful or unlawful.
6. Thus we see how far the laws of ingenuity and Christian simplicity have put fetters upon our words and actions, and directed them in the paths of truth and nobleness ; and the first degrees of permission of simulation are in the arts of war, and the cases of just hostility. But here it is usually inquired, Whether it be lawful to tell a lie or dissemble, to save a good man's life, or to do him a great benefit? — a question which St. Austin was much troubled withal, affirm- ing it to be of the greatest difficulty ; for he saw, generally, all the doctors before his time allowed it; and of all the fathers, no man is noted to have reproved it but St. Austin alone, and he also, as his manner is, with some variety : those which followed him, are to be accounted upon his score. And it rehes upon such precedents, which are not lightly to be disallowed. For so Abraham and Isaac told a lie, in the case of their own danger, to Abimelech; so did the Israelitish midwives to Pharaoh, and Rahab concerning the
OF CHRISTIAN SIMPLICITY. |62|
spies, and David to the king of Gath, and the prophet that anointed Saul, and EHsha to Hazael, and Solomon in the sentence of the stolen child ; concerning which Irenaeus hath given us a rule. That those vi^hose actions the Scripture hath remarked, and yet not chastised or censured, we are not, without great reason and certain rule, to condemn. But whether his rule can extend to this case, is now to be in- quired.
1 . It is certain that children may be cozened into good- ness, and sick men into health, and passengers in a storm into safety; and the reason of these is, — because not only the end is fair, and charitable, and just, but the means are such which do no injury to the persons, which are to receive benefit ; be- cause these are persons who are, either naturally or accident- ally, ignorant and incompetent judges of affairs : and if they be also wilful, as such persons most commonly are, there is in art and nature left no way to deal with them, but with innocent, charitable, and artificial deceptions ; they are not capable of reason and solid discourses, and therefore either must be exposed to all harms, like lions' whelps, when their nurse and sire are taken in a toil, or else be provided for in ways proportionable to their capacity.
2. Sinners may not be treated with the liberty we take to children and sick persons, because they must serve God with choice and election ; and therefore, although a sick man may be cozened into his health, yet a man must not be cozened into his duty ; which is no duty at all, or pleasing to God, unless it be voluntary and chosen ; and therefore they are to be treated with arguments proper to move their wills, by the instrument of understanding specially, being persons of perfect faculties, and apt to be moved by the ways of health and of a man. It is an argument of infirmity, that in some cases it is necessary to make pretences ; but those pretences are not made legitimate, unless it be by the infirmity of the interested man with whom we do comply. My infirmity cannot make it lawful to make colours and images of things ; but the infirmity of him with whom I deal, may be such, that he can be defended or instructed no other way. But sinners that offend God by choice, must have their choice corrected, and their under- standings instructed, or else their evil is not cured, nor their state amended.
1G4 OF CHRISTIAN SIMPLICITY.
3. For it is here very observable, that in intercourses of this nature we are to rep;ard a double duty — the matter of justice, and the rights of charity ; that is, that good be done by lawful instrununts : for it is certain it is not lawful to abuse a man's understanding, w ith a purpose to gain him six- pence ; it is not lit to do evil for a good end, or to abuse one man, to preserve or do advantage to another. And therefore it is not surticient that I intend to do good to my neighbour ; for I may not therefore tell a lie and abuse his credulity, because his understanding hath a right as certain as his will hath, or as his money ; and his riglit to truth is no more to be cozened and defrauded, than his right unto his money. And therefore such artificial intercourses are nowise to be permitted, but to such persons over whose understandings we have power and authority. Plato said it was lawful for kings and governors to dissemble, because there is great necessity for them so to do ; but it was but crirdely said, so nakedly to deliver the doctrine : for in such things, which the people cannot understand and yet ought to obey, there is a liberty to use them as we use children, who are of no other condi- tion or capacities than children ; but in all things where they can and ought to choose, because their understanding is only a servant to God, no man hath power to abuse their credulity and reason, to preserve their estates and peace. But because children, and mad people, and diseased, are such whose un- derstandings are in minority and under tuition, they are to be governed by their proper instruments and proportions : To yap aya^ov ftpeTrrov Ictti tJjj dXvOetag, said Proclus ; " A good turn is to be preferred before a true saying." It is only true to such persons who cannot value truth, and prefer an intellec- tual before a material interest. It is better for children to have warm clothes than a true proposition, and therefore, in all senses, they and their like may be so treated ; but other persons, who have distinct capacities, have an injury done them by being abused into advantages ; and although those advantages make them recompense, yet he that is tied to make a man recompense, hath done him injury, and committed a sin, by which he was obliged to restitution : and therefore the man ought not to be cozened for his own good.
4. And now, upon the grounds of this discourse, we may more easily determine concerning saving the life of a man by
OF CHRISTIAN SIMPLICITY. 165
telling a lie in judgment, AeT f/,£ crvpi.7r^aTrm ro7g (plxoig, ay^a, /x£x,^i dsuv, said Pericles of Athens, when his friend desired him to swear on his side ; " I will assist my friend, so far as I may not dishonour God." And to lie in judgment is directly against the being of government, the honour of tribunals, and the commandment of God; and therefore by no accident can be hallowed ; it is naff ai/ro (paSxov kou ^vctov, as Aristotle said of a lie, it is '' a thing evil in itself;" that is, it is evil in the Avhole kind, ever since it came to be forbidden by God. And therefore all those instances of crafty and delusive answers which are recorded in Scripture, were extra-judicial, and had not this load upon them, to be deceiving of authority in those things where they had right to command or inquire, and either were before or besides the commandment, not at all against it. And since the law of Moses forbade * lying in judgment' only, by that law we are to judge of those actions in the Old Testament, which were committed after its publi- cation : and because in the sermons of the prophets, and especially in the New Testament, Christ hath superadded or enlarged the law of ingenuity and hearty simplicity, we are to leave the old Scripture-precedents upon the ground of their own permissions, and finish our duty by the rules of our religion : which hath so restrained our words, that they must always be just, and always charitable; and there is no leave given to prevaricate, but to such persons where there can be no obligation, persons that have no right, such with whom no contract can be made, such as children, and fools, and infirm persons, whose faculties are hindered or depraved. I remember that Secundus extremely commends Arria for deluding her husband's fears concerning the death of his beloved boy. She wiped her eyes, and came in confidently, and sat by her husband's bed-side ; and when she could no longer forbear to weep, her husband's sickness was excuse enough to legiti- mate that sorrow, or else she could retire ; but so long she forbore to confess the boy's death, till Caecinna Psetus had so far recovered, that he could go forth to see the boy, and need not fear with sorrow to return to his disease. It was, indeed, a great kindness and rare prudence, as their affairs and laws were ordered ; but we have better means to cure our sick ; our religion can charm the passion, and enable the spirit to entertain and master a sorrow. And when we have such rare
\(^(^ OF CHRISTIAN SIMPLICITY.
sii])j)lies out of the storehouses of reason and religion, we have less reason to use these arts and little devices, which are arguments of an infirmity as great as is the charity ; and therefore we are to keep ourselves strictly to the foregoing measures. " Let every man speak the truth to his neighbour, putting away lying, for we are members one of another"" ;" and, " Be as harmless as doves," saith our blessed Saviour in my text ; which contain the whole duty concerning the matter of truth and sincerity. In both which places, truth and simplicity are founded upon justice and charity ; and, therefore, wherever a lie is in any sense against justice, and wrongs any man of a thing, his judgment and his reason, his right, or his liberty, it is expressly forbidden in the Christian religion. What cases we can truly suppose to be besides these, the law forbids not ; and therefore it is lawful to say that to myself which I believe not, for what innocent purpose I please, and to all those over whose understanding I have, or ought to have, right.
These cases are intricate enough ; and therefore I shall return plainly to press the doctrine of simplicity, which ought to be so sacred, that a man ought to do nothing indi- rectly, which it is not lawful to own ; to receive no advan- tage by the sin of another, which I should account dishonest, if the action were my own ; for whatsoever disputes may be concerning the lawfulness of pretending craftily in some rare and contingent cases, yet it is on all hands condemned, that my craft should do injury to my brother. I remember, that when some greedy and indigent people forged a will of Lucius Minutius Basilius, and joined M. Crassus and Q. Hor- tensius in the inheritance, that their power for their own interest might secure the others' share ; they suspecting the thing to be a forgery, yet being not principals and actors in the contrivance, * alieni facinoris munusculum non repudia- verunt,' ' refused not to receive a present made them by another's crime " ;' but so they entered upon a moiety of the estate, and the biggest share of the dishonour. We must not be crafty to another's injury, so much as by giving counte- nance to the wrong ; for tortoises and the ostrich hatch their eggs with their looks only ; and some have designs which a dissembling face, or an acted gesture, can produce : but as a
" EpUei>. iv, 2o. " Cicer. Off. iii. 18. 4. Htus.
OF CHRISTIAN SIMPLICITY. 167
man may commit adultery with his eye, so with his eye also he may tell a lie, and steal with one finger, and do injury collaterally, and yet design it with a direct intuition, upon which he looks with his face over his shoulder ; and by what- soever instrument my neighbour may be abused, by the same instrument I sin, if I do design it antecedently, or fall upon it together with something else, or rejoice in it when it is done.
7. One thing more I am to add, that it is not lawful to tell a lie in jest. It was a virtue noted in Aristides and Epa- minondas, that they would not lie, oby Iv 'maihai Tm r^oTrcp, * not in sport.' And as Christian simplicity forbids all lying in matter of interest and serious rights ; so there is an appen- dix to this precept, forbidding to lie in mirth ; for " of every idle word a man shall speak, he shall give account in the day of judgment." And such are the 'jestings' which St. Paul reckons amongst * things uncomely.' But among these, fables, apologues, parables, or figures of rhetoric, and any artificial instrument of instruction or innocent pleasure, are not to be reckoned. But he that, without any end of charity or institution, shall tell lies only to become ridiculous in himself, or mock another, hath set something upon his doomsday book, which must be taken off by water or by fire, that is, by repentance or a judgment.
Nothing is easier than simplicity and ingenuity : it is open and ready without trouble and artificial cares, fit for commu- nities and the proper virtue of men, the necessary appendage of useful speech, without which, language were given to men as nails and teeth to lions, for nothing but to do mischief. It is a rare instrument of institution, and a certain token of courage ; the companion of goodness and a noble mind ; the preserver of friendship, the band of society, the security of merchants, and the blessing of trade ; it prevents infinite of quarrels, and appeals to judges, and suffers none of the evils of jealousy. Men, by simplicity, converse as do the angels ; they do their own work, and secure their proper interest, and serve the public, and do glory to God. But hypocrites, and liars, and dissemblers, spread darkness over the face of affairs, and make men, like the blind, to walk softly and timorously ; and crafty men, like the close air, suck that which is open, and devour its portion, and destroy its liberty : and it is the
168 THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY.
guise of devils, and the dishonour of the soul, and the canker of society, and the enemy of justice, and truth, and peace, of wealth and honour, of courage and merchandise. He is a good man with whom a blind man may safely converse; " dignus quicum in tenebris mices"," to whom, in respect of his fair treatinus, the darkness and light are both alike : but he that bears light upon the face, with a dark heart, is like him that transforms himself into an angel of light, when he means to do most mischief. Kemember this only ; that false colours laid upon the face besmear the skin and dirty it, but they neither make a beauty nor mend it. — " For without, shall be dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murder- ers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie p."
SERMON XXV.
THE MlllACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY.
PART I.
Fur thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive, and plenteous in mercy to all t/icm that call upon thee. — Psal. Ixxxvi. 5,
Man having destroyed that which God delighted in, that is, the beauty of his soul, fell into an evil portion, and being seized upon by the Divine justice, grew miserable, and con- demned to an incurable sorrow. Poor Adam, being banished and undone, went and lived a sad life in the mountains of India, and turned his face and his prayers towards Paradise ; thither he sent his sighs, to that place he directed his devo- tions, there was his heart now, where his felicity sometimes had been : but he knew not how to return thither, for God was his enemy, and, by many of his attributes, opposed himself against him. God's power was armed against him ; and poor man, whom a fly or a fish could kill, was assaulted and beaten with a sword of fire in the hand of a cherubim. God's eye watched him, his omniscience was man's accuser,
'' Cic. Off. iii. 19. 10. p Apocal. xxii. 15.
THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 169
his severity was the judge, his j ustice the executioner. It was a mighty calamity that man was to undergo, when he that made him, armed himself against his creature, which would have died or turned to nothing, if he had but withdrawn the miracles and the almightiness of his power: if God had taken his arm from under him, man had perished. But it was, therefore, a greater evil when God laid his arm upon him and against him, and seemed to support him, that he might be longer killing him. In the midst of these sadnesses, God remembered his own creature, and pitied it; and, by his mercy, rescued him from the hands of his power, and the sword of his justice, and the guilt of his punishment, and the disorder of his sin ; and placed him in that order of good things where he ought to have stood. It was mercy that preserved the noblest of God's creatures here below,; he who stood condemned and undone under all the other attributes of God, was only saved and rescued by his mercy ; that it may be evident that God's mercy is above all his works, and above all ours, greater than the creation, and greater than our sins. As is his majesty, so is his mercy, that is, without measures and without rules, sitting in heaven and filling all the world, calling for a duty that he may give a blessing, making man that he may save him, punishing him that he may preserve him. And God's justice bowed down to his mercy, and all his power passed into mercy, and his omniscience converted into care and watchfulness, into providence and observation for man's avail ; and Heaven gave its influence for man, and rained showers for our food and drink ; and the attributes and acts of God sat at the foot of mercy, and all that mercy descended upon the head of man. For so the light of the world in the morning of the creation was spread abroad like a curtain, and dwelt no where, but filled the ' ex- pansum' with a dissemination great as the unfoldings of the air's looser garment, or the wilder fringes of the fire, without knots, or order, or combination ; but God gathered the beams in his hand, and united them into a globe of fire, and all the light of the world became the body of the sun ; and he lent some to his weaker sister that walks in the night, and guides a traveller, and teaches him to distinguish a house from a river, or a rock from a plain field. So is the juercy of God, a vast ' expansum' and a huge ocean; from
170 THK MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY.
eternnl aG:cs it dwelt round about the throne of God, and it filled all that iidinite distance and space, that hath no measures but the will of God : until (Jod, desiring to communicate that excellency and make it relative, created angels, that he might have persons capable of huge gifts; and man, who he knew would need forgiveness. For so the angels, our elder bro- thers, dwelt for ever in the house of their Father, and never brake his connnandments ; but we, the younger, like prodi- gals, forsook our Father's house, and went into a strange country, and followed stranger courses, and spent the portion of our nature, and forfeited all our title to the family, and came to need another portion. For, ever since the fall of Adam, — who, like an unfortunate man, spent all that a wretched man could need, or a happy man could have, — our life is repentance, and forgiveness is all our portion ; and though angels were objects of God's bounty, yet man only is, in proper speaking, the object of his mercy: and the mercy which dwelt in an infinite circle, became confined to a little ring, and dwelt here below ; and here shall dwell below, till it hath carried all God's portion up to heaven, where it shall reign in glory upon our crowned heads for ever and ever !
But for him that considers God's mercies, and dwells awhile in that depth, it is hard not to talk wildly, and with- out art and order of discoursings. St. Peter talked he knew not what, when he entered into a cloud with Jesus upon Mount Tabor, though it passed over him like the little cur- tains, that ride upon the north wind, and pass between the sun and us. And when we converse with a light greater than the sun, and taste a sweetness more delicious than the dew of heaven, and in our thoughts entertain the ravishments and harmony of that atonement, which reconciles God to man, and man to felicity, — it will be more easily pardoned, if we should be like persons that admire much, and say but little ; and indeed we can best confess the glories of the Lord by dazzled eyes, and a stammering tongue, and a heart overcharged with the miracles of this infinity. For so those little drops that run over, though they be not much in them- selves, yet they tell that the vessel was full, and could ex- press the greatness of the shower no otherwise but by spil- ling, and in artificial expressions and runnings over. But because I have undertaken to tell the drops of the oceari, and
THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 171
to span the measures of eternity, I must do it by the great lines of revelation and experience, and tell concerning God's mercy as we do concerning God himself, that he is that great fountain of which we all drink, and the great rock of which we all eat, and on which we all dwell, and under whose shadow we all are refreshed. God's mercy is all this ; and we can only draw great lines of it, and reckon the constel- lations of our hemisphere, instead of telling the number of the stars ; we only can reckon what we feel and what we live by : and though there be, in every one of these lines of life, enough to engage us for ever to do God service, and to give him praises ; yet it is certain there are very many mercies of God upon us, and towards us, and concerning us, which we neither feel, nor see, nor understand as yet; but yet we are blessed by them, and are preserved and secured, and we shall then know them, when we come to give God thanks in the festivities of an eternal sabbath. But that I may confine my discourse into order, since the subject of it cannot, 1 consider,
1. That mercy, being an emanation of the Divine good- ness upon us, supposes us and found us miserable. In this account concerning the mercies of God, 1 must not reckon the miracles and graces of the creation, or any thing of the nature of man, nor tell how great an endearment God passed upon us that he made us men, capable of felicity, apted with rare instruments of discourse and reason, passions and desires, notices of sense, and reflections upon that sense ; that we have not the deformity of a crocodile, nor the motion of a worm, nor the hunger of a wolf, nor the wildness of a tiger, nor the birth of vipers, nor the life of flies, nor the death of serpents.
Our excellent bodies and useful faculties, the upright motion and the tenacious hand, the fair appetites and pro- portioned satisfactions, our speech and our perceptions, our acts of life, the rare invention of letters, and the use of writing, and speaking at distance, the intervals of rest and labour, (either of which, if they were perpetual, would be intolerable,) the needs of nature and the provisions of Provi- dence, sleep and business, refreshments of the body and entertainments of the soul ; these are to be reckoned as acts of bounty rather than mercy : God gave us these when he
172 THE MIRACLES Ol- THE DIVINE MEUCV.
uiailo us, and before we needed mercy ; these were portions of our nature, or provided to supply our consequent neces- sities : but when we forfeited all God's favour by our sins, then that they were continued or restored to us became a mercy, and, therefore, ought to be reckoned upon this new account. For it was a rare mercy that we were sufiered to live at all, or that the anger of God did permit to us one blessing, that he did jjunish us so gently : but when the rack is changed into an axe, and the axe into an imprisonment, and the imprisonment changed into an enlargement, and the enlargement into an entertaimnent in the family, and this entertainment passes on to an adoption ; these are steps of a mighty fa\ our, and perfect redemption from our sin : and the returning back our own goods is a gift, and a perfect dona- tive, sweetened by the apprehensions of the calamity from whence every lesser punishment began to free us. And thus it was that God punished us, and visited the sin of Adam upon his posterity. He threatened we should die, and so we did, but not so as we deserved : we waited for death, and stood sentenced, and are daily summoned by sicknesses and uneasiness ; and every day is a new reprieve, and brings a new favour, certain as the revolution of the sun upon that day ; and at last, when we must die by the irreversible decree, that death is changed into a sleep, and that sleep is in the bosom of Christ, and there dwells all peace and secu- rity, and it shall pass forth into glories and felicities. We looked for a judge, and behold a Saviour ! we feared an accuser, and behold an Advocate ! we sat down in sorrow, and rise in joy : we leaned upon rhubarb and aloes, and our aprons were made of the sharp leaves of Indian fig-trees, and so we fed, and so were clothed ; but the rhubarb proved medicinal, and the rough leaf of the tree brought its fruit wrapped up in its foldings : and round about our dwelhngs was planted a hedge of thorns and bundles of thistles, the aconite and the briony, the nightshade and the poppy ; and at the root of these grew the healing plantain, which, rising up into a tallness, by the friendly invitation of heavenly influ- ence, turned about the tree of the cross, and cured the wounds of the thorns, and the curse of the thistles, and the malediction of man, and the wrath of God. " Si sic irascitur, quomodo convivatur?" * If God be thus kind when he is
THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 173
angry, what is he when he feasts us with caresses of his more tender kindness?' All that God restored to us after the forfeiture of Adam, grew to be a double kindness ; for it became the expression of a bounty which knew not how to repent, a graciousness that was not to be altered, though we were ; and that was it which we needed. That is the first oeneral : all the bounties of the creation became mercies to us, when God continued them to us, and restored them after they were forfeit.
2. But as a circle begins every where and ends no where, so do the mercies of God : after all this huge progress, now it began anew : ' God is good and gracious,' and ' God is ready to forgive.' Now that he had once more made us capable of mercies, God had what he desired, and what he could rejoice in, something upon which he might pour forth his mercies. And, by the way, this I shall observe, (for I cannot but speak without art, when I speak of that which hath no measure,) God made us capable of one sort of his mercies, and we made ourselves capable of another. ' God is good and gracious,' that is, desirous to give great gifts: and of this God made us receptive, first, by giving us natural possibilities, — that is, by giving those gifts, he made us capable of more ; and next, by restoring us to his favour, that he might not, by our provocations, be hindered from raining down his mercies. But God is also ' ready to forgive :' and of this kind of mercy we made ourselves capable, even by not deserving it. Our sin made way for his grace, and our infirmities called upon his pity ; and because we sinned we became miserable, and because we were miserable we became pitiable ; and this opened the other treasure of his mercy ; that because our ' sin abounds,' his ' grace may superabound.' In this method we must confine our thoughts :
1. Giving. c Thou, Lord, art good, ) plenteous in mercy to all them
2. Forgiving, i^ and ready to forgive, S that call upon thee.
3. God's mercies, or the mercies of his giving, came first upon us by mending of our nature : for the ignorance we fell into, is instructed, and better learned in spiritual notices, than Adam's morning knowledge in Paradise ; our appetites are made subordinate to the Spirit, and the liberty of wills is improved, having * the liberty of the sons of God ;' and Christ
174 THE MI11ACI.K.S OF THK HIVrNE MF.RCY.
hath done us more grace and advantage than we lost in Adam: and as man lost Paradise, and got heaven ; so he lost the in- tegrity of the first, and got the perfection of the second Adam : his * living soul ' is changed into ' a quickening spirit ;' our discerning faculties are filled with the spirit of faith, and our passions and desires are entertained with hope, and our election is sanctified with charity, and our first life of a temporal pos- session is ])assed into abetter, a life of spiritual expectations; and, though our first parent was forbidden it, yet we live of the fruits of the tree of life. But I instance in two great things, in which human nature is greatly advanced, and passed on to greater perfections. The first is, that besides body and soul, which was the sum total of Adam's constitution, God hath superadded to us a third principle, the beginner of a better life, I mean, the Spirit*: so that now man hath a spiritual and celestial nature breathed into him, and the old man, that is, the old constitution, is the least part, and in its proper operations is dead, or dying; but the new man is that which gives denomination, life, motion, and proper actions to a Christian, and that is renewed in us day by day. — But secondly, human nature is so highly exalted and mended by that mercy, which God sent immediately upon the fall of Adam, the promise of Christ, that when he did come, and actuate the purposes of this mission, and ascended up into heaven, he carried human nature above the seats of angels, to the place whither * Lucifer, the son of the morning,' aspired to ascend, but in his attempt fell into hell. For (so said the prophet) the son of the morning said, * I will ascend into heaven, and sit in the sides of the north,' that is, the throne of Jesus seated in the east, called the sides or obhquity of the north. And as the seating of his human 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 less than angels, have a relative dignity greater, and an equal honour of being fellow-servants. This mystery is plain in Scripture, and the real effect of it we read in both
=1 Vide Sermon II.
THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 175
the Testaments. When Manoah, the father of Samson, saw an angel, he worshipped hhn •> ; and, in the Old Testament, it was esteemed lawful ; 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 inferiors. 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 St. 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 con- trary; the angel 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 St. Cyprian "^ reads it, " worship Jesus." God and man are now only 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 St. Gregory explicates fully ^ : " Quid est, quod, ante Redemptoris adventura, adorantur ab hominibus [angeli] et tacent, postmodum vero adorari refugiunt?" " 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 priiis despexerant, postquam banc super se assumptam aspiciunt, prostratam sibi videri pertimescunt; nee jam sub se velut infirmam contemnere ausi sunt, quam super se, viz. in Coeli Rege, venerantur :" " The reason is, because they, seeing our nature, which they did so lightly value, raised up above them, they fear to see it humbled under them ; neither do they any more despise the weakness, which themselves worship in the King of Heaven." The same also is the sense of the gloss of St. 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
•^ Judges, xiii. « Revel, xxii. 9.
'' De Bono Patientiae. * Homil. a. in Evangel.
17G THE MIRACLKS OK Till. DIVINK MF.UCV.
consiixned by the testimony of such men, I the rather note, that those who worship anojels, and make reh2;ious addresses to them, may see what |)rivileo;e themselves lose, and how they part with the honour of Christ, who in his natiwc relative to us is " exalted far above all thrones, and principalities, and dominions." I need not add 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, than 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 likeness of the matter, I add, that the Divine mercy hath so prosecuted us with the enlargement of his favours, that we are not only 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 are in honour no degrees, no priority or distances, or characters of fame and nobleness. Christ is the great Judge of all the world ; his human nature shall then triumph over evil men and evil spirits ; then shall the devils, those angels that fell 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 St. Paul, " that ye shall judge angels '^?" And TertuUian, speaking concerning devils and accursed spirits, saith: " Hi sunt angeli quos judicaturi sumus ; hi sunt angeli quibus in lavacro renunciavimus ;" '' Those angels which we renounced in baptism, those we shall judge in the day of the Lord's glory, in the great day of recompenses s." And that the honour may be yet greater, the same day of sentence that condemns the evil angels, shall 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
1 Cor. vi. 3. s De Cult. Foemin.
THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVIDE MERCY. 177
upon all our heads, we, who shall be servants of that judj. ment, 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 judgment upon all the world. It is a great indecency that the son of a king should bear water upon his head, and dress vineyards among the slaves ; or to see a v/ise man, and the guide of his coun- try, 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 rainbow, stoops to an imperious whorish woman ; when the soul that is sister to the Lord of angels, shall degenerate into the foolishness 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 ourselves 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 hath honoured in some capacities above angels, — into a portion of an eternal shame, and become less 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 base- ness of ingratitude, and the amazement of suffering the Divine vengeance. But I pass on.
5. The next order of Divine mercies that I shall remark, is also an improvement of our nature, or an appendage to it. For, whereas our constitution is weak, our souls apt to diminution and impedite faculties, our bodies to mutilation and imperfection, to blindness and crookedness, to stammer- ing and sorrows, to baldness and deformity, to evil conditions and accidents of body, and to passions and sadness of spirit ; God hath, in his infinite mercy, provided for every condition rare suppletories of comfort and usefulness, to make recom- pense, and sometimes with an overrunning proportion, for those natural defects, which were apt to make our persons otherwise contemptible, and our conditions intolerable. God gives to blind men better memories. For upon this account it is that Ruffinus makes mention of Didymus of Alexandria, who, being blind, was blest with a rare attention and singular memory, and by prayer, and hearing, and meditating,
VOL. VI. N
178 THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY.
atul discoursing, came to be one of tlie most excellent divines of that whole aije. And it was more remarkable in Nicasius Mechliniensis, who, being blockish at his book, in his first childhood fell into accidental blindness, and from thence continually grew to so quick an apprehension and so tenacious a memory, that he became the wonder of his contemporaries, and was chosen rector of the college at Mechlin, and was made licentiate of theology at Louvain, and doctor of both the laws at Cologne, living and dying in great reputation for his rare parts and excellent learning. At the same rate also God deals with men in other instances : want of children he recom- penses with freedom from care ; and whatsoever evil happens to the body is therefore most commonly single and unaccom- panied, because God accepts that evil as the punishment of the sin of the man, or the instrument of his virtue or his security, and it is reckoned as a sufficient antidote. God hath laid a severe law upon all women, that " in sorrow they shall bring forth children :" yet God hath so attempered that sorrow, that they think themselves more accursed, if they want that sorrow ; and they have reason to rejoice in that state, the trouble of which is alleviated by a promise, that " they shall be saved in bearing children." He that wants one eye, hath the force and vigorousness of both united in that which is left him : and whenever any man is afflicted with sorrow, his reason and his religion, himself and all his friends, persons that are civil and persons that are obliged, run in to comfort him ; and he may, if he will observe wisely, find so many circumstances of ease and remission, so many designs of providence and studied favours, such contrivances of collateral advantage, and certain reserves of substantial and proper comfort, that in the whole sum of affairs it often hap- pens, that a single cross is a double blessing, and that even in a temporal sense ' it is better to go to the house of mourning ' than of joys and festival egressions. Is not the affliction of poverty better than the prosperity of a great and tempting fortune ? Does not wisdom dwell in a mean estate and low spirit, retired thoughts, and under a sad roof? And is it not generally true, that sickness itself is appayed with religion and holy thoughts, with pious resolutions and penitential prayers, with returns to God and to sober counsels .'' And if this be true, that God sends sorrow to cure sin, and affliction
THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 179
be the handmaid to grace ; it is also certain, that every sad contingency in nature is doubly recompensed with the advan- tages of rehgion, besides those intervening refreshments which support the spirit, and refresh its instruments. I shall need to instance but once more in this particular.
God hath sent no greater evil into the world, than that " in the sweat of our brows we shall eat our bread ;" and in the difficulty and agony, in the sorrows and contention of our souls, we shall ' work out our salvation.' But see how in the first of these God hath outdone his own anger, and defeated the purposes of his wrath, by the inundation of his mercy ; for this labour and sweat of our brows is so far from being a curse, that without it, our very bread would not be so great a blessing. Is it not labour that makes the garlick and the pulse, the sycamore and the cresses, the cheese of the goats and the butter of the sheep, to be savoury and pleasant as the flesh of the roebuck, or the milk of the kine, the marrow of oxen, or the thighs of birds? If it were not for labour, men neither could eat so much, nor relish so pleasantly, nor sleep so soundly, nor be so healthful nor so useful, so strong nor so patient, so noble nor so untempted. And as God hath made us beholden to labour for the purchase of many good things, so the thing itself owes to labour many degrees of its worth and value. And, therefore, I need not reckon, that, besides these advantages, the mercies of God have found out proper and natural remedies for labour ; nights to cure the sweat of the day, — sleep to ease our watchfulness, — rest to alleviate our burdens, — and days of religion to procure our rest : and thinos are so ordered, that labour is become a duty, and an
£3 ...
act of many virtues, and is not so apt to turn mtp a sm as its contrary; and is therefore necessary, not only because we need it for making provisions for our hfe, but even to ease the labour of our rest ; there being no greater tediousness of spirit in the world than want of employment, and an inactive life : and the lazy man is not only unprofitable, but also accursed, and he groans under the load of his time ; which yet passes over the active man light as a dream, or the feathers of a bird; while the unemployed is a disease, and like a long sleepless nio-ht to himself, and a load unto his country. And therefore, although, in this particular, God hath been so merciful in this infliction, that from the sharpness of the curse a very great
180 TlIK MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY.
jiart of mankiiKl are freed, and there are myriads of people, good and bad, who do not * eat their bread in the sweat of their brows;' yet tliis is but an overrunning and an excess of the Divine mercy; God did more for us than we did absolutely need : for he hath so disposed of the circumstances of this nu'so, that man's affections are so reconciled to it, that they desire it, and are delighted in it; and so the anger of God is ended in loving kindness, and the drop of water is lost in the full chalice of the wine, and the curse is gone out into a multi- plied blessing.
But then for the other part of the severe law and laborious imposition, that we must work out our spiritual interest with the labours of our spirit, seems to most men to be so intoler- able, that, rather than pass under it, they quit their hopes of heaven, and pass into the portion of devils. And what can there be to alleviate this sorrow, that a man shall be per- petually solicited with an impure tempter, and shall carry a flame within him, and all the world is on fire round about him, and every thing brings fuel to the flame, and full tables are a •snare, and empty tables are collateral servants to a lust, and help to blow the fire and kindle the heap of prepared tempta- tions ; and yet a man must not at all taste of the forbidden fruit, and he must not desire what he cannot choose but desire, and he must not enjoy whatsoever he does violently covet, and must never satisfy his appetite in the most violent impor- tunities, but must therefore deny himself, because to do so is extremely troublesome ? This seems to be an art of torture, and a device to punish man with the spirit of agony, and a restless vexation. But this also hath in it a great ingredient of mercy, or rather is nothing else but a heap of mercy in its entire constitution. For, if it were not for this, we had nothing of our own to present to God, nothing proportionable to the great rewards of heaven, but either all men, or no man, ■must go thither ; for nothing can distinguish man from man, in order to beatitude, but choice and election ; and nothing can ennoble the choice but love, and nothing can exercise love but difficulty, and nothing can make that difficulty but the contradiction of our appetite, and the crossing of our natural affections. And, therefore, whenever any of you are tempted violently, or grow weary in your spirits with resisting .the petulancy of temptation, you may be cured, if you will
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please but to remember and rejoice, that now you have some- thing of your own to give to God, something that he will be pleased to accept, something that he hath given thee that thou mayest give it him: for our money and our time, our days of feasting and our days of sorrow, our discourse and our acts of praise, our prayers and our songs, our vows and our offerings, our worshippings and protestations, and what- soever else can be accounted in the sum of our religion, are only accepted according as they bear along with them portions of our will, and choice of love, and appendant difficulty.
Lactius est quoties magno tibi constat honestum.
So that whoever can complain that he serves God with pains and mortifications, he is troubled because there is a distinction of things such as we call virtue and vice, reward and punishment ; and, if we will not suffer God to distinguish the first, he will certainly confound the latter ; and his portion shall be blackness without variety, and punishment shall be his reward.
6. As an appendage to this instance of Divine mercy, we are to account that, not only in nature, but in contingency. and emergent events of providence, God makes compensation to us for all the evils of chance and hostihties of accident, and brings good out of evil ; which is that solemn triumph which mercy makes over justice, when it rides upon a cloud, and crowns its darkness with a robe of glorious light. God indeed suffered Joseph to be sold a bond-slave into Egypt, but then it was that God intended to crown and reward his chastity ; for by that means he brought him to a fair condition of dwelling, and there gave him a noble trial ; he had a brave contention, and he was a conqueror. Then God sent him to prison ; but still that was mercy ; it was to make way to bring him to Pharaoh's court. And God brought famine upon Canaan, and troubled all the souls of Jacob's family : and there was a plot laid for another mercy ; this was to bring them to see and partake of Joseph's glory. And then God brought a great evil upon their posterity, and they groaned under taskmasters ; but this God changed into the miracles, of his mercy, and suffered them to be afflicted that he might do ten miracles for their sakes, and proclaim to all. the world how dear they were to God. And was not the greatest good
182 THE MIUACLLS OK THE DIVINE MERCY.
to mankind brousrht forth from the y-reatest treason that ever was committed, — the redemption oftlie world, from the fact ol Judas? God lovin"; to defeat the mahce of man and the arts of the devil by rare emergencies and stratagems of mercy. It is a sad calamity to see a kingdom spoiled, and a church afflicted ; the priests slain with the sword, and the blood of nobles mingled with cheaper sand ; religion made a cause of trouble, and the best men most cruelly persecuted; govern- ment confounded, and laws ashamed ; judges decreeing causes in fear and covetousness, and the ministers of holy things setting themselves against all that is sacred, and setting Cue upon the fields, and turning in ' little foxes* on purpose to * destroy the vineyards.' And what shall make recompense for this heap of sorrows, whenever God shall send such swords of fire ? Even the mercies of God, which then will be made public, when we shall hear such afflicted people sing, " In convertendo captivitatem Sion," with the voice of joy and festival eucharist, " among such as keep holy day ;" and when peace shall become sweeter, and dwell the longer. And in the mean time it serves religion, and the affliction shall try the children of God, and God shall crown them, and men shall grow wiser and more holy, and leave their petty interests, and take sanctuary in holy living, and be taught temperance by their want, and patience by their suffering, and charity by their persecution, and shall better understand the duty of their relations ; and, at last, the secret worm that lay at the root of the plant, shall be drawn forth and quite extinguished. For so have I known a luxuriant vine swell into irregular twigs and bold excrescences, and spend itself in leaves and little rings, and afford but trifling clusters to the wine-press, and a faint return to his heart, which longed to be refreshed with a full vintage : but when the lord of the vine had caused the dressers to cut the wilder plant, and made it bleed, it grew temperate in its vain expense of useless leaves, and knotted into fair and juicy bunches, and made accounts of that loss of blood by the return of fruit. So is an afflicted province cured of its surfeits, and punished for its sins, and bleeds for its long riot, and is left ungoverned for its disobedience, and chastised for its wantonness ; and when the sword hath let forth the corrupted blood, and the fire hath purged the rest, then it enters into the double joys of restitution, and gives
THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 183
God thanks for his rod, and confesses the mercies of the Lord in making the smoke to be changed into fire, and the cloud into a perfume, the sword into a staff, and his anger into mercy.
Had not David suffered more, if he had suffered less ? and had he not been miserable, unless he had been afflicted ? He understood it well, when he said, " It is good for me, that I have been afflicted." He that was rival to Crassus when he stood candidate to command the legions in the Parthian war, was much troubled that he missed the dignity ; but he saw himself blest that he escaped the death, and the dishonour of the overthrow, by that time the sad news arrived at Rome. The gentleman at Marseilles cursed his stars, that he was absent when the ship set sail to sea, having long waited for a wind, and missed it ; but he gave thanks to the Providence that blessed him with the cross, when he knew that the ship perished in the voyage, and all the men were drowned. And even those vir2;ins and barren women in Jerusalem that longed to become glad mothers, and for want of children would not be comforted, yet, when Titus sacked the city, found the words of Jesus true, " Blessed is the womb that never bare, and the paps that never gave suck." And the world being governed with a rare variety, and changes of accidents and providence ; that which is a misfortune in the particular, in the whole order of things becomes a blessing bigger than we hoped for, then when we woie angry with God for hindering us to perish in pleasant ways, or when he was contriving to pour upon thy head a mighty blessing. Do not think the judge condemns you, when he chides you; nor think to read thy own final sentence by the first half of his words. Stand still, and see how it will be in the whole event of things : let God speak his mind out ; for it may be this sad beginning is but an art to bring in, or to make thee to esteem, and enter- tain, and understand the blessing.
They that love to talk of the mercies of the Lord, and to recount his good things, cannot but have observed that God delights to be called by such appellatives, which relate to miserable and afflicted persons : he is ' the Father of the fatherless,' and an ' Avenger of the widow's cause ;' ' he standeth at the right hand of the poor, to save his soul from unrighteous judges ;' and ' he is with us in tribulation.' And
184 THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY.
upon tills ground let us acc(Hmt whether mercy be not the greater ingredient in that death and deprivation, when I lose a man, and get God to be my Father; and when my weak arm! of flesh is cut from my shoulder, and God makes me to lean upon liim, and becomes my Patron and my Guide, my Advocate and Defender. And if, in our greatest misery, God's mercy is so conspicuous, what can we suppose him to be in the endearment of his loving-kindness? If his evil be so trans- parent, well may we know that upon his face dwells glory, and from his eyes light and perpetual comforts run in chan- nels larger than the returns of the sea, when it is driven and forced faster into its natural course by the violence of a tempest from the north. The sum is this : God intends every accident should minister to virtue, and every virtue is the mother and the nurse of joy, and both of them daughters of the Divine goodness ; and, therefore, if our sorrows do not pass into comforts, it is beside God's intention; it, is because we will not comply with the act of that mercy, which would save us by all means and all varieties, by health and by sickness, by the life and by the death of our dearest friends, by what we choose and by what we fear ; that as God's providence rules over all chances of things and all designs of men, so his mercy may rule over all his provi- dence.
SERMON XXVI.
PART II.
7. God having, by these means, secured us from the evils of nature and contingencies, and represented himself to be our Father, which is the great endearment, and tie, and ex- pression of a natural, unalterable, and essential kindness ; he next makes provisions for us to supply all those necessities which himself hath made. For even to make necessities was a great circumstance of the mercy ; and all the relishes of wine, and the savouriness of meat, the sweet and the fat, the pleasure and the satisfaction, the restitution of spirits and the strengthening of the heart, are not owing to the liver of the
THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 185
vine or the kidneys of wheat, to the blood of the grape or the strength of the corn, but to the appetite or the necessity : and therefore it is, that he, — that sits at a full table, and does not recreate his stomach with fasting, and let his digestion rest, and place himself in the advantages of nature's inter- vals; — he loses the blessing of his daily bread, and leans upon his table as a sick man upon his bed, or the lion in the grass, which he cannot feed on : but he that wants it, and sits down when nature gives the sign, rejoices in the health of his hunger, and the taste of his meat, and the strengthening of his spirit, and gives God thanks, while his bones and his flesh rejoice in the provisions of nature and the blessing of God. Are not the imperfections of infancy and the decays of old age the evils of our nature, because respectively they want desire, and they want gust and relish, and reflections upon their acts of sense ? and " when desire fails, presently the mourners go about the streets*." But then, that those desires are so provided for by nature and art, by ordinary and extraordinary, by foresight and contingency, according to necessity and up unto convenience, until we arrive at abundance, is a chain of mercies larger than the bow in the clouds, and richer than the trees of Eden, which were per- mitted to feed our miserable father. Is not all the earth our orchard and our granary, our vineyard and our garden of pleasure? and the face of the sea is our traffic, and the bowels of the sea is our vivarium, a place for fish to feed us, and to serve some other collateral appendant needs ; and all the face of heaven is a repository for influences and breath, fruitful showers and fair refreshments. And when God made provision for his other creatures, he gave it of one kind, and with variety no greater than the changes of day and night, one devouring the other, or sitting down with his draught of blood, or walking upon his portion of grass : but man hath, all the food of beasts, and all the beasts themselves that are fit for food, and the food of angels, and the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth ; and every part of his body hath a provision made for it: and the smoothness of the olive and the juice of the vine refresh the heart and make the face cheerful, and serve the ends of joy and the festivity of man; and are not only to cure hunger or to allay thirst, but to
* Ecclcs. xii.
18G rut: mihacles or rut: divink mkucy.
appease a passion, and allay a sorrow. It is an infinite variety of meat, with wliiclj Cod furnishes out the table of mankind. And in the cuverinj; our sin, and clothin<!j our nakedness, (Joil passed from lig-Ieaves to the skins of beasts, from aprons to long robes, from leather to wool, and from thence to the warmth of furs, and the coolness of silks ; he hath dressed not only our needs, but hath fitted the several j)ortions of the year, and made us to go dressed like our mother, leaving ofl:" the winter-sables when the florid spring appears; and as soon as the tulip fades, we put on the robe of summer, and then sheer our sheep for winter : and God uses us as Joseph did his brother Benjamin; we have many changes of raiment, and our mess is five times bigger than the provision made for our brothers of the creation. But the providence and mercies of God are to be estimated also according as these provisions are dispensed to every single person. For that I may not remark the bounties of God running over the tables of the rich, God hath also made provisions for the poorest person ; so that if they can but rule their desires, they shall have their tables furnished. And this is secured and provided for by one promise and two duties, by our own labour and our brother's charity : and our faith in this affair is confirmed by all our own, and by all the experience of other men. Are not all the men and the women of the world provided for, and fed, and clothed, till they die ? And was it not always so from the first morning of the creatures ? And that a man is starved to death, is a violence and a rare contingency, happening almost as seldom as for a man to have but one eye ; and if our being provided for be as certain as for a man to have two eyes, we have reason to adore the wisdom and admire the mercies of our almighty Father. But these things are evident. Is it not a great thing that God hath made such strange provisions for our health — such infi- nite differences of plants — and hath discovered the secrets of their nature by mere chance, or by inspiration? Either of which is the miracle of Providence, secret to us, but ordered by certain and regular decrees of Heaven. It was a huge dili- gence and care of the Divine mercy that discovered to man the secrets of spagyric medicines, of stones, of spirits, and the results of seven or eight decoctions, and the strange effects of accidental mixtures, which the art of man could not suspect, being bound up in the secret sanctuary of hidden
THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MEUCV. 187
causes and secret natures, and being laid open by the con- course of twenty or thirty Utile accidents, all which were ordered by God as certainly as are the first principles of nature, or the descent of sons from the fathers in the most noble families.
But that which I shall observe in this whole affair is, that there are, both for the provision of our tables and the relief of our sicknesses, so many miracles of Providence, that they give plain demonstration what relation we bear to Heaven : and the poor man need not be troubled that he is to expect his daily portion after the sun is up ; for he hath found to this day he was not deceived; and then he may rejoice, because he sees, by an effective probation, that in heaven a decree was made, every day to send him provisions of meat and drink. And that is a mighty mercy, when the circles of heaven are bowed down to wrap us in a bosom 'of care and nourishment, and the wisdom of God is daily busied to serve his mercy, as his mercy serves our necessities. Does not God plant remedies there, where the diseases are most popular? and every country is best provided against its own evils. Is not the rhubarb found, where the sun most corrupts the liver ; and the scabious by the shore of the sea, that God might cure as soon as he wounds ? and the inha- bitants may see their remedy against the leprosy and the scurvy, before they feel their sickness. And then to this we may add nature's commons and open fields, the shores of rivers and the strand of the sea, the unconfined air, the wilderness that hath no hedge ; and that in these every man may hunt, and fowl, and fish, respectively ; and that God sends some miracles and extraordinary blessings so for the public good, that he will not endure they should be enclosed and made several. Thus he is pleased to dispense the manna of Calabria, the medicinal waters of Germany, the muscles at Sluys at this day, and the Egyptian beans in the marshes of Albania, and the salt at Troas of old; which God, to defeat the covetousness of man, and to spread his mercy over the face of the indigent, as the sun scatters his beams over the bosom of the whole earth, did so order, that as long as every man was permitted to partake, the bosom of Heaven was open ; but when man gathered them into single hand- fuls, and made them impropriate, God gathered his hand into
188 THE MIUACLKS OF TIIK DIVUVK MERCY.
his bosom, aiul bound the lieavens with ribs of brass, and the earth A\i(h deoroes of iron; and the blessing reverted to him; that gave it, since thvt/ might not receive it to wliom it was sent. And in general, this is the excellency of this nuercyy that all our needs are certainly supplied and secured by a promise which CJod cannot break : but he that cannot break the laws of his own promises, can break the laws of nature, that he may perform his promise, and he will do a miracle rather than forsake thee in thy needs : so that our security and the relative mercy is bound upon us by all the power and the truth of God.
8. But because such is the bounty of God, that he hath provided a better life for the inheritance of man, if God is so merciful in making fair provisions for our less noble part, in order to the transition toward our country, we may expect that the mercies of God have rare arts to secure to us his designed bounty in order to our inheritance, to that which ought to be our portion for ever. And here I consider, that it is an infinite mercy of the almighty Father of mercies, that he hath appointed to us such a religion, that leads us to a huge felicity through pleasant ways. For the felicity that is designed to us, is so above our present capacities and con- ceptions, that while we are so ignorant as not to understand it, we are also so foolish as not to desire it with passions great enough to perform the little conditions of its purchase. God, therefore, knowing how great an interest it is, and how apt we should be to neglect it, hath found out such conditions of acquiring it, which are eases and satisfaction to our present appetites. God hath bound our salvation upon us by the endearment of temporal prosperities ; and because we love this world so well, God hath so ordered it, that even this world may secure the other. A.nd of this, God in old times made open profession : for when he had secretly designed to bring his people to a glorious immortality in another world, he told them nothins; of that, it beins; a thino- bifraer than the capacity of their thoughts, or of their theology ; but told them that which would tempt them most, and endear obe- dience : ' If you will obey, ye shall eat the good things of the land ;' ye shall possess a rich country, ye shall triumph over your enemies, ye shall have numerous families, blessed children, rich granaries, overrunning wine-presses. For God
.THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 189
•knew the cognation of most of them was so dear between their affections and the good things of this world, that if they did not obey in hope of that they did need, and fancy, and love, and see, and feel, — it was not to be expected they should qnit their affections for a secret in another world, whither before they come, they must die, and lose all desire and all capacities of enjoyment. But this design of God, which was barefaced in the days of the law, is now in the Gospel inter- woven secretly (but yet plain enough to be discovered by an eye of faith and reason,) into every virtue ; and temporal advantage is a great ingredient in the constitution of every Christian grace. For so the richest tissue dazzles the be- holder's eye, when the sun reflects upon the metal, the silver and the gold weaved into fantastic imagery, or a wealthy plainness ; but the rich wire and shining filaments are wrought upon cheaper silk, the spoil of worms and flies : so is the embroidery of our virtue. The glories of the Spirit dwell upon the face and vestment, upon the fringes and the borders, and there we see the beryl and the onyx, the jasper and the sardonyx, order and perfection, love, and peace, and joy, mortification of the passions and ravishment of the will, adherences to God and imitation of Christ, reception and entertainment of the Holy Ghost, and longings after heaven, humility and chastity, temperance and sobriety; these make the frame of the garment, the clothes of the soul, that it may not be found naked in the day of the Lord's visitation : but through these rich materials a thread of silk is drawn, some compliance with worms and weaker creatures, something that shall please our bowels, and make the lower man to rejoice; they are wrought upon secular content and material satis- factions : and now we cannot be happy unless we be pious, and the religion of a Christian is the greatest security, and the most certain instrument of making a man rich, and pleasing, and healthful, and wise, and beloved, in the whole world. I shall now remark only two or three instances ; for the main body of this truth I have otherwhere represented.
1. The whole religion of a Christian, as it relates to others, is nothing but justice and mercy'', certain parents of peace and benefit : and upon this supposition, what evil
*' Life of Holy Jesus, part iii. disc. 14.
100 THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MEUCY.
ran come to -a jnst niul a merciful, to a necessary and useful person ? For the first permission of evil was upon the stock of injustice. He that kills may be killed, and he that does injury may be mischieved ; he that invades another man's rip^ht, must venture the loss of his own ; and when I put my brother to his defence, he may chance drive the evil so far from himself, that it may reach me. Laws and judges, private and public judicatures, wars and tribunals, axes and wheels, were made, not for the righteous, but for the unjust; and all that whole order of things and persons would be use- less, if men did do as they would willingly suffer.
2. And because there is no evil that can befall a just man, unless it comes by injury and violence, our religion hath also made as good provisions against that too, as the nature of the thing will suffer. For by patience we are reconciled to the sufferance, and by hope and fiiith we see a certain consequent reward ; and by praying for the persecuting man we are cured of all the evil of the mind, the envy and the fretfulness that uses to gall the troubled and resisting man : and when we turn all the passion into charity, and God turns all the suffering into reward, there remains nothing that is very formidable. So that our religion obliges us to such duties which prevent all evils that happen justly to men : and in our religion no man can suffer as a malefactor, if he follows the religion truly: and for the evils that are unavoidable and come by violence, the graces of this discipline turn them into virtues and rewards, and make them that in their event they are desirable, and in the suffering they are very tolerable.
3, But then when we consider that the religion of a Christian consists in doing good to all men ; that it is made up of mercies and friendships, of friendly conventions and assemblies of saints ; that all are to do good works for neces- sary uses, that is, to be able to be beneficial to the public, and not to be burdensome to any, where it can be avoided ; what can be wished to men in relation to others, and what can be more beneficial to themselves, than that they be such whom other men will value for their interest, such whom the public does need, such whom princes and nobles ought to esteem, and all men can make use of according to their several conditions ; that they are so well provided for, that, imless a persecution disables them, they can not only maintain
THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 191
themselves, but oblige others to their charity ? This is a temporal good, which all wise men reckon as part of that fehcity which recompenses all the labours of their day, and sweetens the sleep of their night, and places them in that circle of neighbourhood and amity, where men are most valued and most secure.
4. To this we may add this material consideration : That all those graces, which oblige us to do good to others, are nothing else but certain instruments of doing advantage to ourselves. It is a huge nobleness of charity to give alms, not only to our brother, but for him. It is the Christian sacrifice, like that of Job, who made oblations for his sons when they feasted each other, fearing lest they had sinned against God. And if I give alms, and fast, and pray, in behalf of ray prince or my patron, my friend or my children, I do a combination of holy actions; which are, of all things that I can do, the most effectual intercession for him whom I so recommend. But then observe the art of this, and what a plot is laid by the Divine mercy, to secure blessing to ourselves. That I am a person fit to intercede and pray for him, must suppose me a gracious person, one whom God rathei will accept : so that, before I be fit to pray and inter- pose for him, I must first become dear to God ; and my charity can do him no good, for whose interest I gave it, but by making me first acceptable to God, that so he may the rather hear me. And when I fast, it is first an act of repent- ance for myself, before it can be an instrument of impetration for him. And thus I do my brother a single benefit, by doing myself a double one. And it is also so ordered, that when I pray for a person for whom God will not hear me, yet then he will hear me for myself, though I say nothing in my own behalf : and our prayers are like Jonathan's arrows ; if they fall short, yet they return my friend or my friendship to me ; or if they go home, they secure him whom they pray for; and I have not only the comfort of rejoicing with him, but the honour and the reward of procuring him a joy. And certain it is, that the charitable prayer for another can never want what it asks, or, instead of it, a greater blessing. The good man, — that saw his poor brother troubled, because he had nothing to present for an offering at the holy commu- nion, (when all knew themselves obliged to do kindness for
192 TlIK MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY.
Clirist's poor members, with which themselves were incorpo- rated with so mysterious an union), and gave him money, that he miglit present for the good of his soul, as other Christians did, — iiad not only the reward of alms, but of reliiiion too ; and that ofterin*r was well husbanded, for it did benefit to two souls. For as I sin when I make anotlier sin ; so if I help him to do a good, I am sharer in the gains of that talent ; and he shall not have the less, but I shall be rewarded upon his stock. And this was it which David rejoiced in : " Partlceps sum omnium timentium te :" " I am a partner, a con)panion, of all them that fear thee ;" I share in their profits. If I do but rejoice at every grace of Gqd which I see in my brother, I shall be rewarded for that grace. And we need not envy the excellency of another ; it becomes mine as well as his; and if 1 do rejoice, I shall have cause to rejoice. So excellent, so full, so artificial is the mercy of God, in making, and seeking, and finding all occasions to do us good.
5. The very charity, and love, and mercy, that is com- manded in our religion, is in itself a great excellency ; not only in order to heaven, but to the comforts of the earth too, and such, without which a man is not capable of a blessing or a comfort. And he that sent charity and friendships into the world, intended charity to be as relative as justice, and to do its effect both upon the loving and the beloved person. It is a reward and a blessing to a kind father, when his children do well ; and every degree of prudent love which he bears to them, is an endeaiment of his joy^ and he that loves them not, but looks upon them as burdens of necessity and loads to his fortune, loses those many rejoicings, and the pleasures of kindness which they feast withal, who love to divide their fortunes amongst them, because they have already divided large and equal portions of their heart. I have instanced in this relation ; but it is true in all the excel- lency of friendship : and every man rejoices twice, when he hath a partner of his joy. A friend shares my sorrow, and makes it but a moiety ; but he swells my joy, and makes it double. For so two channels divide the river, and lessen it into rivulets, and make it fordable, and apt to be drunk up at the first revels of the Sirian star ; but two torches do not divide, but increase the flame. And though my tears are the
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sooner dried up, when they run upon my friend's cheeks in the furrows of compassion ; yet when my flame hath kindled his lamp, we unite the glories, and make them radiant, like the golden candlesticks that burn before the throne of God ; because they shine by numbers, by unions, and confederations of light and joy.
And nov/, upon this account, which is already so great, I need not reckon concerning the collateral issues and little streams of comfort, which God hath made to issue from that religion to which God hath obliged us ; such as are mutual comforts, — visiting sick people, — instructing the ignorant, — and so becoming better instructed, and fortified, and com- forted ourselves, by the instruments of our brother's ease and advantages ; — the glories of converting souls, of rescuing a sinner from hell, of a miserable man from the grave, — the honour and nobleness of being a good man, — the noble con- fidence and the bravery of innocence, — the ease of patience, — the quiet of contentedness, — the rest of peacefulness, — the worthiness of forgiving others, — the greatness of spirit that is in despising riches, — and the sweetness of spirit that is in meekness and humility ;~these are Christian graces in every sense; favours of God, and issues of his bounty and his mercy. But all that I shall now observe farther concerning them is this : That God hath made these necessary ; he hath obliged us to have them, under pain of damnation ; he hath made it so sure to us to become happy even in this world, that if we will not, he hath threatened to destroy us ; which is not a desire or aptness to do us an evil, but an art to make it impossible that we should. For God hath so ordered it, that we cannot perish, unless we desire it ourselves ; and unless we will do ourselves a mischief on purpose to get hell, we are secured of heaven ; and there is not in the nature of things any way that can more infallibly do the work of felicity upon creatures that can choose, than to make that which they should naturally choose, be spiritually their duty : and then he will make them happy hereafter, if they will suffer him to make them happy here. But hard by stand another throng of mercies, that must be considered by us, and God must be glorified in them ; for they are such as are intended to preserve to us all this feUcity.
9. God, that he might secure our duty and our present
VOL. VI. O
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and consequent felicity, liath tied us with <;olden chains, and bound us, not only with the bracelets of love and the deliciousness of"hoi)e, but with the ruder cords of fear and reverence; even with all the innumerable parts of a restraining grace. For it is a huge aggravation of human calamity to consider, tliat after a man hath been instructed in the love and advantages of his religion, and knows it to be the way of honour and felicity, and that to prevaricate his holy sanc- tions is certain death and disgrace to eternal ages ; yet that some men shall despise their religion, others shall be very wary of its laws, and call the conunandments a burden ; and too many, with a perfect choice, shall delight in death, and the ways that lead thither ; and they choose money infinitely, and to rule over their brother by all means, and. to be revenged extremely, and to prevail by wrong, and to do all that they can, and please themselves in all that they desire, and love it fondlv, and be restless in all things but where they perish. If God should not interpose by the arts of a miraculous and merciful grace, and put a bridle in the mouth of our lusts, and chastise the sea of our follies by some heaps of sand or the walls of a rock, we should perish in the deluge of sin universally ; as the old world did in that storm of the Divine anger, * the flood of waters.' But thus God suffers but few adulteries in the world, in respect of what would be, if all men that desire to be adulterers, had power and oppor- tunity. And yet some men, and very many women, are, by modesty and natural shaniefacedness, chastised in their too forward appetites ; or the laws of man, or public reputation, or the indecency and unhandsome circumstances of sin, check the desire, and make it that it cannot arrive at act. For so have I seen a busy flame sitting upon a sullen coal, turn its point to all the angles and portions of its neighbour- hood, and reach at a heap of prepared straw, which, like a bold temptation, called it to a restless motion and acti-vity ; but either it was at too big a distance, or a gentle breath from heaven diverted the sphere and the ray of the fire to the other side, and so prevented the violence of the burning ; till the flame expired in a weak consumption, and died, turning into smoke, and the coolness of death, and the harm- lessness of a cinder. And when a man's desires are winded yvith sails and a lusty wind of passion, and pass on in a
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smooth channel of opportunity, God oftentimes hinders the hist and the impatient desire from passing on to its port, and entering into action, by a sudden thought, by a httle remem^ brance of a word, by a fancy, by a sudden disabihty, by unreasonable and unlikely fears, by the sudden intervening of company, by the very weariness of the passion, by curiosity, by want of health, by the too great violence of. the desire, bursting itself with its fulness into dissolution and a remiss easiness, by a sentence of Scripture, by the reverence •of a good man, or else by the proper interventions of the Spirit of grace, chastising the crime, and representing its appendant mischiefs, and its constituent disorder and irregu- lai-ity ; and after all this, the very anguish and trouble of being defeated in the purpose, hath rolled itself into so much uneasiness and unquiet reflections, that the man is grown ashamed, and vexed into more sober counsels.
And the mercy of God is not less. than infinite, in sepa- rating men from the occasions of their sin, from the neigh- bourhood and temptation. For if the hyena and a dog should be thrust into the same kennel, one of them would soon find a grave, and, it may be, both of them their death. So infalhble is the ruin of most men, if they be showed a temptation. Nitre and resin, naphtha and bitumen, sulphur and pitch, are their constitution; and the fire passes upon them infinitely, and there is none to secure them. But God, by removing our sins far from us, ' as far as the east is from the west,' not only putting away the guilt, but setting the occasion far from us, extremely far — so far that sometimes we cannot sin, and many times not easily, — hath magnified, his mercy, by giving us safety in all those measures in which we are untempted. It would be the matter of new discourses, if I should consider concerning the variety of God's grace ; his preventing and accompanying, his inviting and corrobo- rating grace ; his assisting us to will, his enabling us to do ; his sending angels to watch us, to remove us from evil com- pany, to drive us with swords of fire from forbidden instances, to carry us by unobserved opportunities into holy company, to minister occasions of holy discourses, to make it by some means or other necessary to do an holy action, to make us in love with virtue, because they have mingled that virtue with a just and a fair interest; to some men, by making rehgion
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that thing they live upon ; to others, the means of their repu- tation and the securities of their honour, and thousands of ways more, which every prudent man tliat watches the ways of God, cannot but have observed. But I must also observe other threat conjugations of mercy; for he that is to pass through an infinite, must not dwell upon every little line of life.
10. The next order of mercies is such which is of so pure and unmingled constitution, that it hath at first no regard to the capacities and dispositions of the receivers; and after- wards, when it hath, it relates only to such conditions, which itself creates and produces in the suscipient ; I mean, the mercies of the Divine predestination. For was it not an infinite mercy, that God should predestinate all mankind to salvation by Jesus Christ, even when he had no other reason to move him to do it, but because man was miserable, and needed his pity? But I shall instance only in the inter- medial part of this mysterious mercy. Why should God cause us to be born of Christian parents, and not to be cir- cumcised by the impure hands of a Turkish priest? What distinguished me from another, that my father was severe in his discipline, and careful to * bring me up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord ;' and I was not exposed to the care- lessness of an irreligious guardian, and taught to steal and lie, and to make sport with my infant vices and beginnings of iniquity ? Who was it that discerned our persons from the lot of dying chrysoms, whose portion must be among those who never glorified God with a free obedience ? What had you done of good, or towards it, that you were not con- demned to that stupid ignorance, which makes the souls of most men to be little higher than beasts ; and who under- stand nothing of religion and noble principles, of parables and wise sayings of old men .'' And not only in our cradles, but in our schools and our colleges, in our friendships and in our marriages, in our enmities and in all our conversation, in our virtues and in our vices, where all things in us were equal, or else we were the inferior, there is none of us but have felt the mercies of many differences. Or it may be, my brother and I were intemperate, and drunk, and quarrelsome, and he killed a man ; but God did not suffer me to do so : he fell down and died with a little disorder ; I was a beast.
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and yet was permitted to live, and not yet to die in ray sins : he did amiss once, and was surprised in that disadvantage ; I sin daily, and am still invited to repentance : he would fain have lived and amended ; I neglect the grace, but am allowed the time. And when God sends the angel of his wrath to execute his anger upon a sinful people, we are encompassed with funerals, and yet the angel hath not smitten us. What or who makes the difference? We shall then see, when, in the separations of eternity, we sitting in glory shall see some of the partners of our sins carried into despair and the por- tions of the left hand, and roaring in the seats of the repro- bate ; we shall then perceive that it is even that mercy which hath no cause but itself, no measure of its emanation but our misery, no natural limit but eternity, no beginning but God, no object but man, no reason but an essential and an unalter- able goodness, no variety but our necessity and capacity, no change but new instances of its own nature, no ending or repentance, but our absolute and obstinate refusal to enter- tain it.
1 1 . Lastly : All the mercies of God are concentred in that which is all the felicity of man ; and God is so great a lover of souls, that he provides securities and fair conditions for them, even against all our reason and hopes, our expectations and weak discoursings. The particulars I shall remark are these : 1 . God's mercy prevails over the malice and igno- rances, the weaknesses and follies, of men ; so that in the conventions and assemblies of heretics (as the word is usually understood, for erring and mistaken people), although their doctrines are such, that, if men should live according to their proper and natural consequences, they would live impiously, yet in every one of these there are persons so innocently and invincibly mistaken, and who mean nothing but truth, while in the simplicity of their heart they talk nothing but error, that, in the defiance and contradiction of their own doctrines, they live according to its contradictory. He that believes contrition alone, with confession to a priest, is enough to "expiate ten thousand sins, is furnished with an excuse easy enough to quit himself from the troubles of a holy life ; and he that hath a great many cheap ways of buying off his penances for a little money, even for the greatest sins, is taught a way not to fear the doing of an act, for which he
198 THE MIUACLtS O 1- THE DIVINE MERCY.
must repeat ; since repentance is a duty so soon, so certainly, and so easily iierfornied. liut these are notorious doctrines of the Roman church; and yet God so loves the souls of his creatures, that many men, who trust to these doctrines in their discourses, dare not rely upon them in their lives. But while they talk as if they ditl not need to live strictly, many of them live so strictly as if they did not believe so foolishly, lie that tells that, antecedently, God hath, to all human choice, de- creed men to heaven or to hell, takes away from men all care of the way, because they believe that he that infallibly decreed that eiul, hath unalterably appointed the means ; and some men that talk thus wildly, live soberly, and are overwrought in their understanding by some secret art of God, that man may not perish in his ignorance, but be assisted in his choice, and saved by the Divine mercies. And there is no sect of men but are furnished with antidotes and little excuses to cure the venom of their doctrine ; and therefore, although the adherent and constituent poison is notorious, and therefore to be declined, yet, because it is collaterally cured and, over- powered by the torrent and wisdom of God's mercies, the men are to be taken into the quire, that we may all join in giving God praise for the operation of his hands. — 2. I said for- merly, that there are many secret and undiscerned mercies by which men live, and of which men can give no account, till they come to give God thanks at their publication ; and of this sort is that mercy which God reserves for the souls of many millions of men and women, concerning whom we have no hopes, if we account concerning them by the usual pro- portions of revelation and Christian commandments ; and yet we are taught to hope some strange good things concerning them, by the analogy and general rules of the Divine mercy. For what shall become of ignorant Christians, people that live in wildernesses and places more desert than a primitive her- mitage ? people, that are baptized, and taught to go to church, it may be, once a year ? people that can get no more know- ledge ; they know not where to have it, iior how to desire it ? And yet that an eternity of pains shall be consequent to such fa,n ignorance, is unlike the mercy of God ; and yet that they should be in any disposition tow ards an eternity of intellectual joys, is nowhere set down in the leaves of revelation. And vvhen the Jews grew rebellious, or a silly woman of the
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daughters of Abraham was tempted, and sinned, and punished with death, we usually talk as if that death passed on to a worse ; but yet we may arrest our thoughts upon the Divine mercies, and consider that it is reasonable to expect from the Divine goodness, that no greater forfeiture be taken upon a law than was expressed in its sanction and publication. He that makes a law, and binds it with the penalty of stripes, we say, he intends not to afflict the disobedient with scorpions and axes : and it had been hugely necessary that God had scared the Jews from their sins by threatening the pains of hell to them that disobeyed, if he intended to inflict it ; for although many men would have ventured the future, since they are not aflrighted with the present and visible evil, yet some persons would have had more philosophical and spiritual apprehensions than others, and have been infallibly cured, in all their temptations, with the fear of an eternal pain : and, however, whether they had or no, yet since it cannot be understood how it consists with the Divine justice to exact a pain bigger than he threatened, greater than he gave warning of, we are sure it is a great way off from God's mercy to do so. He that usually imposes less, and is loath to inflict any, and very often forgives it aU, is hugely distant from exacting an eternal punishment, when the most that he threatened, and gave notice of, was but a temporal. The effect of this con- sideration 1 would have to be this : That we may publicly worship this mercy of God, which is kept in secret, and that we be not too forward in sentencing all heathens, and preva- ricating Jews, to the eternal pains of hell ; but to hope that they have a portion in the secrets of the Divine mercy, where also, unless many of us have some little portions deposited, our condition will be very uncertain, and sometimes most miserable. God knows best how intolerably accursed a thing it is to perish in the eternal flames of hell, and therefore he is not easy to inflict it ; and if the joys of heaven be too great to be expected upon too easy terms, certainly the pains of the damned are infinitely too big to pass lightly upon persons who cannot help themselves, and who, if they were helped with clearer revelations, would have avoided them. But as in these things we must not pry into the secrets of the Divine economy, being sure, whether it be so or no, it is most just, even as it is ; so we may expect to see the glories of the
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Divine mercy made public, in unexpected instances, at the i;rent day of mai\itestation. And, indeed, our dead many times oo forth froui ouv hands very strangely and carelessly, without prayers, without sacraments, without consideration, without counsel, and without comfort ; and to dress the souls of our dear people at so sad a parting, is an employment we therefore omit, not always because we are negligent, but because the work is sad, and allays the affections of the world with those melancholic circumstances ; but if God did not in his mercies make secret and equivalent provisions for them, and take care of his redeemed ones, we might unhappily meet them in a sad eternity, and, without remedy, weep to- gether, and groan for ever ! But ' God hath provided better things for them, that they, without us,' that is, without our assistances, ' shall be made perfect.'
SERMON XXVII. PART III.
There are very many more orders and conjugations of mer- cies ; but because the numbers of them naturally tend to their own greatness, that is, to have no measure, I must reckon but a few more, and them also without order : for that they do descend upon us, we see and feel, but by what order of things or causes, is as undiscerned as the head of Nilus, or a sudden remembrance of a long-neglected and forgotten pro- position.
1. But upon this account it is that good men have ob- served, that the providence of God is so great a provider for holy living, and does so certainly minister to religion, that nature and chance, the order of the world and the influences of Heaven, are taught to serve the ends of the Spirit of God and the spirit of a man. I do not speak of the miracles that God hath, in the several periods of the world, wrought for the establishing his laws, and confirming his promises, and se- curing our obedience; though that was, all the way, the overflowings and miracles of mercy, as well as power : but that which I consider is, that besides the extraordinary
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emanations of the Divine power upon the first and most solemn occasions of an institution, and the first beginnings of a religion, (such as were the wonders God did in Egypt and in the wilderness, preparatory to the sanction of that law and the first covenant, and the miracles wrought by Christ and his apostles, for the founding and the building up the rehgion of the Gospel and the new covenant), God does also do things wonderful and miraculous, for the promoting the ordinary and less solemn actions of our piety, and to assist and accompany them in a constant and regular succession. It was a strange variety of natural efficacies, that manna should stink in twenty-four hours, if gathered upon Wed- nesday and Thursday, and that it should last till forty-eight hours, if gathered upon the even of the Sabbath ; and that it should last many hundreds of years, when placed in the sanctuary by the ministry of the high priest. But so it was in the Jews' religion : and manna pleased every palate, and it filled all appetites, and the same measure was a different pro- portion, it was much and it was little ; as if nature, that it might serve religion, had been taught some measures of infinity, which is every where and nowhere, filling all things, and circumscribed with nothing, measured by one omer, and doing the work of two ; like the crowns of kings, fitting the brows of Nimrod and the most mighty warrior, and yet not too large for the temples of an infant prince. And not only is it thus in nature, but in contingencies and acts depending upon the choice of men ; for God having commanded the sons of Israel to go up to Jerusalem to worship thrice every year, and to leave their borders ta be guarded by women, and children, and sick persons, in the neighbourhood of dili- gent and spiteful enemies, yet God so disposed of their hearts and opportunities, that they never entered the land when the people were at their solemnity, until they desecrated their rites, by doing at their passover the greatest sin and treason in the world. Till at Easter they crucified the Lord of life and glory, they were secure in Jerusalem and in their borders ; but when they had destroyed religion by this act, God took away their security, and Titus besieged the city at the feast of Easter, that the more might perish in the deluge of the Divine indignation.
To this observation the Jews add, that in Jerusalem no
'202 THi; MIltACI.KS OF I'll I, DIVINK MEIICV.
ui;m ever had a iall that came thither to worship ; that at their solemn festivals, there was reception in the town for all the inhabitants ol' the land ; concerning which, althou<;h I cannot atlirni any thing, yet this is certain, that no godly person, among all the tribes of Israel, was ever a beggar, but all the variety of hiniian chances were overruled to the pur- poses qI' providence, and providence was measured by the ends of the religion, and the religion which promised them plenty, performed the promise, till the nation and the religion too began to decline, that it might give place to a better ministry, and a more excellent dispensation of the things of the world.
But when Christian religion was planted, and had taken root, and had filled all lands, then all the nature of things, the whole creation, became servant to the kingdom of grace; and the head of the religion is also the head of the creatures, and ministers all the things of the world in order to the Syjirit of grace : and now " angels are ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for the good of them that fear the Lord;" and all the violences of men, and things of nature and choice, are forced into subjection and lowest ministries, and to co- operate, as with an united design, to verify all the promises of the Gospel, and to secure and advantage all the children of the kingdom : and now he that is made poor by chance or persecution, is made rich by religion ; and he that hath nothing, yet possesses all things ; and sorrow itself is the greatest comfort, not only because it ministers to virtue, but because itself is one, as in the case of repentance ; and death ministers to life, and bondage is freedom, and loss is gain, and Qur enemies are our friends, and every thing turns into reli- gion, and religion turns into felicity and all manner of advantages. But that I may not need to enumerate any more particulars in this observation, certain it is, that angels of light and darkness, all the influences of heaven, and the fruits and productions of the earth, the stars and the elements, the secret things that lie in the bowels of the sea and the entrails of the earth, the single effects of all efficients, and the conjunction of all causes, all events foreseen and all rare contingencies, every thing of chance, and every thing of choice, is so much a servant to him whose greatest desire and great interest is, by all means, to save our souls, that we
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are thereby made sure, that all the whole creation shall be made to bend, in all the flexures of its nature and accidents, that it may minister to religion, to the good of the catholic church, and every person within its bosom, who are the body of him that rules over all the world, and commands them as he chooses.
2. But that which is next to this, and not much unlike the design of this wonderful mercy, is, that all the actions of rehgion, though mingled with circumstances of differing, and sometimes of contradictory, relations, are so concentred in God their proper centre, and conducted in such certain and pure channels of reason and rule, that no one duty does con- tradict another ; and it can never be necessary for any man, in any case, to sin. They that bound themselves by an oath to kill Paul, were not environed with the sad necessities of murder on one side, and vow-breach on the other, so that if they did murder him, they were man-slayers, if they did not, they were perjured ; for God had made provision for this case, that no unlawful oath should pass an obligation. He that hath given his faith in unlawful confederation against his prince, is not girded with a fatal necessity of breach of trust on one side, or breach of allegiance on the other; for in this also God hath secured the case of conscience, by forbidding any man to make an unlawful promise ; and, upon a stronger degree of the same reason, by forbidding him to keep it, in case he hath made it. He that doubts whether it be lawful to keep the Sunday holy, must not do it during that doubt, because ' whatsoever is not of faith, is sin.' But yet God's mercy hath taken care to break this snare in sunder, so that he may neither sin against the commandment, nor against his conscience ; for he is bound to lay aside his error, and be better instructed ; till when, the scene of his sin lies in something that hath influence upon his understanding, not in the omission of the fact. "No man can serve two masters," but therefore " he must hate the one, and cleave to the other." But then if we consider what infinite contradiction there is in sin, and that the great long-suffering of God is expressed in this, that God ' suffered the contradiction of sinners,' we shall feel the mercy of God in the peace of our consciences and the unity of religion, so long as we do the work of God. It is a huge affront to a covetous man, that he is the farther
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off from fulness by having great heaps and vast revenues ; and that his thirst increases by having that which should quench it ; and that the more he shall need to be satisfied, the less lie shall dare to do it; and that he shall refuse to drink because he is dry ; that he dies if he tastes, and lan- guishes if he does not; and at the same time he is full and empty, bursting with a plethory, and consumed with hunger, drowned with rivers of oil and wine, and yet dry as the Arabian sands. But then the contradiction is multiplied, and the labyrinths more amazed, when prodigality waits upon another curse, and covetousness heaps up, that prodigality may scatter abroad ; then distractions are infinite, and a man hath two devils to serve of contradictory designs, and both of them exacting obedience more unreasonably than the Egyptian taskmasters ; then there is no rest, no end of labours, no satisfaction of purposes, no method of things ; but they begin where they should end, and begin again ; and never pass forth to content, or reason, or quietness, or possession. But the duty of a Christian is easy in a persecution, it is clear under a tyranny, it is evident in despite of heresy, it is one in the midst of schism, it is determined amongst infinite disputes ; being like a rock in the sea, which is beaten with the tide, and washed with retiring w-aters, and encompassed with mists, and appears in several figures, but it always dips its foot in the same bottom, and remains the same in calms and storms, and survives the revolution of ten thousand tides, and there shall dwell till time and tides shall be no more. So is our duty, unifonn and constant, open and notorious, variously represented, but in the same manner exacted ; and in the interest of our souls God hath not exposed us to uncertainty, or the variety of any thing that can change ; and it is by the grace and mercy of God, put into the power of every Christian, to do that which God, through Jesus Christ, will accept to salvation ; and neither men nor devils shall hinder it, unless we list ourselves.
3. After all this, we may sit down and reckon by great sums and conjugations of his gracious gifts, and tell the minutes of eternity by the number of the Divine mercies. God hath given his laws to rule us, his word to instruct us, his Spirit to guide us, his angels to protect us, his ministers to exhort us : he revealed all our duty, and he hath concealed
THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 205
whatsoever can hinder us : he hath affrighted our follies with fear of death, and engaged our watchfulness by its secret coming : he hath exercised our faith by keeping private the state of souls departed, and yet hath confirmed our faith by a promise of a resurrection, and entertained our hope by some general significations of the state of interval. His mercies make contemptible means instrumental to great purposes, and a small herb the remedy of the greatest diseases. He impedes the devil's rage, and infatuates his counsels ; he diverts his malice, and defeats his purposes ; he binds him in the chain of darkness, and gives him no power over the children of light ; he suffers him to walk in solitary places, and yet fetters him that he cannot disturb the sleep of a child ; he hath given him mighty power, and yet a young maiden that resists him, shall make him flee away ; he hath given him a vast know- ledge, and yet an ignorant man can confute him with the twelve articles of his creed ; he gave him power over the winds, and made him prince of the air, and yet the breath of a holy prayer can drive him as far as the utmost sea ; and he hath so restrained him, that (except it be by faith) we know not whether there be any devil, yea or no ; for we never heard his noises, nor have seen his affrighting shapes. This is that great principle of all the felicity we hope for, and of all the means thither, and of all the skill and all the strengths we have to use those means. He hath made great variety of conditions, and yet hath made all necessary, and all mutual helpers ; and by some instruments, and in some respects, they are all equal in order to felicity, to content, and final and intermedial satisfactions. He gave us part of our reward in hand, that he might enable us to work for more ; he taught the world arts for use, arts for entertainment of all our facul- ties and all our dispositions : he gives eternal gifts for temporal services, and gives us whatsoever we want for asking, and commands us to ask, and threatens us if we will not ask, and punishes us for refusing to be happy. This is that glorious attribute that hath made order and health, harmony and hope, restitutions and variety, the joys of direct possession, and the joys, the artificial joys of contrariety and comparison. He comforts the poor, and he brings down the rich, that they may be safe, in their humility and sorrow, from the transport- ations of an unhappy and uninstructed prosperity. He gives
206 THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCV.
necessaries to all, and scatters the extraordinary provisions so, that every nation may traffic in charity, and commute for pleasures. He was the Lord of Hosts, and he is still what he was ; but he loves to be called the God of Peace ; because he was terrible in that, but he is delighted in this. His mercy is his glory, and his glory is the light of heaven. His mercy is the life of the creation, and it fills all the earth ; and his mercy is a sea too, and it fills all the abysses of the deep : it hath given us promises for supply of whatsoever we need, and relieves us in all our fears, and in all the evils that we suffer. His mercies are more than we can tell, and they are more than we can- feel: for all the world in the abyss of the Divine mercies is like a man diving into the bottom of the sea, over whose head the waters run insensibly and unper- ceived, and yet the weight is vast, and the sum of them is unmeasurable ; and the man is not pressed with the burden, nor confounded with numbers : and no observation is able to recount, no sense sufficient to perceive, no memory large enoug'h to retain, no understanding great enough to appre- hend this infinity ; but we must admire, and love, and wor- ship, and magnify this mercy for ever and ever ; that we may dwell in what we feel, and be comprehended by that which is equal to God, and the parent of all felicity.
And yet this is but the one half. The mercies of giving I have now told of; but those of forgiving are greater, though not more : — " He is ready to forgive." — And upon this stock thrives the interest of our great hope, the hope of a blessed immortality. For if the mercies of giving have not made our expectations big enough to entertain the confidences of heaven ; yet when we think of the graciousness and readi- ness of forgiving, we may with more readiness hope to escape hell, and then we cannot but be blessed by an eternal conse^ quence. We have but small opinion of the Divine mercy, if we dare not believe concerning it, that it is desirous, and able, and watchful, and passionate, to keep us, or rescue us respectively from such a condemnation, the pain of which is insupportable, and the duration is eternal, and the extension is misery upon all our faculties, and the intention is great beyond patience, or natural or supernatural abilities, and the state is a state of darkness and despair, of confusion and amazement, of cursing and roaring, anguish of spirit and.
THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 207
gnashing of teeth, misery universal, perfect and irremediable. From this it is which God's mercies would so fain preserve us. This is a state that God provides for his enemies, not for them that love him ; that endeavour to obey, though they do it but in weakness ; that weep truly for their sins, though but with a shower no bigger than the drops of pity ; that wait for his coming with a holy and pure flame, though their lamps are no brighter than a poor man's candle, though their strengths are no greater than a contrite reed or a strained arm, and their fires have no more warmth than the smoke of kindling flax. If our faith be pure, and our love unfeigned; if the degrees of it be great, God will accept it into glory ; if it be little, he will accept it into grace and make it bigger. For that is the first instance of God's readiness to forgive : he will, upon any terms that are not unreasonable, and that do not suppose a remanent affection to sin, keep us from the intolerable pains of hell. And, indeed, if we consider the constitution of the conditions which God requires, we shall soon perceive God intends heaven to us as a mere gift, and that the duties on our part are but little entertainments and exercises of our affections and our love, that the devil might not seize upon that portion which, to eternal ages, shall be the instrument of our happiness. For, in all the parts of our duty, it may be, there is but one instance in which we are 'to do violence to our natural and first desires. For those men have very ill natures, to whom virtue is so contrary that they are inclined naturally to lust, to drunkenness and anger, to pride and covetousness, to unthankfulness and disobedience. Most men that are tempted with lust, could easily enough entertain the sobrieties of other counsels, as of temperance, and justice, or religion, if it would indulge to them but that One passion of lust ; and persons that are greedy of money, are not fond of amorous vanities, nor care they to sit long at the wine : and one vice destroys another: and when one vice is consequent to another, it is by way of punishment and dereliction of the man, unless where vices have cognation, and seem but like several degrees of one another. And it is evil custom and superinduced habits that make artificial appetites in most men to most sins : but rhany times their natural temper vexes them into uneasy dispositions, and apt- nesses only to some one unhandsome sort of action. That
208 THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY.
one thinp;, therefore, is it, in which God demands of" thee mortification and self-denial.
Certain it is, there are very many men in the world, that wonUl fain eonnnute their severity in all other instances for a license in their one appetite ; they would not refuse long- prayers after a drunken meeting, or great alms together with one great lust. But then consider how easy it is for them to go to heaven. God demands of them, for his sake and their own, to crucify but one natural lust, or one evil habit (for all the rest they are easy enough to do themselves), and God will give them heaven, where the joy is more than one. And I said, it is but one mortification God requires of most men ; for, if those persons would extirp but that one thing in which they are principally tempted, it is not easily imaginable that any less evil to which the temptation is trifling, should inter- pose between them and their great interest. If Saul had not spared Agag, the people could not have expected mercy : and our little and inferior appetites, that rather come to us by intimation and consequent adherences than by direct violence, must not dwell with him, who hath crossed the violence of his ^ distempered nature in a beloved instance. Since, therefore, this is the state of most men, and God in effect demands of them but one thing, and, in exchange for that, will give them all good things ; it gives demonstration of his huge easiness to redeem us from that intolerable evil, that is equally conse- quent to the indulging to one or to twenty sinful habits.
2. God's readiness to pardon appears in this, that he par- dons before we ask ; for he that bids us ask for pardon, hath in design and purpose done the thing already : for, what is wanting on his part, in whose only power it is to give pardon, and in whose desire it is that we should be pardoned, and who commands us to lay hold upon the offer ? He hath done all that belongs to God, that is, all that concerns the pardon ; there it lies ready, it is recorded in the book of life, it wants nothing but being exemplified and taken forth, and the Holy Spirit stands ready to consign and pass the privy signet, that we may exhibit it to devils and evil men when they tempt us to despair or sin.
3. Nay, God is so ready in his mercy, that he did pardon us even before he redeemed us. For, what is the secret of the mystery, that the eternal Son of God should take upon
THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY, 209
hitn our nature, and die our death, and suffer for our sins, and do our work, and enable us to do our own? He that did this, is God ; he who " thought it no robbery to be equal with God," he came to satisfy himself, to pay to himself the price for his own creature. And when he did this for us that he might pardon us, was he at that instant angry with us ? Was this an effect of his anger or of his love, that God sent his Son to work our pardon and salvation? Indeed, we were angry with God, at enmity with the Prince of life ; but he was reconciled to us so far, as that he then did the greatest thing in the world for us : for nothing could be greater than that God, the Son of God, should die for us. Here was reconciliation before pardon : and God, that came to die for us, did love us first before he came. This was hasty love. But it went farther yet.
4. God pardoned us before we sinned ; and w^hen he fore- saw our sin, even mine and yours, he sent his Son to die for us : our pardon was wrought and effected by Christ's death above 1600 years ago; and for the sins of to-morrow, and the infirmities of the next day, Christ is already dead, already risen from the dead, and does now make intercession and atonement. And this is not only a favour to us who were born in the due time of the Gospel, but to all mankind since Adam: for God, who is infinitely patient in his justice. Was not at all patient in his mercy; he forbears to strike and punish us, but he would not forbear to provide cure for us and remedy. For, as if God could not stay from i-edeeming us, he promised the Redeemer to Adam in the beginning of the world's sin ; and Christ was " the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world;" and the covenant of the Gospel, * though it was not made with man, yet it was from the begin- ning performed by God as to his part, as to the ministration of pardon; the seed of the woman was set up against the dragon as soon as ever the tempter had won his first battle : and though God laid his hand, and drew a veil of types and secrecy before the manifestation of his mercies ; yet he did the work of redemption, and ^aved us by the covenant of faith, and the righteousness of believing, and the mercies of repentance, the graces of pardon, and the blood of the slain Lamb, even from the fall of Adam to this very day, and will do till Christ's second coming.
VOL. VI. p
210 THE MIRACLES O P^ THE DIVINE MERCY.
Adam fell by liis folly, and did not perform the covenant of one little work, a work of a single abstinence ; but he was restored by faith in tlie seed of the woman. And of this righteousness Noah was a preacher : and " by faith Enoch was translated," and by faith a remnant was saved at the flood : and to '' Abrahuui this was imputed for righteousness/' and to all the patriarchs, and to all the righteous judges, and holy prophets, and saints of the Old Testament, even while they were obliged (so far as the words of their covenant were expressed) to the law of works : their pardon was sealed and kept within the veil, within the curtains of the sanctuary; and they saw it not tlien, but they feel it ever since. And this was a great excellency of the Divine mercy unto them. God had mercy on all mankind before Christ's manifestation, even beyond the mercies of their covenant ; and they were saved as we are, by * the seed of the woman,' by * God incarnate,' by * the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world :' not by works, for we all failed of them ; that is, not by an exact obedience, but by faith working by love ; by sincere, hearty endeavours, and believing God, and relying upon his infinite mercy, revealed in part, and now fully manifest by the great instrument and means of that mercy, Jesus Christ. So that here is pardon, before we asked it; pardon before Christ's coming, pardon before redemption, and pardon before we sinned. What greater readiness to forgive us can be ima- gined? Yes, there is one degree more yet, and that will prevent a mistake in this.
5. For God so pardoned us once, that we should need no more pardon : he pardons us " by turning every one of us away from our iniquities." That is the purpose of Christ; that he might safely pardcn us before we sinned, and we might not sin upon the confidence of pardon. He pardoned us not only upon condition we would sin no more, but he took away our sin, cured our cursed inclinations, instructed our understanding, rectified our will, fortified us against tempta- tion ; and now every man whom he pardons, he also sanctifies ; and he is born of God ; and he must not, will not, cannot sin, so long as the seed of God remains with him, so long as his pardon continues. This is the consummation of pardon. For if God had so pardoned us, as only to take away our evils which are past, we should have needed a second Saviour, and
THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 211
a Redeemer for every month, and new pardons perpetually. But our blessed Redeemer hath taken away our sin, not only the guilt of our old, but our inclinations to new sins : he makes us like himself, and commands us to live so, that we shall not need a second pardon, that is, a second state of pardon : for we are but once baptized into Christ's death, and that death was but one, and our redemption but one, and our covenant the same ; and as long as we continue within the covenant, we are still within the power and comprehen- sions of the first pardon.
6. And yet there is a necessity of having one degree of pardon more beyond all this. For although v.'e do not abjure our covenant, and renounce Christ, and extinguish the Spirit ; yet we lesist him, and we grieve him, and we go off from the holiness of the covenant, and return again, and very often step aside, and need this great pardon to be perpetually applied and renewed : and to this purpose, that we may not have a possible need without a certain remedy, the holy *' Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith" and pardon, sits in heaven in a perpetual advocation for us, that this pardon, once wrought, may be for ever applied to every emergent need, and every tumour of pride, and every broken heart, and every disturbed conscience, and upon every true and sincere return of a hearty repentance. And now upon this title no more degrees can be added : it is already greater, and was before all our needs, than the old covenant, and beyond the revelations, and did in Adam's youth antedate the Gospel, turning the public miseries by secret grace into eternal glories. But now upon other circumstances it is remarkable and excellent, and swells like an hydropic cloud when it is fed with the breath of the morning tide, till it fills the bosom of heaven, and descends in dews and gentle showers, to water and refresh the earth,
7. God is so ready to forgive, that himself works our dis- positions towards it, and either must, in some degree, pardon us before we are capable of pardon, by his grace making way for his mercy, or else we can never hope for pardon. For unless God, by his preventing grace, should first work the first part of our pardon, even without any dispositions of our own to receive it, we could not desire a pardon, nor hope for it, nor work towards it, nor ask it, nor receive it. This giving
212 THK MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY.
of preventinsj <:;rnce is \\ mercy of forgiveness contrary to that severity, by which some desjierate persons are given over to a reprobate sense ; that is, a leaving of men to tliemselves, so that they cannot pray eftectually, nor desire hohly, nor repent truly, nor receive any of those mercies which God designed so ])lenteously, and the Son of God purchased so dearly for us. When God sends a plague of war upon a land, in all the accounts of religion and expectations of reason the way to obtain our peace is, to leave our sins for which the war was sent upon us, as the messenger of wrath: and without this, we are like to perish in the judgment. But then consider what a sad condition we are in : war mends but few, but spoils multitudes ; it legitimates rapine, and authorizes mur- der ; and these crimes must be ministered to by th-»lr lesser relatives, by covetousness, and anger, and pride, and revenge, and heats of blood, and wilder liberty, and all the evil that can be supposed to come from, or run to, such cursed causes of mischief. But then if the punishment increases the sin, by what instrument can the punishment be removed? How shall we be pardoned and eased, when our remedies are converted into causes of the sickness, and our antidotes are poison ? Here there is a plain necessity of God's preventing grace ; and if there be but a necessity of it, that is enough to ascertain us we shall have it : but unless God should begin to pardon us first, for nothing, and against our own dispo- sitions, we see there is no help in us, nor for us. If we be not smitten, we are undone ; if we are smitten, we perish : and, as young Demarchus said of his love, when he was made master of his wish, " Salvus sum, quia pereo ; si non peream, plane inteream;" we may say of some of God's judgments, " We perish when we are safe, because our sins are not smitten ; and if they be, then we are worse undone :" because we grow worse for being miserable ; but we can be relieved only by a free mercy. For pardon is the way to pardon : and when God gives us our penny, then we can work for another ; and a gift is the way to a grace, and all that we can do towards it, is but to take it in God's method. And this must needs be a great forwardness of forgiveness, when God's mercy gives the pardon, and the way to find it, and the hand to receive it, and the eye to search it, and the heart to desire it; being busy and effective as Elijah's fire.
THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 213
which, intending to convert the sacrifice into its own more
spiritual nature of flames and purified substances, stood in
the neighbourhood of the fuel, and called forth its enemies,
and licked up the hindering moisture, and the water of the
trenches, and made the altar send forth a fantastic smoke
before the sacrifice was enkindled. So is the preventing
grace of God : it does all the work of our souls, and makes
its own way, and invites itself, and prepares its own lodging,
and makes its own entertainment; it gives us precepts, and
makes us able to keep them ; it enables our faculties, and
excites our desires ; it provokes us to pray, and sanctifies our
heart in prayer, and makes our prayer go forth to act, and
the act does make the desire valid, and the desire does make
the act certain and persevering : and both of them are the
works of God. For more is received into the soul from
without the soul, than does proceed from within the soul : it
is more for the soul to be moved and disposed, than to work
when that is done ; as the passage from death to life is
greater than from life to action, especially since the action is
owing to that cause that put in the first principle of life.
These are the great degrees of God's forwardness and readiness to forgive, for the expression of which no language is sufficient, but God's own words describing mercy in all those dimensions, which can signify to us its greatness and infinity. His mercy ' is great,' his mercies * are many,' his mercy ' reacheth unto the heavens,' it ' fills heaven and earth,' it is * above all his works,' it * endureth for ever.' ' God pitieth us as a father doth his children ;' nay, he is * our Father,' and the same also is ' the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;' so that mercy and we have the same relation : and well it may be so, for we live and die together ; for as to man only God shows the mercy of forgiveness, so if God takes away his mercy, man shall be no more ; no more capable of felicity, or of any thing that is perfective of his condition or his person. But as God preserves man by his mercy, so his mercy hath all its operations upon man, and returns to its own centre, and incircumscription, and infinity, unless it issues forth upon us. And, therefore, besides the former great lines of the mercy of forgiveness, there is another chain, which but to produce, and tell its links, is to open a cabinet of jewels, where every stone is as bright as a
214 TllL MIllACLLS OT THE DIVINE MERCV.
star, and every star is great as the bun, ami shines for ever, unless we shut our eyes, or draw the veil of obstinate and final sins.
1. God is lonjx-sufTerinnr, that is, long before he be angry; and yet God is provoked every day, by the obstinacy of the Jews, and the folly of the heathens, and the rudeness and infidelity of the Mahometans, and the negligence and vices of Christians : and he that can behold no impurity, is received in all places with perfumes of mushrooms, and gar- ments spotted with the flesh, and stained souls, and the actions and issues of misbelief, and an evil conscience, and with accursed sins that he hates, upon pretence of religion which he loves ; and he is made a party against himself by our voluntary mistakes ; and men continue ten years, and twenty, and thirty, and fifty, in a course of sinning, and they grow old with the vices of their youth ; and yet God forbears to kill them, and to consign them over to an eternity of horrid pains, still expecting they should repent and be saved,
2. Besides this long-sufterance and forbearing with an unwearied patience, God also excuses a sinner oftentimes, and takes a little thing for an excuse, so far as to move him to intermedial favours first, and from thence to a final pardon. He passes by the sins of our youth with a huge easiness to pardon, if he be entreated and reconciled by the effective repentance of a vigorous manhood. He takes ignorance for an excuse ; and in every degree of its being inevitable or innocent in its proper cause, it is also inculpable and inno- cent in its proper effects, though in their own natures crimi- nal. " But I found mercy of the Lord, because I did it in ignorance," saith St. Paul. He pities our infirmities, and strikes off much of the account upon that stock : the violence of a temptation and restlessness of its motion, the perpe- tuity of its solicitation, the weariness of a man's spirit, the state of sickness, the necessity of secular affairs, the public customs of a people, have all of them a power of pleading and prevailing towards some degrees of pardon and diminu- tion before the throne of God.
3. When God perceives himself forced to strike, yet then he takes off his hand, and repents him of the evil : it is as if it were against him, that any of his creatures should fall under the strokes of an exterminating fury.
THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 215
4. When he is forced to proceed, he yet makes an end before he hath half done : and is as glad of a pretence to pardon us, or to strike less, as if he himself had the deliver- ance, and not we. When Ahab had but humbled himself at the word of the Lord, God was glad of it, and went with the message to the prophet himself, saying, " Seest thou not how Ahab humbles himself ?" What was the event of it? " I will not bring the evil in his days ;" but in his son's days the evil shall come upon his house,
5. God forgets our sin, and puts it out of his remem- brance ; that is, he makes it as though it had never been, he makes penitence to be as pure as innocence to all the effects of pardon and glory : the memory of the sins shall not be upon record, to be used to any after-act of disadvantage, and never shall return, unless we force them out of their secret places by ingratitude and a new state of sinning.
6. God sometimes gives pardon beyond all his revelations and declared will, and provides suppletories of repentances, even then when he cuts a man off from the time of repent- ance, accepting a temporal death instead of an eternal ; that although the Divine anger might interrupt the growing of the fruits, yet in some cases, and to some persons, the death and the very cutting off shall go no farther, but be instead of explicit and long repentances. Thus it happened to Uzzah, who was smitten for his zeal, and died in severity for preva- ricating the letter, by earnestness of spirit to serve the whole religion. Thus it was also in the case of the Corinthians, that died a temporal death for their indecent circumstances in receiving the holy sacrament : St. Paul, who used it for an argument to threaten them into reverence, went no farther, nor pressed the argument to a sadder issue, than to die temporally.
But these suppletories are but seldom, and they are also great troubles, and ever without comfort, and dispensed irre- gularly, and that not in the case of habitual sins, that we know of, or very great sins, but in single actions, or instances of a less malignity; and they are not to be relied upon, be- cause there is no rule concerning them : but when they do happen, they magnify the infiniteness of God's mercy, which is commensurate to all our needs, and is not to be circum- scribed by the limits of his own revelations.
21G THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY.
7. God pardons the greatest sinners, and hath left them upon record : and there is no instance in the Scripture ol" the Divine forgiveness, but in such instances, the misery of wliich was a fit instrument to speak ahnid the olories of God's mercies, and g;entleness, and readiness to forgive. Such were St. Paid, a persecutor, — and St. Peter, tliat forswore his Master, — Mary Magdalene, with seven devils, — the thief upon the cross, — Manasses, an idolater, — David, a murderer and adulterer, — the Corinthian, for incest,^ — the cliildren of Israel, for ten times rebelling against the Lord in the wilderness, with murmuring, and infidelity, and rebellion, and schism, and a gulden calf, and open disobedience : and above all, 1 shall instance in the Pharisees among the Jews, who had sinned against the Holy Ghost, as our blessed Saviour inti- mates, and tells the particular, viz. in saying that the Spirit of God, by which Christ did work, was an evil spirit; and afterward they crucified Christ; so that two of the persons of the most holy Trinity were openly and solemnly defied, and God had sent out a decree that they should be cut off": yet forty years' time,after all this, was left for their repentance, and they were called upon by arguments more persuasive and more excellent in that forty years, than all the nation had heard from their prophets, even from Samuel to Zacha- rias. And Jonah thought he had reason on his side to refuse to go to threaten Nineveh ; he knew God's tenderness in destroying his creatures, and that he should be thought to be but a false prophet ; and so it came to pass according to his belief. " Jonah prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray thee. Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country ? Therefore I fled ; for I knew thou wert a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil^." He told beforehand what the event would be, and he had reason to know it ; God proclaimed it in a cloud before the face of all Israel, and made it to be his name : " Miserator et misericors Deus :" " The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious •>," &,c.
You see the largeness of this treasure ; but we can see no end, for we have not yet looked upon the rare arts of conver- sion; nor that God leaves the natural habit of virtues, even
» Jouab, iv. 2. '' Exod. xxxiv. 6.
THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 217
after the acceptation is interrupted ; nor his working extra- regular miracles, besides the sufficiency of Moses, and the prophets, and the New Testament ; and thousands more, which we cannot consider now.
But this we can : when God sent an angel to pour plagues upon the earth, there were in their hands * phialas rureae,' * golden phials :' for the death of men is precious and costly, and it is an expense that God delights not in : but they were phials, that is, such vessels as out of them no great evil could come at once ; but it comes out with difficulty, sobbing and troubled as it passes forth ; it comes through a narrow neck, and the parts of it crowd at the port to get forth, and are stifled by each other's neighbourhood, and all strive to get out, but few can pass ; as if God did nothing but threaten, and draw his judgments to the mouth of the phial with a full body, and there made it stop itself.
The result of this consideration is, that as we fear the Divine judgments, so we adore and love his goodness, and let the golden chains of the Divine mercy tie us to a noble prosecution of our duty and the interest of religion. For he is the worst of men whom kindness cannot soften, nor endearment oblige, whom gratitude cannot tie faster than the bands of life and death. He is an ill-natured sinner, if he will not comply with the sweetnesses of heaven, and be civil to his angel-guardian, or observant of his patron God, who made him, and feeds him, and keeps all his faculties, and takes care of him, and endures his follies, and waits on him more tenderly than a nurse, more diligently than a client, who hath greater care of him than his father, and whose bowels yearn over him with more compassion than a mother ; who is bountiful beyond our need, and merciful beyond our hopes, and makes capacities in us to receive more. Fear is stronger than death, and love is more prevalent than fear, and kindness is the greatest endearment of love ; and yet to an ingenuous person, gratitude is greater than all these, and obliges to a solemn duty, when love fails, and fear is dull and inactive, and death itself is despised. But the man who is hardened against kindness, and whose duty is not made ahve with gratitude, must be used like a slave, and driven like an ox, and enticed with goads and whips ; but must
218 THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY.
never enter into the iiilu-ritance of sons.' Let us tuke heed; for mercy is hkc a rainbow, which God set in the clouds to remember mankind : it shines hero as long as it is not hindered ; but we must never look for it after it is night, and it shines not in the other work). If we refuse mercy here, we shall have justice to eternity.
AEKAS EMBOAIMAIOS,
A SUPPLEMENT
TO THE
ENIATT02,
OR,
COURSE OF SERMONS FOR THE WHOLE YEAR :
BEING
TEN SERMONS,
EXPLAINING
THE NATURE OF FAITH AND OBEDIENCE, IN RELATION TO GOD, AND THE ECCLESIASTICAL AND SECULAR POWERS, RESPECTIVELY.
TO THE
MOST NOBLE AND VIRTUOUS PRINCESS,
THE
LADY DUTCHESS OF ORMOND,
HER GRACE.
MADAM, I PRESENT your Grace herewith a testimony of my obedience, and of your own zeal for the good of souls. You were, in your great charity, not only pleased to pardon the weakness of this discourse *, but to hope it might serve as a memorial to those that need it, of the great necessity of living virtu- ously, and by the measures of Christianity. Madam, you are too great and too good to have any ambition for the things of this world ; but I cannot but ob- serve, that in your designs for the other world, you, by your charity and zeal, adopt yourself into the portion of those ecclesiastics, who humbly hope, and truly labour, for the reward that is promised to those wise persons who convert souls, if our prayers and your desires that every one should be profited in their eternal concerns, cast in a symbol towards this great work, and will give you a title to that
* This and the two following Discourses were preached at Christ Church, Dublin, and respectively entitled, " The Righteous- ness Evangelical Described:" — "The Christian's Conquest over the Body of Sin :" — " Fides Formata ; or, Faith working by Love."
CCXXll THE EPISTLE DEDlCATOllY.
great reward : but, Madam, when I received your commands for dispersing some copies of this sermon, I perceived it was too little to be presented to your Eminence ; and if it were accompanied with some- thing else of the like nature, it might, with more profit, advance that end which your Grace so piously designed ; and, therefore, I have taken this opportunity to satisfy the desire of some very honourable and very reverend personages, who re- quired that the two following sermons should also be made fit for the use of those, who hoped to receive profit by them. I humbly lay them all at your Grace s feet, begging of God, that even as many may receive advantages by the perusing of them, as either your Grace will desire, or he that preached them did intend. And if your Grace will accept of this first testimony of my concurrence with all the world that know you, in paying those great regards, which your piety so highly merits, I will endeavour hereafter, in some greater instance, to pursue the intentions of your zeal of souls, and, by such a service, endeavour to do more benefit to others, and by it, as by that which is most acceptable to your Grace, endear the obedience and services of, MADAM,
Your Grace's most humble
And obedient Servant,
JER. DOWN.
THE
RIGHTEOUSNESS EVANGELICAL
DESCRIBED.
SERMON I.
For I say unto you, that except your righteoustiesa exceed the righteousness of the Sci^ibes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. — Matt. v. 20.
JtvEWARDs and punishments are the best sanction of laws; and although the guardians of laws strike sometimes with the softest part of the hand in their executions of sad sen- tences, yet in the sanction they make no abatements, but so proportion the duty to the reward, and the punishment to the crime, that by these we can best tell what value the lawgiver puts upon the obedience. Joshua put a great rate upon the taking of Kiriath-Sepher, when the reward of the service was his daughter and a dower. But when the young men ventured to fetch David the waters of Bethlehem, they had nothing but the praise of their boldness, because their service was no more than the satisfaction of a curiosity. But as lawgivers, by their rewards, declare the value of the obedience, so do subjects also, by the grandeur of what they expect, set a value on the law and the lawgiver, and do their services accordingly.
And, therefore, the law of Moses, whose endearment was nothing but temporal goods and transient evils, *' could never make the comers thereunto perfect;" but the B'^eia-aycoyii H^£iTTovog eXTTi^og, " the superinduction of a better hope,^" hath endeared a more perfect obedience. When Christ brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel, and hath
* Heb. vii. 19.
224 HIGHTEOUSKF.SS EVA NO K MCA L DESCRIBED.
promised to us things p;reater than all our exj)licit desires, bigorer than thr thouj^lits of our heart, then iyyt^oixiv tw 0e&>, saith the apostle, " then we draw near to God ;" and by these we are enabled to do all that God requires, and then he requires all that we can do ; more love and more obedience than he did of those who, — for want of these helps, and these revelations, and these promises, which we have, but they had not, — were but imperfect persons, and could do but little more than human services. Christ hath taught us more, and given us more, and promised to us more, than ever was in the world known or believed before him ; and by the strengths and confidence of these, thrusts us foi^ard in a holy and wise economy ; and plainly declares, that we must serve him by the measures of a new love, do him honour by wise and material glorifications, be united to God by a new nature, and made alive by a new birth, and fulfil all righteousness ; to be humble and meek as Christ, to be merciful as our heavenly Father is, to be pure as God is pure, to be partakers of the Divine nature, to be wholly renewed in the frame and temper of our mind, to become people of a new heart, a direct new creation, new principles, and a new being, to do better than all the world before us ever did, to love God more perfectly, to despise the world more generously, to contend for the faith more earnestly ; for all this is but a proper and a just consequent of the great promises, which our blessed Lawgiver came to publish and effect for all the world of believers and disciples.
The matter which is here required, is certainly very great; for it is to be more righteous than the Scribes and Pharisees ; more holy than the doctors of the law, than the leaders of the synagogue, than the wise princes of the sanhedrim ; more righteous than some that were prophets and high priests, than some that kept the ordinances of the law without blame; men that lay in sackcloth, and fasted much, and prayed more, and made religion and the study of the law the work of their lives : this was very much ; but Christians must do more.
Nunc te marniorenm pro tempore fecimus ; at tu. Si fcEtura gregein suppleverit, aureus esto.
They did well, and we must do better ; their houses were marble, but our roofs must be gilded and fuller of glory.
RIGHTEOUSNESS EVANGELICAL DESCRIBED. 225
But as the matter is very great, so the necessity of it is the greatest in the world. It must be so, or it will be much worse : unless it be thus, we shall never see the glorious face of God. Here it concerns us to be wise and fearful ; for the matter is not a question of an oaken garland, or a circle of bays, and a yellow riband : it is not a question of money or land ; nor of the vainer rewards of popular noises, and the undiscerning suffrages of the people, who are contingent judges of good and evil : but it is the great stake of hfe eternal. We cannot be Christians, unless we be righteous by the new measures : the righteousness of the kingdom is now the only way to enter into it ; for the sentence is fixed, and the judgment is decretory, and the Judge infallible, and the decree irreversible : " For I say unto you," said Christ, " unless your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in nowise enter into the kingdom of heaven."
Here, then, we have two things to consider. 1. What was the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees. 2. How far that is to be exceeded by the righteousness of Christians.
1. Concerning the first. I will not be so nice in the observation of these words, as to take notice that Christ does not name the Sadducees, but the Scribes and Pharisees, though there may be something in it : the Sadducees were called ' Caraim,' from tg/'a, * to read ;' for they thought it religion to spend one third part of their day in reading their Scriptures, whose fulness they so admired, they would admit of no suppletory traditions : but the Pharisees were called 'Thanaim,' that is, ^Burs^oorai, they added to the word of God words of their own, as the church of Rome does at this day ; they and these fell into an equal fate ; while they • taught for doctrines the commandments of men,' they pre- varicated the righteousness of God : what the church of Rome, to evil purposes, hath done in this particular, may be demonstrated in due time and place ; but what false and corrupt glosses, under the specious title of the tradition of their fathers, the Pharisees had introduced, our blessed Saviour reproves, and are now to be represented as the avriTtapxI^EiyiJia, that you may see that righteousness, beyond which all they must go, tliat intend that heaven should be their journey's end.
VOL. VI. Q
220 RIGHTKOUSNESS EV ANG F. LI C A 1. DESCRIBED.
1. The Pharisees obeyed the commaiuhiieiits in the letter, not in tlie spirit : they ininded \vhat God spake, but not what he intended : they were busy in the outward work of the hand, but incurious of the affections and choice of the heart. T/xiTg Travra cra^KiKui; vevomarE, said Justin Martyr to Tryplion the Jew, ' Ye understand all things carnally ;' that is, they rested h TO^aafxaTi Eua-e^slag, as Nazianzen calls it, * in the outward work of piety,' which not only Justin Martyr but St. Paul calls * carnality,' not meaning a carnal appetite, but a carnal service''. Their error was plainly this: they never distinguished duties natural from duties relative; that is, whether it were commanded for itself, or in order to some- thing that was better ; whether it were a principal grace, or an instrumental action : so God was served in the letter, they did not much inquire into his purpose : and, therefore, they were curious to wash their hands, but cared not to purify their hearts ; they would give alms, but hate him that received it; they would go to the temple, but did not revere the glory of God that dwelt there between the cherubims ; they would fast, but not mortify their lusts ; they would say good prayers, but not labour for the grace they prayed for. This was just as if a man should run on his master's errand, and do no business when he came there. They might easily have thought, that by the soul only a man approaches to God, and draws the body after it; but that no washing or corporal services could unite them and the shechinah together, no such thing could make them like to God, who is the Prince of Spirits. They did as the dunces in Pythagoras's school, who, — when their master had said " Fabis abstineto," by which he intended * they should not ambitiously seek for magistracy,' — they thought themselves good Pythagoreans if they * did not eat beans ;' and they would be sure to put their right foot first into the shoe, and their left foot into the water, and supposed they had done enough ; though if they had not been fools, they would have understood their master's meaning to have been, that they should put more affections to labour and travel, and less to their pleasure and recreation ; and so it was with the Pharisee : for as the Chaldees taught their morality by mystic words, and the
^ Gal. iii. 3. and vi. 12, 13. Phil. iii. 31.
RIGHTEOUSNESS EVANGELICAL DESCRIBED. 227
Egyptians by hieroglyphics, and the Greeks by fables; so did God by rites and ceremonies external, leading them by the hand to the purities of the heart, and by the services of the body to the obedience of the spirit; which because they would not understand, they thought they had done enough in the observation of the letter.
2. In moral duties, where God expressed himself more plainly, they made no commentary of kindness, but regarded the prohibition so nakedly, and divested of all antecedents, consequents, similitudes, and proportions, that if they stood clear of that hated name which was set down in Moses' tables, they gave themselves liberty, in many instances, of the same kindred and alliance. If they abstained from murder, they thought it very well, though they made no scruple of murdering their brother's fame ; they would not cut his throat, but they would call him fool, or invent Hes in secret, and pviblish his disgrace openly ; they would not dash out his brains, but they would be extremely and unreasonably angry with him : they would not steal their brother's money, but they would oppress him in crafty and cruel bargains. The commandment forbade them to commit adultery; but because fornication was not named, they made no scruple of that ; and being commanded to honour their father and their mother, they would give them good words and fair observances ; but because it was not named that they should maintain them in their need, they thought they did well enough to pretend ' corban,' and let their father starve.
3. The Scribes and Pharisees placed their righteousness in negatives : they would not commit what was forbidden, but they cared but little for the included positive, and the omis- sions of good actions did not much trouble them; they would not hurt their brother in a forbidden instance, but neither would they do him good according to the intention of the commandment. It was a great innocence if they did not rob the poor, — then they were righteous men ; but they thought themselves not much concerned to acquire that godlike excellency, a philanthropy and love to all mankind. Who- soever blasphemed God was to be put to death ; but he that did not glorify God as he ought, they were unconcerned for him, and let him alone. He that spake against Moses, was to die without mercy ; but against the ambitious and the
228 RIGHTEOUSNESS EVANGELICAL DESCRIBED.
covetous, against the proud man and the unmerciful, they
made no provisions.
Viitiis est viliiim fitgeic, ct sapicntia prima Stultiti^ cariiiiise''.
They aecounted themselves good, not fordoing good, but for doing no evil ; that was the sum of their theology.
4. They had one thing more as had as all this : they broke Moses' tables ii\to pieces, and, gathering up the fragments, took to themselves what part of duty they pleased, and let the rest alone ; for it was a proverb amongst the Jews, " Qui operam dat pr-decepto, liber est a ])rcCcepto;" that is, *ifhe chooses one positive commandment for his business, he may be less careful in any of the rest.' Indeed, they said also, "Qui multiplicat legem, multiplicat vitaim;" "He that mul- tiplies the law, increases life ;" that is, if he did attend to more goed things, it was so much the better, but the other was well enough ; but as for universal obedience, that was not the measure of their righteousness ; for they taught that God would put our good works and bad into the balance, and ac- cording to the heavier scale, give a portion in the world to come ; so that some evil they would allow to themselves and their disciples, always provided it was less than the good they did. They would devour widows' houses, and make it up by long prayers ; they would love their nation, and hate their prince ; offer sacrifice, and curse Caesar in their heart ; advance Judaism, and destroy humanity.
Lastly : St. Austin summed up the difference between the Pharisaical and evangelical righteousness in two words ; " Brevis differentia inter legem et evangelium ; timor et amor." They served the God of their fathers * in the spirit of fear,' and we worship the Father of our Lord Jesus * in the spirit of love,' and by the spirit of adoption. And as this slavish principle of theirs was the cause of all their former imperfections, so it finally and chiefly expressed itself in these two particulars: — L They would do all that they thought they lawfully could do. 2. They would do nothing but what was expressly commanded.
This was the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, and their disciples, the Jews ''; which, because our blessed
e Hor. Ep. i. 1. 41.
^ Scd Beelzebulis callida commenta Cliri&tiis destiuit.
RIGHTEOUSNESS EVANGELICAL DESCRIBED. 229
Saviour reproves, not only as imperfect then, but-as criminal now, calling us on to a new righteousness, the righteousness of God, to the law of the Spirit of life, to the kingdom of God, and the proper righteousness thereof, — it concerns us in the next place to look after the measures of this, ever remem- bering that it is infinitely necessary that we should do so ; and men do not generally know, or not consider, what it is to be a Christian ; they understand not what the Christian law forbiddeth or commandeth. But as for this in my text, it is, indeed, our great measure ; but it is not a question of good and better, but of good and evil, lite and death, salvation and damnation ; for unless our righteousness be weighed by new weights, we shall be found too light, when God comes to weigh the actions of all the world : and unless we be more righteous than they, we " shall in nowise," that is, upon no other terms in the world, " enter into the kingdom of heaven." Now concerning this, we shall do very much amiss, if we take our measures by the manners and practices of the many who call themselves Christians ; for there are, as Nazianzen expresses it, the ol tote kcc) vSv ^apiaam, ' the old and the new Pharisees.' I wish it were no worse amongst us ; and that all Christians were indeed righteous as they were ; " est aliquid prodire tenus ;" it would not be just nothing. But I am sure that to bid defiance to the laws of Christ, to laugh at religion, to make a merriment at the debauchery and damnation of our brother, is a state of evil worse than that of the Scribes and Pharisees ; and yet, even among such men, how impatient would they be, and how unreasonable would they think you to be, if you should tell them, that there are no present hopes or possibility, that, in this state they are in, they can be saved !
Omnes videmur nobis esse beliiili
Et festivi saperdae, ciiin sinius a-av^ol^.
But the world is too full of Christians, whose righteousness
is very little, and their iniquities very great; and now-a-days,
a Christian is a man that comes to church on Sundays, and
on the week following will do shameful things ;
Passim corvos sequitur, testaque lutoqne Securus quo pes feiat, atque ex tempore vivit ;
being, according to the Jewish proverbial reproof, as so many
« Varr. ap. Non. c. ii. u. 823.
230 RIGHTEOUSNESS EVANGELICAL DESCRIBED.
Mcphiboslietlis : " discipuli sapientum, qui incessu piulefa- ciunt priEceptorem suuni ;" * their master teaches them to go uprifflitly, but tliey still show tlit ir lame leg, and sliame their master;' as if a man might be a Christian, and yet be the vilest person in the world, doing such things ior which the laws of nuMi have provided smart and shame, and the laws of God have threatened the intolerable pains of an insufterable and never-ending damnation. Example here cannot be our rule, miless men were much better ; and, as long as men live at the rate they do, it will be to little purpose to talk of ex- ceeding the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees ; but because it must be much better with us all, or it will be very much worse with us at the latter end, I shall leave complaining, and go to the rule, and describe the necessary and unavoid- able measures of the righteousness evangelical, without which we can never be saved.
1. Therefore, when it is said our " righteousness must exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees," let us first take notice, by way of precognition, that it must at least be so much ; we must keep the letter of the whole moral law ; we must do all that lies before us, all that is in our hand : and therefore c^yia^sadai, which signifies ' to be religious,' the grammarians derive aTro roS xsr^af o§E7EaSat, ' from reaching forth the hand :' the outward work must be done ; and it is not enough to say, * My heart is right, but my hand went aside.' Prudentius saith, that St. Peter wept so bitterly, be- cause he did not confess Christ openly, whom he loved secretly.
Flevit negator deniqne
Ex ore piolapsum iiefas.
Cum mens maneret innocens,
Aniniusque serv&rit fidem. v
A right heart alone will not do it; or rather, the heart is not right, when the hand is wrong. " If a man strikes his neighbour, and says. Am not I in jest? it is folly and shame to him," said Solomon. For, once for all, let us remember this, that Christianity is the most profitable, the most useful, and the most bountiful institution in the whole world ; and the best definition I can give of it is this : — It is the wisdom of God brought down among us, to do good to men, and therefore we must not do less than the Pharisees, who did the outward work ; at least, let us be sure to do all the work
RIGHTEOUSNESS EVANGELICAL DESCRIBED. 231
that is laid before us in the commandments. And it is strang-e that this should be needful to be pressed amongst Christians, whose religion requires so very much more. But so it is, upon a pretence that we must serve God with the mind, some are such' fools as to think that it is enough to have a good meaning. " Iniquum perpol verbum est, ' bene vult,' nisi qui bene facit." And because we must serve God in the spirit, therefore they will not serve God with their bodies ; and because they are called upon to have the power and the life of godliness, they abominate all external works as mere forms ; and because the true fast is to ab- stain from sin, therefore they will not abstain from meat and drink, even when they are commanded ; which is just as if a Pharisee, being taught the circumcision of the heart, should refuse to circumcise his flesh ; and as if a Christian, being instructed in the excellencies of spiritual communion, should wholly neglect the sacramental ; that is, because the soul is the life of man, therefore it is fitting to die in a humour, and lay aside the body. This is a taking away the subject of the question ; for our inquiry is, — how we should keep the commandments ? how we are to do the work that lies before us, by what principles, with what intention, in what degrees, after what manner, ' ut bonum bene fiat,' ' that the good thing be done well.' This, therefore, must be presupposed ; we must take care that even our bodies bear a part in our spiritual services. Our voice and tongue, our hands and our feet, and our very bowels must be servants of God, and do the work of the commandments. , This being ever supposed, our question is, how much more we must do ? and the first measure is this, — whatsoever can be signified and ministered to by the body, the heart and the spirit of a man must be the principal actor. We must not give alms without a charitable soul, nor suffer martyrdom, but in love and in obedience ; and when we say our prayers, we do but mispend our time, unless our mind ascend up to God upon the wings of desire.
Desire is the life of prayer ; and if you indeed desire what you pray for, you will also labour for what you desire ; and if you find it otherwise Vv'ith yourselves, your coming to church is but like the Pharisees going up to the temple to pray. If your heart be not present, neither will God j and
232 UIC'.HTEOUSNKSS EVANGELICAL DESCRIBED.
then there is a sound of men and women between a pair of dead walls, from whence, because neither God nor your souls are present, you must needs f2;ohome without a blessin<:;.
Jjut this measure ot" evan<;ehciil rii^hteousness is oi" prin- cipal remark in all the rites and solenuiities of religion ; and intends to say this, that Christian religion is something that is not seen, it is the hidden man of the heart; iari Ti;@sog ev^ov, * it is God that dwells within ;' and true Christians are men, who, as the Chaldee oracle said, are ttoXuv kcrcrafjLzvoi vouv, * clothed with a great deal of mind.' And, therefore, those words of the proj)het lloseji, *' Et loquar ad cor ejus," " 1 will speak unto his heart," is a proverbial expression, sig- nifying to speak spiritual comforts, and, in the mystical sense, signifies EuayyBXi^Biv, * to preach the Gospel :' where the Spirit is the preacher, and the heart is the disciple, and the sermon is of righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Our service to God must not be in outward works and scenes of religion, it must be something by which we become like to God ; the Divine prerogative must extend beyond the out- ward man, nay, even beyond the mortification of corporal vices ; the Spirit of God must go * in trabis crassitudinem,' and mollify all our secret pride, and ingenerate in us a true humility, and a Christian meekness of spirit, and a Divine charity. For in the Gospel, when God enjoins any external rite or ceremony, the outward work is always the less prin- cipal. For there is a bodily and a carnal part, an outside, and a cabinet of religion in Christianity itself. When we are baptized, the purpose of God is, that we cleanse ourselves from all pollution of the flesh and spirit, and then we are, indeed, Ka9apo) oxoi, ' clean all over.' And when we communi- cate, the commandment means that we should be made one spirit with Christ, and should live on him, beheving his word, praying for his Spirit, supported with his hope, refreshed by his promises, recreated by his comforts, and wholly, and in all things, conformable to his hfe ; that is the true communion. The sacraments are not made for sinners, until they do repent ; they are the food of our souls, but our souls must be ahve unto God, or else they cannot eat. It is good to ' confess our sins,' as St. James says, and to open our wounds to the ministers of refigion ; but they absolve none but such as are truly penitent.
RIGHTEOUSNESS EVANGEI.TCAL DESCRIBED. 233
Solemn prayers, and the sacraments, and the assemblies of the faithful, and fasting days, and acts of external worship, are the solemnities and rites of religion; but the religion of a Christian is in the heart and spirit. And this is that by which Clemens Alexandrinus defined the righteousness of a Christian, Ainaioa-uvyj crufA.cpccvta tuv t^jj ^ux^i (x.s^S>v' ' all the parts and faculties that make up a man, must make up our religion :' but the heart is * domus principalis,' it is * the court' of the great King; and he is properly served with interior graces and moral virtues, with a humble and a good mind, with a bountiful heart, and a willing soul, and these will command the eye, and give laws to the hand, and make the shoulders stoop ; but " anima cuj usque est quisque ;" " a man's soul is the man," and so is his religion; and so you are bound to understand it.
True it is, God works in us his graces by the sacrament; but we must dispose ourselves to a reception of the Divine blessing by moral instruments. The soul is auvt^yoi tw ©ew, ' it must Vvork together with God ;' and the body works to- gether v/ith the soul : but no external action can purify the soul, because, its nature and operations being spiritual, it can no more be changed by a ceremony or an external solemnity, than an angel can be caressed with sweetmeats, or a man's belly can be filled with music or long orations. The sum is this : no Christian does his duty to God but he that serves him with all his heart : and although it becomes us to fulfd all righteousness, even the external also ; yet that which makes us gracious in his eyes, is not the external, it is the love of the heart and the real change of the mind and obedience of the spirit ; that is the first great measure of the righteousness evangelical.
2. The righteousness evangelical must exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees by extension of our obedience to things of the same signification : " Leges non ex verbis, sed ex mente intelligendas," says the law ^ There must be a commentary of kindness in the understanding the laws of Christ. We must understand all God's meaning; we must secure his service, we must be far removed from the dangers of his displeasure. And, therefore, our righteousness must be the
I f Dc Le"il)us 1. scire.
234 uiGiiTEOuexnss evaxcj^mcal described.
purification and the perfection of the spirit. So that it will be nothing for us not to commit adultery, unless our eyes and hands be chaste, and the desires be clean. A Christian must not look upon a woman to lust after her. He must hate sin in all dimensions, and in all distances, and in every angle of its reception. A Christian must not sin, and he must not be willing to sin if he durst. He must not be lustful, and there- fore he must not feed high, nor drink deep, for these make provisions for lust : and, amongst Christians, great eatings and drinkings are acts of uncleanness as well as of intemper- ance, and whatever ministers to sin, and is the way of it; it partakes of its nature and its curse.
For it is remarkable that in good and evil the case is greatly different. Mortification (e. g.) is a duty of Christian- ity ; but there is no law concerning the instruments of it. We are not connnanded to roll ourselves on thorns, as St. Benedict did ; or to burn our flesh, like St. Martinian ; or to tumble in snows, with St. Francis ; or in pools of water, with St. Bernard. A man may chew aloes, or lie upon the ground, or wear sackcloth, if he have a mind to it, and if he finds it good in his circumstances and to his purposes of mortification ; but, it may be, he may do it alone by the instrumentalities of fear and love ; and so the thing be done, no special instrument is under a command. But although the instruments of virtue are free, vet the instruments and ministries of vice are not. Not only the sin is forbidden, but all the ways that lead to it. The instruments of virtue are of themselves indifferent, that is, not naturally, but good only for their relation's sake, and in order to their end. But the instruments of vice are of them- selves vicious ; they are part of the sin, they have a share in the fantastic pleasure, and they begin to estrange a man's heart from God, and are directly in the prohibition. For we are commanded to fly from temptation, to pray against it, ' to abstain from all appearances of evil,' ' to make a covenant with our eyes,' 'to pluck them out' if there be need. And if Chris- tians do not understand the commandments to this extension of signification, they will be innocent only by the measures of human laws, but not by the righteousness of God.
3. Of the same consideration it is also that w^e understand Christ's commandments to extend our duty, not only to what is named, and what is not named of the same nature and
RIGHTEOUSNESS EVANGELICAL DESCRIBED. 235
design ; but that we abstain from all such things as are Uke to sins. Of this nature tiiere are many. All violences of passion, irregularities in gaming, prodigality of our time, indecency of action, doing things unworthy of our birth or our profession, aptness to go to law ; ' ambitus,' or a fierce prosecution even of honourable employments ; misconstruc- tion of the words and actions of our brother; easiness to believe evil of others, willingness to report the evil which we hear; curiosity of diet, peevishness toward servants, indiscreet and importune standing for place, and all excess in ornaments ; for even this little instance is directly prohibited by the Christian and royal law of charity. For ayaTr^? ou m^Trs^^vsTxi, saith St. Paul ; the word is a word hard to be understood ; we render it well enough, '' charity vaunteth not itself;" and upon this St. Basil says, that an ecclesiastic person (and so every Christian in his proportion) ought not to go in splendid and vain ornaments ; liav yap h /xh Jia %f fi'av, axxa ^ta KaXKuTricriMov Troc^othaiJi.Qa.vBrai, vrzp'Trspua^ l'%£i «^T>?70f('ai/* '' Every thing that is not wisely useful or proportioned to the state of the Christian, but ministers only to vanity, is apart of this'37£f77-HffwecrSi2:i,"itis a * vaunting,' which the charity and the grace of a Christian does not well endure. These things are like to sins; they are of a suspicious nature, and not easily to be reconciled to the righteousness evangelical. It is no wonder if Christianity be nice and curious ; it is the cleanness and the purification of the soul, and Christ intends to present his church to God a(T7[i\ov Hoii aixaixY\rov, " without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing." N.B. or any such thing. If there be any irregularity that is less than a wrinkle, the evangelical righteousness does not allow it. These are such things which if men will stand to defend, possibly a modest reprover may be more ashamed than an impudent offender. If I see a person apt to quarrel, to take every thing in an ill sense, to resent an error deeply, to reprove it bitterly, to remember it tenaciously, to repeat it frequently, to upbraid it unhandsomely, [ think I have great reason to say, that this person does not do what becomes the sweetness of a Christian spirit. If it be replied, It is no where forbidden to chide an offending person, and that it cannot be a fault to understand when a thing is said or done amiss ; I cannot return an answer, but by saying, that suppose nothing of it were a sin, yet that every thing of it is so like a sin, that
2W UIOIITEOUSNESS EV A \G K 1.1 C A F, DESCRIBED.
it is the worse for it ; and that it were better not to do so ; at least 1 think so, and so ought you too. ifyou be curious of your eternal interest: a little more tenderness here would do well. I cannot say that this dress, or this garment, or this standing for place, is the direct sin of pride ; but 1 am sure it looks like it in some persons ; at least the letting it alone is much better, and is very like humility. And certain it is, that he is dull of hearing who understands not the voice of God, unless it be clamorous in an express and a loud commandment, proclaimed with trumpets and clarions upon Mount Sinai ; but a willing and an obedient ear understands the still voice of Christ, and is ready to obey his meaning at half a word ; and that is the ri^rhteousness evangelical. It not only abstains from sins named, and sins implied, but from the beginnings and instru- ments of sin; and from whatsoever is like it. The Jews were so great haters of swine upon pretensions of the Mosaic rites, that they would not so much as name a swine, but called it nn« *in daber acher, another thing. And thus the Romans, in their auguries, used * alterum ' for * non bonum.' The simile of this St. Paul translates to a Christian duty : " Let not fornication be so much as named amongst you, ug tt^ettov iv ro7g aytoig, as is comely amongst Christians;" that is, come not near a foul thing ; speak not of it, let it be wholly banished from all your conversation ; for this niceness and curiosity of duty * becometh saints,' and is an instance of the righteousness evangelical.
I have now done with the first sort of measures of the Christian righteousness ; these which are the matter of our negative duty ; these are the measures of our caution and our first innocence. But there are greater things behind, which although I must crowd up into a narrow room, yet I must not wholly omit them : therefore,
4. The fourth thing I shall note to you is, that whereas the righteousness of the Pharisees was but a fragment of the broken tables of Moses ; the pursuance of some one grace, ' lacinia sanctitatis/ ' a piece of the robe of righteousness ;' the riohteousness evanoelical must be like Christ's seamless coat, all of a piece from the top to the bottom ; it must invest the whole soul : Misma, Dumah, Massah, said the proverb of the Rabbins ; it is this, and it is the other, and it must be all, it must be an universal righteousness ; not a little knot of holy
RIGHTEOUSNESS EVANGELICAL DESCRIBED. 237
actions scattered in our lives, and drawn into a sum at the day of judgment, but it must be a state of holiness. It was said of the Paphlagonian pigeons, d'lTrMv o^acrOai tyiv Ka^^lavy ' every one of them had two hearts ;' but that in our mystical theology signifies a wicked man. So said Solomon, " The perverse or wicked man (derachaim) he is a man of two ways ;" arnf ^i^'UXog, so St. James expresses an unbeliever; a man that will and will not; something he does for God, and something for the world ; he hath two minds, and in a good fit: in his well days he is full of repentance, and overflov>'S in piety ; but the paroxysm will return in the day of temptation, and then he is gone infallibly. But know this, that in the righteousness evangelical, one duty cannot be exchanged for another, and three virtues will not make amends for one remaining vice. He that oppresses the poor, cannot make amends by giving good counsel ; and if a priest be simonaical, he cannot be esteemed righteous before God by preaching well, and taking care of his charge. To be zealous for God and for religion is good, but that will not legitimate cruelty to our brother. It is not enough for a man to be a good citizen, unless he be also a good man ; but some men build their houses with half a dozen cross sticks, and turf is the foundation, and straw is the covering, and they think they dwell securely; their religion is made up of two or three virtues, and they think to commute with God, some good for some bad, 5^o^^a //.s/j-iy/j-eva, ttot^xo. ^s ala-x^oc as if one deadly wound were not enough to destroy the most healthful con- stitution in the world. Deceive not yourselves. It is all one on which hand we fall :
Uniini operantur
Et calor et frigns, sic hoc, sic illnd admit ; Sic tenebiae visum, sic sol contrariiis aufert.
The moon may burn us by night as well as the sun by day : and a man may be made blind by the light of the sun as well as by the darkness of the evening, and any one great mischief is enough to destroy one man. Some men are very meek and gentle naturally, and that they serve God withal ; they pursue the virtue of their nature : that is, they tie a stone at the bottom of the well, and that is more than needs ; the stone
8 Prov. xxviii. 14.
23S UIGHTEOUSNESS EVANGELICAL DESCRIBED.
will stay there without that trouble ; and tiiis good inclination will of itself easily proceed to issue; and, therefore, our care and caution should be more carefully employed in mortification of our natures, and acquist of such virtues to which we are more refractory, and then cherish the other too, even as much as we please : but, at the same time, we are busy in this, it may be, we are secret adulterers, and that will spoil our con- fidences in the goodness of the other instance : others are greatly bountiful to the poor, and love all mankind, and hurt nobody but themselves ; but it is a thousand pities to see such loving good-natured persons to perish infinitely by one crime, and to see such excellent good things thrown away to please an uncontrolled and a stubborn lust ; but so do some escape out of a pit, and are taken in a trap at their going forth ; and stepping aside to avoid the hoar-frost, fall into a valley full of snow. The righteousness evangelical is another kind of thing : it is a holy conversation, a god-like life, an universal, obedience, a keeping nothing back from God, a sanctification of the whole man, and keeps not the body only, but the soul and the spirit, unblamable to the coming of the Lord Jesus.
5. And lastly : the Pharisaical righteousness was the product of fear, and, therefore, what they must needs do, that they would do ; but no more ; but the righteousness evangelical is produced by love, it is managed by choice, and cherished by delight and fair experiences. Christians are a willing- people ; ' homines bona voluntatis,' ' men of good will ;' * arbores Domini :' so they are mystically represented in Scripture ; " the trees of the Lord are full of sap :" among the Hebrews the trees of the Lord did signify such trees as grew of themselves; and all that are of God's planting, are such as have a vital principle within, and grow without con- straint. TLelOovTai To7i u^ia-/jCBvoig vof^otg, Kca Toig l^loig ^loTg vincHcn Toi/g vofxoug, one said it of Christians : " They obey the laws, and by the goodness of their lives exceed the laws :" and certain it is, no man hath the righteousness evangelical, if he resolves always to take all his liberty in every thing that is merely lawful ; or if he purpose to do no more than he must needs, that is, no more than he is just commanded. For the reasons are plain.
1. The Christian that resolves to do every thing that is
RIGHTEOUSNESS EVANGELICAL DESCRIBED. 239
lawful, will many times run into clanger and inconvenience ; because the utmost extremity of lawful is so near to that which is unlawful, that he will often pass into unlawful undiscernibly. Virtues and vices have not, in all their instances, a great landmark set between them, like warlike nations separate by prodigious walls, vast seas, and portentous hills ; but they are oftentimes like the bounds of a parish ; men are fain to cut a cross upon the turf, and make little marks and annual perambulations for memorials : so it is in lawful and unlawful, by a little mistake a man may be greatly ruined. He that drinks till his tongue is full as a sponge, and his speech a little stammering and tripping, hasty and disor- derly, though he be not gone as far as drunkenness, yet he is gone beyond the severity of a Christian; and when he is just past into unlawful, if he disputes too curiously, he will certainly deceive himself for want of a wiser curiosity.
But 2. He that will do all that he thinks he may lawfully, had need have an infallible guide always by him, who should, without error, be able to answer all cases of conscience, which will happen every day in a life so careless and insecure ; for if he should be mistaken, his error is his crime, and not his excuse. A man in this case had need be very sure of his proposition ; . which because he cannot be, in charity to him- self, he will quickly find that he is bound to abstain from all things that are uncertainly good, and from all disputable evils, from things which, although they may be in themselves law- ful, yet, accidentally, and that from a thousand causes, may become unlawful. " Pavidus quippe et formidolosus est Christianus," saith Salvian, " atque in tantum peccare me- tuens, ut interdum et non timenda formidet :" " A Christian is afraid of every little thing; and he sometimes greatly fears that he hath sinned, even then when he hath no other reason to be afraid, but because he would not do so for all the world."
3. He that resolves to use all his liberty, cannot be innocent, so long as there are in the world so many bold temptations, and presumptuous actions, so many scandals, and so much ignorance in the things of God, so many things that are suspicious, and so many things that are of evil report; so many ill customs and disguises in the world, with which if we resolve to comply in all that is supposed lawful, a man may be in the regions of death, before he perceive his head to ache ;
240 RIGHTEOUSNESS EVANGELICAL DESCRIBED.
and, instead of a staff in his hand, may have a spUnter in his elbow,
4. Besides all this ; he that thus stands on his terms with God, and so carefully husbands his duty, and tliinks to make so jjcood a market of obedience, that he will (piit nothing which he thinks he may lawfully keep, shall never be exem- plar in his life, and shall never grow in grace, and therefore shall never enter into glory. He, therefore, that will be righteous by the measures evangelical, must consider not only what is lawful, but what is expedient ; not only what is barely safe, but what is worthy ; that which may secure, and that which may do advantage to that concern that is the greatest in the world.
And 2. The case is very like with them that resolve to do no more good than is commanded them. For 1. It is in- finitely unprofitable as to our eternal interest, because no man does do all that is commanded at all times; and, therefore, he that will not sometimes do more, besides that he hath no love, no zeal of duty, no holy fires in his soul ; besides this, I say, he can never make any amends towards the reparation of his conscience. " Let him that stole, steal no more;" that is well ; but that is not well enough ; for he must, if he can, make restitution of what he stole, or he shall never be par- doned ; and so it is in all our intercourse with God. To do what is commanded is the duty of the present ; we are tied to this in every present, in every period of our lives; but, therefore, if we never do any more than just the present duty^ who shall supply the deficiencies, and till up the gaps, and redeem what is past ? This is a material consideration in the righteousness evangelical.
But then, 2. We must know that in keeping of God's com- mandments, every degree of internal duty is under the com- mandments ; and, therefore, whatever we do, we must do it as well as we can. Now, he that does his duty with the biggest affection he can, will also do all that he can ; and he can never know that he hath done what is commanded, unless he does all that is in his power. For God hath put no limit but love and possibility ; and therefore whoever says. Hither will I go, and no further ; this I will do, and no more ; thus much will I serve God, but that shall be all ; he hath the affections of a slave, and the religion of a Pharisee, the craft
RIGHTEOUSNESS EVANGELICAL DESCRIBED. 241
of a merchant, and the falseness of a broker ; but he hath not the proper measures of the righteousness evangelical. But so it happens in the mud and slime of the river Borborus, when the eye of the sun hath long dwelt upon it, and pro- duces frogs and mice which begin to move a little under a thin cover of its own parental matter, and if they can get loose to live half a life, that is all ; but the hinder parts, which are not formed before the setting of the sun, stick fast in their beds of mud, and the little moiety of a creature dies before it could be well said to live : so it is with those Christians, who will do all that they think lawful, and will do no more than what they suppose necessary ; they do but peep into the light of the sun of righteousness ; they have the beginnings of life ; but their hinder parts, their passions and aflPections, and the desires of the lower man, are still unformed ; and he that dwells in this state, is just so much of a Christian, as a sponge is of a plant, and a mushroom of a shrub : they may be as sensible as an oyster, and discourse at the rate of a child, but are greatly short of the righteousness evangelical.
I have now done with those parts of the Christian righte- ousness, which were not only an u;r£fo%jj or * excess,' but an avriaroix^lua-ig to the pharisaical : but because I ought not to conceal any thing from you that must integrate our duty, and secure our title to the kingdom of heaven ; there is this to be added, that this precept of our blessed Saviour is to be ex- tended to the direct degrees of our duty. We must do more duties, and we must do them better. And in this, although we can have no positive measures, because they are poten- tially infinite, yet therefore we ought to take the best, because we are sure the greatest is not too big ; and we are not sure that God will accept a worse, when we can do a better. Now although this is to be understood of the internal affection only, because that must never be abated, but God is at all times to be loved and served with all our heart; yet concern- ing the degrees of external duty, as prayers, and alms, and the like, we are certainly tied to a greater excellency in the degree, than was that of the Scribes and Pharisees. I am obliged to speak one word for the determination of this in- quiry, viz. to how much more of external duty Christians are obhged, than was in the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees. In order to this, briefly thus.
VOL. VI. R
242 RIGIITF.OI SNFSS fVANC; FIICAL I) KSC K I lU. D.
I remember tliatSalviaii, speakin<ij of old men summing up their repentances, and making amends for the sins of their whole life, exhorts them to alms and works of piety; but inquiring how mucli they should do towards the redeeming of their souls, answers with a little sarcasm, but plainly enough to give a wise man an answer : " A man," says he, " is not bound to give away all his goods, unless, peradventure, he owes all to God ; but, in that case, I cannot tell what to say ; for then the case is altered. A man is not bound to part with all his estate ; that is, unless his sins be greater than his estate ; but if they be, then he may consider of it again, and consider better. And he need not part with it all, unless pardon be more precious to him than his money, and unless heaven be worth it all, and unless he knows justly how much less will do it. If he does, let him try his skill, and pay just so much and no more than he owes to God : but if he does not know, let him be sure to do enough." His meaning is this : not that a man is bound to give all he hath, and leave his children beggars ; he is bound from that by another obli- gation. But as when we are tied to pray continually, the meaning is, we should consecrate all our time by taking good portions out of all our time for that duty ; the devoutest per- son being like the waters of Siloam ^, a perpetual spring, but not a perpetual current ; that is always in readiness, but actu- ally thrusting forth his waters at certain periods every day. So out of all our estate we must take for religion and repent- ance such portions, as the whole estate can allow ; so much as will consecrate the rest ; so much as is fit to bring when we pray for a great pardon, and deprecate a mighty anger, and turn aside an intolerable fear, and will purchase an excellent peace, and will reconcile a sinner. Now in this case a Christian is to take his measures according to the rate of his contrition and his love, his religion and his fear, his danger and his expectation, and let him measure his amends wisely ; his sorrow pouring in, and his fear thrusting it down, and it were very well, if his love also would make it run over. For, deceive not yourselves, there is no other mea- sure but this ; so much good as a man does, or so much as he would do, if he could, — so much of religion, and so much of
•> S. Hier. in Comment. Isai. viii. Isidor. lib. xiii. Orig. cap. 13.
RIGHTEOUSNESS EVANGELICAL DESCRIBED. 243
repentance he hath, and no more : and a man cannot ordi- narily know that he is in a savable condition, but by the testimony which a divine philanthropy and a good mind always gives, which is to omit no opportunity of doing good in our several proportions and possibihties.
There was an alms which the Scribes and Pharisees were obliged by the law to give, the tenth of every third year's increase"; this they always paid, and this sort of alms is called ^ixccio(Tuvn, 'righteousness' or 'justice;' but the alms which Christians ought to give, is %af<?, and it is aya'^n, it is ' grace,' and it is ' love,' and it is abundance ; and so the old rabbins told : " Justitia proprie dicitur in iis quae jure facimus ; benignitas in iis quae prseter jus." It is more than righteous- ness, it is bounty and benignity, for that is the Christian mea- sure. And so it is in the other parts and instances of the righteousness evangelical. And, therefore, it is remarkable that the saints in the Old Testament were called suQsTg, ' right men ;' and the book of Genesis, as we find it twice attested by St. Jerome, was called by the ancient Hellenists, ^i^>.og eudsuv, ' the book of right or just men,' the book of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob'. But the word for Christians is %fno-ro<, * good' men, harmless, and profitable ; men that are good, and men that do good. In pursuance of which it is further observed by learned men, that the word a^sTri, or ' virtue,' is not in the four gospels ; for the actions of Christ's disciples should not be in ' gradu virtutis' only, virtuous and laudable ; such as these Aristotle presses in his ' Magna Moralia;' they must pass on to a further excellency than so : the same which he calls Tr^a^sii tcov ri^um, they must be sometimes, and as often as we can, in ' gradu heroico ;' or, that I may use the Christian style, they must be ' actions of perfection.' ' Righteousness' was the crvvcovv/j.ov for ' alms' in the Old Testament, — and teAe/o- Tnf,or ' perfection,' was the word for ' alms' in the New ; as ap- pears by comparhig the fifth of St. Matthew and the sixth of St. Luke together ; and that is the full state of this difference in the inquiries of the righteousness pharisaical and evange- lical.
I have many more things to say, but ye cannot hear them
' Coinment. in Isai. xH. and lib. vi. in Ezek. xviii.
244 UHUITEOUSNKSS EVANOELICAI, DESCRIBED.
now, because the time is past. One thing indeed were fit to be spoken of, if I liad any time left ; but I can only name it, and desire your consideration to make it up. This great rule that Christ gives us, does also, and that principally too, concern churches and commonwealths, as well as every single Christian. Christian parliaments must exceed the religion and government of the sanhedrim. Your laws must be more holy, the condition of the subjects be made more tolerable, the laws of Christ must be strictly enforced ; you must not suffer your great Master to be dishonoured, nor his religion dismembered by sects, or disgraced by impiety: you must give no impunity to vicious persons, and you must take care that no great example be greatly corrupted ; you must make better provisions for your poor than they did, and take more care even of the external advantages of Christ's religion and his ministers, than they did of the priests and Levites ; that is, in all things you must be more zealous to promote the kingdom of Christ, than they were for the ministries of Moses. The sum of all is this : the righteousness evangelical is the same with that, which the ancients called aTroaroMKriv haysiv TToXiTtiav, * to live an apostolical life ;' that was the measure of Christians ; the ol eva^sTug ica) Bea^Errmg ^loVvrsi, ' men that desired to please God ;' that is, as Apostolius most admirably describes it'', men who are curious of their very eyes, temperate in their tongue, of a mortified body, and an humble spirit, pure in their intentions, masters of their passions ; men who, when they are injured, return lionour- able words ; when they are lessened in their estates, increase in their charity ; when they are abused, they yet are cour- teous, and give entreaties ; when they are hated, they pay love ; men that are dull in contentions, and quick in loving- kindnesses, swift as the feet of Asahel', and ready as the chariots of Amminadib"". True Christians are such as are crucified with Christ, and dead unto all sin, and finally place their whole love on God, and, for his sake, upon all mankind :
* *Eo-Ti Je avrh o^Qa'KfxZv aK^iSlia, yXuiaa-rii; lyxjaTEia, a-JiifxaToq ioVKaywyia, <pMvnfJka -rawEivov, Iwotaj xaflafOT))?, opy>?j a.<pavnTfxO(;' ayya^ivofxivoi; Ttporldii, a'KOTTipovixiyoq fxr, Jixa^ou, fXicroiixi^i-jf; a.yk<rra,^ ffia^o/xivoi; avey(OV, B'KatT'^rifA.oviA.ivoq TrajaxaXfi, vixoiafloTj T? a/ota|Tict, (TVT'Ta.v^cLQnTi T'2 X^trTtS, oXriv Triv aya'TTiv fxtTabiq Itti tov Kv^iov. ' 2 Sam ii. 18. "' Song of Sol. vi. U'.
THE christian's CONQUEST, &C. 245
this is the description of a Christian, and the true state of the righteousness evangelical ; so that it was well said of Athe- nagoras, Oud'eii X^ia-rtavog ttovv^o^, £j i^h vwok^Ivstoii toi/ \oyov, " No Christian is a wicked man, unless his life be a continual lie "," unless he be false to God and his religion. For the righte- ousness of the Gospel is, in short, nothing else but a tran- script of the life of Christ : " De matthana nahaliel ; de nahaliel Bamoth," said R. Joshua ; Christ is the image of God, and every Christian is the image of Christ, whose ex- ample is imitable ; but it is the best, and his laws are the most perfect, but the most easy ; and the promises by which he invites our greater services, are most excellent, but most true; and the rewards shall be hereafter, but they shall abide for ever; and, that I may take notice of the last words of my text, the threatenings to them that fall short of this righte- ousness, are most terrible, but mast certainly shall come to pass ; " they shall never enter into the kingdom of heaven ;" that is, their portion shall be shame and an eternal prison, acripaXTwJ^Ej fsuf^a, ' a flood of brimstone,' and a cohabitation with devils to eternal ages ; and if this consideration will not prevail, there is no place left for persuasion, and there is no use -of reason, and th€ greatest hopes and the greatest fears can be no argument or sanction of laws; and the greatest good in the world is not considerable, and the greatest evil is not formidable : but if they be, there is no more to be said ; if you would have your portion with Christ, you must be righteous by his measures : and these are they that I have told you.
SERMON IL
THE christian's CONQUEST OVER THE BODY OF SIN.
For the good that I loould, I do not ; but the evil which I would nut, that I do. — Rom.vii. 19.
What the emiuch said to Philip, when he read the book of the prophet Isaiah, " Of whom speaketh the prophet this, of
" Li«gat. pro Christiunis,
246 THE christian's conquest
himself, or some other man?" the same question I am to ask concernin<^ the words of my text: Does St. Paul mean this of himself, or of some other? It is hoped that he speaks it of himself; and means, that though his understanding is convinced that he ought to serve God, and that he hath some imperfect desires to do so. yet the law of God without is oj)posed by a law of sin within. We have a corrupted nature, and a body of infirmity, and our reason dwells in the dark, and we must go out of the world before we leave our sin. For besides that some sins are esteemed brave and honourable, and he is a baffled person that dares not kill his brother like a gentleman ; our very tables are made a snare, and our civilities are direct treasons to the soul. You can- not entertain your friend, but excess is the measure ; and that you may be very kind to your guest, you step aside, and lay away the Christian ; your love cannot be expressed, unless you do him an ill turn, and civilly invite him to a fever. Justice is too often taught to bow to great interests, and men cannot live without flattery ; and there are some trades that minister to sin, so that without a sin we cannot maintain our families ; and if you mean to live, you must do as others do. Now so long as men see they are like to be undone by innocence, and that they can no way live but by compliance with the evil customs of the world, men conclude practically, because they must live, they must sin ; they must live handsomely, and, therefore, must do some things unhandsomely, and so upon the whole matter sin is unavoidable. Fain they would, but cannot tell how to help it. But since it is no better, it is well it is no worse. For it is St. Paul's case, no worse man : he would and he would not, he did and he did not ; he was willing, but he was not able ; and, therefore, the case is clear, that if a man strives against sin, and falls unwillingly, it shall not be imputed to him ; he may be a regenerate man for all that. A man must, indeed, wrangle against sin when it comes, and, like a peevish lover, resist and consent at the same time, and then all is well ; for this not only consists with, but is a sign of the state of regeneration.
If this be true, God will be very ill served. If it be not true, most men will have but small hopes of being saved, because this is the condition of most men. What then is to be done? Truth can do us no hurt; and, therefore, be wil- ling to let this matter pass under examination; for if it trouble
OVER THE BODY OF SIN. 247
US now, it will bring comfort hereafter. And, therefore, before I enter into the main inquiry, I shall, by describing the state of the man of whom St. Paul speaks here, tell you plainly, who it is that is in this state of sad things ; and then do ye make your resolutions, according as you shall find it necessary for the saving of your souls, which, I am sure, ought to be the end of all preaching.
1. The man St. Paul speaks of, is one that is ' dead %' one that was * deceived' and ' slain ^' one in whom ' sin vi^as ex- ceeding sinful":,' that is, highly imputed, greatly malicious, infinitely destructive : he is one who is ' carnal, and sold under sin'';' he is one that sins against his * conscience and his reason*";' he is one in whom ' sin dwells,' but the Spirit of God does not dwell; for ' no good thing dwells in him*";' he is one who is ' brought into captivity to the law of sin ;' he is a servant of uncleanness, with his * flesh and members serving the law of sinS.' Now if this be a state of regene- ration, I wonder what is, or can be, a state of reprobation ! for though this be the state of nature, yet it cannot be the state of one redeemed by the Spirit of Christ ; and, therefore, flatter not yourselves any more, that it is enough for you to have good desires and bad performances : never think that any sin can reign in you, and yet you be servants of God ; that sin can dwell in you, and at the same time the Spirit of God can dwell in you too; or that life and death can abide together. The sum of affairs is this : " If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die ; but if ye, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live ^ ;" but not else upon any terms whatsoever.
My text is one of the hard places of St. Paul, which, as St. Peter says, " the ignorant and the unstable wrest to their own damnation." But because in this case the danger is so imminent, and the deception would be so intolerable, St. Paul, immediately after this chapter, (in which, under his own person, as was usual with him to do, he describes the state of a natural man advanced no further than Moses' law, and not redeemed by the blood of Christ, or enlightened by the Spirit of God, and taught by the wiser lessons and
» Ver. 9. '• Ver. li. '' Ver. 13. ^ Ver. 14.
• Ver. 16. f Ver. 18. * Ver. 'ib. '' Koni. viii. 13.
248 THE christian's conquest
sermons of the Gospel) immediately spends the next chapter in opposing; the evansxelical state to the legal, the spiritual to the carnal, the Christian to the natural ; and tells us plainly, he that is redeemed by the blood of Christ, is redeemed from the power of sin : he that is Christ's freed-man, is not a slave of sin, not captive to the devil at his will: he that is in " the flesh, cannot please God," but every servant of Christ is freed from sin, and is a servant of righteousness, and redeemed from all his vain conversation : for this is the end of Christ's coming, and cannot be in vain, unless we make it so. He came to bless us by turning every one of us from our iniquities. Now concerning this, besides the evidence of the thing itself, that St. Paul does not speak these words of himself, but by a fXETa(Tx,yjfjuxTi<rfjiog, under his own borrowed person he describes the state of a carnal, unredeemed, unregenerate person, is expressly affirmed by St. Irenaeus and Origen, by TertuUian and St. Basil, by Theodoret and St. Chrysostom, by St. Jerome, and sometimes by St. Austin, by St. Ambrose, and St. Cyril, by Macarius and Theophylact ; and is indeed that true sense and meaning of these words of St. Paul, which words none can abuse or misunderstand, but to the great prejudice of a holy life, and the patronage of all iniquity.
But for the stating of this great case of conscience, I shall first in short describe to you what are the proper causes, which place men and keep them in this state of a necessity of sin- ning ; and 2. 1 shall prove the absolute necessity of coming out of this condition, and quitting all our sin. 3. In what degree this is to be effected. 4. By what instruments this is to be done ; and all these being practical, will, of themselves, be sufficient use to the doctrines, and need no other applicatory but a plain exhortation.
1. What are the causes of this evil, by which we are first placed, and so long kept, in a necessity of sinning, so that we cannot do what good we would, nor avoid the evil that we hate?
The first is the evil state of our nature. And, indeed, he that considers the daily experiment of his own weak nature, the ignorance and inconstancy of his soul, being hke a sick man's legs, or the knees of infants, reeling and unstable by disease or by infirmity, and the perpetual leaven and germina- tions, the thrustings forth and swelling of his senses, running out hke new wine into vapours and intoxicating activities,
OVER THE BODY OF SIN. 249
will readily confess, that though even in nature there may be many good inclinations to many instances of the Divine commandments ; yet it can go no further than this * velleity/ this desiring to do good, but is not able. And it is upon this account that Lactantius brings in the Pagan or natural man complaining, '' Volo equidem non peccare, sed vincor, indutus enim sum carne fragili et imbecilla." This is very true ; and 1 add only this caution : there is not in the corruption of our nature so much as will save us harmless, or make us excusable, if we sin against God. Natural corruption can make us criminal, but not innocent ; for though by him that willingly abides in the state of mere nature, sin cannot be avoided, yet no man is in that state longer than he loves to be so ; for the grace of God came to rescue us from this evil portion, and is always present, to give us a new nature, and create us over again : and, therefore, though sin is made necessary to the natural man by his impotency and fond loves, that is by his unregenerate nature ; yet, in the whole constitution of affairs, God hath more than made it up by his grace, if we will make use of it, " In pueris elucet spes plurimorum, quae dum emoritur setate, manifestum est, non naturam defecisse, sed curam," said Quintilian'. We cannot tell what we are, or what we think, in our infancy ^ and, when we can know our thoughts, we can easily observe that we have learned evil things by evil examples, and the corrupt manners of an evil conversation : " Et ubi per socordiam vires, tempus, ingenium defluxere, naturae infirmitas accusatur "^ ;" that, indeed, is too true : ' We grow lazy, and wanton, and we lose our time, and abuse our parts, and do ugly things, and lay the fault wholly upon our natural infirmities :' but we must remember, that, by this time, it is a state of nature, a state of flesh and blood, which cannot enter into heaven. The natural man and the natural child are not the same thing in true divinity. The natural child indeed can do no good ; but the natural man cannot choose but do evil ; but it is because he will do so ; he is not born in the second birth, and renewed in the baptism of the Spirit.
2. We have brought ourselves into an accidental necessity of sinning by the evil principles, which are sucke din by great
■ Gesner. i. 1, 2. i* Sail. J. c. i.
250 THE chuistian's conquest
parts of mankintl. We are taught ways ot going to heaven witliout forsaking our sins ; of repentance without restitution ; of being in charity without hearty forgiveness, and without love; of beheving our sins to be pardoned before they are mortified ; of trusting in Christ's death without conformity to liis hfe ; of being in God's favour upon the only account of being of such an opinion ; and that wiien we are once in, we can never be out. We are taught to believe that the events of things do not depend upon our crucifying our evil and corrupt atl'ections, but upon eternal and unalterable counsels ; that the promises are not the rewards of obedience, but graces pertaining only to a few predestinates, and yet men are saints for all that ; and that the laws of God are of the race of the giants, not to be observed by any grace or by any industry : this is the catechism of the ignorant and the profane : but, without all peradventure, the contrary proposi- tions are the way to make the world better: but certainly they that believe these things, do not believe it necessary that we should eschew all evil : and no wonder then, if when men upon these accounts slacken their industry and their care, they find sin still prevailing, still dwelling within them, and still unconquerable by so slight and disheartened labours. For 'l^idiTvs Trag Koi aTrat^eurog t^ottov Tivct Tralg e<xti' '' Every fool and every ignorant person is a child still :" and it is no wonder that he who talks foolishly, should do childishly and weakly. 3. To our weak and corrupted nature, and our foolish discourses, men do daily superinduce evil habits and customs of sinning. " Consuetudo mala tanquam hamus infixus animac," said the father ; " An evil custom is a hook in the soul," and draws it whither the devil pleases. When it comes to the Hap^ia, ysyvfxvaa-iMEvyt TrXEovE^iaig, as St. Peter's word is, " a heart I
exercised with covetous practices," then it is also a<rBEvyig, it is I
* weak ' and unable to do the good it fain would, or to avoid the evil, which, in a good fit, it pretends to hate. This is so known, I shall not insist upon it; but add this only, that wherever a habit is contracted, it is all one what the instance be ; it is as easy as delicious, as unalterable in virtue as in vice ; for what helps nature brings to a vicious habit, the same and much more the Spirit of God, by his power and by his comforts, can do in a virtuous ; and then we are well again. You see'by this who are, and why they are, in this evil con-
OVER THE BODY OF SIN. 251
dition. The evil natures, and the evil principles, and the evil manners of the world, these are the causes of our imperfect willings and weaker actings in the things of God ; and as long as men stay here, sin will be unavoidable. For even meat itself is loathsome to a sick stomach, and it is impossible for him'that is heart-sick, to eat the most wholesome diet; and yet he that shall say eating is impossible, will be best confuted by seeing all the healthful men in the world eat heartily every day.
2. But what then? Cannot sin be avoided? Cannot a Christian mortify the deeds of the body? Cannot Christ redeem us, and cleanse us from all our sins? Cannot the works of the devil be destroyed ? That is the next particular to be inquired of: Whether or no it be not necessary, and, therefore, very possible, for a servant of God to pass from this evil state of things, and not only hate evil, but avoid it also ?
" He that saith he hath not sinned, is a liar ;" but what then? Because a man hath sinned, it does not follow he must do so always. " Hast thou sinned ? do so no more," said the wise Bensirach; and so said Christ to the poor paralytic, " Go, and sin no more." — They were excellent words spoken by a holy prophet : " Let not the sinner say he hath not sinned ; for God shall burn coals of fire upon his head, that saith before the Lord God and his glory, I have not sinned." Well ! that case is confessed ; " All men have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." But is there no remedy for this? Must it always be so? and must sin for ever have the upper hand, and for ever baffle our resolutions, and all our fierce and earnest promises of amendment? God forbid. There was a time then to come, and, blessed be God, it hath been long come ; " Yet a little while,"saith that prophet, " and iniquity shall be taken out of the earth, and righteousness shall reign among you." For that is in the day of Christ's kingdom, the manifestation of the Gospel. When Christ reigns in our hearts by his Spirit, Dagon and the ark cannot stand together; we cannot serve Christ and Belial. And as in the state of nature no good thing dwells within us ; so when Christ rules in us, no evil thing can abide ; " For every plant that my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up," and cast away into the fires of consumption or purification. But how shall this come to pass, since we all find ourselves so
252 THF. chiustian's conquest
infinitely weak and foolish ? 1 shall tell you. " It is easier tor a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into tiie kingdom of heaven," saith Christ. It is impossible to nature ; it is impossible to them that are given to vanity ; it is impossible for them that delight in the evil snare : but Christ adds, " With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." What we cannot do for ourselves, God can do for us, and with us. What nature cannot do, the grace of God can. So that the thing may be done; not indeed by ourselves, but * gratia Dei mecum,' saith St. Paul ; God and man together can do it. But if it can be done any way that God has put into our powers, the con- sequent is this ; no man's good will shall be taken in exchange for the real and actual mortification of his sins. He that sins, and would fain not sin, but sin is present with him whether he will or no, let him take heed ; for the same is ' the law of sin,' and ' the law of death,' saith the apostle ; and that man's heart is not right with God. For it is impossible men should pray for deliverance, and not be heard ; that they should labour, and not be prosperous ; unless they pray amiss, and labour falsely. Let no man, therefore, please himself with talking of great things, with perpetual conversation in pious discourses, or with ineffective desires of serving God : he that does not practise as well as he talks, and do what he desires, and what he ought to do, confesses himself to sin greatly against his conscience ; and it is a prodigious folly to think that he is a good man, because though he does sin, yet it was against his mind to do so. A man's conscience can never condemn him, if that be his excuse, to say that his conscience checked him : and that will be but a sad apology at the day of judgment. Some men talk like angels, and pray with great fervour, and meditate with deep recesses, and speak to God with loving affections, and words of union, and adhore to him in silent devotion, and when they go abroad are as passionate as ever, peevish as a frighted fly, vexing themselves with their own reflections : they are cruel in their bargains, unmerciful to their tenants, and proud as a barbarian prince : they are, for all their fine words, impatient of reproof, scornful to their neighbours, lovers of money, supreme in their own thoughts, and submit to none ; all their spiritual life they talk of, is nothing but spiritual fancy and illusion ; they are still
OVER THE BODY OF SIN. 253
under the power of their passions, and their sin rules them imperiously, and carries them away infallibly. Let these men consider, there are some men think it impossible to do as much as they do : the common swearer cannot leave that vice, and talk well ; and these men that talk thus well, think they cannot do as well as they talk ; but both of them are equally under the power of their respective sins, and are equally deceived, and equally not the servants of God. This is true ; but it is equally as true, that there is no necessity for all this ; for it ought, and it maybe otherwise if we please : for, I pray, be pleased to hear St. Paul ; '* Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh ;" there is your remedy : *' For the Spirit lusteth against the flesh, and the flesh against the Spirit ;" there is the cause of it ; 'Iva. //.ri TroinTs, " so that ye may not, or cannot, do the things ye would ^;" that is the blessed consequent and product of that cause. That is plainly, — As there is a state of carnality, of which St. Paul speaks in my text, so that in that state a man cannot but obey the flesh, — so there is also a state of spirituality, when sin is dead, and righteousness is alive ; and, in this state, the flesh can no more prevail, than the Spirit could do in the other. — Some men cannot choose but sin ; " for the carnal mind is not subject to God, neither, indeed, can be°»/' saith St. Paul ; but there are, also, some men that cannot endure any thing that is not good. It is a great pain for a temperate man to suffer the disorders of drunkenness, and the shames of lust are intolerable to a chaste and modest person. This also is affirmed by St. John : " Whosoever is born of God, doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him"." So that, you see, it is possible for a good man not to commit the sin to which he is tempted. But the apostle says more : " He doth not commit sin, neither indeed can he, because he is born of God."
And this is agreeable to the words of our blessed Saviour : " A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit, and a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit";" that is, as the child of hell is carried to sin, ' pleno impetu,' he does not check at it, he does it, and is not troubled ; so, on the other side, a child of God is as fully convinced of righteousness, and that which is
' Gal. V. 16. " Rom. viii. 7. " Ijohn, iii. 9. « Matt. vii. 18.
254 THE christian's conquest
unrighteous is as hatt't'ul to him as colocynths to the taste, or the sharpest punctures to the pupil of the eye. We may see something of this in common experiences. What man of ordinary prudence and reputation can be tempted to steal ? or, for what price woidd he be tempted to murder his friend? If we did hate all sins as we hate tliese, would it not be as easy to be as innocent in other instances, as most men are in these ? and we should have as few drunkards as we have thieves. In such as these, we do not complain in the words of my text, "What I would not, that I do; and what I would, I do not." Does not every good man overcome all the power of great sins ? and can he, by the Spirit of God and right reason, by fear and hope, conquer Goliath, and beat the sons of the giant ; and can he not overcome the little children of Gath ? or is it harder to overcome a little sin than a great one? Are not the temptations to little sins very little ? and yet are they greater and stronger than a mighty grace ? Could the poor demoniac, that lived in the graves, by the power of the devil break his iron chains in pieces ? and cannot he, who hath the Spirit of God, dissolve the chains of sin ? "Through Christ that strengthens me, I can do all things," saith St. Paul ; " Satis sibi copiarum cum Publio Decio, et nunquam nimium hostium fore," said one in Livy ; which is best rendered by St. Paul — " If God be with us, who can be against us ?" Nay, there is an vTre^vixu/xsv in St. Paul, " We are more than con- querors.'"' For even amongst an army of conquerors there are degrees of exaltation ; some serve God like the centurion, and some like St. Peter ; some like Martha, and some like Mary ; fisr st/xoxlai aTrcia-rig, avev ttovuv koi i^^cotccv, all good men conquer their temptation, but some with more ease, and some with a clearer victory; and more than this, — " Non solijm viperam terimus, sed ex ea antidotum conficimus," " We kill the viper, and make treacle of him;" that is, not only escape from, but get advantages by, temptations. But we, commonly, are more afraid than hurt : " Let us, therefore, lay aside every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset usp :" so we read the words of the apostle; but St. Chrysostom's rendition of them is better ; for the word suTTE^Ia-raros is a perfect passive, and cannot signify the strength and irresistibility of sin upon
P Heb. xii. ].
OVER THE BODY OF SIN. 255
US, but quite the contrary, suTTEpia-raroi aixa^rla signifies ' the sin that is so easily avoided/ as they that understand that language know very v^^ell. And if we were so wise and valiant as not to affright ourselves with our own terrors, we should quickly find, that by the help of the Spirit of God, we can do more than we thouoht we could. It was said of Alexander, " Bene ausus est vana contemnere ^," he did no great matter in conquering the Persians, because they were a pitiful and a soft people ; only he understood them to be so, and was wise and bold enough not to fear such imag-es and men of clouts. But men, in the matter of great sins and little, do as the magicians of Egypt : when Moses turned his rod into a serpent, it moved them not ; but when they saw the lice and the flies, then they were afraid. We see, that, by the grace of God, we can escape great sins ; but we start at flies, and a bird out of a bush disorders us ; the lion in the way troubles us not, but a frog and a worm affrights us. Remember the saying of St. Paul, " Christ came to redeem to himself a church, and to present it, pure and spotless, before the throne of grace ;" and, if you mean to be of this number, you must endeavour to be under this qualification, that is, as Paul laboured to be, " void of offence, both towards God and to- wards man." And so I have done with the second propo- sition. It is necessary that all sin, great and little, should be mortified and dead in us, and that we no longer abide in that state of slavery, as to say, " The good that I would, I do not ; but the evil that 1 would not, that I do."
3. In the next place, we are to inquire in what degree this is to be effected ; for though in negatives, properly, there are no degrees, yet, unless there be some allays in this doctrine, it will not be so well, and it may be, your experiences will for ever confute my arguments ; for, ' Who can say that he is clean from his sin ?' said the wise man. And, as our blessed Saviour said, " He that is innocent among you all, let him throw the first stone at the sinner," and spare not.
To this I answer, in the words of St. Gregory, All man's righteousness will be found to be unrighteous, if God should severely enter into judgment ; but, therefore, even after our innocence we must pray for pardon, " ut quae succumbere discussa poterat, ex judicis pietate convalescat," 'that our
'1 Liv. ix. t7.
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innocence, which, in strictness of Divine judgment, would be found spotted and stained, by the mercy of our Saviour may be accepted/ St. Bernard expresses this well : " Nostra siqua est humilis justitia, recta forsitan, sednon pura ;" "Our humble ri<2,hteousness is, perhaps, right in the eyes of God, but not pure ;" that is, accepted by his mercy, but it is such as dares not contend in judgment. For as no man is so much a sinner, but he sometimes speaks a good word, or does some things not ill, and yet that little good interrupts not that state of evil ; so it is amongst very good men, from whom, some- times, may pass something that is not commendable ; and yet their heart is so habitually right towards God, that they will do nothing, I do not say which God, in justice, cannot, but which, in mercy, he will not, impute to eternal condemnation. It was the case of David ; " he was a man after God's own heart ;" nay, it is said, " he was blameless, save in the matter of Uriah ;" and yet we know he numbered the people, and God was angry with him, and punished him for it ; but, be- cause he was a good man, and served God heartily, that other fault of his was imputed to him no further. God set a fine upon his head for it ; but it was ' salvo contenemento,' * the main stake was safe.'
For concerning good men, the question is not, whether or no God could not, in the rigour of justice, blame their indis- cretion, or impute a foolish word, or chide them for a hasty answer, or a careless action, for a less devout prayer, or weak hands, for a fearful heart, or a trembling faith. These are not the measures by which God judges his children ; " for he knoweth whereof we are made, and he remembers that we are but dust." — But the question is, whether any man that is covetous or proud, false to his trust, or a drunkard, can, at the same time, be a child of God ? No, certainly he cannot. But then we know that God judges us by Jesus Christ, that is, with the allays of mercy, with an eye of pardon, with the sentences of a father, by the measures of a man, and by analogy, to all our unavoidable abatements. God could enter with us into a more severe judgment, but he would not ; and no justice tied him from exercising that mercy. But, accord- ing to the measures of the Gospel, *' he will judge every man according to his works." — Now what these measures are, is now the question. To which I answer, first, in general, and then more particularly.
OVER THE BODY OF SIN. 257
1. In general, thus: — A Christian's innocence is always to be measured by the plain lines and measures of the com- mandments ; but is not to be taken into account by uncertain and fond opinions, and the scruples of zealous and timorous persons. My meaning- is this : Some men tell us that every natural inclination to a forbidden object is a sin ; which they that believe, finding them to be natural, do also confess that such sins are unavoidable. But if these natural and first motions be sins, then a man sins whether he resists them, or resists them not, whether he prevails, or prevails not ; and there is no other difference but this,— he that fights not against, but always yields to his desires, sins greatest; and he that never yields, but fights always, sins oftenest. But then, by this reckoning, it will indeed be impossible to avoid millions of sins ; because the very doing of our duty does suppose a sin. If God should impute such first desires to us as sins, we were all very miserable ; but if he does not impute them, let us trouble ourselves no further about them, but to take care that they never prevail upon us. Thus men are taught, that they never say their prayers but they commit a sin. Indeed that is true but too often ; but yet it is possible for us, by the grace of God, to please him in saying our prayers, and to be accepted of him. But, indeed, if God did proceed against us as we do against one another, no man could abide innocent for so much as one hour. But God's judgment is otherwise ; he inquires if the heart be right, if our labour be true, if we love no sin, if we use prudent and efficacious instruments to mortify our sin, if we go about our religion as we go about the biggest concerns of our life, if we be sincere and real in our actions and intentions. For this is the ava/ji.a^Tii(Tla that God requires of us all ; this is that ' sinless state,' in which if God does not find us, we shall never see his glorious face ; and if he does find us, we shall certainly be saved by the blood of Jesus. For, in the style of Scripture, to be eixm^ivsTg Koi aw^oa-HO'Ttoi is the same thing ; " to be sin- cere, and to be without offence," is all one. Thus David spake heartily, " I am utterly purposed, that my mouth shall not offend ; and thou shalt find no wickedness in me." He that endeavours this, and hopes this, and does actions and uses means accordingly, not being deceived by his own false heart, nor abused by evil propositions, — this man will stand
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258 riii: chuisti ax's conquest
upriojht ill the congregations of the just; and, though he cannot challenge heaven by merit, yet he shall receive it as a gilt, by promise and by grace. '* Lex nos innocentes esse jubet, non curiosos," said Seneca. For God takes no judg- ment of us by any measures, but of the commandment without, and the heart and the conscience within ; but he never intended his laws to be a snare to us, or to entrap us with consequences and dark interpretations, by large deduc- tions and w itty similitudes of faults ; but he requires of us a sincere heart, and a hearty labour in the work of his com- mandments ; he calls upon us to avoid all that which his law plainly forbids, and which our consciences do condemn. This is the general measure. The particulars are briefly these : —
1. Every Christian is bound to arrive at that state, that he have remaining in him no habit of any sin whatsoever. * Our old man must be crucified,' — ' the body of sin must be destroyed,' — * he must no longer serve sin,' — * sin shall not have the dominion over you.' — All these are the apostleV words ; that is plainly, as I have already declared, you must not be at that pass, that though ye would avoid sin^ ye cannot. For he that is so, is a most perfect slave, and Christ's freed- man cannot be so. Nay, he that loves sin, and delights in it, hath no liberty indeed, but he hath more show of it^ than be that obeys it against his will.
Libertatis servaveris iimbrain,
Si quidquid jiibeaie velis. — Lucan.
He that loves to be in the place, is a less prisoner than he that is confined against his will.
2. He that commits any one sin by choice and deliberation, is an enemy to God, and is under the dominion of the flesh. In the case of deliberate sins, one act does give the denomi- nation ; he is an adulterer, that so much as once foully breaks the holy laws of marriage. " He that offends in one, is guilty of all," saith St. James. St. Peter's denial, and David's adultery, had passed on to a fatal issue, if the mercy of God, and a great repentance, had not interceded. But they did so no more, and so God restored them to grace and pardon. And in this sense are the words of St. John, 'O ttoluiv riw a/MxpTiav^ " lie that (Joes a sin, is of the devil," and " he that is born
OVEU THE BODY OF SIX. 259
of God," a/xapTiav ou ttoisT, " does not commit a sin " ;" he chooses none, he loves none, he endures none, " taha quae non faciet bonse fidei et spei Christianus ;" they do no great sin, and love no little one. A sin chosen and deliberately done, is, as TertuUian's expression is, " crimen devoratorium salutis ;" '*it devours salvation." For as there are some sins, vs^hich can be done but once, — as a man can kill his father but once, or himself but once, so in those things which can be repeated, a perfect choice is equivalent to a habit ; it is the same in principle, that a habit is in the product. In short, he is not a child of God, that, knowingly and deliberately, chooses any thing that God hates.
3. Every Christian ought to attain to such a state of life, as that he never sin, not only by a long deliheration, but also not by passion. I do not say that he is not a good Christian, who by passion is suddenly surprised, and falls into folly ; but this I say, that no passion ought to make him choose a sin. For, let the sin enter by anger or by desire, it is all one, if the consent be gained. It is an ill sign, if a man, though on the sudden, consents to a base action. Thus far every good man is tied, not only to endeavour, but to prevail against his sin.
4. There is one step more, which, if it be not actually effected, it must, at least, be greatly endeavoured, and the event be left to God ; and that is, that we strive for so great a dominion over our sins and lust, as that we be not surprised on a sudden. This, indeed, is a work of time, and it is well if it be ever done ; but it must always be endeavoured. But in this particular, even good men are sometimes unprosperous. St. Epiphanius and St. Chrysostom grew once into choler, and they passed too far, and lost more than their argument ; they lost their reason, and they lost their patience ; and Epiphanius wished that St. Chrysostom might not die a bishop ; and he, in a peevish exchange, wished that Epipha- nius might never return to his bishoprick : when they had forgotten their foohsh anger, God remembered it, and said ' Amen' to both their cursed speakings. Nay, there is yet a greater example of human frailty ; St. Paul and Barnabas were very holy persons ; but once, in a heat, they were both to blame ; they were peevish, and parted company. This was
' 1 John, iii. 8.
260 THE christian's conquest
not very much ; but God was so displeased, even for this little Hy in their box of ointment, that their story says, they never saw one another's lace again. These earnest emissions and transportations of" passion do sometime declare the weak- ness of good men ; but that, even here, we ought, at least, to en- deavour to be more than concjuerors, appears in this, — because God allows it not, and by punishing such follies, does manifest that lie intends that we should get victory over our sudden passions, as well as our natural lusts. And so I have done with the third inquiry, in what degree God expects our inno- cence ; and now I briefly come to the last particular, which will make all the rest practicable. I am now to tell you how all this can be eftected, and how we shall get free fron) the power and dominion of our sins.
4. The first great instrument is faith. He that hath faith like a grain of mustard-seed, can remove mountains ; the mountains of sin shall fall flat at the feet of the faithful man, and shall be removed into the sea, the sea of Christ's blood, and penitential waters. ' Faith overcometh the world,' saith St. John ; and ' walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh.' There are two of our enemies gone, — the world and the flesh, by faith and the Spirit, by the spirit of faith; and, as for the devil, put on the shield of faith, and ' resist the devil, and he will flee from you,' saith the apostle ; and the powers of sin seem insuperable to none, but to them that have not faith : we do not believe that God intends we should do what he seems to require of us ; or else we think, that though God's grace abounds, yet sin must superabound, expressly against the saying of St. Paul ; or else we think, that the evil spirit is stronger than the good Spirit of God. Hear what St. John saith : '^ My little children, ye are of God, and have overcome the evil one ; for the Spirit that is in you, is greater than that which is in the world'." Believest thou this? If you do, I shall tell you what may be the event of it. When the father of the boy possessed with the devil told his sad story to Christ, he said, Master, if thou canst do any thing, I pray help me. Christ answered him. If thou canst beheve, all things are possible to him that believeth'. N. B. And therefore, if you do believe this, go to your prayers, and go to your guards, and go to your labour, and
''John, iv. 4. « Mark, ix. 23.
OVER THE BODY OF SIN. 261
try what God will do for you. '^ For whatsoever things ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye shall receive them, and ye shall have them." Now consider ; Do not we every day pray, in the Divine hymn called * Te Deum,' " Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin?" And in the collect at morning prayer, — " and grant that this day we fall into no sin, neither run into any kind of danger ; but that all our doings may be ordered by thy governance, to do always that which is righteous in thy sight?" Have you any hope, or aay faith, when you say that prayer? And if you do your duty as you can, do you think the failure will be on God's part ? Fear not that, if you can trust in God, and do ac- cordingly ; " though your sins were as scarlet, yet they shall be as white as snow/' and pure as the feet of the holy Lamb. Only let us forsake all those weak propositions, which cut the nerves of faith, and make it impossible for us to actuate all our good desires, or to come out from the power of sin.
2. He that would be free from the slavery of sin, and the necessity of sinning, must always watch. Aye, that is the point ; but who can watch always ? Why every good man can watch always ; and, that we may not be deceived in this, let us know, that the running away from a temptation is a part of our watchfulness, and every good employment is another great part of it, and a laying in provisions of reason and reli- gion beforehand, is yet a third part of this watchfulness ; and the conversation of a Christian is a perpetual watchfulness ; not a continual thinking of that one, or those many things, which may endanger us ; but it is a continual doing something, directly or indirectly, against sin. He either prays to God for his Spirit, or relies upon the promises, or receives the sacrament, or goes to his bishop for counsel and a blessing, or to his priest for religious offices, or places himself at the feet of good men to hear their wise sayings, or calls for the church's prayers, or does the duty of his calhng, or actually resists temptation, or frequently renews his holy purposes, or fortifies himself by vows, or searches into his danger by a daily examination ; so that, in the whole, he is for ever upon his guards. This duty and caution of a Christian is like watching, lest a man cut his finger. Wise men do not often cut their fingers, yet every day they use a knife ; and a man's eye is a tender thing, and every thing can do it wrong, and
2G2 iiiK ciiins ri an's concjiest
every thing can put it out; yet, because we love our eyes so well, in the midst of so many dangers, by God's providence, and a prudent natural care, by winking when any thing comes against tiiem, and by turning aside when a blow is ofFered, they are preserved so certainly, that not one man in ten thousand does, by a stroke, lose one of his eyes in all his life- time. If we would transplant our natural care to a spiritual caution, we might, by God's grace, be kept from losing our souls, as we are from losing our eyes ; and, because a perpe- tual watchfulness is our great defence, and the perpetual presence of God's grace is our great security, and that this grace never leaves us, unless we leave it, and the precept of a daily watchfulness is a thing not only so reasonable, but so many easy ways to be performed, — we see upon what terms we may be quit of our sins, and more than conquerors over all the enemies and impediments of salvation.
3. If you would be in the state of the liberty of the sons of God, that is, that you may not be servants of sin in any instance, be sure, in the mortifications of sin, wiUingly or care- lessly to leave no remains of it, no nest-egg, no principles of it, no affections to it ; if any thing remains, it will prove to us as manna to the sons of Israel on the second day; it will breed worms, and stink. Therefore, labour against every part of it, reject every proposition that gives it countenance, pray to God against it all. And what then? Why then, "ask, and you shall have," said Christ. Nay, say some, it is true, you shall be heard, but in part only; for God will leave some remains of sin within us, lest we should become proud, by being innocent. So vainly do men argue against God's goodness, and their own blessings and salvation ; /wera wAf/ofoj Te;CV»)5 Koii TrapaaKEurii;, nai Tr^ay/xaTBiczg a.7io>>.mt(x\., as St. Basil says ; ' they contrive witty arts to undo themselves,' being entangled in the periods of ignorant disputations. But as to the thing itself, if, by the remains of sin, they mean the pro- pensities and natural inclinations to forbidden objects, there is no question but they will remain in us, so long as we bear oar flesh about us ; and, surely, that is a great argument to make us humble. But these are not the sins, which God charges on his people. But if, by remains, we mean any part of the habit of sin, any affection, any malice or perverseness of the will, then it is a contradiction to say that God leaves
OVER THE JiODY OF SIN. 263
in us such remains of sin, lest, by innocence, we become proud; for how should pride spring in a man's heart, if there be no remains of sin left? And is it not the best, the surest way, to cure the pride of our hearts, by taking out every root of bitterness, even the root of prid* itself? Will a physician purposely leave the relics of a disease, and pretend he does it to prevent a relapse ? And is it not more likely he will relapse, if the sickness be not wholly cured ? But besides this, if God leaves any remains of sin in us, what remains are they, and of what sins? Does he leave the remains of pride? If so, that were a strange cure, to leave the remains of pride in us, to keep us from being proud. But, if not so, but that all the remains of pride be taken away by the grace of God ■blessing our endeavours, what danger is there of being proud, the remains of which sin are, by the grace of God, wholly 'taken away? But then, if the pride of the heart be cured, which is the hardest to be removed, and commonly is done last of all, — ^who can distrust the power of the Spirit of God, t)r his goodness, or his promises, and say that God does not intend to cleanse his sons and servants from all unrighteous- ness ; and, according to St. Paul's prayer, " keep their bodies, and souls, and spirits, unblamable to the coming of the Lord Jesus r" But, however, let God leave what remains he please, all will be well enough on that side ; but let us be careful, as far as we can, that ive leave none ; lest it be severely imputed to us, and the fire break out, and consume us.
4. Let us, without any further question, pirt this argument to a material issue; let us do all that we can do towards the destruction of the whole body of sin ; but let us never say we cannot be quit of our sin, till we have done all that we can •do, towards the mortification of it. For till that be done, how can any man tell, where the fault lies, or whether it can be done or no? If any man can say that he hath done all that he could do, and yet hath failed of his duty, — if he can say truly, that he hath endured as much as is possible to be endured, — that he hath watched always, and never nodded, when he could avoid it, — that lie hath loved as much as he could love, — that he hath waited till he can wait no longer ; — then, indeed, if he says true, we must confess that it is not to be understood. But is there any man in the world, that .does all that he can do ? If there be, that man is blameless ;
264 THE cinusTiANs conquest
if there be not, then he cannot say but it is his own flxult, that his sin prevails an;aiiist liiin. It is true, that no man is free from sin ; but it is as true, that no man does as much as he can against it ; and, therefore, no man must go about to excuse himseli" by saying. No man is free from his sin ; and therefore, no man can be, no, not by the powers of grace : lor he may as well argue thus, — No man does do all that he can do against it, and, therefore, it is impossible he should do what he can do. The argument is apparently foolish, and the excuse is weak, and the deception visible, and sin prevails upon our weak arguings ; but the consequence is plainly this, — when any man commits a sin, he is guilty before God, and he cannot say he could not help it ; and God is just in punishing every sin, and very merciful when he forgives us any. But he that says he cannot avoid it, that he cannot overcome his lust, — confesses himself a servant of sin, and that he is not yet redeemed by the blood of the holy Lamb.
5. He that would be advanced beyond the power and necessity of sinning, must take great caution concerning his thoughts and secret desires ; " for lust, when it is conceived, bringeth forth sin ;" but, if it be suppressed in the conception, it comes to nothing; but we find it hard to destroy the serpent, when the egg is hatched into a cockatrice. The thought is diMa^rv^Qi a/xafria-, no man takes notice of it, but lets it alone till the sin be too strong" ; and then we complain we cannot help it. "Nolo sinas cogitationem crescere," " Suffer not your thoughts to grow up;" for they usually come a(pvu, zuKOTTui;, aTT^ayiMaTiuTu^, as St. Basil says, " suddenly, and easily, and without business ;" but take heed that you nurse them not; but, if you- chance to stumble, mend your pace, and if you nod, let it awaken you ; for he only can be a good man, that raises himself up at the first trip, that strangles his sin in the birth : Toiat/rai ruv ayiuv i^uxoii, Trfiv sTncrov, dviatavTai, '* Good men rise up again, even before they fall," saith St. Chrysostom. Now, I pray, consider, that when sin is but in the thought, it is easily suppressed, and, if it be stopped there, it can go no further ; and what great mountain of labour is it, then, to abstain from our sin ? Is not the adultery of the eye easily cured by shutting the eye-lid ? and cannot
" IllelaHdatiir,qui,utcoepeiint, statim interficit cogitata, et aUiditad petrani.
OVER THE BODY OF SIN. 265
the thoughts of the heart be turned aside by doing business, by going into company, by reading, or by sleeping ? A man may divert his thoughts by shaking of his head, by thinking any thing else, by thinking nothing. " Da mihi Christianum," saith St. Austin, " et intelligit quod dico." Every man that loves God, understands this, and more than this, to be true. Now if things be thus, and that we may be safe in that which is supposed to be the hardest of all, we must needs condemn ourselves, and lay our faces in the dust, when we give up our- selves to any sin; we cannot be justified by saying we could not help it. For as it was decreed by the fathers of the second Aurasican council, " Hoc etiam secundum fidem catholicam credimus," &.c. " This we believe according to the catholic faith," that have received baptismal grace ; all that are baptized by the aid and co-operation of Christ, must and can, if they will labour faithfully, perform and fulfil those things, which belong unto salvation.
6. And lastly : if sin hath gotten the power of any one of us, consider in what degree the sin hath prevailed : if but a little, the battle will be more easy, and the victory more certain ; but then be sure to do it thoroughly, because there is not much to be done : but if sin hath prevailed greatly, then indeed you have very much to do ; therefore begin be- times, and defer not this work, till old age shall make it extremely difficult, or death shall make it impossible.
Nam qiiamvis prope te, quamvis temoiie sub uno Vcrtentem sese, fnistra scctabeie cantluim, Cum rota posteiioi" ciirras, et in axe seciindo ^.
If thou beest cast behind ; if thou hast neglected the duties of thy vigorous age, thou shalt never overtake that strength ; ^ the hinder wheel, though bigger than the former, and measures more ground at every revolution, yet shall never overtake it ;' and all the second counsels of thy old age, though undertaken with greater resolution, and- acted with the strengths of fear and need, and pursued with more per- tinacious purposes than the early repentances of young men, yet shall never overtake those advantages, which you lost when you gave your youth to folly, and the causes of a sad repentance.
" Pers. V. 70.
2(10 riiK ciiins ri A\\s conqt i:sT, &c.
However, if you find it so hard a thing to get from the power of one master-sin; if an old adulterer does dote, — if an ohl drunkard be furtlier from remedy than a young sinner, — if covetousness grows with old age, — if ambition be still more hvdro])ic and grows more thirsty for every draught of honour, — you may easily resolve that old age, or your last sickness, is not so likely to be prosperous in the mortification of your long prevailing sins. Do not all men desire to end their days in religion, to die in the arms of the church, to expire under the conduct of a religious man ? When ye are sick or dying, then nothing but prayers and sad complaints, and the groans of a tremidous repentance, and the faint labours of an almost impossible mortification : then the despised priest is sent for ; then he is a good man, and his words are oracles, and religion is truth, and sin is a load, and the sinner is a fool ; then we watch for a word of comfort from his mouth, as the fearful prisoner for his fate upon the judge's answer. That which is true then, is true now ; and, therefore, to prevent so intolerable a danger, mortify your sin betime, for else you will hardly mortify it at all. Re- member that the snail outwent the eagle, and won the goal, because she set out betimes.
To sum up all : every good man is a new creature, and Christianity is not so much a Divine institution, as a Divine frame and temper of spirit, — which if we heartily pray for, and endeavour to obtain, we shall find it as hard and as uneasy to sin against God, as now we think it impossible to abstain From our most pleasing sins. For as it is in the spermatic virtue of the heavens, which diffuses itself universally upon all sublunary bodies, and subtilely insinuating itself into the most dull and inactive element, produces gold and pearls, life and motion, and brisk activities in all things, that can receive the influence and heavenly blessing: — so it is in the Holy Spirit of God, and the word of God, and the grace of God, which St. John calls * the seed of God ;' it is a law of right- eousness, and it is a law of the Spirit of life, and changes nature into grace, and dulness into zeal, and feai' into love, ^nd sinful habits into innocence, and passes on from grace to grace, till we arrive at the full measures of the stature of -Christ, and into the perfect liberty of the sons of God ; so that we shall no more say. The evil that I would not, that I
FIDES FOllMATA, &C. 267
do ; — but we shall hate what God hates, and the evil that is forbidden, we shall not do ; not because we are strong of our- selves, but because Christ is our strength, and he is in us ; and Christ's strength shall be perfected in our weakness, and his grace will be sufficient for us ; and he will, of his own good pleasure, work in us, not only to will, but also to do, " velle et perficere," saith the apostle, " to will and to do it thoroughly" and fully, being sanctified throughout, to the glory of his holy name, and the eternal salvation of our souls, through Jesus Christ our Lord ; to whom, with the Father, &c. -
SERMON III.
FIDES FORMATA; OR, FAITH WORKING BY LOVE.
You see, then, how that hy works a man is justified, and not by faith only. — James, ii. 24.
That we are 'justified by faith,' St. Paul tells us *; that we are also " justified by works," we are told in my text ; and both may be true. But that this justification is wrought by faith without works, " to him that worketh not, but believ- eth," saith St. Paul : that this is not wrought without works, St. James is as express for his negative as St. Paul was for his affirmative ; and how both these should be true, is some- thing harder to unriddle. But, " affirmanti incumbit pro- batio," *' he that affirms must prove ;" and, therefore, St. Paul proves his doctrine by the example of Abraham, to whom faith was imputed for righteousness ; and, therefore, not by works. And what can be answered to this ? Nothing but this, that St. James uses the very same argument to prove that our justification is by works also ; " For our father Abraham was justified by works, when he offered up his son Isaac ''." Now which of these says true .'' Certainly both of them ; but neither of them have been well understood ; inso- much that they have not only made divisions of heart among
a Rom. iii. 28. iv. 5. v. 1. x. 10. G;il. ii. 16. '' James, ii. 9.
2GS FIDKS FOWMATA ; OH,
the faithful, hut one paity relies on faith to the (lisparaf^e* uient of good life, and the other makes works to be the main ground of our ho|)e and confidence, and consequently to ex- clude the eflicacy of faith : the one makes Christian religion a la/v and inactive institution; and the other, a bold ])re- suniption on oiuselves; while the first tempts us to live like heathens, and the other recalls us to live the life of Jews; while one says * I am of Paul,' and another, ' I am of St. James,' and both of them put it in danger of evacuating the institution and the death of Christ; one looking on Christ only as a Lawgiver, and the other only as a Saviour. The effects of these are very sad, and by all means to be diverted by all the wise considerations of the Spirit.
INIy purpose is not with subtle arts to reconcile them that never disagreed ; the two apostles spake by the same Spirit, and to the same last design, though to differing intermedial purposes : but because the great end of faith, the design, the definition, the state, the economy of it, is that all believers should not live according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. Before 1 fall to the close handhng of the text, I shall premise some preliminary considerations, to prepare the way of holiness, to explicate the differing senses of the apostles, to understand the question and the duty, by removing the causes of the vulgar mistakes of most men in this article ; and then proceed to the main inquiry.
1. That no man may abuse himself or others by mis- taking of hard words, spoken in mystery, with allegorical ex- pressions to secret senses, wrapt up in a cloud ; such as are, * faith, and justification, and imputation, and righteousness, and works,' be pleased to consider, that the very word ' faith' is, in Scripture, infinitely ambiguous, insomuch that in the Latin concordances of St. Jerome's Bible, published by Robert Stephens, you may see no less than twenty-two several senses and acceptations of the word ' faith,' set down with the several places of Scripture referring to them ; to which if, out of my own observation, I could add no more, yet these are an abundant demonstration, that whatsoever is said of the efficacy of faith for justification, is not to be taken in such a sense as will weaken the necessity and our care- fuhiess of good life, when the word may, in so many other senses, be taken to verify the affirmation of St. Paul, of
FAITH WORKING BY LOVE. 269
'justification by faith/ so as to reconcile it to * the necessity of obedience.'
2. As it is in the word ' faith,' so it is in ' works ;' for by works is meant sometimes the thing done,- — sometimes the labour of doing, — sometimes the' good will; — it is some- times taken for a state of good life, — sometimes for the covenant of works ;-^ it sometimes means the works of the law, — sometimes the works of the Gospel; — sometimes it is taken for a perfect, actual, unsinning obedience, — sometimes for a sincere endeavour to please God; — sometimes they are meant to be such which can challenge the reward as of debt ; — sometimes they mean only a disposition of the person to receive the favour and the grace of God. Now since our good works can be but of one kind (for ours cannot be meri- torious, ours cannot be without sin all our life, they cannot be such as need no repentance), it is no wonder if we must be justified without works in this sense; for by such works no man living can be justified : and these St. Paul calls the ' works of the law,' and sometimes he calls them ' our right- eousness ;' and these are the covenant of works. But because we came into the world to serve God, and God will be obeyed, and Jesus Christ came into the world to save us from sin, and ' to redeem to himself a people zealous of good works,' and hath, to this purpose, revealed to us all his Father's will, and destroyed the works of the devil, and gives us his Holy Spirit, and by him we shall be justified in this obedience ; therefore, when works signify a sincere, hearty endeavour to keep all God's commands, out of a belief in Christ, that if we endeavour to do so, we shall be helped by his grace, and if we really do so, we shall be pardoned for what is past, and if we continue to do so, we shall receive a crown of glory; — therefore, it is no wonder that it is said we are to be justified by works ; always meaning, not the works of the law, that is, works that are meritorious, works that can challenge the reward, works that need no mercy, no repentance, no humi- liation, and no appeal to grace and favour; — but always meaning works, that are an obedience to God by the mea- sures of good will, and a sincere endeavour, and the faith of the Lord Jesus.
3. But thus also it is in the word ' justification :' for God is justified, and wisdom is justified, -and man is justified, and
270 FIDES FORM ATA ; OR,
a sinner is not justified as Ion;:; as he continues in sin ; and a sinner is justified when he repents, and when he is pardoned ; and an innocent person is justified when he is declared to be no criminal ; and a righteous man is justified when he is saved ; and a weak Christianvis justified when his imperfect services are accepted for the present, and himself" thrust forward to more grace ; and he that is justified may be justified more ; and every man that is justified to one purpose, is not so to all ; and faith, in divers senses, gives justification in as many ; and, therefore, though to every sense of faith there is not always a degree of justification in any, yet when the faith is such that justification is the product and cor- respondent,— as that faith may be imperfect, so the justifi- cation is but begun, and either must proceed further, or else, as the faith will die, so the justification will come to nothing. The like observation might be made concerning imputation, and all the words used in this question ; but these may suffice till I pass to other particulars.
4. Not only the word ' faith,' but also ' charity,' and * godliness,' and * religion,' signify sometimes particular graces ; and sometimes they suppose universally, and mean conjugations and unions of graces, as is evident to them that read the Scriptures with observation. Now when justifica- tion is attributed to faith, or salvation to godliness, they are to be understood in the aggregate sense : for, that I may give but one instance of this, when St. Paul speaks of faith as it is a particular grace, and separate from the rest, he also does separate it from all possibihty of bringing us to heaven : " Though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing •=:" when faith includes charity, it will bring us to heaven ; when it is alone, when it is without charity, it will do nothing at all.
5. Neither can this (pam//.evov be solved by saying, that though faith alone does justify, yet when she does justify, she is not alone, but good works must follow ; for this is said to no purpose :
1. Because if we be justified by faith alone, the work is done, whether charity does follow or no ; and, therefore, that want of charity cannot hurt us.
« 1 Cor. xiii. 2.
I
FAITH WORKING BY LOVE. 271
2. There can be no imaginable cause why charity and obedience should be at all necessary, if the whole work can be done without it.
3. If obedience and charity be not a condition of our salvation, then it is not necessary to follow faith ; but if it be, it does as much as faith, for that is but a part of the condition,
4. If we can be saved without charity and keeping the commandments, what need we trouble ourselves for them? If we cannot be saved without them, then either faith with- out them does not justify ; or if it does, we are never the better, for we may be damned for all that justification.
The consequent of these observations is briefly this : — 1. That no man should fool himself by disputing about ^ the philosophy of justification, and what causality faith hath in it, and whether it be the act of faith that justifies, or the habit? Whether faith as a good work, or faith as an instru- ment? Whether faith as it is obedience, or faith as it is an access to Christ? Whether as a hand, or as a heart? Whe- ther by its own innate virtue, or by the efficacy of the object? Whether as a sign, or as a thing signified? Whether by introduction, or by perfection? Whether in the first begin- nings, or in its last and best productions ? Whether by inherent worthiness, or adventitious imputations ? " Uberius ista, quseso :" (that I may use the words of Cicero <') " hsec enim spinosiora, prius, ut confitear, me cogunt, quam ut assentiar :" these things are knotty, and too intricate to do any good ; they may amuse us, but never instruct us ; and they have already made men careless and confident, dis- putative and troublesome, proud and uncharitable, but neither wiser nor better. Let us, therefore, leave these weak ways of troubling ourselves or others, and directly look to the theology of it, the direct duty, the end of faith, and the work of faith, the conditions and t^ie instruments of our salvation, the just foundation of our hopes, how our faith can destroy our sin, and how it can unite us unto God ; how by it we can be made partakers of Christ's death, and imi- tators of his life. For since it is evident, by the premises, that this article is not to be determined or relied upon by
d Ttiscnl. i. 8. Davis.
272 FIDES FORM ATA ; Oil,
arguinj^ from words oi" many significations, we must walk l)y a clearer light, by such plain sayings and dogmatical pro- positions of Scripture, which evidently teach us our duty, and j)lace our hopes u|)on that which cannot deceive us, that is, which require obedience, which call upon us to glorify God, and to do good to men, and to keep all God's com- mandments with diligence and sincerity.
For since the end of our faith is, that we may be disciples and servants of the Lord Jesus, advancing his kingdom here, and partaking of it hereafter ; since we are commanded to believe what Christ taught, that it may appear as reasonable as it is necessary to do what he hath commanded ; since faith and works are in order one to the other, it is impossible that evangelical faith and evangelical works should be opposed one to the other in the effecting of our salvation. So that as it is to no purpose for Christians to dispute whether we are justified by faith or the works of the law, that is, the cove- nant of works, without the help of faith and the auxiliaries and allowances of mercy on God's part, and repentance on ours ; because no Christian can pretend to this, — so it is perfectly foolish to dispute whether Christians are to be justified by faith, or the works of the Gospel ; for I shall make it appear that they are both the same thing. No man disparages faith but he that says, faith does not work righteousness ; for he that says so, says indeed it cannot justify ; for he says that faith is alone : it is ' faith only,' and the words of my text are plain : " You see," saith St. James, that is, it is evident to your sense, it is as clear as an ocular demonstration, *' that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only."
My text hath in it these two propositions ; a negative and an affirmative. The negative is this, 1. ' By faith only' a man is not justified. The affirmative, 2. 'By works also' a man is justified.
When I have briefly discoursed of these, I shall only add such practical considerations as shall make the doctrines useful, and tangible, and material.
1. By faith only a man is not justified, ^y faith only, here is meant, faith without obedience. For what do we think of those that detain the faith in unrighteousness? They have faith, they could not else keep it in so ill a cabinet : but yet the apostle reckons them amongst the reprobates ; for
FAITH WORKING BY LOVE. 273
the abominable, the reprobates, and the disobedient, are all one ; and, therefore, such persons, for all their faith, shall have no part with faithful Abraham : for none are his children but they that do the works of Abraham. Abraham's faith, without Abraham's works, is nothing ; for of him " that hath faith, and hath not works," St. James asks, " Can faith save him'r' meaning, that it is impossible. For what think we of those, that did miracles in Christ's name, and in his name cast out devils ? Have not they faith ? Yes, * omnem fidem,' ' all faith,' that is, alone, for ' they could remove mountains:' but yet to many of them Christ will say, " De- part from me, ye workers of iniquity ; I know you not." Nay, at last, what think we of the devils themselves? Have not they faith ? Yes ; and this faith is not ' fides miraculorum' neither ; but it is an operative faith, it works a little ; for it makes them tremble ; and it may be, that is more than thy faith does to thee : and yet dost thou hope to be saved by a faith that does less to thee than the devil's faith does to him? That is impossible. For " faith without works is dead," saith St. James. It is * manus arida,' saith St. Austin; * it is a withered hand ; '— and that which is dead cannot work the life of grace in us, much less obtain eternal life for us. In short, a man may have faith, and yet do the works of un- righteousness ; he may have faith and be a devil ; and then what can such a faith do to him or for hjm ? It can do him no good in the present constitution of affairs. St. Paul, from whose mistaken words much noise hath been made in this question, is clear in this particular : " Nothing in Christ Jesus can avail, but faith working by charity *^;" that is, as he expounds himself once and again, " nothing but a new creature, nothing but keeping the commandments of God ?." If faith be defined to be any thing that does not change our natures, and make us to be a new creation unto God ; if keeping the commandments be not in the definition of faith, it avails nothing at all. Therefore deceive not yourselves ; they are the words of our blessed Lord himself: " Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord," that is, not every one that confesses Christ, and believes in him, calling Christ Master and Lord, shall be saved; " but he that doth the will
* Chap. ii. 14. ' Gal. v. 6. ? Gal. vi. 15. 1 Cor. vii. 19.
VOL. VI. T
274 FIDES 1 OHMATA ; OR,
of my Father which is in heaven." These things are so plain, that they need no commentary ; so evident, that they cannot be denied : and to these I add but this one truth ; that faith alone without a p,ood life is so far from justifying a sinner, that it is one of the greatest aggravations of his condem- nation in the whole world. For no man can be so greatly damned as he that hath faith ; for unless he knows his Master's will, that is, by faith be convinced, and assents to the revelations of the will of God, * he can be beaten but with few stripes :' but he that believes, hath no excuse; he is ai/roKaTciK^nog, ' condemned by the sentence of his own heart,' and, therefore, TtoT^oii Trhnyai, ' many stripes,' the greater con- demnation shall be his portion. Natural reason is a light to the conscience, but faith is a greater ; and, therefore, if it be not followed, it damns deeper than the hell of the infidels and uninstructed. And so I have done with the negative proposition of my text ; a man is not justified bj)^ faith alone, that is, by faith which hath not in it charity and obedience.
2. \i faith alone will not do it, what will? The affirma- tive part of the text answers ; not faith alone ; but works must be an ingredient: " a man is justified by works;" and that is now to be explicated and proved. It will be ab- solutely to no purpose to say that faith alone does justify, if, when a man is justified, he is never the nearer to be saved. Now that without obedience no man can go to heaven, is so evident in holy Scripture, that he that denies it, hath no faith. " There is no peace, saith my God, unto the wicked ^ ;" and " I will not justify a sinner'," saith God; unless faith purges away our sins, it can never justify. Let a man believe all the revelations of God ; if that belief ends in itself, and goes no further, it is like physic taken to purge the stomach ; if it do not work, it is so far from bringing health, that itself is a new sickness. Faith is a great purger and purifier of the soul, " purifying your hearts by faith," saith the apostle. It is the best physic in the world for a sinful soul; but if it does not work, it corrupts in the stomach, it makes us to rely upon weak propositions and trifling confidences, it is but a dreaming lAtTo, 7ro»S)i <parraalaf, ' a phantastic dream,* and introduces pride or superstition, swelling thoughts and presumptions of
*> Isaiah, Ivii. 21. ' Exod. xxv. 7.
I
FAITH WORKING BY LOVE. 275
the Divine favour: but what saith the apostle? "Follow peace with all men, and hoHness, without which no man can see God ^ :" mark that. If faith does not make you chari- table and holy, talk no more of justification by it, for you shall never see the glorious face of God. Faith indeed is a title and relation to Christ ; it is a naming of his names ; but what then ? Why then, saith the apostle, " Let every one that nameth the name of Christ, depart from iniquity."
For let any man consider, can the faith of Christ and the hatred of God stand together? Can any man be justified, that does not love God ? Or can any man love God and sin at the same time ? And does not he love sin, that falls under its temptation, and obeys it in the lusts thereof, and delights in the vanity, and makes excuses for it, and returns to it with passion, and abides with pleasure ? This will not do it ; such a man cannot be justified for all his believing. But, therefore, the apostle shows us a more excellent way : " This is a true saying, and I will that thou affirm constantly, that they who have believed in God, be careful to maintain good works '." The apostle puts great force on this doctrine, he arms it with a double preface ; the saying is ' true,' and it is to be * con- stantly affirmed ;' that is, it is not only true, but necessary ; it is like Pharaoh's dream, doubled, because it is bound upon us by the decree of God; and it is unalterably certain, that every believer must do good works, or his beUeving will sig- nify little ; nay more than so, every man must be careful to do good works ; and more yet, he must carefully maintain them ; that is, not do them by fits and interrupted returns, but 7r§oia-Tixa9cci, to be incumbent upon them, to dwell upon them, to maintain good works, that is, to persevere in them. But I am yet but in the general : be pleased to go along with rae in these particular considerations.
1. No man's sins are pardoned, but in the same measure in which they are mortified, destroyed, and taken av/ay ; so that if faith does not cure our sinful natures, it never can justify, it never can procure our pardon. And therefore it is, that as soon as ever faith in the Lord Jesus was preached, at the same time also they preached repentance from dead works : inso- much that St. Paul reckons it among the fundamentals and
>• Hcb. xii. 14. ' TiUi%, iii. f!.
270 FIDES KORMATA ; OH,
tirst principles of Chnstinnity"; nay, the Baptist preached repentance and amendment of life as a preparation to the faith ul' Christ. And 1 pray consider; can there be any forgiveness of sins without re|)entance? But if an apostle should lueacii foigiveness to all that believe, and this belief did not also mean that they should repeiit and forsake their sin, — the sermons of the apostle would make Christianity nothing else but the sanctuary of Romulus, a device to get together all the wicked people of the world, and to make them happy without any change of manners. Christ came to other purposes; he came '* to sanctify us and to cleanse us by his word":" the word of faith was not for itself, but was a design of holiness, and the very " grace of God did appear," for this end ; that " teaching us to deny all ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live holily, justly, and soberly in this present world ° :" he came to gather a people together ; not like David's army, when Saul pursued him, but the armies of the Lord," a faithful people, a chosen generation ;" and what is that ? The Spirit of God adds, " a people zealous of good works." Now as Christ proved his power to forgive sins, by curing the poor man's palsy, because a man is never pardoned, but when the punishment is removed; so the great act of justification of a sinner, the pardoning of his sins, is then only effected, when the spiritual evil is taken away : that is the best indication of a real and an eternal pardon, w^hen God takes away the hardness of the heart, the love of sin, the accursed habit, the evil inclination, the sin that doth so easily beset us: and when that is gone, what remains within us that God can hate ? Nothing stays behind, but God's creation, the work of his own hands, the issues of his Holy Spirit. The faith of a Christian is '^aa-tii a/xa^ra^oi ava.ipeTiH.Yi, * it destroys the whole body of sin ;' and to suppose that Christ pardons a sinner, whom he doth not also purge and rescue from the dominion of sin, is to affirm that he justifies the wicked ; that he calls good evil, and evil good ; that he delights in a wicked person; that he makes a wicked man all one with himself; that he makes the members of an harlot at the same time also the members of Christ : but all this is impossible, and, therefore, ought not to be pretended to by any Christian. Severe are
"• Heb. vi. 1. "1 John, iii. 8. " Epli, v. jJS. Tit. ii. 11.
I
FAITH WORKING BY LOVE. 277
those words of our blessed Saviour, " Every plant in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh awayP:" faith ingrafts us into Christ ; by faith we are inserted into the vine ; but the plant that is ingrafted, must also be parturient and fruitful, or else it shall be quite cut off from the root, and thrown into the everlasting burning : and this is the full and plain meaning of those words so often used in Scripture for the magnification of faith, ' The just shall live by faith :' no man shall live by faith but the just man ; he indeed is justified by faith, but no man else ; the unjust and the unrighteous man hath no portion in this matter. That is the first great consideration in this affair; no man is justified in the least sense of justification, that is, when it means nothing but the pardon of sins, but when his sin is mortified and destroyed.
2. No man is actually justified, but he that is in some measure sanctified. For the understanding and clearing of which proposition we must know, that justification, when it is attributed to any cause, does not always signify justification actual. Thus, when it is said in Scripture, ' We are justified by the death of Christ,' it is but the same thing as to say, * Christ died for us ;' and he rose again for us too, that we might indeed be justified in due time, and by just measures and dispositions ; ' he died for our sins, and rose again for our justification;' that is, by his death and resurrection, he hath obtained this power, and efiected this mercy, that if we believe him and obey, we shall be justified and made capable of all the blessings of the kingdom. But that this is no more but a capacity of pardon, of grace, and of salvation, appears not only by God's requiring obedience as a condition on our parts, but by his expressly attributing this mercy to us at such times, and in such circumstances, in which it is certain and evident, that we could not actually be justified ; for so saith the Scripture: " We, when we were enemies, were reconciled to God by the death of his Son; and while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us 'i;" that is, then was our justification wrought on God's part; that is, then he intended this mercy to us, then he resolved to show us favour, to give us promises, and laws, and conditions, and hopes, and an infallible economy of salvation ; and when faith lays hold
V Jolin, XV. 2. "^ Ron>- v. 8, 10.
278 yiDES FOKMATA ; OR,
on this grace, and this justification, then we are to do the other part of it; that is, as God made it potential by the death and resurrection of Clirist, so we, laying hold on these things by faith, and working the righteousness of faith, that is, performing what is required on our parts, we, I say, make it actual ; and lor this very reason it is, that the apostle puts more emphasis upon the resurrection of Christ than upon his death. " Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again ^■' And " Christ was both delivered for our sins, and is risen again for our justifi- cation';" implying to us, that as it is in the principal, so it is in the correspondent; our sins indeed are potentially pardoned, when they are marked out for death and cruci- fixion ; when, by resolving and fighting against sin, we die to sin daily, and are so made conformable to his death ; but we must partake of Christ's resurrection before this justifi- cation can be actual ; when we are ' dead to sin, and are risen again unto righteousness,' then, as we are * partakers of his death,' so we shall * be partakers of his resurrection,' saith St. Paul ; that is, then we are truly, effectually, and indeed justified ; till then we are not.
" He that loveth gold, shall not be justified," saith the wise Bensirach ' ; he that is covetous, let his faith be what it will, shall not be accounted righteous before God, because he is not so in himself, and he is not so in Christ, for he is not in Christ at all ; he hath no righteousness in himself, and he hath none in Christ ; for if we be in Christ, or " if Christ be in us, the body is dead by reason of sin, and the spirit is life because of righteousness " :" for this the to Tnarh, ' that faithful thing,' that is, the faithfulness is manifested ; the * emun,' from whence comes * emunah,' which is the Hebrew word for * faith,' from whence ' amen' is derived. " Fiat quod dictum est hinc inde ; hoc fidum est;" when God and we both say amen to our promises and undertakings. '' Fac fidehs sis fideli ; cave fidem fluxam geras," said he in the comedy '^ ; God is faithful, be thou so too ; for if thou failest him, thy faith hath failed thee. " Fides sumitur pro eo, quod est inter utrumque placitum," says one; and then it is
' Rom. viii. 28. • Rom. iv. 25. « Ecclus. xxxi.
" Rom. viii. 10. » Plant. Captiv. act ii. seen. 3. 79.
FAITH WORKING BY LOVE. 279
true which the prophet and the apostle said, * the just shall live by faith,' in both senses : " ex fide mea vivet, ex fide sua :" " we live by God's faith, and by our own ;" by his fidelity, and by ours. When the righteousness of God be- comes ' your righteousness, and exceeds the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees ;' when the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us, ' by walking not after the flesh, but after the Spirit;' then we are justified by God's truth and by ours, by his grace and our obedience. So that now we see that justification and sanctification cannot be distinguished, but as words of art signifying the various steps of progression in the same course ; they may be distinguished in notion and speculation, but never when they are to pass on to material events ; for no man is justified but he that is also sanctified. They are the express words of St. Paul : " Whom he did foreknow, them he did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son," to be like to Christ ; and then it follows, " Whom he hath predestinated," so predestinated, " them he hath also called, and whom he hath called, them he hath also justified:" and then it follows, "Whom he hath justified, them he hath also glorified y." So that no man is justified, that is, so as to signify salvation, but sanctification must be precedent to it ; and that was my second consideration oTsep i^£i hH^ai, ' that which I was to prove.'
3. I pray consider, that he that does not believe the promises of the Gospel, cannot pretend to faith in Christ; but the promises are all made to us upon the conditions of obedience, and he that does not believe them as Christ made them, believes them not at all. ' In well-doing commit yourselves to God as unto a faithful Creator ;' there is no committing ourselves to God without well-doing: " For God will render to every man according to his deeds : to them that obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath ; but to them who, by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory, and honour, and immortality, to them eternal life^." So that if faith apprehends any other promises, it is illusion, and not faith ; God gave us none such, Christ purchased none such for us ; search the Bible over, and you shall find none such. But if faith lays hold on these promises that
y Kom. viii. 29. ' Rom. ii. 6, 7, 8.
280 FIDES FOIIMATA ; OR,
are, and as they are, then it becomes an article of our faith, that without obedience and a sincere endeavour to keep God's commandments, no man Uving can be justified : and, there- fore, let us take heed, when we magnify tlie tree grace of God, we do not exclude the conditions, whicii this free grace hath set upon us. Christ freely died for us, God pardons us freely in our first access to him ; we could never deserve pardon, because when we need pardon we are ene- mies, and have no good thing in us ; and he freely gives us of his Spirit, and freely he enables us to obey him ; and for our little imperfect services he freely and bountifully will give us eternal life ; here is free grace all the way, and he overvalues his pitiful services, who thinks that he deserves heaven by them ; and that if he does his duty tolerably, eternal life is not a free gift to him, but a deserved reward.
Conscins est animus meus, experientia testis,
Mystica quae retiili dogmata vera scio. Non tamcn idcirco scio me fore gloiificaudum,
Spes mca crux Cliristi, gratia, non opera.
It was the meditation of the wise chancellor of Paris : " I know that without a good life, and the fruits of repentance, a sinner cannot be justified ; and, therefore, I must live well, or I must die for ever : but if I do live holily, I do not think that I deserve heaven, it is the cross of Christ that procures me grace ; it is the Spirit of Christ that gives me grace ; it is the mercy and the free gift of Christ that brings me unto glory." But yet he that shall exclude the works of faith from the justification of a sinner by the blood of Christ, may as well exclude faith itself; for faith itself is one of the works of God : it is a good work, so said Christ to them that asked him, " What shall we do to work the works of God ? Jesus said. This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent^." Faith is not only the foundation of good works, but itself is a good work; it is not only the cause of obedience, but a part of it ; it is not only, as the son of Sirach calls it, * initium adhaerendi Deo,' ' a beginning of cleaving unto God,' but it carries us on to the perfection of it. Christ is the Author and Finisher of our faith ; and w hen faith is finished, a good life is made perfect in our kind : let
» Jolm, vi. 28, 29.
FAITH WORKING BY LOVE. 281
no man therefore expect events, for which he hath no pro- mise ; nor call for God's fidelity without his own faithfulness ; nor snatch at a promise without performing the condition; nor think faith to be a hand to apprehend Christ, and to do nothing- else ; for that will but deceive us, and turn religion into words, and holiness into hypocrisy, and the promises of God into a snare, and the truth of God into a lie. For when God made a covenant of faith, he made also the vo/^og Trla-reajg, * the law of faith ;' and when he admitted us to a covenant of more mercy than was in the covenant of works, or of the law, he did not admit us to a covenant of idleness, and an incurious walking in a state of disobedience ; but the mercy of God leadeth us to repentance, and when he gives us better promises, he intends we shoidd pay him a better obedience : when he forgives us what is past, he intends we should sin no more ; when he offers us his graces, he would have us to make use of them ; when he causes us to distrust ourselves, his meaning is we should rely upon him ; when he enables us to do what he commands us, he commands us to do all that we can. And, therefore, this covenant of faith and mercy is also a covenant of holiness, and the grace that pardons us does also purify us : for so saith the apostle, " He that hath this hope purifies himself, even as God is pure." And when we are so, then we are justified indeed ; this is the vo/j-og Trlo-TEug, ' the law of faith ;' and by works in this sense, that is, by the works of faith, by faith working by love, and pro- ducing fruits worthy of amendment of life, we are justified before God. And so I have done with the affirmative pro- position of my text : you see that " a man is justified by works."
But there is more in it than this matter yet amounts to : for St. James does not say, ' we are justified by works, and are not justified by faith;' that had been irreconcilable with St. Paul; but we are so justified by works, that it is not by faith alone ; it is faith and works together : that is, it is by the vTraKon Tricneug, ' by the obedience of faith/ by the works of faith, by the law of faith, by righteousness evangelical, by the conditions of the Gospel, and the measures of Christ. I have many things to say in this particular; but because I have but a little time left to say them in, I will sum it all up in this proposition, that in the question of justification and
282 TIDES FOUMATA ; OR,
salvation, faith and good works are no part of a distinction, but members of one entire body. Faith and good works together work the righteousness of God : that is, that I may speak phiinly, justifying faith contains in it obedience; and if tliis be made good, then the two apostles are reconciled to each other, and both of them to the necessity, the indispen- sable necessity of a good life.
Now that justifying and saving faith must be defined by something more than an act of understanding, appears not only in this, that St. Peter reckons faith as distinctly from knowledge as he does from patience, or strength, or brotherly kindness ; saying, '* Add to your faith, virtue ; to virtue, knowledge '' ;" but in this also, because an error in life, and whatsoever is against holiness, is against faith : and, there- fore, St. Paul reckons the lawless and the disobedient, murderers of parents, man-stealing, and such things, to be against sound doctrines ; for the doctrine of faith is called h )caT tuasQeiav h^ao-naXia, * the doctrine that is according to godliness.' And when St. Paul prays against ungodly men, he adds this reason, cu yap Ttavrm v Trla-Tig, " for all men have not faith "^ :" meaning that wicked men are infidels and un- believers ; and particularly he affirms of him " that does not provide for his own, that he hath denied the faith''." Now from hence it follows that faith is godliness, because all wickedness is infidelity, it is an apostasy from the faith. " Ille erit, ille nocens qui me tibi fecerat hostem ;" he that sins against God, he is the enemy to the faith of Jesus Christ ; and therefore we deceive ourselves, if we place faith in the understanding only ; it is not that, and it does not well there, but h xa6a^a auvei^ria-Ei, saith the apostle ; the mystery of faith is kept no where, it dwells no where but " in a pure conscience."
For I consider, that, since all moral habits are best defined by their operation, we can best understand what faith is by seeing what it does. To this purpose hear St. Paul : " By faith, Abel offered up to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. By faith, Noah made an ark. By faith, Abraham left his country, and offered up his son. By faith, Moses chose to suffer affliction, and accounted the reproach of Christ greater
•> 2 Pet. i. 5. '2 Thess. iii. 2, <» i Tim. v. 8.
FAITH WORKING BY LOVE. 283
than all the riches of Egypt ^" In short, the children of God, " by faith, subdued kingdoms, and wrought righteous- ness." To work righteousness is as much the duty and work of faith as believing is. So that now we may quickly make an end of this great inquiry, whether a man is justified by faith, or by works, for he is so by both : if you take it alone, faith does not justify : but take it in the aggregate sense, as it is used in the question of justification by St. Paul, and then faith does not only justify, but it sanctifies too ; and then you need to inquire no further ; obedience is a part of the defini- tion of faith, as much as it is of charity. This is love, saith St. John, " that we keep his commandments." And the very same is affirmed of faith too by Bensirach, " He that be- lieveth the Lord, will keep his commandments'"."
I have now done with all the propositions expressed and implied in the text. Give me leave to make some practical considerations; and so I shall dismiss you from this at- tention.
The rise I take from the words of St. EpiphaniusS, speak- ing in praise of the apostolical and purest ages of the church. There was, at first, no distinction of sects and opinions in the church : she knew no difference of men, but good and bad ; there was no separation made, but what was made by piety or impiety, or, says he, which is all one, by fidehty and infi- delity ; TTiaTt? //.h ETTExoviTa roS X^ii7Tiavi(r//.ou s'lKova' a7ri<rria d'e i'Trex.ovcra, rov aae^Eiac %afa«T)?fa xa) Trapavoixiag' " for faith hath in it the image of godliness engraven, and infidelity hath the character of wickedness and prevarication." A man was not then esteemed a saint, for disobeying his bishop or an apostle, nor for misunderstanding the hard sayings of St. Paul about predestination ; to kick against the laudable customs of the church, was not then accounted a note of the godly party ; and to despise government was but an ill mark and weak indication of being a good Christian. The kingdom of God did not then consist in words, but in power, the power of godliness ; though now we are fallen into another method ; we have turned all religion into faith, and our faith is nothing but the productions of interest or disputing, — it is adhering to a party, and a wrangling against all the world beside ; and
*Heb. xi. 'Ecclus. xxxii. 24. ? Panar. lib. i. edit. Basil, p. 8. 1. 46.
284 FiDKS fohmata; or,
when it is asked of what rehgion he is of, we understand the meaning to be, what faction does he follow : what are the articles of his sect, not what is the manner of his life : and if men be zealous for their party and that interest, then they are precious men, though otherwise they be covetous as the grave, factious as Dathan, schismatical as Corah, or proud as the fallen angels. Alas ! these things will but deceive us ; the faith of a Christian cannot consist in strifes about words, and perverse disputings of men. These things the apostle calls " profane and vain babblings **;" and, mark what he says of them, these things will increase ett) m-hsliov aire^ciai' They are, in themselves, ungodliness, and will pro- duce more, — *' they will increase unto more ungodliness." But the faith of a Christian had other measures, that was faith then, which made men faithful to their vows in baptism. The faith of a Christian was the best security in contracts, and a Christian's word was as good as his bond, because he was faithful that promised, and a Christian would rather die than break his word, and was always true to his trust ; he was faithful to his friend, and loved as Jonathan did David. This was the Christian faith then : their religion was, to hurt no man, and to do good to every man, and so it ought to be. **True religion is to visit the fatherless and widow, and to keep ourselves unspotted of the world." That is a good reli- gion, that is * pure and undefiled.' So St. James : aiid St. Chrysostom defines Buas^iiav, ' true religion,' to be Tria-nv Kci^apav Koi 6p9ov /3iov, ' a pure faith and a godly life ;' for they make up the whole mystery of godliness ; and no man could then pretend to faith, but he that did do valiantly, and suffer patiently, and resist the devil, and overcome the world. These things are as properly the actions of faith, as alms is of charity ; and, therefore, they must enter into the moral definition of it. And this was truly understood by Salvian, that wise and godly priest of Massilia : what is faith, and what is believing, saith he; *' hominem fideliter Christo credere est fidelem Deo esse, h. e. fideliter Dei mandata servare :" " That man does faithfully believe in Christ, who is faithful unto God, — who faithfully keeps God's commandments ;" and, therefore, let us measure our faith here, by our faithfulness to God, and by our
'' 2 Tim. ii. 16.
FAITH WORKING BY LOVE. 285
diligence to do our Master's commandments ; for " Christian- orum omnis religio sine scelere et macula vivere," said Lactantius ; " The whole religion of a Christian is to live un- blamablyV that is, in all holiness and purity of conver- sation.
2. When our faith is spoken of as the great instrument of justification and salvation, take Abraham's faith as your best pattern, and that will end the dispute, because that he was justified by faith, when his faith was mighty in effect; when he. trusted in God, when he believed the promises, when he expected a resurrection of the dead, when he was strong in faith, when he gave glory to God, when, against hope, he believed in hope ; and when all this passed into an act of a most glorious obedience, even denying his greatest desires, contradicting his most passionate affections, offering to God the best thing he had, and exposing to death his beloved Isaac, his laughters, all his joy, at the command of God. By this faith he was justified, saith St. Paul ; ' by these works he was justified,' saith St. James ; that is, by this faith working this obedience. And then all the difficulty is over ; only remember this, your faith is weak, and will do but little for you, if it be not stronger than all your secular desires and all your peevish angers. Thus we find, in the holy Gospels, this conjunction declared necessary, '' Whatsoever things ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them ^." Here is as glorious an event promised to faith as can be ex- pressed ; faith shall obtain any thing of God. True ; but it is not faith alone, but faith in prayer ; faith praying, not faith simply believing. So St. James ; the *' prayer of faith shall save the sick ; but adds, it must be " the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man ;" so that faith shall prevail, but there must be prayer in faith, and fervour in prayer, and devotion in fervour, and righteousness in devotion ; and thea impute the effect to faith if you please, provided that it be declared, that effect cannot be wrought by faith, unless it be so qualified. But Christ adds one thing more : " When ye stand praying, forgive ; but if ye will not forgive, neither will ydur Father forgive you," So that it will be to no purpose to say a man is justified by faith, unless you mingle charity with
' Instit. lib. V. c. 9. '' Mark, xii. 24.
286 FiDKS fohmata; or,
it; for ^vithout the charity of forc;iveness, there can be no pardon, and then justification is but a word, when it ejftects nothinsx.
3. Let every one take heed, that by an importune adliering to and relying- upon a mistaken faith, he do not really make a shipwreck of a ris^ht faith. Hymenffius and Alexander lost their faith by putting away a good conscience ; and what matter is it of what religion or faith a man be of, if he be a villain and a cheat, a man of no truth, and of no trust, a lover of the world, and not a lover of God ? But, I pray, consider, can any man have faith that denies God ? That is not possible : and cannot a man as well deny God by an evil action, as by an heretical proposition? Cannot a man deny God by works, as much as by words ? Hear what the apostle says : " They profess that they know God, but in works they deny him, being abominable and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate '." Disobedience is a denying God. ' Nolumus hunc regnare,' is as plain a renouncing of Christ, as ' Nolumus huic credere.' It is to no purpose to say we believe in Christ and have faith, unless Christ reign in our hearts by faith.
4. Fi'om these premises we may see but too evidently, that though a great part of mankind pretend to be saved by faith, yet they know not what it is, or else wilfully mistake it, and place their hopes upon sand, or the more unstable water. Believing is the least thing in a justifying faith ; for faith is a conjugation of many ingredients, and faith is a covenant, and faith is a law, and faith is obedience, and faith is a work, and indeed it is a sincere cleavino- to, and closing with the terms of the Gospel in every instance, in every particular. Alas ! the niceties of a spruce understanding, and the curious nothings of useless speculation, and all the opinions of men that make the divisions of heart, and do nothing else, cannot bring us one drop of comfort in the day of tribulation, and therefore are no parts of the strength of faith. Nay, when a man begins truly to fear God, and is in the agonies of mor- tification, all these new nothings and curiosities will lie neglected by, as baubles do by children, when they are deadly sick. But that only is faith that makes us to love God, to do his will, to suffer his impositions, to trust his promises, to
•Tit. i. KJ.
FAITH WORKING BY LOVE. 287
see through a cloud, to overcome the world, to resist the devil, to stand in the day of trial, and to be comforted in all our sorrows. This is that precious faith so mainly necessary to be insisted on, that by it we may be sons of the free woman, * liberi a vitiis ac ritibus ;' that the true Isaac may be in us, which is Christ according to the Spirit, the wisdom and power of God, a divine vigour and life, whereby we are enabled, with joy and cheerfulness, to walk in the way of God. By this you may try your faith, if you please, and make an end of this question : Do you believe in the Lord Jesus, yea or no ? God forbid else ; but if your faith be good, it will abide the trial. There are but three things that make the integrity of Christian faith ; believing the words of God, confidence in his goodness, and keeping his commandments.
For the first, it is evident that every man pretends to it ; if he calls himself Christian, he believes all that is in the canon of the Scriptures ; and if he did not, he were indeed no Christian. But now consider, what think we of this propo- sition? "All shall be damned who believe not the truth, but have pleasure in unrighteousness'"." Does not every man believe this ? Is it possible they can believe there is any such thing as unrighteousness in the world, or any such thing as damnation, and yet commit that which the Scriptures call unrighteousness, and which all laws and all good men say is so ? Consider how many unrighteous men there are in the world, and yet how few of them think they shall be damned. I know not how it comes to pass, but men go upon strange principles, and they have made Christianity to be a very odd institution, if it had not better measures than they are pleased to afford it. There are two great roots of all evil, covetous- ness and pride, and they have infected the greatest parts of mankind, and yet no man thinks himself to be either covetous or proud ; and, therefore, whatever you discourse against these sins, it never hits any man, but, like Jonathan's arrows to David, they fall short, or they fly beyond. Salvian com- plained of it in his time : " Hoc ad crimina nostra addimus, ut cum in omnibus rei simus, etiam bonos nos et sanctos esse credamus :" " This we add unto our crimes, we are the vilest persons in the world, and yet we think ourselves to be
~ 1 Thess. ii. l?.
^88
FIDKS rORMATA ; OK,
good people," and, when we die, make no question but we shall go to heaven". There is no cause of this, but because we have not so much faith as believing comes to ; and yet most men will pretend not only to believe, but to love Christ all this while. And how do they prove this / Truly they hate the memory of Judas, and curse the Jev.s that crucified Christ, and think Pilate a very miserable man, and that all the Turks are damned, and to be called Caiaphas is a word of reproach ; and, indeed, there are many that do not much more for Christ than this comes to ; things to as little pur- pose, and of as little signification. But so the Jews did hate the memory of Corah as we do of Caiaphas, and they built the sepulchre of the prophets ; and we also are angry at them that killed the apostles and the martyrs ; but, in the mean- time, we neither love Christ nor his saints ; for we neither obey him, nor imitate them. And yet we should think our- selves highly injured, if one should call us infidels, and haters of Christ. But, I pray, consider ; what is hating of any man, but designing and doing him all the injury and spite we can? Does not he hate Christ that dishonours him, that makes Christ's members the members of an harlot, that doth not feed and clothe these members ? If the Jews did hate Christ when they crucified him, then so does a Christian too, when he crucifies him again. Let us not deceive ourselves ; a Christian may be damned as well as a Turk ; and Christians may with as much malice crucify Christ, as the Jews did : and so does every man that sins wilfully ; he spills the blood of Christ, making it to be spent in vain. " He that hateth you, hateth me ; he that receives you, receives me," said Christ to his apostles. I wish the world had so much faith as to believe that ; and by this try whether we love Christ, and believe in him, or no. I shall, for the trial of our faith, ask one easy question : Do we believe that the story of David and Jonathan is true ? Have we so much faith as to think it possible that two rivals of a crown should love so dearly ? Can any man believe this, and not be infinitely ashamed to see Christians, almost all Christians, to be irreconcilably angry, and ready to pull their brother's heart out, when he offers to take our land or money from us ? Why do almost all men that go to law
» Lib. iii.
FAITH WORKING BV LOVE. 289
for right, hate one another's persons ? Why cannot men with patience hear their titles questioned ? But, if Christianity be so excellent a religion, why are so very many Christians so very wicked ? Certainly they do not so much as believe the propositions and principles of their own religion. For the body of Christians is so universally wicked, that it would be a greater change to see Christians generally live according to their profession, than it was at first from infidelity to see them to turn believers. The conversion from Christian to Christian, from Christian in title to Christian in sincerity, would be a greater miracle than it was, when they were con- verted from heathen and Jew to Christian. What is the matter? is not "repentance from dead works" reckoned by St. Paul" as one of the fundamental points of Christian reli- gion? Js it not a piece of our catechism, the first thing we are taught, and is it not the last thing that we practise ? We had better be without baptism than without repentance, and yet both are necessary; and, therefore, if we were not with- out faith, we should be without neither. Is not repentance a forsakino- all sin, and an entire returning unto God? Who can deny this ? And is it not plainly said in Scripture, " Unless ye repent, ye shall all perish ?" But show me the man that believes these things heartily ; that is, show me a true penitent ; he only believes the doctrines of repentance.
If I had time, I should examine your faith by your con- fidence in God, and by your obedience. But, if we fall in the mere believing, it is not likely we should do better in the other. But because all the promises of God are conditional, and there can be no confidence in the particular without a promise or revelation, it is not possible that any man that does not live well, should reasonably put his trust in God. To live a wicked life, and then to be confident that in the day of our death God will give us pardon, is not faith, but a direct want of faith. If we did believe the promises upon their proper conditions, or believe that God's commandments were righteous and true, or that the threatenings were as really intended as they are terribly spoken, — we should not dare to live at the rate we do. But '' wicked men have not faith," saith St. Paul ; and then the wonder ceases.
" Heh. vi. VOL, VI. U
290 FIDES FORMATA ; OR,
But there are such palpable contradictions between men's practices and the fundamentals of our faith, that it was a material consideration of our blessed Saviour, " When the Son of Man conies, shall he find faith upon earth?" meaning- it should be very hard and scant : " Every man shall boast of his own goodness ; * sed virum fidelem,' (saith Solomon,) but *a faithful man,' who can find?" Some men are very good when they are afflicted.
Hanc tibi virtutcm fracta facit iirceiis ans&,
Et tiistis niillo qui tcpct igiic focus; Et teges ct cimex, tt midi spoiula grabati,
Et bievisatque eadcni nocte dicque toga''.
When the gown of the day is the mantle of the night, and cannot, at the same time, cover the head, and make the feet warm ; when they have but one broken dish and no spoon, then they are humble and modest ; then they can suffer an injury and bear contempt : but give them riches, and they grow insolent; fear and pusillanimity did their first work, and an opportunity to sin undoes it all. " Bonum militera perdidisti, imperatorem pessimuni creasti," said Galba : " You have spoiled a good trooper, when you made me a bad commander." Others can never serve God but when they are prosperous ; if they lose their fortune, they lose their faith, and quit their charity : " Non rata fides, ubi jam melior fortuna ruit ;" if they become poor, they become liars and deceivers of their trust, envious and greedy, restless and uncharitable ; that is, one way or other they show that they love the world, and by all the faith they pretend to, cannot overcome it.
Cast up, therefore, your reckonings impartially ; see what is, what will be required at your hands : do not think you can be justified by faith, unless your faith be greater than all your passions ; you have not the learning, not so much as the common notices of faith, unless you can tell when you are covetous, and reprove yourself when you are proud ; but he that is so, and knows it not (and that is the case of most men), hath no faith, and neither knows God, nor knows himself.
To conclude. He that hath true justifying faith, believes
P Martial, xi. 57.
FAITH WORKING BY LOVE. 291
the power of God to be above the powers of nature ; the goodness of God above the merit and' disposition of our persons ; the bounty of God above the excellency of our works ; the truth of God above the contradiction of our weak arguings and fears ; the love of God above our cold expe- rience and ineffectual reason ; and the necessities of doing- good works above the faint excuses and ignorant pretences of disputing sinners : but want of faith makes us so generally wicked as we are, so often running to despair, so often baffled in our resolutions of a good life : but he whose faith makes him more than conqueror over these difficulties, to him Isaac shall be born even in his old ao-e • the life of God shall be perfectly wrought in him ; and by this faith, so ope- rative, so strong, so lasting, so obedient, he shall be justified, and he shall be saved.
SERMON
PREACHLD AT
THE CONSECRATION
OF
TWO ARCHBISHOPS AND TEN BISHOPS,
IN IHE
CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ST. PATRICK, IN DUBLIN,
January 27, 1660.
TO THE
CHRISTIAN READER.
JVIy obedience to the commands of the Right Honourable the Lord Justices, and the most Reverend and Learned Primate, and to the desires of my Reve- rend Brethren, put it past my inquiry, whether I ought to publish this following Sermon. I will not, therefore, excuse it, and say it might have advan- tages in the delivery, which it would want in the reading ; and the ear would be kind to the piety of it, which was apparent in the design, when the eye would be severe in its censure of those arguments, which, as they could not be longer in that measure of time, so would have appeared more firm, if they could have had liberty to have been pursued to their utmost issue : but reason lies in a little room, and obedience in less ; and although what I have here said, may not stop the mouths of men resolved to keep up a faction, yet I have said enough to the sober and pious, to them who love order, and hearken to the voice of the spouse of Christ, to the loving and to the obedient : and for those that are not so, I have no argument fit to be used, but prayer.
CCXCVl •]() TH K CllUIsri A N UlAUKU.
ami iciidinL'ss to give tlicm u reason, when they shall modestly demand it. In the meantime, I shall only desire them to make use of those truths which the more learned of their party have, by the evidence of fact, been forced to confess. Rivet affirms, that it descended ' ex veteris a3vi reliquiis,' that presbyters should be assistants or conjoined to the bishops (who is by this confessed to be the principal), in the imposition of hands for ordination. Walo Messa- linus acknowledges it to be ' rem antiquissimam,' ' a most ancient thing,' that these two orders, viz., of bishops and presbyters, should be distinct, even in the middle, or in the beginning of the next age after Christ. David Blonde! places it to be thirty-five years after the death of St. John. Now, then, epis- copacy is confessed to be of about one thousand six hundred years' continuance ; and if, before this, they can show any ordination by mere presbyters, by any but an apostle, or an apostolical man; and if there were not visibly a distinction of powers and persons relatively in the ecclesiastical government ; or if they can give a rational account why they, who are forced to confess the honour and distinct order of episcopacy, for about sixteen ages, should, in the dark interval of thirty^five years, in which they can pretend to no monument or record to the contrary, yet make unlearned scruples of things they cannot
TO THE CHRISTIAN READER. CCXCVII
colourably prove ; if, I say, they can reasonably ac- count for these things, I, for my part, will be ready to confess, that they are not guilty of the greatest, the most unreasonable and inexcusable schism in the world ; but else they have no colour to palliate the unlearned crime : for will not all wise men in the world conclude, that the church of God, which was then holy, not in title only and design, but practically and materially, and persecuted, and not immerged in secular temptations, could not, all in one instant, join together to alter that form of church- government, which Christ and his apostles had so recently established, and, without a Divine warrant, destroy a Divine institution, not only to the con- fusion of the hierarchy, but to the ruin of their own souls ? It were strange that so great a change should be, and no good man oppose it: "In toto orbe decretum est ;" so St. Jerome : " All the world consented" in the advancement of the episcopal order ; and, therefore, if we had no more to say for it, yet in prudence and piety we cannot say they would innovate in so great a matter.
But 1 shall enter no further upon this inquiry : only I remember that it is not very many months since the bigots of the popish party cried out against us vehemently, and inquired, ' Where is your church of England, since you have no unity ? for your
CCXCVUl TO THE CHIUSTIAN UK ADEN.
ecclesiastic head of unity, your bishops, are gone :' and if we should be desirous to verify their argu- ment, so as indeed to destroy episcopacy, we should too much advantage popery, and do the most im- prudent and most impious thing in the world. But blessed be God, who hath restored that government, for which our late King, of glorious memory, gave his blood ; and that, methinks, should very much weigh with all the King's true-hearted subjects, who should make it religion not to rob that glorious prince of the greatest honour of such a martyrdom. For my part, I think it fit to rest in these words of another martyr, St. Cyprian : "Si quis cum epis- copo non sit, in ecclesia non esse :" " He that is not with the bishop, is not in the church* :" that is, he that goes away from him, and willingly separates, departs from God's church; and whether he can then be with God, is a very material consideration, and fit to be thought on by all that think heaven a more eligible good than the interests of a faction and the importune desire of rule can countervail.
However, I have, in the following papers, spoken a few things, which, I hope, may be fit to persuade them, that are not infinitely prejudiced; and al- though two or three good arguments are as good as
* Ep. 69.
TO THE CHRISTIAN READER. CCXCIX
two or three hundred, yet my purpose here was to prove the dignity and necessity of the office and order episcopal, only that it might be as an economy to convey notice and remembrances of the great duty incumbent upon all them, that undertake this great charge. The dignity and the duty take one another by the hand, and are born together : only every sheep of the flock must take care to make the bishop's duty as easy as it can, by humility and love, by prayer and by obedience. It is, at the best, very difficult ; but they who oppose themselves to government, make it harder and uncomfortable : but take heed, if thy bishop hath cause to complain to God of thee, for thy perverseness and uncharitable walking, thou wilt be the loser ; and for us, we can only say, in the words of the prophet, " We will weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people*:" but our comfort is in God: for we can do nothing without him, but in him we can do all things : and, therefore, we will pray, " Domine, dabis pacem nobis ; omnia enim opera nostra ope- ratus es in nobis:" "God hath wrought all our works within us; and therefore he will give us peace, and give us his Spirit f."
" Finally : Brethren, pray for us, that the word
* Jerem. ix. 1. f Isa. xxvi. 12.
CCC TO THE CllUIS-TIAN READER.
of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you • and that we may be de- livered from unreasonable and wicked men ; for all men have not faith*."
• 2 Thess. iii. 1.
CONSECRATTON SERMON,
PREACHED AT DUBLIN.
SERMON IV.
A)id the Lord said, Who then is that faithful and wise steivard, whom his Lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season ^
Blessed is that servant whom his Lord, when he cometh, shall find so doing. — Luke, xii. 42, 43.
Tif ecTTiv a^a 'snarog na) ^^ovt/^cg o'ihovo/xo^.
1 HESE words are not properly a question, though they seem so 5 and the particle rig is not interrogative, but hypothe- tical, and extends ' who ' to ' whosoever ; ' plainly meaning, that whoever is a steward over Christ's household, of him God requires a great care, because he hath trusted him with a great employment. Every steward ov xacQeaTmEv b Kupiog, so it is in St. Matthew * ; ov KaTaa-Tria-Ei b Kupiog, so it is in my text; every steward whom the Lord hath or shall appoint over the family, to rule it and to feed it, now and in all gene- rations of men, as long as this family shall abide on earth ; that is, the apostles, and they who were to succeed the apostles in the stewardship, were to be furnished with the same power, and to undertake the same charge, and to give the same strict and severe accounts.
In these words here is something insinuated, and much expressed.
1. Tliat which is insinuated only is, who these stewards
* Cap. xxiv. 25.
302 A CONSECRATION SF.UIMOK,
arc, whom Christ liad, wliom Clirist would appoint over his family, the church : they are not here named, but we shall find them out by their jjroper direction and indigitation by and by.
2. But that which is expressed, is the office itself, in a double capacity. 1. In the disunity of it, it is a rule and a govern- ment : " whom the Lord shall make ruler over his household." 2. In the care and duty of it, which determines the govern- ment to be paternal and profitable ; it is a rule, but such a rule as shepherds have over their flocks, to lead them to good pastures, and to keep them witliin their appointed walks, and within their folds : JiJovaj a-iro/xsTpwr that is the work, " to give them a measure and proportion of nourishment :" Tpo(phv kv Kai^u, so St. Matthew calls it : " meat in the season ;" that which is fit for them, and when it is fit ; meat enough, and meat convenient ; and both together mean that which the Greek poets call a^ixaxinv e/x/xwov^, 'the strong wholesome diet.'
3. Lastly : Here is the reward of the faithful and wise dispensation. The steward that does so, and continues to do so, till his Lord find him so doing, this man shall be blessed in his deed. " Blessed is the servant whom his Lord, when he Cometh, shall find so doing." Of these in order.
1. Who are these rulers of Christ's family? for though Christ knew it, and, therefore, needed not to ask ; yet we have disputed it so much, and obeyed so little, that we have changed the plain hypothesis into an entangled question. The answer yet is easy as to some part of the inquiry : the apostles are the first meaning of the text ; for they were our fathers in Christ, they begat sons and daughters unto God ; and were a spiritual paternity, is evident : we need look no further for spiritual government, because in the paternal rule all power is founded ; they begat the family by the power of the word and the life of the Spirit, and they fed this family, and ruled it, by the word of their proper ministry : they had the keys of this house, the steward's ensign, and they had the ruler's place ; 'for they sat on twelve thrones, and judged the twelve tribes of Israel.' But of this there is no question.
And as little of another proposition ; that this stewardship was to last for ever, for the power of ministering in this office and the office itself were to be perpetual : for the issues and
>• Hesiod. t^y. 765. Gaisford. p. 57.
PREACHED AT DUBLIN. 303
powers of government are more necessary for the perpetu- ating the church, than for the first planting ; and if it wa» necessary that the apostles should have a rod and a staff at first, it would be more necessary afterwards, when the family was more numerous, and their first zeal abated, and their native simplicity perverted into arts of hypocrisy and fornis of godliness, v/hen ' heresies should arise, and the love of many should wax cold.' The apostles had also a power of ordination : and that the very power itself does denote, for it makes perpetuity, that could not expire in the days of the apostles ; for by it they themselves propagated a succession. And Christ, having promised his Spirit to abide with his church for ever, and made his apostles the channels, the ministers and conveyances of it, that it might descend as the inheritance and eternal portion of the family ; it cannot be imagined, that when the first ministers were gone, there should not others rise up in the same places, some like to the first, in the same ofiice and ministry of the Spirit. But the thing is plain and evident in the matter of fact also : " Quod in ecclesia nunc geritur, hoc olim fecerunt apostoli," said St. Cyprian : " AVhat the apostles did at first, that the church does to this day •=," and shall do so for ever : for when St. Paul had given to the bishop of Ephesus tules of govern- ment in this family, he commands that they should be " ob- served till the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ'';" and, therefore, these authorities and charges are given to him and to his successors; it is the observation of St. Ambrose upon the warranty of that text, and is obvious and undeniable.
Well, then, the apostles were the first stewards ; and this office dies not with them, but must for ever be succeeded in ; and now begins the inquiry. Who are the successors of the apostles ? for they are, they must evidently be, the stewards to feed and to rule this family. There are some that say, that all who have any portion of work in the family, all the ministers of the Gospel, are these stewards, and so all will be rulers. The presbyters surely ; for, say they, presbyter and bishop is the same thing, and have the same name in Scrip- ture, and, therefore, the office cannot be distinguished. To
= Epjst. 73. ad Jub. << l Tim. vi. 14.
304 A COXSECH ATrOX SEllMOK,
this I shall very briefly say two things, which will (juickly clear our way through tins bush of thorns.
1. That the word ' presbyter' is but an honourable appel- lative used amongst the Jews, as * alderman' amongst us; but it signifies no order at all, nor was ever used in Scripture to signify any distinct company or order of clergy: and this appears not only by an induction in all the enumerations of the offices ministerial in the New Testament", where to be a presbyter is never reckoned either as a distinct office, or a distinct order; but by its being indifierently communicated to all the superior clergy, and all the princes of the people.
2. The second thing I intended to say, is this: that al- though all tlie superior clergy had not only one, but divers common appellatives, all being called Tr^eafiuTe^oi and ^ioMovoi, even the apostolate itself being called a deaconship'^ ; yet it is evident, that before the common appellatives were fixed into names of propriety, they were as evidently distinguished in their offices and powers, as they are at this day in their names and titles.
To this purpose St. Paul gave to Titus, the bishop of Crete, a special commission, command, and power, to make ordinations ; and in him, and in the person of Timothy, he did erect a court of judicature even over some of the clergy, who yet were called presbyters ; " Against a presbyter receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses S;" there is the measure and the warranty of the * audientia episco- palis,' ' the bishops' audience-court;' and when the accused were found guilty, he gives in charge to proceed to censures ; £X£7%E (XTTOTo/xu;^ and ^£r sTTia-To/xi^Eiv ** You uiust rcbukc them sharply, and you must silence them, stop their mouths'^," that is St. Paul's word ; that they may no more scatter their venom in the ears and hearts of the people. These bishops were commanded " to set in order things that were wanting " in the churches, the same with that power of St, Paul; — " Other things will I set in order, when I come," said he to the Corinthian churches ; in which there were many who were called presbyters, who nevertheless, for all that name, had
« Kom. xii. 6. Eph. iv. 11. 1 Cor. xii. yS. f Acts, i. 2.5.
!>' 1 Tim. V. ly. •' 1 Tit. xi. and 2 Tit. xv.
PREACHED AT DUBLIN. 305
not that power. To the same purpose it is plain in Scripture, that some would have been apostles that were not ; such were those whom the Spirit of God notes in the Ilevelation * ; and some did ' love pre-eminence ' that had it not, for so did Diotrephes ; and some were judges of questions, and all were not, for therefore they appealed to the apostles at Jerusalem ; and St. Philip, though he was an evangelist, yet he could not give confirmation to the Samaritans whom he had baptized, but the apostles were sent for ; for that was part of the power reserved to the episcopal or apostolic order.
Now from these premises, the conclusion is plain and easy. 1. Christ left a government in his church, and founded it in the persons of the apostles. 2. The apostles received this power for the perpetual use and benefit, for the comfort and edification of the church for ever. 3. The apostles had this government ; but all that were taken into the ministry, and all that were called presbyters, had it not. If, therefore, this government, in which there is so much disparity in the very nature, and exercise, and first original of it, must abide for ever 5 then so must that disparity. If the apostoiate, in the first stabiliment, was this eminency of power, then it must be so ; that is, it must be the same in the succession, that it was hi the foundation. For, after the church is founded upon its governors, we are to expect no change of government. If Christ was the author of it, then, as Christ left it, so it must abide for ever : for ever there must be the governing and the governed, the superior and the subordinate, the ordainer and the ordained, the confirmer and the confirmed.
Thus far the way is straight, and the path is plain. The apostles were the stewards and the ordinary rulers of Christ's family, by virtue of the order and oflice apostolical; and although this be succeeded to for ever, yet no man, for his now or at any time being called a presbyter or elder, can pretend to it ; for, besides his being a presbyter, he must be an apostle too ; else, though he be called * in partem sollici- tudinis,' and may do the oflEice of assistance and under-stew- ardship, yet the Kvpo(;, ' the government,' and rule of the family, belongs not to him.
But then t/j apa kui j^/xs^ov, ' who are these stewards and
• Cap. ii. ver. 2. VOL. VI. X
300 A CONSECRATION SF.HMON,
rulerfl over the household now ?' To this the answer is also certain and easy. Christ hath made the same governors to- day as heretofore ; ' apostles still.' For though the twelve apostles are dead, yet the apostolical order is not : it is ralij y£vv>iT/x)), * a generative order,' and begets more apostles. Now who these * minores apostoli' are, the successors of the apostles in that office apostolical and supreme regiment of souls, we are sufficiently taught in holy Scriptures ; which when I have clearly shown to you, I shall pass on to some more practical considerations.
1 . Therefore, certain and known it is, that Christ appointed two sorts of ecclesiastic persons, — twelve apostles, and the seventy-two disciples ; to these he gave a limited commission; to those a fulness of power ; to these a temporary employ- ment ; to those a perpetual and everlasting : from these two societies, founded by Christ, the whole church of God derives the two superior orders in the sacred hierarchy ; and, as bishops do not claim a Divine right but by succession from the apostles, so the presbyters cannot pretend to have been instituted by Christ, but by claiming a succession to the seventy-two. And then consider the difference, compare the tables, and all the world will see the advantages of argument we have ; for, since the seventy-two had nothing but a mission on a temporary errand ; and more than that, we hear nothing of them in Scripture ; but upon the apostles Christ poured all the ecclesiastical power, and made them the ordinary ministers of that Spirit, \ii'hich was to abide with the church for ever : the Divine institution of bishops, that is, of succes- sors to the apostles, is much more clear than that Christ appointed presbyters, or successors of the seventy-two. And yet, if from hence they do not derive it, they can never prove their order to be of Divine institution at all, much less to be so alone.
But we may see the very thing itself — the very matter of fact. St. James, the bishop of Jerusalem, is by St. Paul called an apostle : " Other apostles saw I none, save James, the Lord's brother"*^." For there w'ere some whom the Scrip- tures call ' the apostles of our Lord ;' that is, such which Christ made by his word immediately, or by his Spirit extra-
kGal.i. 19.
PREACHED AT DUBLIN'. 307
ordinarily ; and even into this number and title, Matthias, and St. Paul, and Barnabas, were accounted'. But the church also made apostles'"; and these were called by St. Paul, ccaoaroxoi EKHXria-im, ' apostles of the churches ;' and particularly Epaphroditus was the ' apostle of the Philippians ;' — ' properly so,' saith Primasius ; and ' what is this else but the bishop,' saith Theodoret ; for tov^ vuv naXou/j-evoug kTria-noTroug uvofia^ov aito- a-r6>.ovg, " those who are now called bishops, were then called apostles/' saith the same father. The sense and full meaning of which argument is a perfect commentary upon that famous prophecy of the church, *' Instead of thy fathers, thou shalt have children, whom thou mayest make princes in all lands" ;" that is, not only the twelve apostles, our fathers in Christ, who first begat us, Vv^ere to rule Christ's family, but when they were gone, their children and successors should arise in their stead : ' Et nati natorum, et qui nascentur ab illis :' their direct successors to all generations shall be ' principes populi,' that is, * rulers and governors of the whole catholic church.' — " De prole enim ecclesise crevit eadem paternitas, id est, episcopi quos ilia genuit, et patres appellat, et con- stituit in sedibus patrum," saith St. Austin : " The children of the church become fathers of the faithful ; that is, the church begets bishops, and places them in the seat of fathers, the first apostles."
After these plain and evident testimonies of Scripture, it will not be amiss to say, that this great affair, relying not only upon the words of institution, but on matter of fact, passed forth into a demonstration and greatest notoriety by the doctrine and practice of the whole Catholic church : for so St. Irenseus, who was one of the most ancient fathers of the church, and might easily make good his aflirmative : " We can," says he, " reckon the men, who by the apostles were appointed bishops in churches, to be their successors unto us ; leaving to them the same power and authority which they had." — Thus St. Polycarp was by the apostles made bishop of Smyrna ; St. Clement, bishop of Rome, by St. Peter ; " and divers others by the apostles," saith Ter- tuUian ; saying also, that the Asian bishops were consecrated by St. John. And to be short, that bishops are the sue-
I
' 1 Cor. viii. 23. "> Philip, ii. 25. " Psalm xlv. IS.
308 A CONSECRATION SERMON,
cessors of the apostles in the stewardship and rule of the church, is expressly taught by St. Cyprian", and St. Jerome p, St. Ambrose and St. Austin"', by Euthymius and Pacianus, by St. Gregory and St. John Damasccnus, by Clarius ii Muscula and St. Sixtus, by Anacletus and St. Isidore ; by the Koman council under St. Sylvester, and the council of Cartilage ; and the J'laJoxrj, or * succession' of bishops from the apostles' hands in all the churches apostolical, was as certainly known as in our chronicles we find the succession of our Enolish kin^s, and one can no more be denied than the other. The conclusion from these premises I give you in the words of St. Cyprian : " Cogitent diaconi, qu6d apostolos, id est, episcopos, Dominus ipse elegerit :" " Let the ministers know, that apostles, that is, the bishops, were chosen by our blessed Lord himself':" and this was so evident, and so believed, that St. Austin affirms it with a * Nemo ignorat,' " * No man is so ignorant' but he knows this, that our blessed Saviour appointed bishops over churches ^"
Indeed the Gnostics spake evil of this order ; for they are noted by three apostles, St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. Jude, to be * despisers of government, and to speak evil of dig- nities ;' and what government it was they did so despise, we may understand by the words of St. Jude; they were Iv TJ? dvTi^oyla rou Kofe ' in the contradiction or gainsaying of Corah,' who with his company rose up against Aaron the high priest ; and excepting these, who were the vilest of men, no man, within the first three hundred years after Christ, opposed episcopacy. But when Constantine received the church into his arms, he found it universally governed by bishops ; and, therefore, no wise or good man professing to be a Christian, that is, to believe the holy catholic church, can be content to quit the apostohcal government (that by which the whole family of God was fed, and taught, and ruled), and beget to himself new fathers and new apostles, who, by wanting succession from the apostles of our Lord, have no ecclesias- tical and derivative communion with these fountains of our Saviour.
o In 1 Cor. xii. p In Psm. xliv. i Epist. l, Simpronianuni.
f Epist. 65. ad Rogat. • Quaest. V. et N. T. q. 197.
PREACHED AT DUBLIN. 309
If ever Vincentius Lirinensis's rule could be used in any question, it is in this : '' Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus ;" that bishops are the successors of the apostles in this stewardship, and that they did always rule the family, was taught and acknowledged " always, and every where, and by all men " that were of the church of God : and if these evidences be not sufficient to convince modest and sober persons in this question, we shall find our faith to fail in many other articles, of which we yet are very confident : for the observation of the Lord's day, the consecration of the holy eucharist by priests, the baptizing infants, the com- municating of women, and the very canon of the Scripture itself, rely but upon the same probation; and, therefore, the denying of articles thus proved, is a way, I do not say, to bring in all sects and heresies, — that is but little ; — but a plain path and inlet to atheism and irreligion ; for by this means it will not only be impossible to agree concerning the meaning of Scripture, but the Scripture itself, and all the records of religion, will become useless, and of no efficacy or persuasion.
I am entered into a sea of matter; but I will break it off abruptly, and sum up this inquiry with the words of the council of Chalcedon, which is one of the four generals, by our laws made the measures of judging heresies : "EmaKOTrov fiV TT^etrSuTE^ov ^a9/xov ava<pEp£tv, h^oa-uXiex iariv, '* It is sacnlege tO bring back a bishop to the degree and order of a presbyter." It is indeed a rifling the order, and entangling the gifts, and confounding the method of the Holy Ghost; it is a dis- honouring them whom God would honour, and a robbing them of those spiritual eminences with which the Spirit of God does anoint the consecrated heads of bishops. And I shall say one thing more, which indeed is a great truth, that the diminution of episcopacy was first introduced by popery ; and the popes of Rome, by communicating to abbots, and other mere priests, special graces to exercise some essential offices of episcopacy, have made this sacred order to be cheap, and apt to be invaded. But then add this : if Simon Magus was in so damnable a condition for offering to buy the gifts and powers of the apostolical order, what shall we think of them that snatch them away, and pretend to wear them, whether the apostles and their successors will
310 A CONSECUATION SERMON,
or no ? This is 4,£C(Ta(T9cti to ayiov llvEOfxa, * to belie the Holy Ghost ;' that is the least of it : it is rapine and sacrilege, besides the heresy and schism, and the spiritual lie. For the government episcopal, as it was exemplified in the synagogue, and practised by the same measures in the temple, so it was transcribed by the eternal Son of God, who translated it into a Gospel ordinance : it was sanctified by tlie Holy Spirit, who named some of the persons, and gave to them all power and graces from above : it was subjected in the apostles first, and by them transmitted to a distinct order of ecclesiastics : it was received into all churches, consigned in the records of the holy Scriptures, preached by the universal voice of all the Christian world, delivered by notorious and uninterrupted practice, and derived to further and unquestionable issue by perpetual succession.
I have done with the hardest part of the text, by finding out the persons intrusted, " the stewards of Christ's family ;" which though Christ only intimated in this place, yet he plainly enough manifested in others : the apostles, and their successors the bishops, are the men intrusted with this great charge ; God grant they may all discharge it well. And so I pass from the officers to a consideration of the office itself, in the next words ; " whom the Lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their meat in due season."
2. The office itself is the stewardship, that is episcopacy, the office of the bishop : the name signifies an office of the ruler indefinitely, but the word was chosen, and by the church appropriated to those whom it now signifies, both because the word itself is a monition of duty, and also because the faithful were used to it in the days of Moses and the prophets. The word is in the prophecy of the church : '' I v.'ill give to thee princes in peace, ko.) zTriaKOTroug sv hnaioauvYi, and bishops in righteousness ' ;" upon which place St. Jerome says, " Principes ecclesise vocat futuros episcopos " ;" " The Spirit of God calls them who were to be Christian bishops, * principes,' or * chief rulers,'" and this was no new thing ; for the chief of the priests who were set over the rest, are called bishops by all the Hellenist Jews. Thus Joel is called sTTiaKOTTOi Itt ccuroug, ' the bishop Over the priests";' and the
' Isa. Ix. 17. " Hunc locum etiam citat S. Cicinens, Ep. ad Cor.
? Neh, xi. '.).
PREACHED AT DUBLIN. 311
son of Bani, ema-noTfog Aeuituv, ' the bishop and visitor over the Levites ;' and we find at the purging of the land from idolatry, the high priest placed sTria-KOTrovg e/j o'dcov Kj/^/ov, ' bishops over the house of God^.' Nay, it vi^as the appel- lative of the high priest himself, sTria-jiOTrog 'Exea^a^, ' bishop Eleazar^' the son of Aaron the priest, to whom is com- mitted the care of lamps, and the daily sacrifice, and the holy unction.
Now this word the church retained, choosing the same name to her superior ministers, because of the likeness of the ecclesiastical government between the Old and New Testament.
For Christ made no change but what was necessary : baptism was a rite among the Jews, and the Lord's Supper was but the ' post-coenium' of the Hebrews changed into a mystery, from a type to a more real exhibition ; and the Lord's Prayer was a collection of the most eminent devotions of the prophets and holy men before Christ, who prayed by the same Spirit ; and the censures ecclesiastical were but an imitation of the proceedings of the Judaical tribunals ; and the whole religion was but the law of Moses drawn out of its vail into clarity and manifestation ; and to conclude in order to the present affair, the government which Christ left, w^as the same as he found it ; for what Aaron and his sons, and the Levites, were, in the temple, — that bishops, priests, and deacons, are, in the church: it is affirmed by St. Jerome more than once ; and the use he makes of it is this, '^ Esto subjectus pontifici tuo, et quasi animae parentem suscipe ;" " Obey your bishop, and receive him as the nursing-father of your soul^." But above all, this appellation is made honour- able by being taken by our blessed Lord himself; for he is called in Scripture the * great Shepherd and Bishop of our souls.'
But our inquiry is not after the name, but the office, and the dignity and duty of it : " Ecclesise gubernandae sublimis ac Divina potestas," so St. Cyprian calls it ; "A high and a Divine power from God of governing the church ;" " rem magnam et pretiosam in conspectu Domini," so St. Cyril ;
y 2 Kings, xi. 18. '■ Numb. iv. 16.
* Ejiist. 2. ad Nepot. Epistol. ad Evagrium,
312 A CONSECRATION SERMON,
'* a great and precious thing in the sight of God;" — twv ev av^fwTrci; ibxTaim o^ov, by Isidore Pchisiot ; *' the utmost limit of what is desirable among men:" — but the account upon which it is so desirable, is the same also that makes it formi- dable. They who liave tried it, and did it conscientiously, have found the burden so grent, as to make them stoop with care and labour; and they who do it ignorantly or carelessly, will fnid it will break their bones : for the bishop's ollice is all that duty which can be signified by those excellent words of St. Cyprian: " He is a bishop or overseer of the brother- hood, the ruler of the people, the shepherd of tlie flock, the governor of the church, the minister of Christ, and the priest of God." These are great titles, and yet less than what is said of them in Scriptiu'e, which calls them " salt of the earth, — lights upon a candlestick, — stars and angels, — fathers of our faith, — ambassadors of God, — dispensers of the mysteries of God, — the apostles of the churches, — and the glory of Christ:" — but then they are great burdens too; for the bishop is TTE'STiaTEUfA.Evog Tov T^aov Tou Kv^iou, * intrusted with the Lord's people ;' that is a great charge, but there is a worse matter that follows, koI tov vtte^ ruv 4''^X,^'v aorm Xoyov uTrat- r^idna-o/^Evog- tlie bishop is he, of whom God will require " an account fur all their souls:" they are the words of St. PauP, and transcribed into the fortieth canon of the apostles, and the twenty-fourth canon of the council of Antioch.
And now I hope the envy is taken off; for the honour does not pay for the burden ; and we can no sooner consider episcopacy in its dignity, as it is a rule ; but the very nature of that rule does imply so severe a duty, that as the load of it is almost insufl'erable, so the event of it is very formidable, if we take not great care. For this stewardship is KupLOTvg hoI ^laxovla, ' a principality and a ministry.' So it was in Christ ; he is Lord of all, and yet he was the Servant of all : so it was in the apostles ; it was kxH^o; ^laxoviai koi aTroaroMg, ' their lot W'as to be apostles, and yet to serve and minister*^;' and it is remarkable, that, in Isaiah, the Seventy use the word ETr'ia-KOTrog, or ' bishop ^ ;' but there they use it for the Hebrew word ' nechosheth,' which the Greeks usually render by ifyoJ/wxTnj, (pofohoyoq, TT^aKTccp, and the interlineary translation by * ex-
^ Heb. xiii. 17. <= Acts, i. 25. ^ Isuiab, Ix. 17.
PREACHED AT DUBLIN. 313
actores.' Bishops are only God's ministers and tribute- gatherers, requiring and overseeing them that they do their duty ; and, therefore, here the case is so, and the burden so great, and the dignity so allayed, that the envious man hath no reason to be troubled that his brother hath so great a load, nor the proud man plainly to be delighted with so honour- able a danger. It is indeed a rule, but it is paternal ; it is a government, but it must be neither avayKainiKov nor alax^o- Ksp^k, it is neither ' a power to constrain,' nor ' a commission to get wealth %' for it must be without necessity, and not for filthy lucre sake ; but it is a rule, ^g ^lanovoSvrog, so St. Luke, " as of him that ministers'";" oij ttccvtuv ho>.ou, so St. Mark, '•' as of him that is servant of all s ;" wj Tro^ag wVtovtoj, so St. John''; such a principality as he hath * that washes the feet' of the weary traveller ; or if you please, take it in the words of our blessed Lord himself, that " He that will be chief among you, let him be your minister ;" meaning, that if under Christ's kingdom you desire rule, possibly you may have it; but all that rule under him, are servants to them that are ruled; and, therefore, you get nothing by it, but a great labour and a busy employment, a careful life, and a necessity of making severe accounts. But all this is nothing but the general measures ; I cannot be useful or understood unless I be more particular. The particulars we shall best enumerate by recounting those great conjugations of worthy offices and actions, by which Christian bishops have blessed and built up Christendom ; for because we must be followers of them, as they were of Christ, the recounting what they did worthily in their generations, will not only demonstrate how useful, how profitable, how necessary episcopacy is to the Christian church, but it will, at the same time, teach us our duty, by what services we are to benefit the church, in what works we are to be employed, and how to give an account of our stewardship with joy.
1. The Christian church was founded by bishops, not only because the apostles, who were bishops, were the first preachers of the Gospel, and planters of churches, — but be- cause the apostolical men, whom the apostles used in planting and disseminating religion, were, by all antiquity, affirmed to
<= 1 Pet. V. 1,5. ' Luke, xxii. 27.
r Mark, X. 43. ^ JoI>n, xiii- Ij-
314 A CONSECRATION SERMON,
have been diocesan bishops; insomuch that, as St. Epipha- nius ' witnesses, there were, at the first disseminations of the feith of Christ, many churches, who had in tliem no other clergy, but a bishop and his deacons ; and the presbyters were brought in afterwards, as the harvest grew greater : but the bishops' names are known, they are * recorded in the book of hfe,' and * tlieir praise is in the Gospel ;' such were Timothy and Titus, Clemens and Linus, Marcus and Diony- sius, Onesimus and Caius, Epaphroditus and St. James, our Lord's brother, — Evodius and Simeon; all which, if there be any faith in Christians that gave their lives for a testimony to the faith, and any truth in their stories ; and unless we, who believe Thucydides and Plutarch, Livy and Tacitus, think that all church-story is a perpetual romance, and that all the brave men, the martyrs and the doctors of the primi- tive church, did conspire, as one man, to abuse all Christen- dom for ever ; I say, unless all these impossible suppositions be admitted, — all these, whom I have now reckoned, were bishops fixed in several churches, and had dioceses for their charges.
The consequent of this consideration is this : If bishops were those upon whose ministry Christ founded and built his church, let us consider what great wisdom is required of them that seem to be pillars : the stewards of Christ's family must be wise ; that Christ requires : and if the order be necessary to the church, wisdom cannot but be necessary to the order ; for it is a shame, if they, who, by their office, are fathers in Christ, shall, by their unskilfulness, be but babes themselves, understanding not the secrets of religion, the mysteries of godliness, the perfections of the evangelical law, all the advantages and disadvantages in the spiritual life. A bishop must be exercised in godliness, a man of great ex- perience in the secret conduct of souls, not satisfied with an ordinary skill in making homilies to the people, and speaking- common exhortations in ordinary cases ; but ready to answer in all secret inquiries, and able to convince the gainsayers, and to speak wisdom amongst them that are perfect.
If the first bishops laid the foundation, their successors must not only preserve whatsoever is fundamental, but build up the church in a most holy faith, taking care that no heresy
' Lib. iii. tit. l.
PREACHED AT DUBLIN. 315
sap the foundation, and that no hay or rotten wood be built upon it ; and above all things, that a most holy life be super- structed upon a holy and unreprovable faith. So the apostles laid the foundation, and built the walls of the church, and their successors must raise up the roof as high as heaven. For let us talk and dispute eternally, we shall never compose the controversies in religion, and establish truth upon unalter- able foundations, as long as men handle the word of God deceitfully, that is, with designs and little artifices, and secular partialities; and they will for ever do so, as long as they are proud or covetous. It is not the difficulty of our questions, or the subtilty of our adversaries, that makes disputes interminable ; but we shall never cure the itch of disputing, or establish unity, unless we apply ourselves to humility and contempt of riches. If we will be contending, let us contend like the olive and the vine, who shall produce best and most fruit ; not like the aspin and the elm, which shall make most noise in a wind. And all other methods are a beginning at a wrong end. And as for the people, the way to make them conformable to the wise and holy rules of faith and government, is by reducing them to live good lives. When the children of Israel gave themselves to gluttony, and drunkenness, and filthy lusts, they quickly fell into abomi- nable idolatries ; and St. Paul says, " that men make ship- wreck of their faith by putting away a good conscience ^ :" for the mystery of faith is best preserved sv naSaoix (xwzi^msi, ' in a pure conscience,' saith the same apostle ^ : secure but that, and we shall quickly end our disputes, and have an obedient and conformable people ; but else never.
2. As bishops were the first fathers of churches, and gave them being, so they preserve them in being; for without sacraments there is no church, or it will be starved, and die ; and without bishops there can be no priests, and conse- quently no sacraments ; and that must needs be a supreme order, from whence ordination itself proceeds. For it is evident and notorious, that in Scripture there is no record of ordination, but an apostolical hand was in it; one of the av^^Bg riyou/xEvoi, one of the chief, one of the superior and ' ruling' clergy ; and it is as certain in the descending ages of the
. '' 1 Tiui. i. 19. ' 1 Tim. iii. 'J.
fiJ*
li^
.«•
310
A CONSECRATION SKRMON,
church, the bishop always had tliat power; it was never denied to him, and it was never imputed to presbyters : and St. Jerome himself, when, out of his anger against John, bishop of Jerusalem, he endeavoured to equal the presbyter with the bishop, tliough in very many places he spake otherwise, yet even then also, and in that heat, he excepted ordination, acknowledging that to be the bishop's peculiar. And, there- fore, they who go about to extinguish episcopacy, do as Julian did ; they destroy the presbytery, and starve the flock, and take away their shepherds, and dispark their pastures, and tempt God's providence to extraordinaries, and put the people to hard^shifts, and turn the channels of salvation quite another way, and leave the church to a perpetual uncertainty, whether she be alive or dead, and the people destitute of the life of their souls, and their daily bread, and their spiritual comforts, and holy blessings.
The consequent of this is : if sacraments depend upon bishops, then let us take care that we convey to the people holy and pure materials, sanctified with a holy ministry, and ministered by holy persons : for although it be true, that the efficacy of the sacraments does not depend wholly upon the worthiness of him that ministers; yet it is as true, that it does not wholly rely upon the worthiness of the receiver ; but both together, relying upon the goodness of God, produce all those blessings which are designed. The minister hath an influence into the effect, and does very much towards it ; and if there be a failure there, it is a defect in one of the concur- ring causes ; and, therefore, an unholy bishop is a great dimi- nution to the people's blessing. St. Jerome presses this severely : " Impie faciunt," &.c. " They do wickedly who affirm, that the holy eucharist is consecrated by the words (alone) and solemn prayer of the consecrator, and not also by his life and holiness ^ :" And, therefore, St, Cyprian affirms, that " none but holy and upright men are to be chosen, who, offering their sacrifices worthily to God, may be heard in their prayers for the Lord's people " :" but for others, " Sacri- ficia eorum, panis luctus," saith the prophet Hosea : " Their sacrifices are like the bread of sorrow; whoever eats thereof, shall be defiled."
In Zcph. c. ii.
" Lib. i. Ei». 4.
This' though lii"'^^' in the i-
of our V-
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It:
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the Holy SfutfCil pnyer/vliodNiin holylirej,ai4^
hathnottKkrfif^ to earnest d«B if ^
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¥^
■«:*-.*
PREACHED AT DUBLIN.
317
This discourse is not mine, but St. Cyprian's ; and al- though his words are not to be understood dogmatically, but in the case of duty and caution, yet we may lay our hands upon our hearts, and consider how we shall give an account of our stewardship, if we shall offer to the people the bread of God with impure hands ; it is of itself a pure nourishment ; but if it passes through an unclean vessel, it loses much of its excellency.
3. The like also is to be said concerning prayer; for the episcopal order is appointed by God to be the great ministers of Christ's priesthood, that is, to stand between Christ and the people in the intercourse of prayer and blessing. " We will give ourselves continually to prayer," said the apostles ; that was the one-half of their employment; — and indeed a bishop should spend very much of his time in holy prayer, and in diverting God's judgments, and procuring blessings to the people ; for in all times, the chief of the religion was ever the chief minister of blessing. Thus Abraham blessed Abime- lech, and Melchisedeck blessed Abraham, and Aaron blessed the people ; and " Without all controversy," saith the apostle, " the less is blessed of the greater." But then * v/e know that God heareth not sinners ;' and it must be ' the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man that shall prevail.'
And, therefore, we may easily consider, that a vicious prelate is a great calamity to that flock, which he is ap- pointed to bless and pray for. How shall he reconcile the penitents, who is himself at enmity with God ? How shall the Holy Spirit of God descend upon the symbols at his prayer, who does perpetually grieve him, and quench his holy fires, and drive him quite away? How shall he that hath not tasted of the Spirit by contemplation, stir up others to earnest desires of celestial things .'' Or what good shall the people receive, when the bishop lays upon their head a covetous or a cruel, an unjust or an impure hand? But, therefore, that 1 may use the words of St. Jerome, " Cum ab episcopo gratia in populum transfundatur, et mundi totius et ecclesise totius condimentum sit episcopus"," &c. Since it is intended that from the bishop grace should be diffused amongst all the people, there is not in the world a greater
5
>e.
" Dial. adv. Lucifer.
310 A CONSECRATION SERMON,
church, the bishop always had that power; it was never denied to him, and it was never imputed to presbyters : and St. Jerome himself, wlien, out of his anger against John, bishop of Jerusalem, he endeavoured to equal the presbyter with the bishop, though in very many places he spake otherwise, yet even then also, and in that heat, he excepted ordination, acknowledging that to be the bishop's peculiar. And, there- fore, they who go about to extinguish episcopacy, do as Julian did ; they destroy the presbytery, and starve the Hock, and take away their shepherds, and dispark their pastures, and tempt God's providence to extraordinaries, and put the people to hard^shifts, and turn the channels of salvation quite another way, and leave the church to a perpetual uncertainty, whether she be alive or dead, and the people destitute of the life of their souls, and their daily bread, and their spiritual comforts, and holy blessings.
The consequent of this is : if sacraments depend upon bishops, then let us take care that we convey to the people holy and pure materials, sanctified with a holy ministry, and ministered by holy persons : for although it be true, that the efficacy of the sacraments does not depend wholly upon the worthiness of him that ministers; yet it is as true, that it does not wholly rely upon the worthiness of the receiver ; but both together, relying upon the goodness of God, produce all those blessings which are desipned. The minister hath an influence into the effect, and does very much towards it ; and if there be a failure there, it is a defect in one of the concur- ring causes ; and, therefore, an unholy bishop is a great dimi- nution to the people's blessing. St. Jerome presses this severely : " Impie faciunt," &,c. " They do wickedly who affirm, that the holy eucharist is consecrated by the words (alone) and solemn prayer of the consecrator, and not also by his life and holiness >" :" And, therefore, St. Cyprian affirms, that " none but holy and upright men are to be chosen, who, offering their sacrifices worthily to God, may be heard in their prayers for the Lord's people" :" but for others, " Sacri- ficia eorum, panis luctus," saith the prophet Hosea : " Their sacrifices are like the bread of sorrow; whoever eats thereof, shall be defiled."
"> In Zcph. c, ii. " Lib, i. Ep. 4.
PREACHED AT DUBLIN. 317
This discourse is not mine, but St. Cyprian's ; and al- though his words are not to be understood dogmatically, but in the case of duty and caution, yet we may lay our hands upon our hearts, and consider how we shall give an account of our stewardship, if we shall offer to the people the bread of God with impure hands ; it is of itself a pure nourishment ; but if it passes through an unclean vessel, it loses much of its excellency.
3. The like also is to be said concerning prayer; for the episcopal order is appointed by God to be the great ministers of Christ's priesthood, that is, to stand betv:een Christ and the people in the intercourse of prayer and blessing. " We will give ourselves continually to prayer," said the apostles ; that was the one-half of their employment; — and indeed a bishop should spend very much of his time in holy prayer, and in diverting God's judgments, and procuring blessings to the people ; for in all times, the chief of the religion was ever the chief minister of blessing. Thus Abraham blessed Abime- lech, and Melchisedeck blessed Abraham, and Aaron blessed the people ; and " Without all controversy," saith the apostle, " the less is blessed of the oTeater." But then ' we know that God heareth not sinners ;' and it must be ' the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man that shall prevail.'
And, therefore, w^e may easily consider, that a vicious prelate is a great calamity to that flock, which he is ap- pointed to bless and pray for. How shall he reconcile the penitents, who is himself at enmity with God ? How shall the Holy Spirit of God descend upon the symbols at his prayer, who does perpetually grieve him, and quench his holy fires, and drive him quite away? How shall he that hath not tasted of the Spirit by contemplation, stir up others to earnest desires of celestial things ? Or what good shall the people receive, when the bishop lays upon their head a covetous or a cruel, an unjust or an impure hand? But, therefore, that I may use the words of St. Jerome, " Cum ab episcopo gratia in populum transfundatur, et mundi totius et ecclesise totius condimentum sit episcopus "," &c. Since it is intended that from the bishop grace should be diffused amongst all the people, there is not in the world a greater
» Dial. adv. Lucifer.
318 A CONSECRATION SERMON,
indecency than ii holy ofiicc ministered by an unholy person, and no greater injury to the people, than that of the blessings which God sends to them by the ministries evangelical, they should be cheated and defrauded by a wicked steward. And, therefore, it was an excellent prayer, which to this very purpose was, by the son of Sirach, made in behalf of the high priests, the sons of Aaron : " God give you wisdom in your lieart, to judge his people in righteousness, that their good things be not abolished, and that their glory may endure for ever p."
4. All the offices ecclesiastical always were, and ought to be, conducted by the episcopal order, as is evident in the imiversal doctrine and practice of the primitive church : O/ TTpEa^uTE^oi Kcc) ^tdtcovoi uvtv yvui/jcy^g tou sTna-KOTrov [xyi^Iv E'n'iTE^.ehcoa-av. It is the fortieth canon of the apostles, " Let the presbyters and deacons do nothing without leave of the bishop '^ ;" but that case is known.
The consequent of this consideration is no other than the admonition in my text: " We are stewards of the manifold grace of God," and dispensers of the mysteries of the king- dom ; and " it is required of stewards that they be found faithful "■ ;" " that we preach the word of God in season and out of season, — that we rebuke and exhort, admonish and correct:" — for these God calls " pastores secundum cor meum," " pastors according to his own heart, which feed the people with knowledge and understanding = ;" but they must also ' comfort the afflicted, and bind up the broken heart;' minister the sacraments Vv^ith great diligence, and righteous measures, and abundant charity, always having in mind those passionate words of Christ to St. Peter: " If thou lovest me, feed my sheep ; if thou hast any love to me, feed my lambs."
And let us remember this also, that nothing can enforce the people to obey their bishops as they ought, but our doing that duty and charity to them which God requires. There is reason in these words of St. Chrysostom : " It is necessary that the church should adhere to their bishop, as the body to the head, as plants to their roots, as rivers to their springs,
P Eccles. xlv. 26. t Et 24 C. Concil. Antiocli.
■" 1 Cor. iv, 1, 2, 3. ' Jer. iii. 15.
PREACHED AT DUBLIN. 319
as children to their fathers, as disciples to their masters." These similitudes express not only the relation and depend- ence, but they tell us the reason of the duty : the head gives light and reason to conduct the body ; the roots give nourish- ment to the plants ; and the springs, perpetual emanation of waters to the channels : fathers teach and feed their children; and disciples receive v^ise instructions from their masters : and if we be all this to the people, they will be all that to us ; and wisdom will compel them to submit, and our humility will teach them obedience, and our charity will invite their compliance ; our good example will provoke them to good works, and our meekness will melt them into softness and flexibihty : for all the Lord's people are ' populus voluntarius/ * a free and willing people ;' and we, who cannot compel their bodies, must thus constrain their souls, by inviting their wills, by convincing their understandings, by the beauty of fair example, the efficacy and holiness, and the demonstra- tions of the Spirit,
This is ' experimentum ejus, qui in nobis loquitur Chris- tus,' ' the experiment of Christ that speaketh in us : ' for to this purpose those are excellent words which St. Paul spake : " Remember them who have the rule over you : whose faith follow, considerino; the end of their conversation ^" There lies the demonstration ; and those prelates who teach good life, whose sermons are the measures of Christ, and whose life is a copy of their sermons, these must be followed, and surely these will ; for these are burning and shining lights : but if we hold forth false fires, and by the amusement of evil examples, call the vessels that sail upon a dangerous sea, to come upon a rock or an iron shore instead of a safe harbour, we cause them to make shipwreck of their precious faith, and to perish in the deceitful and unstable waters : ' Vox operum fortius sonat quam verborum :' ' a good life is the strongest argument that your faith is good,' and a gentle voice will be sooner entertained than a voice of thunder ; but the greatest eloquence in the world is a meek spirit and a hberal hand ; these are the two pastoral staves the prophet speaks of, " nognam et hovehm," " beauty and bands « ;" he that hath the staff of the beauty of holiness, the ornament of fair
' Heb. xiii.7. " Zech. xi. 7.
320 A CONSECRATION SEUMOX,
exam|)lc, he hath also the staflf of hands : " Atqno in fimiculis Adam trahet cos, in vinculis charitalis," as the pro])hc't llosea's expression is, " He sliall draw the people after him hy the cords of a man, by the bands of a holy charity *.'' But if, against all these demonstrations, any man will be refrac- tory, we have, instead of a staff, an apostolical rod, which is the last and latest remedy, and either brings to repentance, or consigns to ruin and reprobation.
If there were any time remaining, I could reckon that the episcopal order is the principle of vmity in the churcli ; and we see it is so, by the innumerable sects that sprang up, when episcopacy was persecuted. I could add, how that bishops were the cause that St. John wrote his Gospel ; that the Christian faith was, for three hundred years together, bravely defended by the sufferings, the prisons and flames, the life and the death of bishops, as the principal combatants ; that the fathers of the church, whose writings are held in so great veneration in all the Christian world, were almost all of them bishops. I could add, that the reformation of religion in England was principally by the preachings and the dis- putings, the writings and the martyrdom of bishops : that bishops have ever since been the greatest defensatives against popery : that England and Ireland were governed by bishops ever since they were Christian, and under their conduct have, for so many ages, enjoyed all the blessings of the Gospel. I could add also, that episcopacy is the great stabiliment of monarchy ; but of this we are convinced by a sad and too dear-bought experience : I could therefore, instead of it, say, that episcopacy is the great ornament of religion; that as it rescues the clergy from contempt, so it is the greatest pre- servative of the people's liberty from ecclesiastic tyranny on one hand (the gentry being little better than servants, while they live imder the presbytery), and anarchy and licentious- ness on the other ; that it endears obedience, and is subject to the laws of princes, and is wholly ordained for the good of mankind, and the benefit of souls. But I cannot stay to number all the blessings, which have entered into the world at this door : I only remark these, because they describe unto us the bishop's employment, which is, to be busy in the
* Cap. xi. 4.
PREACHED AT DUBLIN. 321
service of souls, — to do good in all capacities, — to serve every man's need, — to promote all public benefits, — to cement governments, — to establish peace, — to propagate the kingdom of Christ, — to do hurt to no man, — to do good to every man ; — that is, so to minister, that religion and charity, public peace and private blessings, may be in their exaltation.
As long as it was thus done by the primitive bishops, the prmces and the people gave them all honour; insomuch, that by a decree of Constantino the Great, the bishop had power given him to retract the sentences made by the presidents of provinces ; and we find, in the acts of St. Nicholas, that he rescued some innocent persons from death, when the execu- tioner was ready to strike the fatal blow ; which thing, even when it fell into inconvenience, was indeed forbidden by Arcadius and Honorius; but the confidence and honour was only changed, it was not taken away ; for the condemned criminal had leave to appeal to the 'Audientia Episcopalis,' to ' the Bishops' Court.' This was not any right which the bishops could challenge, but a reward of their piety ; and so long as the holy office was holily administered, the w^orld found so much comfort and security, so much justice and mercy, so many temporal and spiritual blessings, consequent to the ministries of that order, that, as the Galatians to St. Paul, ' men have plucked aut their eyes ' to do them service, and to do them honour. For then episcopacy did that good that God intended by it ; it v/as a spiritual govern- ment, by spiritual persons, for spiritual ends. Then the princes and the people gave them honours, because they de- served, and sought them not ; then they gave tliem wealth, because they would dispend it wisely, frugally, and charitably ; then they gave them power, because it was sure to be used for the defence of the innocent, for the relief of the oppressed, for the punishment of evil-doers, and the reward of the vir- tuous. Then they desired to be judged by them, because their audiences, or courts, did h<Tux°<-i^^v to ^ap^a^ikov, ' they appeased all furious sentences,' and taught gentle principles, and gave merciful measures, and in their courts were all equity and piety, and Christian determinations.
But afterwards, when they did fall t/f ^uvaardav, Mnto se- cular methods,' and made their counsels vain by pride, and
VOL. VI. V
322 A CONSECRATION SERMON,
dirtied their sentences with money, then they became like other men ; and so it will be, unless the bishops be more holy than other men : but when our sanctity and severity shall be as eminent as the calling is, then we shall be called to councils, and sit in public meetings, and bring comfort to private fami- lies, and rule in the hearts of men by a 'jus relationis,' such as was between the Roman emperors and the senate ; they courted one another into power, and, in giving honour, strove to outdo each other ; for from an humble wise man no man will snatch an employment that is honourable ; but from the proud and from the covetous every man endeavours to wrest it, and thinks it lawful prize.
My time is now done ; and, therefore, I cannot speak to the third part of my text, the reward of the good steward and of the bad ; I shall only mention it to you in a short exhort- ation, and so conclude. In the primitive church, a bishop was never admitted to public penance ; not only because in them every crime is ten, and he that could discern a public shame, could not deserve a public honour ; nor yet only because every such punishment was scandalous, and did more evil by the example of the crime, than it could do good by the example of the punishment ; but also because no spiritual power is higher than the episcopal, and therefore they were to be referred to the Divine judgment, which was likely to fall on them very heavily: '^ix^ToiJ.-na-Ei ax^yK^rov o Ku^iog, '* the Lord will cut the evil stewards asunder ;" he will suffer schisms and divisions to enter in upon us, and that will sadly cut us asunder ; but the evil also shall fall upon their persons, like the punishment of quartering traitors, 'Iva nal as ha/xEXEicrT) TaiJi-no-ri, punishment with the circumstances of detestation and exemplarity. Consider, therefore, what is your great duty. Consider what is your great danger. The lines of duty I have already described ; only remember how dear and precious souls are to God, since for their salvation Christ gave his blood ; and therefore will not easily lose them, whom, though they had sinned against him, yet he so highly valued : remem- ber that you are Christ's deputies in the care of souls, and that you succeed in the place of the apostles. " Non est facile stare loco Pauh, et tenere gradum Petri ;" you have under- taken the work of St. Paul, and the office of St. Peter ; and what, think you, upon this account, will be required of us ?
PREACHED AT DUBLIN^ 323
St. Jerome expresses it thus : '' The wisdom and skill of a bishop ought to be so great, that his countenance, his gesture, his motion, every thing should be vocal, " ut quicquid agit, quicquid loquitur, doctrina sit apostolorum :" '' that vv^hatever he does or speaks, be doctrine apostolical." The ancient fathers had a pious opinion, that besides the angel-guardian which is appointed to the guard of every man, there is to every bishop a second angel appointed to him at the conse- cration ; and to this Origen alludes, saying that every bishop- rick hath two angels, the one visible and the other invisible. This is a great matter, and shows what a precious thing that order and those persons are in the eyes of God ; but then this also means, that we should live angelic hves, which the church rarely well expresses by saying, that episcopal dignity is the ecclesiastic state of perfection, and supposes the persons to be so far advanced in hohness, as to be in the state of con- firmation in grace. But I shall say nothing of these things, because it may be they press too hard ; but the use I shall make of it, upon occasion of the reward of the good and bad steward, is to remind you of your great danger. For if it be required of bishops to be so wise and so holy, so industrious and so careful, so busy and so good, up to the height of best examples ; if they be anointed of the Lord, and are the hus- bands of the churches ; if they be the shepherds of the flock, and stewards of the household ; it is very fit they consider their danger, that they may be careful to do their duty. St. Bernard considers it well in his epistle to Henry, archbishop of Sens : — If I, lying in my cell, and smoking under a bushel, not shining, yet cannot avoid the breath of the winds, but that my light is almost blown out; what will become of my candle, if it were placed on a candlestick, and set upon a hill .? I am to look to myself alone, and provide for my own salva- tion ; and yet I offend myself, I am weary of myself, I am my own scandal and my own danger ; my own eye and mine own belly, and my own appetite, find me work enough ; and there- fore God help them, who, beside themselves, are answerable for many others. Jacob kept the sheep of Laban, and we keep the sheep of Christ ; and Jacob was to answer for every sheep that was stolen, and every lamb that was torn by the wild beast; and so shall we too, if by our fault, one of Christ's sheep perish ; and yet it may be, there are one hundred
324 A COXSECRATION SERMON,
Ihousoiid souls committed to the care and conduct of some one shepherd, who yet will find his own soul work enough for all his care and watchfulness. If any man should desire me to carry a frigate into the Indies, in which one hundred men were embarked, I were a madman to undertake the charge without proportionable skill ; and, therefore, when there is more danger, and more souls, and rougher seas, and more secret rocks, and horrible storms, and the shipwreck is an eternal loss, the matter will then require great consideration in the undertaking, and greatest care in the conduct.
Upon this account we find many brave persons, in the first and in the middle ages of the church, with great resolution refusing episcopacy. I will not speak of those, who, for fear of martyrdom, declined it, but those, who, for fear of dam- nation, did refuse. St. Bernard was by three rich cities severally called to be their bishop, and by two to be their archbishop, and he refused them ; St. Dominicus refused four successively ; St. Thomas Aquinas refused the archbishoprick of Naples ; and Vincentius Ferrarius would not accept of Valentia or Ilerda ; and Bernardinus Senensis refused the bishopricks of Sens, Urbin, and Ferrara. They had reason ; and yet, if they had done amiss in that office which they de- clined, it had been something more excusable ; but if they that seek it, be as careless in the office as they are greedy of the honour, that will be found intolerable. " Electus epis- copus ambulat in disco, recusans volvitur in area," said the hermit in St. Jerome ; " The bishop walks upon round and trundling stones ; but he that refuses it, stands upon a floor." But I shall say no more of it; because I suppose you have read it, and considered it, in St. Chrysostom's six books ' de Sacerdotio;' in the Apologetic of St. Gregory of Nazianzus; in the pastoral of St. Gregory of Rome ; in St. Dionysius's eighth epistle to Demophilus ; in the letters of Epiphanius to St. Jerome ; in St. Austin's epistle to bishop Valerius ; in St. Bernard's life of St. Malcahy ; in St. Jerome's one hundred and thirty-eighth epistle to Fabiola. These things, I am sure, you could not read without trembling ; and certainly, if it can belong to any Christian, then — " work out your salvation with fear and trembling" — that is the bishop's burden. For the bishop is like a man that is surety for his friend ; he is bound for many, and for great sums ; what is to be done in
PREACHED AT DUBLIN. 325
this case, Solomon's answer is the way : " Do this now, my son, deliver thyself, make sure thy friend, give not sleep to thine eyes, nor slumber to thine eye-lids >' :" that is, be sedu- lous to discharge thy trusty to perform thy charge ; be zealous for souls, and careless of money : and remember this, that even in Christ's family there was one sad example of an apostate apostle ; and he fell into that fearful estate merely by the desire and greediness of money. Be warm in zeal, and indifferent in thy temporalities : for he that is zealous in temporals, and cold in the spiritual ; he that doth the acces- sories of his calling by himself, and the principal by his depu- ties ; he that is present at the feast of sheep-shearing, and puts others to feed the flock ; hath no sign at all upon him of a good shepherd. "It is not fit for us to leave the word of God, and to serve tables," said the apostles. And if it be a less w^orthy office to serve the tables even of the poor, to the diminution of our care in the dispensation of God's word, — it must needs be an unworthy employment to leave the word of God, and to attend the rich and superfluous furniture of our own tables. Remember the quality of your charges : " Civitas est, vigilate ad custodiam et concordiam ; sponsaest, studete amari ; oves sunt, intendite pastui z." ' The church is a spouse ;' the universal church is Christ's spouse, but your own diocese is yours ; ' behave yourselves, so that ye be beloved. Your people are as sheep,' and they must be fed, and guided, and preserved, and healed, and brought home. *■ The church is a city,' and you are the watchmen ; * take care that the city be kept at unity in itself;' be sure to make peace amongst your people ; suffer no hatreds, no quarrels, no suits at law amongst the citizens, which you can avoid ; make peace in your dioceses by all the ways of prudence, piety, and authority, that you can ; and let not your own corrections of criminals be to any purpose but for their amendment, for the cure of offenders as long as there is hope, and for the security of those who are sound and whole. Preach often, and pray continually ; let your discipline be with charity, and your censures slow ; let not excommunications pass for trifles, and drive not away the fly from your brother's forehead with a hatchet; give counsel frequently, and dispensations seldom, but never without ne-
> Prov. vi. 3, 4. * D. Bernard, ad Henr. Episc. Senensem.
326 A CONSECRATION SERMON,
cessity or i^reat charity ; let every place in your diocese say, " luvenerunt me vigiles," "The watchmen have found me out," • hassovehm ;' they that walk the city round have sought me out, and found me. " Let every one of us," as St. Paul's* expression is, " show himself a workman that shall not be ashamed;" ' operarium inconfusibilem,' mark that; 'such a labourer as shall not be put to shame' for his illness or his unskilfulness, his falseness and unfaithfulness, in that day when the great Bishop of souls shall make his last and dreadful visitation ; for, be sure, there is not a carcass nor a skin, not a lock of wool nor a drop of milk of the whole flock, but God shall for it call the idle shepherd to a severe account. And how, think you, will his anger burn, when he shall see so many goats standing at his left hand, and so few sheep at his right I and, upon inquiry, shall find that his ministering shep- herds w ere w olves in sheep's clothing ? and that, by their ill example or pernicious doctrines, their care of money and carelessness of their flocks, so many souls perish, who, if they had been carefully and tenderly, wisely and conscientiously handled, might have shined as bright as angels ? And it is a sad consideration to remember, how many souls are pitifully handled in this world, and carelessly dismissed out of this world ; they are left to live at their own rate, and when they are sick, they are bidden to be of good comfort, and then all is well ; who, when they are dead, find themselves cheated of their precious and invaluable eternity. Oh, how will those souls, in their eternal prisons, for ever curse those evil and false guides ! And how will those evil guides themselves abide in judgment, when the angels of wrath snatch their abused people into everlasting torments ? For will God bless them, or pardon them, by whom so many souls perish ? Shall they reign with Christ, who evacuate the death of Christ, and make it useless to dear souls? Shall they partake of Christ's glories, by whom it comes to pass that there is less joy in heaven itself, even because sinners are not converted, and God is not glorified, and the people is not instructed, and the kingdom of God is not filled ? Oh no ; the curses of a false prophet will fall upon them, and the reward of the evil steward will be their portion; and they who destroyed the sheep, or
^2 Tim. ii.
PREACHED AT DUBLIN. 327
neglected them^ shall have their portion with goats for ever and ever, in everlasting burnings, in which it is impossible for a man to dwell.
Can any thing be beyond this? beyond damnation ? Surely a man would think not : and yet I remember a severe saying of St. Gregory, '' Scire debent prselati, quod tot mortibus digni sunt, quot perditionis exempla ad subditos extenderunt :" * One damnation is not enough for an evil shepherd ; but for every soul who dies by his evil example or pernicious care- lessness, he deserves a new death, a new damnation.' — Let us, therefore, be wise and faithful, walk warily, and watch care- fully, and rule diligently, and pray assiduously ; for God is more prepense to rewards than to punishments ; and the good steward, that is wise and faithful in his dispensation, shall be greatly blessed. But how ? " He shall be made ruler over the household." What is that? for he is so already. True : but he shall be much more ; * Ex dispensatore faciet procuratorem ;' God will treat him, as Joseph was treated by his master ; ' he was first a steward, and then a procurator ;' one that ruled his goods without account, and without restraint. Our ministry shall pass into empire, our labour into rest, our watchfulness into fruition, and our bishoprick to a kingdom. In the mean time, our bishopricks are a great and weighty care, and, in a spiritual sense, our dominion is founded in grace, and our rule is in the hearts of the people, and our strengths are the powers of the Holy Ghost, and the weapons of our warfare are spi- ritual ; and the eye of God watches over us curiously, to see if we watch over our flocks by day and by night. And though the primitive church, as the ecclesiastic histories observe, when they deposed a bishop from his office, ever concealed his crime, and made no record of it, yet remember this, that God does and will call us to a strict and severe account. Take heed that you may never hear that fearful sentence, " I was hungry, and ye gave me no meat." If you suffer Christ's httle ones to starve, it will be required severely at your hands. And know this, that the time will quickly come, in which God shall say unto thee, in the words of the prophet, " Where is the flock that was given thee, thy beautiful flock ? What wiitthou say when he shall visit thee ^ ?"
•> Jer. xiii. 20, 21.
328 A CONSECRATION SERMON, &C.
God, of his mercy, grant unto us all to be so faithful and so wise as to convert souls, and to be so blessed and so assisted, that we may give an account of our charges with joy, to the glory of God, to the edification and security of our flocks, and the salvation of our own souls, in that day when the great Shepherd and Bishop of our souls shall come to judgment, even our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; to whom, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory, love and obedience, now and for ever more, Amen.
I
SERMON
PREACHED AT THE OPENING
OF THE
PARLIAMENT OF IRELAND,
May 8, 1661,
BEFORE THE RIGHT HONOITRABLE THE LORDS JUSTICES, AND THE LORDS • SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL, AND THE COMMONS.
TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
THE LORDS SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL,
AND COMMONS OF IRELAND,
ASSEMBLED IN PARLIAMENT.
MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN,
I OUGHT not to dispute your commands for the printing my Sermon of Obedience, lest my sermon should be * protestatio contra factum.' Here I know my example would be the best use to this doctrine ; and I am sure to find no inconveniency so great, as that of disobedience ; neither can I be confident that I am wise in any thing, but when I obey ; for then I have the wisdom of my superior for my warrant, or my excuse. I remember the saying of Aurelius the emperor, '* ^quius est me tot et talium amicorum consilium, quam tot tales meam unius- voluntatem sequi." I could easily have pretended excuses ; but that day I had taught others the con- trary, and I would not shed that chalice, which my own hands had newly filled with waters issuing from the fountains of salvation.
CCCXXXll THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY.
My eyes are almost grown old with seeing the horrid mischiefs, which came from rebellion and disobedience ; and I would willingly now be blest with observation of peace and righteousness, plenty and religion, which do already, and I hope shall for ever, attend upon obedience to the best King, and the best Church, in the world. I see no objection against my hopes, but that which ought least of all, in this case, to be pretended. Men pretend conscience against obedience, expressly against St. Paul's doctrine, teaching us to ' obey for conscience' sake ;' but to disobey for conscience in a thing indifferent, is never to be found in the books of our religion.
It is very hard, when the prince is forced to say to his rebellious subject, as God did to his stubborn people, ' Quid faciam tibi ?' I have tried all the ways I can to bring thee home, and * what shall I now do unto thee V The subject should rather say, * Quid me vis facere V ' What wilt thou have me to do V This question is the best end of disputations. " Corrumpitur atque dissolvitur imperantis officium, si quis ad id quod facere jussus est, non obsequio debito, sed consilio non considerato, respondeat," said one in A. Gellius : When a subject is com- manded to obey, and he disputes, and says, ' Nay, but the other is better;' he is like a seryant that
THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY. CCCXXXIU
gives his master necessary counsel, when he requires of him a necessary obedience. " Utilius pare re edicto quam efFerre consilium;" "He had better obey than give counsel ;" by how much it is better to be profitable than to be witty, to be full of good- ness, rather than full of talk and argument.
But all this is acknowledged true in strong men, but not in the weak ; in vigorous, but not in tender consciences ; for obedience is strong meat, and will not down with weak stomachs ; as if, in the world, any thing were easier than to obey ; for we see that the food of children is milk and laws ; the breast- milk of their nurses, and the commands of their parents, is all that food and government, by which they are kept from harm and hunger, and conducted to life and wisdom. And, therefore, they that are weak brethren, of all things in the world, have the least reason to pretend an excuse for disobedience ; for nothing can secure them but the wisdom of the laws ; for they are like children in minority — they cannot be trusted to their own conduct ; and, there- fore, must live at the public charge ; and the wisdom of their superiors is their guide and their security. And this was wisely advised by St. Paul : " Him that is weak in the faith, receive, but not to doubtful disputations ;" that is not the way for him ; children must not dispute with their fathers and their masters.
CCCXXXIV THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY.
11' old men will dispute, let them look to it; that is meat for the strong indeed, though it be not very nutritive ; but the laws and the counsels, the ex- hortations and the doctrines of our spiritual rulers, are the measures, by which God hath ap})ointed babes in Christ to become men, and the weak to become strong ; and they that are not to be received to doubtful disputations, are to be received with the arms of love, into the embraces of a certain and regular obedience.
But it would be considered, that ' tenderness of conscience' is an equivocal term, and does not always signify in a good sense. For a child is of tender flesh ; but he whose foot is out of joint, or hath a bile in his arm, or hath strained a sinew, is much more tender. The tenderness of age is that weak- ness, that is in the ignorant and the new beginners : the tenderness of a bile, — that is soreness indeed, rather than tenderness, — is of the diseased, the abused, and the mispersuaded. The first, indeed, are to be tenderly dealt with, and have usages accordingly ; but that is the same I have already told ; you must teach them, you must command them, you must guide them, you must choose for them, you must be their guardians, and they must comport themselves accordingly. But for that tenderness of conscience, which is the disease and soreness of conscience, it
THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY. CCCXXXV
must be cured by anodynes and soft usages, unless they prove ineiFective, and that the lancet may be necessary. But there are amongst us such tender stomachs that cannot endure milk, but can very well digest iron ; consciences so tender, that a ceremony is greatly offensive, but rebellion is not ; a surplice drives them away, as a bird affrighted with a man of clouts, but their consciences can suffer them to despise government, and speak evil of dignities, and curse all that are not of their opinion, and disturb the peace of kingdoms, and commit sacrilege, and account schism the character of saints. The true tenderness of conscience is, 1. That which is impa- tient of a sin ; 2. It will not endure any thing that looks like it; and 3. It will not give offence. Now, since all sin is disobedience, 1. It will be rarely contingent that a man, in a Christian commonwealth, shall be tied to disobey, to avoid sin ; and certain it is, if such a case could happen, yet 2. Nothing of our present question is so like a sin, as when we refuse to obey the laws. To stand in a clean vest- ment is not so ill a sight as to see men stand in separation ; and to kneel at the communion, is not so like idolatry, as rebellion is to witchcraft. And then, 3. For the matter of * giving offences,' what scandal is greater than that which scandalizes the laws ? And who is so carefully to be observed, lest
CCCXXXVl THE EPISTLE DEDICATOKY.
he be offended, as the King? And if that which offends the weak brother, is to be avoided, much more that which offends the strong ; for this is cer- tainly really criminal ; but for the other, it is much odds but it is mistaken. And when the case is so put, between the obedient and the disobedient, which shall be offended, and one will, — I suppose there is no question but the laws will take more care of subjects than of rebels, and not weaken them in their duty, in compliance with those that hate the laws, and will not endure the government.
And after all this in the conduct of government, what remedy can there be to those, that call them- selves ' tender consciences V I shall not need to say, that every man can easily pretend it ; for we have seen the vilest part of mankind, men that have done things so horrid, worse than which the sun never saw, yet pretend tender consciences against ecclesiastical laws. But I will suppose that they are really such ; that they, in the simplicity of their hearts, follow Absalom, and in weakness hide their heads in little conventicles, and places of separation, for a trifle ; what would they have done for them- selves ?
If you make a law of order, and, in the sanction, put a clause of favour for tender consciences, do not you invite every subject to disobedience by impu-
THE EPISTLE. DEDICATORY. CCCXXXVll
nity, and teach him how to make his own excuse ? Is not such a law, a law without an obligation? May not every man choose whether he will obey or no ? and if he pretends to disobey out of conscience, is not he that disobeys, equally innocent with the obedient ; altogether as just, as not having done any thing without leave ; and yet much more re- ligious and conscientious ? * Quicunque vult,' is but an ill preface to a law ; and it is a strange obligation, that makes no diiference between him that obeys and him that refuses to obey.
But what course must be taken with ' tender consciences?' Shall the execution of the law be suspended as to all such persons ? That will be all one with the former : for if the execution be com- manded to be suspended, then the obligation of the law by command is taken away, and then it were better there were no law made. And indeed that is the pretension, that is the secret of the business ; they suppose the best way to prevent disobedience is to take away all laws. It is a short way indeed ; there shall then be no disobedience; but, at the same time, there shall be no government : but the remedy is worse than the disease ; and to take away all wine and strong drink, to prevent drunkenness, would not be half so great a folly.
I cannot, therefore, tell what to advise in this
VOL. VI. z
eccxxxvin the eimstle dedicatouv.
])articular, but that every s])iritual guide should consider who are tender consciences, and who are weak brethren, and use all the ways of piety and prudence to instruct and to inform them, that they may increase in knowledge and spiritual under- standing^. But they that will be always learning, and never come to the knowledge of the truth; they that will be children of a hundred years old, and never come to years of discretion ; they are very unfit to guide others, and to be curates of souls : but they are most unfit to reprove the laws, and speak against the wisdom of a nation, when it is confessed that they are so weak that they under- stand not the fundamental liberty which Christ hath purchased for them, but are servants to a scruple, and affrighted at a circumstance, and in bondage under an indifferent thing, and so much idolaters of their sect or opinion, as to prefer it before all their owm nobler interests, and the charity of their brother, and the peace of a whole church and nation.
To you, my Lords and Gentlemen, I hope I may say, as Marcus Curius said to a stubborn young man, " Non opus esse eo cive reipublica?, qui parere nesciret ;" " The kingdom hath no need of those, that know not how to obey \" But as for them who
» Val. Max. vi. 3. 4.
THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY. CCCXXXIX
have weak and tender consciences, they are in the state of childhood and minority ; but then you know that a child is never happy by having his own humour ; if you choose for him, and make him to use it, he hath but one thing to do ; but if you put him to please himself, he is troubled with every thing, and satisfied with nothing. We find that all Christian churches kept this rule ; they kept them- selves and others close to the rule of faith, and peaceably suffered one another to differ in cere- monies, but suffered no difference amongst their own ; they gave liberty to other churches, and gave laws, and no liberty, to their own subjects : and at this day, the churches of Geneva, France, Switzer- land, Germany, Low Countries, tie all their people to their own laws, but tie up no man's conscience ; if he be not persuaded as they are, let him charitably dissent, and leave that government, and adhere to his own communion : if you be not of their mind, they will be served by them that are ; they will not trouble your conscience, and you shall not disturb their government. But when we think they cannot enjoy their conscience unless you give them good livings, and if you prefer them not, you afflict their consciences ; they do but too evidently declare, that it is not their consciences, but their profits, they would have secured. Now to these I have only this
CCCXl THE EPISTLK DEDICATORV.
to say, that their conscience is to be enjoyed by the measures of God's word, but the rule for their estates is the laws of tlic kingdom ; and ' I show you yet a more excellent way ; ' obedience is the best secu- rity for both, because this is the best conservatory of charity, and truth, and peace. " Si vis brcvi perfectus esse, esto obediens etiam in minimis," was the saying of a saint ; and the w^orld uses to look for miracles from them whom they shall esteem saints ; but ' I had rather see a man truly humble and obedient, than to see him raise a man from the dead,' said old Pachomius.
But to conclude : If weak brethren shall still plead for toleration and compliance, I hope my Lords the bishops will consider where it can do good, and do no harm ; where they are permitted, and where themselves are bound up by the laws ; and in all things where it is safe and holy, to labour to bring them ease and to give them remedy : but to think of removing the disease by feeding the humour, I confess it is a strange cure to our present distempers. He that took clay and spittle to open the blind eyes, can make any thing be collyrium ; but he alone can do it. But whether any human power can bring good from so unlikely an instru- ment, if any man desires yet to be better informed, I desire him, besides the calling to mind the late
THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY. CCCXli
sad effects of schism, to remember that no church in Christendom ever did it. It is neither the way of peace nor government, nor yet a proper remedy for the cure of a weak conscience.
I shall, therefore, pray to God, that these men who separate in simplicity, may, by God's mercy, be brought to understand their own liberty, and that they may not, for ever, be babes and neophytes, and wax old in trifles, and for ever stay at the entrances and outsides of religion ; but that they would pass ' in interiora domus,' and seek after peace and righteousness, holiness and justice, the love of God and evangelical perfections ; and then they will understand how ill-advised they are, who think religion consists in zeal against ceremonies, and speaking evil of the laws.
My Lords and Gentlemen, what I said in pur- suance of public peace and private duty, and some little incidences to both, I now humbly present to you, more to show my own obedience than to re- mind you of your duty, which, hitherto, you have so well observed in your amicable and sweet con- cord of counsels and affections, during this present session. I owe many thanks to you, who heard me patiently, willingly, and kindly ; I endeavoured to please God, and I find I did not displease you : but he is the best hearer of a sermon, who first loves the
CCCXlii THE EPISTLE DEDICATOUY.
doctrine, and then practises it ; and that you have hitlierto done, very piously and very prosperously. I pray God continue to direct your counsels, so that you, in all things, may please him, and in all things ])e blessed by him, that all generations may call you blessed instruments of a lasting peace, the restorers of the old paths, the patrons of the church, friends of religion, and subjects fitted for your prince, who is just up to the greatest example, and merciful beyond all examples; a prince who hath been nou- rished, and preserved, and restored, and blessed, by miracles ; a prince whose virtues and fortunes are equally the greatest.
SERMON
PREACHED AT THE
OPENING OF THE PARLIAMENT.
SERMON V.
Behold to obey is better than sacrijice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. — 1 Sam. xv. latter part of verse 22.
For rebellion is as the sin ofzcitchcraft, and sfnbhornness is as iniquity and idolatry. — First part of verse 23.
In the world, nothing is more easy than to say our prayers, and to obey our superiors ; and yet in the world, there is nothing to which we are so unwilling as to prayer, and nothing seems so intolerable as obedience ; for men esteem all laws to be fetters, and their superiors are their enemies : and when a command is given, we turn into all shapes of excuse, to escape, from the imposition : for either the authority is incompetent, or the law itself is ' statutum non bonum ;' or it is impossible to be kept, or at least very inconvenient, and we are to be relieved in equity ; or there is a secret dispensation, and it does not bind in my particular case, or not now \ or it is but the law of a man, and was made for a certain end ; or it does not bind the conscience, but it was only for political regards ; or, if the worst happen, I will obey passively, and then I am innocent. Thus every man snufts up the wind, like " the wild asses in the wilder- ness," and thinks that authority is an encroachment upon a man's birthright ; and in the meantime, never considers, that Christ took upon him our nature, that he might learn us obedience, and in that also make us become like unto God. In his justice and his mercy he was imitable before ; but before the incarnation of Christ we could not, in passive
344
A SERMON PREACHED AT THE
graces, iiuitute God, who was impassible : but he was pleased, at a great rate, to set forward this duty ; and when himself became obedient in the hardest point, " obediens usque ad mortem," and is now become to us " the Author and Finisher of our obedience," as well as of our faith, — " ad- monetur onmis a3tas fieii posse quod aliquando factum est." We must needs confess it very possible to obey the severest of line Divine laws, even to die if God commands, because it was already done by a man ; and we must needs confess it excellent, because it was done by God himself.
But tills great example is of universal influence in the whole matter of obedience : for, that I may speak of that part of this duty, which can be useful, and concerns us ; men do not deny but they must obey in all civil things ; but in religion they have a supreme God only, and conscience is his interpreter ; and, in effect, every man must be the judge, whether he shall obey or no. Therefore it is that I say, the example of our Lord is the great determination of this inquiry ; for he did obey and suffer, according to the commands of his superiors, under whose government he was placed; he ' gave his back to the smiters, and his cheeks to the nippers ;' he kept the orders of the rulers, and the customs of the synagogues, the law of Moses, and the rites of the temple ; and by so doing, * he fulfilled all righteous- ness.' Christ made no distinctions in his obedience ; but obeyed God * in all things,' and those that God set over him, ' in all things according to God,' and in things of religion most of all ; because to obey was of itself a great instance of religion : and if ever religion comes to be pretended against obedience, in any thing where our superior can com- mand, it is imposture : for that is the purpose of my text, " obedience is better than sacrifice." Our own judgment, our own opinion, is the sacrifice seldom fit to be offered to God, but most commonly deserving to be consumed by fire : but, take it at the best, it is not half so good as obedience ; for that was, indeed, Christ's sacrifice ; and, as David said of Goliah's sword, " Non est alter talis," there is no other sacrifice that can be half so good : and when Abraham had lifted up his sacrificing knife to slay his son, and so expressed his obedience, God would have no more ; he had the obe- dience, and he cared not for the sacrifice.
OPENING OF THE PARLIAMENT. 345
By sacrifice here, then, is meant the external and con- tingent actions of religion; by obedience, is meant, submission to authority, and observing the command. Obedience is a not choosing our duty, a not disputing v/ith our betters, not to argue, not to delay, not to murmur ; it is not only this, but it is much better ; for it is love, — and simplicity, — and humility, — and usefulness ; and I think these do reductively contain all that is excellent in the whole conjugation of Christian graces.
My text is a perfect proposition, and hath no special remark in the words of it ; but is only a great representation of the most useful truth to all kingdoms and parliaments, and councils and authorities, in the whole w orld : it is your charter, and the sanction of your authority, and the stabili- ment of your peace, and the honour of your laws, and the great defence of your religion, and the building up, and the guarding of the king's throne. It is that by which all the societies in heaven and earth are firm : without this you cannot have a village prosperous, or a ship arrive in harbour : it is that which God hath bound upon us by hope and fear, by wrath and conscience, by duty and necessity. Obedience is the formality of all virtues, and every sin is disobedience : there can no greater thing be said, unless you please to add, that we never read that the earth opened and swallowed up any man alive but a company of rebelhous, disobedient people, wlio rose up against Moses and Aaron, the prince of the people, and the priest of God. For obedience is the most necessary thing in the world, and ' corruptio optimi est pessima :' disobedience is the greatest evil in the world, and that alone which can destroy it ^.
My text is instanced in the matter of obedience to God ; but yet the case is so, that though I shall, in the first place, discourse of our obedience to man, 1 shall not set one foot aside from the main intention of it ; because obedience to our superiors is really, and is accounted to be, obedience to God ; for they are sent by God ; they are his vicegerents, his ministers, and his ambassadors. '' Apostolus cujusque est quisque," say the Jews ; " Every man's apostle is himself;"
a Nullum malum majus ant iufclicitcr fcracius quam inobedicntia. — Seneca.
340 A SERMON I'REACHtn AT THE
and " lie tliat lu-aivth or dospiseth yon," said Christ, " heareth or despiseth me:" and the reason is very evident, — beeause it is not to be expected, that God should speak to us by himself, but sometimes by angels, sometimes by pro- phets, once by his Son, and always by his servants. Now I desire two things to be observed : — First: We may as well perceive that God speaks to us, when he uses the ministry of men, as when he uses the ministry of angels : one is as much declared and as certain as the other. And if it be said, a man may pretend to come from God, and yet deliver nothing but his own errand, that is no strange thing : but remember also that St. Paul puts this supposition in the case of an angel, " If an angel preach any other Gospel;" and we know that many angels come like angels of light, who yet teach nothing but the ways of dark- ness. So that we are still as much bound to obey our superior as to obey an angel : a man is ' paulo minor angelis/ * a httle lower than the angels ;' but we are much lower than the king. Consider, then, with what fear and love we should receive an angel; and so let us receive all those whom God hath sent to us, and set over us ; for they are no less ; less, indeed, in their persons, but not in their au- thorities. Nay, the case is nearer yet ; for we are not only bound to receive God's deputies as God's angels, but as God himself: for it is the power of God in the hand of a man, and " he that resists, resists God's ordi- nance." And I pray remember, that there is not only no power greater than God's, but there is no other; for all power is his. The consequent of this is plain enough ; I need say no more of it : it is all one to us who commands, God, or God's vicegerent. This was the first thing to be observed.
Secondly : There can be but two things in the world required to make obedience necessary ; the greatness of the authority, and the worthiness of the thing. In the first you see the case can have no difference, because the thing itself is but one : there is but one authority in the world, and that is God's ; as there is but one sun, whose light is diffused into all kino-doms. But is there not oreat difference in the thing
o ri o
commanded ? Yes, certainly there is some ; but nothing to
OPENING OF THE PARLIAMENT. 347
warrant disobedience : for, whatever the thing be, it may be commanded by man, if it be not comitermanded by God. For,
1. It is not required, that every thing commanded should of itself be necessary ; — for God himself oftentimes com- mands things, which have in them no other excellency than that of obedience. What made Abraham 'the friend of God?' and what made his offer to kill his son to be so pleasing to God ? It had been naturally no very great good to cut the throat of a little child ; but only that it was obedience. What excellency was there in the journeys of the patriarchs from Mesopotamia to Syria, from the land of Canaan into Egypt ? and what thanks could the sons of Israel deserve, that they sat still upon the seventh day of the week? and how can a man be dearer unto God by keeping of a feast, or building of a booth, or going to Jerusalem, or cutting off the foreskin of a boy, or washing their hands and garments in fair water ? There was nothins; in these things but the obedience. And when our blessed Lord himself came to his servant, to take of him the baptism of repentance, alas ! he could take nothing but the water and the ceremony ; for, as TertuUian observes, he was * nullius poenitentiae debitor ;' he was, indeed, * a just person, and needed no repentance ;' but even so it * became him to fulfil all righteousness :' but yet even then it was that the Holy Spirit did descend upon his holy head, and crowned that obedience, though it were but a ceremony. Obedience, you see, may be necessary, when the law is not so : for in these cases, God's Son and God's servants did obey in things, which were made good only by the commandment : and if we do so in the instances of human laws, there is nothing to be said against it, but that what was not of itself necessary, is made so by the authority of the commander, and the force of the commandment : but there is more in it than so. For,
2. We pretend to be willing to obey, even in things naturally not necessary, if a Divine command does interpose ; but if it be only a commandment of man, and the thing be not necessary of itself, then we desire to be excused. But will we do nothing else ? We ourselves will do many things, that God hath not commanded ; and may not our superiors command us, in many cases, to do what we may lawfully do
348 A SEUMOV PllKACHED AT THE
without a commandment? Can we become a law unto onrselves, and cannot the word and power of our superiors also become a law unto us? hath God given more to a private than to a public hand ? But consider the ill con- seqiients of this fond opinion. Are all the practices of Geneva or Scotland recorded in the word of God ? are the triflino- ceremonies of their public penance recorded in the four Gospels? are all the rules of decency, and all * things that are of good report,' and all the measures of prudence, and the laws of peace and war, and the customs of the churches of God, and the lines of public honesty, are all these described to us by the laws of God? If they be, let us see and read them, that we may have an end to all questions and minute cases of conscience : but if they be not, and yet by the word of God these are bound upon us in general, and no otherwise ; then it follows, that the particulars of all these, which may be infinite, and are innumerable, yet may be the matter of human laws ; and then are bound upon us by the power of God, put into the hands of man. The consequent is this, that whatsoever is commanded by our superiors, according to the will of God, or whatsoever is not against it, is, of necessity, to be obeyed.
3. But what if our princes or our prelates command things against the word of God ? What then ? Why nothing then, but that we must obey God, and not man ; there is no dispute of that. But what then again? Why, therefore, says the papist, ' I will not obey the protestant kings, be- cause, against the word of God, they command me to come to church, where heresy is preached ;' — ' and I will not ac- knowledge the bishops,' saith the presbyterian, ' because they are against the discipline and sceptre of Jesus Christ;' and the independent hates parochial meetings, and is wholly for a gathered church, and supposes this to be the practice apos- tolical ; and * I will not bring my child to baptism,' saith the anabaptist, ' because God calls none but believers to that sacrament;' and ' I will acknowledge no clergy, no lord, no master,' saith the quaker, ' because Christ commands us to " call no man master on the earth, and be not called of men ' rabbi.' " And if you call upon these men to obej^ the autho- rity God had set over them, they tell you v»ith one voice, with all their hearts, as far as the word of God will give them
OPENING OF THE PARLIAMENT. 349
leave ; but God is to be obeyed, and not man : and, therefore, if you put the laws in execution against them, they will obey you passively, because you are stronger ; and so long as they know it, they will not stir against you ; but they, in the mean time, are little less than martyrs, and you no better than persecutors.
What shall we do now ? for here is evidently a great heap of disorder: they ail confess that authority must be obeyed, but when you come to the trial, none of them all will do it, and they think they are not bound : but because their opi- nions, being contrary, cannot all be right, and, it may be, none of them are, — it is certain, that all this while authority is infinitely wronged and prejudiced amongst them, when all fantastic opinions shall be accounted a sufficient reason to despise it. I hope the presbyterian will join with the pro- testant, and say, that the papist, and the Socinian, and the independent, and the anabaptist, and the quaker, are guilty of rebellion and disobedience, for all their pretence of the word of God to be on their side: and I am more sure that all these will join with the protestant, and say, that the pres- byterian hath no reason to disobey authority upon pretence of their new government, concerning which they do but dream dreams, when they think they see visions. Certain it is that the biggest part of dissenters in the whole world are criminally disobedient ; and it is a thousand to one but that authority is in the right against them, and ought to be obeyed. It remains now, in the next place, that we inquire what au- thority is to do in this case, and what these sectaries and recusants are to do ; for these are two things worth inquiry.
1. Concerning authority. All disagreeing persons, to cover their foul shame of rebellion or disobedience, pretend conscience for their judge, and the Scripture for their law. Kow if these men think, that, by this means, they proceed safely, upon the same ground the superior may do what he thinks to be his duty, and be at least as safe as they. If the rebellious subject can think, that, by God's law, he ought not to obey, the prince may, at the same time, think, that, by God's law, he ought to punish him : and it is as certain that he is justly punished, as he thinks it certain he reason- ably disobeys. Or is the conscience of the superior bound to relax his laws, if the inferior tells him so ? Can the prince
350 A SERMON PREACHED AT THE
f^ive laws to the people'?; will, and can the people give measures to the prince's understanding? If any one of the people can prescribe or make it necessary to change the law, then every one can ; and by this time every new opinion will introduce a new law, and that law shall be obeyed by him only that hath a mind to it, and that will be a strange law, that binds a man only to do his own pleasure. But because the kino-'s conscience is to him as sure a rule, as the con- science of any disobedient subject can be to himself, the prince is as much bound to do his duty in government, as the other can be to follow his conscience in disagreeing ; and the consequent will be, that whether the subject be right or wrong in the disputation, it is certain he hath the just reward of disobedience in the conclusion. If one man's conscience can be the measure of another man's action, why shall not the prince's conscience be the subject's measure'.' But if it cannot, then the prince is not to depart from his own con- science, but proceed according to the laws which he judges just and reasonable.
2. The superior is tied, by the laws of Christian charity, so far to bend in the ministration of his laws, as to pity the invincible ignorance and weakness of his abused people, *' qui devoratur a malis pastoribus," as St. Jerome's expres- sion is, " that are devoured by their evil shepherds :" but this is to last no longer than till the ignorance can be cured, and the man be taught his duty ; for whatsoever comes after this, looks so like obstinacy, that no laws in the world judge it to be any thing else. And then, secondly, this also is to be understood to be the duty of superiors only in matters of mere opinion, not relating to practice. For no man's opinion must be suffered to do mischief, to disturb the peace, to dis- honour the government ; not only because every disagreeing person can, to serve his end, pretend his conscience, and so claim impunity for his villany ; but also because those things, which concern the good of mankind and the peace of king- doms, are so plainly taught, that no man who thinks himself so wise as to be fit to oppose authority, can be so foolish as in these things not to know his duty. In other things, if the opinion does neither bite nor scratch, if it dwells at home in the house of understanding, and Meanders not into the out- houses of passion and popular orations, the superior imposes
OPENING OF THE PARLIAMENT. 351
no laws, and exacts no obedience, and destroys no liberty, and gives no restraint : this is the part of authority.
2. The next inquiry is : What must the disagreeing sub- ject do, when he supposes the superior's command is against the law of God? I answer, that if he thinks so, and thinks true, he must not obey his superior in that : but because most men that think so, think amiss, — there are many particulars fit, by such persons, to be considered.
1 . Let such men think charitably of others, and that all are not fools or madmen, who are not of the same opinion with themselves or their ovv'n little party. 2. Let him think him- self as fallible and subject to mistake as other men are. 3. But let him by no means think, that every opinion of his is an inspiration from God ; for that is the pride and madness of a pretended religion : such a man is to be cured by physic ; for he could not enter into that persuasion by reason or ex- perience, and, therefore, it must enter into him by folly or the anger of God. 4. From hence it will naturally follow, that he ought to think his opinion to be uncertain, and that he ought not to behave himself like the man that is too con- fident; but because his obedience is duty, and his duty certain, he will find it more wise, and safe, and holy, to leave that which is disputable, and pursue that which is demonstrable ; to change his uncertain opinion for his certain duty : for it is twenty to one but he is deceived in his opinion ; but if he be, it is certain that whatsoever his con- science be, yet, in his separation from authority, he is a sinner.
2. Every man who, by his opinion, is engaged against authority, should do well to study his doubtful opinion less^ and humility and obedience more. But you say, that this concerns not me ; for my disagreeing is not in a doubtful matter, but I am sure I am in the right ; there are no ifs and ands in my case. Well, it may be so : but were it not better that you did doubt ? "A wise man feareth," saith Solomon, " and departeth from evil ; but a fool rageth and is con- fident :" and the difference between a learned man and a novice is this, that the young fellow crieth out, ' I am sure it is so ;' the better learned answers, to-coi; ndi to Ta%a, ' Possibly it may, and peradventure it is so, but I pray inquire :' and he is the best diviner, ,aavT(j a^iaro<; oang tlna^^i uaXwi, ' he is the
352 A SERMON PREACHED AT THE
best jud2;e thnt conjectures best,' not he that is most con- fident; for, as Xeiiophunes said wisely, " Man does but con- jecture, but God only knows;" and it is no disj)araoement to a wise man to learn, and, — by suspecting the fallibility of things, and his own aptness to mistake, — to walk prudently and safely, with an eye to God, and an ear open to his superior. Some men are drunk with fancy, and mad with opinion. Who believe more strongly than boys and women? who are so hard to be persuaded as fools ? and who so readily suspect their teachers as they who are governed by chance, and know not the intrinsic measures of good and evil ? " Qui pauca considerat, de facili pronunciat ; " * it is a little learning, and riot enough, that makes men conclude hastily,' and clap fast hold on the conclusion, before they have well weighed the premises ; but experience and hu- mility would teach us modesty and fear.
3. In all disputes, he that obeys his superior, can never be a heretic in the estimate of law, and he can never be a schismatic in the point of conscience ; so that he certainly avoids one great death, and, very probably, the other. " Res judicata pro veritate accipitur," saith the law : " If the judge have given sentence, that sentence is supposed a truth:" and Cassiodorus said, accordino; to the sentence of the law, " Nimis iniquum est, ut ille patiatur dispendium, qui imperium fecit alienum." Our obedience secures us from the imputation of evil, and error does but seldom go in company with obedience. But, however, there is this advantage to be gotten by obedience ; that he who prefers the sentence of the law before his own opinion, does do an act of great humility, and exercises the grace of modesty, and takes the best way to secure his conscience and the public peace, and pleases the government Avhich he is bound to please, and pursues the excellencies of unity, and promotes charity and godly love : whereas, on the other side, he that goes by himself, apart from his superior, is always materially a schismatic, and is more likely to be deceived by his own singularity, and prejudice, and weakness, than by following the guides God hath set over him. And if he loses truth, certainly he will get nothing else : for by so doing we lose our peace too, and give public offence, and arm authority against us, and are scandalous in law, and pull evil upon our
OPENING OF THE PARLIAMENT. 353
heads ; and all this for a proud singularity, or a trifling opinion, in which we are not so likely to be deceived, if we trust ourselves less, and the public more. " In omnibus falli possum, in obedientia non possum," said St. Teresa ; " I can in every thing else, but in obedience I can never be deceived." And it is very remarkable in my text, that ' rebellion' or * disobedience' is compared to ' the sin of witchcraft.' Indeed, it seems strange ; for the meaning of it is not only that a rebel is as much hated by God as a witch, but it means that the sins are alike in their very natures. *' Quasi peccatum divinationis," saith the Vulgar Latin ; they that disobey authority, trusting in their own opinions, are but like witches or diviners ; that is, they are led by an evil spirit: pride and a lying and deceiving spirit is their teacher, and their answers are seldom true ; for though they pretend the truth of God for their disobedience, yet they ' fall into the deception of the devil ; ' and that is the end of their soothsaying. And let me add this, that when a man distrusts his superior, and trusts himself, if he misses truth, it will be greatly imputed to him: he shall feel the evil of his error and the shame of his pride, the reproach of his folly and the punishment of his disobedience, the dishonour of singu- larity, and the restlessness of schism, and the scorn of the multitude. But, on the other side, if he obey authority, and yet be deceived, he is greatly excused ; he erred on the safer side, he is defended by the hands of many virtues, and gets peace and love of the congregation.
You see the blessings of obedience, even in the questions and matters of religion : but I have something more to say, and it is not only of great use to appease the tumultuary disputations and arguings of religion, which have lately disturbed these nations, but is proper to be spoken to, and to be reduced to practice, by the honourable and high court of parliament.
That which I am to say, is this : — You have no other way of peace, no better way to appease and quiet the quarrels in religion which have been too long among us, but by, reducing all men to obedience, and all questions to the measures of the laws : for they on both sides pretend Scrip- ture, but one side only can pretend to the laws ; and they that do admit no authority above their own to expound
VOL. VI. A A
354 A SEUMON I'UFACMKL) AT THE
Scripture, cannot deny but kings and parliaments are the makers and proper expounders of our laws ; and if ever you mean to have * truth and peace kiss each other,' let no man dispute against your laws. For did not our blessed Savionr say, that an oath is the end of all questions, and, after depositions are taken, all judges go to sentence ? What oaths are to private questions, that laws are to public. And if it be said tliat laws may be mistaken, it is true ; but may not an oath also be a perjury ? and yet, because, in human aftairs, we have no greater certainty, and greater than God gives we may not look for, — let the laws be the last determination; and, in wise and religious governments, no disputation is to go beyond them.
2. But this is not only true in religious prudence and plain necessity, but this is the way that God hath appointed, and that he hath blessed, and that he hath intended to be the means of ending all questions. This we learn from St. Paul'', " I exhort that first of all, prayers, and supplica- tions, and intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men ; for kings, and all that are in authority." For all; for parliaments and for councils, for bishops and for magistrates : it is for all, and for kings above all. Well ; to what purpose is all this ? " That we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness and honesty." Mark that : * kings and all that are in authority,' are by God appointed to be the means of obtaining unity and peace in godliness, h EiKTs^eiaig, * in all the true and godly worshippings' of God ; no unity in religion without kings and bishops, and those that are in authority.
3. And, indeed, because this is God's way of ending our controversies, the matter of authority is highly to be re- garded. If you suffer the authority of the king to be lessened, to be scrupled, to be denied in ecclesiastical affairs, you have no way left to silence the tongues and hands of gainsaying people. But so it is; the king's authority is appointed and enabled by God to end our questions of religion : " Divinatio inlabiis regis" (saith Solomon ") ; " in judicio non errabit os ejus:" " Divination and a wise sen- tence is in the lips of the king, and his mouth shall not err in
*> 2 Tim. ii. 1. « Prov. xvi. 10.
OPENING OF THE PARLIAMENT. 355
judgment." In all Scripture there is not so much for the pope's infallibility, but by this, it appears there is divinity in the king's sentence ; for God gives to kings, who are his vicegerents, a peculiar spirit. And when Justinian had, out of the sense of Julian the lawyer, observed that there were many cases, for which law made no provision, he adds : "If any such shall happen''," " Augustum imploretur remedium," " run to the king for remedy ;" for, therefore, God hath set the imperial fortune over human affairs, ' ut possit omnia quiB noviter contingunt, et emendare et componere, et modis ac regulis competentibus tradere,' * that the king may amend and rule and compose every new arising question.' And it is not to be despised, but is a great indication of this truth, that the answers of the Roman princes and judges recorded in the civil law are such, that all nations of the world do approve them, and are a great testimony how the sentences of kings ought to be valued, even in matters of rehgion, and questions of greatest doubt. " Bona conscientia scyphus est Josephi," said the old abbot of Kells <= ; " A good con- science is like Joseph's cup," in which our lord the king divines. And since God hath blessed us with so good, so just, so religious, and so wise a prince, let the sentence of his laws be our last resort, and no questions be permitted after his judgment and legal determination : for wisdom saith, " By me princes rule, by me they decree justice :" and therefore the spirit of the king is a divine eminency, and is as the spirit of the most high God.
4. Let no man be too busy in disputing the laws of his superiors ; for a man by that seldom gets good to himself, but seldom misses to do mischief unto others : Mh tpi^z yoveScrt, kom ^Uaioc. >.sy^5, said one in Laertius. Will a son contend with his father ? that is not decent, though the son speak that which is right ; he may, possibly, say well enough, but he does do very ill ; not only because he does not pay his duty and reverential fear, but because it is in itself very often unreasonable to dispute concerning the command of our superior, whether it be good or no ; for the very commandment can make it not only good, but a necessary good. " It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us,
* Lib. viii. cod. de Veteri Jure enucleando. « Petrus Cellensis, lib. de Conscientia.
3;3G A SERMON PREACHED AT THE
to lay on you no oreatcr burden than tliese necessary thinp;s, said the council of Jerusalem ; and yet these things were not necessary, but as they were commanded : to abstain from a strangled hen or a bloody pudding, could not of themselves be necessary ; but the commandment came, authority did interpose, and then they were made so.
5. But then besides the advantages, both of the spirit and the authority of kings, in matter of question, the laws and decrees of a national church ought, upon the account of their own advantajres, to be esteemed as a final sentence in ail things disputed. The thing is a plain command : " Re- member them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God^" This tells what rulers he means; rulers ecclesiastical ; and what of them? "whose faith follow," they must ' prceire in articulis;' they are not masters of your faith, but guides of it ; and ' they that sit in Moses' chair' must be heard and obeyed, said our blessed Saviour. These words were not said for nothing ; and they were nothing, if their authority were nothing.
For between the laws of a church and the opinion of a subject, the comparison is the same as between a public spirit and a private. The public is far the better; the daughter of God, and the mother of a blessing, and always dwells in light. The public spirit hath already passed the trial, it hath been ' subjected to the prophets,' tried and searched and approved : the private is yet to be examined. The public spirit is uniform and apt to be followed ; the private is various and multiform as chance, and no man can follow him that hath it : for if he follows one, he is reproved by a thousand ; and if he changes, he may get a shame, but no truth; and he can never rest but in the arms and conduct of his superior. When Aaron and Miriam murmured against Moses, God told them they were prophets of an inferior rank than Moses was. God communicated himself to them in dreams and visions ; but the ruach hakkodesh, >i>-iipn nn * the public spirit' of Moses their prince, that was higher: and what then? "Wherefore, then," (God said?) " vi^ere ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses ?" plainly teaching us, that where there is a more excellent spirit, they that have
' Hcl). xiii. 7. s Num. xii. 6, 7, 8.
OPENING OF THE PARLIAMENT. 357
a spirit less excellent, ought to be afraid to speak against it. And this is the full case of the private and pubhc spirit ; that is, of a subject speaking against the spirit and the laws of the church. In heaven, and in the air, and in all the regions of spirits, the spirit of a lower order dares not speak against the spirit of a higher ; and, therefore, for a private spirit to oppose the public, is a disorder greater than is in hell itself.
To conclude this point : let us consider whether it were not an intolerable mischief, if the judges should give sentence in causes of instance by the measures of their own fancy, and not by the laws ; who would endure them? and yet why may they not do that as well as any ecclesiastic person preach religion, not which the laws allow, but what is taught him by his own private opinion? but he that hath the laws on his side, hath ever something of true religion to warrant him, and can never want a great measure of justification : mo^/S^ km X^fa, ' the laws and the customs of the country,' are the results of wise counsels or long experience ; they ever comply with peace and public benefit ; and nothing of this can be said of private religions ; for they break the peace, and trouble the conscience, and undo government, and despise the laws, and offend princes, and dishonour the wisdom of parliaments, and destroy obedience.
Well ; but in the last place : but if we cannot do what the laws command, we will suffer what they impose ; and then all is well again. But first, who ever did so that could help it? And, secondly, this talking of passive obedience is but a mockery ; for what man did ever say the laws were not good, but he also said the punishment was unjust? And thirdly, which of all the recusants did not endeavour to get ground upon the laws, and secretly or openly asperse the authority that put him to pain for doing that which he calls his duty ? and can any man boast of his passive obedience that calls it persecution ? He may think to please himself, but he neither does nor says any thing that is for the reputation of the laws : such men are like them that sail in a storm ; they may possibly be thrown into a harbour, but they are very sick all the w^ay.
But after all this, I have one thing to observe to such persons, that such a passive obedience as this does not acquit a man before God ; and he that suffers what the law inflicts,
358 A SERMON PREACHED AT THE
is not discharged in the court of conscience, but there is still a sinner and a debtor: lor ' the law is not made for the righteous, but for sinners;' that is, the punishment appointed by the law falls on him only, that hath sinned ; but an of- fending subject cannot, * with the fruit of his body, pay for the sin of his soul :' when he does evil, he must suflttr evil ; but if he does not repent besides, a worse thing will happen to him ; lor we are not tied to obey only for wrath, but also for conscience. Passive obedience is only the correspondent of wrath, but it is the active obedience that is required by con- science : and whatever the subject suffers for his own fault, it matters nothing as to his duty ; but this also God will exact at the hands of every man, that is placed under authority,
I have now told you the sum of what I had to say con- cerning obedience to laws and to your own government; and it will be to little purpose to make laws in matter of religion, or in any thing else, if the end of it be, that every man shall choose whether he will obey or no : and if it be questioned Avhether you be deceived or no, though the suffering such a question is a great diminution to your authority, yet it is infinitely more probable that you are in the right than that the disobedient subject is ; because you are conducted with a public spirit, you have a special title and peculiar portions of the promise of God's assistance, — you have all the helps of counsel and the advantages of deliberation, — you have the Scriptures and the laws, — you are as much concerned to judge according to truth as any man, — you have the principal of all capacities and states of men to assist your consultations, — you are the most concerned for peace, — and to please God also is your biggest interest: and, therefore, it cannot be denied to be the most reasonable thins in the world which is set down in the law, " Praesumptio est pro auctoritate ini- ponentis," the presumption of truth ought to be on your side ; and since this is the most hkely way for truth, and the most certain way for peace, you are to insist in this, and it is not possible to find a better,
I have another part or sense of my text yet to handle ; but, because I have no more time of mine own, and I will not take any of yours, I shall only do it in a short exliortation to this most honourable auditory, and so conclude.
OPENING OF THE PARLIAMENT. 359
God hath put a royal mantle, and fastened it with a golden clasp upon the shoulder of the king, and he hath given you the judge's robe ; the king holds the sceptre, and he hath now permitted you to touch the golden ball, and to take it awhile into your handling, and make obedience to your laws to be duty and religion : but then remember that the first in every kind is to be the measure of the rest ; you cannot reasonably expect that the subjects should obey you, unless you obey God. I do not speak this only in relation to your personal duty ; though in that also it would be con- sidered, that all the bishops and ministers of religion are bound to teach the same doctrines by their lives as they do by their sermons ; and what we are to do in the matters of doctrine, you are also to do in matter of laws ; what is reasonable for the advantages of religion, is also the best method for the advantages of government ; we must preach by our good example, and you must govern by it ; and your good example in observing the laws of religion, will strangely endear them to the afiections of the people. But I shall rather speak to you as you are in a capacity of union and of government; for as now you have a new power, so there is incumbent upon you a special duty.
1. Take care that all your power and your counsels be employed in doing honour and advantages to piety and holiness. Then you obey God in your public capacity, when, by holy laws and wise administrations, you take care that all the land be an obedient and a religious people. For then you are princely rulers indeed, when you take care of the salvation of a whole nation. '' jVihil aliud est imperium nisi cura salutis alienee," said Ammianus ; " Government is nothing but a care that all men be saved." And, therefore, take care that men do not destroy their souls by the abomi- nations of an evil life : see that God be obeyed; take care that the breach ot the laws of God may not be unpunished. The best way to make men to be good subjects to the king, is to make them good servants of God. Suffer not drunken- ness to pass with impunity ; let lust find a public shame ; let the sons of the nobility and gentry no more dare to dis- honour God, than the meanest of the people shall ; let base- ness be basely esteemed ; that is, put such characters of shame upon dishonourable crimes, that it be esteemed more
3()0 A SEKMON PREACHED AT THE
a<iainst. the honour of a c'cntlenian to be drunk than to be kicked, more shame to fornicate than to be caned : and for lionour's sake, and the reputation of Christianity, take some course, that the most unworthy sins of the world have not reputation added to them, by being the practice of gentlemen and persons of good birth and fortunes. Let not them who should be examples of holiness, have an impunity and a license to provoke God to anger; lest it be said, that in Ireland it is not lawful for any man to sin, unless he be a person of quality. '* Optimus est reipublica; status, ubi nihil deest nisi licentia pereundi :" " Jn a commonwealth, that is the best state of things where every thing can be had but a leave to sin, a license to be undone ''."
2. As God is thus to be obeyed, and you are to take care that he be, so God also must be honoured, by paying that reverence and religious obedience which is due to those persons, whom he hath been pleased to honour, by admitting them to the dispensation of his blessings, and the ministries of your religion. For certain it is, this is a right way of giving honour and obedience to God. The church is, in some very peculiar manner, the * portion,' and the ' called,' and the ' care' of God ; and it will concern you, in pursuance of your obedience to God, to take care that they, in whose hands religion is to be ministered and conducted, be not discouraged. For what your judges are to the ministry of laws, that your bishops are in the ministries of religion ; and it concerns you that the hands of neither of them be made weak : and so long as you make religion your care, and holiness your measure, you will not think that authority is the more to be despised, because it is in the hands of the church ; or that it is a sin to ' speak evil of dignities,' unless they be ecclesiastical ; but that they may be reviled, and that though nothing is baser than for a man to be a thief, yet sacrilege is no dishonour ; and indeed, to be an oppressor is a great and crying sin, yet to oppress the church, to diminish her rents, to make her beggarly and contemptible, that is no offence ; and that though it is not lawful ' to despise govern- ment,' yet if it be church-government, that then the case is altered. Take heed of that; for then God is dishonoured,
'' Seneca.
, OPENING OF THE PARLIAMENT. 361
when any thing is the more despised, by how much it relates nearer unto God. No rehgion ever did despise their chiefest ministers ; and the Christian rehgion gives them the greatest honour. For honourable priesthood is like a shower from heaven, it causes blessings every where : but a pitiful, a dis- heartened, a discouraged clergy, waters the ground with a water-pot, here and there a little good, and for a little while ; but every evil man can destroy all that work, whenever he pleases. Take heed ; in the world there is not a greater misery can happen to any man, than to be an enemy to God's church. All histories of Christendom and the whole book of God have sad records, and sad threatenings, and sad stories of Korah, and Doeg, and Balaam, and Jeroboam, and Uzzah, and Ananias, and Sapphira, and Julian, and of heretics and schismatics, and sacrilegious ; and after all, these men could not prevail finally, but paid for the mischief they did, and ended therr days in dishonour, and left nothing behind them but the memory of their sin, and the record of their curse.
3. In the same proportion, you are to take care of all inferior relatives of God and of religion. Find out methods to relieve the poor, to accommodate and well dispose of the cures of souls ; let not the churches lie waste and in ruinous heaps, to the diminution of religion, and the reproach of the nation, lest the nations abroad say, that the Britons are a kind of Christians that have no churches ; for churches, and courts of judicature, and the public defences of an imperial city, are ' res sacrse ;' they are venerable in law, and honour- able in religion.
But that which concerns us most is, that we all keep close to our religion. " Ad magnas reipublicse utilitates retinetur religio in civitatibus," said Cicero ; by religion, and the strict preserving of it, ye shall best preserve the interests of the nation: and according to the precept of the apostle, " Mark them which cause divisions amongst you, contrary to the doctrine that ye have received, and avoid them'." For I beseech you to consider, all you that are true protestants ; do you not think that your religion is holy, and apostolical, and taught by Christ, and pleasing unto God ? If you do not
' Kom. xvi. 17.
3G2 A SERMONf PREACHED AT THE
think so, Avhy do vou not leave it? but if you do think so, wiiy are ye not zealous for it ? Is not the government a part of it? It is that which immures, and adorns, and conducts all the rest, and is established in the thirty-sixth article of the church, in the public service-book, and in the book of conse- cration : it is, therefore, a part of our religion, and is not all of it worth preserving ? If it be, then they which make schisms against this doctrine, by the rule of the apostle are to be avoided. " Beatus qui preedicat verbum inauditum ;" " Blessed is he that preaches a word that was never heard before ;" so said the Spanish Jesuit : but Christ said other- wise : " No man having drunk old wine straight desires new, for he saith the old is better." And so it is in religion, " Quod piimum verum," *' truth is always first ;" and since episcopacy hath been of so lasting an abode, of so long a blessing, since it hath ever combined with government, and hath been taught by that Spirit that hath so long dwelt in God's church, and hath now, according to the promise of Jesus, that says " the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church," been restored amongst us by aheap of miracles; and as it went away, so it returned again in the hand of monarchy, and in the bosom of our fundamental laws. Suffer no evil tongue to speak against this truth, which hath had so long a testimony from God, and from experience, and from the wisdom of so many ages, of all your ancestors and all your laws, lest ye be found to speak against God, and neglect the things that belong unto your peace, and get nothing by it but news and danger, and what other effects ye know not. But Leontinus, bishop of Antioch, stroked his old white beard, and said, " When this snow is dissolved, a great deal of dirty weather will follow ;" meaning, that when the old religion should be questioned and discountenanced, the new religion would bring nothing but trouble and unquietness : and we have found it so by a sad experience.
4. Ye cannot obey God unless ye do justice : for this also is " better than sacrifice," said Solomon''. For Christ, who is * the Sun of righteousness,' is a Sun and a Shield to them that do righteously. The Indian was nut immured sufficiently by the Atlantic sea, nor the Bosphoran by the walls of ice,
* Prov. xxi. 3.
OPENING OF THE PARLIAMENT. 363
nor the Arabian by his meridian sun; the Christian justice of the Roman princes brake through all enclosures, and, by justice, set up Christ's standard, and gave to all the world a testimony how much could be done by prudence and valour, when they were conducted by the hands of justice. And now you will have a great trial of this part of your obedience to God.
For you are to give sentence in the causes of half a nation : and he had need be a wise and a good man, that divides the inheritance amongst brethren ; that he may not be abused by contrary pretences, — nor biassed by the interest of friends, — nor transported with the unjust thoughts even of a just revenge, — nor allured by the opportunities of spoil, — nor turned aside by partiality in his own concerns, — nor blinded by gold, which puts out the eyes of wise men, — nor cozened by pretended zeal, — nor wearied with the difficulty of ques- tions,— nor directed by a general measure in cases not measurable by it, — nor borne down by prejudice, — nor abused by resolutions taken before the cause be heard, — nor over- ruled by national interests. For justice ought to be the simplest thing in the world, and is to be measured by nothing but by truth and by laws, and by the decrees of princes. But whatever you do, let not the pretence of a different religion make you think it lawful to oppress any man in his just rights : for opinions are not, but laws only, and * doing as we Vv'ould be done to,' are the measures of justice : and though justice does alike to all men, Jew and Christian, Lutheran and Calvinist; yet to do right to them that are of another opinion, is the way to win them; but if you, for conscience sake, do them wrong, they will hate you and your religion.
Lastly : As " obedience is better than sacrifice," so God also said, " I will have mercy, and not sacrifice ;" meaning, that mercy is the best obedience. " Perierat totum quod Deus fecerat, nisi misericordia subvenisset," said Chryso- logus : " All the creatures both of heaven and earth would perish, if mercy did not relieve us all." Other good things, more or less, every man expects according to the portion of his fortune : " Ex dementia omnes idem sperant' ;" but from mercy and clemency all the world alike do expect advantages. And which of us all stands here this day, that
' Seneca.
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does not need God's pardon and the king's? Surely no man is so much pleased witli his own innocence, as that he will be willing to quit his claim to mercy:' and if" we all need it, let us all show it.
Natnra? impeiio geniiiiins, cum fiiniis adiilta; Virciiiis occiirrit, vel tii la claiiditur iiifaiis, Et minor ignc rogi""
" If vou do but see a maiden carried to her grave a little before her intended marriage, or an infant die before the birth of reason, nature hath taught us to pay a tributary tear." Alas ! your eyes will behold the ruin of many families, which, though they sadly have deserved, yet mercy is not delighted with the spectacle ; and therefore God places a watery cloud in the eye, that when the light of heaven shines upon it, it may produce a rainbow to be a sacrament, and a memorial, that God and the sons of God do not love to see a man perish. God never rejoices ' in the death of him that dies ;' and we also esteem it indecent to have music at a funeral. And as religion teaches us to pity a condenmed criminal, so mercy intercedes for the most benign interpreta- tion of the laws. You must, indeed, be as just as the laws; and you must be as merciful as your religion : and you have no way to tie these together, but to follow the pattern in the Mount; do as God does, who * in judgment remembers mercy.'
To conclude : If every one in this honourable assembly would join together, to promote Christian religion, in its true notion, that is, peace and holiness, the love of God and the love of our brother, Christianity in all its proper usefulness, and would not endure in the nation any thing against the laws of the holy Jesus : if they were all zealous for the doctrines of righteousness, and impatient of sin, in your- selves and in the people, it is not to be imagined what a happy nation we should be. But if ye divide into parties, and keep up useless differences of names or interests ; if ye do not join in the bands of peace, that is, the king and tlie •church, religion and the good of the nation, you can never hope to see a blessing to be the end of your labours. Re- member the words of Solomon", " Righteousness exalteth a nation ; but sin is a reproach to any people :" but when
°> Juvcn. XV. 153. " Prov. xxiv. 34.
OPENING OF THE PARLIAMENT. 365
righteousness is advanced in the hearts and lives of the nation, who shall dare to reprove your faith ? who can find fault with your religion ?
God, of his mercy, grant, that in all your consultations the word of God may be your measure, the Spirit of God may be your guide, and the glory of God may be your end. He, of his mercy, grant, that moderation may be your limit, and peace may be within your walls, as long as you are there, and in all the land for ever after. But remember, that since the honour and service of his majesty, and the peace and pro- sperity of the church, the perpetuity of our fundamental laws, public justice, and the honour of all legal authority, the advancement of trade, and the wealth of the nation, is your design; — remember, I pray, what warranty you have to expect all this; no less than the words of our blessed Saviour ; but it is upon these terms : "■ Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and the righteousness thereof; and all these things shall be added to you." Amen.
VIA INTELLIGENTIiE
SERMON
PREACHED TO THE
UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN,
SHOWING BY WHAT MEANS THE SCHOLARS SHALL BECOME MOST LEARNED AND MOST USEFUL.
TO
THE READER.
JPeace is so great a blessing, and disputations and questions in religion are so little friends to peace, that I have thought no man's time can be better spent than in propositions and promotions of peace, and consequently in finding expedients, and putting periods to all contentious learning. I have already, in a Discourse before the Right Honourable the Lords and Commons assembled in this Parliament, proved that obedience is the best medium of peace and true religion ; and laws are the only common term and certain rule and measure of it. " Vocatc\ ad concionem multitudine, quae coalescere in populi unius corpus nulla re, prseterquam legibus, poterat," said Livy\ Obedience to man is the external instrument, and the best in the world. To which I now add, that obedience to God is the best internal instrument ; and I have proved it in this Discourse. Peace and holiness are twin-sisters; after which because every man is bound to follow, and he
3 Lib. i. cap. 8.
VOL. VI. B B
CCClXX TO THE READER.
that does not, shall never see God, I concluded that the office of a bishop is in nothing so signally to be exhibited, as in declaring by what means these great duties and blessings are to be acquired. This way I have here described, is an old way ; for it was Christ's way, and therefore it is truth and life ; but it hath been so little regarded, and so seldom taught, that when I first spake my thoughts of it, in the following words, before the little, but excellent University of Dublin, they consented to it so perfectly, and so piously entertained it, that they were pleased, with some earnestness, to desire me to publish it to the world, and to consign it to them as a perpetual memorial of their duty, and of my regards to them, and care over them in my station. I was very desirous to serve and please them in all their worthy desires, but had found so much reason to distrust my own abilities, that I could not resolve to do what I fain would have done, till by a second communication of those thoughts, though in differing words, I had published it also to my clergy, at the metropolitical visitation of the most Reverend and Learned Lord Primate of Armagh, in my own diocese. But when I found that they also thought it very reasonable and pious, and joined in the desire of making it public, I consented perfectly, and now only pray to God
TO THE READER. CCClxxi
it may do that work which I intended. I have often thought of those excellent words of Mr. Hooker, in his very learned Discourse of Justification: " Such is the untoward constitution of our nature, that we do neither so perfectly understand the way and knowledge of the Lord, nor so steadfastly embrace it when it is understood, nor so graciously utter it when it is embraced, nor so peaceably maintain it when it is uttered, but that the best of us are overtaken, sometimes through blindness, sometimes through hastiness, sometimes through impatience, sometimes through other passions of the mind, whereunto (God knows) we are too subject." That I find by true experience ; the best way of learning and peace, is that which cures all these evils, as far as in the world they are curable, and that is the ways of holiness, which are, therefore, the best and only way of truth. In disputations there is no end, and but very little advantage; but the way of godliness hath in it no error and no doubt- fulness. By this, therefore, I hoped best to apply the counsel of the wise man : *' Stand thou fast in thy sure understanding, in the way and know- ledge of the Lord, and have but one manner of word, and follow the word of peace and righteous-
CCClxxii TO THE READER.
ness**/' I have reason to be confident that they who desired me to publish this Discourse, will make use of it, and find benefit by it : and if any others do so too, both they and I shall still more and more give God all thanks, and praise, and glory.
b Ecclus. V. 10. Vulg. Edit. Lat.
VIA INTELLIGENT!^.
SERMON VI.
If any man ivill do his will, lie shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or luhether I speak of myself. — John, vii. 17.
1 HE ancients, in their mythological learning, tell us, that when Jupiter espied the men of the world striving for Truth, and pulling her in pieces to secure her to themselves, he sent Mercury down amongst them ; and he, with his usual arts, dressed Error up in the imagery of Truth, and thrust her into the crowd, and so left them to contend still : and though then, by contention, men were sure to get but little truth, yet they were as earnest as ever, and lost peace too, in their importune contentions for the very image of truth. And this, indeed, is no wonder ; but when truth and peace are brought into the world together, and bound up in the same bundle of life ; when we are taught a religion by the Prince of peace, who is the truth itself; to see men contending for this truth, to the breach of that peace ; and when men fall out, to see that they should make Christianity their theme, that is one of the greatest wonders in the world. For Christianity is YifMEpog koI (pi>.dv9^co7ros voixoQso-ia, ' a soft and gentle institution ;' vyfov aai iabiXixov riSog' it was brought into the world to soften the asperities of human nature, and to cure the barbarities of evil men, and the contentions of the passionate. The eagle, seeing her breast wounded, and espying the arrow that hurt her, to be feathered, cried out, Ute^ov ^z rov ttte^cotov o'KXuei, ' The feathered nation is destroyed by their own feathers ;' that is, a Christian fighting and wrangling with a Christian ; and, indeed, that is very sad : but wrangling about peace too, that peace itself should be the argument of a war, that is unnatural ; and if it were not that there are many, who are
374 A SERMON TREACIIED TO
' homines multoi rGlic;ionis, nuUius penti pietatis,' ' men of mucli religion and little <^odliness,' — it would not be that there should be so many quarrels in and concerning that religion, which is wholly made up of truth and peace, and was sent amongst us to reconcile the hearts of men, when they were tem})ted to uncharitableness by any other unhappy argument. Disputation cures no vice, but kindles a great many, and makes passion evaporate into sin : and though men esteem it learning, yet it is the most useless learning in the world. When Eudamidas, the son of Archidamus, heard old Xenocrates disputing about wisdom, he asked very soberly, ' If the old man be yet disputing and inquiring concerning wisdom, what time will he have to make use of it?' Christianity is all for practice; and so much time as is spent in quarrels about it, is a diminution to its interest. Men inquire so much what it is, that they have but little time left to be Christians. I remember a saying of Erasmus, ' that when he first read the New Testament, with fear and a good mind, with a purpose to understand it and obey it, he found it very pleasant ; but when, afterwards, he fell on reading the vast differences of commentaries, then he understood it less than he did before, then he began not to understand it :' for, indeed, the truths of God are best dressed in the plain culture and simplicity of the Spirit ; but the truths that men commonly teach, are like the reflections of a multiplying- glass ; for one piece of good money, you shall have forty that are fantastical ; and it is forty to one if your finger hit upon the right. Men have wearied themselves in the dark, having been amused with false fires ; and instead of going home, have wandered all night kv o^oiq d^uToig, ' in untrodden, unsafe, uneasy ways ;' but have not found out what their soul desires. But, therefore, since we are so miserable, and are in error, and have wandered very far, we must do as wandering travellers use to do, go back just to that place from whence they wandered, and begin upon a new account. Let us go to the truth itself, to Christ ; and he will tell us an easy way of ending all our quarrels : for we shall find Christianity to be the easiest and the hardest thing in the world : it is like a secret in arithmetic, infinitely hard till it be found out by a right operation, and then it is so plain, we wonder we did not understand it earlier.
THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN. 375
Christ's way of finding out of truth, is by " doing the will of God." We will try that by and by, if possibly we may find that easy and certain : in the meantime, let us consider what ways men have propounded to find out truth, and upon the foundation of that to estabhsh peace in Christendom.
1 . That there is but one true way, is agreed upon ; and therefore almost every church of one denomination that lives under government, propounds to you a system or collective body of articles, and tells you that is the true religion, and they are the church, and the peculiar people of God : like Brutus and Cassius, of whom one says, ** Ubicunque ipsi essent, prsetexebant esse rempublicam," " They supposed themselves were the commonwealth ;" and these are the church, and out of this church they will hardly allow salva- tion : but of this there can be no end ; for divide the church into twenty parts, and in what part soever your lot falls, you and your party are damned by the other nineteen ; and men on all hands almost keep their own proselytes by affrighting them with the fearful sermons of damnation : but, in the meantime, here is no security to them, that are not able to judge for themselves, and no peace for them that are.
2. Others cast about to cure this evil, and conclude, that it must be done by submission to an infallible guide ; this must do it or nothing; and this is the way of the church of Rome ; follow but the pope and his clergy, and you are safe, at least as safe as their warrant can luake you. Indeed, this were a very good way, if it were a way at all ; but it is none ; for this can never end our controversies : not only because the greatest controversies are about this infallible guide ; but also because, 1. We cannot find, that there is, upon earth, any such guide at all. 2. We do not find it necessary that there should. 3. We find that they who pretend to be this infallible guide, are themselves infinitely deceived. 4. That they do not believe themselves to be infallible, whatever they say to us ; because they do not put an end to all their own questions, that trouble them. 5. Because they have no peace, but what is constrained by force and government. 6. And lastly: Because, if there were such a guide, we should fail of truth by many other causes : for, it may be, that guide would not do his duty ; or we are fallible followers of this infallible leader; or we should not understand his
37G A SERMON PREACHED TO
meaning at all times, or we should be perverse at some times, or something as bad ; because we all confess, that God is an infallible guide, and that some way or other he does teach us sufficiently, and yet it does come to pass, by our faults, that we are as far to seek for peace and truth as ever.
3. Some very wise men, finding this to fail, have under- taken to reconcile the differences of Christendom, by a way of moderation. Thus they have projected to reconcile the papists and the Lutherans, the Lutherans and the Calvinists, the remonstrants and contra-remonstrants, and project, that each side should abate of their asperities, and pare away something of their propositions, and join in common terms and phrases of accommodation, — each of them sparing some- thing, and promising they shall have a great deal of peace for the exchange of a little of their opinion. This was the way of Cassander, Modrevius, Andreas Frisius, Erasmus, Spalato, Grotius, and, indeed, of Charles the Fifth, in part, but some- thing more heartily of Ferdinand the Second. This device produced the conferences at Poissy, at Montpelier, at Ratisbon, at the Hague, at many places more : and what was the event of these 1 Their parties, when their delegates returned, either disclaimed their moderation, — or their respective princes had some other ends to serve, — or they permitted the meetings upon uncertain hopes, and a trial if any good might come ; or, it may be, they were both in the wrong, and their mutual abatement was nothing but a mutual quitting of what they could not get, and the shaking hands of false friends ; or, it may be, it was all of it nothing but hypocrisy and arts of craftiness, and, like Lucian's man, every one could be a man and a pestle when he pleased. And the Council of Trent, though under another cover, made use of the artifice, but made the secret manifest and common : for at this day the Jesuits, in the questions ' de auxiliis Divine gratiae,' have prevailed with the Domini- cans to use their expressions, and yet they think they still keep the sentence of their own order. From hence can suc- ceed nothing but folly and a fantastic peace : this is but the skinning of an old sore ; it will break out upon all occasions.
4. Others, who understand things beyond the common rate, observing that many of our controversies and peevish wranglings are kept up by the ill stating of the question,
THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN. 377
endeavour to declare things wisely, and make the matter intelligible, and the words clear ; hoping, by this means, to cut off all disputes. Indeed this is a very good way, so far as it can go ; and would prevail very much, if all men were wise, and would consent to those statings, and would not fall out upon the main inquiry, when it were well stated : but we find, by a sad experience, that few questions are well stated ; and when they are, they are not consented to ; and when they are agreed on by both sides that they are well stated, it is nothing else but a drawing up the armies in battalia with great skill and discipline ; the next thing they do is, they thrust their swords into one another's sides.
5. What remedy after all this? Some other good men have propounded one way yet ; but that is a way of peace, rather than truth ; and that is, that all opinions should be tolerated, and none persecuted, and then all the world will be at peace. Indeed, this relies upon a great reasonableness ; not only because opinions cannot be forced, but because if men receive no hurt, it is to be hoped they will do none. But we find that this alone will not do it; for besides that all men are not so just as not to do any injury, — for some men begin the evil ; besides this, I say, there are very many men amongst us, who are not content that you permit them ; for they will not permit you, but ' rule over your faith,' and say that their way is not only true, but necessary ; and therefore the truth of God is at stake, and all indifference and modera- tion is carnal wisdom, and want of zeal for God; nay, more than so, they preach for toleration when themselves are under the rod, who, when they got the rod into their own hands, thought toleration itself to be intolerable. Thus do the papists, and thus the Calvinists ; and, for their cruelty, they pretend charity. They will, indeed, force you to come in, but it is in true zeal for your soul ; and if they do you violence, it is no more than if they pull your arm out of joint, when, to save you from drowning, they draw you out of a river; and if you complain, it is no more to be regarded than the outcries of children aoainst their rulers, or sick men ag-ainst physicians. But as to the thing itself, the truth is, it is better in contemplation than practice ; for reckon ail that is got by it, when you come to handle it, and it can never satisfy for the infinite disorders happening in the government ; the
378 A SERMON PREACHED TO
Bcandal to religion, the secret dangers to public societies, the growth of heresy, the musing uj) of parties to a grandeur so considerable, as to be able, in their own time, to change the laws and the government. So that if the question be, whether mere opinions are to be persecuted, — it is certainly true, they ought not. But if it be considered how, by opinions, men rifle the affairs of kingdoms, it is also as certain, they ought not to be made public and permitted. And what is now to be done? Must truth be for ever in the dark, and the world for ever be divided, and societies disturbed, and governments weakened, and our spirits debauched with error, and the uncertain opinions and the pedantry of talking men ? Certainly there is a way to cure all this evil ; and the wise Governor of all the world hath not been wanting in so necessary a matter as to lead us into all truth. But the way hath not yet been hit upon, and yet I have told you all the ways of man, and his imaginations, in order to truth and peace : and you see these will not do ; we can find no rest for the soles of our feet, amidst all the waters of contention and disputations, and little artifices of divided schools. * Every man is a liar,' and his understanding is weak, and his propositions uncertain, and his opinions trifling, and his contrivances imperfect, and neither truth nor peace does come from man. I know I am in an auditory of inquisitive persons, whose business is to study for truth, that they may find it for themselves, and teach it unto others. I am in a school of prophets and pro- phets' sons, who all ask Pilate's question, " What is truth ?" You look for it in your books, and you tug hard for it in your disputations, and you derive it from the cisterns of the fathers, and you inquire after the old ways, and sometimes are taken with new appearances, and you rejoice in false lights, or are delighted with little umbrages and peep of day. But w^here is there a man, or a society of men, that can be at rest in his inquiry, and is sure he understands all the truths of God ? Where is there a man, but the more he studies and inquires, still he discovers nothing so clearly as his own igno- rance? This is a demonstration that we are not in the right way, that we do not inquire wisely, that our method is not artificial. If men did fall upon the right way, it were impos- sible so many learned men should be engaged in contrary parties and opinions. We have examined all ways but one,
THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN. 379
all but God's way. Let us, having missed in all the other, try this ; let us go to God for truth ; for truth comes from God only, and his ways are plain, and his sayings are true, and his promises * Yea and Amen ;' and if we miss the truth, it is because we will not find it ; for certain it is, that all that truth which God hath made necessary, he hath also made legible and plain ; and if we will open our eyes, we shall see the sun, and if " we will walk in the light, we shall rejoice in the light ;" only let us withdraw the curtains, let us remove the * impediments, and the sin that doth so easily beset us ;' that is God's way. Every man must, in his station, do that portion of duty, which God requires of him, and then he shall be taught of God all that is fit for him to learn. There is no other way for him but this. " The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and a good understanding have all they that do thereafter^." And so said David of himself, " I have more understanding than my teachers ; because I keep thy commandments ^." And this is the only way which Christ hath taught us. If you ask, " What is truth ?" you must not do as Pilate did — ask the question, and then go away from him that only can give you an answer ; for as God is the author of truth, so he is the teacher of it ; and the way to learn it is this of my text : for so saith our blessed Lord, "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or no."
My text is simple as truth itself, but greatly comprehen- sive, and contains a truth that alone will enable you to under- stand all mysteries, and to expound all prophecies, and to interpret all scriptures, and to search into all secrets ; all, I mean, which concern our happiness and our duty : and, it being an affirmative hypothetical, is plainly to be resolved into this proposition, — ' The way to judge of religion is by doing of our duty ; and theology is rather a Divine life than a Divine knowledge.' In heaven, indeed, we shall first see, and then love ; but here on earth, we must first love, and love will open our eyes as well as our hearts ; and we shall then see, and perceive, and understand.
In the handling of which proposition, I shall first represent to you, that — the certain causes of our errors are nothing but
» Ps. cxi. 10, *> Ps. cxix.
380 A SKKMON PREACHED TO
direct sins, — nothino; makes us fools and ignorants but living vicious lives; and tlun I shall proceed to the direct demon- stration of the article in question, that — holiness is the only way of truth and understanding.
1. No man understands the word of God, as it ought to be understood, unless he lays aside all affections to sin : of which because we have taken very little care, the product hath been, that we have had very little wisdom, and very little knowledge, in the ways of God. Kaxla ia-Ti <p9a.^rmyi rUg apx^i, said Aristotle ; " Wickedness does corrupt a man's reasoning ;" it gives him false principles and evil measures of things : the sweet wine that Ulysses gave to the Cyclops, put his eye out ; and a man that hath contracted evil affections, and made a league with sin, sees only by those measures. A covetous man understands nothing to be good that is not profitable; and a voluptuous man likes your reasoning well enough, if you discourse of ' bonum jucundum,' the pleasures of the sense, the ravishments of lust, the noises and inadvertencies, the mirth and songs of merry company ; but if you talk to him of the melancholy lectures of the cross, the content of resignation, the peace of meekness, and the joys of the Holy Ghost, and of rest in God, after your long discourse, and his great silence, he cries out, ' What is the matter V He knows not what you mean. Either you must fit his humour, or change your discourse.
I remember that Arrian tells of a gentleman that was banished from Rome, and in his sorrow visited the philo- sopher, and he heard him talk wisely, and believed him, and promised him to leave all the thoughts of Rome, and splen- dours of the court, and retire to the course of a severe philosophy ; but before the good man's lectures were done, there came Trivatci^sg utto toS Kalaa^oi, ' letters from Csesar,' to recall him home, to give him pardon, and promise him great employment. He presently grew weary of the good man's sermon, and wished he would make an end, thought his discourse was dull and flat ; for his head and heart were full of another story and new principles ; and by these measures he could hear only, and he could understand *=.
Every man understands by his affections more than by his
" Upton, vol. i. p. 60.
THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN. 381
reason : and when the wolf in the fable went to school to learn to spell, whatever letters were told him, he could never make any thing of them but ' agnus ;' he thought of nothing but his belly : and if a man be very hungry, you must give him meat, before you give him counsel. A man's mind must be like your proposition, before it can be entertained ; for whatever you put into a man, it will smell of the vessel : it is a man's mind that gives the emphasis, and makes your argument to prevail.
And upon this account it is, that there are so many false doctrines in the only article of repentance. Men know they must repent, but the definition of repentance they take from the convenience of their own affairs : what they will not part with, that is not necessary to be parted with ; and they will repent, but not restore : they will say * Nollem factum,' * they wish they had never done it ;' but since it is done, you must give them leave to rejoice in their purchase : they will ask forgiveness of God ; but they sooner forgive themselves, and suppose that God is of their mind : if you tie them to hard terms, your doctrine is not to be understood ; or it is but one doctor's opinion, — and, therefore, they will fairly take their leave, and get them another teacher.
What makes these evil, these dangerous and desperate doctrines? Not the obscurity of the thing, but the cloud upon the heart ; for say you what you will, he that hears must be the expounder, and we can never suppose but a man will give sentence in behalf of what he passionately loves. And so it comes to pass, that, as Rabbi Moses observed, God, for the greatest sin, imposed the least oblation, as a she- goat for the sin of idolatry ; for a woman accused of idolatry, a barley cake : so do most men ; they think to expiate the worst of their sins with a trifling, with a pretended, little, insignificant repentance. God, indeed, did so, that the cheapness of the oblation might teach them to hope for pardon, not from the ceremony, but from a severe internal repentance : but men take any argument to lessen their repentance, that they may not lessen their pleasures or their estates, — and that repentance may be nothing but a word, — and mortification signify nothing against their pleasures, but be a term of art only, fitted for the schools or for the pulpit, — but nothing relative to practice, or the extermination of their
382 A SF.RMON PUEACHED TO
sin. So tliat it is no wonder we understand bo little of religion : it is because we are in love with that which destroys it; and as a man does not care to hear what does not please hiui, so neither does he beUeve it; he cannot;, he will not understand it.
And tlie same is the case in the matter of pride ; the church hath extremely suffered by it in many ages. Arius missed a bishoprick, and, therefore, turned heretic; ETa^aa-at Tw kxuMa-'ic^v^ saith the story ; " he disturbed and shaked the church;" for he did not understand this truth, — that the peace of the church was better than the satisfaction of his person, or the promoting his foolish opinion. — And do not we see and feel, that, at this very day, the pride of men makes it seem impossible for many persons to obey their superiors ? and they do not see what they can read every day, that it is a sin " to speak evil of dignities."
A man would think it a very easy thing to understand the thirteenth chapter to the Romans, *' Whosoever resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God :" and yet we know a generation of men, to whom these words were so obscjre, that they thought it lawful to fight against their king. A man would tliink it easy to believe, that those who were ' in the gainsaying of Korah,' who rose up against the high priest, were in a very sad condition : and yet there are too many amongst us, who are in the gainsaying of Korah, and think they do very well ; that they are the godly party, and the good people of God. Why? What is the matter ? In the world there can be nothing plainer than these words, " Let every soul be subject to the higher powers;" and that you need not make a scruple who are these higher powers, it is as plainly said, " There is no power but of God ;" all that are set over you by the laws of your nation, these '^ are over you in the Lord :" and yet men will not understand these plain things ; they deny to do their notorious duty, and yet believe they are in the right ; and if they sometimes obey ' for wrath,' they oftener disobey for * conscience sake.' Where is the fault ? The words are plain, the duty is certain, the book lies open ; but, alas ! * it is sealed within,' that is, " men have eyes and will not see, ears and will not hear." But the wonder is the less ; for we know when God said to Jonah, " Doest thou well to be angry ?" he answered God to his face,
THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN. 383
" 1 do well to be angry even unto the death." Let God declare his mind never so plainly, if men will not lay aside the evil principle that is within, their open love to their secret sin, they may kill an apostle, and yet be so ignorant as to '* think they do God good service ;" they may disturb king- doms, and break the peace of a well-ordered church, and rise up against their fathers, and be cruel to their brethren, and stir up the people to sedition; and all this with a cold stomach and a hot liver, with a hard heart and a tender conscience, with humble carriage and a proud spirit. For thus men hate repentance, because they scorn to confess an error ; they will not return to peace and truth, because they fear to lose the good opinion of the people, whom themselves have cozened ; they are afraid to be good, lest they should confess they have formerly done amiss: and he, — that ob- serves how much evil is done, and how many heresies are risen, and how much obstinacy and unreasonable perseverance in folly dwells in the world upon the stock of pride, — may easily conclude, that no learning is sufficient to make a proud man understand the truth of God, unless he first learn to be humble. But " Obedite et intelligetis," saith the prophet; " Obey," and be humble, leave the foolish affections of sin, " and then ye shall understand." That is the first particular : all remaining affections to sin hinder the learning and under- standing of the things of God.
2. He that means to understand the will of God and the truth of religion, must lay aside — all inordinate affections to the world. — St. Paul complained that there was at " that day a veil upon the hearts of the Jews, in the reading of the Old Testament "^ :" they looked for a temporal prince to be their Messias, and their affections and hopes dwelt in secular advantages ; and so long as that veil was there, they could not see, and they would not accept the poor despised Jesus.
For the things of the world, besides that they entangle one another, and make much business, and spend much time, they also take up the attentions of a man's mind, and spend his faculties, and make them trifling and secular with the very handling and conversation. And, therefore, the Pythagoreans taught their disciples x.^§iafA,ov utco rou cru/xaTOi,
^ 2 Cor. iii. 14.
384 A SERMON PllEACflED TO
fig ro KaXciJ; (piXoTofuv, ' a separation from tlie things of the body, if they would purely fuid out truth and the excellencies of wisdom.' Had not he lost his labour, that would have discoursed wisely to Apicius, and told him of the books of fate and the secrets of the other world, the abstractions of the soul, and its brisker immortality, that saints and ant^els eat not, and that the spirit of a man lives for ever upon wisdom, and holiness, and contemplation ? The fat glutton would have stared awliile upon the preacher, and then have fallen asleep. But if you had discoursed well and knowingly of a lamprey, a large mullet, or a boar, " animal propter con- vivia natura," and have sent him a cook from Asia to make new sauces, he would have attended carefully, and taken in your discourses greedily. And so it is in the questions and secrets of Christianity : which made St. Paul, when he in- tended to convert Fehx, discourse first with him about " tem- perance, righteousness, and judgment to come." He began in the right point ; he knew it was to no purpose to preach Jesus Christ crucified to an intemperate person, to an usurper of other men's rights, to one whose soul dwelt in the world, and cared not for the sentence of the last day. The philoso- phers began their wisdom with the meditation of death, and St. Paul his with the discourse of the day of judgment: to take the heart off from this world and the amabilities of it, which dishonour and baffle the understanding, and made Solomon himself become a child, and fooled into idolatry, by the prettiness of a talking woman. Men, now a-days, love not a religion that will cost them dear. If your doctrine calls upon men to part with any considerable part of their estates, you must pardon them if they cannot believe you ; they understand it not. I shall give you one great instance of it. \\ hen we consider the infinite unreasonableness that is in the popish religion, how against common sense their doctrine of transubstantiation is, how against the common experience of human nature is the doctrine of the pope's infallibility, how against Scripture is the doctrine of indulgences and purgatory ; we may well think it a wonder, that no more men are persuaded to leave such unlearned follies. But then, on the other side, the wonder will cease, if we mark how many temporal ends are served by these doctrines. If you destroy the doctrine of purgatory and indulgences, you take
THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIX. 385
away the priest's income, and make the see apostohc to be poor ; if you deny the pope's infallibility, you will despise his authority, and examine his propositions, and discover his failing, and put him to answer hard arguments, and lessen his power : and, indeed, when we run through all the propositions of difference between them and us, and see that, in every one of them, they serve an end of money or of power ; it will be very visible that the way to confute them is not by learned disputations, — for we see they have been too long without effect, and without prosperity : the men must be cured of their affections to the world, " ut nudi nudum sequantur crucifixum," " that with naked and divested affections they might follow the naked crucified Jesus;" and then they would soon learn the truths of God, which, till then, will be impos- sible to be apprehended. 'Ev Tr^oJ-Troiria-si kivyria-eoog ra lauruv 'BapBia-dyouaiv, " Men," as St. Basil says, " when they expound Scripture, always bring in something of themselves :" but till there be, as one said, ava^aa-tg sh rod a-TTYiXalou, " a rising out" from their own seats, until they go out " from their dark dungeons," they can never see the light of heaven. And how many men are there amongst us, who are, therefore, enemies to the religion, because it seems to be against their profit? The argument of Demetrius is unansvv'erable : " By this craft they get their livings :" leave them in their livings, and they will let your rehgion alone; if not, they think they have reason to speak against it. When men's souls are possessed with the world, their souls cannot be invested with holy truths. Xprf utto tovtuv auTviv ■^'^X^v -^uxovcrGai, as St. Isidore said : * The soul must be' informed, ' ensouled,' or animated with the propositions that you put in; or you shall never do any good, or get disciples to Christ. Now because a man cannot serve two masters ; because he cannot vigorously attend two objects ; because there can be but one soul in any livino- creature; if the world have got possession, talk no more of your questions, shut your Bibles, and read no more of the words of God to them, for they cannot tell of" the doctrine, whether it be of God, or of the world." That is the second particular : worldly affections hinder true understand- ings in religion,
3. No man, how learned soever, can understand the word
VOL. VI. C C
3SG A SERMON PliEAClIKH TO
of God, or be at peace in the questions of religion, unless lie be a master over his passions:
Til quoqtic si vis Iimiine claio Ccnicrc M mm, jraiuliii j)i'lle, Pi lit' tinionni : niihila innis est Vinctnqtie tVacnis, heec ubi regnant :
said the wise Boethius ; a man must first learn himself before he can learn God. '' Tua te fallit imago :" nothing deceives a man so soon as a man's self; when a man is (that I may use Plato's expression) aufj.7n(pu^iJLkvoq tyj ysvEosi, ' mingled with his nature,' and his congenial infirmities of anger and desire, he can never have any thing but afMv^pov ^o^av, ' a knowledge partly moral and partly natural :' his whole life is but ima- gination ; his knowledge is inclination and opinion ; he judges of heavenly things by the measures of his fears and his desires, and his reason is half of it sense, and determinable by the principles of sense. E^ys oii (pixo(TO<p{i<; kv 'sjadsa-i, then * a man learns well, when he is a philosopher in his passions^.' Passionate men are to be taught the first elements of religion ; and let men pretend to as much learning as they please, they must begin again at Christ's cross ; they must learn true mortification and crucifixion of their anger and desires, before they can be good scholars in Christ's school, — or be admitted into the more secret inquiries of religion, — or profit in spiritual understanding. It was an excellent proverb of the Jews, " In passionibus Spiritus Sanctus non habitat," " The Holy Ghost never dwells in the house of passion." Truth enters into the heart of man, when it is empty, and clean, and still; but -when the mind is shaken with passion as with a storm, you can never hear the ' voice of the charmer, though he charm very wisely :' and you will very hardly sheath a sword, when it is held by a loose and a paralytic arm. He that means to learn the secrets of God's wisdom, must be, as Plato says, tyiv Aoyjxriv {mv oi/a-icafjLEvog, ' his soul must be con- substantiated with reason,' not invested with passion : to him that is otherwise, things are but in the dark, his notion is obscure, and his sight troubled ; and, therefore, though we
• Naziaaz. ad Philagi iuni.
THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN. 387
often meet with passionate fools, yet we seldom or never hear of a very passionate wise man.
I have now done with the first part of my undertaking, and proved to you that our evil life is the cause of our con- troversies and ignorances in religion and of the things of God. You see what hinders us from becoming good divines. But all this while, we are but in the preparation to the mys- teries of o-odliness : when we have thrown off all affections to sin, when we have stripped oui'selves from all fond ad- herences to the things of the world, and have broken the chains and dominion of our passions ; then we may say with David, " Ecce paratum est cor meum, Deus ;" " My heart is ready, O God, my heart is ready :" then we may say, " Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth :" but we are not yet instructed. It remains, therefore, that we inquire what is that immediate principle or means, by v/hich we shall certainly and infallibly be let into all truth, and be taught the mind of God, and understand all his secrets ; and this is worth our knowledge. I cannot say that this will end your labours, and put a period to your studies, and make your learning easy; it may possibly increase your labour, but it will make it profitable ; it will not end your studies, but it will direct them ; it will not make human learning easy, but it will make it ' wise unto salvation,' and conduct it into true notices and ways of wisdom.
I am now to describe to you the right way of knowledge : " Qui facit voluntatem Patris mei," saith Christ ; that is the way ; do God's will, and you shall understand God's word. And it was an excellent saying of St. Peter, " Add to your faith virtue *"," &.c. " If these things be in you and abound, ye shall not be unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." For in this case, it is not enough that all our hinderances of knowledge are removed; for that is but the opening of the covering of the book of God ; but when it is opened, it is written with a hand that every eye cannot read. Though the windows of the east be open, yet every eye can- not behold the glories of the sun : 'O(p9a^fA.0i ixv) v^^iozi^v; yivo- fx.Evo5 rixiov ou ^AOTEi, saith Plotinus ; " The eye that is not made solar, cannot see the sun ;" — the eye must be fitted to the
' 2 Pet. i. 5.
388 A SERMON rUI.ACUKI) TO
splnuloiir ; siiul it is not the wit of the man, but the spirit of the man ; not so much liis head as his heart, that learns tlie Divine philosophy.
1. Now, in this inquiry, I must take one thing for a ' priecognitum,' tliat every good man is SeoJ/^oixtoj, he is ' taught of God :' and, indeed, unless he teach us, we shall make but ill scholars ourselves, and worse guides to others. " Nemo potest Deum scire, nisi a Deo doceatur,'' said St. Iremvuss. If God teaches us, then all is well ; but if we do not learn wisdom at his feet, from whence should we have it ? it can come from no other spring. And, therefore, it naturally follows, that by how much nearer we are to God, by so much better we are like to be instructed.
But this being supposed, as being most evident, we can easily proceed, by wonderfid degrees and steps of pro- gression, in the economy of this Divine philosophy : For,
2. There is, in every righteous man, a new vital principle; the Spirit of grace is the Spirit of wisdom, and teaches us by secret inspirations, by proper arguments, by actual persua- sions, by personal applications, by effects and energies : and as the soul of a man is the cause of all his vital operations, so is the Spirit of God the life of that life, and the cause of all actions and productions spiritual : and the consequence of this is what St. John tells us of, " Ye have received the unction from above, and that anointing teacheth you all things'' :" J/l things of some one kind ; that is, certainly, — all things that pertain to life and godliness; — all that by which a man is wise and happy. We see this by common experience. Unless the soul have a new life put into it, unless there be a vital principle within, unless the Spirit of life be the informer of the spirit of man, — the word of God will be as dead in the operation, as the body in its powers and possibilities. " Sol et homo generant hominem," saith our philosophy : * A man alone does not beget a man, but a man and the sun;' for without the influence of the celestial bodies, all natural actions are ineffective : and so it is in the operations of the soul.
Which principle, divers fanatics, both among us and in the church of Rome, misunderstanding, look for new revela-
« Lil). vi. cap. 13. '' 1 Jolm, ii. '27.
THE UNIVERSITV OF DUBLIN. 389
tions, and expect to be conducted by ecstasy, and will not pray but in a transfiguration, and live upon raptures and ex- travagant expectations, and separate themselves from the conversation of men, by affectations, by new measures and singularities, and destroy order, and despise government, and live upon illiterate phantasms and ignorant discourses. These men do i^si/ha-Oai to ayiov llvttJfj^a, " they belie the Holy Ghost:" for the Spirit of God makes men wise : it is an evil spirit that makes them fools. The Spirit of God makes us ' wise unto salvation ;' it does not spend its holy influences in disguises and convulsions of tlie understanding : God's Spirit does not destroy reason, but heightens it ; he never disorders the beauties of government, but is a God of order ; it is the Spirit of humility, and teaches no pride ; he is to be found in churches and pulpits, upon altars, and in the doctors' chairs ; not in conventicles, and mutinous corners of a house : he goes in company w ith his own ordi- nances, and makes progressions by the measures of life ; his infusions are just as our acquisitions, and his graces pursue the methods of nature : that which was imperfect, he leads on to perfection ; and that which was weak, he makes strong : he opens the heart, not to receive murmurs, or to attend to secret whispers, but to hear the word of God ; and then he opens the heart, and creates a new one ; and without this new creation, this new principle of life, we may hear the word of God, but we can never understand it ; we hear the sound, but are never the better; unless there be in our hearts a secret conviction by the Spirit of God, the Gospel itself is a dead letter, and worketh not in us the light and righteousness of God.
Do not we see this by daily experience ? Even those tliino-s which a good man and an evil man know, they do not know them both alike. A wicked man does know that good is lovely, and sin is of an evil and destructive nature ; and when he is reproved, he is convinced ; and when he is observed, he is ashamed ; and when he has done, he is unsatisfied ; and when he pursues his sin, he does it in the dark : tell him he shall die, and he sighs deeply, but he knows it as well as you : proceed, and say, that after death, comes judgment, and the poor man believes and trembles ; he knows that God is angry with him ; and
390 A SKRMON PRE ACHED TO
if you tell him, that, for avioht he knows, he may be in heil to-morrow, he knows that it is an intolerable truth, but it is also undeniable : and vet, after all this, he runs to commit his sin with as certain an event and resolution as if he knew no arc^ument aoainst it : these notices of things terrible and true pass through his understanding, as an eagle through the air ; as long as her flight lasted, the air was shaken, but there remains no ])ath behind her.
Now since, at the same time, we see other ])ersons, not so learned, it may be, not so much versed in Scriptures, — ■ yet they say a thing is good and lay hold of it ; they believe glorious things of heaven, and they live accordingly, as men that believe themselves; half a word is enough to make them understand ; a nod is a sufficient reproof; the crowing of a cock, the singing of a lark, the dawning of the day, and the washing their hands, are to them competent memorials of religion, and warnings of their duty. What is the reason of this diiierence ^ They both read the Scriptures, they read and hear the same sermons, they have capable understand- ings, they both believe v/hat they hear and what they read, and yet the event is vastly different. The reason is that which I am now speaking of; the one understands by one principle, the other by another; the one understands by nature, and the other by grace ; the one by human learning, and the other by Divine ; the one reads the Scriptures with- out, and the other within ; the one understands as a son of man, the other as a son of God ; the one perceives by the proportions of the world, and the other by the measures of the Spirit; the one understands by reason, and the other by love ; and, therefore, he does not only understand the sermons of the Spirit, and perceives their meaning, but he pierces deeper, and knows the meaning of that meaning ; that is, the secret of the Spirit, that which is spiritually discerned, that which gives life to the proposition, and activity to the soul. And the reason is, because be hath a divine principle within him, and a new understanding ; that is plainly, he hath love, and that is more than knowledge ; as was rarely well observed by St. Paul, " Knowledge pufFeth up, but charity edifieth ;" that is, charity makes the best scholars. No sermons can edify you, no Scriptures can build you up a holy building to God, unless the love of God
THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN. 391
be in your hearts, and " purify your souls from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit."
But so it is in the regions of stars, where a vast body of fire is so divided by eccentric motions, that it looks as if Nature had parted them into orbs and round shells of plain and purest materials : but where the cause is simple, and the matter without variety, the motions must be uniform ; and in heaven we should either espy no motion, or no variety. But God, who designed the heavens to be the causes of all changes and motions here below, hath placed his angels in their houses of light, and given to every one of his appointed officers a portion of the fiery matter to circumagitate and roll ; and now the wonder ceases : for if it be inquired why this part of the fire runs eastward, and the other to the south, they being both indifferent to either, — it is because an angel of God sits in the centre, and makes the same matter turn, not by the bent of its own mobility and inclination, but in order to the needs of man, and the great purposes of God : and so it is in the understandings of men; when they all receive the same notions, and are taught by the same master, and give full consent to all the propositions, and can, of themselves, have nothing to distinguish them in the events, it is because God has sent his Divine Spirit, and kindles a new fire, and creates a braver capacity, and applies the actives to the passives, and blesses their operation; for there is, in the heart of man, such a dead sea, and an indisposition to holy flames, like as in the cold rivers in the north, so as the fires will not burn them, and the sun itself will never warm them, till God's Holy Spirit does, from the temple of the New Jerusalem, bring a holy flame, and make it shine and burn.
" The natural man," saitli the holy apostle', " cannot perceive the things of the Spirit ; they are foolishness unto him ; for they are spiritually discerned :" for he that dis- courses of things by the measures of sense, thinks nothing good but that which is delicious to the palate, or pleases the brutish part of man ; and therefore, while he estimates the secrets of religion by such measures, they must needs seem as insipid as corU, or, the uncondited mushroom ; for they have nothing at all of that in their constitution. A volup-
^ 1 Cor. ii. 14.
392 A SERMON PREACH LD TO
tiious person is like tlie dogs of Sicily, so filled with the deliciousness orj)lants that j^row in every furrow nnd hedj^e, that they can never keep tiie scent of their game. 'A^uvaTov ava/M^ai i^acTi ttu^' o'uTug ol/xai T^v(pnv nai xaTixvu^iv, said St. Chry- sostom : '* The fire and water can never mingle ; so neither can sensuality, and the watchfulness and wise discerning of the spirit." — " Pilato interroganti de veritate, Christus non respondit ;" " When tlie wicked governor asked of Christ concerning truth, Christ gave him no answer." He was not fit to hear it.
He, therefore, who so understands the words of God, that he not only believes, but loves the proposition ; he who consents with all his heart, and, being convinced of the truth, does also apprehend the necessity, and obeys the precept, and delights in the discovery, and lays his hand upon his heart, and reduces the notices of things to the practice of duty ; he who dares trust his proposition, and drives it on to the utmost issue, resolving to go after it whithersoever it can invite him; this man walks in the Spirit; at least thus far he is gone towards it ; his understanding is brought ' in ob- sequium Christi,' * into the obedience of Christ.' This is a " loving God with all our mind ;" and whatever goes less than this, is but memory, and not understanding; or else such notice of things, by which a man is neither the wiser nor the better.
3. Sometimes God gives to his choicest, his most elect and precious servants, a knowledge even of secret things, which he communicates not to others. We find it greatly remarked in the case of Abraham, " And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing that I do*^?" Why not from Abraham ? — God tells us : " For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment'." And though this be irregular and infrequent, yet it is a reward of their piety, and the proper increase also of the spiritual man. We find this spoken by God to Daniel, and promised to be the lot of the righteous man in the days of the Messias"": " Many sha^l be purified, and made white, and tried ; but the wicked shall do wickedly :" —
t^ Gen. xviii. 17. 'Ver. I'J. "* Dan, xii. 10.
THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN. 393
and what then? — " None of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand"." Where, besides that the wise man and the wicked are opposed, plainly signifying that the wicked man is a fool and an ignorant ; it is plainly said, that " None of the wicked shall understand" the wisdom and mysteriousness of the kingdom of the Messias.
4. A good life is the best way to understand wisdom and religion, because, by the experiences and relishes of religion, there is conveyed to them such a sweetness, to which all wicked men are strangers : there is in the things of God, to them which practise them, a deliciousness that makes us love them, and that love admits us into God's cabinet, and strangely clarifies the understanding by the purification of the heart. For vdien our reason is raised up by the Spirit of Christ, it is turned quickly into ex- perience ; when our faith relies upon the principles of Christ, it is changed into vision ; and so long as we know God only in the ways of man, by contentious learning, by arguing and dispute, — we see nothing but the shadow of him ; and in that shadow we meet with many dark appearances, little certainty, and much conjecture : but when we know him Xoyu a'zso(pavri}cu, yaMvvi vos^a, with the eyes of hohness, and the intuition of gracious experiences, with a quiet spirit and the peace of enjoyment ; then we shall hear what we never heard, and see what our eyes never saw ; then the mysteries of godliness shall be opened unto us, and clear as the w^indows of the morning: and this is rarely well expressed by the Apostle, *' If we stand up from the dead, and awake from sleep, then Christ shall give us light"."
For although the Scriptures themselves are written by the Spirit of God, yet they are written within and without; and besides the light that shines upon the face of them, unless there be a light shining within our hearts, unfolding the leaves, and interpreting the mysterious sense of the Spirit, convincing our consciences and preaching to our hearts, to look for Christ in the leaves of the Gospel, is to ' look for the living amongst the dead.' There is a life in them, but that life is, according to St. Paul's expression,
» Dan. xli. 10. • Ejili. v. 1 J.
394 A M.llMON PliKAClI KJ) TO
** hid with Clirist in God:" and, unless the Spirit of God be tlie * pronin-condus,' we shall never draw it forth.
Human learning:; brings excellent ministries towards this ; it is admirably useful lor the reproof of heresies, for the detection of fallacies, lor the letter of the Scripture, for collateral testimonies, for exterior advanta«i;es ; but there is somethinji; beyond this, that human learning, without the addition of Divine, can never reach. Moses was learned in all the learning of the Egyptians ; and the holy men of God con- templated the glories of God in the admirable order, motion, and influences of the heavens ; but besides all this, they were taught of God something far beyond these prettinesses. Pythagoras read Moses' books, and so did Plato ; and yet they became not proselytes of the religion, though they were learned scholars of such a master. The reason is, because that, which they drew forth from thence, was not the life and secret of it.
Tiadidit arcano qiiodciinqHc vohiminc Moses p.
There is a secret in these books, which few men, none but the godly, did understand; and though much of this secret is made manifest in the Gospel, yet even here, also, there is a letter, and there is a spirit ; still there is a reserve for God's secret ones, even all those deep mysteries which the Old Testament covered in figures, and stories, and names, and prophecies, and which Christ hath, and by his Spirit, will yet reveal more plainly to all, that will understand them by their proper measures. For, although the Gospel is infinitely more legible and plain than the obscurer leaves of the law, yet there is a seal upon them also ; " which seal no man shall open, but he that is worthy." We may understand something of it by the three children of the captivity ; they were all skilled in all the wisdom of the Chaldees, and so was Daniel : but there was something beyond that in him ; " the wisdom of the most high God was in him;" and that taught him a learning beyond his learning.
in all Scripture there is a spiritual sense, a spiritual cabala, which, as it tends directly to holiness, so it is
r Jtiv. xiv. 10'.'.
THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN. 395
best and truest understood by the sons of the Spirit, who love God, and therefore know him. Tvcca-ig hxixa-rav ^i o/j^oiory^ra. ylvBTai, " Every thing is best known by its own simihtudes and analoo-ies."
But I must take some other time to speak fully of these things; I have but one thing mOre to say, and then I shall make my applications of this doctrine, and so conclude.
5. Lastly : there is a sort of God's dear servants who walk in perfectness, who ' perfect holiness in the fear of God ; ' and they have a degree of clarity and divine know- ledge more than we can discourse of, and more certain than the demonstrations of geometry, brighter than the sun, and indeficient as the light of heaven. This is called by the apostle the a7rauyaa-/j.x roS Bsou- Christ is this * brightness of God,' manifested in the hearts of his dearest servants.
EvfA,a6ir,z,
But I shall say no more of this at this time, for this is to be felt, and not to be talked of; and they that never touched it with their finger, may secretly, perhaps, laugh at it in their heart, and be never the wiser. All that I shall now say of it is, that a good man is united unto God, yJvr^ov aevr^u avva-^ag, as a flame touches a flame, and combines into splendour and to glory : so is the spirit of a man united unto Christ by the Spirit of God. "These are the friends of God, and they best know God's mind, and they only that are so, know how much such men do know. They have a special unction from above: so that now you are come to the top of all ; this is the highest round of the ladder, and the angels stand upon it : they dwell in love and contemplation, they worship and obey, but dispute not : and our quarrels and impertinent wrangiings about rehgion are nothing else but the want of the measures of this state. Our light is like a candle; every wind of vain doctrine blows it out, or spends the wax, and makes the light tremulous ; but the lights of heaven are fixed and bright, and shine for ever.
But that we may speak not only things mysterious, but things intelligible ; how does it come to pass, by what means and what economy is it effected, that a holy life is the best determination of all questions, and the surest way of know-
39f) A SF.RMON IMU'.ACUKDTO
Irdije ? Is it to he supposed, thai a godly man is hotter enahled to determine the questions of purgatory or transuh- stantiation? is the gift of chastity the hest way to reconcile Thomas and Scotus? and is a temperate man always a better scholar than a drunkard ? To this I answer, that in all things in which true wisdom consists, holiness, which is the best wisdom, is the surest way of understanding them. And this, 1. Is effected by holiness as a proper and natural in- strument : for naturally every thing is best discerned by its proper light and congenial instrument.
ram ^£y yij yaXav oirii7ra,y,lv, vSari Y iljajj .
For as the eye sees visible objects, and the understanding perceives the intellectual ; so does the Spirit the things of the Spirit. " The natural man," saith St. Paul, " knows not the things of God, for they are spiritually discerned:" that is, they are discovered by a proper light, and concerning these things an unsanctified man discourses pitifully, with an im- perfect idea, as a blind man does of light and colours, which he never saw.
A good man, though unlearned in secular notices, is like the windows of the temple, narrow without and broad within : he sees not so much of what profits not abroad, but what- soever is within, and concerns religion and the glorifications of God, that he sees with a broad inspection : but all human learning, without God, is but blindness and ignorant folly.
But when it is otxaioauvy) ^£^a/j.fx£vyi s'k; ^adog Trig aXndsiag^ ' righteousness dipped in the wells of truth ;' it is like an eye of gold in a rich garment, or like the light of heaven, it shows itself by its own splendour. What learning is it to discourse of the philosophy of the sacrament, if you do not feel the virtue of it? and the man that can with eloquence and subtilty discourse of the instrumental efficacy of bap- tismal waters, talks ignorantly in respect of him who hath * the answer of a good conscience' within, and is cleansed by the purifications of the Spirit. If the question concern any thing that can perfect a man and make him happy, all that is the proper knowledge and notice of the good man. How can a w icked man understand the purities of the heart ? and how can an evil and unworthy communicant tell what it is to have received Christ by faith, to dwell with him, to
THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN. 397
be united to him, to receive him in his heart? The good man only understands that : the one sees the colour, and the other feels the substance ; the one discourses of the sacra- ment, and the other receives Christ ; the one discourses for or against transubstantiation, but the good man feels himself to be changed, and so joined to Christ, that he only under- stands the true sense of transubstantiation, while he becomes to Christ bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, and of the same spirit with his Lord.
We talk much of reformation, and (blessed be God) once we have felt the good of it : but of late we have smarted under the name and pretension : the woman that lost her groat, * everrit doniuni,' not ' evertit;' 'she swept the house, she did not turn the house out of doors.' That was but an ill reformation, that untiled the roof and broke the walls, and was dio-o-ino; down the foundation.
too o
Now among all the pretensions of reformation, who can tell better what is, and what is not, true reformation, than he that is truly reformed himself ? He knows what pleases God, and can best tell by what instruments he is reconciled. "The mouth of the just bringeth forth wisdom; and the lips of the righteous know what is acceptable," saith Solomoni. He cannot be cozened by names of things, and feels that reformation to be imposture that is sacrilegious : himself is humble and obedient, and therefore knows that is not truth that persuades to schism and disobedience : and most of the questions of Christendom are such which are either good for nothing, and therefore to be laid aside ; or if they be compli- cated with action, and are ministries of practice, no man can judge them so well as the spiritual man. That which best pleases God, that which does good to our neighbour, that which teaches sobriety, that which combines with govern- ment, that which speaks honour of God, and does him ho- nour,— that only is truth. Holiness, therefore, is a proper and natural instrument of Divine knowledge, and must needs be the best way of instruction in the questions of Christendom, because, in the most of them, a duty is complicated with the proposition.
No man that intends to live holily, can ever suffer any
n Piov. X. 31, 32.
398 A SERMON' PRi: ACHED TO
pretences of religion to be made to teach him to fight against his king. And when the men of Geneva turned their bishop out of doors, they might easily have considered, that the same person was their prince too ; and that must needs be a strange religion, that rose up against Moses and Aaron at the same time : but that hath been the method ever since. There was no church till then ever governed without an apostle or a bishop : and since then, they who go from their bishop, have said very often to their king too, " Nolumus hunc regnare :" and when we see men pretending religion, and yet refuse to own the king's supremacy, they may, upon the stock of holiness, easily reprove their own folly, by considering that such recusancy does introduce into our churches the very worst, the most intolerable parts of popery : for perfect submission to kings is the glory of the protestant cause : and really the reprovable doctrines of the church of Rome are by nothing so much confuted, as that they destroy good life by consequent and evident deduction ; as by an induction of particulars were easy to make apparent, if this were the proper season for it.
2. Holiness is not only an advantage to the learning all wisdom and holiness, but for the discerning that which is wise and holy from what is trifling, and useless, and contentious; and to one of these heads all questions will return : and therefore, in all, from holiness we have the best instructions. And this brings me to the next particle of the general consideration. For that which we are taught by the holy Spirit of God, this new nature, this vital principle within us, it is that which is worth our learning ; not vain and empty, idle and insignificant notions, in which when you have laboured till your eyes are fixed in their orbs, and your flesh unfixed from its bones, you are no better and no wiser. If the Spirit of God be your teacher, he will teach you such truths as will make you know and love God, and become like to him, and enjoy him for ever, by passing from similitude to union and eternal fruition. But what are you the better, if any man should pretend to teach you whether every angel makes a species ? and what is the individuation of the soul in the state of separation ? what are you the wiser, if you should study and find out what place Adam should for ever have lived in, if he had not fallen ? and what is any man the more learned, if
THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN-. 399
he hears the disputes, whether Adam should have multipHed children in the state of innocence, and what would have been the event of things, if one child had been born before his father's sin ?
Too many scholars have lived upon air and empty notions for many ages past, and troubled themselves with tying and untying knots, like hypochondriacs in a fit of melancholy, thinking of nothing, and troubling themselves with nothing, and falling out about nothings, and being very wise and very learned in things that are not and work not, and were never planted in paradise by the finger of God. Men's notions are too often like the mules, begotten by equivocal and un- natural generations ; but they make no species : they are begotten, but they can beget nothing ; they are the effects of long study, but they can do no good when they are produced : they are not that which Solomon calls ' viam intelligentitfi,' 'the way of understanding.' If the Spirit of God be our teacher, we shall learn to avoid evil, and to do good, to be wise and to be holy, to be profitable and careful : and they that walk in this way, shall find more peace in their con- sciences, more skill in the Scriptures, more satisfaction in their doubts, than can be obtained by all the polemical and impertinent disputations of the world. And if the Holy Spirit can teach us how vain a thing it is to do foolish things, he also will teach us how vain a thing it is to trouble the world with foolish questions, to disturb the church for interest or pride, to resist government in things indifferent, to spend the people's zeal in things unprofitable, to make religion to consist in outsides, and opposition to circumstances, and trifling regards. No, no ; the man that is wise, he that is conducted by the Spirit of God, — knows better in what Christ's kingdom does consist, than to throw away his time and interes<, and peace and safety — for what? for retgion ? no : for the body of religion ? not so much : for the garment of the body of religion ? no, not for so much ; but for the fringes of the garment of the body of religion ; for such, and no better are the disputes that trouble our discontented brethren ; they are things, or rather circumstances and man- ners of things, in which the soul and spirit is not at all concerned.
3. Holiness of life is the best way of finding out truth
400 A SERMON PREACH KD TO
and understanding ; not only ns a natural medium, nor only as a prudent medium, but as a means by way of Divine blessing. " He that hath my commandmeuts and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that lovoth me, shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him '." Here we have a promise lor it; and upon that we may rely.
The old man t'at confuted the Arian priest by a plain recital of his creed, found a mighty power of God effecting his own work by a strange manner, and by a very plain in- strument : it wrought a Divine blessing just as sacraments use to do : and this liiihtening sometimes comes in a strange manner, as a peculiar blessing to good men. For God kept the secrets of his kingdom from the wise heatiiens and the learned Jews, revealing them to babes ; not because they had less learning, but because they had more love ; they were children and babes in mahce ; they loved Christ, and so he became to them a light and a glory. St. Paul had more learning than they all ; and Moses was instructed in all the learning of the Egyptians : yet because he was the meekest man upon earth, he was also the wisest; and to his hu- man learning, in which he was excellent, he had a Divine light and excellent wisdom superadded to him, by way of spiritual blessings. And St. Paul, though he went very far to the knowledge of many great and excellent truths by the force of human learning, yet he was far short of perfective truth and true wisdom, till he learned a new lesson in a new school, at the feet of one greater than his Gamaliel : his learning grew much greater, his notions brighter, his skill deeper, — by the love of Christ, and his desires, his passionate desires after Jesus.
The force and use of human learning, and of this Divine learning I am now speaking of, are both well expressed by the prophet Isaiah : " And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee : and he saith, I cannot, for it is sealed. And the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying. Read this, I pray thee : and he saith, I am not learned'." He that is no learned
' John, xiv. 21. ' Isa. xxix. 11, 1^.
I
TFIE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN. 401
man, who is not bred up in the schools of the prophets, cannot read God's book for want of learning. For human learnino- is the 2;ate and first entrance of Divine vision: not the only one indeed, but the common gate. But beyond this, there must be another learning; for he that is learned, bring the book to him, and you are not much the better as to the secret part of it^ if the book be sealed, if his eyes be closed, if his heart be not opened, if God does not speak to him in the secret way of discipline. Human learning is an excellent foundation : but the top-stone is laid by love and conformity to the will of God, For we may further observe, that blindness, error, and ignorance, are the, punishments which God sends upon wicked and ungodly men. " Etiamnum propter nostrae intelligentise tarditatem et vitee demeritum, Veritas nondum se apertissime ostenderit," was St. Austin's expression : " The truth hath not yet been manifested fully to us, by reason of our demerits :" our sins have hindered the brightness of the truth from shining upon us. And St. Paul observes, that when the heathens gave themselves " over to lusts, God gave them over to strong delusions, and to believe a lie'." But "God giveth to a man that is good in his sight, wisdom, and knowledge, and joy," said the wise Preacher". But this is most expressly promised in the New Testament, and particularly in that admirable sermon, which our blessed Saviour preached a little before his death : "The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things''." Well: there is our teacher told of plainly : but how shall we obtain this teacher, and how shall we be taught? Christ will pray for us that we may have this Spirit/. That is well : but shall all Christians have the Spirit? Yes, all that will live like Christians: for so said Christ, " If ye love irie, keep my commandments ; and I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever ; even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him." Mark these things. The Spirit of God is our teacher : — he will abide with us for ever to be our teacher:— he will teach us all things;—^
*Rom. i. 25, 26. ° EccI, ii. '26. " John, xiv. '26. ^ lb. 15, 16, ir. VOL. VI. D D
402 A SERMON PREACHED TO
but how ? " If ye love Christ," if ye keep his commandments, but not else : if ye be of the world, that is of worldly affec- tions, ye cannot see him, ye cannot know him. And this is the jiarticular I am now to speak to ; the way by which the iSpirit of God teaches us in all the ways arid secrets of God, is love and holiness.
" Secreta Dei Deo nostro et filiis domus ejus," " God's secrets are to himself and the sons of his house," saith the Jewish proverb. Love is the great instrument of Divine knowledge, that is the v-^oo/xa ruv h'^aa-xoixsvuv, ' the height of all that is to be taught or learned.' Love is obedience, and we learn his words best when we practise them ; *A yap h'i (/.av^civovrag ttoleTv, raura ttoiouvts^ ixav^avofxzv, said Aristotle^; " Those things which they that learn ought to practise, — even while they practise, they will best learn." — " Quisquis non venit, profecto nee didicit : ita enim Dominus docet per Spiritus gratiam, ut quod quisque didicerit, non tantum cog- noscendo videat, sed etiam volendo appetat et agendo per- ficiat;" St. Austin »: ''Unless we come to Christ, we shall never learn : for so our blessed Lord teaches us by the grace of his Spirit, that what any one learns, he not only sees it by knowledge, but desires it by choice, and perfects it by practice."
4. When this is reduced to practice and experience, we find not only in things of practice, but even in deepest mys- teries, not only the choicest and most eminent saints, but even every good man can best tell what is true, and best reprove an error.
He that goes about to speak of and to understand the mysterious Trinity, and does it by words and names of man's invention, or by such which signify contingently, if he reckons this mystery by the mythology of numbers, by the cabala of letters, by the distinctions of the school, and by the weak inventions of disputing people ; if he only talks of essences and existences, hypostasies and personalities, distinctions without difference, and priority in coequalities, and unity in pluralities, and of superior predicates of no larger extent than the inferior subjects; — he may amuse himself, and find
* Lib. ii. Ethic, c. 1.
* De Gratia Christi, lib. i. c. 14. Nullum bonum perfecte noscitur quod non perfecte amatur. Aug. lib. Ixxxiii. Qu. de Gratis Christi.
THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN. 403
his understanding will be like St. Peter's upon the mount of Tabor at the transfiguration : he may build three tabernacles in his head, and talk something, but he knows not what. But the good man that feels the ' power of the Father,' and he to whom ' the Son' is become " wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption ;" he in " whose heart the love of the Spirit of God is spread ;" to whom God hath communi- cated the " Holy Ghost, the Comforter;" — this man, though he understands nothing of that which is unintelligible, yet he only understands the mysteriousness of the holy Trinity. No man can be convinced well and wisely of the article of the holy, blessed, and undivided Trinity, but he that feels the mightiness of ' the Father begetting him to a new life,' the wisdom of ' the Son building him up in a most holy faith/ and the * love of the Spirit of God making him to become like unto God.'
He that hath passed from his childhood in grace, under the generation of the Father, and is gone forward to be a young man in Christ, strong and vigorous in holy actions and holy undertakings, and from thence is become an old disciple, and strong and grown old in religion, and the con- versation of the Spirit ; this man best understands the secret and undiscernible economy, he feels this unintelligible mys- tery, and sees with his heart what his tongue can never express, and his metaphysics can never prove. In these cases faith and love are the best knowledge, and Jesus Christ is best known by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ; and if the kingdom of God be in us, then we know God, and are known of him ; and when we communicate of the Spirit of God, when we pray for him, and have received him, and entertained him, and dwelt with him, and v/armed ourselves by his holy fires, — then we know him too : but there is no other satisfactory knowledge of the blessed Trinity but this : and, therefore, whatever thing is spoken of God metaphy- sically, there is no knowing of God theologically, and as he ought to be known, but by the measures of hohness, and the proper light of the Spirit of God.
But in this case experience is the best learning, and Christianity is the best institution, and the Spirit of God is the best teacher, and holiness is the greatest wisdom; and he that sins most, is the most ignorant, — and the humble
404 A SERMON PREACHED TO
and obedient man is the best scholar; " For the Spirit of God is a lovino- Spirit, and will not enter into a polluted soul : but he that keepeth the law, gettetli the understanding thereof; and the perfection of the fear of the Lord is wisdom," said the wise Ben-Sirach •>. And now give me leave to apply the doctrine to you, and so I shall dismiss you from this attention.
Many ways have been attempted to reconcile the dif- ferences of the church in matters of religion, and all the counsels of man have yet proved ineffective : let us now try God's method, let us betake ourselves to live holily, and then the Spirit of God will lead us into all truth. And indeed — it matters not what religion any man is of, if he be a villain ; — the opinion of his sect, as it will not save his soul, so neither will it do good to the public: but this is a sure rule, if the holy man best understands wisdom and religion, then by the proportions of holiness we shall best measure the doctrines, that are obtruded to the disturbance of our peace, and the dishonour of the Gospel. And, therefore,
1. That is no good reUgion, whose principles destroy any duty of rehgion. He that shall maintain it to be lawful to make a war for the defence of his opinion, be it what it will, his doctrine is against godliness. Any thing that is proud, any thing that is peevish and scornful, any thing that is uncharitable, is against the iyiaivouaa ^i^ao-ytahia, that " form of sound doctrine" which the apostle speaks of. And I remember that Ammianus Marcellinus, telling of George, a proud and factious minister, that he was an informer against his brethren, he says, he did it " oblitus professionis suae, quse nil nisi justum suadet et lene ;" " He forgot his profession, which teaches nothing but justice and meekness, kindnesses and charity." — And however Bellarmine and others are pleased to take but indirect and imperfect notice of it, yet goodness is the best note of the true church.
2. It is but an ill sign of holiness when a man is busy in troubling himself and his superior in little scruples and fantastic opinions, about things not concerning the life of religion, or the pleasure of God, or the excellencies of the Spirit. A good man knows how to please God, how to
•> Ecclus. xxi. 11.
THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN, 405
converse with him, how to advance the kingdom of the Lord Jesus, to set forward holiness, and the love of God and of his brother; and he knows also that there is no godliness in spending our time and our talk, our heart and our spirits, about the garments and outsides of religion : and they can ill teach others, that do not know that religion does not consist in these things ; but obedience may, and reductively that is religion : and he that, for that which is no part of religion, destroys religion directly, by neglecting that duty that is adopted into rehgion, — is a man of fancy and of the world ; but he gives but an ill account, that he is a man of God and a son of the Spirit.
Spend not your time in that which profits not ; for your labour and your health, your time and your studies, are very valuable ; and it is a thousand pities to see a diligent and a hopeful person spend himself in gathering cockle-shells and little pebbles, in telling sands upon the shores, and making garlands of useless daisies. Study that which is profitable, that which will make you useful to churches and common- wealths, that which will make you desirable and wise. Only I shall add this to you, that in learning there are variety of thino;s, as well as in religion : there is mint and cummin, and there are the weighty things of the law ; so there are studies more and less useful, and every thing that is useful, will be required in its time : and I may in this also use the words of our blessed Saviour, " These things ought you to look after, and not to leave the other unregarded." But your great oare is to be in the things of God and of religion, in holiness and true wisdom, remembering the saying of Origen, " That the knowledge that arises from goodness is BeIotb^ov ti '^aang aTTo^Ei^Ecc^, ' something that is more certain and more divine than all demonstration,' than all other learnings of the world."
3. That is no good religion that disturbs governments, or shakes a foundation of public peace. Kings and bishops are the foundations and the great principles of unity, of peace, and government ; like Rachel and Leah, they build up the house of Israel : and those blind Samsons that shake these pillars, intend to pull the house down. " My son, fear God and the king," saith Solomon ; '' and meddle not with them
406 A SERMON PREACHED TO
that are given to change." That is not truth that loves changes ; and the new nothings of heretical and schismatical preachers are infinitely far from the blessings of truth.
In the holy language, truth hath a mysterious name, n?oK, * emet ;' it consists of three letters, the first and the last and the middlemost of the Hebrew letters ; implying to us, that truth is first, and will be last, and it is the same all the way, and combines and unites all extremes ; it ties all ends together. — " Truth is lasting, and ever full of blessing :" — For the Jews observe that those letters which signify truth, are both in the figure and the number quadrate, firm, and cubical ; these signify a foundation, and an abode for ever. Whereas, on the other side, the word which in Hebrew signifies a lie, inty * secher,' is made of letters whose num- bers are imperfect, and their figure pointed and voluble ; to signify that a lie hath no foundation.
And this very observation will give good light in our questions and disputes : and I give my instance in episcopal government, which hath been of so lasting an abode, of so long a blessing, hath its firmament by the principles of Christianity, hath been blest by the issues of that stabiliment ; it hath for sixteen hundred years combined with monarchy, and hath been taught by the Spirit which hath so long dwelt in God's church, and hath now — according to the promise of Jesus, that says, " the gates of hell shall never prevail against the church" — been restored amongst us by a heap of miracles ; and as it went away, so now it is returned again in the hand of monarchy, and in the bosom of our fundamental laws. Now that doctrine must needs be suspected of error, and an intolerable lie, that speaks against this truth, which hath had so long a testimony from God, and from the wisdom and experience of so many ages, of all our ancestors, and all our laws.
When the Spirit of God wrote in Greek, Christ is called A and XI ; if he had spoken Hebrew, he had been called and n, that is, nD« * emet;' he is ' truth,' " the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever :" and whoever opposes this holy sanction, which Christ's Spirit hath sanctified, his word hath warranted, his blessings have endeared, his pro- mises have ratified, and his church hath always kept; he
THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN. 407
fights against this dd^ * emet,' and ' secher' is his portion ; his lot is ' a lie ;' his portion is there, where hohness can never dwell.
And now to conclude: to you, fathers and brethren, you who are, or intend to be of the clergy ; you see here the best compendium of your studies, the best abbreviature of your labours, the truest method of wisdom, and the infallible, the only way of judging concerning the disputes and questions in Christendom. It is not by reading multitudes of books, but by studying the truth of God : it is not by laborious commentaries of the doctors that you can finish your work, but by the expositions of the Spirit of God : it is not by the rules of metaphysics, but by the proportions of holiness ; and when all books are read, and all arguments examined, and all authorities alleged, nothing can be found to be true that is unholy. " Give yourselves to reading, to exhortation, and to doctrine," saith St. Paul. Read all good books you can; but exhortation unto good life is the best instrument, and the best teacher of true doctrine, of that which is * according to godliness.'
And let me tell you this, the great learning of the fathers was more owing to their piety than to their skill ; more to God than to themselves : and to this purpose is that excel- lent ejaculation of St. Chrysostom^ with which I will con- clude : " O blessed and happy men, whose names are in the book of life, from whom the devils fled, and heretics did fear them, who (by holiness) have stopped the mouths of them that spake perverse things ! But I, like David, will cry out,
* Where are thy loving-kindnesses which have been ever of old?' Where is the blessed quire of bishops and doctors, who shined like lights in the world, and contained the word of life 1 ' Dulce est meminisse ;' ' their very memory is pleasant.' Where is that Evodias, the sweet savour of the church, the successor and imitator of the holy apostles? Where is Ignatius, in whom God dwelt? Where is St. Dionysius the Areopagite, that bird of Paradise, that celestial eagle? Where is Hippolytus, that good man, avY\p x/JifTo?,
* that gentle sweet person?' Where is great St. Basil, a man almost equal to the apostles? Where is Athanasius, rich in
'^ Lib. de Consummat. Seculi, inter opera Eplirem Syri.
408 A SERMON, &C.
virtue? Where is Gregory Nyssen, that great divine? And Ephreni tlie great Syrian, that stirred up the sluggish, and awakened the sleepers, and comforted the afflicted, and brought the young men to discipline ; the looking-glass of the religious, the captain of the penitents, the destruction of heresies, the receptacle of graces, the habitation of the Holy Ghost?" These were the men that prevailed against error, because they lived according to truth : and whoever shall oppose you, and the truth you walk by, may better be con- futed by your lives than by your disputations. Let your adversaries have no evil thing to say of you, and then you will best silence them : for all heresies and false doctrines are but like IMyron's counterfeit cow, it deceived none but beasts ; and these can cozen none but the wicked and the negligent, them that love a lie, and live according to it. But if ye become burning and shining lights; if ye do not detain the truth in unrighteousness ; if ye walk in light, and live in the Spirit ; your doctrines will be true, and that truth will prevail. But if ye live wickedly and scandalously, every little schismatic shall put you to shame, and draw disciples after him, and abuse your flocks, and feed them with colo- cynths and hemlock, and place heresy in the chairs appointed for your religion.
I pray God give you all grace to follow this wisdom, to study this learning, to labour for the understanding of godli- ness ; so your time and your studies, your persons and your labours, will be holy and useful, sanctified and blessed, bene- ficial to men, and pleasing to God, through him who is the wisdom of the Father, who is made to all that love hira wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemp- tion .: " To whom with the Father/' &c.
SERMON
PREACHED iN
CHRIST'S CHURCH, DUBLIN,
July 16, 1663,
AT THE FUNERAL
OF
THE MOST REVEREND FATHER IN GOD,
JOHN,
LATE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH, AND PRIMATE OF ALL IRELAND.
FUNERAL SERMON.
SERMON VII.
But every man in his own order : Christ the first fruits ; after- ward they that are Christ's at his coming. — 1 Cor. xv. 23.
jLhe condition of man, in this world, is so limited and depressed, so relative and imperfect, that the best things he does, he does weakly, — and the best things he hath, are im- perfections in their very constitution. I need not tell how little it is that we know ; the greatest indication of this is, that we can never tell how many things we know not ; and we may soon span our own knowledge, but our ignorance we can never fathom. Our very will, in which mankind pretends to be most noble and imperial, is a direct state of imperfection ; and our very liberty of choosing good and evil is permitted to us, not to make us proud, but to make us humble ; for it supposes weakness of reason and weakness of love. For if we understood all the degrees of amabihty in the service of God, or if we had such love to God as he deserves, and so perfect a conviction as were fit for his services, we could no more deliberate : for liberty of will is like the motion of a magnetic needle toward the north, full of trembling and uncertainty till it were fixed in the beloved point ; it wavers as long as it is free, and is at rest, when it can choose no more. And truly what is the hope of man? It is indeed the resurrection of the soul in this world from sorrow and her saddest pressures, and like the twihght to the day, and the harbinger of joy ; but still it is but a conjugation of infirmities, and proclaims our present calamity, only be- cause it is uneasy here, it thrusts us forward toward the light and glories of the resurrection.
412 A SERMON PREACHED AT THE
For as a worm creeping with her belly on the ground, with her portion and share of Adam's curse, lifts up its bead to partake a little of the blessings of the air, and opens the junctures of her imperfect body, and curls her little rings into knots and combinations, drawing uj) her tail to a neighbour- hood of the head's pleasure and motion ; but still it must return to abide the fate of its own nature, and dwell and sleep upon the dust : so are the hopes of a mortal man ; he opens his eyes, and looks upon fine things at distance, and shuts them again with weakness, because they are too glorious to behold ; and the man rejoices because he hopes fine things are staying for him ; but his heart aches, because he knows there are a thousand ways to fail and miss of those glories ; and though he hopes, yet he enjoys not; he longs, but he possesses not, and must be content with his portion of dust; and being * a worm, and no man/ must lie down in this portion, before he can receive the end of his hopes, the salva- tion of his soul in the resurrection of the dead. For as death is the end of our lives, so is the resurrection the end of our hopes ; and as we die daily, so we daily hope : but death, which is the end of our life, is the enlargement of our spirits from hope to certainty, from uncertain fears to certain ex- pectations, from the death of the body to the life of the soul ; that is, to partake of the light and life of Christ, to rise to life as he did ; for his resurrection is the beginning of ours : he died for us alone, not for himself ; but he rose again for him- self and us too. So that if he did rise, so shall we ; the resurrection shall be universal ; good and bad, all shall rise, but not altogether : first Christ, then we that are Christ's ; and yet there is a third resurrection, though not spoken of here ; but thus it shall be. " The dead of Christ shall rise first;" that is, next to Christ; and after them, the wicked shall rise to condemnation.
So that you see here is the sum of affairs treated of in my text : not whether it be lawful to eat a tortoise or a mush- room, or to tread with the foot bare upon the ground within the octaves of easter. It is not here inquired, whether angels be material or immaterial ; or whether the dw ellings of dead infants be within the air or in the regions of the earth ? the inquiry here is, whether we are to be Christians or no? whether we are to live good lives or no .'' or whether it be
FUNERAL OF THE LOUD PRIMATE. 413
permitted to us to live with lust or covetousness, acted witli all the daughters of rapine and ambition? whether there be any such thing as sin, any judicatory for consciences, any rewards of piety, any difference of good and bad, any rewards after this life ? This is the design of these words by proper interpretation : for if men shall die like dogs and sheep, they will certainly live like wolves and foxes ; but he that believes the article of the resurrection, hath entertained the greatest demonstration in the world, that nothing can make us happy but the knowledge of God, and conformity to the life and death of the holy Jesus. Here, therefore, are the great hinges of all religion : 1. Christ is already risen from the dead. 2. We also shall rise in God's time and our order. Christ is the first fruits. But there shall be a full harvest of the resurrection, and all shall rise. My text speaks only of the resurrection of the just, of them that belong to Christ; explicitly, I say, of these ; and, therefore, directly of resurrection to life eternal. But because he also says there shall be an order for every man ; and yet every man does not belong to Christ ; there- fore, indirectly also, he implies the more universal resurrection unto judgment : but this shall be the last thing that shall be done ; for, according to the proverb of the Jews, Michael flies but with one wing, and Gabriel with two ; God is quick in sending angels of peace, and they fly apace ; but the messengers of wrath come slowly : God is more hasty to glorify his servants than to condemn the wicked. And, therefore, in the story of Dives and Lazai'us, we find that the beggar died first; the good man, Lazarus, was first taken away from his misery to his comfort, and afterwards the rich | man died ; and as the good, many times, die first, so all off them rise first, as if it were a matter of haste : and as the | mother's breasts swell, and shoot, and long to give food to her babe, so God's bowels did yearn over his banished children, and he longs to cause them to eat and drink in his kinodom. And at last the wicked shall rise unto condeni- nation, for that must be don6 too ; every man in his own order: first Christ, then Christ's servants, and, at last, Christ's enemies. The first of these is the great ground of our faith; the second is the consummation of all our hopes : the first is the foundation of God, that stands sure ; the second is that superstructure that shall never perish : by the
414 A SERMON PREACHED AT THE
first we believe in God unto righteousness ; by the second we Uve in God unto salvation : but the third, for that also is true, and must be considered, is the great aftVightment of all them that live ungodly. But in the whole, Christ's resur- rection and ours is the A and D. of a Christian ; that as " Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, and the same for ever," so may we in Christ become the morrow of the resurrection, the same or better than yesterday in our natural life ; the same body and the same soul, tied together in the same essential union, with this only difference, that not nature, but grace and glory, with an hermetic seal, give us a new signature, whereby we shall no more be changed, but, like unto Christ, our Head, we shall become the same for ever. Of tliese I shall discourse in order. 1. That Christ, who is " the first fruits," is the first in this order: he is already risen from the dead. 2. We shall all take our turns, we shall die, and, as sure as death, we shall all rise again. And, 3. This very order is effective of the thing itself. That Chi'ist is first risen, is the demonstration and certainty of ours ; for because there is an order in this economy, the first in the kind is the measure of the rest. If Christ be the first fruits, we are the whole vintage; and we shall all die in the order of nature, and shall rise again in the order of Christ : ** They that are Christ's," and are found so " at his coming," shall partake of his resurrection. But Christ first, then they that are Christ's : that is the order.
1. Christ is the first fruits; he is already risen from the ■dead : for he alone could not be held by death. " Free among the dead."
<l>fi*£v tre -yi^ani tint Kcti \aoBo(OQ y-imt
Death was sin's eldest daughter, and the grave-clothes were her first mantle ; but Christ was Conqueror over both, and came to take that away, and to disarm this. This was a glory fit for the Head of mankind, but it was too great and too good to be easily believed by incredulous and weak- hearted man. It was at first doubted by all that were
» Synes. Hym. 9. Petavii, p. 347.
FUNERAL OF THE LORD PRIMATE. 415
concerned ; but they that saw it, had no reason to doubt any longer. But what is that to us, who saw it not ? Yes, very much : " Valde dubitatum est ab ilhs, ne dubitaretur a nobis," saith St. Austin ; '' They doubted very much, that, by their confirmation, we might be estabhshed, and doubt no more." Mary Magdalene saw him first, and she ran with joy, and said " she had seen the Lord, and that he was risen from the dead; but they believed her not: — After that, divers women together saw him," and they told it, but had no thanks for their pains, and obtained no credit among the disciples : the two disciples that went to Emmaus, saw him, talked with him, ate with him, and they ran and told it : they told true, but nobody believed them : then St. Peter saw him, but he was not yet got into the chair of the catholic church, they did not think him infallible, and so they be- lieved him not at all. Five times in one day he appeared ; for after all this, he appeared to the eleven; they were indeed transported with joy and wonder; but they would scarce believe their own eyes, and though they saw him, they doubted. Well, all this was not enough ; he was seen also of James, and suffered Thomas to thrust his hand into his side, and appeared to St. Paul, and was seen by " five hun- dred brethren at once." So that there is no capacity of man- kind, no time, no place, but had an ocular demonstration of his resurrection. He appeared to men and women, to the clergy and the laity, to sinners of both sexes ; to weak men and to criminals, to doubters and deniers, at home and abroad, in public and in private, in their houses and their journeys, unexpected and by appointment, betimes in the morning and late at night, to them in conjunction and to them in dispersion, when they did look for him and when they did not; he appeared upon earth to many, and to St. Paul and St. Stephen from heaven : so that we can require no greater testimony than all these are able to give us ; and they saw for themselves and for us too, that the faith and certainty of the resurrection of Jesus might be conveyed to all that shall die, and follow Christ in their own order.
Now this being matter of fact, cannot be supposed infi- nite, but limited to time and place, and, therefore, to be proved by them who, at that time, were upon the place ; good men and tme, simple and yet losers by the bargain,
416 A SERMOX PREACHED AT THE
many and united, confident and constant, preaching it all their hfe, and stoutly maintaining it at their death ; men that would not deceive others, and men that could not be deceived themselves, in a matter so notorious, and so proved, and so seen : and if this be not sufticient credibility in a matter of fact, as this was, then we can have no story credibly trans- mitted to us, no records kept, no acts of courts, no narratives of the days of old, no traditions of our fathers, no memorials of them in the third generation. Nay, if from these we have not sufficient causes and arguments of faith, how shall we be able to know the will of Heaven upon earth ? unless God do not only tell it once, but always, and not only always to some men, but always to all men : for if some men must believe others, they can never do it in any thing more reason- ably than in this ; and if we may not trust them in this, then, without a perpetual miracle, no man could have faith : for faith could never come by hearing, by nothing but by seeing. But if there be any use of history, any faith in men, any honesty in manners, any truth inhuman intercourse; if there be any use of apostles or teachers, of ambassadors or letters, of ears or hearing; if there be any such thing as the grace of faith, that is less than demonstration or intuition ; then we may be as sure that Christ, the first fruits, is already risen, as all these credibilities can make us. But let us take heed; as God hates a lie, so he hates incredulity; an obsti- nate, a foolish, and pertinacious understanding. What we do every minute of our lives, in matters of title and oreat concernment, if we refuse to do it in religion, which yet is to be conducted, as all human affairs are, by human instruments, and arguments of persuasion proper to the nature of the thing, it is an obstinacy as cross to human reason, as it is to Divine faith.
But this article was so clearly proved, that presently it came to pass that men were no longer ashamed of the cross, but it was worn upon breasts, printed in the air, drawn upon foreheads, carried upon banners, put upon crowns imperial ; presently it came to pass that the religion of the despised Jesus did infinitely prevail ; a religion that taught men to be meek and humble, apt to receive injuries, but unapt to do any ; a religion that gave countenance to the poor and pitiful, in a time when riches were adored, and ambition and
FUNERAL OF THE LORD PRIMATE. 417
pleasure had possessed the heart of all mankind ; a religion that would change the face of things, and the hearts of men, and break vile habits into gentleness and comisel ; that such a religion, in such a time, by the sermons and conduct of fishermen, men of mean breeding and illiberal arts, should so speedily triumph over the philosophy of the world, and the arguments of the subtle, and the sermons of the eloquent; the power of princes and the interests of states, the inclina- tions of nature and the blindness of zeal, the force of custom and the solicitation of passions, the pleasures of sin and the busy arts of the devil ; that is, against wit, and power, super- stition and wilfulness, fame and money, nature and empire, which are all the causes in this world that can make a thing impossible ; this, this is to be ascribed to the power of God, and is the great demonstration of the resurrection of Jesus. Every thing was an argument for it, and improved it ; no objection could hinder it, no enemies destroy it ; Vvhatsoever was for them, it made the religion to increase ; whatsoever was against them, made it to increase ; sun-shine and storms, fair weather or fout, it was all one as to the event of things : for they were instruments in the hands of God, who could make what himself should choose to be the product of any cause ; so that if the Christians had peace, they went abroad and brought in converts ; if they had no peace but persecu- tion, the converts came in to them. In prosperity, they allured and enticed the world by the beauty of holiness ; in affliction and trouble, they amazed all men with the splendour of their innocence, and the glories of their patience ; and quickly it was that the world became disciple to the glorious Nazarene, and men could no longer doubt of the resurrection of Jesus, when it became so demonstrated by the certainty of them that saw it, and the courage of them that died for it, and the multitude of them that believed it; who, by their sermons and their actions, by their public offices and dis- courses, by festivals and eucharists, by arguments of expe- rience and sense, by reason and religion, by persuading rational men, and establishing believing Christians, by their living in the obedience of Jesus, and dying for the testimony of Jesus, have greatly advanced his kingdom, and his power, and his glory, into Wj;iich he entered after his resurrection from the dead. For he is the First Fruits ; and if we hope
VOL. VI. E E
418 A SERMON PllEACHED AT THE
to rise through him, we must confess that himself is tirst risen from the dead. That is the first particular.
2. There is an order for us also : we also shall rise again :
Conibustusqiic sciiex tunuilo pioccdit adiiltus ; Consumcns clat nicml)ra rogiis ;
The ashes of old Camillus shall stand up spritely from his urn ; and the funeral fires shall produce a new warmth to the dead bones of all those, who died under the arms of all the enemies of the Roman greatness. This is a less wonder than the former ; for ** admonetur omnis eetas jam fieri posse quod aliquando factum est," If it was done once, it may be done again : for since it could never have been done but by a Power that is infinite, that infinite must also be eternal and indeficient. By the same almighty Power, which restored life to the dead body of our living Lord, we may all be restored to a new life in the resurrection of the dead.
When man was not, what power, what causes made him to be ? Whatsoever it was, it did then as great a work as to raise his body to the same being again ; and because we know not the method of Nature's secret changes, and how we can be fashioned beneath ' in secreto terrse/ and cannot handle and discern the possibilities and seminal powers in the ashes of dissolved bones, must our ignorance in philosophy'- be put in balance against the articles of religion, the hopes of mankind, the faith of nations, and the truth of God ? And are our opinions of the power of God so low, that our under- standing must be his measure ; and he shall be confessed to do nothing, unless it be made plain in our philosophy? Cer- tainly we have a low opinion of God, unless we believe he can do more things than we can understand : but let us hear St. Paul's demonstration; if the corn dies and lives again; if it lays its body down, suffers alteration, dissolution and death, — but, at the Spring, rises again in the verdure of a leaf, in the fulness of the ear, in the kidneys of wheat ; if it proceeds from little to great, from nakedness to ornament, from empti- ness to plenty, from unity to multitude, from death to life : be a Sadducee no more, shame not thy miderstanding, and reproach not the weakness of thy faith, by thinking that corn can be restored to hfe, and man cannot ; especially since, in every creature, the obediential capacity is infinite.
FUNERAL OF THE LORD PRIMATE. 419
and cannot admit degrees ; for every creature can be any thing under the power of God, which cannot be less than infinite.
But we find no obscure footsteps of this mystery even amongst the heathens : Pliny reports that Apion, the grammarian, by the use of the plant osiris, called Homer from his grave; and in Valerius Maximus we find that jElius Tubero returned to life, when he was seated in his funeral pile ; and in Plutarch, that Soleus, after three days' burial, did live; and in Valerius, that Eris Pamphylius did so after ten days^. And it was so commonly believed, that Glaucus, who was choked in a vessel of honey, did rise again, that it grew to a proverb: " Glaucus, poto melle, surrexit;" " Glaucus having tasted honey, died and lived again." I pretend not to believe these stories to be true ; but from these instances it may be concluded, that they believed it possible that there should be a resurrection from the dead ; and natural reason, and their philosophy, did not wholly destroy their hopes and expectation to have a portion in this article.
For God, knowing that the great hopes of man, that the
biggest endearment of religion, the sanction of private
justice, the band of piety and holy courage, — does wholly
derive from the article of the resurrection, — was pleased not
only to make it credible, but easy and familiar to us ; and we
so converse every night with the image of death, that every
morning we find an argument of the resurrection. Sleep
and death have but one mother, and they have one name in
common.
Soles occidere et redire possunt ; Nobis cum seinel occidit brevis lux> Nox est perpetua una dormienda<:.
Charnel-houses are but Koi/xnTyipioc, ' cemeteries' or sleep- ing-places ; and they that die, are fallen asleep, and the resurrection is but an awakening and standing up from sleep : but in sleep our senses are as fast bound by Nature, as our joints are by the grave-clothes; and unless an angel of God waken us every morning, we must confess ourselves as unable to converse With men, as we now are afraid to die and to converse with spirits. But, however, death itself is no more ;.
b Lib. i. c. 8. Helfrecht. p. 71. " CatuU. v.
420 A SERMON PREACHED AT THE •
it is but darkness and a shadow, a rest and a forgetfulness. What is there more in death? What is there less in sleep? For do we not see by experience that nothing of equal loud- ness does awaken us sooner than a man's voice, especially if he be called by name? and thus also it shall be in the resur- rection : we shall be awakened by the voice of a man, and he that called Lazarus by name from his grave, shall also call us : for although St. Paul affirms, " that the trumpet shall sound, and there shall he the voice of an archangel ;" yet this is not a word of nature, but of office and ministry : Christ himself is that archangel, and he shall " descend with a mighty sluiut," saith the apostle'' ; " and all that are in the grave shall hear his voice," saith St. John*": so that we shall be awakened by the voice of man, because we are only fallen asleep by the decree of God ; and when the cock and the lark call us up to prayer and labour, the first thing we see is an arc'uraent of our resurrection from the dead. And when we consider what the Greek church reports, — that amongst them the bodies of those that die excommunicate, will not return to dust till the censure be taken off; — we may, with a little faith and reason, believe, that the same power that keeps them from their natural dissolution, can recall them to life and union. I will not now insist upon the story of the rising bones seen every year in Egypt, nor the pretences of the chymists, that they, from the ashes of (lowers, can re- produce, from the same materials, the same beauties in colour and figure ; for he that proves a certain truth from an un- certain argument, is like him that wears a wooden leg, when he hath two sound legs already ; it hinders his going, but helps him not : the truth of God stands not in need of such supporters ; nature alone is a sufficient preacher :
Quae nunc hoiba fuit, lignum jacet, herba futtira, Aeiiffi iiudantur aves cum pcnna vetusta, Et nova subvestit rcpaiatas pluma volucresf.
Night and day ; the sun returning to the same point of east; every change of species in the same matter ; generation and corruption ; the eagle renewing her youth, and the snake her skin ; the silk-worm and the swallows ; the care of posterity, and the care of an immortal name ; winter and summer ; the
^ 1 Thes. iv. 16. • John. v. 28. ^ Dracontius de Opere Dei.
FUNERAL OF THE LORD PRIMATE. 42l
fall and spring ; the Old Testament and the New; the words of Job ; and the visions of the prophets ; tlie prayer of Ezekiel for the resurrection of the men of Ephraim ; and the return of Jonas from the whale's belly ; the histories of the Jews and the narratives of Christians ; the faith of believers and the philosophy of the reasonable ; — all join in the verifi- cation of this mystery. And amongst these heaps, it is not of the least consideration, that there was never any good man, who having been taught this article, but if he served God, he also relied upon this. If he believed God, he believed this ; and therefore St. Paul says, that they who were sattI^u fx.ri exovrsg, were also aSeoi kv Ko-fji.^, " they who had no hope" (meaning of the resurrection) " were also atheists, and without God in the world." — And it is remarkable what St. Austin observes, that when the world savv' the righteous Abel destroyed, and that the murderer outlived his crime, and built up a numerous family, and grew mighty upon earth, — they neglected the service of God upon that account, till God, in pity of their prejudice and foolish arguings, took Enoch up to heaven to recover them from their impieties, by showino- them that their bodies and souls should be rewarded for ever in an eternal union. But Christ, the first fruits, is gone before, and himself did promise, that when himself was lifted up, he would draw all men after him : " Every man in his own order ; first Christ, then they that are Christ's at his coming." — And so I have done with the second particular; not Christ only, but we also shall rise in God's time and our order.
But concerning this order I must speak a word or two, not only for the fuller handling the text, but because it will be matter of application of what hath been already spoken of the article of the resurrection.
3. First Christ, and then we : and we, therefore, because Christ is already risen: but you must remember, that the resurrection and exaltation of Christ was the reward of his perfect obedience and purest holiness ; and he calling us to an imitation of tlie same obedience, and the same perfect holiness, prepares a way for us to the same resurrection. If we, by holiness, become the sons of God, as Christ was, we shall also, as he v.as, become the sons of God in the resurrection : but upon no other terms. So said our blessed
422 A SERMON PREACHED AT THE
Lord liiinself : " Ye which have followed me in the regenera- tion, when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon thrones judging the tribes of Israel e." For as it was with Christ the first fruits, so it shall be with all Christians in their own order : as with the head, so it shall be with the members. He was the Son of God by love and obedience, and then became the Son of God by resurrection from the dead to life eternal, and so shall we ; but we cannot be so in any other way. To them that are Christ's, and to none else shall this be given : for we must know that God hath sent Christ into the world to be a great example and demonstration of the economy and dis- pensation of eternal life. As God brought Christ to glory, so he will bring us, but by no other method. He first obeyed the will of God, and patiently suffered the will of God ; he died and rose again, and entered into glory ; and so must we. Thus Christ is made " via, Veritas, et vita," " the way, the truth, and the life ;" that is, the true way to eternal life : he first trod this wine-press, and we must insist in the same steps, or we shall never partake of this blessed resurrection. He was made the Son of God in a most glorious manner, and we by him, by his merit, and by his grace, and by his example ; but other than this there is no way of salvation for us : that is the first and great effect of this glorious order.
4. But there is one thing more in it yet : '' Every man in his own order ; first Christ, and then they that are Christ's :" but what shall become of them that are not Christ's ? why there is an order for them too : first, " they that are Christ's ; and then they that are not his:" *' Blessed and holy is he that hath his part in the first resurrection'^:" there is a first and a second resurrection even after this life ; " The dead in Christ shall rise first':" now blessed are they that have their portion here ; " for upon these the second death shall have no power." As for the recalling the wicked from their graves, it is no otherwise in the sense of the Spirit to be called a resurrection, than taking a criminal from the prison to the bar, is a giving of liberty. When poor Acilius Aviola had been seized on by an apoplexy, his friends, supposing
r Luke, xiv. it. ^ Rev. xx. 6. ' 1 Tliess. iv. 16.
FUNERAL OF THE LORD PRIMATE. 423
him dead, carried him to his fimeral pile ; but when the fire began to approach, and the heat to warm the body, he revived, and seeing himself encircled with funeral flames, called out aloud to his friends to rescue, not the dead, but the living Aviola from that horrid burning : but it could not be, he only was restored from his sickness to fall into death, and from his dull disease to a sharp and intolerable torment*. Just so shall the wicked live again ; they shall receive their souls, that they may be a portion for devils ; they shall receive their bodies, that they may feel the everlasting burning ; they shall see Christ, that they may ' look on him whom they have pierced ;' and they shall hear the voice of God passing upon them the intolerable sentence ; they shall come from their graves, that they may go into hell ; and live again, that they may die for ever. So have we seen a poor condemned criminal, the weight of whose sorrows sitting heavily upon his soul, hath benumbed him into a deep sleep, till he hath forgotten his groans, and laid aside his deep sighings ; but, on a sudden, comes the messenger of death, and unbinds the poppy garland, scatters the heavy cloud that encircled his miserable head, and makes him return to acts of life, that he may quickly descend into death and be no more. So is every sinner that lies down in shame, and makes his grave with the wicked ; he shall indeed rise again, and be called upon by the voice of the Archangel ; but theui^ he shall descend into sorrows greater than the reason and the patience of a man, weeping and shrieking louder than the groans of the miserable children in the valley of Hinnom. These, indeed, are sad stories, but true as the voice of God, and the sermons of the Holy Jesus. They are God's words, and God's decrees ; and I wish that all who profess the belief of these, would consider sadly what they mean. If ye believe the article of the resurrection, then you know, that, in your body, you shall receive what you did in the body, whether it be good or bad. It matters not now very much, whether our bodies be beauteous or deformed ; for if we glorify God in our bodies, God shall make our bodies glorious. It matters not much, whether we live in ease and pleasure, or eat nothing but bitter herbs ; the body that lies in dust and ashes, that goes stooping and feeble, that lodges
• Plin. sec. vii. 5?.
424 A SERMON PREACHED AT THE
at the foot of the cross, and dwells in discijdine, shall be feasted at the eternal supper of the Lanil). And ever re- member this, that beastly pleasures, and lyin<^ lips, and a deceitful tonoue. and a heart that sendeth forth proud things, are no good dispositions to a blessed resurrection.
Ou xecXcv af/xovw MaKvifji.iv avd^ivTroio .
* It is not good, that in the body we live a life of dissolution, for that is no good harmony with that purpose of glory which God designs the body.'
Kai Ttt;^a S' Ix. ya'ini; ixni^ofxtv li; ^ao; ix6iXv AE;4'av' aTToip^OjtxEvaJV iirls-ai Se Seoi TEXEflovrai,
said Phocylides ''; " for we hope that from our beds of darkness we shall rise into regions of light, and shall become like unto God :" they shall partake of a resurrection to life ; and what this can infer is very obvious : for if it be so hard to believe a resurrection from one death, let us not be dead in trespasses and sins ; for a resurrection from two deaths will be harder to be believed, and harder to be effected. But if any of you have lost the life of grace, and so forfeited all your title to a life of glory, betake yourselves to an early and an entire piety, that when, by this first resurrection, you have made this way plain before your face, you may with confidence expect a happy resurrection from your graves : for if it be possible that the Spirit, when it is dead in sin, can arise to a life of righteousness; much more it is easy to suppose, that the bod}^ after death, is capable of being restored again : and this is a consequent of St. Paul's argument ; " If, when ye were enemies, ye were reconciled by his death, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life ';" plainly declaring, that it is a harder and more wonderful thing for a wicked man to become the friend of God, than for one that is so, to be carried up to heaven and partake of his glory. The first resurrection is certainly the greater miracle : but he that hath risen once, may rise again ; and this is as sure as that he that dies once, may die again, and die for ever. But he who partakes of the death of Christ by mortification, and of his resurrection by holiness of life and a holy faith, shall, according to the expression of the
" Gaisforcl, p. 452. ' Rom. v. 10.
FUNERAL OF THE LORD PRIMATE. 425
prophet Isaiah, '' Enter into his chamber of deaths;" when Nature and God's decree " shall shut the doors upon him, and there he shall be hidden for a little moment :" but then shall they that dwell in dust, awake and sing, with Christ's dead body shall they arise ; all shall rise, but " every man in his own order ; Christ, the first fruits, then they that are Christ's at his coming." Amen.
I have now done with my meditation of the resurrection ; but we have had a new and a sadder subject to consider. It is glorious and brave when a Christian contemplates those glories, which stand at the foot of the account of all God's servants ; but when we consider, that before all, or any thing of this happens, every Christian must twice ' exuere homi- nem,' * put off the old man,' and then lie down in dust, and the dishonours of the grave ; it is ' vinum myrrhatum,' there is ' myrrh put into our wine ;' it is wholesome, but it will allay all our pleasures of that glorious expectation : but no man can escape it. After that the great Cyrus had ruled long in a mighty empire, yet there came a message from heaven, not so sad it may be, yet as decretory as the hand- writing on the wall that arrested his successor Darius, I.u- crusvalou, a Kv^z' vjS'ji ya^ ilg Seovj awfi, '^ Prepare thyself, O Cyrus, and then go unto the gods * ;" he laid aside his tire and his beauteous diadem, and covered his face with a cloth, and in a single linen laid his honoured head in a poor humble grave : and none of us all can avoid this sentence : for if wit and learning, great fame and great experience ; if wise notices of things, and an honourable fortune ; if courage and skill, if prelacy and an honourable age, if any thing that could give greatness and immunity to a v/ise and prudent man, could have been put in bar against a sad day, and have gone for good plea, this sad scene of sorrows had not been the enter- tainment of this assembly. But tell me. Where are those great masters, who while they lived, flourished in their studies 1 ^' Jam eorum prsebendas alii possident, et nescio utrum de iis cogitant ;" " other men have got their prebends and their dignities, and who knows whether ever they remember them or no ?" While they lived, they seemed nothing ; when they are dead, every man for a while speaks
" Isai xxvi. 20. * Cyrop. viii. 7. 2. Schneider.
42G A SEK>10N PREACHED AT THE
of tlieiu what they please; and af'tervvard.s they are as if they had not been. But tlie piety of the Christian church hath made some httle ])rovision towards an artificial immortality for brave and worthy persons ; and the friendships which our dead contracted while they were alive, require us to con- tinue a fair memory as long as we can ; but they expire in monthly minds, or at most in a faint and declining anni- versary ; •
And we have great reason so to do in this present sad acci- dent of the death of our late most reverend primate, whose death the church of Ireland hath very great reason to de- plore ; and we have great obligation to remember his very many worthy deeds, done for this poor afflicted and despised church. St. Paul made an excellent funeral oration, as it were instituting a feast of all saints, who all died " having obtained a good report" :" and that excellent preacher made a sermon of their commemoration. For since good men, while they are alive, have their conversation in heaven ; when they are in heaven, it is also fit that they should, in their good names, live upon earth. And as their great examples are an excellent sermon to the living, and the praising them, when envy and flattery can have no interest to interpose, as it is the best and most vigorous sermon and incentive to great things ; so to conceal what good God hath wrought by them, is great unthankfulness to God and to good men.
When Dorcas died, the apostle came to see the dead corpse, and the friends of the deceased expressed their grief and their love, by shewing the coats that she, whilst she lived, wrought with her own hands : she was a good needle- "woman and a good housewife, and did good to mankind in her little way, and that itself ought not to be forgotten; and the apostle himself was not displeased with their little ser- mons, and that EO(pyif/.icr/ji,og which the women made upon that sad interview. But if we may have the same liberty to record the worthy things of this our most venerable father and brother, and if there remains no more of that envy which
■ Hebrews, xi. 39.
FUNERAL OF THE LORD PRIMATE. 427
usually obscures the splendour of living heroes ; if you can with your charitable, though weeping eyes, behold the great gifts of God with which he adorned this great prelate, and not object the failings of humanity to the participation of the graces of the Spirit, or think that God's gifts are the less because they are born in earthen vessels, Travrej ya^ xxura, ^ma KE^aa-a-a./u(.Evot (po^Eovaiv, for all men bear mortality about them, and the cabinet is not so beauteous as the diamond that shines within its bosom; then we may, without inter- ruption pay this duty to piety, and friendship, and thankful- ness; and deplore our sad loss by telling a true and sad story of this great man, whom God hath lately taken from our eyes.
He was bred in Cambridge, in Sidney College, under Mr. Hulet, a grave and a worthy man ; and he shewed himself not only a fruitful plant by his great progress in his studies, but made him another return of gratitude, taking care to pro- vide a good employment for him in Ireland, where he then began to be greatly interested. It was spoken as an honour to Augustus Csesar, that he gave his tutor an honourable funeral ; and Marcus Antoninus erected a statue unto his ; and Gratian the emperor made his master Ausonius to be consul : and our worthy primate, knowing the obligation which they pass upon us, who do ' obstetricare gravidse animse, ' ' help the parturient soul' to bring forth fruits ac- cording to its seminal powers, was careful not only to reward the industry of such persons, so useful to the church in the cultivating * infantes palmarum,' ' young plants,' whose joints are to be stretched and made straight; but to demonstrate that his scholar knew how to value learning, when he knew so well how to reward the teacher.
Having passed the course of his studies in the university, and done his exercise with that applause which is usually the reward of pregnant wit and hard study, he was removed into Yorkshire, where first, in the city of York, he was an assiduous preacher ; but, by the disposition of the Divine Providence, he happened to be engaged at Northallerton in disputation with three pragmatical Romish priests of the Jesuits' order, whom he so much worsted in the conference, and so shamefully disadvantaged by the evidence of truth, represented wisely and learnedly, that the famous primate of
42S A SERMON PREACHED AT THE
York, Archbisliop Matthews, a learned and an excellent prelate, and a most worthy preacher, hearing of that triumj)h, sent for him. and made him his chaplain ; in whose service he continued till t'e death of the primate, but, in that time had given so much testimony of his dexterity in the conduct of ecclesiastical and civil affairs, that he grew dear to his master. In that employuient he was made prebendary of York, and then of Kippon, the dean of which church having made him his sub-dean, he managed the affairs of that church so well, that he soon acquired a greater fame, and entered into the possession of many hearts, and admiration to those many more that knew him. There and at his parsonage he con- tinued long to do the duty of a learned and good preacher, and by his wisdom, eloquence, and deportment, so gained the affections of the nobility, gentiy, and commons of that- country, that as at his return thither upon the blessed resto- ration of his most sacred majesty, he knew himself obliged enough, and was so kind as to give them a visit ; so they, by their coming in great numbers to meet him, their joyful re- ception of him, their great caressing of him when he was there, their forward hopes to enjoy him as their bishop, their trouble at his departure, their unwillingness to let him go away, ga\e signal testimonies that they were wise and kind enough to understand and .value his great worth.
But while he lived there, he was like a diamond in the dust, or Lucius Quinctius at the plough ; his low fortune covered a most valuable person, till he became observed by Sir Thou)as Wentworth, Lord President of York, whom we all knew for his great excellencies, and his great but glorious misfortunes. This rare person espied the great abilities of Doctor Bramhail, and made him his chaplain, and brought him into Ireland, as one who, he believed, would prove the most fit instrument to serve in that design, which, for two years before his arrival here, he had greatly meditated and resolved, the reformation of religion, and the reparation of the broken fortunes of the church. The complaints were many, the abuses great, the causes of the church vastly numerous ; but as fast as they were brought in, so fast they were by the Lord Deputy referred back to Dr. Bramhail, who by his indefatigable pains, great sagacity, perpetual watch- fulness, daily and hourly consultations, reduced things to a
FUNERAL OF THE LORE* PRIMATE. 429
more tolerable condition, than they had been left in by the schismatical principles of some, and the unjust prepossessions of others, for many years before: for at the reformation, the popish bishops and priests seemed to conform, and did so, that keeping their bishopricks they might enrich their kindred and dilapidate the revenues of the church, which by pretended offices, false informations, fee-farms at contemptible rents, and ungodly alienations, were made low as poverty itself, and unfit to minister to the needs of them that served the altar, or the noblest purposes of religion : for hospitality decayed, and the bishops w^ere easy to be oppressed by those that would ; and they complained, but for a long time had no helper, till God raised up that glorious instrument the Earl of Strafford, who brought over with him as great affections -to the church and to all public interests, and as admirable abilities, as ever before his time did invest and adorn any of the king's vicegerents ; and God fitted his hand with an in- strument good as his skill was great : for the first specimen of his abilities and diligence in recovery of some lost tithes, being represented to his late majesty, of blessed and glorious memory, it pleased his majesty, upon the death of bishop Downham, to advance the doctor to the bishoprick of Derry, which he not only adorned with an excellent spirit and a wise government, but did more than double the revenue, not by taking any thing from them to whom it was due, but by resuming something of the churches' patrimony, which by undue means was detained in unfitting hands.
But his care was beyond his diocese, and his zeal broke out to warm all his brethren; and, though by reason of the favour and piety of king James, the escheated counties were well provided for their tithes, yet the bishopricks were not so well, till the primate, then bishop of Derry, by the favour of the Lord Lieutenant and his own incessant and assiduous labour and wise conduct, brought in divers impropriations, cancelled many unjust alienations, and did restore them to a condition much more tolerable ; I say much more tolerable ; for though he raised them above contempt, yet they were not near to envy; but he knew there could not in all times be wanting too many, that envied to the church every degree of prosperity : so Judas did to Christ the expense of ointment ; and so Dionysius told the priest, when himself stole the
430 A SERMON PllEAClltD AT THE
golden cloak from A])ollo, and gave him one of the Arcadian home spun, that it was warmer for him in winter and cooler in summer. And for ever, since the church, by God's blessing and the favour of religious kings and princes, and pious no- bility, hath been endowed with fair revenues, ' inimicus homo,' * the enemy' hath not been wanting, by pretences of religion, to take away God's portion from the church, as if his word were intended as an instrument to rob his houses. But when the Israelites were governed by a Beox^aTia, and ' God was their king,' and Moses his lieutenant, and things were of his management, — he was pleased, by making great provisions for them that ministered in the service of the tabernacle, to consign this truth for ever; — that men, as they love God, at the same rate are to make provisions for his priests. For when himself did it, he not only gave the forty-eight cities, with a mile of glebe round about their city every way, and yet the whole country was but an hundred and forty miles long, or thereabouts, from Dan to Beersheba; but beside this they had the tithe of all increase, the first-fruits, offerings, vows, redemptions, and in short, they had twenty-four sorts of dues, as Buxtorf relates ; and all this either brought to the barn home to them without trouble, or else, as the nature of the thing required, brought to the temple ; the first to make it more profitable, and the second to declare that they re- ceived it not from the people but from God, not the people's kindness but the Lord's inheritance; insomuch that this small tribe of Levi, which w as not the fortieth part of the people, as the Scripture computes them, had a revenue almost treble to anv of the largest of the tribes". I will not insist on what Villalpandus observes?, it may easily be read in the 45th of Ezekiel, concerning that portion which God reserves for him- self and his service ; but whatsoever it be, this shall I say, that is confessedly a prophecy of the Gospel ; but this I add, that they had as little to do, and much less than a christian priest ; and yet in all the twenty-four courses the poorest priest among them might be esteejned a rich man^. I speak not this to upbraid any man, or any thing but sacrilege and murmur, nor to any other end but to represent upon what
0 Nun-.b. i. 46. iii. 39. p Seld. Hist, of Tithes, c. 2.
1 See Pliilo. wiji toZ Tjvi yi^a It^icev,
FUNERAL OF THE LORD PRIMATE. 431
great and religious grounds the then bishop of Derry did, with so much care and assiduous labour, endeavour to restore the church of Ireland to that splendour and fulness; which as it is much conducing to the honour of God and of religion, God himself being the judge, so it is much more necessary for you than it is for us ; and so this wise prelate rarely well understood it ; and having the same advantage and blessing as we now have, a gracious king, and a lieutenant, patron of religion and the church, he improved the ' deposita pietatis,' as Origen' calls them, 'the gages of piety,' which the reli- gion of the ancient princes and nobles of this kingdom had bountifully given to such a comfortable competency, that though there be place left for present and future piety to large itself, yet no man hath reason to be discouraged in his duty ; insomuch that as I have heard from a most worthy hand, that at his going into England he gave account to the archbishop of Canterbury of 30,0001. a year, in the recovery of which he was greatly and principally instrumental. But the goods of this world are called 'waters' by Solomon: Stolen waters are sweet, and they are too unstable to be stopped : some of these waters did run back from their proper channel, and return to another course than God and the laws intended ; yet his labours and pious counsels were not the less acceptable to God and good men, and therefore by a thankful and honourable recognition, the convocation of the church of Ireland has transmitted in record to posterity their deep resentment of his singular services and great abilities in this whole affair. And this honour will for ever remain to that bishop of Derry ; he had a Zerubbabel who repaired the temple and restored its beauty ; but he was the Joshua, the high-priest, who under him ministered this blessing to the consresations of the Lord.
But his care was not determined in the exterior part only, and accessaries of religion ; he was careful, and he was pros- perous in it, to reduce that divine and excellent service of our church to public and constant exercise, to unity and devotion ; and to cause the articles of the church of England to be accepted as the rule of public confessions and per- suasions here, that they and we might be ' populus unius labii,' ' of one heart and one lip,' building up our hopes of
' Tract. 25. in St. Matthew.
432 A SEllMON PREACHED AT THE
heaven on a most holy faith ; and taking; away that Shibholctli whicli made this church hsp too undecently, or rather, in some httle decree, to speak the speech of" Ashdod, and not the hmgnage of Canaan; and the excellent and wise pains he took in this particular no man can dehonestate or reproach, but he that is not willing to confess, that the church of Eng- land is the best reformed church in the world. But when the brave Roman infantry, under the conduct of Manlius, ascended up to the Capitol to defend religion and the altars from the fury of the Gauls, they all prayed to God, '' Ut quemadmodum ipsi ad defendendum templum ejus concurris- sent, ita ille virtutem eorum ninnine suo tueretur :" " That as they came to defend his temple by their arms, so he would defend their persons and that cause with his power and divinity." And this excellent man in the cause of religion found the like blessing which they prayed for ; God, by the prosperity of his labours and a blessed effect, gave testimony not only of the piety and wisdom of his purposes, but that he loves to bless a wise instrument, when it is vigorously em- ployed in a wise and religions labour. He overcame the difficulty in defiance of all such pretences, as were made even from religion itself, to obstruct the better procedure of real and material religion.
These were great things and matter df great envy, and, like the fiery eruptions of Vesuvius, might, with the very ashes of consumption, have buried another man. At first indeed, as his blessed Master, the most holy Jesus, had, so he also had his ' annum acceptabilem.' At first the product was nothing but great admiration at his stupen- dous parts, and wonder at his mighty diligence and observa- tion of his unusual zeal in so good and great things ; but this quickly passed into the natural daughters of envy, suspicion, and detraction, the spirit of obloquy and slander. His zeal for recovery of the church-revenues was called oppression and rapine, covetousness and injustice; his care of reducing religion to wise and justifiable principles was called popery and Arminianism, and I know not what names, which signify what the authors are pleased to mean, and the people to construe and to hate. The intermedial prosperity of his person and fortune, which he had as an earnest of a greater reward to so well-meant labours, was supposed to be the production of illiberal arts and ways of getting ; and the
FUNERAL OF THE LORD PRIMATE. 433
necessary refreshment of his wearied spirits, which did not always supply all his needs, and were sometimes less than the permissions even of prudent charity, they called intem- perance : ^' Dederunt enim malum Metelli Nsevio poetae ;" their own surmises were the bills of accusation ; and the splendour of his great aya^oz^yla, or ' doing of good works,' was the great probation of all their calamities. But if envy be the accuser, what can be the defences of innocence ?
Saucior invidias nioisii, quaBrenda medela est; Die quibiis in teiris seatiet aegcr opem ?
Our blessed Saviour, knowing the unsatisfiable angers of men if their money or estates were meddled with, refused to divide an inheritance amongst brethren ; it was not to be imagined that this great person (invested, as all his brethren were, with the infirmities of mortality, and yet employed in dividing and recovering, and apportioning of lands) should be able to bear all that reproach, which jealousy and suspicion and malicious envy could invent against him. But 0.7: l%5fwv ^roxxa iiav^avov- criv ol ao(po\, said Sophocles : and so did he ; the afFrightments brought to his great fame and reputation made him to walk more warily, and do justly, and act prudently, and conduct his affairs by the measures of laws, as far as he understood, and indeed that was.a very great way: but there was ' aperta justitia, clausa manus,' 'justice was open, but his hand was shut;' and, though every slanderer could tell a story, yet none could prove that ever he received ' a bribe to blind his eyes, to the value of a pair of gloves : ' it was his own ex- pression, when he gave glory to God who had preserved him innocent. But, because every man's cause is right in his own eyes, it was hard for him so to acquit himself, that in the intrigues of law and difficult cases, some of his enemies should not seem (when they were heard alone) to speak reason against him. But see the greatness of truth and prudence, and how greatly God stood with him. When the numerous armies of vexed people,
Turba gravis paci, placidaqiie inimica quieti™,
heaped up catalogues of accusations, when the parliament of Ireland, imitating the violent procedures of the then dis-
™ Mart, de Spect. 4. VOL. VI. F F
434 A SERMON PREACHED AT THE
ordered lMi»;lisli, when liis gloriouB patron was taken from his head, and ho was disrobed of his great defences ; when peti- tions were invited and accusations furnished, and calumny was rewarded and managed with art and power, when there were above two Inmdred petitions put in against him, and himself denied leave to answer by word of mouth; when he was long imprisoned, and treated so that a guilty man would have been broken into aflrightmcnt and pitiful and low con- siderations ; yet then he himself, standing almost alone, like Callimachus at Marathon, invested with enemies and covered with arrows, defended himself beyond all the powders of guiltiness, even with the defences of truth and the bravery of innocence, and answered the petitions in writing, some- times twenty in a day, with so much clearness, evidence of truth, reality of fact, and testimony of law, that his very enemies were ashamed and convinced; they found they had done like iEsop's viper, they licked the file till their tongues bled ; but himself was wholly invulnerable. They were there- fore forced to leave their muster-rolls and decline the parti- culars, and fall to their ev fxkya, to accuse him for going about to subvert the fundamental laws ; the way by which great Stratford and Canterbury fell; which was a device, when all reasons failed, to oppress the enemy by the bold affirmation of a conclusion they could not prove: they did like those * gladiatores' vi'hom the Komans called 'retiarii,' when they could not stab their enemy with their daggers, they threw nets over him, and covered him with a general mischief. But the martyr king Charles the first, of most glorious and eternal memory, seeing so great a champion likely to be oppressed with numbers and despair, sent what rescue he could, his royal letter for his bail, which was hardly granted to him ; and when it was, it was upon such hard terms, that his very delivery was a persecution. So necessary it was for them, who intended to do mischief to the public, to take away the strongest pillars of the house. This thing I remark to acquit this great man from the tongue of slander, which had so boldly spoken, that it was certain something would stick ; yet was so impotent and unarmed, that it could not kill that great fame, which his greater worthiness had procured him. It was said of Hippasus the Pythagorean, that being asked how and what he had done, he answered, " Nondum nihil;
FUNERAL OF THE LORD PRIMATE. 435
neque enim adhuc mihi iiividetur;" " I have done nothing yet, for no man envies me." He that does great things, cannot avoid the tongues and teeth of envy; but if calumnies must pass for evidences, the bravest heroes must always be the most reproached persons in the world.
Nascitiir jEtolicus, pravum ingeniosns ad oninc ; Qui facere as8ueiat, patriae non degener artis, Candida de nigiis, et de candentibus atra.
Every thing can have an ill name and an ill sense put upon it; but God, who takes care of reputations as he does of lives, by the orders of his Providence confutes the slander, ' ut memoria justorum sit in benedictionibus,' ' that the memory of the righteous man might be embalmed with honour :' and so it happened to this great man ; for by a public warranty, by the concurrent consent of both houses of parliament, the libellous petitions against him, the false records and public monuments of injurious shame, were cancelled, and he was restored, ' in integrum,' to that fame where his great labours and just procedures had first estated him ; which though it was but justice, yet it was also such honour, that it is greater than the virulence of tongues, which his worthiness and their envy had armed against him. But yet the great scene of the troubles was but newly opened. I shall not refuse to speak yet more of his troubles, as remembering that St. Paul, when he discourses of the glories of the saints departed, he tells more of their sufferings than of their prosperities, as being that laboratory and crucible, in which God makes his servants vessels of honour to his glory. The storm quickly grew high ; ' et transitum est a linguis ad gladios ;' and that was indeed ad'Mia sxouo-a oTTXa, ' Iniquity had put on arms ;' when it is ' armata nequitia,' then a man is hard put to it. The rebelHon breaking out, the bishop went to his charge at Derry ; and because he was within the defence of walls, the execrable traitor Sir Phelim O'Neale, laid a snare to bring him to a dishonourable death ; for he wrote a letter to the bishop, pretended intelligence between them, desired that according to their former agreement such a gate might be delivered to him. The messenger was not advised to be cautious, nor at all instructed in the art of secrecy ; for it was intended that he should be searched, intercepted, and hanged for aught
436 A SERMON PREACHED AT THE
they cared : but the arrow was shot against the bishop, that he might be accused for base conspiracy, and die with shame and sad dishonour. But here God manifested liis miglity care of his servants ; he was pleased to send into the heart of the messenger such an affiightnient, that he directly ran away with the letter, and never durst come near the town to deliver it. This story was published by Sir Phelim himself, who added, that if he could have thus ensnared the bishop, he had good assurance the town should have been his own : " Sed bonitas Dei prajvalitura est super omnem mali- tiam hominis ;" " The goodness of God is greater than all the malice of men ;" and nothing could so prove how dear that sacred life was to God, as his rescue from the dangers. " Stantia non poterant tecta probare Deos ' :" ' To have kept him in a warm house had been nothing, unless the roof had fallen upon his head ; that rescue was a remark of Divine favour and Providence.' But it seems Sir Phelim's treason against the life of this worthy man had a correspondent in the town ; and it broke out speedily ; for what they could not effect by malicious stratagem, they did in part by open force ; they turned the bishop out of the town, and upon trifling and unjust pretences searched his carriages, and took what they pleased, till they were ashamed to take more : they did worse than divorce him from his church ; for in all the Roman divorces they said, " Tuas tibi res habeto," " Take your goods and be gone ;" but plunder was religion then. However, though the usage was sad, yet it was recompensed to him by his taking sanctuary in Oxford, where he was graciously received by that most incomparable and divine prince ; but having served the king in Yorkshire, by his pen, and by his counsels, and by his interests, he returned back to Ireland, where, under the excellent conduct of his grace the now lord lieutenant, he ran the risk and fortune of oppressed virtue.
But God having still resolved to afflict us, the good man was forced into the fortune of the patriarchs, to leave his country and his charges, and seek for safety and bread in a strange land ; for so the prophets were used to do, wandering up and down in sheep's clothing ; but poor as they were,
' Mart. i. 13. 12.
FUNERAL OF THE LORD PRIMATE. 437
the world was not worthy of them : and this worthy man,
despising the shame, took up his cross and followed his
Master.
Exiliiim causa ipsa jiibet sibi dulce vidtii, Et desideriiim diilce levat patriae.
He was not ashamed to suffer, where the cause was honour- able and glorious ; but so God provided for the needs of his banished, and sent a man who could minister comfort to the afflicted, and courage to the persecuted, and resolutions to the tempted, and strength to that religion for which they all suffered.
And here this great man was indeed triumphant ; this was one of the last and best scenes of his life : yi/J-epcn ya^ eTriXoyoi Ixa^Tu^eg crotpuTaroi, " The last days are the best witnesses of a man." But so it was, that he stood up in pubhc and brave defence for the doctrine and discipline of the church of England ; first, by his sufferings and great example ; for, " Verbis tantum philosophari, non est doctoris, sed his- trionis;" " To talk well and not to do bravely, is for a comedian, not a divine :" but this great man did both ; he suffered his own calamity with great courage, and by his wise discourses, strengthened the hearts of others.
For there wanted no diligent tempters in the church of Rome, who taking advantage of the afflictions of his sacred majesty, in which state men commonly suspect every thing, and like men in sickness are willing to change from side to side, hoping for ease and finding none, flew at royal game, and hoped to draw away the king from that religion which his most royal father, the best man and the wisest prince in the world, had sealed with the best blood ui Christendom, and which himself sucked in with his education, and had confirmed by choice and reason, and confessed publicly and bravely, and hath since restored prosperously. Miili- tiere was the man, witty and bold enough to attempt a zealous and a foolish undertaking, who addressed himself with ignoble, indeed, but witty arts, to persuade the king to leave what was dearer to him than his eyes. It is true, it was a wave dashed against a rock, and an arrow shot against the sun, it could not reach him ; but the bishop of Derry turned it also, arid made it fall upon the shooter's head; for he made so ingenious, so learned, and so acute reply to that book; he so discovered the errors of the
438 A SERMON PREACHED AT THE
Roman churcli, retorted the arguments, stated the questions, demonstrated the truth, and shamed their procedures, that notliing- could be a greater argument of the bishop's learning, great parts, deep judgment, quickness of apprehension, and sincerity in the cathohc and apostohc faith ; or of the foUies and prevarications of tlie church of Rome. He wrote no apologies for himself, though it were much to be wished that, as Junius wrote his own life, or Moses his own story, so we might have understood from himself how great things God had done for him and by him : but all that he permitted to God, and was silent in his own defences ; " Gloriosius enim est injuriam tacendo fugere, quam respondendo supe- rare :" but when the honour and conscience of his king, and the interest of a true relioion was at stake, the fire burned within him, and at last he spake with his tongue; he cried out like the son of Croesus, "HvB^utts, f/.rt kteTve Kforo-ov", Take heed and meddle not with the king: his person is too sacred, and religion too dear to him to be assaulted by vulgar hands. In short, he acquitted himself in this affair with so much truth and piety, learning and judg- ment, that in those papers his memory will last unto very late succeeding generations.
But this most reverend prelate foimd a nobler adversary, and a braver scene for his contention : he found that the Roman priests, being wearied and bafHed by the wise dis- courses and pungent arguments of the English divines, had studiously declined any more to dispute the particular ques- tions against us, but fell at last upon a general charge, imputing to the church of England the great crime of schism ; and by this they thought they might with most probability deceive unwary and unskilful readers ; for they saw the schism, and they saw we had left them ; and because they considered not the causes, they resolved to out-face us in the charge : but now it was that ' dignum nactus argu- mentum,' ' having an argument fit' to employ his great abihties,
Consecrat Iiic praesul calamiim calaniique labores. Ante aras Domino Iceta tiopaca suo j
' the bishop now dedicates his labours to the service of God' and of his church, undertook the question, and in a full dis-
« Herod. i> 85. 16. Schweij:.
FUNERAL OF THE LOUD PRIMATE. 439
course proves the church of Rome not only to be guilty of the schism, by making it necessary to depart from them ; but they did actuate the schisms, and themselves made the first separation in the great point of the pope's supremacy, which was the palladium for which they principally contended. He made it appear that the popes of Rome were usurpers of the rights of kings and bishops ; that they brought in new doc- trines in every age, that they imposed their own devices upon Christendom as articles of faith, that they prevaricated the doctrines of the apostles, that the church of England only returned to her primitive purity, that she joined with Christ and his apostles, that she agreed in all the sentiments of the primitive church. He stated the questions so wisely, and conducted them so prudently, and handled them so learnedly, that I may truly say, they never were more mate- rially confuted by any man, since the questions have so unhappily disturbed Christendom. * Verum hoc eos male ussit :' and they finding themselves smitten under the fifth rib, set up an old champion of their own, a Goliali to fight against the armies of Israel ; the old bishop of Chalcedon, known to many of us, replied to this excellent book ; but was so answered by a rejoinder made by the lord bishop of Derry, in which he so pressed the former arguments, refuted the cavils, brought in so many impregnable autho- rities and probations, and added so many moments and weights to his discourse, that the pleasures of reading the book would be the greatest, if the profit to the church of God were not greater.
Fluminajam lactis, jam fliiniina utctaris ibaiit, Flavaque dc viiidi stillabant iUce iiicl!a\
For SO Sampson's riddle was again expounded, " Out of the strong came meat, and out of the eater came sweetness." His arguments were strong, and the eloquence was sweet and delectable ; and though there started up another combatant against him, yet he had only the honour to fall by the hands of Hector : still " haeret lateri lethalis arundo ;" the headed arrow went in so far, that it could not be drawn out but the barbed steel stuck behind : and whenever men will desire to
" Ov. M. i. 111.
440 A SERMON PllKACIIED AT THE
be satisfied in those ^reat questions, the bishop of Derry's book shall be his oracle.
I will not insist upon his other excellent writings ; but it is known every where with what piety and acumen he wrote against the Manichean doctrine of" fatal necessity," which a late wittv man had pretended to adorn with a new vizor : but this excellent person washed off the ceruse and the meretri- cious paintings, rarely well asserted the economy of the Divine Providence, and having once more triumphed over his adversary, " plenus victoriarum et tropaeorum," betook him- self to tlie more agreeable attendance upon sacred offices ; and having usefully and wisely discoursed of the sacred rite of confirmation, imposed his hands upon the most illustrious princes, the dukes of York and Gloucester, and the princess royal, and ministered to them the promise of the Holy Spirit, and ministerially established them in the religion and service of the holy Jesus. And one thing more I shall remark ; that at his leaving those parts upon the king's return, some of the remonstrant ministers of the Low Countries coming to take their leaves of this great man, and desiring that by his means the church of England would be kind to them, he had reason to grant it, because they were learned men, and in many things of a most excellent belief; yet he reproved them, and gave them caution against it, that they approached too near and gave too much countenance to the great and dangerous errors of the Socinians.
He thus having served God and the king abroad, God was pleased to return to the king and to us all, as in the days of old, and we sung the song of David, " In convertendo cap- tivitatem Sion," when king David and all his servants re- turned to Jerusalem. This great person having trod in the wine-press, was called to drink of the wine, and, as an hono- rary reward of his great services and abilities, was chosen primate of this national church, in which time we are to look upon him, as the king and the king's great vicegerent did, as a person concerning whose abilities the world had too great testimony ever to make a doubt. It is true he was in the declension of his age and health ; but his very ruins were goodly ; and they who saw the broken heaps of Pompey's theatre, and the crushed obelisks, and the old face of beau- teous Philsenium, could not but admire the disordered glories
FUNERAL OF THE LORD PIIIMATE. 441
of such magnificent structures, which were venerable in their very dust.
He ever was used to overcome all difficulties, only mor- tahty was too hard for him ; but still his virtues and his spirit were immortal ; he still took great care, and still had new and noble designs, and proposed to himself admirable things. He governed his province with great justice and sincerity ;
Unns aniplo consulens pastor g;regi, Somnos tiietur omnium solus vigiL
And had this remark in all his government, that as he was a great hater of sacrilege, so he professed himself a public enemy to non-residence, and often would declare wisely and religiously against it, allowing it, in no case but of necessity, or the greater good of the church. There are great things spoken of his predecessor, St, Patrick, that he founded seven hundred churches and religious convents, that he ordained five thousand priests, and, with his own hands, consecrated three hundred and fifty bishops. How true the story is I know not ; but we were all witnesses that the late primate, whose memory we now celebrate, did, by an extra- ordinary contingency of Providence, in one day, consecrate two archbishops and ten bishops ; and did benefit to almost all the churches in Ireland, and was greatly instrumental to the re-endowments of the whole clergy ; and in the greatest abilities and incomparable industry, was inferior to none of his most glorious antecessors.
Since the canonization of saints came into the church, we find no Irish bishop canonized, except St. Laurence of Dublin, and St. Malachias of Down ; indeed Richard of Armagh's canonization was propounded, but not effected ; but the character which was given of that learned primate by Trithemius J', does exactly fit this, our late father: " Vir in Divinis Scripturis eruditus, secularis philosophise jurisque canonici non ignarus, clarus ingenio, sermone scholasticus, in declamandis sermonibus ad populum excellentis indus- trisB :" " He was learned in the Scriptures, skilled in secular philosophy, and not unknowing in the civil and canon laws, (in which studies I wish the clergy were, with some careful-
y De Scriptor. Eccles.
442 A SERMON PUEACIIKI) AT THE
ness and diligence, still more conversant,) he was of an excellent spirit, a scholar in his discourses, an early and industrious preacher to the people." And as if there were a more particular sympathy between their sotds, our primate had so great a veneration to his memory, that he purposed, if lie had lived, to have restored his monument in Dundalk, which time, or impiety, or unthankfulness, had cither omitted or destroyed. !So great a lover he was of all true and in- lierent worth, that he loved it in the very memory of the dead, and to have such great examples transmitted to the intuition and imitation of posterity.
At his coming to the primacy, he knew he should at first espy little besides the ruin of discipline, a harvest of thorns, and heresies prevailing in the hearts of the people, the churches possessed by wolves and intruders, men's hearts greatly estranged from true religion ; and, therefore, he set himself to weed the fields of the church ; he treated the adversaries sometimes sweetly, sometimes he confuted them learnedly, sometimes he rebuked them sharply. He visited his charges diligently and in his own person, not by proxies and instrumental deputations : " Quairens non nostra, sed nos, et quae sunt Jesu Christi :" " He designed nothing that we knew of but the redintegration of religion," the honour of God and the king, the restoring of collapsed disciphne, and the renovation of faith and tlie service of God in the churches. And still he was indefatigable, and, even at the last scene of his life, intended to undertake a regal visitation. " Quid enim vultis me otiosum a Domino comprehendi?" said one ; " He was not willing that God should take him unemployed :" but, good man, he felt his tabernacle ready to fall in pieces, and could go no further, — for God would have no more work done by that hand ; he, therefore, espying this, put his house in order, and had lately visited his diocese, and done what he then could, to put his charge in order; for he had, a good while since, received the sentence of death within himself, and knew he was shortly to render an account of his stewardship ; he, therefore, upon a brisk alarm of death, which God sent him the last January, made his will ; in whichj^sides the prudence and presence of spirit manifested in making just and wise settlement of his estate, and pro- visions fur his descendants : at midnight, and in the trouble
FUNERAL OF THE LORD PRIMATE. 443
of his sickness and circumstances of addressing death, still kept a special sentiment, and made confession of God's admirable mercies, and gave thanks that God had permitted him to live to see the blessed restoration of his majesty and the church of England, confessed his faith to be the same as ever, gave praises to God that he was born and bred up in this religion, and prayed to God, and hoped he should die in the communion of th^is church, which he declared to be the most pure and apostolical church in the whole world.
He prayed to God to pardon his frailties and infirmities, relied upon the mercies of God »and the merits of Jesus Christ, and, with a singular sweetness, resigned up his soul into the hands of his Redeemer.
But God, who is the great Choragus and Master of the scenes of life and death, was not pleased then to draw the cuit?ins; there was an epilogue to his life yet to be acted and spoken. He returned to actions and life, and went on in the methods of the same procedure as before ; was desirous still to establish the affairs of the church, complained of some disorders which he purposed to redress, girt himself to the work ; but though his spirit was willing, yet his flesh was weak ; and as the apostles in the vespers of Christ's passion, so he, in the eye of his own dissolution, was heavy, not to sleep, but heavy unto death ; and looked for the last warning, which seized on him in the midst of business ; and though it was sudden, yet it could not be unexpected, or unprovided by surprise, and, therefore, could be no other than that iu^avaaicx, which Augustus used to wish unto himself, a civil and well-natured death, without the amazement of trouble- some circumstances, or the great cracks of a falling house, or the convulsions of impatience. Seneca tells that Bassus Aufidius was wont to say, " Sperare se nullum dolorem esse in illo extremo anhelitu; si tamen esset, habere aliquantum in ipsa brevitate solatii ^ :" " He hoped that the pains of the last dissolution were little or none ; or if they were, it was full of comfort that they could he but short." It happened so to this excellent man ; his passive fortitude had been abundantly tried before, and, therefore, there was the less need of it now ; his active graces had been abundantly demonstrated by the great and good tilings he did ; and,
' Epist. 30.
444 A SERMOX PREACHED AT THE
therefore, bis last scene was not so laborious, but God called him away something after the manner of Moses, which the Jews express by * osculum oris Dei,' ' the kiss of God's mouth ;' that is, a death indeed fore-signified, but gentle and serene, and without temptation.
To sum up all : he was a wise prelate, a learned doctor, a just man, a true friend, a great benefactor to others, a thank- ful beneficiary where he was obliged himself. He was a faithful servant to his masters, a loyal subject to the king, a zealous assertor of his religion against popery on one side, and fanaticism on the other. The practice of his religion was not so much in forms and exterior ministries, though he was a great observer of all the public rites and ministries of the church, as it was in doing good for others. He was like INIyson, whom the Scythian Anacharsis so greatly praised, 0 Muauv vv oIhov oUija-ag xaXoJj, ' he governed his family j\'ell,' he gave to all their due of maintenance and duty ; he did great benefit to mankind ; he had the fate of the apostle St. Paul, he passed ' through evil report and good report, as a deceiver, and yet true.' He was a man of great business and great resort: " Semper aliquis in Cydonis domo,"as the Corinthians said ; " There was always somebody in Cydon's house." He was /xs^l^oiv tov ^wv ipyai Koi ^l^xcp^, he ' divided his life into labour and his book.' He took care of his churches when he was alive, and even after his death, having left five hundred pounds for the repair of his cathedral of Armagh and St. Peter's church in Drogheda. He was an excellent scholar, and rarely well accomplished ; first in- structed to great excellency by natural parts, and then con- summated by study and experience. Melancthon was used to say, that himself was a logician ; Pomeranus, a gram- marian ; Justus Jonas, an orator ; but that Luther was all these. It was greatly true of him, that the single perfections which make many men eminent, were united in this primate, and made him illustrious.
Ergo Qiiiiictilium perpetuus sopor Urget ? ciii Pudor, et, JustitiiE soror, Incorrsipta Fides, midaque Veritas, Quando ullnm invenieiit parem ?
It will be hard to find his equal in all things : " Fortasse
* Synes. Ep. 57.
FUNERAL OF THE LORD PRIMATE. 445
tanquam PhcEiiix anno quingentesimo nascitur," (that I may use the words of Seneca) " nee est mirum ex intervallo magna generari ; mediocria et in turbam nascentia ssepe for- tuna producit : eximia vero ipsa raritate commendat." For in him were visible the great lines of Hooker's judiciousness, of Jewel's learning, of the acuteness of bishop Andrews. He was skilled in more great things than one : and, as one said of Phidias, he could mot only make excellent statues of ivory, but he could work in stone and brass. He showed his equa- nimity in poverty, and his justice in riches ; he was useful in his country, and profitable in his banishment ; for, as Parseus was at Anvilla, Luther at Wittenburg, St. Athanasius and St. Chrysostom in their banishment, St. Jerome in his retire- ment at Bethlehem, they were oracles to them that needed it : so was he in Holland and France, where he was abroad ; and beside the particular endearments which his friends received from him, for he did do relief to his brethren that wanted, and supplied the soldiers out of his store in York- shire, when himself could but ill spare it : but he received public thanks from the convocation of which he was presi- dent, and public justification from the parliament where he was speaker ; so that although, as one said, " Miraculi instar vitse iter, si longum, sine offensione percurrere ;" yet no man had greater enemies, and no man had greater justifications.
But God hath taken our Elijah from our heads this day : I pray God that at least his mantle may be left behind, and that his spirit may be doubled upon his successor ; and that we may all meet together with him at the right hand of the Lamb, where every man shall receive according to his deeds, whether they be good or whether they be evil. I conclude with the words of Caius Plinius*": " Equidem beatos puto quibus Deorum munere datum est, aut facere scribenda, aut scribere legenda :" ' he wrote many things fit to be read, and did very many things worthy to be written ;' which if we wisely imitate, we may hope to meet him in the resurrection of the just, and feast with him in the eternal supper of the Lamb, there to sing perpetual anthems to the honour of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ; to whom be all ho- nour, &-C.
^ Gierig. vi. 16. 3.
FUNERAL SERMON
PREACHED AT
THE OBSEQUIES
OF IIIE
RIGHT HONOURABLE AND MOST VIRTUOUS LADY,
THE LADY FRANCES,
COUNTESS OF CARBERV.
TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
AND
TRULY NOBLE
RICHARD LORD VAUGHAN,
EARL OF CARBERY, BARON OF EMLIN AND MOLINGER, KNIGHT OF THE HONOURABLE ORDER OF THE BATH.
MY LORD, I AM not ashamed to profess, that I pay this part of service to your Lordship most unwillingly ; for it is a sad office to be the chief minister in a house of mourning-, and to present an interested person with a branch of cypress and a bottle of tears. And indeed, my Lord, it were more proportionable to your needs to bring something that might alleviate or divert your sorrow, than to dress the hearse of your dear lady, and to furnish it with such circum- stances, that it may dwell with you, and lie in your closet, and make your prayers and your retirements more sad and full of weepings. But, because the Divine Providence hath taken from you a person so excellent, a woman fit to converse with angels and apostles, with saints and martyrs, give me leave to present you with her picture, drawn in little and in water colours, sullied, indeed, with tears and the
VOL. VI. G G
CCCCl TIIK EPISTLE DEDICATORY.
abrupt accents of a real and consonant sorrow, but drawn with a iaithful hand, and taken from tlie life ; and indeed, it were too great a loss to be deprived of her example and of licr rule, of the original and of the copy too. The age is very evil and deserved her not ; but because it is so evil, it hath the more need to have such lives preserved in memory, to instruct our piety, or upbraid our wickedness. For now that God hath cut this tree of Paradise down from its seat of earth, yet so the dead trunk may support a part of the declining temple, or, at least, serve to kindle the fire on the altar. My Lord, I pray God this heap of sorrow may swell your piety, till it breaks into the greatest joys of God and of religion ; and remember, when you pay a tear upon the grave, or to the memory of your lady, that dear and most excellent soul, that you pay two more ; one of repentance for those things that may have caused this breach, and another of joy for the mer- cies of God to your dear departed saint, that he hath taken her into a place where she can weep no more. My Lord, I think / shall, so long as I live, that is, so long as I am
Your Lordship's
Most humble servant,
JER. TAYLOR.
Pietati et Memories, Sacrum.
MoNUMENTUM doloiis singulaiis, paris fati et conditionis, posuit E-icardus Comes Carberiensis sibi vivo, et mor- t&in nee exoptanti nee metuenti : et dilectissimee suse conjugi Franciscse Comitissce in Acre eetatis casibus puer- perii raptaa ex amplexibus sanctissimi amoris. Fuit ilia (descendat lacrimula, amice lector) fuit inter castissiraas prima, inter conjugea amantissima, mater optima: placidi oris, severse virtutis, conversationis suavissimse : vultum hilarem fecit bona conscientia ; amabilem, forma plusquam uxoria. Claris orta natalibus, fortunam non mediocrem habuit ; erat enim cum miica germana hseres ex asse. Annos XIIL Menses IV, supra biduum vixit in sanctis- simo matrimonio cum suo, quem efFusissime dilexit, et sancte observavit ; quem novit prudentissimum, sensit amantissimum, virum optimum vidit et Isetata est. Enixa prolem numerosam, pulcram, ingenuam, formse et spei op- timae; quatuor masculos, Franciscum Dorainum Vaughan, Johannem, Althamum, quartum immaturum ; fceminas sex, Dominam Franciscam,Elizabethas duas, Mariam, Mar- garitam, et Altliamiara : — post cujus partum paucis diebus obdorraiit. Totam prolem masculam (si deraas abortivum ilium) et fceminas omnes, prseter Elizabetham alteram, et Mariam, superstites reliquit. Fietatis adeoque spei plena obiit ix. Octobr. MDCL. Lacrymis suorum omnium tota irrigua eonditur in hoe coemeterio, ubi cum Deo Opt. Max. visum fuerit, sperat se reponendum conjux moestis- simus : interea temporis luctui, s,ed pietati magis vacat, ut in suo tempore simul leetentur par tarn pium, tam nobile, tam christianum in greraio Jesu, usque dum co- ronffi adornentur accipiendse in adventu Domini. Amen.
Cum ille vita, defunctus fuerit, marmor loquetur, quod adhuc tacere jubet virtus modesta: interim vitara ejus observa, et leges quod postea hie inscriptum amabunt et colent posteri. Ora et abi.
m
k 'J
FUNERAL SERMON, &c.
SERMON VIII.
For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again : neither doth God respect any person : yet doth he devise means, that his banished be not expelled from him. 2 Sam. xiv. 14.
When our blessed Saviour and his disciples viewed the temple, some one amongst them cried out, " Magister, aspice, quales lapides ! " " Master, behold what fair, what great stones are here ! " Christ made no other reply, but foretold their dissolution, and a world of sadness and sorrow which should bury that whole nation, when the teeming cloud of God's displeasure should produce a storm, whiph was the daughter of the biggest anger, and the mother of the greatest calamity, which ever crushed any of the sons of Adam ; " The time shall come, that there shall not be left one stone upon another." The whole temple and the religion, the ceremonies ordained by God, and the nation beloved by , ^j God, and the fabric erected for the service of God, shall ^ run to their own period, and lie down in their several graves. Whatsoever had a beginning, can also have an ending ; and it shall die, unless it be daily watered with the purls flowing from the fountain of life, and refreshed vnXh. the dew of heaven, and the wells of God : and, therefore, God had provided a tree in Paradise to have supported Adam in his artificial immortality : immortality was not in his nature, but in the hands and arts, in the favour and superadditions of God. Man was always the same mixture of heat and cold, of dryness and moisture ; ever the same weak thing, apt to feel rebellion in the humours, and to suffer the evils of a civil war in his body natural : and, therefore, health and
45* A FUNEUAl. SERMON.
life was to descend upon him from lioaven, and he was to suck hfc from a tree on cartli ; himself being but ingrafted into a tree of life, and adopted into the condition of an immortal nature. But he that in the best of his days was but a scion of this tree of life, by his sin was cut off from thence quickly, and planted upon thorns, and his portion was for ever after among the flowers, which to-day spring and look like health and beauty, and in the evening they are sick, and at night are dead, and the oven is their grave : and, as before, even from our first spring from the dust on earth, we might have died, if we had not been preserved by the continual flux of a rare providence; so now that we are reduced to the laws of our own nature, " we must needs die." It is natural, and, therefore, necessary : it is become a punishment to us, and therefore it is unavoidable ; and God hath bound the evil upon us by bands of natural and insepa- rable propriety, and by a supervening unalterable decree of heaven ; and we are fallen from our privilege, and are returned to the condition of beasts, and buildings, and common things : and we see temples defiled unto the ground, and they die by sacrilege; and great empires die by their own plenty and ease, full humours, and factious subjects ; and huge buildings fall by their own weight, and the violence of many winters eating and consuming the cement, which is the marrow of their bones ; and princes die like the meanest of their servants ; and every thing finds a grave and a tomb : and the very tomb itself dies by the bigness of its pompous ness and luxury,
Pliario nutaiitia poiic?eia »axo,
Quae cineri vanus dat niitura laboi",
and becomes as friable and uncombined dust, as the ashes of the sinner or the saint that lay under it, and is now forgotten in his bed of darkness. And to this catalogue of mortality man is enrolled with a " statutum est ;" " It is appointed for all men to die once, and after death comes judgment :" and if a man can be stronger than nature, or Can wrestle with a decree of heaven, or can escape from a divine punishment by his own arts, so that neither the power nor the Providence
» Martial, i. 8';. S.
A FUNERAL SERMON. 455
of God, nor the laws of nature, nor the bands of eternal predestinatiop can hold him, then he may live beyond the fate and period of flesh, and last longer than a flower : but if ; 11 these can hold us and tie us to conditions, then we must lay our heads down upon a turf, and entertain creeping things in the cells and little chambers of our eyes, and dwell with worms till time and death shall be no more. " We must needs die" — that is our sentence : but that is not all.
" We are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again." Stay,
1. We are as water, weak, and of no consistence, always descending, abiding in no certain place, unless where we are detained with violence : and everv little breath of wind makes us rough and tempestuous, and troubles our faces ; every trifling accident discomposes us ; and, as the face of the waters wafting in a storm, so wrinkles itself that it makes upon its forehead furrows deep and hollow like a grave ; so do our great and little cares and trifles first make the wrinkles of old age, and then they dig a grave for us : and there is in nature nothing so contemptible, but it may meet with us in such circumstances, that it may be too hard for us in our weaknesses ; and the sting of a bee is a weapon sharp enough to pierce the finger of a child or' the lip of a man ; and those creatures which nature hath left without weapons, yet they are armed sufficiently to vex those parts of men, which are left defenceless and obnoxious to a sun-beam, to the roughness of a sour grape, to the unevenness of a gravel-stone, to the dust of a wheel, or the unwholesome breath of a star looking awry upon a sinner.
2. But besides* the weaknesses and natural decayings of our bodies, if chances and contingencies be innumerable, then no man can reckon our dangers, and the preternatural causes of our deaths : so that he is a vain person, whose hopes of life are too confidently increased by reason of his health : and he is too unreasonably timorous, who thinks his hopes at an end, when he dwells in sickness. For men die without rule, and with and without occasions ; and no man suspecting or foreseeing any of death's addresses, and no man in his whole condition is weaker than another. A man in a long consumption is fallen under one of the solemnities
j>ev- %
456 A FUNERAL SERMON.
and preparations to death ; but at the same instant, the most healthi'ul person is as near death, upon a more fatal and a more sudden, but a less discerned cause. There are but few persons upon whose foreheads every man can read the sentence of death, written in the lines of a lingering sickness, but they sometimes hear the passing-bell ring for stronger men, even long before their own knell calls at the house of their mother to open her womb, and make a bed for them. No man is surer of to-morrow than the weakest of his brethren : and when Lepidus and Aufidius stumbled at the threshold of the senate, and fell down and died, the blow came from heaven in a cloud ; but it struck more suddenly than upon the poor slave that made sport upon the theatre with a premeditated and fore-described death : " Quod quisque vitet, nunquam homini satis Cautum est in horas''." There are sicknesses that walk in darkness ; and there are exter- minating angels, that fly wrapt up in the curtains of im- materiality and an uncommunicating nature ; whom we cannot see, but we feel their force, and sink under their sword ; and from heaven the veil descends that wraps our heads in the fatal sentence. There is no age of man but it hath proper to itself some posterns and outlets for death, besides those infinite and open ports out of which myriads of men and women every day pass into the dark, and the land ' of forgetfulness. Infancy hath life but in effigy, or like'>-' a spark dwelling in a pile of wood : the candle is so newly lighted, that every little shaking of the taper, and every ruder breath of air puts it out, and it dies. Childhood is so tender, and yet so unwary ; so soft to all the impressions of chance, and yet so forward to run into them, that God knew there could be no security without the care and vigilance of an angel-keeper : and the eyes of parents and the arms of nurses, the provisions of art, and all the effects of human love and providence are not sufficient to keep one child from horrid mischiefs, from strange and early calamities and deaths, unless a messenger be sent from heaven to stand sentinel, and watch the very playings and sleepings, the eatings and drinkings of the children ; and it is a long time before nature makes them capable of help : for there are many deaths, and
b Od. ii. 13. 13.
A FUNERAL SERMOX. 45?
very many diseases to which poor babes are exposed ; but they have but very few capacities of physic ; to show that infancy is as hable to death as old age, and equally exposed to danger, and equally incapable of a remedy; with this only difference, that old age hath diseases incurable by nature, and the diseases of childhood 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. Some- times none at all ; as in the most sudden and most dangerous imposthumations. 7. And then, the diseases, in the inward parts of the body, are oftentimes such, to which no applica- tion can be made. 8. They are so far off", that the effects of all medicines can no otherwise come to them, than 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 physic are so uncertain, that after they have been believed seven or eight ages, and that upon them much of the practice 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 human calamity ; when God's Providence hath not only 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 abode no more certain ; if the sluices be opened, " it falls away and runneth apace;" if its current be stopped, it swells and grows troublesome, and
458 A FUNERAL SEUMON.
Spills over with a tireater diHusion ; if it be made to stand still, it putrifies : and all this we do. For,
4. In all the process of our health we are running to out grave : we open our own sluices by viciousness and unworthy actions ; we pour in drink, and let out life; we increase dis- eases, and know not how to bear them ; we strangle ourselves witli our own intt'uiperance ; we suffer the fevers and the in- tlaniinations of lust, and we quench our souls with drunken- ness: we burv our understandings in loads of meat and surfeits : and then v.e lie down upon our beds, and roar with pain a!id disquietness of our souls : nay, we kill one another's souls and bodies witli violence and folly, with the effects of pride and uncharitableness ; we live and die like fools, and bring a new mortality upon ourselves ; wars and vexatious cares, and private duels and })ublic disorders, and every thing that is unreasonable, and every thing that is violent : so that now we may add this fourth gate to the grave: besides na- ture 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 ourselves 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 shower 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 days are finished, they shall be, and they shall be remembered no more : and that is like water too, — when it is spilt, "it cannot be gathered up again." There is no redemption from the grave.
inter S€ mortales mutiia vivnnt :
Et, quasi cursoics, vitai lanipaila tradiinf^.
Men live in their course and by turns ; their light burns awhile, and then it burns blue 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 Avho lived them over once, he shall never come to live them again, aad live thena
«= Lucr. ii. 75.
A FUXERAL SERMON". 459
better. When Lazarns, and the widow's son of Nain, 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 only to make a visits and -all of them to manifest a glory : but none came upon the stock of a new life, or entered 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 brother's house ; but neither he, nor any one from him conld be sent: but all the rest in the ]Vew Testament (one only 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 St. Peter was a charitable and a holy Christian: and the maiden of twelve years old, raised by our blessed Saviour, had not entered into the regions of choice and sinfulness : and the only exception of the widow's son, is indeed none at all, for. in it the Scripture is wholly silent ; and therefore it is very probable that the same pro- cess was used, God, in all other instances, having chosen to exemplify his miracles of nature to purposes of the spirit, and in spiritual capacities. So that, althoxigh the Lord of nature did not break the bands of nature in some instances, to ma- nifest his glory to succeeding great and never-failing pur- poses ; 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 eternal 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 carefulness, that youorder your affairs so t'nat you may be partakers of the first resurrection ; that is, from sin to grace, from the death of vicious habits, to the vigour, life, and efScacy of an habitual righteousness : for (as it hap- pened to those persons in the New Testament now mentioned, to them, I say, in the literal sense) " Blessed are they that ; have part in the first resurrection; upon them the second death shall have no power :" meaning that they who, by the
400 A FUNERAL SERMON.
power of Christ and his Holy Spirit were raised to hfe again, were holy and blessed souls, and such who were written in the book of God ; and that this grace happened to no wicked and vjcious person : so it is most true in the spiritual and intended sense : you only that serve God in a holy life ; you who are not dead in trespasses and sins : you who serve God with an early diligence and an unwearied industry, and a holy religion, you, and you only shall come to life eternal, you only shall be called from death to life ; the rest of mankind shall never live again, but pass from death to death ; from one death to another, to a worse ; from the death of the body, to the eternal death of body and soul : and therefore in the Apos- tles' Creed there is no mention made of the resurrection of wicked persons ; but of " the resurrection of the body to everlasting life." The wicked indeed shall be haled forth from their graves, from their everlasting prisons, where, in chains of darkness, they are kept unto the judgment of the great day : but this therefore cannot be called, * in sensu favoris,' a resurrection ; but the solemnities of the eternal death ; it is nothing but a new capacity of dying again ; such a dying as cannot signify rest; but where death means no- thing but an intolerable and never ceasing calamity ; and therefore these words of my text are otherwise to be under- stood of the wicked, otherwise of the godly : the wicked are spilt like water, and shall never be gathered up again ; no not in the gatherings of eternity ; they shall be put into vessels of wrath, and set upon the flames of hell; but that is not a gathering, but a scattering from the face and presence of God. But the godly also come under the sense of these words : they descend into their graves, and shall no more be reckoned among the living : they have no concernment in all that is done under the sun. Aoamemnon hath no more to do with the Turks' armies invading and possessing that part of Greece, where he reigned, than had the Hippocentaur, who never had a being : and Cicero hath no more interest in the present evils of Christendom, than we have to do with his boasted discovery of Catihne's conspiracy. What is it to me that Rome was taken by the Gauls ? and Avhat is it now to Camillus, if different relio;ions be tolerated amongst us? These things that now happen concern the living, and they are made the scenes of our duty or danger respectively : and
A FUNERAL SERMOX. 4G1
when our wiyes are dead, and sleep in cliarnel-houses, they are not troubled when we laugh loudly at the songs sung at the next marriage-feast ; nor do they envy when another snatches away the gleanings of their husbands' passion.
It is true, they erivy not, and they lie in a bosom where there can be no murmur ; and they that are consigned to kingdoms, and to the feast of the marriage-supper of the Lamb, the glorious and eternal bridegroom of holy souls, they cannot think our marriages here, our lighter laughings and vain rejoicings, considerable, as to them. And " yet there is a relation continued still :" Aristotle said, that to affirm the dead take no thouglit for the good of the hving, is a dispa- ragement to the laws of that friendship, which, in their state of separation, they cannot be tempted to rescind. And the church hath taught in general, that they pray for us, they recommend to God the state of all their relatives, in the union of the intercession that our blessed Lord makes for them and us : and St. Ambrose gave some things in charge to his dying brother Satyrus, that he should do for him in the other world : he gave it him, I say, when he was dying, not when he was dead. And certain it is, that, though our dead friends' affection to us is not to be estimated according to our low conceptions, yet it is not less, but much more than ever it was ; it is greater in degree, and of another kind. But then we should do well also to remember, that in this world we are something besides flesh and blood ; that we may not, without violent necessities, run into new rela- tions, but preserve the affections we bore to our dead when they were alive : we must not so live as if they were perished, but so as pressing forward to the most intimate participation of the communion of saints. And we also have some ways to express this relation, and to bear a part in this communion, by actions of intercourse with them, and yet proper to our state : such as are strictly performing the will of the dead, providing for, and tenderly and wisely educating their children, paying their debts, imitating their good example, preserving their memories privately, and publicly keeping their memo- rials, and desiring of God, with hearty and constant, prayer, that God would give them a joyful resurrection, and a mer- ciful judgment, — for so St. Paul prayed in behalf of Onesi-
4G2 A FUNEK-\L SERMON'.
phorusJ ; — that " God would shew them mercy in that day;" that fearful, an.l yot much to be desired day, in which the- most righteous person hath need of much mercy and pity, and shall find it. Now these instances of duty shew, that the relation remains still ; and though the relict of a man or woman hatli liberty to contract new relations, yet I do not find that they have liberty to cast off the old, as if there were no such thing as immortality of souls, liemember that we shall converse together again ; let us therefore never do any thino- of reference to them, which we shall be ashamed of in that day when all secrets shall be discovered, and when we shall meet again in the presence of God : in the mean time, God watcheth concerning all their interest, and he will, in his time, both discover and recompense. For though, as to us, they are like water spilt ; yet, to God, they are as water fallen in the sea, safe and united in his comprehension and inclosures.
But we are not yet passed the consideration of the sen- tence : this descending to the grave is the lot of all men, " neither doth God respect the person of any man :" the rich is not protected for favour, nor the poor for pity; the old man is not reverenced for his age, nor the infant regarded for his tenderness ; youth and beauty, learning and prudence, wit and strength lie down equally in the dishonours of the grave. All men, and all natures, and all persons resist the addresses and solemnities of death, and strive to preserve a miserable and unpleasant life ; and yet they all sink down and die. For so have I seen the pillars of a building, assisted with artificial props, bending under the pressure of a roof, and pertinaciously resisting the infallible and prepared ruin,
Donee ccrta dies, omni compagc solnt^, Ipsuni cum rebus snbiual auxilinin ;
* till the determined day comes, and then the burden sunk upon the pillars, and disordered the aids and auxiliary rafters' into a common ruin and a ruder grave : so are the desires and weak arts of man ; with little aids and assistances of care and physic, we strive to support our decaying bodies, and to
* 2Tini.i. 18.
A FUNERAL SERMON. 463
put ofF the evil day ; but quickly that day will come, and then neither angels nor men can rescue us from our grave ; but the roof sinks down upon the walls, and the walls de- scend to the foundation ; and the beauty of the face, and the dishonours of the belly, the discerning head and the servile feet, the thinking heart and the working hand, the eyes and the guts together shall be crushed into the confusion of a heap, and dwell with creatures of an equivocal produc- tion, vv'ith worras_and_ser]3ents, the sons and daughters of Q.UI!- own bones, in a house of dirt and darkneaa.
Let us not think to be excepted or deferred : if beauty, or wit, or youth, or nobleness, or wealth, or virtue, could have been a defence and an excuse from the grave, we had not met here to-day to mourn upon the hearse of an excellent lady : and God only knows, for which of us next the mourners shall go about the streets, or weep in houses.
Zei/5 y-h 'jTou Toys ol^ JUti aBavaroi &£oi aXXot, OTfsrorspoi ^avaroio teAo; TTl'ir^aif/.evov ssttiv^.
We have lived so many years ; and every day, and every minute, we make an escape from those thousands of dangers and deaths that encompass us round about : and such escapings we must reckon to be an extraordinary fortune ; and, therefore, that it cannot last long. Vain are the thoughts of man, who, when he is young or healthful, thinks he hath a long thread of life to run over, and that it is violent and strange for young persons to die ; and natural and proper only for the aged. It is as natural for a man to die by drowning as by a fever : and v/hat greater violence or more unnatural thing is it, that the horse threw his rider into the river, than that a drunken meeting cast him into a fever? and the strengths of youth are as soon broken by the strong sicknesses of youth, and the stronger intemperance, as the weakness of old age by a cough, or an asthma, or a continual rheum : nay, it is more natural for young men and women to die, than for old ; be- cause that is more natural, which hath more natural causes, and that is more natural, which is most common : but to die with age is an extreme rare thing ; and there are more persons carried forth to burial before the tive and tEirtieth
« il. y. 309.
4G4 ^ A 1 L N'EUAI. SFHMON.
year of their ai;e, than alter it : and therefore, let no vain confidence make you hope for long life : if you have lived but little, and are still in youth, remember that now you are in your biggest throng of dangers, both of body and soul ; and the proper sins of youth to which they rush infinitely and without consideration, are also the proper and immediate instruments of death. But if you be old, you have escaped long and wonderfully, and the time of your escaping is out : you must not for ever think to live upon wonders, or that God will work miracles to satisfy your longing follies, and unreasonable desires of living longer to sin and to the world. Go home and think to die, and what you would choose to be doing when you die, that do daily : for you will all come to that pass to rejoice that you did so, or wish that you had: that will be the condition of every one of us : for ' God re- gardeth no man's person.'
Well ! but all this you will think is but a sad storv : What ? we must die, and go to darkness and dishonour ; and we must die quickly, and we must quit all our delights, and all our sins, or do worse, infinitely worse ; and this is the condition of us all, from which none can be excepted ; every man shall be spilt and fall into the ground, and " be gathered up no more." Is there no comfort after all this ? " shall we go from hence, and be no more seen," and have no re- compense ?
" Mifero niiscrc," aiimt, " omnia adcniit Una dies infausta tibi tot preemia vitae^."
Shall we exchange our fair dwellings for a coffin, our softer beds for the moistened and weeping turf, and our pretty children for worms ; and is there no allay to this huge cala- mity ? yes, there is : there is a yet in the text : " for all this, yet doth God devise means that his banished be not expelled
'7' j from him :" — All this sorrow and trouble is but a phantasm, and receives its account and degrees from our present con- ceptions, and the proportion to our relishes and gust.
When Porapey saw the ghost of his first lady, Julia, who
j vexed his rest and his conscience, for superinducing Cornelia upon her bed, within the ten months of mourning, he presently
f Liicr. iii. 911.
A FUNERAL SERMOK. 465
fancied it, either to be an illusion, or else that death could be no very great evil :
Aut nihil est sensus animis a inorte relictiim^ Aiit mors ipsa nihil f
* Either my dead wife knows not of my unhandsome mar- riage, and forgetfulness of her; or if she does, then the dead live.'
longas, canitis si cognita, vitae
Mors media est ^
* Death is nothing but the middle point between two lives, between this and another :' concerning which comfortable mystery the holy Scripture instructs our faith, and entertains our hope in these words : God is still the " God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; for all do live to him ;" and the souls of saints are with Christ : " I desire to be dissolved," (saith St. Paul) '^ and to be with Christ, for that is much better :" and, *' Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord ; they rest from their labours, and their works follow them : for we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dis- solved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens :" and this state of separation St. Paul calls '* a being absent from the body, and being pre- sent with the Lord '." This is one of God's means which he hath devised, that although our dead are like persons ba- nished from this world, yet they are not expelled from God : they are ' in the hands of Christ ;' they are ' in his presence ;' they are, or shall be ' clothed with a house of God's making;*
* they rest from all their labours ;' ' all tears are wiped from their eyes,' and all discontents from their spirits ; and in the state of separation, before the soul be re-invested with her new house, the spirits of all persons are with God, so se- cured, and so blessed, and so sealed up for glory, that this state of interval and imperfection is, in respect of its certain event and end, infinitely more desirable than all the riches, and all the pleasures, and all the vanities, and all the king- doms of this world.
I will not venture to determine what are the circumstances
if Lucan. iii. 3'J. '' Id. i. 436-
' 1 Cor. XV. 18. 1 Thess. iv. 16. Rev. xiv. 13. John, v. 24. 2 Cor. v. 6, 8.
VOL. VI. H H
4G0 A FUNERAL SERMON.
of the abode of holy souls in their separate dwelhngs ; and yet possibly, that might be easier than to tell what or how the soul is and works in tliis world, where it is in the body " tanquam in aliena domo," * as in a prison/ in fetters and restraints; for here the soul is discomposed and hindered ; it is not as it shall be, as it ought to be, as it wns liiteuded to be ; it is not permitted to its own freedom and proper operation ; so that all that we can understand of it here, is, that it is so in- commodated with a troubled and Abated instrument, that the object we are to consider, cannot be offered to us in a right line, in just and equal propositions: or if it could, yet because we are to understand the soul by the soul, it becomes not only a troubled and abused object, but a crooked instrument; and we here can consider it just as a weak eye can behold a staff thrust into the waters of a troubled riYer, the very water makes a refraction, and the storm doubles the refraction, and the water of the eye doubles the species, and there is nothing- right in the thing : the object is out of its just place, and the medium is troubled, and the organ is impotent : " At cum exierit, et in liberum coelum, quasi in domum suam, venerit;" ' when the soul is entered into her own house, into the free regions of the rest,' and the neighbourhood of heavenly joys, then its operations are more spiritual, proper, and propor- tioned to its being ; and, though we cannot see at such a dis- tance, yet the object is more fitted, if we had a capable under- standing ; it is in itself in a more excellent and free con- dition.
Certain it is that the body does hinder many actions of the soul ; it is an imperfect body and a diseased brain, or a violent passion, that makes fools : no man hath a foolish soul ; and the reasonings of men have infinite difference and degrees, by reason of the body's constitution. Among beasts, which have no reason, there is a greater hkeness than be- tween men, who have ; and as by faces it is easier to know a man from a man, than a sparrow from a sparrow, or a squirrel from a squirrel ; so the difference is very great in our souls ; which difference, because it is not originally in the soul, (and indeed cannot be in simple or spiritual substances of the same species or kind,) it must needs derive wholly from the body, from its accidents and circumstances ; from whence it follows, that because the body casts fetters and restraints.
A FUNERAL SERMON. 467
hinderances and impediments upon the soul, that the soul is much freer in the state of separation ; and if it hath any act of life, it is much more noble and expedite.
That the soul is alive after our death, St. Paul affirms : " Christ died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him''." Now it were strange that we should be alive, and live with Christ, and yet do no act of life : the body when it is asleep, does many ; and if the soul does none, the principle is less active than the instru- ment ; but if it does any act at all in separation, it must necessarily be an act or effect of understanding ; there is nothing else it can do, but this it can ; for it is but a weak and an unlearned proposition to say, that the soul can do no- thing of itself, nothing without the phantasms and provisions of the body : for,
1. In this life the soul hath one principle clearly separate, abstracted, and immaterial ; 1 mean ' the spirit of grace,' which is a principle of life and action, and in many instances does not at all communicate with matter, as in the infusion, superinduction, and creation of spiritual graces.
2. As nutrition, generation, eating and drinking, are ac- tions proper to the body and its state ; so ecstasies, visions, raptures, intuitive knowledge and consideration of itself, acts of volition, and reflex acts of understanding, are proper to the soul.
3. And therefore it is observable that St. Paul said, that " he knew not whether his visions and raptures were in or out of the body;" for by that we see his judgment of the thing, that one was as likely as the other, neither of them impossible or unreasonable ; and therefore, that the soul is as capable of action alone as in conjunction.
4. If in the state of blessedness, there are some actions of the soul which do not pass through the body, such as con- templation of God, and conversing with spirits, and receiving those influences and rare immissions, which coming from the holy and mysterious Trinity, make up the crown of glory ; it follows that the necessity of the body's ministry is but dur- ing the state of this life, and as long as it converses with fire and water, and lives with corn and flesh, and is fed by the satisfaction of material appetites ; which necessity and man-
•« 1 Thess. V. 10.
'»U/'
4G8 A FUNEUAL SERMON'.
ner of conversation, when it ceases, it can be no longer ne- cessary tbr the soul to be served by phantasms and material representations.
5. And therefore, when the body shall be reunited, it shall be so ordered that then the body shall confess it i^ives not any thing, but receives all its being and operation, its manner and abode from the soul ; and that then it comes not to serve a necessity, but to partake a glory : for as the operations of the soul, in this life, begin in the body, and by it the object is transmitted to the soul ; so then they shall begin in the soul, and pass to the body ; and as the operations of the soul, by reason of its dependence on the body, are animal, natural, and material ; so in the resurrection, the body shall be spi- ritual, by reason of the pre-eminence, influence, and prime operation of the soul. Now between these two states stands the state of separation, in which the operations of the soul are of a middle nature, that is, not so spiritual as in the re- surrection, and not so animal and natural as in the state of conjunction.
To all which I add this consideration, that our souls have the same condition that Christ's soul had in the state of separation, because he took on him all our nature, and all our condition ; and it is certain, Christ's soul, in the three days of his separation, did exercise acts of life, of joy and triumph, and did not sleep, but visited the souls of the fathers, trampled upon the pride of devils, and satisfied those longing souls which were prisoners of hope : and from all this we may conclude, that the souls of all the servants of Christ are alive, and therefore do the actions of life, and proper to their state; and, therefore, it is highly probable I that the soul works clearer, and understands brighter, and discourses wiser, and rejoices louder, and loves nobler, and desires purer, and hopes stronger, than it can do here.
But if these arguments should fail, yet the felicity of God's saints cannot fail : for suppose the body to be a neces- sary instrument, but out of tune and discomposed by sin and anger, by accident and chance, by defect and imperfections, yet that it is better than none at all ; and that if the soul works imperfectly with an imperfect body, that then she works not at all, when she hath none : and suppose also that the soul should be as much without sense or perception in death, as it is in a deep sleep, which is the image and shadow
A FUNERAL SERMOX. 469
of death ; yet then God devises other means that his banished be not expelled from him. For,
2. God will restore the soul to the body, and raise the body to such a perfection, that it shall be an organ fit to praise him upon ; it shall be made spiritual to minister to the soul, when the soul is turned into a spirit ; then the soul shall be brought forth by angels from her incomparable and easy bed, from her rest in Christ's holy bosom, and be made perfect in her being, and in all her operations : and this shall first appear by that perfection, which the soul shall receive, as instrumental to the last judgment; for then she shall see clearly all the records of this world, all the register of her own niemory : for all that we did in this life is laid up in our memories ; and though dust and forgetfulness be drawn upon them, yet when. God shall lift us from our dust, then shall appear clearly all that we have done, written in the tables of our conscience, which is the soul's memory. We see many times, and in many instances, that a great memory is hindered and put out, and we, thirty years after, come to think of some- thing that lay so long under a curtain ; we think of it sud- denly, and without a line of deduction, or proper conse- quence : and all those famous memories of Simonides and Theedactes, of Hortensius and Seneca, of Sceptius, Metro- dorus, and Carneades, of Cyneas the ambassador of Pyrrhus, are only the records better kept, and less disturbed by acci- dent and disease : for even the memory of Herod's son of Athens, of Bathyllus, and the dullest person now alive, is so great, and by God made so sure a record of all that ever he did, that as soon as ever God shall but tune our instrument, and draw the curtains, and but light up the candle of immor- tality, there we shall find it all, there we shall see all, and the whole world shall see all ; then we shall be made fit to con- verse with God after the manner of spirits, we shall be like to angels.
In the mean time, although upon the persuasion of the former discourse, it be highly probable that the souls of God's servants do live in a state of present blessedness, and in the exceeding joys of a certain expectation of the revela- tion of the day of the Lord, and the coming of Jesus ; yet it will concern us only lo secure our state by holy living, and leave the event to God, that (as St. Paul said) '' whether
470 A FUXERAL SERMON.
present or absent, wliether sleeping or waking," whether perceiving or perceiving not, " we may be accepted of him ;" that when we are banished this world, and from the light of the sun, we may not be expelled from God, and from the light of his countenance, but that, from our beds of sorrows, our souls may pass into the bosom of Christ, and from thence to his right hand in the day of sentence : " For we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ;" and then if we have done well in the body, we shall never be expelled from the beatifical presence of God, but be domestics of his family, and heirs of his kingdom, and par- takers of his glory. Amen.
I HAVE now done with my text, but yet am to make you another sermon. I have told you the necessity and the state of death, it may be too largely for such a sad story ; I shall, therefore, now with a better compendium teach you how to live, by telling you a plain narrative of a life, which if you imitate, and write afte/ the copy, it will make that death shall not be an evil, but a thing to be desired, and to be reckoned among the purchases and advantages of your fortune, W hen Martha and Mary went to weep over the grave of their brother, Christ met them there, and preached a funeral sermon, discoursing of the resurrection, and applying to the purposes of faith, and con- fession of Christ, and glorification of God. We have no other, we can have no better precedent to follow : and now that we are come to weep over the grave of our dear sister, this rare personage, we cannot choose but have many virtues to learn, many to imitate, and some to exercise.
I choose not to declare her extraction and genealogy ; it was indeed fair and honourable ; but having; the blessing to be descended from worthy and honoured ancestors, and herself to be adopted and ingrafted into a more noble family; yet she felt such outward appendages to be none of her's, because not of her choice ; but the purchase of the virtues of others, which although they did engage her to do noble things, yet they would upbraid all degenerate and less honourable lives than were those, which began and increased the honour of the families. She did not love her fortune for making her noble ; but thought it would be a dishonour to
A FUNERAL SERMON. 471
her, if she did not continue a nobleness and excellency of virtue fit to be owned by persons relating to such ancestors. It is fit for us all to honour the nobleness of a family ; but it is also fit for them that are noble, to despise it, and to esta- blish their honour upon the foundation of doing excellent things, and suffering in good causes, and despising dis- honourable actions, and in communicating good things to others : for this is the rule in nature ; those creatures are most honourable, which have the greatest power and do the greatest good : and accordingly myself have been a witness of it, how this excellent lady would, by an act of humihty and Christian abstraction, strip herself of all that fair appen- dage and exterior honour, which decked her person and her fortune, and desired to be owned by nothing but what was her own, that she might only be esteemed honourable, according to that which is the honour of a Christian, and a wise person.
2. She had a strict and severe education, and it was one of God's graces and favours to her : for being the heiress of a great fortune, and hving amongst the throng of persons, in the sight of vanities and empty temptations, that is, in that part of the kingdom where greatness is too often expressed in great follies and great vices, God had provided a severe and angry education to chastise the forwardnesses of a young spirit and a fair fortune, that she might for ever be so far distant from a vice, that she might only see it and loath it, but never taste of it, so much as to be put to her choice whether she would be virtuous or no. God intending to secure this soul to himself, would not suffer the follies of the world to seize upon her, by way of too near a trial, or busy temptation.
3. She was married young ; and besides her businesses of religion, seemed to be ordained in the Providence of God to bring to this honourable family a part of a fair fortune, and to leave behind her a fairer issue, worth ten thousand times her portion : and as if this had been all the public business of her life, when she had so far served God's ends, God in mercy would also serve her's, and take her to an early blessedness.
4. In passing through which line of Providence, she had the art to secure her eternal interest, by turning her con-
472 A FUNERAL SERMON.
dition into duty, and expressing her duty in the greatest eniinency of a virtuous, prudent, and rare affection, that hath been known in any example. I will not give her so low a testimony, as to say only that slie was chaste ; she was a person of tliat severity, modesty, and close religion as to that particular, that she was not capable of uncivil temptation ; and you might as well have suspected the sun to smell of the poppy that he looks on, as that she could have been a person apt to be sullied by the breath of a foul question.
5. But that which I shall note in her, is that which I would have exemplar to all ladies, and to all women : she had a love so great for her^Lord, so entirely given up to a dear affection, that she thought the same things, and loved the same loves, and hated according to the same enmities, and breathed in his soul, and lived in his presence, and languished in his absence ; and all that she was or did, was only for, and to, her dearest Lord :
Si gaudet, si flet, si tacet, linnc loquitur ; \v
Coeuat, propinat, poscit, negat, innuit, unus V
Naevius est : ' '
And although this was a great enamel to the beauty of her soul, yet it might in some degrees be also a reward to the virtue of her Lord : for she w^ould often discourse it to them that conversed with her, that he would improve that interest which he had in her affection, to the advantages of God and of rehgion; and she would delight to say, that he called her to her devotions, he encouraged her good inclinations, he directed her piety, he invited her with good books ; and then she loved religion, which she saw was not only pleasing to God, and an act or state of duty, but pleasing to her Lord, and an act also of affection and conjugal obedience ; and what at first she loved the more forwardly for his sake, in the using of religion, left such 'relishes upon her spirit, that she found in it amability enough to make her love it for its own. So God usually brings us to him by instruments of nature and affections, and then incorporates us into his inheritance by the more immediate relishes of heaven, and the secret things of the Spirit. He only was (under God) t;he light of her eyes, and the cordial of her spirits, and
' Mai Ijal, i. fitf. V
A FUNERAL SERMON. 473
the guide of her actions, and the measure of her affections, till her affections swelled up into a religion, and then it could go no higher, but was confederate with those other duties which made her dear to God : which rare combination of duty and religion, I choose to express in the words of Solomon ; " She forsook not the guide of her youth, nor brake the covenant of her God'."
6. As she was a rare wife, so she was an excellent mother : for in so tender a constitution of spirit as hers was, and in so great a kindness towards her children, there hath seldom been seen a stricter and more curious care of their persons, their deportment, their nature, their disposition, their learning, and their customs : and if ever kindness and care did contest, and make parties in her, yet her care and her severity was ever victorious ; and she knew not how to do an ill turn to their severer part, by her more tender and forward kindness. And as her custom was, she turned this also into love to her Lord : for she was not only diligent to have them bred nobly and religiously, but also was careful and solicitous, that they should be taught to observe all the circumstances and inclinations, the desires and wishes of their Father ; as thinking that virtue to have no good cir- cumstances, which was not dressed by his copy, and ruled by his lines, and his affections: and her prudence, in the managing her children, was so singular and rare, that when ever you mean to bless this family, and pray a hearty and a profitable prayer for it, beg of God, that the children may have those excellent things which she designed to them, and provided for them in her heart and wishes ; that they may live by her purposes, and may grow thither, whither she would fain have brought them. All these were great parts of an excellent religion, as they concerned her greatest tem^ poral relations.
7. But if we examine how she demeaned herself towards God, there also you will find her not of a common, but of an exemplar piety : she was a great reader of Scripture, con- fining herself to great portions every day ; which she read, not to the purposes of vanity, and impertinent curiosities, not to seem knowing, or to become talking, not to expound and
w Prov. ii. 17.
474 A FUNERAL SERMON.
rule ; but to teach her all her duty, to instruct her in the knowledge and love of God and of her neighbours ; to make lier more humble, and to teach her to despise the world and all its gilded vanities ; and that she might entertain passions wholly in design and order to heaven. I have seen a female religion that wholly dwelt upon the face and tongue ; that like a wanton and an undressed tree, spends all its juice in suckers and irregular branches, in leaves and gum, and after all such goodly outsides, you should never eat an apple, or be delighted with the beauties, or the perfumes of a hopeful blossom. But the religion of this excellent lady was of another constitution ; it took root downward in humility, and brought forth fruit upward in the substantial graces of a Christian, in charity and justice, in chastity and modesty, in fair friendships and sweetness of society: she had not very much of the forms and outsides of godhness, but she was hugely careful for the power of it, for the moral, essen- tial, and useful parts ; such which would make her be, not seem to be, religious.
8. She was a very constant person at her prayers, and spent all her time, which nature did permit to her choice, in her devotions, and reading, and meditating, and the necessary offices of household government ; every one of which is an action of religion, some by nature, some by adoption. To these also, God gave her a very great love to hear the word of God preached ; in which, because I had sometimes the honour to minister to her, I can give this certain testimony, that she was a diligent, watchful, and attentive hearer: and to this, had so excellent a judgment, that if ever I saw a woman whose judgment was to be revered, it was her's alone : and I have sometimes thought that the eminency of her discerning faculties did reward a pious discourse, and placed it in the regions of honour and usefulness, and gathered it up from the ground, where commonly such homilies are spilt, or scattered in neglect and inconsideration. But her appetite was not soon satisfied with what was useful to her soul : she was also a constant reader of sermons, and seldom missed to read one every day ; and that she might be full of instruction and holy principles, she had lately designed to have a large book, in which she purposed to have a stock of rehuion transcribed in such assistances as
A FUNERAL SERMON. 475
she would choose, that she might be " readily furnished and instructed to every good work." But God prevented that, and hath filled her desires, not out of cisterns and little aqueducts, but hath carried her to the fountain, where " she drinks of the pleasures of the river," and is full of God.
9. She always lived a life of much innocence, free from the violences of great sins ; her person, her breeding, her modesty, her honour, her religion, her early marriage, the guide of her soul, and the guide of her youth, were as so many fountains of restraining grace to her, to keep her from the dishonours of a crime. *' Bonum est portare jugum ab adolescentia :" " It is good to bear the yoke of the Lord from our youth :'' and though she did so, being guarded by a mighty Providence, and a great favour and grace of God, from staining her fair soul with the spots of hell, yet she had strange fears and early cares upon her; but these were not only for herself, but in order to others^ to her nearest rela- tives : for she was so great a lover of this honourable family, of which now she was a mother, that she desired to become a channel of great blessings to it unto future ages, and was extremely jealous lest any thing should be done, or lest any thing had been done, though an age or two since, which should entail a curse upon the innocent posterity ; and, there- fore, (although I do not know that ever she was tempted with an oifer of the crime) yet she did infinitely remove all sacrilege from her thoughts, and delighted to see her estate of a clear and disentangled interest : she would have no mingled rights with it ; she would not receive any thing from the church, but religion and a blessing ; and she never thought a curse and a sin far enough off, but would desire it to be infinitely distant ; and that as to this family God had given much honour, and a wise head to govern it, so he would also for ever give many more blessings : and because she knew the sins of parents descend upon children, she endeavoured, by justice and religion, by charity and honour, to secure that her channel should convey nothing but health, and a fair example, and a blessing.
10. And, though her accounts of God were made up of nothing but small parcels, little passions, and angry words, and trifling discontents, which are the allays of the piety of the most holy persons ; yet she was early at her re}>entance ;
47G A FUNEUAL SERMON.
and toward the latter end of licr days, grew so fast in religion, as if she had had a revelation of her approaching end, and, therefore, that she must go a great way in a little time : her discourses more full of religion, her prayers more frequent, her charity increasing, her forgiveness more forward, her friendsliips more communicative, lier passion more under discipline ; and so she trimmed her lamp, not thinking her night was so near, but that it might hliine also in the day- time, in the temple, and before the altar of iucense.
But in this course of hers there were some circumstances, and some appendages of substance, which were highly remarkable.
1, In all her religion, and in all her actions of relation towards God, she had a strange evenness and untroubled passage, sliding toward her ocean of God and of infinity, with a certain and silent motion. So have I seen a river, deep and smooth, passing with a still foot and a sober face, and paying to the ' fiscus,' the great * exchequer' of the sea, the prince of all the watery bodies, a tribute large and full ; and hard by it, a little brook skipping and making a noise upon its unequal and neighbour bottom ; and after all its talking and bragged motion, it paid to its common audit no more than the revenues of a little cloud, or a contemptible vessel : so have I sometimes compared the issues of her reliiiion to the solemnities and famed outsides of another's piety. It dwelt upon her spirit, and was incorporated with the periodical work of every day : she did not believe that religion was intended to minister to fame and reputation, but to pardon of sins, to the pleasure of God, and the salvation of souls. For religion is like the breath of heaven ; if it goes abroad into the open air, it scatters and dissolves like caraphire ; but if it enters into a secret hollowness, into a close conveyance, it is strong and mighty, and comes forth with vigour and great effect at the other end, at the other side of this life, in the days of death and judgment.
2. The other appendage of her religion, which also was a great ornament to all the parts of her life, was a rare modesty and humility of spirit, a confident despising and undervaluing of herself. For though she had the greatest judgment, and the greatest experience of things and persons, that I ever yet knew in a person of her youth, and sex, and circumstances ;
A FUXERAL SERMON".
477
yet, as if she knew nothing of it, she had the meanest opinion of herself ; and hke a fair taper, when she shined to all the room, yet round about her own station, she had cast a shadow and a cloud, and she shined to every body but her- self. But the perfectness of her prudence and excellent parts could not be hid ; and all her humility, and arts of concealment, made the virtues more amiable and illustrious. For as pride sullies the beauty of the fairest virtues, and makes our understanding but like the craft and learning of a devil : so humility is the greatest eminency, and art of pub- lication in the whole world ; and she, in all her arts of secrecy and hiding her worthy things, was but " like one that hideth the wind, and covers the ointment of her right hand."
I know not by what instrument it happened ; but when death drew near, before it made any show upon her body, or revealed itself by a natural signification, it was conveyed to her spirit : she had a strange secret persuasion that the brino-inp; this child should be her last scene of life : and we have known, that the soul, when she is about to disrobe her- self of her upper garment, sometimes speaks rarely ; " Mag- nifica verba mors prope adaiota excutit";" sometimes it is prophetical ; sometimes God, by a superinduced persuasion wrought by instruments, or accidents of his own, serves the ends of his own Providence, and the salvation of the soul : but so it was, that the thought of death dwelt long with her, and grew from the first steps of fancy and fear, to a consent, — from thence to a strange credulity, and expectation of it ; and without the violence of sickness she died, as if she had done it voluntarily, and by design, and for fear her expectation should have been deceived; or that she should seem to have had an unreasonable fear or apprehension ; or rather, as one said of Cato, " Sic abiit e vita, ut causam moriendi nactam se esse gauderet;" * she died as if she had been glad of the opportunity.'
And in this I cannot but adore the Providence and admire the wisdom and infinite mercies of God : for having a tender and soft, a delicate and fine constitution and breedino- she was tender to pain, and apprehensive of it as a child's shoulder is of a load and burden : " Grave est teneras cervici
" Sen. Tioad. 575. Sclirod. p. 4'i9.
478 A FL'XEUAL SERMOX.
jugum :" and iu her often discourses of death, which she would renew wilhngly and frequently, she would tell, that " she feared not death, but she feared the sharp pains of death :" " Eniori nolo, me esse mortuani non euro." The being dead, and being freed from the troubles and dangers of this world, she lioped would be for her advantage, and therefore, that was no part of her fear ; but she believing the pangs of death were great, and the use and aids of reason little, had reason to fear lest they should do violence to her spirit, and the decency of her resolution. But God, that knew her fears and her jealousy concerning herself, fitted her with a death so easy, so harmless, so painless, that it did not put her pa- tience to a severe trial. It was not in all appearance of so much trouble as two fits of a common ague, so careful was God to demonstrate to all that stood in that sad attendance, that this soul was dear to him, — and that since she had done so much of her duty towards it, he that began would also finish her redemption by an act of a rare Providence and a singular mercy. Blessed be that goodness of God, who does so careful actions of mercy for the ease and security of his servants ! But this one instance was a great demonstration, that the apprehension of death is worse than the pains of death ; and that God loves to reprove the unreasonableness of our fears, by the mightiness and by the arts of his mercy.
She had in her sickness, if I may so call it, — or rather in the solemnities and graver preparations towards death, — some curious and well-becomino; fears concernino- the final state of her soul ; but from thence she passed into a " deliquium," or * a kind of trance ;' and as soon as she came forth of it, as if it had been a vision, or that she had conversed with an angel, and from his hand had received a label or scroll of the book of life, and there seen her name enrolled, she cried out aloud, " Glory be to God on high ! now I am sure I shall be saved." Concerning which manner of discoursing we are wholly igno- rant what judgment can be made ; but, certainly, there are strange thing-s in the other world, and so there are in all the immediate preparations to it ; and a little glimpse of heaven, a minute's conversing with an angel, any ray of God, any communication extraordinary from the spirit of comfort, which God gives to his servants in strange and unknown manners, are infinitely far from illusions, and they shall then
A FUNERAL SERMON. 479
be understood by us when we feel them, and when our new and strange needs shall be refreshed by such unusual visi- tations.
But I must be forced to use summaries and arts of abbre- viature in the enumeratino- those thino;s, in which this rare personage was dear to God and to all her relatives.
If we consider her person, she was in the flower of her age, " jucundum cum setas florida ver ageret";" of a tempe- rate, plain, and natural diet, without curiosity or an intem- perate palate ; she spent less time in dressing than many servants ; her recreations were little and seldom, her prayers often, her reading much : she was of a most noble and cha- ritable soul, a great lover of honourable actions, and as great a despiser of base things : hugely loving to oblige others, and very unwilling to be in arrear to any upon the stock of courtesies and liberality : so free in all acts of favour, that she would not stay to hear herself thanked, as being unwil- ling that what good went from her to a needful or an obliged person, should ever return to her again. She was an excel- lent friend, and hugely dear to very many, especially to the best and most discerning persons ; to all that conversed with her, and could understand her great worth and sweetness. She was of an honourable, a nice and tender reputation ; and of the pleasures of this world, which were laid before her in heaps, she took a very small and inconsiderable share, as not loving to glut herself with vanity, or take her portion of good things here below.
If we look on her as a wife, .she was chaste and loving, fruitful and discreet, humble and pleasant, witty and com- pliant, rich and fair : and wanted nothing to the making her a principal and precedent to the best wives of the world, but a long life and a full age.
If we remernber lier as a rnother, she was kind and severe, careful and prudent, very tender, and not at all fond ; a greater lover of her children's souls than of their bodies, and one that would value them more by the strict rules of honour and proper worth, than by their relation to herself.
Her servants found her prudent and fit to govern, and yet open-handed and apt to reward ; a just exactor of their duty, and a great rewarder of their dihgence.
• Catul. Ixviii. 16.
480 A FUNERAL SERMON.
She was in her house a comfort to her dearest Lord, a guide to her children, a rule to her servants, an example to all.
But as she related to God in the offices of religion, she Was even and constant, silent and devout, prudent and mate- rial ; she loved what she now enjoys, and she feared what she never felt, and God did for her what she never did ex- pect : her fears went beyond all her evil ; and yet the good which she hath received, was, and is, and ever shall be, be- yond all her hopes.
She lived as we all should live, and she died as I fain would die :
Ctim milii snprcmos Lacliesis perneverit annos. Noil aliter cineres mando jaceie nicos p.
I pray God I may feel those mercies on rny death-bed that she felt, and that I may feel the same effect of my repentance, which she feels of the many degrees of her innocence. Such was her death, that she did not die too soon ; and her life was so useful and excellent, that she could not have lived too long : " Nemo parum diu vixit, qui virtutis perfectse per- fecto functus est munere." And as now in the grave it shall not be inquired concerning her, how long she lived, but how well ; so to us who live after her, to suffer a longer calamity, — it may be some ease to our sorrows, and souie guide to our lives, and some security to our conditions, to consider that God hath brought the piety of a young lady to the early rewards of a never-ceasing and never-dying eternity of glory. And we also, if we live as siie did, shall partake of the same glories ; not only having the honour of a good name and a dear and honoured memory, but the glories of these glories, the end of all excellent labours, and all prudent counsels, and all holy religion, even the salvation of our souls, in that day when all the saints, and among them this excellent woman, shall be shewn to all the world to have done more, and more excellent things than we know of, or can describe. '* Mors illos consecrat, quorum exitum, et qui timent, laudant :" * death consecrates and makes sacred that person, whose excellency was such, that they that are not displeased at the death, can- not dispraise the life ; but they that mourn sadly, think they can never commend sufficiently.' .'
P Mart. i. 89, 9.
THE WHOLE
DUTY OF THE CLERGY
IN
LIFE, BELIEF, AND DOCTRINE,
DESCRIBED,
AND TRESSED EFFECTUALLY UPON THEIU CONSCIENCES,
IN
TWO SERMONS ON TIT. II. 7, 8.
PREACHED
AT SO MANY SEVERAL VISITATIONS.
VOL. VI. II
THE
MINISTER S DUTY
IN
LIFE AND DOCTRINE
IN
TWO SERMONS.
SERMON IX.
Tn all things shorting thyself a pattern of good ivorTis: in doc^ trine shozcing uncorraptness, gravity, sincerity ;
Sound speech that cannot he condemned ; that he that is of the confran/ part, may he ashamed, hating no evil thing to say of you. Tit. ii. 7, 8.
As God, in the creation of the world, first produced amass of matter, having nothing in it but an obediential capacity and passivity; which God separating into classes of division, gave to every part a congruity to their respective forms, which, in their distinct orbs and stations, they did receive in order, and then were made beauteous by separations and a new economy ; and out of these he appointed some for ser- vants, and some for government ; and some to eat, and some to be eaten ; some above, and some below ; some to be useful to all the rest, and all to minister to the good of man, whom he made the prince of the creation, and a minister of the Divine glory. — So God hath also done, in the new creation; all the world was concluded under sin ; it was a corrupt mass ; all mankind ' had corrupted themselves ;' but yet were capable of Divine influences, and of a nobler form, producible in the new birth : here then God's Spirit moves upon the waters of a Divine birth, and makes a separation of part from part, of corruption from corruption ; and first chose some families to
484 THE minister's duty
whom he communicated the Divine influences and the breath of a nobler life; Seth and Enoch, Noah and Abraham, Job and Bildad, and these were the special repositories of the Divine grace, and prophets of righteousness to glorify God in themselves, and in their sermons unto others. But this was like enclosing of the sun ; he that shuts him in, shuts him out; and God, who was, and is an infinite goodness, would not be circumscribed, and limited to a narrow circle : goodness is his nature, and infinite is his measure, and commu- nication of that goodness is the motion of that eternal being: God, therefore, breaks forth as out of a cloud, and picks out a whole nation ; the sons of Israel became his family, and that soon swelled into a nation, and that nation multiplied, till it became too big for their country, and by a necessary dis- persion went, and did much good, and gained some servants to God out of other ])arts of mankind. But God was pleased to cast lots once more, and was like the sun already risen upon the earth, who spreads his rays to all the corners of the habitable world, that all that will open their eyes and draw their curtains, may see and rejoice in his light. Here God resolved to call all the world ; he sent into the high ways and hedges, to the corners of the Gentiles, and the highways of the Jews, all might come that would ; for ' the sound of the Gospel went out into all lands :' and God chose all that came, but all would not; and those that did, he ga- thered into a fold, marked them with his own mark, sent his son to be ' the great Shepherd and Bishop of their souls ;' and they became * a peculiar people unto God,' ' a little flock/ * a new election.'
And here is the first separation and singularity of the Gospel ; all that hear the voice of Christ's first call, all that profess themselves his disciples, all that take his signature, they and their children are the church, an 'EKKhriaia, called out from the rest of the world, the ' elect' and the ' chosen of God.'
Now these being thus chosen out, culled and picked from the evil generations of the world, he separates them from others, to gather them to himself; he separates them and sanctifies them to become holy; to come out, not of the com- panies so much, as from the evil manners of the world : God chooses them unto holiness, they are rzrayiMsvQt fjj ^uhv aimiov, ' put in the right order to eternal life.'
IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 485
All Christians are holy unto the Lord, and therefore must not be unholy in their conversation; for nothing that is unholy shall come near to God : that is the first great line of our duty : but God intends it further : all Christians must not be only holy, but eminentlif holy. For ' John indeed bap- tized with water ;' but that is but a dull and inactive element, and moves by no principle, but by being ponderous ; Christ * baptizes with the Holy Ghost and with fire,' and God hates lukevvarmness ; and when he chooses to him a peculiar people, he adds, they must be *' zealous of good works."
But in this affair there are many steps and great degrees of progression. 1. All God's people must be defivered from all sin ; for as Christ came wholly ' to destroy the works of the devil,' so he intends also ' to present his church as a pure virgin unto Christ;' acr7r<^ov, aTr^oa-HOTtov, tl\iKpm, * without scandal, without hypocrisy,' " Vv'ithout spot or wrinkle, or any such thing :" for to be quit from sin, that is, from all affection to it, is supposed in the Christian's life : 'denying ungodliness and worldly lusts,' and ' being cleansed from all filthiness of flesh and spirit,' and ' having escaped from all corruption that is in the world through lust ;' this is not so much commande J as supposed : without this, nothing can be done, nothing can be hoped : this is but the foundation of the Christian, who is intended to be ' a habitation of God,' ' a member of Christ,' ' a temple of the holy Spirit of God :' the building follows.
2. All Christians must acquire all the graces of the holy Spirit of God ; St. Peter gives the catalogue ; " faith, and virtue, and knowledge, and temperance, and patience, and godliness, and brotherly kindness, and charity^:" and that you may see what is the spirit of a Christian, what an activity and brisk principle is required to the acquisition of these things ; the apostle gives this precept, that for the acquiring these things, * we should give,' Ttaa-av crTrou^riv, ' all dihgence ;' no lazy worker is a good Christian, he must be diligent ; and not every diligence, nor every degree of good diligence ; but it must be all, ' omnem omnino diligentiam,' * give all dihgence.'
3. There is yet another degree to be added hereto : it is not enough for a Christian to be free from corruption, and to have these graces ; and therefore to be diligent, very diligent to obtain them ; but ' they must be in us, and abound ^'
* 2 Pet. i. 5. I" 2 Pet. i. 8.
48G THE minister's duty
N. B. they must be in vs ; these graces and this righteous- ness must be inlierent ; it is not enough for us that Christ had tliem for us ; for it is true, if he had not had them, we sliould never have received those, or any thing else that is good : but he had them, that we might have them, and follow his steps who knew no sin, and fulfdled all righteousness. They " must be in us," saith St. Peter ; and not only so, they must also abound in us; that is the end of Christ's death ; that is the fruit of his Spirit : they must be plentiful, like a full vintage, or like Euphrates in the time of ripe fruits ; they must swell over the banks : for when they are but ' in gradu virtutis,' * in the lowest step of sincerity,' they may fall from the tree like unripe fruit, and be fit for nothing but for pro- digals and swine ; they must be in their season and period, great and excellent, and eminent ; they must take up all our faculties, fill up all our time, spend all our powers, satisfy the will, and be adequate to all the powers of our choice ; that is, as St. Peter adds, they must be so, that we " make our callmg and election sure;" so as that we shall never any more depart from God : well, thus far, you see how severe and sacred a thing it is to be a Christian.
4. But there are yet three steps more beyond this : God requires of us perseverance ; a thrusting all this forward, even unto the end : ' without peace and holiness no man shall see God%' saith the author to the Hebrews; but that is not all ; ^lUKETe bI^yivyiv km ay^aaixov, " follow after peace and holiness W' ith all men," aviv ol, " without which ;" it is not avsu hg sl^wn?, " without which peace," hut avsu ol ^lixuv, " without -which fol- lowing of peace and holiness ;" that is, unless we endure all contradiction of sinners and objections; without following it close and home to the utmost issue, to the end of all right- eousness, tending even to comprehension, to consummation, and perfection, no man shall see God ; ^iodieTv h ayiaa-/j.u, is good and great, " to dwell in holiness ;" but that is not enough, it must be ^luntiv too, we must still pursue it, and that unto the end: " for he that endureth unto the end, shall be saved."
6. And what more? yes, there is something yet : for be- sides this extension of duration, there must be 'intensio graduum :' for'nondum comprehendimus, nondum perfect!
« Heb. xii. 14.
IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 487
sumus ;*' " we have not yet comprehended, we are not yet made perfect ;" but that must be aimed at : * Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect ;' — be ' ye meek as Christ is ;' — ' be ye holy as God is holy ;' — ' pure as your Father in heaven is pure ;' — and who can be so ? no man can be so in degree, but so in kind; every man must desire, and every man must contend to be, and therefore it is possible, else it had never been required.
6. And now after all this, one thing more is to be done : you must be so for yourselves, and you must be so for others : you must be so as to please God, and you must be so to edify your brethren : " Let your light so shine before men, that they may glorify your Father which is in heaven :" let it be so eminent and conspicuous, that all that see your conversa- tion, and all that come into your congregations, may be con- vinced, and " falling down and worshipping, may say, of a truth, the Spirit of the Lord is in you." And therefore our blessed Saviour, in his sermon upon the mount, which is the summary of a Christian's life, — at the end of the eight beati- tudes, tells all his followers and disciples : ' ye are the salt of the world, ye are the hght of the world ;' and therefore " the kingdom of heaven," or the Gospel, is compared " to a woman that hid, in three measures of meal," — the Jews, the Turks, the heathen idolaters, — " her leaven, till all was lea- vened :" our light must be so shining, our conversation so exemplar, as to draw all the world after us ; that they that will not, may be ashamed, and they that will, may be allured by the beauty of the flame. These are the propor- tions and measures of every Christian; for "from the days of John the Baptist, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force ;" that although " John the Baptist was the greatest that ever was born of woman," yet he that " is least in the kingdom of heaven," the meanest of the laity, may be " greater than he." This is a great height: _ and these things I have premised, not only to describe the duty of all that are here present, even of all Christians whatsoever, that you may not depart without your portion of a blessing ; but also as a foundation of the ensuing periods, which I shall address to you, my brethren of the clergy, the fathers of the people ; for I speak in a school of the prophets, prophets and prophets' sons ; to you who are, or intend to be so.
488 THE minister's duty
For God hath made a separation of you even beyond this separation : he hath separated you yet again ; he hath put you anew into the crucible; he hath made you to pass through the fire seven times more. For it is true, that the whole community of the people is the church ; " Ecclesia sancta est communio sanctorum," '* the holy catholic church is the communion of saints ;" but yet, by the voice and consent of all Christendom, you are the church, by way of propriety, and eminency, and singularity; "churchmen," — that is your ap- pellative : all are av^fs^ •n-v£Ufji,aTiKo), " spiritual men ;" all have received the Spirit, and all walk in the Spirit, and ye are all " sealed by the Spirit unto the day of redemption ;" and yet there is a spirituality peculiar to the clergy : " If any man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness '^ :" you who are spiritual by office and designation, of a spiritual calling, and spiritual em- ployment ; you who have the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, and minister the Spirit of God, you are more eminently spiritual ; you have the Spirit in graces and in powers, in sanctification and abilities, in office and in person ; the unction from above hath descended upon your heads and upon your hearts ; you are jcar k^oxhv ' by way of eminency' and prelation, ' spiritual men.' All ' the people of God were holy ;' Korah and his company were in the right so far ; but yet Moses and Aaron were more holy, and stood nearer to God. All the people are prophets : it is now more than Moses' wish, for the Spirit of Christ hath made them so : " If any man prayeth or pro- phesieth with his head covered ;" or " if any v/oman prophe- sieth with her head uncovered," the}'^ are dishonoured : but either man or woman may do that work in time and place; for " in the latter days I will pour out of my Spirit, and your daughters shall prophesy :" and yet, God hath appointed in his church prophets above these, to whose Spirit all the other prophets are subject ; and as God said to Aaron and Miriam concerning Moses, "to you I am known in a dream or a vision, but to Moses I speak face to face ;" so it is in the church ; God gives of his Spirit to all men, but you he hath made the ministers of his Spirit: nay, the people have their portion of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, so said St. Paul; "To
«» Gal. vi. 1. .
IN LIFE AND DO*CTRINE. 489
whom ye forgive any thing, to him I forgive also ;" and to the whole church of Corinth he gave a commission, "in the name of Christ, and by his Spirit, to deliver the incestuous person unto Satan ;" and when the primitive penitents stood in their penitential stations, they did "CarisDei adgeniculari, et toti populo legationem orationis suae commendare ;" and yet the keys were not only promised, but given to the apostles to be used then, and transmitted to all prenerations of the church ; and we are " ministers of Christ, and stewards of the manifold mysteries of God ; and to us is conuiiitted the word of reconciliation." And thus, in the consecration of the mysterious sacrament, the people have their portion ; for the bishop or the priest blesses, and the people, by saying ' Amen' to the mystic prayer, is partaker of the power, and the whole church hath a share in the power of spiritual sacrifice ; " Ye are a royal priesthood, kings and priests unto God ;" that is, so ye are priests as ye are kings ; but yet kings and priests have a glory conveyed to them, of which the people partake but in minority, and allegory, and improper communication t but you are, and are to be respectively that considerable part of mankind, by whom God intends to plant holiness in the world ; by you God means to reign in the hearts of men ; and therefore you are to be first in this kind, and consequently the measure of all the rest: to you, therefore, I intend this, and some following discourses, in order to this purpose : I shall but now lay the first stone, but it is the conier-stone in this foundation.
But to you, I say, of the clergy, these things are spoken properly ; to you these powers are conveyed really ; upon you God hath poured his Spirit plentifully ; you are the choicest of his choice, the elect of his election, a church picked out of the church, vessels of honour for your Master's use, appointed to teach others, authorized to bless in his name; you are the ministers of Christ's priesthood, under- labourers in the great work of mediation and intercession, " Medii inter Deum et populum ;" you are for the people towards God, and convey answers and messages from God to the people : these things I speak, not only to magnify your office, but to enforce and heighten your duty ; you are holy by office and designation ; for your very appointment is
400 THE MINISTiLu's I>U'J'V
a sanctificatiou and a consecration ; and therefore whatever hohness God requires of the people, who liave some little portions in the priesthood evangelical, he expects it of you, and much greater, to \\honi he hath conveyed so great ho- nours, and admitted so near unto himself, and hath made to be the great ministers of his kingdom and his Spirit: and now, as Moses said to the Levitical schismatics, Korah and his company, so I may say to you ; " Seemeth it but a small thing unto you, that the God of Israel hath separated you from the congregation of Israel to bring you to himself, to do the service of the tabernacle of the Lord, and to stand before the cono-regation to minister to them ? And he hath brought thee near to him*^." Certainly, if of every one of the Christian congregation God expects a holiness that mingles with no unclean thing; if God will not suffer of them a lukewarm and an indifferent service, but requires zeal of his glory, and that which St. Paul calls the Trovog rUg ayaTrng, " the labour of love ;" if he will have them to be * without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing ;' if he will not endure any pollution in their flesh or spirit; if he requires that their bodies, and souls, and spirits be kept blameless unto the coming of the Lord Jesus; if he accepts of none of the people, unless they have within them the conjugation of all Christian graces ; if he calls on them to abound in every grace, and that in all the periods of their progression, unto the ends of their lives, and to the consummation and perfection of grace; if he hath made them lights in the world, and the salt of the earth, to enlighten others by their good example, and to teach them, and invite them by holy discourses, and wise counsels, and speech seasoned with salt ; what is it, think ye, or with what w^ords is it possible to express what God requires of you? They are to be examples of good life to one another ; but you are to be examples even of the exam])les themselves; that is your duty, that is the purpose of God, and that is the design of my text, " That in all things ye show yourselves a pattern of good works ; in doctrine showing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity, sound speech, that cannot be condemned ; that he, that is of the contrary part, may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you."
^ Xiinib. xvi. 'J.
IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 491
Here then is, 1. Your duty. 2. The degrees and excel- lency of your duty.
The duty is double: 1. Holiness of life. 2. Integrity of doctrine. Both these have their heightenings, in several^ degrees.
1. For your life and conversation, it ought not only to be good, not only to be holy, but to be so up to the degrees of an excellent example ; " Ye must be a pattern."
2. Ye must be patterns, not only of knowledge and wis- dom, not of contemplation and skill in mysteries, not of un- profitable notions, and ineffective wit and eloquence ; but of something that is more profitable, of something that may do good, something by which mankind shall be better; of some- thing that shall contribute to the felicity and comfort of the world ; " a pattern of good works."
3. It must not be a ti/ttoj, ' a type' or pattern to be hidden or laid in tabernacles, like those images of Moloch and Remphan, which the Spirit of God in the Old Testament calls nun nno ' Succoth Benoth,' little repositories or booths to hide their images and patterns of their gods ; but Tra^i- xo/^^voi ruTTov, ' you must be exhibited' and shown forth, brought forth into action and visibility, and notorious obser- vation.
4. There is also another mystery and duty in this word ; for Moloch and Remphan they were patterns and figures, but they were tuttoi ovj kTroimavro, ' patterns which the people made ;' — but to Titus St. Paul commanded that he himself should be 7ra^sx,oM.£voi tl/ttov, ' he should give a pattern' to the people ; that is, the ministers of Christ must not be framed according to the people's humour, they must not give him rules, nor describe his measures ; but he should be a rule to them ; he is neither to live with them, so as to please their humours, or to preach doctrines " populo ut placerent, quas fecisset fabulas*":" but the people are to require the doctrine at his mouth, and he is to become exemplar to them, according to the pattern seen in the mount, according to the laws of the religion and the example of Christ.
5. It must be sv Tracnv ; he must be a pattern " in all things :" it is not enough that the minister be a loving
f Tciciit. Aiidr. I'lolog. 3.
492 THK MINISTERS DUTY
person, a r;;ood neighbourly man, tiiut he be lios])itablc, that he be not Htigious, that he be harmless, and that he be diligent; but in every grace he must * prieferre facem,' * hold a torch,' and show himself a li<iht in all the commands of God. These are the measures of his holiness, the pattern in his life and conversation.
Secondly; integrity of doctrine. The matter of the doctrine you are to preach, hath in it four qualitications.
1. It must be a^i^npeopog, " incorrupt;" that is, it must be KUT dvaxoyiav 'Kianui, it must be * according to the analogy of faith,' no heretical mixtures, pure truths of God.
2. It must be asfxyog, ' grave,' and clean, and chaste ; that is, aveu (pxua^iag, no vain and empty notions, little contentions, and pitiful disputes; but becoming the wisdom of the guide of souls, and the ministers of Christ.
And 3. It must be uyihi, " sound speech," so we read it ; the word properly signifies ' salutary' and ' wholesome ;' that is, such as is apt for edification, slg ol)ioh/xYiv Tiia-Tsccgxai ayaTung ; " for the building men up in a most holy faith, and a more excellent charity ;" not feeding the people M'itli husks and drufF, with colocynths and gourds, with gay tulips and useless daffodils, but with the bread of life, and medicinal plants, springing from the margin of the fountains of salvation. This is the matter of their doctrine ; and this also hath some heightenings, and excellencies, and extraordinaries : for,
4. It must be afcaTayvcca-rcg, so evidently demonstrated, that * no man shall be able to reprove it;' so certainly holy, that no man shall be willing to condemn it.
And 5. It must be aipda^To;, ' sincere,' not polluted with foul intentions and little devices of secular interests, complying with the lusts of the potent, or the humours of the time ; not biassed by partiality, or bending in the flexures of human policy : it must be so conducted that your very enemies, schismatics and heretics, and all sorts of gainsayers, may see that you intend God's glory, and the good of souls ; and, thereibrc, that as they can say nothing against the doctrine delivered, so neither shall they find fault with him that delivers it : and he that observes all this, will indeed be a pattern both of life and doctrine ; both of good words, and good works.
IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 493
But I shall not be so minute in my discourse, as in the division ; the duties, and the manner or degrees of the duties, I shall handle together, and give you the best measures I can, both for institution of life and excellency of doctrine: — it is required of every one of you, that in all things you show yourselves a pattern of good works.
That is the first thing required in a minister : and this is, \ipon infinite accounts, necessary: 1. In general. 2. In particular. I. In general. The very first words of the whole psalter are an argument of this necessity : "Blessed is tiie man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the chair of the mockers," the seat of the scornful. The doctor's chair or pulpit must have nothing to do with the ' irrisores,' that mock God, and mock the people ; he must neither walk with them, nor stand with them, nor sit with them ; that is, he must " have no fellowship with the unfruitful workers of darkness, but rather reprove them ;" for they that do preach one thing, and do another, area'y^, ' mockers;' they destroy the benefit of the people, and diminish the blessings of God; and " binding burdens on the people's shoulders which they will not touch with the top of their finger," they secretly laugh and mock at the people, as at the asses of Issachar, fit to be cozened into unnecessary burdens. These words are greatly to be regarded : the primitive church would admit no man to the superior orders of the clergy, unless, among other prerequired dispositions, they could say all David's psalter , by heart ; and it was very well, besides many other reasons, that they might in the front read their own duty, so wisely and so mysteriously, by the Spirit of God, made preliminary to the whole office.
To the same pm^pose is that observation of St. Jerome made concerning the vesting of the priests in the Leviticai ministrations ; the priest put on the humeral, beset v/ith precious stones, before he took the xoyiov, or the ' rationale' upon his breast, to signify, that first the priest must be a shining light, i^esplendent with good works, before he fed them with the yccxa xoytnov, ' the rational milk' of the word : concerning which symbolical precept, you may please to read many excellent things to this purpose, in St. Jerome's epistle to Fabiola. It will be more useful for us to consider those
404 Tlir. AIINISTEr's DUTY
Severn words of David ; " But unto the wicked God saitli. what hast thou to do to dechxre my statutes, or that thou sliouldst take my covenant in thy mouth ; seeing thou hatest instruction and castest my wortls behind thee ^T' The words are a sad upbraiding to all ungodly ministers, and they need no commentary; for whatever their office and employment be to teach God's people, yet, unless they regard the com- mandments of God in their heart and practice, themselves, they have nothing to do with the word of God, — they sin in taking the covenant, a testament of God, into their moutK God said to the sinner, rtr'i Raschaah, that is, * to him that had sinned and had not repented of his sins ;' so the Chaldee paraphrase reads it ; " Impio autem, qui non agit pocnitentiam et orat in prttvaricatione, dixit Deus." Indeed, if none could be admitted to this ministry but those who had never sinned, the harvest might be very great, but the labourers would be extremely few, or rather none at all; but, after repentance, they must be admitted, and not before ; " Iniquitas opilabit OS eorum,'' " iniquity shall stop their mouths," saith David''; that ought to silence them indeed : and this was David's care, when he had fallen into the foul crimes of murder and adultery ; he knew himself unfit and unable, though he were a prophet, to teach others the laws of God ; but when he prayed to God to restore him to a free spirit, he adds ; " Then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto thee ' :" till then it was to no purpose for him to preach. " But thou, when thou art converted," said Christ to Peter, " strengthen the brethren." — The primitive church had a degree of severity beyond this ; for they would not admit any man, who had done public penance, to receive holy orders : to which purpose they were excellent words which P. Hormisda spake in his letters to the bishops of Spain, in which he exhorts them to the observation of the ancient canons of the church, telling them that, " They who are promoted to the clergy, ought to be better than others ;" ' nam longa debet vitam suam probatione monstrare, cui gubernacula committuntur ecclesiaj ; non negamus,' etc. we deny not but amongst the laity there are many whose manners are pleasing to God, but the faithful laws of God
s Psai. 1. 16, 17. ■' Psal. cvii. 42. * Psal. li. 13.
IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 495
seek for him soldiers that are approved ; and they ought rather to afford to others, by themselves, an example of a religious life, than require it from them ; ^ ideoque nullus ex pcenitentibus debet ordinari ; quis enim quern paulo ante jacentem viderat, veneretur antistitem?' ' None of the public penitents must be ordained, for who will esteem that priest venerable, whom a little before he saw dishonoured by scandalous and public crimes V But this is to be understood of them only, as the prophet Amos expresses it, *' qui corri- piuntur in porta," '^ who are rebuked in the gate''," condemned by public sentence, and are blotted with the reproaches of the law. But in all cases,
Tiupe est doctoii, cum culpa ledarguit ipsum.
The guilt of the sin which a man reproves, quite spoils his sermon : " ipsam obmutescere facundiam, si aegra sit con- sclentia," said St. Ambrose ; " a sick conscience spoils the tongue of the eloquent, and makes it stammer." For how shall any man preach against sin, or affiight his people from their dangers, if he denies God's justice? and if he thinks God is just, why is not he confounded, that, with his own mouth, pronounces damnation against himself? Nothing con- founds a man so much, as to be judged out of his own mouth: " Esse munda studeat manus, quae diluere sordes curat," said St. Gregory, " the hand that means to make another clean, should not itself be dirty." But all this is but in general ; there are yet considerations more particular and material.
1. A minister of an evil life cannot do so much good to his charges; he cannot profit them, he is not useful slg oUo- ^ofiYiv, he pulls down as fast, or faster, than he builds up, " Talmud absque opere non est magnum Talmud," said the Jews' proverb : ' a good sermon without a good example is no very good sermon.' For, besides that such a man is con- temptible to his people, contemptible, not only naturally, but by Divine judgment, (according to that of the prophet, *' Propter quod dedi vos contemptibiles omni populo," * for this very reason I have made you to be scorned in the eyes of all the people ') :' but besides this, it is very considerable
^ Amos, V. 10. ' MaL ii.
49G THE minister's duty
what St. Chrysostom says: " Si prcr-dicas ct non facis, ojjus l)roi)onis tanqiiam iiupossibile :" * he t)iat preaches inortifi- calion and lives voUiptuousIy, propounds the duty as if it were impossible :' for certainly if it be good, and if it be pos- sible, a man will ask, why is it not done ? It is easy for him that is well to give a sick man counsel : " Verum tu si hie esses, certti aliter sen tires ;" when it comes to be his own case, when the sickness pinches, and when the belly calls for meat, where 's the fine oration tlien? " Omnia qure vindi- caris in alteo, tibi ipsi vehementer fugienda sunt : etenim non modo accusator, sed ne objurgator ferendus est is, qui, quod in alteo vitiumreprehendit, in eo ipse deprehenditur :" ' whatso- ever you reprove in others, must be infinitely avoided by yourself; for no man will endure an accuser, no nor so much as a man to chide, for that fault in which himself w'as taken*".' But if your charges see you bear your sickness patiently, and your cross nobly, and des])ise money generously, and forgive your enemy bravely, and relieve the poor charitably, then he sees your doctrine is tangible and material ; it is more than words, and he loves you, and considers what you say. In the East the shepherds used to go before their sheep, to which our blessed Saviour alludes, " My sheep hear my voice and follow me :" but our shepherds are forced to drive them, and affright them with dogs and noises : it were better if them- selves did" go before. 3. A minister of an evil life cannot preach with that fervour and efficacy, with that hfe and spirit, as a good man does ; for besides that he does not himself understand the secrets of religion, and the private inducements of the Spirit, and the sweetness of internal joy, and the inexpressible advantages of a holy peace ; besides this, he cannot heartily speak all that he knows ; he hath a clog at his foot, and a gag in his teeth ; there is a fear, and there is a shame, and there is a guilt, and a secret wilhng- ness that the thing were not true ; and some little private arts to lessen his own consent, and to take off" the asperities and consequent troubles of a clear conviction. To which if we add, that there is a secret envy in all wicked men against the prosperities of goodness ; and if I should say no more, this alone were enough to silence a Boanerges, and to make his
"• Cic. in Veir. Act. ii. lib. 3. Beck. T. i. p. 337.
IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 497
thunder still and easy as an oaten pipe : " Nonne id flagitium est, te aliis consilium dare, foris sapere, tibi non posse auxi- liari ?" ' That's a burnino- shame and an intolerable wicked- ness, that a minister shall be like Marcotis, or the statue of Mercury, show the way to others, and himself stand still like a painted block ; to be wise abroad, and a very fool in his own concerns, and unable to do himself good,' — " Dicit Res- lakis, ' orna teipsum, postea ornate ahos :'" ' first trim thyself, and then adorn thy brother,' said the rabbins : but certain it is, he that cannot love to see others better than himself, it cannot be that he should heartily endeavour it.
Scilicet exspectas, ut tradat mater honestos, Atque alios mores, quam qiios habet ? utile porro Filiolam turpi vetulae prodiicere turpem".
It is not to be expected that a diseased father should beget wholesome children : hke will come from like, whether the principle be good or evil.
But, secondly ; for this is but the af%>j wS^/vajv ; this is but the least evil ; there is yet much worse behind. A wicked minister cannot with success and benefit pray for the people of his charges ; and this is a great matter; for prayer is the key of David, and God values it at so high a rate, that Christ is made the prince of all intercession, and God hath ap- pointed angels to convey to his throne of grace the prayers of the saints ; and he hath made prophets and priests, even the whole clergy, the peculiar ministers of prayer : " Orabit pro eo sacerdos ;" ' the priest shall pray for him,' the priest shall m.ake an atonement for his sin, and it shall be forgiven him". And God's anger is no where more fiercely de- scribed, than when things come to that pass that he will not hear the priest or prophet praying for the people : " Pray not thou for this people, neither lift up prayer nor cry for them, neither make intercession to me ; for behold mine anger and my fury shall be poured out upon this place p." When the prayers of the gracious and acceptable persons, the presidents of prayer, are forbidden, then things are desperate ; it is a greater excommunication ; ' the man sins a sin unto death ; and I say not that thou pray for him, that sins unto death.* This, I say, is the priest's office, and if the people lose the
" Juvenal, vi. 240. Rupert. " Numb. xv. 5. Lev. iv. 33.
P Jer. vii. 16, 20. VOL. VI. K K
498 THE iMlXISTKUS DUTY
benefit of this, they are undone. To bishop Timothy, St. Paul gave it in charge, " That supphcations, and prayers, and intercessions, be made for all men." And St. James advised " the sick to send for the elders of the church," (the bisliops and priests,) " and let them pray over them," and then " their sins shall be forgiven them." But how? that is supposed, the minister prays fervently, and be a righteous man ; for " the eliectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much ;" it is promised on no other terms. " Qualis vir, talis oratio," is an old rule : ' as is the man, such is his prayer.' " The prayer of the wicked is an abo- mination to the Lord," said Solomon ; he cannot prevail for himself, much less for others. I remember that Bias being- once in a storm, and a company of villains in the ship, being affrighted, called upon their gods for help : " Cavete," said he, " ne vos dii interesse sentiaut :" * take heed lest the gods perceive you to be here,' lest we all perish for your sakes. And upon surer grounds it was that David said, " If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear my prayer." And what then do you think will be the event of those assemblies, where he that presents the prayers of all the people, is hate- ful to God ? will God receive the oblation that is presented to him by an impure hand ? The Levitical priests were com- manded to wash before they sacrificed ^ : and every man is commanded to repent before he prays ; " My son, hast thou sinned, do so no more ;" and then, " ask pardon for thy former fault '^." And can we hope that the minister, who, " with wrath and doubting," and covetousness, presents the people's prayers, that ever those intercessions shall pierce the clouds, and ascend to the mercy-seat, and descend with a blessins^ Believe it not: a man that is unoracious in his life, can never be gracious in his office, and acceptable to God. We are abundantly taught this, by those excellent words of God, by the prophet Micah : " The heads of Sion judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money ; yet will they lean upon the Lord, and say, is not the Lord among us ^ ?" As if God had said, nothing is so presumptuous and unreasonable ' as to lean upon God, and think he will be among us, when
1 Exod. XXX. 40. ■■ Eccliis. « Cap. iii. H.
IX LIFE AND DOCTRINE.
499
the priests and the prophets are covetous and wicked. No, he declares it expressly, {v. 7.) " Then shall the seers be ashamed, and the diviners confounded, yea, they shall all cover their lips ; for there is no answer of God." God will not answer ; for sometimes the case is so, that, " though Noah, Daniel, and Job were there," God would not hear ; that is, when the people are incorrigibly wicked, and the decree is irrevocably gone out for judgment. But there are other times, in which the prayers of innocent people, being pre- sented by an ungracious minister and intercessor, are very much hindered in prevailing. In such cases, God is put to extraordinaries ; and Christ and Christ's angels are then the suppletories, and^ at the best, the people's prayers go alone, they want the assistance of the " angel of the church," and they get no help or furtherance from him, and probably very much hinderance : according to that of St. Gregory : " Cum is qui displicet, ad intercedendum mittitur, irati animus ad deteriora provocatur." Alexander hated to see Zercon, and, therefore, if he had interceded for Clytus, it would but have hastened his death : a man's suit thrives the worse for having a hated intercessor. If, therefore, he that robs a church of a patin or a chalice, be a sacrilegious person, what is he that steals from the church of God (so far as lies in him) the fruit of all their holy prayers ; that corrupts the sacrifice, and puts coloquintida into the cups of salvation, and mingles death in the poUage provided for the children and disciples of the prophets ? I can say no more, but to expostulate with them in those upbraiding words of God, in the prophet : " Do they provoke me to anger, saith the Lord ? do they not provoke themselves to the confusion of their own faces'?" " Con- fundentur divini, et operient vultus suos omnes " :" ' all such diviners shall be confounded, and shall cover their faces in the day of sad accounts.' " Divini sunt, non theologi :" ' they are diviners, not divines,' witches rather than prophets ; they are the sons of Bosor, and have no portion in the economy of God, In short, if so much holiness as I formerly described,r be required of him that is appointed to preach to others, to offer spiritual sacrifices for the people, to bless the people, to divert judgments from them, to deprecate the wrath of God,
* Jer. vii. 19. " Mich. iii. 7.
500 THE minister's m TV
to make an atonement for thorn, and to reconcile them to the eternal mercy; — certain it is, that though the sermons ot a wicked minister may do some good, not so much as lliey ought, but some tliey can ; but t1ie prayer of a wicked mi- nister does no good at all ; it provokes God to anger, it is an abomination in his righteous eyes.
Thirdly : The ecclesiastical order is by Christ appointed to minister his holy Spirit to the people; the priests, in baptism, and the holy eucharist, and prayer, and intercession ; the bishop, in all these, and in ordination besides, and in con- firmation, and in solemn blessing : now then consider what will be the event of this without effect : can he minister the Spirit, from whom the Spirit of God is departed? And, therefore, since all wickedness does ' grieve the Spirit of God,' and great wickedness defiles his temples, and destroys them unto the ground, and extinguishes the Spirit that drives iniquity away ; — these persons are no longer spiritual men ; * they are carnal, and sold under sin,' and walk not in the Spirit; they are spiritual just as Simon Magus was a Christian, or as Judas was an apostle ; he had the name of it ; but Avhat says the Scripture? " He fell from it by trans- gression ;" only this, as he that is baptized, has for ever a title to the promises, and a possibility of repentance, and a right to restitution, mitil he renounces all, and never will or can repent ; so there is in all our holy orders an indelible cha- racter, and they can, by a new life, be restored to all their powers ; but, in the mean time, while they abide in sin and carnality, the cloud is over the face of the sun, and the Spirit of God appears not in a fiery tongue, that is, not in material and active demonstrations; and how far he will be ministered by the offices of an unworthy man, we know not ; only by all that is said in Scripture we are made to fear, that things will not be so well with the people, till the minister be better; only this we are sure of, that though one man may be much the worse for another man's sin, yet, without his own fault, no man shall perish ; and God will do his work alone ; and the Spirit of God, though he be ordinarily conveyed by eccle- siastical ministries, yet he also comes irregularly, and in ways of his own, and prevents the external rites, and pre- possesses the hearts of his servants ; and the people also have so much portion in the evangelical ministration, that if
IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 501
they be holy, they shall receive the Holy Ghost in their hearts, and will express him in their lives, and themselves also become kings and priests unto God, while they are zealous of good works. And to this purpose may the pro- verb of the Rabbins be rightly understood, " Major est qui respondit ' amen,' quam qui benedicit;" " He that says ' amen,' is greater than he that blesses or prays;" meaning, if he heartily desires what the other perfunctorily, and with his lips only utters, not praying with his heart, and with the accepta- bihties of a good life, the ' amen' shall be more than all the ' prayer,' and the people shall prevail for themselves, when the priest could not; according to the saying of Midrasich Tehillim, " Quicunque dicit ' amen,' omnibus viribus suis, ei aperiuntur portse paradisi, sicut dictum est, ' et ingredietur gens justa ;'" '' He that says * amen,' with his whole power, to him the gates of Paradise shall be open, according to that which is said, — and the righteous nation shall enter in." And this is excellently discoursed of by St. Austin, " Sacramen- tum gratise dat etiam deus per malos ; ipsam vero gratiam non nisi per seipsum, vel per sanctos suos ;" and, therefore, he gives remission of sins by himself, or by the members of the Dove ; so that good men shall be supplied by God. But as this is an infinite comfort to the people, so it is an in- tolerable shame to all wicked ministers ; the benefit which God intended to minister by them, the people shall have without their help, and whether they will, or no ; but because the people get nothing by their ministration, or but very little, the ministers shall never have their portion, where the good people shall inhabit to eternal ages : and I beseech you to consider what an infinite confusion that will be at the day of judgment, when they, to whom you have preached righte- ousness, shall enter into everlasting glory, and you who have preached it, shall have the curse of Hanameel, and the reward of Balaam, ' The wages of unrighteousness.' But thus it was, when the wise men asked the doctors where Christ should be born, they told them right; but the wise men went to Christ, and found him, and the doctors sat still, and went not.
Fourthly ; Consider, that every sin which is committed by a minister of religion, is more than one, and it is as soon espied too ; for more men look upon the sun in an eclipse.
502 THE minister's dutt
than when he is in his beauty : but every spot, I say, is greater, every mote is a beam ; it is not only made so, but it is so ; it hath not the excuses of the people^ is not pitiable by the measures of tlieir infirmity: and, therefore, 1. It is reckoned in tlie accounts of mahce, never of ignorance : for ignorance itself, in them, is always a double sin ; and, therefore, it is very remarkable, that when God gave command to the Levitical priests to make atonement for the sins of ignorance in the people, there is no mention made of the priests' sin of ignorance ; God supposed no such thing in them, and Moses did not mention it, and there was no provision made in that case, as you may see at large in Levit. iv. and Numb. xv. ^ But 2. Because every priest is a man also, observe how his sin is described, Levit. iv. 3. " If the priest that is anointed, do sin according to the sin of the people ;" that is, if he be so degenerate, and descend from the glory, where God hath placed him, and do sin after the manner of the people, then he is to proceed to remedy ; intimating that it is infinitely besides expectation ; it is a strange thing, it is like a monstrous production; it is unnatural that a priest should sin, according as the people do ; however, if he does, it is not connived at with a sentence gentle, as that finds which is a sin of ignorance, or the sin of the people : no, it is not ; for it is always malice, it is always uncharitableness ; for it brings mischief to their congregations, and contracts their blessings mto little circuits, and turns their bread into a stone, and their wine to vinegar: and then besides this, 3. It is also scandalous, and then it is infinitely against charity ; such ministers make the people of God to sin, and that is against the nature of their office, and design of their persons : God sent them to bring the people from sin, and not to be like so many Jeroboams, the sons of Nebat, to set forward the devil's kingdom, to make the people to transgress the cove- nant of their God : for they who live more by example, than by precept, will more easily follow the works of their minister, than the woi'ds of God ; and few men will aspire to be more righteous than their guide ; they think it well if they be as he is : and hence it is no wonder that we see iniquity so popular. " Oppida tota canem venerantur, nemo Dianam^ ;"
-* Vide Origin. Homil. ii. in Levit. ^ Juv. xv. 8. Kupe*t.
IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 503
every man runs after bis lusts and after his money, because they see too many of the clergy, httle looking after the Avays of godliness. But then consider, let all such persons consider,
5. That the accounts, which an ungodly and an irreligious minister of religion shall make, must needs be intolerable ; when, besides the damnation which shall certainly be inflicted upon them for the sins of their own lives, they shall also reckon for all the dishonours they do to God, and to re- ligion, and for all the sins of the people, which they did not, in all just ways, endeavour to hinder, and all the sias which their flocks have committed by their evil example and undis- ciplined lives.
6. I have but two words more to say in this afl'air: 1. Every minister that hves an evil life, is that person whom out blessed Saviour means under the odious appellative of a * hireling :' for he is not the hireling that receives wages, or that lives of the altar ; " sine farina non est lex," said the doctors of the Jews ; " without bread-corn, no man can preach the law :" and St. Paul, though he spared the Corin- thians, yet he took wages of other churches, of all, but in the regions of Achaia ; and the law of nature, and the law of the Gospel have taken care, that " he that serves at the altar, should hve of the altar ;" and he is no hireling for all that ; but he is a hireling, that does not do his duty ; he that " flies when the wolf comes," says Christ, he that is not present with them in dangers, that helps them not to resist the devil, to master their temptations, to invite them on to piety, to gain souls to Christ ; to him it may be said, as the apostle did of the Gnostics, svjeSekz bctti Tropia-fMg, " Gain to them is godli- ness ;" and theology is but ' artificium venale,' a trade of life, to fill the belly, and keep the body warm. " An cuiquam licere putas, quod cuivis non licet?" " Is any thing lawful for thee, that is not lawful for every man?" and if thou dost not mind, in thy own case, whether it be lawful, or no, then thou dost but sell sermons, and give counsel at a price, and like a fly in the temple, taste of every sacrifice, but do nothing but trouble the religious rites : for certain it is, no man takes on him this office, but he ' either seeks those things which are his own, or those things which are Jesus Christ's ;' and if he does this, ' He is a minister of Jesus
504 THE minister's duty
Christ ;' if he does the otlier, he is * the hirehng/ and intends notliing but his belly, and ' God shall destroy both it and him.'
7, Lastly; These things I have said unto you, that ye sin not ; but this is not the great thing here intended ; you may be innocent, and yet not * zealous of good works ;' but if you be not this, you are not good ministers of Jesus Christ : but, that this is infinitely your duty, and indis- pensably incumbent on you all, besides the express words of my text, and all the precepts of Christ and his apostles, we have the concurrent sense of the whole church, the laws and expectations of all the world, requiring of the clergy a great and an exemplar sanctity : for, therefore it is, that, upon this necessity, is founded the doctrine of all divines in their dis- courses of the states and orders of religion; of which you may largely inform yourselves in Gerson's Treatise ' De perfectione Religionis,' in Aquinas ^, and in all his scholars upon that question; the sum of which is this, that all those institutions of religions, which St. Anselm calls ' factitias religiones,' that is, the schools of discipline in which men, for- saking the world, give themselves up wholly to a pious life, they are indeed very excellent if rightly performed ; they are ' status perfectionis acquirendas,' they are excellent insti- tutions ' for the acquiring perfection;' but the state of the superior clergy is * status perfectionis exercendffi,' they are states which suppose perfection to be already in great mea- sures acquired, and then to be exercised, not only in their own lives, but in the whole economy of their office : and, there- fore, as none are to be chosen but those who have given themselves up to the strictness of a holy life, — so far as can be known ; so none do their duty, so much as tolerably, but those who, by an exemplar sanctity, become patterns to their flocks of all good works. Herod's doves could never have invited so many strangers to their dove-cotes, if they had not been besmeared with opobalsamum : but sav /^upu %f/cr/ij ra; ;r£f Jo-THfaj, koc) s^co^ev aM«f aioua-iv, said Didymus * ; " Make your pigeons smell sweet, and they will allure whole flocks ;" and if your life be excellent, if your virtues be like a precious ointment, you will soon invite your charges to run ' in odorem
=^ 22 q. 184. '■^ Gcopouic. lib. 14.
IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 505
unguentorum/ ' after your precious odours :' but you must be excellent, not ' tanquam unus de populo/ but * tanquam homo Dei ;' you must be a man of God, not after the com- mon manner of men, but ' after God's own heart ;' and men will strive to be like you, if you be like to God : but when you only stand at the door of virtue, for nothing but to keep sin out, you will draw into the folds of Christ none but such as fear drives in. *■ Ad majorem Dei gloriam/ * To do what will most glorify God,' that is the hne you must walk by : for to do no more than all men needs must, is servility, not so much as the affection of sons ; much less can you be fathers to the people, when you go not so far as the sons of God : for a dark lantern, though there be a weak brightness on one side, will scarce enlighten one, much less will it conduct a multitude, or allure many followers, by the brightness of its flame. And indeed, the duty appears in this, that many things are lawful for the people, which are scandalous in the clergy ; you are tied to more abstinences, to more severities, to more renunciations and self-denials, you may not with that free- dom receive secular contentments that others may ; you must spend more time in prayers, your alms must be more bounti- ful, your hands more open, your hearts enlarged ; others must relieve the poor, you must take care of them ; others must show themselves their brethren, but you must be their fathers ; they must pray frequently and fervently, but you must give your ' selves up wholly to the word of God and prayer ;' they must ' watch and pray, that they fall not into temptation,' but you must watch for yourselves, and others too ; the people must mourn when they sin, but you must mourn for your own infirmities, and for the sins of others \ and indeed, if the life of a clergyman does not exceed even the piety of the people, that life is, in some measure, scan- - dalous : and what shame was ever greater than is described in the parable of the traveller going from Jerusalem ta Jericho, when, to the eternal dishonour of the Levite and the priest, it is told that they went aside, and saw him with a wry neck and a bended head, but let him alone, and left him to be cured by the good Samaritan ? The primitive church in her discipline used to thrust their delinquent clergy * in laicam communionem,' even then when their faults were but
50G THE minister's duty
small, and of less reproach than to deserve greater censures; yet they lessened them by thruHting them * into the lay com- munion,' as most fit I'or sucli ministers, who refused to live ttt the height of sacerdotal piety. Remember your dignity, to which Christ hath called you : " Shall such a man as I flee," said the brave Eleazar? shall the stars be darkness, shall the ambassadors of Christ neglect to do their king honour, shall the glory of Christ do dishonourable and inglorious actions ? " Ye are tlie glory of Christ," saith St. Paul ; remember that, ■"-I can say no greater thing; unless possibly this may add some moments for your care and caution, that " potentes potenter cruciabuntur," '* great men shall be greatly tor- mented," if they sin ; and to fall from a great height is an intolerable ruin. Severe were the words of our blessed Saviour, " Ye are the salt of the earth ; if the salt have lost his savour, it is thenceforth good for nothing, neither for land, nor yet for the dunghill :" a greater dishonour could not be expressed ; he that takes such a one up, will shake his fingers. I end this with the saying of St. Austin, " Let your religious prudence think, that, in the world, especially at this time, nothing is more laborious, more difficult, or more dangerous, than the office of a bishop, or a priest, or a deacon : ' Sed apud Deum nihil beatius, si eo modo militetur quo noster imperator jubet ;' * but nothing is more blessed, if we do our duty, according to the commandment of our Lord".'"
I have always discoursed of the integrity of life, and what great necessity there is, and how deep obligations lie upon you, not only to be innocent and void of offence, but also to be holy ; not only pure, but shining ; not only to be blame- less, but to be didactic in your lives ; that as, by your sermons, you preach in season, so, by your lives, you may preach out of season ; that is, at all seasons, and to all men, that they, " seeing your good works, may glorify God" on your behalf, and on their own.
*> Epist. 148.
IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 507
SERMON X.
THE minister's DUTY IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE, SHOWING INCORRUPTNESS, GRAVITY, SINCERITY, &,C.
The second Sermon on Titus ii. 7.
Now by the order of the words, and my own undertakings I am to tell you what are the rules and measures of your doctrine, which you are to teach the people.
1. Be sure that you teach nothing to the people, but what is certainly to be found in Scripture : " Servemus eas mensuras, quas nobis per legislatorem lex spiritualis enun- ciat ;" " The whole spiritual law given us by our law-giver, that must be our measures^;" for, though by persuasion and by faith, by mis-persuasion and by error, by false commentaries and mistaken glosses, every man may become a law unto himself, and unhappily bind upon his conscience burdens which Christ never imposed ; yet you must bind nothing upon your charges, but what God hath bound upon you ; you cannot become a law unto them ; that is the only privilege of the lawgiver, who, because he was an interpreter of the Divine will, might become a law unto us; and because he was faithful in all the house, did tell us all his Father's will; and, therefore, nothing can be God's law to us, but what he hath taught us. But of this I shall need to say no more but the words of Tertullian ; " Nobis nihil licet ex nostro arbitrio indulgere, sed nee eligere aliquid, quod de suo arbitrio aliquis induxerit : apostolos Domini habemus autores, qui nee ipsi quicquam de suo arbitrio quod inducerent elegerunt, sed acceptam a Christo disciplinam tideliter nationibus assig- narunt ^." Whatsoever is not in, and taken from, the Scrip- tures, is from a private spirit, and that is against Scripture certainly ; " for no Scripture is," l^ia; kTn'hmiux;, saith St. Peter ; it is not, it cannot be '' of private interpretation ;" that is, unless it come from the Spirit of God, which is that Spirit, that moved upon the waters of the new creation, as well
» Oiigen. •" Contraliaeres.
508 THE MINISTETl's DUTY
as of the old, and was promised to all, * to you, and to your cliildren, and to as many as the Lord our God shall call,' and is bestowed on all, and is the earnest of all our inheritance, and is ' given to every man to profit withal ;' it cannot prove God to be the author, nor be a light to us to walk by, or to show others the way to heaven.
This rule were alone sufficient to guide us all in the whole economy of our calling, if we were not weak and wilful, ignorant and abused: but the holy Scripture hath suffered so many interpretations, and various sounds and seemings, and we are so prepossessed and predetermined to misconstruction by false apostles without, and prevailing passions within, that, though it be in itself sufficient, yet it is not so for us ; and we may say with the eunuch, " How can I understand, unless some man should guide me?" And, indeed, in St. Paul's epistles, " there are many things hard to be understood ;" and, in many other places, we find that the well is deep ; and unless there be some to help us to draw out the latent senses of it, our souls will not be filled with the waters of salvation. Therefore, that I may do you what assistances I can, and, if I cannot in this small portion of time, instruct you, yet that I may counsel you, and remind you of the best assistances that are to be had ; if I cannot give you rules sufficient to expound all hard places, yet that I may show how you shall sufficiently teach your people, by the rare rules and precepts, recorded in places that are, or may be made, easy, I shall first give you some advices in general, and then descend to more particular rules and measures.
1. Because it is not to be expected, that every minister of the word of God should have all the gifts of the Spirit, and every one to abound in tongues, and in doctrines, and in interpretations ; you may, therefore, make great use of the labours of those worthy persons, whom God hath made to be lights in the several generations of the w^orld, that a hand may help a hand, and a father may teach a brother, and we all be taught of God : for there are many who have, by great skill, and great experience, taught us many good rules for the interpretation of Scripture ; amongst which those that I shall principally recommend to you, are the books of St. Aus- tin, * De utilitate credendi' and his 3 lib. ' De Doctrina
IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 509
Christiana;' the ' Synopsis' of Athanasius; the * Proems' of Isidore ; the ' Prologues' of St. Jerome. I might well add the ' Scholia' of (Ecuraenius ; the ' Catenae' of the Greek fathers, and of later times, the ordinary and interlineary glosses ; the excellent book of Hugo de S. Victore, ' de eruditione didascalica;' * Ars interpretandi Scripturas/ by Sixtus Senensis : Serarius's ' Prolegomena ;' Tena's ' Intro- duction to the Scriptures ;' together with Laurentius e Villa- Vincentio, Andreas Hyperius ' de ratione studii Philosophici/ and the ' Hypotyposes' of Martinus Cantapratensis : Arias Montanus's * Joseph' or ' de Arcano Sermone' is of another nature, and more fit for preachers; and so is Sanctes Pao-uine's ' Isagoge;' but Ambrosius Catharinus's book * duarum clavium ad sacrara scripturam,' is useful to many good purposes : but more particularly, and I think more use- fully, are those seven rules of interpreting Scriptures, written by Tichonius, and first made famous by St. Austin's com- mendation of them, and inserted in torn. v. of the Biblioth. SS. pp. — Sebastian Perez wrote thirty-five rules for the in- terpretation of Scripture: Franciscus Ruiz drew from the ancient fathers two hundred and thirty-four rules : besides those many learned persons who have written vocabularies, tropologies, and expositions of words and phrases ; such as are Flacius Illyricus, Junius, Jerome Lauretus, and many others, not infrequent in all public libraries. But I remember, that he that gives advice to a sick man in Ireland to cure his sickness, must tell him of medicaments that are ' facile para- biha,' ' easy to be had,' and cheap to be bought, or else his counsel will not profit him; and even of these God hath made good provision for us ; for, although many precious things are reserved for them that dig deep, and search wisely, yet there are medicinal plants, and corn and grass, things fit for food and physic, to be had in every field.
And so it is in the interpretation of Scripture ; there are w^ays of doing it well and wisely, without the too laborious methods of weary learning, that even the meanest labourers in God's vineyard may have that which is fit to minister to him that needs. Therefore,
2. In all the interpretations of Scripture, the literal sense is to be presumed and chosen, unless there be evident cause to the contrary. The reasons are plain ; because the literal
510 ' THE minister's DUTY
sense is natural, and it is first, and it is most agreeable to some things, in their whole kind ; not indeed to prophecies, nor to the teachings of the learned, nor those cryptic ways of institution by which the ancients did hide a light, and keep it in a dark lantern from the teraeration of ruder handlings, and popular preachers : but tlie literal sense is agreeable to laws, to the publication of commands, to the revelation of the Divine will, to the concerns of the vulgar, to the founda- tions of faith, and to all the notice of things, in which the idiot is as much concerned as the greatest clerks. From w hich proposition, these three corollaries will properly follow ; 1. That God hath plainly and literally described all his will, both in belief and practice, in which our essential duty, the duty of all men, is concerned. 2. That, in plain expressions,- we are to look for our duty, and not in the more secret places and darker corners of the Scripture, 3. That you may regularly, certainly, and easily do your duty to the people, if you read and literally expound the plain sayings, and easily expressed commandments, and promises, and threat- enings of the Gospel, and the Psalms, and the prophets.
3. But then remember this also ; that not only the gram- matical or prime signification of the word is the litei'al sense ; but whatsoever is the prime intention of the speaker, that is the literal sense ; though the word be to be taken metaphori- cally, or by translation signify more things than one. " The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous j"this is literally true ; and yet it is as true, that God hath no eyes properly ; but by * eyes' are meant, God's ' Providence ;' and though this be not the first literal sense of the word ' eyes,' it is not that which was at first imposed and contingently ; but it is that signification, which was secondarily imposed, and by reason and proportion. Thus, when we say, ' God cares for the righteous,' it will not suppose that God can have any anxiety or afflictive thoughts ; but ' he cares ' does as truly and properly signify provision, as caution; beneficence, as fear; and therefore the literal sense of it is, that ' God provides good things for the righteous.' For in this case the rule of Abulensis is very true ; " Sensus literalis semper est verus,'' "the literal sense is always true;" that is, all that is true, which the Spirit of God intended to signify by the words ; whether he intended the first or second signification ; whether
IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 511
that of voluntary and contingent, or that of analogical and rational institution. " Other sheep have I," said Christ, " which are not of this fold :" that he did not mean this of the ' pecus lanigerum' is notorious; but of the Gentiles to be gathered into the privileges and fold of Israel : for in many- cases, the first literal sense is the hardest, and sometimes im- possible, and sometimes inconvenient : and when it is any of these, although we are not to recede from the literal sense ; yet we are to take the second signification, the tropological or figurative. ''If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out," said Christ: and yet no man digs his eyes out; because the very letter or intention of this command bids us only to throw away that, which if we keep, we cannot avoid sin : for some- times the letter tells the intention, and sometimes the inten- tion declares the letter ; and that is properly the literal sense, which is the first meaning of the command in the whole complexion : and in this, common sense, and a vulgar reason will be a sufficient guide, because there is always some other thing spoken by God, or some principle naturally implanted in us, by which we are secured in the understanding of the Divine command. " He that does not hate father and mother for my sake, is not worthy of me:" the literal sense of ' hating' used in Scripture is not always ' malice,' but sometimes a * less loving ;' and so Christ also hath expounded it : " He that loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me." — But I shall not insist longer on this ; he that understands nothing but his grammar, and hath not conversed with men and books, and can see no farther than his fingers' ends, and makes no use of his reason, but for ever will be a child ; he may be deceived in the literal sense of Scripture ; but then he is not fit to teach others : but he that knows, words signify rhetorically, as well as grammatically, and have various proper significations'^, and wliich of these is the first, is not always of itself easy to be told ; and remembers also that God hath given him reason, and observation, and experience, and con- versation with wise men, and the proportion of things, and the end of the command, and parallel places of Scripture, in other words to the same purpose; — will conclude, that, since in plain, places, all the duty of man is contained, and that the
« Verba non sono sed scnsu sapiunt. — Hilar.
512 THE minister's duty
literal sense is always true, and, unless men be wilful or unfortunate, they may, witii a small proportion of learning, find out the literal sense of an easy moral proposition : — will, I say, conclude, that if we be deceived, the fault is our own ; but the fault is so great, the man so supine, the negli- gence so inexcusable, that the very consideration of human infirmity is not sufficient to excuse such teachers of others, who hallucinate or prevaricate in this. The Anthropomor- phites fell foully in this matter, and supposed God to have a face, and arms, and passions, as we have ; but they prevailed not : and Origen was, in one instance, greatly mistaken, and thinking there was no literal meaning but the prime signifi- cation of the word, understood the word ewov^/^ejv, * to make an eunuch,' to his own prejudice; but that passed not into a doctrine : but the church of Rome hath erred greatly in pertinacious adhering, not to the letter, but to the grammar; nor to that, but in one line or signification of it: and 'Hoc est corpus meum' must signify nothing but grammatically ; and though it be not, by their own confessions, to be under- stood without divers figures, in the whole complexion, yet peevishly and perversely, they will take it by the wrong handle ; and this they have passed into a doctrine, that is against sense and reason, and experience, and Scripture, and tradition, and the common interpretation of things, and public peace and utihty, and every thing by which mankind ought to be governed and determined.
4. I am to add this one thing more : that -we admit in the interpretation of Scripture but one literal sense ; I say, but one prime literal sense ; for the simplicity and purity of the Spirit, and the philanthropy of God will not admit that there should, in one single proposition, be many intricate meanings, or that his sense should not certainly be under- stood, or that the people be abused by equivocal and doubtful senses; this was the way of Jupiter in the sands, and Apollo Pythius, and the devil's oracles: but be it far from the wisdom of the Spirit of God.
5. But then take in this caution to it ; that although there be but one principal literal sense ; yet others that are sub- ordinate, may be intended subordinately ; and others that are true by proportion, or that first intention, may be true for many reasons, and every reason applicable to a special in-
IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 513
stance ; and all these may be intended as they signify, that is, one only by prime design, and the other by collateral consequence. Thus when it is said, "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee ;" the Psalmist means it of the eternal generation of Christ: others seem to apply it to his birth of the blessed virgin Mary ; and St. Paul expounds it of the resurrection of Christ^: This is all true ; and yet but one literal sense primely meant; but by proportion to the first, the others have their place, and are meant by way of similitude. Thus we are the sons of God, by adoption, by creation, by favour, by participation of the Spirit, by the laver of regeneration ; and every man, for one or other of these reasons, can say, " Our Father which art in heaven;" and these are all, parts of the literal sense, not different, but subordinate and by participation : but more than one prime literal sense must not be admitted.
6. Lastly ; Sometimes the literal sense is lost by a plain change of the words ; which when it is discovered, it must be corrected by the fountain ; and till it be, so long as it is pious, and commonly received, it may be used without scruple. In the 41st psalm the Hebrews read, "My soul hath longed after ' the strong, the living God;' ' Deum fortem, vivum :'" In the vulgar Latin, it is ' Deum fontem vivum,' * the living fountain ;' and it was very well, but not the literal sense of God's Spirit : but when they have been so often warned of it, that they were still in love with their own letter, and leave the words of the Spirit, I think was not justifiable at all: and this was observed at last by Sixtus and Clement, and corrected in their editions of the Bible, and then it came right again. The sum is this; he that with this moderation and these measures, construes the plain meaning of the Spirit of God, and expounds the articles of faith, and the precepts of life, according to the intention of God, signified by his own words, in their first or second signification, cannot easily be cozened into any heretical doctrine ; but his doctrine will be a.d'iix<p9opog, the pure word and mind of God.
2. There is another sense or interpretation of Scripture, and that is mystical or spiritual ; which the Jews call u;nio
* Heh. i. VOL. VT. L L
514 Ti[E ministkr's duty
*midrash;' which Elias the Levite calls "omne commenta- riiim, quod non est juxta siniplicem et literalem seiisum ;" " every gloss that is not according to their niyQ * peschat,' to the literal sense ;" and this relates principally to the Old Testament: thus the waters of the deluge did signify the waters of baptism; Sarah and Agar, the law and the Gospel ; the brazen serpent, the passion of Christ; the conjunction of Adam and Eve, the communion of Christ and his church ; and this is called the spiritual sense, St. Paul being our war- rant ; *' Our fathers ate of the same spiritual meat, and drank of that same spiritual rock ;" now that rock was not spiritual, but of solid stone ; but it signified spiritually; for " that rock was Christ." — This sense the doctors divide into tropolo- gical, allegorical, and anagogical, — for method's sake, and either to distinguish the things, or to amuse the persons : for these relate but to the several spiritual things signified by divers places ; as matters of faith, precepts of manners, and celestial joys : you may make more if you please, and yet these are too many to trouble men's heads, and to make theo- logy an art and craft, to no purpose. This spiritual sense is that which the Greeks call 'vnovoiav, or ' the sense that lies under the cover of words :' concerning this I shall give you these short rules, that your doctrine be aoiai^SofOf, pure and without heretical mixtures, and the leaven of false doctrines ; for, above all things, this is to be taken care of.
1. Although every place of Scripture hath a literal sense, either proper or figurative, yet every one hath not a spiritual and mystical interpretation ; and, therefore, Origen was blamed by the ancients for forming all into spirit and mys- tery : one place was reserved to punish that folly. Thus the followers of the family of love, and the quakers, expound all the articles of our faith, all the hopes of a Christian, all the stories of Christ, into such a clancular and retired sense, as if they had no meaning by the letter, but were only an hiero- glyphic or a Pythagorean scheme, and not to be opened but by a private key, which every man pretends to be borrowed from the Spirit of God, though made in the forges here below : to which purposes the epistles of St. Jerome to Avitus, to Pammachius and Oceanus, are worth your read- ing. In this case men do as he said of Origen, " Ingenii sui
IN LIFE AXD DOCTRI?^E. 515
acumina putant esse ecclesise sacramenta :" 'every man be- lieves God meant as he intended, and so he will obtrude his own dreams instead of sacraments.' Therefore,
2. Whoever will draw spiritual senses from any history of the Old or New Testament, must first allow the literal sense, or else he will soon deny an article of necessary belief. A story is never the less true, because it is intended to profit as well as to please ; and the narrative may well establish or insinuate a precept, and instruct with pleasure ; but if, be- cause there is a jewel in the golden cabinet, you will throw away the inclosure, and deny the story that you may look out a mystical sense, we shall leave it arbitrary for any man to believe or disbelieve what story he please; and Eve shall not be made of the rib of Adam, and the garden of Eden shall be no more than the Hesperides, and the story of Jonas a well-dressed fable : and I have seen all the Revelation of St. John turned into a moral commentary, in which every person can signify any proposition, or any virtue, according as his fancy chimes. This is too much, and, therefore, comes not from a good principle.
3. In moral precepts, in rules of polity and economy, there is no other sense to be inquired after but what they bear upon the face ; for he that thinks it necessary to turn them into some further spiritual meaning, supposes that it is a dispa- ragement to the Spirit of God to take care of governments, or that the duties of princes and masters are no great con- cerns, or not operative to eternal felicity, or that God does not provide for temporal advantages; for if these things be worthy concerns, and if God hath taken care of all our good, and if " godliness be profitable to all things, and hath the promise of the life that now is, and that which is to come," there is no necessity to pass on to more abstruse senses, when the literal and proper hath also in it instrumentality enough towards very great spiritual purposes. "■ God takes care " for servants, yea " for oxen " and all the beasts of the field ; and the letter of the command enjoining us to use them with mercy, hath in it an advantage even upon the spirit and whole frame of a man's soul ; and, therefore, let no man tear those Scriptures to other meanings beyond their own intentions and provisions. In these cases a spiritual sense is not to be inquired after.
4. If the letter of the story infers any indecency or con-
51G THE minister's duty
tradiction, then it is necessary that a spiritual or mystical sense be thought of; but never else is it necessary. It may in other cases be useful, when it does advantage to holiness ; and may be safely used, if used modestly; but because this spiritual or mystical interpretation, when it is not necessary, cannot be certainly proved, but relies u])on fancy, or at most some light inducement, no such interpretation can be used as an argument to prove an article of faith, nor relied upon in matters of necessary concern. The " three measures of meal," in the Gospel, are but an ill argument to prove the blessed and eternal Trinity : and it may be, the three angels that came to Abraham, will signify no more than the two that came to Lot, or the single one to Manoah or St. John. This divine mystery relies upon a more sure foundation ; and he makes it unsure, that causes it to lean upon an unexpounded vision, that was sent to other purposes. " Non esse conten- tiosis et infidelibus sensibus ingerendum," said St. Austin of the book of Genesis. Searching for articles of faith in the by-paths and corners of secret places, leads not to faith but to infidelity, and by making the foundations unsure, causes the articles to be questioned.
1 remember that Agricola, in his book '' De Animalibus Subterraneis," tells of a certain kind of spirits that use to con- verse in mines, and trouble the poor labourers : they dig metals, they cleanse, they cast, they melt, they separate, they join the ore ; but when they are gone, the men find just nothing done, not one step of their work set forward. So it is in the books and expositions of many men : they study, they argue, they expound, they confute, they reprove, they open secrets, and make new discoveries ; and when you turn the bottom upwards, up starts nothing ; no man is the wiser, no man is instructed, no truth discovered, no proposition cleared, nothing is altered, but that much labour and much time is lost : and this is manifest in nothing more than in books of controversy, and in mystical expositions of Scrip- ture : "Quaerunt quod nusquam est, inveniunt tamen." Like Isidore, who, in contemplation of a pen, observed, that the nib of it was divided into two, but yet the whole body remained one : " Credo propter mysterium " :" he found a knack in it, and thought it was a mystery. Concerning which I shall
* Isid, Orig. lib. vi. c. 14.
IX LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 517
need to say no more but that they are safe, when they are necessary, and they are useful when they teach better, and they are good when they do good ; but this is so seldom, and so by chance, that oftentimes if a man be taught truth, he is taught it by a lying master; it is like being cured by a good witch, an evil spirit hath an hand in it; and if there be not error and illusion in such interpretations, there is very seldom any certainty.
" What shall I do to my vineyard, said God H" " Aufe- ram sepem ejus:" 'I will take away the hedge:' that is, •' custodiam angelorum," saith the gloss, * the custody of their angel guardians.' And God says, " Manasseh humeros suos comedit^:" ' Manasseh hath devoured his own shoul- ders:' that is, " gubernatores diraovit," say the doctors, ' hath removed his governors,' his princes, and his priests. It is a sad complaint 'tis true, but what it means is the ques- tion. But although these senses are pious, and may be used for illustration and the prettiness of discourse, yet there is no further certainty in them than what the one fancies, and the other is pleased to allow. But if the spiritual sense be proved evident and certain, then it is of the same efficacy as the literal ; for it is according to that letter by which God's Holy Spirit was pleased to signify his meaning, and it mat- ters not how he is pleased to speak, so we understand his meaning. And, in this sense, that is true which is affirmed by St. Gregory : " Allegoriam interdum sedificare fidem :" ' sometimes our faith is built up by the mystical words of the Spirit of God.' But because it seldom happens that they can be proved, therefore you are not to feed your flocks with such herbs whose virtue you know not, of whose wholesome- ness or powers of nourishing you are wholly, or for the most part, ignorant. We have seen and felt the mischief, and sometimes derided the absurdity. " God created the sun and the moon," said Moses ; that is, said the extravagants of pope Boniface VIII., ' the pope and the emperor.' And " Behold here are two swords," said St. Peter : " It is enough," said Christ ; enougli for St. Peter ; and so he got the two swords, the temporal and spiritual, said the gloss
f Isaiali, V. s: Isaiali, ix.
518 THE minister's duty
upon tliat text. Of these tlnnii;s there is no bcoinning and 110 end, no certain principles, and no good conclusion.
These are the two ways of expounding all Scriptures ; these aie as " the two witnesses of God ;" by the first of which he does most commonly, and by the latter of which he does sometimes, declare his meaning ; and in the disco- very of these meanings, the measures which I have now given you are the general land-marks, and are sufficient to guide us from destructive errors. It follows in the next place, that I give you some rules that are more particular, according to my undertaking, that you in your duty, and your charges in the provisions to be made for them, may be more secure.
1. Although you are to teach your people nothing but what is the word of God, yet by this word I understand all that God spake expressly, and all that by certain consequence can be deduced from it. Thus Dionysius Alexandtinus argues, iyvm on ulo^ adi hoyog ou ^evog av Ein rrig oi/crlag roil vrixT^of ' He that in Scripture is called the Son a id the Word of the Father, I conclude he is no stranger to the essence of the Father.' And St. Ambrose derided them that called for ex- press Scripture for o/jLoouaiog, since the prophets and the gos- pels acknowledge the unity of substance in the Father and the Son ; and we easily conclude the Holy Ghost to be God, because we call upon him ; and we call upon him because we believe in him ; and we believe in him because we are bap- tized into the faith and profession of the Holy Ghost. This way of teaching our blessed Saviour used, when he confuted the Sadducees, in the question of the resurrection ; and thus he confuted the Pharisees, in the question of his being the Son of God ^. The use I make of it is this, that right reason is so far from being an exile from the inquiries of religion, that it is the great ensurance of many propositions of faith ; and we have seen the faith of men strangely alter, but the reason of man can never alter, every rational truth supposing its principles being eternal and unchangeable. All that is to be done here is to see that you argue well, that your deduc- tion be evident, that your reason be right : for Scripture is to
'' John, X. 37.
IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 519
our understandings, as the grace of God to our wills ; that instructs our reason, and this helps our wills ; and we may as well choose the things of God without our wills, and delight in them without love, as understand the Scriptures or make use of them without reason.
Quest. But how shall our reason be guided that it may- be right, that it be not a blind guide, but direct us to the place where the star appears, and point us to the very house where the babe lieth, that we may indeed do as the wise men did ? To this I answer :
2. In the making deductions, the first great measure to direct our reason and our inquiries is the analogy of faith ; that is, let the fundamentals of faith be your cynosura, your great light to walk by, and whatever you derive from thence, let it be agreeable to the principles from whence they come. It is the rule of St. Paul, n^o<pr{levccv naV avaXoyiav 9r/c7Tfw?, *' Let him that prophesies, do it according to the proportion of faith * ;" that is, let him teach nothing but what is revealed, or agreeable to the auTOTCKna, ' the prime credibilities' of Christianity ; that is, by the plain words of Scripture let him expound the less plain, and the superstructure by the mea- sures of the foundation, and doctrines be answerable to faith, and speculations relating to practice, and nothing taught, as simply necessary to be believed, but what is evidently and plainly set down in the holy Scriptures ; for he that calls a proposition necessary, which the apostles did not declare to be so, or which they did not teach to all Christians, learned and unlearned, he is gone beyond his proportions ; for every thing is to be kept in that order where God hath placed it. There is a ' classis ' of necessary articles, and that is the apos- tles' creed, which TertuUian calls " regulara fidei," ' the rule of faith ;' and according to this we must teach necessities : but what comes after this is not so necessary ; and he that puts upon his own doctrines a weight equal to this of the apostles' declaration, either must have an apostolical autho- rity, and an apostolical infallibility, or else he transgresses proportion of faith, and becomes a false apostle.
3. To this purpose it is necessary that you be very dili- gent in reading, laborious and assiduous in the studies of
* Rom. xii, 7.
620 THE MINISTER S DUTY
Scripture ; not only lest ye be blind seers and blind guides, but because, without great skill and learning, ye cannot do your duty. A minister may as well siii by his ignorance as by his negligence ; because when light springs from so many angles that may enlighten us, unless we look round about us and be skilled in all the angles of reflexion, we shall but turn our backs upon the sun, and see nothing but our own sha- dows. " Search the Scriptures," said Christ. " Non dixit legitCy sed scriitamini," said St. Chrysostom ; " quia oportet profundius efFodere, ut qu8e alte delitescunt, invenire possi- mus." * Christ did not say read, but search the Scriptures ;' turn over every page, inquire narrowly, look diligently, con- verse with them perpetually, be mighty in the Scriptures ; for that which is plain there, is the best measure of our faith and of our doctrines. The Jews have a saying, " Qui non advertit, quod supra et infra in Scriptoribus legitur, is per- vertit verba Dei viventis." He that will understand God's meaning, must look above and below, and round about ; for the meaning of the Spirit of God is not like the wind blowing from one point, but like light issuing from the body of the sun, it is light round about ; and in every word of God there is a treasure, and something will be found somewhere, to an- swer every doubt, and to clear every obscurity, and to teach every truth by which God intends to perfect our understand- ings. But then take this rule with you : do not pass from plainness to obscurity, nor from simple principles draw crafty conclusions, nor from easiness pass into difficulty, nor from wise notices draw intricate nothings, nor from the wisdom of God lead your hearers into the follies of men. Your prin- ciples are easy, and your way plain, and the words of faith are open, and what naturally flows from thence will be as open; but if, without violence and distortion, it cannot be drawn forth, the proposition is not of the family of faith. " Qui nimis emungit, elicit sanguinem :" * he that wrings too hard, draws blood :' and nothing is fit to be offered to your cliarges and your flocks but what flows naturally, and comes easily, and descends readily and willingly, from the fountains of salvation.
4. Next to this analogy or proportion of faith, let the consent of the Catholic church be your measure, so as by no means to prevaricate in any doctrine, in which all Christians
IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 521
always have consented. This will appear to be a necessary rule by and by ; but in the mean time, I shall observe to you, that it will be the safer, because it cannot go far : it can be instanced but in three things, in the creed, in ecclesiastical government, and in external forms of worship and liturgy. The Cathohc church hath been too much and too soon divided : it hath been used as the man upon a hill used his heap of heads in a basket ; when he threw them down the hill, every head run his own way, " quot capita, tot sen- tentise ;" and as soon as the spirit of truth was opposed by the spirit of error, the spirit of peace was disordered by the spirit of division ; and the Spirit of God hath overpowered us so far, that we are only fallen out about that, of which if we had been ignorant, we had not been much the worse ; but in things simply necessary, God hath preserved us still un- broken : all nations, and all ages recite the creed, and all pray the Lord's prayer, and all pretend to walk by the rule of the commandments ; and all churches have ever kept the day of Christ's resurrection, or the Lord's-day holy ; and all churches have been governed by bishops, and the rites of Christianity have been for ever administered by separate orders of men, and those men have been always set apart by prayer and the imposition of the bishop's hands ; and all Christians have been baptized, and all baptized persons were, or ought to be, and were taught that they should be confirmed by the bishop, and presidents of religion ; and for ever there were public forms of prayer, more or less in all churches ; and all Christians that were to enter into holy wedlock, were ever joined or blessed by the bishop or the priest : in these things all Christians ever have consented, and he that shall prophesy or expound Scripture to the prejudice of any of these things, hath no part in that article of his creed ; he does not believe the holy catholic church, he hath no fellowship, no commu- nion with the saints and servants of God.
It is not here intended, that the doctrine of the church should be the rule of faith distinctly from, much less against, the Scripture ; for that were a contradiction to suppose the church of God, and yet speaking and acting against the will of God ; but it means, that where the question is concerning an obscure place of Scripture, the practice of the Catholic church is the best commentary. " Intellectus, qui cum praxi
522 'J- HE minister's duty
concurrit, est spiritus vivificans/' said Cusanus. Then we speak according to the Spirit of God, ■when we understand Scripture in that sense in which the church of" God liath always practised it. '* Quod j)luribus, quod sapientibus, quod omnibus videtur," that is Aristotle's rule; and it is a rule of nature ; every thing puts on a degree of probability as it is witnessed * by wise men, by many wise men, by all wise men :' and it is Vincentius Lirinensis' great rule of truth; " Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus :" and he that goes against * what is said always, and every where, and by air Christians, had need have a new revelation, or an infallible spirit; or he hath an intolerable pride and foolish- ness of presumption. Out of the communion of the universal church no man can be saved; they are the body of Christ; and the whole church cannot perish, and Christ cannot be a head without a body, and he will for ever be our Redeemer, and for ever intercede for his church, and be glorious in his saints ; and, therefore, he that does not sow in these furrows, but leaves the way of the whole church, hath no pretence for his error, no excuse for his pride, and will find no alleviation of his punishment. These are the best measures which God hath given us to lead us in the way of truth, and to preserve us from false doctrines ; and whatsoever cannot be proved by these measures, cannot be necessary. There are many truths besides these ; but if your people may be safely ignorant of them, you may quietly let them alone, and not trouble their heads with what they have so little to do ; things that need not to be known at all, need not to be taught : for if they be taught, they are not certain, or are not very useful ; and, therefore, there may be danger in them besides the trouble ; and since God hath not made them necessary, they may be let alone without danger ; and it will be madness to tell stories to your flocks of things which may hinder salvation, but cannot do them profit. And now it is time that I have done with the first great remark of doctrine noted by the apostle in my text ; all the guides of souls must take care that the doctrine they teach be a^ia(p9o^og, " pure and in- corrupt," the word of God, the truth of the Spirit. That which remains is easier.
2. In the next place, it must be a-Eij.voi, ' grave,' and reverend, no vain notions, no pitiful contentions, and disputes
IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 523
a"bout little things, but becoming your great employment in the ministry of souls : and in this the rules aie easy and ready,
1. Do not trouble your people with controversies: what- soever does gender strife, the apostle commands us to avoid ; and, therefore, much more the strife itself: a controversy is a stone in the mouth of the hearer, who should be fed with bread, and it is a temptation to the preacher, it is a state of temptation ; it engages one side in lying, and both in un- certainty and uncharitableness ; and after all, it is not food for souls ; it is the food of contention, it is a spiritual law- suit, and it can never be ended ; every man is right, and every man is wrong in these things, and no man can tell v.ho is right, or who is wrong. For as long as a word can be spoken against a word, and a thing be opposite to a thing ; as long as places are hard, and men are ignorant, or '' knowing but in part;" as long as there is money and pride in the world, and for ever till men willingly confess themselves to be fools and deceived, so long will the saw of contention be drawn from side to side. " That which is not, cannot be numbered," saith the wise man : no man can reckon upon any truth that is got by contentious learning ; and whoever troubles his people with questions, and teaches them to be troublesome, note that man, he loves not peace, or he would fain be called * Rabbi, Rabbi.' Christian religion loves not tricks nor artifices of wonder ; but like the natural and amiable sim- plicity of Jesus, by plain and easy propositions, leads us in wise paths to a place, where sin and strife shall never enter. What good can come from that which fools begin, and wise men can never end but by silence? and that had been the best way at first, and would have stifled them in the cradle. What have your people to do whether Christ's body be in the sacrament by consubstantiation, or transubstantiation ; whe- ther purgatory be in the centre of the earth, or in the air, or any where, or no where ; and who but a madman would trouble their heads with the entanoled links of the fantastic chain of predestination ? Teach them to fear God and honour the king, to keep the commandments of God, and the king's commands, because of the oath of God ; learn them to be sober and temperate, to be just and to pay their debts, to
524 THE minister's duty
speak well of their nei*^hbours and to tliink meanly of then^- selves; teach them charity, and learn them to be zealous of good works. Is it not a shame, that the people should be filled with sermons against ceremonies, and declamations against a surplice, and tedious harangues against the poor airy sign of the cross in baptism ? These things teach them to be ignorant ; it fills them with wind, and they suck dry nurses ; it makes them lazy and useless, troublesome and good for nothing. Can the definition of a Christian be, that a Christian is a man that rails against bishops and the common prayer-book ? and yet this is the great labour of our neighbours that are crept in among us ; this they call the work of the Lord, and this is the great matter of the desired reformation ; in these things they spend their long breath, and about these things they spend earnest prayers, and by these they judge their brother, and for these they revile their superior, and in this doughty cause they think it fit to fight and die. If St. Paul or St. Anthony, St. Basil or St. Am- brose ; if any of the primitive confessors, or glorious martyrs should awake from within their curtains of darkness, and find men thus striving against government, for the interest of dis- obedience, and labouring for nothings, and preaching all day for shadows and moonshine ; and that not a word shall come from them, to teach the people humility, not a word of obedience or self-denial ; they are never taught to suspect their own judgment, but always to prefer the private minister before the public, the presbyter before a bishop, fancy before law, the subject before his prince, a prayer in which men consider not at all, before that which is weighed wisely and considered ; and, in short, a private spirit before the public, and Mas John before the patriarch of Jerusalem : if, I say, St. Paul or St. Anthony should see such a light, they would not know the meaning of it, nor of what religion the country were, nor from whence they had derived their new nothing of an institution. " The kingdom of God consists in wisdom and righteousness, in peace and holiness, in meekness and gentleness, in chastity and purity, in abstinence from evil and doing good to others ;" in these things place your labours, preach these things, and nothing else but such as these ; things which promote the public pea«e and public good ;
i
IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 525
things that can give no offence to the wise and to the virtuous : for these things are profitable to men, and pleasing to God.
2. Let not your sermons and discourses to your people be busy arguings about hard places of Scripture ; if you strike a hard against a hard, you may chance to strike fire, or break a man's head ; but it never makes a good building : " Philo- sophiam ad syllabas vocare," that is to no purpose ; your sermons must be for edification, something to make the people better and w^iser, " wiser unto salvation," not wiser to discourse ; for, if a hard thing get into their heads, I know not what work you will make of it, but they will make nothing of it, or something that is very strange : dress your people unto the imagery of Christ, dress them for their funerals, help them to make their accounts up, against the day of judgment. I have known some persons and some families that would re- ligiously educate their children, and bring them up in the Scriptures from their cradle ; and they would teach them to tell who was the first man, and who was the oldest, and who was the wisest, and who was the strongest ; but I never observed them to ask who was the best, and what things were required to make a man good'' : the apostles' creed was not the entertainment of their pretty talkings, nor the life of Christ, the story of his bitter passion, and his incomparable sermon on the mount went not into their catechisms. What good can your flocks receive, if you discourse well and wisely,, whether Jephthah sacrificed his daughter, or put her into the retirements of a solitary life ; nor how David's numbering the people did differ from Joshua's ; or whether God took away the life of Moses by an apoplexy, or by the kisses of his mouth ? If scholars be idly busy in these things in the schools, custom, and some other little accidents may help to excuse them ; but the time that is spent in your churches, and conversation with your people, must not be so thrown away ; ■hoyog ea-rco as/^vog, that is your rule ; " let your speech be grave" and wise, and useful and holy, and intelligible ; something to reform their manners, to correct their evil natures, to amend their foolish customs ; '' to build them up in a most holy faith." That is the second rule and measure of your preach- ings that the apostle gives you in my text.
52G THE minister's duty
3- Your spt^ech must be byir^i, ' salutary' and vvliolesome : and, indeed, this is of greatest concern, next to the first, next to the truth and purity of that doctrine ; for unless the doctrine be made fit for the necessities of your people, and not only be good in itself, but good for them, you lose the end of your labours, and they the end of your preachings ; " Your jneaching is vain, and their faith is also vain." The particulars of this are not many, but very useful.
1. It is never out of season to preach good works; but when you do, be careful that you never indirectly disgrace them by telling how your adversaries spoil them. I do not speak this in vain ; for too many of us account good works to be popery, and so not only dishonour our religion, and open wide the mouths of adversaries, but disparage Chris- tianity itself, while we hear it preached in every pulpit, that they who preach good works, think tliey merit heaven by it ; and so for fear of merit, men let the work alone ; to secure a true opinion, they neglect a good practice, and out of hatred of popery, we lay aside Christianity itself. Teach them how to do good works, and yet to walk humbly with God ; for better it is to do well even upon a weak account, than to do notliing upon the stock of a better ])roposition : and let it never be used any more as a word of reproach unto us all, that the faith of a Protestant, and the works of a Papist, and the words of a fanatic, make up a good Christian. Believe well, and speak well, and do well ; but in doing good works a man cannot deceive any one but himself, by the appendage of a foolish opinion ; but in our believing only, and in talking, a man may deceive himself, and all the w^orld; and God only can be safe from the cozenage. Like to this is the case of external forms of worship, which too many refuse, because they pretend that many who use them, rest in them, and pass no finther : for besides that no sect of men teaches their people so to do, you cannot without uncharitableness suppose it true of very many. But if others do ill, do not you do so too; and leave not out the external forms for fear of formality, but join the inward power of godliness; and then they are reproved best, and instructed wisely, and you are secured. But remember, that profane- ness is commonly something that is external ; and he is a profane person who neglects the exterior part of religion : and this is so vile a crime, that hypocrisy while it is undis-
i
IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 527
covered, is not so much mischievous as open profaneness, or a neglect and contempt of external religion. Do not despise external religion, because it may be sincere, and do not rely upon it wholly, because it may be counterfeit; but do you preach both, and practise botli ; both what may glorify God in public, and what may please him in private.
2. In deciding the questions and causes of conscience of your flocks, never strive to speak what is pleasing, but what is profitable, vO >^6yovg, aXKa •KDayixccvuv (pdeyyEaOai ovcrias, as was said of Isidore, the philosopher ; " You must not give your people words, but things and substantial food." Let not the people be prejudiced in the matter of their souls, upon any terms whatsoever, and be not ashamed to speak boldly in the cause of God ; for he that is angry when he is reproved, is not to be considered, excepting only to be reproved again; if he will never mend, not you, but he will have the worst of it; but if he ever mends, he will thank you for your love, and for your wisdom, and for your care : and no man is finally disgraced for speaking of a truth ; only here, pray for the grace of prudence, that you may speak opportunely and wisely, lest you profit not, but destroy an incapable subject.
Lastly: The apostle requires of every minister of the Gospel that his speech and doctrine should be aKarccyvcoa-Tog, " unreprovable :" not such against wliich no man can cavil ; for the Pharisees found fault with the wise discourses of the eternal Son of God ; and heretics and schismatics prated against the holy apostles and their excellent sermons ; but aKa-TtxyvcoTTog is ' such as deserves no blame,' and needs no pardon, and flatters not for praise, and begs no excuses, and makes no apologies; a discourse that will be justified by all the sons of wisdom: now that yours may be so, the pre- cedino; rules are the best means that are imaoinable. For, so long as you speak the pure truths of God, the plain meaning of the Spirit, the necessary things of faith, the useful things of charity, and the excellencies of holiness, who can reprove your doctrine ? But there is something more in this word, which the apostle means, else it had been an useless repetition : and a man may speak the truths of God, and yet may be blame-worthy by an importune, unseasonable, and imprudent way of delivering them, or for want of such conduct, which will place him and his doctrine in reputation
528 THE minister's duty
and advantages. To tliis purpose these advices may be useful.
1. Be more careful to establish a truth, than to reprove an error. For besides that a truth will, when it is esta- blished, of itself reprove the error sufficiently ;> men will be less apt to reprove the truth, when they are not engaged to defend their own propositions against you. Men stand upon their guard, when you proclaim war against their doctrine. Teach your doctrine purely and wisely, and without any angry reflections ; for you shall very hardly persuade him, whom you go about publicly to confute.
2. If any man have a revelation or a discovery, of which thou knowest nothing but by his preaching, be not too quick to condemn it ; not only lest thoa discourage his labour and stricter inquiries in the search of truth, but lest thou also be a fool upon record ; for so is every man that hastily judges, what he slowly understands. Is it not a monument of a lasting reproach, that one of the popes of Rome con- demned the bishop of Sulzbach, for saying that there were antipodes? And is not pope Nicholas deserted by his own party, for correcting the sermons of Berengarius, and making him recant into a worse error? and posterity will certainly make themselves very merry with the wise sentences made lately at Rome, against Galileo, and the Jansenists. To con- demn one truth is more shameful, than to broach two errors : for he that, in an honest and diligent inquiry, misses some- thing of the mark, will have the apologies of human infirmity, and the praise of doing his best ; but he that condemns a truth, when it is told him, is an envious fool, and is a mur- derer of his brother's fame, and his brother's reason.
3. Let no man upon his own head, reprove the religion that is established by law, and a just supreme authority; for no reproofs are so severe, as the reproofs of law ; and a man will very hardly defend his opinion, that is already con- demned by the wisdom of all his judges. A man's^ doctrine possibly may be true though against law ; but it cannot be aKUTayvcoa-TOi, ' unreprovable ;' and a schismatic can, in no case, observe this rule of the apostle. If something may be amiss when it is declared by laws, much easier may he be in an error, who goes upon his own account, and declares alone : and, therefore, it is better to let things alone, than to be
IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 520
troublesome to our superiors by an impertinent wrangling for reformation. We find that some kings of Judah were greatly praised, and yet they did not destroy all the temples of the false gods, which Solomon had built: and if such public persons might let some things alone that were amiss, and yet be innocent, trouble not yourself that all the world is not amended according to your pattern; see that you be perfect at home, that all be rightly reformed there ; as for reformation of the church, God will never call you to an account. Some things cannot be reformed, and very many need not, for all thy peevish dreams ; and after all, it is twenty to one but thou art mistaken, and thy superior is in the right; and if thou wert not proud, thou wouldst think so too. Certain it is, he that sows in the furrows of authority, his doctrine cannot so easily be reproved as he that ploughs and sows alone. When Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, fell into the hands of the Egyptian monks, who were ignorant and confident, they handled him with great rudeness, because he had spoken of the immateriality of the Divine nature; the good man to escape their fury, was forced to give them crafty and soft words, saying ; " Vidi faciem vestram ut faciem Dei :" which because they understood in the sense of the anthropomorphites, and thought he did so too, they let him depart in peace. When private persons are rude against the doctrines of authority, they are seldom in the right; but, therefore, are the more fierce, as wanting the natural supports of truth, which are reason and authority, gentleness and plain conviction ; and, therefore, they fall to declamation and railing, zeal and cruelty, trifling and arrogant confidences. They seldom go asunder : it is the same word in Greek that signifies, ' disobedience,' and ' cruelty :' a7r>5v>ij is both ; ' He that will endure no bridle,' * that man hath no mercy.' AvSahioi, aTryivEia. h(A.i>.lcx,q iv "koyon;. Confidence is that which will endure no bridle, no curb, no superior. It is worse in the Hebrew ; " The sons of Belial," signify ' people that will endure no yoke, no government, no imposition ;' and we have found them so, they are sons of Belial indeed. This is that a^5a^£ia, that kind of boldness and refractory confidence, that St, Paul forbids to be in a minister of religion'; (xy^ al^x^-n,
' 1 Til. vii. VOL. VI. MM
i>30 THE MlMSTLU's DUTY
* not confident ;' that is, let him be humble and modest, distrusting his own jud<;nient, believing wiser men than himself; never bold against authority, never relying on his own wit. Ai/dd^r^g ia-Tiv awToa^'nf, said Aristotle; ' that man is bold and presumptuous, who pleases himself/ and sings his own songs, all voluntary, nothing by his book.
OiiJ ao~rov nvla-', co-Tif aiSaSnf ysyaJfi
nixpo; iroxhttK! la-rh aixaQlat Swo, said the tragedy ".
Every confident man is ignorant, and by his ignorance, troublesome to his country, but will never do it honour.
4. Whatever Scriptures you pretend for your doctrine, take heed that it be not chargeable with foul consequences ; that it lay no burden upon God, that it do not tempt to vanity, that it be not manifestly serving a temporal end, and nothing else ; that it be not vehemently to be suspected to be a design of state, like the sermon at Paul's Cross, by Dr. Shaw, in Richard the Third's time ; that it do not give countenance and confidence to a wicked life ; for then your doctrine is reprovable for the appendage, and the intrinsic truth or falsehood will not so much be inquired after, as the visible and external objection : if men can reprove it in the outside, they will inquire no further. But, above all things, nothing so much will reproach your doctrine, as if you preach it in a railing dialect ; we have had too much of that within these last thirty years. Optatus observes it was the trick of the Donatists, " Nullus vestrum est, qui non convicia nostra suis tractatibus misceat :" " There is none of you but with his own writings mingles our reproaches";" you begin to read chapters, and you expound them to our injuries; you comment upon the Gospel, and revile your brethren that are absent; you imprint hatred and enmity in your people's hearts, and you teach them war when you pretend to mak-e them saints. They do so, their doctrine is not aKaTayvucrTo^ -, that is the least which can be said. If you will not have your doctrine reprehensible, do nothing icith offence; and above all offences avoid the doing or saying those things, that give offence to the king and to the laws, to the voice of Christendom, and the public customs of the church of God.
•^ Eurip. Med. Porsou. 21^.5. " Lib. iv. adv. Parmen.
IN LIFE AND DOCTRINE. 531
Frame your life and preachings to the canons of the church, to the doctrines of antiquity, to the sense of the ancient and holy fathers. For it is otherwise in theology, than it is in other learnings. The experiments of philosophy are rude at first, and the observations weak, and the principles unproved; and he that made the first lock, was not so good a work- man as we have now a days: but in Christian religion, they that were first were best, because God, and not man, was the teacher ; and ever since that, we have been luilearning the wise notices of pure religion, and minghng them with human notices, and human interest. " Quod primum, hoc verum :" and although concerning antiquity, I may say as he in the tragedy";
2 uo"<r axf) JOVE iV a-ot ^oiXafXj aXX' ov irunoff-tiv.
I would have you be wise with them, and under them, and follow their faith, but not their errors ; yet this can never be of use to us, till antiquity be convicted of an error, by an authority great as her own, or a reason greater, and declared by an authorized Master of Sentences. But, how- ever, be very tender in reproving a doctrine for which good men and holy have suffered fiartyrdom, and of which they have made public confession ; for nothing reproves a doc- trine so much as to venture it abroad with so much scandal and objection : and what reason can any schismatic have against the common prayer-book, able to weigh against that argument of blood, which for the testimony of it was shed by the Queen Mary martyrs ? I instance the advice in this particular, but it is true in all things else of the like nature. It was no ill advice, whoever gave it to the favourite of a prince ; " Never make yourself a professed enemy to the church ; for their interest is so complicated with the public, and their calling is so dear to God, that one way or other, one time or other, God and man will be their defender." — The same I say concerning authority and antiquity ; never do any thing, never say or profess any thing against it : for besides that if you follow their measures, you will be secured in your faith, and in your main duty ; even in smaller things, they will be sure to carry the cause against you, and
0 Iph. Aul. 407. vol. iv. Piicstlej's ed.
532 THE MINISTER S DUTY, 8cC.
no man is able to bear the reproach of singularity. It was in honour spoken of St. Malacliias, my predecessor in the see of Down, in his hfe written by St. Bernard ; " Apostohcas sanctiones et decreta Ss. pp. in cunctls ecclesiis statuebat." I hope to do something of this for your help and service, if God gives me life, and health, and opportunity : but for the present, I have done. These rules if you observe, your doc- trine will be aKolayvcoa-Tog, ' it will need no pardon ;' and avsy- xA»)7of, * never to be reproved in judgment.' I conclude all with the wise saying of Bensirach : " Extol not thyself in the counsel of thine own heart, that thy soul be not torn in pieces as a bull straying alone p."
r Ecclus, vi. 2.
SERMON
PREACHED AT THE
FUNERAL OF THAT WORTHY KNIGHT
SIR GEORGE DALSTON,
OF DALSTON IN CUMBERLAND,
Sept. 28, 1657.
FUNERAL SERMON,
If, in this life only, tee have hope in Christ, we are, of all men, most miserable. — 1 Cor. xv. 19.
When God, in his infinite and eternal wisdom, had decreed to give to man a life of labour, and a body of mortality ; a state of contingency, and a composition of fighting elements ; and having designed to be glorified by a free obedience, would also permit sin in the world, and suffer evil men to go on in their wickedness, to prevail in their impious machina- tions, to vex the souls, and grieve the bodies of the righteous, he knew that this would not only be very hard to be suffered by his servants, but also be very difficult to be understood by them who know God to be a ' Lawgiver' as well as a * Lord;' a * Judge' as well as a ' King ;' a ' Father' as well as a * Ruler ;' and that, in order to his own glory, and for the manifestation of his goodness, he had promised to reward his servants, to give good to them that did good : therefore, to take off all prejudices, and evil resentments, and temptations, which might trouble those good men who sufiered evil things, — he was pleased to do two great things,which might confirm the faith, and endear the services, and entertain the hopes of them who are indeed his servants, but yet v.ere very ill used in the accidents of this world.
1. The one wels, that he sent his Son into the world to take upon him our nature ; and him, being the ' Captain of our salvation, he would perfect through sufferings ;' tiiat na man might think it much to suffer, when God spared not his own Son ; and every man might submit to the necessity, when the Christ of God was not exempt ; and yet that no man should
530 A FUNERAL SERMON.
fear the event which was to follow such sad beginnings, when ' it behoved even Christ to suffer, and so to enter into glory.'
2. The other great tiling was, that God did not only by revelation, and the sermons of the prophets to his church, but even to all mankind competently teach, and efiectively persuade, that the soul of man does not die ; but that although things were ill here, yet they should be well hereafter ; that the evils of this life were short and tolerable, and that to the good, who usually feel most of them, they should end in honour and advantages. And, therefore, Cicero had reason on his side to conclude, that there is to be a time and place after this life, wherein the wicked shall be punished, and the virtuous well rewarded, when he considered that Orpheus and Socrates, Palamedes and Thraseas, Lucretia and Papi- nian, were either slain or oppressed to death by evil men. But to us Christians, bI f/.ri kTrax^^i eo'Tiv BiTriiv, iravv Inavug^ avro'^s- hUx^ai, as Plato's* expression is; we have a necessity to declare, and a demonstration to prove it, when we read that Abel died by the hands of Cain, who was so ignorant, that though he had malice and strength, yet he had scarce art enough to kill him ; when we read that John the Baptist, Christ himself, and his apostles, and his whole army of martyrs, died under the violence of evil men ; when virtue made good men poor, and free speaking of brave truths made the wise to lose their liberty ; when an excellent life hastened an opprobrious death, and the obeying God destroyed our- selves ; it was but time to look about for another state of things, where justice should rule, and virtue find her own portion : where the men that were like to God in mercy and justice, should also partake of his felicity : and, therefore, men cast out every line, and turned every stone, and tried every argument, and sometimes proved it well; and when they did not, yet they believed strongly ; and they were sure of the thing, even when they were not sure of the argument.
Thus, therefore, would the old priests of the capitol, and the ministers of Apollo, and the mystic persons at their
» Phaed. c. 37. Fischer, p. 368.
A FUNERAL SERMON. 537
oracles believe, when they made Apotheoses of virtuous and braver persons, ascribing every braver man into the number of their gods : Hercules and Romulus, Castor and Pollux, Liber Pater'', him that taught the use of vines, and her that taught them the use of corn. For they knew that it must needs be, that they who like to God do excellent things, must like to God have an excellent portion.
This learning they also had from Pherecydes the Syrian, from Pythagoras of Saraos, and from Zamolxis the Gete, from the neighbours of Euphrates, and the inhabitants by Ister, who were called aSavar/^ovTEf, ' Iramortalists ;' because, in the midst of all their dark notices of things, they saw this clearly, OTi ayaOa, TroioovTsg ovk aTro^cuvouvrai, aXXa. ri^ouTt ig %a)fov rourov, 'iva, £%a)iji ra wai/ra aya^oi ; " that virtuous and good men do not die, but their souls do go into blessed regions, where they shall enjoy all good things:" and it was never known that ever any good man was of another opinion. Hercules and Themistocles, Epaminondas and Cicero, Socrates and Cimon, Ennius and Phidias, all the flower of mankind have preached this truth. Kupiors^a t« ruv Bsicov dvd'^cov ixocvrEuixdla, y\ T« Tuv jnn' 01 OE iTnEiKEcrrarQi ttccvIcx TTOiouaiv, hirui av Ij rov etteCIo, X^ovQv Eu anovucriv. " The discoursings and prophesyings of divine men are much more proper and excellent than of others, because they do equal and good things, until the time comes that they shall hear well for them : rE)i/yi.yi^iov ^s Troioiifxai, OTL ECTTi Tig altxBrjcrig teGveuti ruv ev^o^e' at ^l ^EXritnai ■4'"%'^' /^oivlsuovTCii raura ourug ex^iv at ^e /u-ox^yi^oTocrai ou (pacriv. " And this is the sign, that when we die we have life and discerning ; because though the wicked care not for believing it, yet all the prophets and the poets, the wise and the brave heroes say so ;' they are the words of Plato. For though that which is compounded of elements, returns to its material and cor- ruptible principles, yet the soul, which is a particle of the Divine breath, returns to its own Divine original, where there is no death or dissolution : and because the understanding: is neither hot nor cold, it hath no moisture in it, and no dryness, it follows that it hath nothing of those substances, concerning which alone we know that they are corruptible. There is nothing corruptible that we know of, but the four
'' Hor. Ep. ii. 1,5.
538 A FUNERAL SERMON.
elements, and their sons and danj[:;hter.s : nothing dies that can discourse, that can reHect in perfect circles upon their own imperfect actions; nothing can die that can see God, and converse with spirits, that can govern by laws and wise propositions. For fire and water caii be tyrannical, but not govern ; they can bear every thitig down that stands before them, and rush like the people ; but not rule like judges, and therefore they perish as tumults are dissolved. Aii'Tnrai Je Tov vouv (to\ov ^{joa^^y sTTEii/tsvcii, xai Beiov Eivai /xovov ou&e yap ai/roS Tn sus^yEia koivuviT aoofxaTmn inpyzia' says Aristotle* : " But the soul only comes from abroad, from a Divine principle (for so saith the Scripture, — '* God breathed into Adam the spirit of life") : and that wliich in operation does not communicate with the body," shall have no part in its corruption.
Thus far they were right; but when they descended to particulars, they fell into error. That the rewards of virtue were to be hereafter, that they were sure of; that the soul was to survive the calamities of this world, and the death of the body, that they were sure of; and upon this account they did bravely and virtuously : and yet they that thought best amongst them, believed that the souls departed should be reinvested with other bodies, according to the dispositions and capacities of this life.
Thus Orpheus, who sang well, should transmigrate into a swan ; and the soul of Thamyris, who had as good a voice as he, should wander till it were confined to the body of a nightingale ; Ajax to a lion, Agamemnon to an eagle, tyrant princes into wolves and hawks, the lascivious into asses and goats, the drunkards into swine, the crafty statesmen inta bees and pismires, and Thersites to an ape. This fancy of theirs prevailed much amongst the common people, and the uninstructed amongst the Jews; for when Christ appeared so glorious in miracle, Herod presently fancied him to be the soul of John the Baptist in another body ; and the common people said he was Elias, or Jeremias, or one of the old prophets. And true it is, that although God was pleased, in all times, to communicate to mankind notices of the other world, sufficient to encourage virtues, and to contest against the rencounters of the world, — yet he was ever sparing in
• De gen. aQ. lil>. 2.
A FUNERAL SERMON. 539
telling the secrets of it ; and when St. Paul had his rapture into heaven, he saw fine things, and heard strange words, but they were appvra pvi/xala, " words that he could not speak," and secrets that he could net understand, and secrets that he could not communicate. For as a man staring upon the broad eye of the sun at his noon of solstice, feels his heat, and dwells in light, and loses the sight of his eyes, and perceives nothing distinctly; but the organ is confounded, and the faculty amazed with too big a beauty : so was St. Paul in his ecstacy ; he saw that he could see nothing to be told below, and he perceived the glories were too big for flesh and blood, and that the beauties of separate souls were not to be understood by the soul in conjunction; and, therefore, after all the fine things that he saw, we only know what we knew before, viz. that the soul can live when the body is dead ; that it can subsist without the body ; that there are very great glories reserved for them that serve God ; that they who die in Christ, shall live with him ; that the body is a prison, and the soul is in fetters, while we are alive ; and that when the body dies, the soul springs and leaps from her prison, and enters into the first liberty of the sons of God. Now much of this did rely upon the same argument, upon which the wise Gentiles of old concluded the immortality of the soul ; even because we are here very miserable and very poor : we are sick, and we are afflicted ; we do well, and we are disgraced ; we speak well, and we are derided ; we tell truths, and few believe us ; but the proud are exalted, and the wicked are delivered, and evil men reign over us, and the covetous snatch our little bundles of money from us, and the * fiscus' gathers our rents; and every where the wisest and the best men are oppressed ; but, therefore, because it is thus, and thus it is not well, we hope for some great good thing hereafter. " For if, in this Ufe only, we had hope," — then we Christians, all we to whom persecution is allotted for our portion, we who must be patient under the cross, and receive injuries, and say nothing but prayers, — " we certainly were of all men the most miserable."
Well then : in this life we see plainly that our portion is not ; here we have hopes ; but not here only, we shall go into another place, where we shall have more hopes: our faith
540 A FUNERAL SERMON.
shall have mote evidence, it shall be of" things seen afar off; and our hopes shall be of more certainty and perspicuity, and next to possession ; we shall have very nmch good, and be very sure of much more. Here then are three propositions to be considered.
1 . The servants of God in this world are very miserable, were it not for their hopes of what is to come hereafter.
2. Though this be a place of hopes, yet we have not our hopes only here. " If in this life only we had hopes," saitli the Apostle ; meaning, that in another life also we have hopes ; not only metonymically, taking hopes for the thing we hope for; but properli/, and for the acts, objects, and causes of hope. In the state of separation the godly shall have the vast joys of a certain intuitive hope, according to their several proportions and capacities.
3. The consummation and perfection of their felicity, when all their miseries shall be changed into glories, is in the world to come, after the resurrection of the dead ; which is the main thing which St. Paul here intends.
1. The servants of God in this life are calamitous and afflicted; they must live under the cross. " He that will be •my disciple, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me," said our glorious Lord and Master. And we see this prophetic precept (for it is both a prophecy and a com- mandment, and, therefore, shall be obeyed whether we will or no,) but 1 say, we see it verified by the experience of every day. For here the violent oppress the meek; and they that are charitable, shall receive injuries. The apostles who preached Christ crucified, were themselves persecuted, and put to violent deaths ; and Christianity itself, for three hun- dred years, was the public hatred ; and yet then it was that men loved God best, and suffered more for him ; then, they did most good, and least of evil. In this world, men thrive by villany ; and lying and deceiving is accounted just ; and to be rich is to be wise ; and tyranny is honourable ; and though little thefts, and petty mischiefs, are interrupted by the laws ; yet if a mischief become public and great, acted by princes, and effected by armies, and robberies be done by whole fleets, it is virtue, and it is glory : it fills the mouths of fools that wonder, and employs the pens of witty naen.
A FUNERAL SERMON. 541
that eat the bread of flattery. How many thousand bottles of tears, and how many milUons of sighs does God every day record, while the oppressed and the poor pray mito him, wor- ship him, speak great things of his holy name, study to please him, beg for helps that they may become gracious in his eyes, and are so, and yet never sing in all their life, but when they sing God's praises out of duty, with a sad heart and a hopeful spirit, living only upon the future, weary of to-day, and sustained only by the hope of to-morrow's event? and after all, their eyes are dim with weeping and looking upon distances, as knowing they shall never be happy till the ' new heavens and the new earth' appear.
But I need not instance in the * miserabili,' in them that dwell in dungeons, and lay their head in places of trouble and disease : take those servants of God who have greatest plenty, who are encircled with blessings, whom this world calls prosperous, and see if they have not fightings within, aAd crosses without, contradiction of accidents, and perpe- tuity of temptations, the devil assaulting them, and their own weakness betraying them ; fears encompassing them round about, lest they lose the favour of God, and shame sitting heavily upon them, when they remember how often they talk foolishly, and lose their duty, and dishonour their greatest relations, and walk unworthy of those glories which they would fain obtain ; and all this is, besides the unavoidable accidents of mortality, sickly bodies, troublesome times, changes of government, loss of interests, unquiet and peevish accidents round about them : so that when they consider to what they are primarily obliged ; that they must in some instances deny their appetite, in others they must quit their relations, in all they must deny themselves, when their natural or secular danger tempts to sin or danger ; and that for the support of their wills, and the strengthening their resolutions, against the arguments and sohcitation of passions, they have nothing but the promises of another world ; they will easily see that all the splendour of their condition, which fools admire, and wise men use temperately, and handle with cau- tion, as they try the edge of a razor, is so far from making them recompense for the sufferings of this world, that the reserves and expectations of the next is, that conjugation of
542 A FUNEllAL SKHiMON.
aids, by which only they can well and wisely bear the cala- mities of their present, plenty.
But if we look, round about us, and see how many righte- ous causes are oppressed, how many good men are reproached, how religion is persecuted, upon what strange principles the greatest princes of the world transact their greatest affairs, how easily they make wars, and how suddenly they break leagues ; and at what expense, and vast pensions, they cor- rupt each other's officers ; and how the greatest part of mankind watches to devour one another : and they that are devoured are commonly the best, the poor and the harmless, the gentle and uncrafty, the simple and religious ; and then how many ways all good men are exposed to danger ; and that our scene of duty lies as much in passive graces as in active ; it must be confessed that this is a place of wasps and insects, of vipers and dragons, of tigers and bears ; but the sheep are eaten by men, or devoured by wolves and foxes, or die of the rot; and when they do not, yet every year they redeem their lives by giving their fleece and their milk, and ' must die, when their death will pay the charges of the knife.
Now, from this, I say, it was that the very heathen, Plu- tarch and Cicero, Pythagoras and Hierocles, Plato and many others, did argue and conclude, that there must be a day of recompenses to come hereafter, which would set all right again : and from hence also our blessed Saviour himself did convince the Sadducees in their fond and pertinacious denying of the resurrection : for that is the meaning of that argument, which our blessed Lord did choose as being clearly and infallibly the aptest of any in the Old Testament, to prove the resurrection ; and though the deduction is not at first so plain and evident, yet upon nearer intuition, the interpretation is easy, and the argument excellent and proper.
For it is observed by the learned among the Jews, that when God is by way of particular relation, and especial bene- diction, appropriated to any one, it is intended that God is to him ' a rewarder and benefactor,' Stof £y£f vethj, Bsog /jiiaBccTro^orni ; for that is the first thing and the last, that every man believes and feels of God ; and, therefore, St. Paul sums up the Gentiles' creed in this compendium : " He that cometh to God, must believe that God is ; and that he is a rewarder of
A FUNERAL SERMON. 543
them that diligently seek him^" And as it is in the inde- finite expression, so it is in the limited ; as it is in the abso- lute, so also in the relative. God is the rewarder; and to be their God, is to be their rewarder, to be their benefactor, and their gracious Lord, " Ego ero Deus vester," — " 1 will be your God ;" that is, ' I will do you good,' says Aben Esra : and Phllo ; TO OS ^£og ale^viog 'laov kcrrl ru, o ^a^i^o'iaEvoj, ou tote /xh, TTOTE de ou, del 3f, ttai crvvtyjiiq. " The everlasting God, that is, as if he had said, one that will do you good; not sometimes some, and sometimes none at all, but frequently, and for ever :" and this we find also observed by St. Paul : " Where- fore God is not ashamed to be called their God*^ ;" and that by which the relative appellative is verified, is the consequent benefit; He is "called their God; for he hath provided for them a city."
Upon this account, the argument of our blessed Saviour is this : " God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ;" that is, the gracious God, the benefactor, the rewarder ; and, therefore, Abraham is not dead, but is fallen asleep, and he shall be restored in the resurrection to receive those blessings and rewards, by the title of which, God was called the ' God of Abraham.' For in this world Abraham had not that harvest of blessings, which is consigned by that glorious appellative ; he was an exile from his country ; he stood far off from the possession of his hopes; he lived an ambulatory life ; he spent most of his days without an heir ; he had a constant piety; and, at the latter end of his life, one great blessing was given him ; and because that was allayed by the anger of his wife, and the expulsion of his handmaid, and the ejection of Ishmael, and the danger of the lad ; and his great calamity about the matter of Isaac's sacrifice ; and all his faith, and patience, and piety, was rewarded with nothing but promises of things a great way off; and before the posses- sion of them, he went out of this world : it is undeniably certain that God, who, after the departure of the patriarchs, did still love to be called ' their God,' did intend to signify that they should be restored to a state of life, and a capacity of those greatest blessings, which were the foundation of that title and that relation. ' God is not the God of the dead, but
f Heb. xi. 6. , ^ Heb. xi. 16.
544 A FUNERAL SERMON.
of the living ;' but God is the God of Abraham, and the other patriarchs; therefore they are not dead ; dead to this world, but ahve to God ; that is, though this hfe be lost, yet tliey shall have another and a better ; a life in which God shall manifest liiuiself to be their God, to all the ])urposes of benefit and eternal blessings.
This argument was summed up by St. Peter, and the sense of it is thus rendered by St. Clement, the Bishop of Rome, as himself testifies : " Si Deus est Justus, animus est immor- talis ;'' which is perfectly rendered by the words of my text : " If in this life only we have hope, then are we of all men the most miserable ;" because this cannot be, that God who is just and good, should suffer them that heartily serve him, to be really and finally miserable ; and yet in this world they are so, very frequently ; therefore, in another world, they shall live to receive a full recompense of reward.
IVeither is this so to be understood, as if the servants of God were so wholly forsaken of him in this world, and so permitted to the malice of evil men, or the asperities of for- tune, that they have not many refreshments, and great com- forts, and the perpetual festivities of a holy conscience ; for •* God my maker is he that giveth songs in the night," said Elihu% that is, God, as a reward, giveth a cheerful spirit, and makes a man to sing with joy, when other men are sad with the solemn darkness, and with the. affrights of conscience, and with the illusions of the night. But God, who intends vast portions of felicity to his children, does not reckon these little joys into the account of the portion of his elect. The good things which they have in this world, are not little, if we account the joys of religion, and the peace of conscience, amongst things valuable ; yet whatsoever it is ; all of it, all the blessings of themselves, and of their posterity, and of their relatives, for their sakes, are cast in for intermedial en- tertainments ; but ' their good,' and their prepared portion shall be hereafter. But for the evil itself, which they must suffer and overcome, it is such a portion of this life, as our blessed Saviour had; injuries and temptations, care and per- secutions, poverty and labour, humility and patience : it is well ; it is very well ; and who can long for, or expect better
"^ Job, XXXV. 10.
A FUNERAL SERMON. 645
here ; when his Lord and Saviour had a state of things, so very much worse than the worst of our calamities ? but bad as it is, it is to be chosen rather than a better; because it is the highway of the cross; it is Jacob's ladder, upon which the saints and the King of saints did descend, and at last ascend to heaven itself; and bad as it is, it is the method and inlet to the best ; it is a sharp, but it is a short step to bliss : for it is remarkable, in the parable of Dives and La- zarus, that the poor man, the afflicted saint, died first. Dives being permitted to his purple and fine linen, to his delicious fare, and (which he most of all needed) to a space of re- pentance: but, in the mean time, the poor man was rescued from his sad portion of this life, and carried into Abraham's bosom ; where he who was denied in this world, to be feasted even with the portion of dogs, was placed in the bosom of the patriarch, that is, in the highest room ; for so it was in their * discubitus,' or lying down to meat, the chief guest, the most beloved person, did lean upon the bosom of the master of the feast ; so St. John did lean upon the breast of Jesus, and so did Lazarus upon the breast of Abraham ; or else KoXTTOi 'A^paa/x, ' sinus Abraham!' may be rendered * the bay of Abraham,' alluding to the place of rest, where ships put in after a tempestuous and dangerous navigation ; the storm was quickly over with the poor man, and the angel of God brought the good man's soul to a safe port, where he should be dis- turbed no more : and so saith the Spirit ; " Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord ; for they rest from their labours."
But this brings me to the second great inquiry ; if here we live upon hopes, and that this is a place of hopes, but not this only ; what other place is there, where we shall be blessed in our hope, where we shall rest from our labour and our fear, and have our hopes in perfection ; that is, all the pleasures which can come from the greatest and the most excellent hope ?
" Not in this life only :" — So my text. Therefore here- after ; as soon as we die ; as soon as ever the soul goes from the body, it is blessed. Blessed, I say, but not perfect; it rejoices in peace and a holy hope : here we have hopes mingled with fear, there our hope is heightened with joy and confi- dence ; it is all the comfort that can be, in the expectation of unraeasurable joys: it is only, not fruition, not the joys
Vt)L. VI. N N
54G A FUNERAL SERMON.
of a perfect possession ; but less than that, it is every good thing else.
But that I may make my way plain : I must first remove an objection, which seems to overthrow this whole affair. St. Paul intends these words of my text, as an argument to prove the resurrection; we shall rise again with our bodies; for '* if in this life only we had hope, then we were of all men most miserable;" meaning, that unless there be a resurrection, there is no good for us any where else ; but if '* they who die in the Lord," were happy before the resurrection, then we ■were not of all men most miserable, though there were to be no resurrection ; for the godly are presently happy. So that one must fail; either the resurrection, or the intermedial happiness ; the proof of one relies upon the destruction of the other; and because we can no other ways be happy, therefore there shall be a resurrection.
To this I answer, that if the godly, instantly upon their dissolution, had the vision beatifical, it is very true, that they were not most miserable, though there be no resurrec- tion of the dead, though the body were turned into its ori- ginal nothing: for the joys of the sight of God would, in the soul alone, make them infinite recompense for all the sufferings of this world. But that which the saints have after their dissolution, being only the comforts of a holy hope, the argument remains good : for these intermedial hopes being nothing at all, but in relation to the resurrection, these hopes do not destroy, but confirm it rather; and if the resurrection were not to be, we should neither have any hopes here, nor hopes hereafter, and therefore the apostle's word is, " If here only we had hopes ;" that is, if our hopes only related to this life ; but because our hopes only relate to the life to come, and even after this life, we are still but in the regions of an enlarged hope, this life and that interval are both but the same argument to infer a resurrection : for they are the hopes of that state, and the joys of those hopes, and it is the comfort of that joy, which makes them blessed who die in the love of God, and the faith and obedience of the Lord Jesus.
And now to the proposition itself.
In the state of separation, the souls departed perceive the blessing and comfort of their labours ; they are alive after death ; and after death, immediately they find great refresh-
A FUNERAL SERMON. 547
"ments. " Justorum animas in manu Dei sunt, et non tanget illos torrnentum mortis :" " The torments of death shall not touch the souls of the righteous, because they are in the hands of God*^." And fifteen hundred years after the death of Moses, we find him talkino- with our blessed Saviour in his transfiguration upon mount Tabor: and as Moses was then, so are all the saints inmiediately after death, " praesentes apud Dominum," " they are present with the Lord ;" and to be so, is not a state of death ; and yet of this it is, that St. Paul affirms it to be much better than to be alive.
And this was the undoubted sentence of the Jews before Christ, and since ; and therefore our blessed Saviour told the converted thief, that he should " that day be with him in paradise." Now without peradventure, he spake so as he was to be understood ; meaning by 'paradise,' that which the schools and pulpits of the Rabbins did usually speak of it. By paradise, till the time of Esdras, it is certain, the Jews only meant the blessed garden, in which God only placed Adam and Eve : but in the time of Esdras, and so downward, when they spake distinctly of things to happen after this Jife, and began to signify their new discoveries, and modern philo- sophy by names, they called the state of souls, expecting the resurrection of their bodies, by the name of Hi' Pj ' the garden of Eden.' Hence came that form of comprecation, and blessing to the soul of an Israelite, " Sit anima ejus in horto Eden," '* Let his soul be in the garden of Eden ;" and in their solemn prayers at the time of their death, they were not to say, ** Let his soul rest; and let his sleep be in peace, until the Com- forter shall come, and open the gates of paradise unto him :" expressly distinguishing paradise from the state of the re- surrection : and so it is evident, in the intercourse on the cross, between Christ and the converted thief. ' That day both were to be in paradise ;' but Christ himself was not then ascended into heaven, and therefore paradise was no part of that region, where Christ now, and hereafter the saints shall reign in glory. For Trapahicroi did, by use and custom, signify ' any place of beauty and pleasure.' So the LXX. read Eccles. ii. 5. " I made me gardens and orchards," " I made me a pa^ radise," so it is in the Greek ; and Cicero ^ having found this
<Wisd. iii. 1. «DeSen. xvii,
^48 A I'l NEUA1> SERMON.
strange word in Xenophon, renders it by '*conseptum agrum ac diligenter consitum :" " a field well hedged and set with flowers and fruit." — ' Vivarium,' Gellius renders it, * a place to keep birds and beasts alive for pleasure.' Pollux says this word was Persian by its original ; yet because by tra- duction it became a Hebrew, we may best learn the meaning of it from the Jews, who used it most often, and whose sense we better understand. Their meaning, therefore, was this ; that as paradise, or the garden of Eden, was a place of great beauty, pleasure, and tranquillity; so the state of separate souls was a state of peace and excellent delights. So Philo allegorically does expound Paradise. AEyouai ya^ h ru Tra^a- ^£iau (puTa Eivai /xri^h boikotcc roii nra^ ^/^^v, aXKa ^wrii, a^avavia^, sl^ria-euq. " For the trees that grow in paradise are not like ours, but they bring forth knowledge and life, and immorta- lity."— It is, therefore, more than probable, that when the converted thief heard our blessed Saviour speak of ' paradise/ or ' Gan Eden,' he who was a Jew, and heard that on that day he should be there, understood the meaning to be, that he should be there, where all the good Jews did believe the souls of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to be placed. As if Christ had said; Though you only ask to be remembered when I come into my kingdom, not only that shall be performed in time, but even to-day thou shalt have great refreshment; and this the Hellenish Jews called dvaTravaiv rou Tra^aMaov, * the rest of paradise :' and "TTa^anKmiv, ' the comfort' of para- dise ; the word being also warranted from that concerning Lazarus, Tra^aKaxthaiy ' he is comforted.'
But this we learn more perfectly from the raptures of St. Paul : " He knew a man " (meaning himself) " rapt up into the third heaven : and I knew such a man how that he was caught up into paradise''." The raptures and visions were distinct ; for St. Paul being a Jew, and speaking after the manner of his nation, makes ' paradise ' a distinct thing from * the third heaven.' For the Jews deny any ' orbes ' to be in heaven ; but they make three regions only, the one of clouds, the second of stars, and the third of angels. To this third or supreme heaven was St. Paul rapt; but he was also bojne to paradise, to another place distinct and separate by
^ 2 Cor. ii. 3.
A FUNERAL SERMON. 549
time and station; for by paradise liis conntiymen never un- derstood the third heaven. But there also it was that he heard ra app-ma pvixccra, * unspeakable words,' great glorifica- tions of God, huge excellencies, such which he might not, or could not utter below. The effect of these considerations is this; that although the saints are not yet admitted to the blessings consequent to a happy resurrection, yet they have the intermedial entertainments of a present and a great joy.
To this purpose are those words to be understood : " To him that overcomes, will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God'." That is, if I may have leave to expound these words, to mean what the Jews did about that time understand by such words : ^ev^^ov Tvg ^wi??, * the tree of life,' does signify the principle of peace and holi- ness, of wisdom and comforts for ever. Philo, expounding it, calls it TYiv fjLByia-rm rm a^irm Bsoa-t^siav, Ji' hg dOavani^ETOci ri ^uxri : ' The worship of God, the greatest of all virtues, by which the soul is made to live for ever :' as if by eating of this tree of life in the paradise of God, they did mean, that they who die well, shall immediately be feasted with the deli- ciousness of a holy conscience, which the Spirit of God ex- presses by saying, '* They shall walk up and down in white garments, and their works shall follow them;" their tree of life shall germinate ; they shall then feel the comforts of hav- ing done good works ; a sweet remembrance and a holy peace shall caress and feast them, and there they shall " walk up and down in white ^ ;" that is, as candidates of the resur- rection to immortality.
And this allegory of the garden of Eden and paradise was so heartily pursued by the Jews, to represent the state of separation, that the Essenes describe that state by the cir- cumstances and ornaments of a blessed garden : Xoi^ov otrt oixQpoii, OUTS vKpEToTg, OUTS Ku/Mcta-t ^apvvofxivov : *' a region that is not troubled with clouds or showers, or storms or blasts :" axx' QV e^ uiKeavou TT^acv; «£( (stpu^og kTTiTrvkwv avoc-^vx^i '-, " but a place which is perpetually refreshed with delicious breaths." This was it which the heathens did dream concerning the Elysian fields ; for all the notices Trspi ahu, concerning the regions of separate souls, came into Greece from the bar- barians, says Diodorus Siculus; and Tertullian obserA^es,
> Kev. ii. 7. ^ Rev. iii. -1, 5. and xiv. 13.
550 A FUNERAL SERjMON.
although we call that paradise, wliich is a place appointed to receive the souls of the saints, and that this is separated from the notices of the world by a wall of fire, a portion of the torrid zone (which he supposes to be meant by the flam- ing sword of the angel placed at the gates of paradise) ; yet, says he, the Elysian fields have already possessed the faith and opinions of men. All comes from the same fountain, the doctrine of the old synagogue, confirmed by the words of Christ, and the commentaries of the apostles; viz. that after death, before the day of judgment, there is a paradise for God's servants, a region of rest, of comfort, and holy expec- tations. And, therefore, it is remarkable that these words of the Psalmist, " Ne rapias me in medio dierum meorum ';'' * snatch me not away in the midst of my days :' in the He- brew it is, '' Ne facias me ascendere ;" * make me not to ascend,' or to go upwards ; meaning, to the supernatural regions of separate souls, who, after death, are in their begin- nings of exultation. For to them that die in the Lord, death is a preferment, it is a part of their great good fortune ; for death hath not only lost the sting, but it brings a coronet in his hand, which will invest and adorn the heads of saints, till that day come in which the crown of righteousness shall be brought forth, to give them the investiture of an everlasting- kingdom.
But that I may take up this proposition useful and clear, I am to add some things by way of supplement.
1. This place of separation was called 'paradise' by the Jews, and by Christ, and after Christ's ascension, by St. John, because it signifies a place of pleasure and rest ; and, there- fore, by the same analogy, the word may be still used in all the periods of the world, though the circumstances, or though the state of things, be changed. It is generally supposed that this had a proper name, and in the Old Testament was called ' Abraham's bosom;' that is, the region where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did dwell, till the coming of Christ. But I suppose myself to have great reason to dissent from this com- mon opinion ; for this word of * Abraham's bosom,' being but once used in both the Testaments, and then particularly ap- plied to the person of Lazarus, must needs signify the emi- nence and privilege of joy that Lazarus had ; for all that were
' P»al. cii. «5.
A FUNERAL SERMON, 551
in the blessed state of separation, were not in ' Abraham's bosom,' but only the best and most excellent persons ; but they were /j-ira t5 'AQ^aaix, ' with Abraham ;' and the analogy of the phrase to the manner of the Jewish feasting, where the best guest did lie in the bosom of the master, that is, had the best place, makes it most reasonable to believe that ' Abra- ham's bosom ' does not signify the general state of separa- tion, even of the blessed, but the choicest place in that state, a greater degree of blessedness. But because he is the father of the faithful, therefore, to be with Abraham, or to sit down with Abraham, in the time of the Old Testament, did signify the same thing as to be in paradise ; but to be in * Abraham's bosom ' signifies a great eminence of place and comfort, which is indulged to the most excellent and the most afflicted.
2. Although the state of separation may now also, and is by St. John called paradise, because the allegory still holds perfectly, as signifying comfort and holy pleasures ; yet the spirits of good men are not to be said * to be with Abraham,' but ' to be with Christ ;' and as being with Abraham was the specification of the more general word of paradise in the Old Testament, so * being with Christ ' is the specification of it in the New. So St. Stephen prayed, " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit;" and St. Paul said, " 1 desire to be dissolved, and to be with Christ ;" which expression St. Polycarp also used in his epistle to the Philippians, oVi tig tov 6(pst\6/u.£VQv aOloTg rmoVy £(Vj Trafa K^if/jj : " they are in the place that is due to them, they are with the Lord;" that is, in the hands, in the custody of the Lord Jesus ; as appears in the words of St. Stephen and St. Paul. So St. Jerome ; " Scimus Nepotianum nos- trum esse cum Christo, et sanctorum mixtum choris :" * We know that our Nepotian is with Christ, mingled in the choirs of saints.' Upon this account (and it is not at all unreason- able) the church hath conjectured, that the state of separate souls, since the glorification of our Lord, is much bettered and advanced, and their comforts greater ; because, as before Christ's coming, the expectation of the saints that slept, was fixed upon the revelation of the Messias in his first coming, so now it is upon the second coming unto judgment, and in his glory. This improvement of their condition is well inti- mated by their being said to be under the altar; that is,
552 A FUNERAL SERMON.
under the protection of Christ, under tlie powers and benefits of his priesthood, by which he makes continual intercession both for them and us. This place some of the old doctors understood too literally, aud from hence they believed that the souls of departed saints were under their material altars ; which fancy produced that fond decree of the council of Eli- beris ■", that wax lights should not by day be burnt in ceme- teries, " inquietandi enim spiritus sanctorum non sunt :" ' lest the spirits of saints should, by the light of the diurnal tapers, be disquieted.' This reason, though it be trifling and impertinent, yet it declares their opinion, that they supposed their souls to be near their relicks, which were placed under the altars. But better than this their state is described by St. John, in these words : " Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him night and day in his temple, and he that sits upon the throne, shall dwell among them." With which general words, as being modest bounds to our inquiries, enough to tell us it is rarely well, but enough also to chastise all curious questions, let us remain content; and labour with faith and patience, with hope and charity, to be made worthy to partake of those comforts, after which when we have long inquired, when at last we come to try what they are, we shall find them much better, and much otherwise than we imagine.
3. I am to admonish this also, that although our blessed Saviour is, in the creed, said to descend elg a^ou, * into hell' (so we render it) ; yet this does not at all prejudice his other words, " This day thou shalt be with me in paradise :" for the word bI; a^ou signifies indefinitely the state of separation, whe- ther blessed or accursed ; it means only * the invisible place,' or the region of darkness, whither whoso descends shall be no more seen. For as among the heathens the ' Elysian fields,' and ' Tartara,' are both kv ahv ; so amongst the Jews and Christians, *paradisus ' and * gehenna ' are the distinct states of hades. Of the first we have a plain testimony in Diphilus:
Ktti yij xtt6' S.h\v Suo Tfi^ovi ve/jii^ofxtVy M>av iiKoiaiy, xarl^av ia-t^Zv i^iif,
*f.Jn hades there are two ways, one for just men, and another
<" Can. iii. 4.
A FUXEUAL SERMOIV. 553
for the impious." Of the second we have the testimony of Josephus, who speaking of the Sadducees, says, rag KaO' ol^ou rt/jLuplag km Ti/xag dvai^ouai, ' they take away or deny the rewards and punishments respectively which are in hades," or in the state of separation ; so that if Christ's soul was in paradise, he was m hades. In vain, therefore, does St. Austin tor- ment himself to tell how Christ could be in both places at once, when it is no harder than to tell how a man may be in England and London at the same time.
4. It is observable, that in the mentions of paradise by St. John, he twice speaks of ' the tree of life,' but never of ' the tree of knowledge of good and evil ;' because this was the symbol of secular knowledge, of prudence and skill of doing things of this world, which we can naturally use ; we may smell and taste them, but not feed upon them ; that is, these are no part of our enjoyment ; and if we be given up to the study of such notices, and be immerged in the things of this world, we cannot attend to the studies of religion and of the divine service. But these cares and secular divertise- ments shall cease, when our souls are placed in paradise; there shall be no care taken for raising portions for our chil- dren, nor to provide bread for our tables ; no cunning con- trivances to be safe from the crafty snare of an enemy ; no amazement at losses, no fear of slanderings or of the gripes of publicans ; but we shall feed on the tree of life, love of God, and longings for the coming of Christ : we are then all spirit, and our employment shall be symbolical, that is, spi- ritual, holy, and pleasant.
I have now made it as evident as questions of this nature will bear, that in the state of separation, the spirits of good men shall be blessed and happy souls, — they have an antepast or taste of their reward ; but their great reward itself, their crown of righteousness, shall not be yet ; that shall not be until the day of judgment; and this was the third proposi- tion I undertook to prove; the consummation and perfection of the saints' felicity shall be at the resurrection of the dead.
'Ev 7ra§oua-i(x auToi), " at his coming ;" so St. John expresses the time, " that we may not then be ashamed : for now we are the sons of God, but it does not yet appear what we shall be ; but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like
554 A FUNERAL SERMON.
unto him, and see him as he is"." At his p;lorious appearing, we shall also appear <;lorious; we shall see him as he is ; but till then, this beatihc vision shall not be at all ; but for the interval, the case is otherwise. TertuUian affirms, " Puniri et foveri animani interim in inferis, sub exspectatione utriusque judicii, in quadam usurpatione et Candida ejus : " the souls are punished or refreshed in their regions, expecting the day of their judgment and several sentences".' " Habitacula ilia, animaruni promptuaria, nominavit Scriptura," saith St. Am- brose : * the Scripture calls these habitations, the promptu- aries or repositories of souls p.' There is comfort, but not the full reward ; a certain expectation, supported with excellent intervals of joy : ** refrigerium," so the Latins call it, * a refreshment.' " Donee consummatio rerum resurrectionem omnium plenitudine mercedis expungat, tunc apparitura coe- lesti promissione," saith TertuUian : " until the consumma- tion of all things points out the resurrection, by the fulness of reward, and the appearing of the heavenly promise." So the author of the questions * ad orthodoxos '^ :' '' Imme- diately after death, presently there is a separation of the just from the unjust; for they are borne by angels e(V a^ioug avruv rowoug, ' into the places they have deserved ;' and they are in those places (pu>.aTloiJLivai hwj t^j Vfxcpag TYig dvaaraaeug xai avlaTrO" ^6<r£ug, ' kept unto the day of resurrection and retribution.' But what do they in the mean time? how is it with them? (davfjutaiav Tiva ri^ovYiv in^irai, «ai ayaxxsroci, says Nazianzen' : ' they rejoice and are delighted in a wonderful joy.' * They see angels and archangels, they converse with them, and see our blessed Saviour Jesus in his glorified humanity ;' so Justin Martyr'. But in these great joys they look for greater. They are now * in paradiso,' but they long that the body and soul may be in heaven together ; but this is the glory of the day of judg- ment, the fruit of the resurrection. And this whole affair is agreeable to reason and the analogy of the whole dispen- sation, as it is generally and particularly described in Scripture.
For when the greatest effect of the Divine power, the mightiest promise, that hardest thing to Christian faith, that
" 1 John, ii. 28. iii. 4. " Lib. de Anima, ct lib. adv. Marciou.
p De Bono Mortis, cap. 10. <» Qiiaest. 75.
' Orat. Funebr. Cresar. Fiatiis. * Ubi siiprd.
A FUNERAL SERMON. 555
impossible thing to gentile philosophy, the expectation of the whole world, the new creation, when that shall come to pass, viz. that the souls shall be reinvested with their bodies, when the ashes of dissolved bones shall stand up a new and living frame, to suppose that then there shall be nothing done in order to eternity, but to publish the salvation of saints, of which they were possessed before, is to make a great solem- nity for nothing, to do great things for no great end, and, therefore, it is not reasonable to suppose it.
For if it were a good argument of the apostle, that the patriarchs and saints of the Old Testament received not the promises signified by Canaan and the land of promise, be- cause ' God hath provided some better thing for us, that without us they should not be made perfect,' it must also conclude of all alike ; that they who died since Christ, must stay till the last day, that they and we and all may be made perfect together. And this very thing was told to the spirits of the martyrs, who under the altar cried, ' How long, O Lord ',' Sec. that they should " rest yet for a little season,'' until their fellow-servants also shall be fulfilled.
Upon this account it is, that the day of judgment is a day of recompense. So said our blessed Lord himself: " Thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just"." And this is the day in which all things shall be restored ; for " the heavens must receive Jesus till the time of restitution of all things "" :" and till then, the reward ' is said to be laid up.' So St. Paul : " Henceforth is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the righteous Judge shall give me in that day." And that you may know he means the resur- rection and the day of judgment, he adds ; " and not to me only, but to all them that love his coming y ;'' of whom it is certain many shall be alive at that day, and therefore cannot, before that day, receive the crown of righteousness : and then also, and not till then, shall be his appearing ; but till then, it is a ' depositum.' The sum is this : in the world, we walk and live by faith ; in the state of separation, we live by hope; and in the resurrection, we shall live by an eternal charity. Here we see God as ' in a glass, darkly ;' in the separation we
' Rev. vi. 10. « Luke, xiv, li.
" Acts, iii. 7. y i' Tim. iv. 0.
^5G A FUNERAL SERMON".
shall behold him, but it is afar off; and after the resurrection we shall see him ' face to face,' in the everlasting comprehen- sions of an intuitive beatitude. In this life we are warriors ; in the separation we are conquerors ; but we shall not triumph till after the resurrection.
And in proportion to this is also the state of devils and damned spirits. " Art thou come to torment us before the time," said the devils to our blessed Saviour. There is for them also an appointed time, and when that is, we learn from St. Jude^: " They are reserved in chains under darkness, under the judgment of the great day." Well, therefore, did St. James affirm, *' that the devils believe and tremble ;" and so do the damned souls, with an insupportable amazement, fearing the revelation of that day. They know that day will come, and they know they shall find an intolerable sentence on that day ; and they fear infinitely, and are in amazement and confusion, feeling the worm of conscience, and are in the state of devils, who fear God and hate him ; they tremble, but they love him not ; and yet they die because they would not love him, because they would not with their powers and strengths keep his commandments.
This doctrine, though of late it hath been laid aside, upon the interest of the church of Rome, and for compliance with some other schools, yet was it universally the doctrine of the primitive church ; as appears out of Justin Martyr, who, in his dialogues with Tryphon, reckons this amongst the hre^o- ^o^tat, * errors' of some men, who say there shall be no resur- rection of the dead ; but that, as soon as good men are dead. Tag 4-yxaf ai/ruv avaXajM^avta^ai e/j tov ov^avov, " their souls are taken up immediately into heaven." And the writer of the questions * ad orthodoxos,' asks », whether, before the resur- rection, there shall be a reward of works? because to the thief paradise was promised that day. He answers : " It was fit the thief should go to paradise, and there perceive what things should be g-iven to the works of faith; but there he is kept, lui trii yifiBpag ryj; dvaa-Tcia-eui xai dvlaTro^oascog " until the day of resurrection and reward." But in paradise the soul hath an intellectual perception, both of herself, and of those things which are under her.
» Cap. vi. » Qii. 76. Q. 60. Q. 75.
A FUNERAL SERMON. 557
Concerning which I shall not need to heap up testimo- nies. This only : it is the doctrine of the Greek church unto this day ; and was the opinion of the greatest part of the ancient church, both Latin and Greek ; and by degrees was, in the west, eaten out by the doctrine of purgatory and invo- cation of saints ; and rejected a little above two hundred years ago, in the council of Florence ; and since that time it hath been more generally taught, that the souls of good men enjoy the beatific vision before the resurrection, even pre- sently upon the dissolution. According to which new opi- nion, it will be impossible to understand the meaning of my text, and of divers other places of Scripture, which I have now alleged and explicated ; or at all to perceive the eco- nomy and dispensation of the day of judgment ; or how it can be a day of discerning ; or how the reapers (the angels) shall bind up the wicked into bundles, and throw them into the unquenchable fire ; or yet how it can be useful, or neces- sary, or prudent for Christ to give a solemn sentence upon all the world; and how it can be, that that day should be so for- midable and full of terrors, when nothing can affright those that have long enjoyed the beatific presence of God ; and no thunders or earthquakes can affright them, who have upon them the biggest evil in the world, I mean the damned, who, according to this opinion, have been in hell for many ages : and it can mean nothing but to them that are alive ; and then it is but a particular, not an universal judgment; and after all it can pretend to no piety, to no Scripture, to no reason, and only can serve the ends of the church of Rome, who can no way better be confuted in their invocations of saints than by this truth, that the saints do not yet enjoy the beatific vision ; and though they are in a state of ease and comfort, yet are not in a state of power and glory and king- dom, till the day of judgment.
This also perfectly does overthrow the doctrine of purga- tory. For as the saints departed are not perfect, and there- fore certainly not to be invocated, not to be made our patrons and advocates ; so neither are they in such a condition as to be in torment ; and it is impossible that any wise man should believe, that the souls of good men after death should endure thersharp pains of hell, and yet at the same time believe those words of Scripture, " Blessed are the dead that die in the
558 A FUNKllAL SEUMOIf.
Lord, from henceforth ; yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours, and their works do follow them •"." If they can rest in beds of fire, and sing hymns of glory in the torments of the damned, if their labours are done when their pains are almost infinite, then these words of the Spirit of God, and that doctrine of purgatory, can be reconciled ; else never to eternal ages. But it is certain they are words that cannot deceive us : " Non tans-et eos tormentum mor- tis :" * torment in death shall never touch them.'
But having established the proposition, and the intended sense of the text, let us awhile consider,
1. That God is our God when we die, if we be his ser- vants while we live : and to be our God signifies very much good to us. He will rescue us from the powers of hell ; the devil shall have no part or portion in us ; we shall be kept in safe custody, we shall be in the hands of Christ, out of which all the powers of hell shall never snatch us ; and therefore we may die with confidence, if we die with a good conscience ; we have no cause of fear, if we have just grounds to hope for pardon. The Turks have a saying, that the Christians do not believe themselves, when they talk such glorious things of heaven and the state of separation ; for if they did, they would not be so afraid to die : but they do not so well consider that Christians believe all this well enough, but they believe better than they live; and therefore they believe and tremble, because they do not live after the rate of going to heaven ; they know that for good men glorious things are prepared ; but * Tophet is prepared for evil kings/ and unjust rulers, for vicious men and degenerate Christians ; there is a hell for accursed souls, and men live without fear of it so long, till their fear as soon as it begins in an instant passes into despair, and the fearful groans of the damned. It is no wonder to see men so unwilling to die, to be impa- tient of the thought of death, to be afraid to make their will, to converse with the solemn scarecrow. He that is fit to die, must have long dwelt with it, must handle it on all sides, must feel whether the sting be taken out : he must examine * whether he be in Christ ;' that is, whether * he be a new creature,' And indeed 1 do not so much wonder that any
*> Rtv. XX. 6.
A FUNERAL SERMON. 559
man fears to die, as when I see a careless and a wicked person descend to his grave with as much indifference as he goes to sleep ; that is, with no other trouble than that he leaves the world, but he does not fear to die ; and yet, upon the instant of his dissolution, he goes into the common receptacle of souls, where nothing can be addressed to him but the con- sequence of what he brings along with him, and he shall pre- sently know whether he shall be saved or damned.
We have read of some men, who by reading or hearing strange opinions have entered into desperate melancholy, and divers who have perfectly despaired of the Divine mercy; who feeling such horrid convulsions in their souls, such fear- ful expectations of an eternal curse, that not finding them- selves able to bear so intolerable a fear, have hanged or drowned themselves ; and yet they only thought so, or feared it ; and might have altered it if they would have hoped and prayed : but then let it be considered, when the soul is stripped of the cloud, her body, — when she is entered into strange regions, and converses only with spirits, and sees plainly all that is within her, — when all her sins appear in their own natural ugliness, and set out by their aggravating cir- cumstances ; then she remembers her filthy pleasures, and hates them infinitely, as being such things to which she then can have no appetite : then she perceives she shall perish for that which is not, for that whose remembrance is intolerable ; when she sees many new secrets which she understood not before, and hath stranger apprehensions of the wrath of God, than ever could be represented in this life : when she hath the notices of a spirit, and an understanding pure enough to see essences, and rightly to weigh all the degrees of things ; when, possibly, she is often affiighted with the alarms and conjectures of the day of judgment ; or if she be not, yet certainly knows not only by faith and fear, but by a clear light and proper knowledge, that it shall certainly come, and its effects shall remain for ever, then she hath time enough to bewail her own folly and remediless infelicity ; if we could now think seriously, that things must come to that pass, and place ourselves, by holy meditation, in the circumstances of that condition, and consider what we should then think, — how miserably deplore our folly, how comfortless remember our ill-gotten wealth ; with how much asperity and deep sighing
560 A FUXEUAL iitKAION.
we should cull to mind our foolish pride, our trifling swear- ing, our beastly drinkings, our unreasonable and brutish lusts; it could not be but we must grow wiser on a sudden, despise the world, betake ourselves to a strict religion, reject all vanities of spirit, and be sober and watch unto prayer. If any of us had but a strange dream, and should, in the fears of the night, but suppose ourselves in hell, and be affrighted with those circumstances of damnation which we can tell of, and use in our imperfect notices of things, it would effect strange changes upon a ductile and malleable spirit. A frequent, severe meditation can do more than a seldom and a fantastic dream ; but an active faith can do more than all the arts and contingencies of fancy or discourse.
Now it is well with us, and we may yet secure it shall be well with us for ever; but within an hour it may be otherwise with any of us all, who do not instantly take courses of security. But he that does not, would, in such a change, soon come to wish, that he might exchange his state with the meanest, with the miserablest of all mankind ; with galley-slaves and miners, with men condemned to tortures for a good conscience.
Sed cum pnlcra minax succidet membra seniris, Quam velles spinas tunc liabiiisse meas*.
In the day of felling timber, the shrub and the bramble are better than the tallest fir, or the goodliest cedar ; and a poor saint, whose soul is in the hand of Jesus, placed under the altar, over which our high priest, like the cherubim over the propitiatory, intercedes perpetually for the hastening of his glory, is better than the greatest tyrant, who, if he dies, is undone for ever. For, in the interval, there shall be rest and comfort to the one ; and torment, and amazement, and hellish confusion to the other; and the day of judgment will come, and it shall appear to all the world, that they whose joys were not in this world, were not, ' of all men, most miserable,' because their joys and their life were hid with Christ in God, and at the resurrection of the just, shall be brought forth, and be illustrious, beyond ail the beauties of the world.
= Avieu. fab. 19. 13.
A FUNERAL SERMON. 561
I have now done with my text, and been the expounder of this part of the divine oracle ; but here is another text, and another sermon yet. Ye have heard Moses and the prophets ; now hear one from the dead, whose life and death would each of them make an excellent sermon, if this dead man had a good interpreter : for he being dead, yet speaketh, and calleth upon us to live well, and to live quickly, to watch perpetually, and to work assiduously ; for we shall descend into the same .shadows of death.
Linquenda telliis, et domus, et placens Uxor; neque liariim, quas oolis, arborum Te, praeter invisas ciipicssos, Ulla brevem domiuuni seqnetur*'.
* Thou must leave thy rich land, and thy well-built house, and thy pleasing wife ; and of all the trees of thy orchard or thy wood, nothing shall attend thee to the grave, but oak for thy coffin, and cypress for thy funeral.' It shall not then be inquired how long thou hast lived, but how well. None below will be concerned, whether thou wert rich or poor, but all the spirits of light and darkness shall be busy in the scrutiny of thy life ; for the good angels would fain carry thy soul to Christ; and if they do, the devils will follow, and accuse thee there ; and when thou appearest before the righteous Judge, what will become of thee, unless Christ be thy advocate, and God be merciful and appeased, and the angels be thy guards, and a holy conscience be thy comfort. There will to every one of us come a time, when we shall with great passion, and great interest, inquire, how have I spent my days, how have I laid out my money, how have I employed my time, how have I served God, and how repented me of my sins ? and, upon our answer to these questions depends a happy or .an unhappy eternity : and blessed is he, who, concerning these things, takes care in time ; and of this care I may with much confidence and comfort propound to you the example of this good man, whose relicks lie before you : Sir George Dalston, of Dalston in Cumberland, a worthy man, beloved of his country, useful to his friends, friendly to all men, careful of his rehgion, and a true servant of God.
He was descended of an ancient and worthy house in
d Hor. Od. ii. 14. VOL. VI. O O
502 A 1 L' \ £ U A 1 . St 11 M O X .
Cumberland ; and lie adorned his family and extraction with a more wortliy conijjortment ; for to be of a worthy fauidy, and to bring to it no stock of our proper virtue, is to be upbraided by our family ; and a worthy father can be no honour to his son, when it shall be said, " behold the difference, this crab descended from a goodly apple-tree ;' but he who beautifies the escutcheon of his ancestors by worthy achieve- ments, by learning, or by wisdom, by valour and by great employments, by a holy life and an useful conversation, that man is the parent of his own fame, and a new beginner of an ancient family ; for, as conversation is a perpetual creation, so is the progression of a family in a line of worthy descendants, a daily beginning of its honour, and a new stabiliment.
He was bred in learning, in which Cambridge was his tiring room, and the court of queen Elizabeth was his stage, in which he first represented the part of a hopeful young man ; but there he staved not ; his friends not being desirous, that the levities of youth should be fermented by the liberties of a rich and splendid court, caused him to lie in the restraints, and to grow ripe in the sobrieties of a country life, and a married state ; in which, as I am informed, he behaved himself with so great worthiness, and gave such probation of his love of justice, popular regards of his country's good, and abilities to serve them, that, for almost forty years together, his country chose him for their knight, to serve in all the intervening parliaments. ' Magistratus, iiidicatorium ;' 'em- ployment shows the man;' he was a leading man in parlia- ments, prevailing there by the great reputation of his justice and integrity ; and yet he was not unpleasant and hated at court : for he had well understood, that the true interests of courts emd parliaments were one, and that they are like the humours of the body, if you increase one beyond its limit, that destroys all the rest, and itself at last ; and when they look upon themselves as enemies, and that hot and cold must fight, the prevailing part is abated in the conflict, and the vanquished part is destroyed : but when they look upon themselves as varieties serving the difi'ering aspects and necessities of the .same body, they are for the allay of each other's exorbitances and excesses, and, by keeping their own measures, they preserve the man : this the good man well understood ; for so he comported himself, that he was loud in
A FUXERAL SERMOX. 563
parlidments and valued at court; he was respected in very many parliaments, and was worthily regarded by the worthy kings ; which, without an orator, commends a man : " Gra- vissimi principis judiciuin in minoribus etiam rebus consequi pulcrum est," said Piiny ; " To be approved, though but in lesser terms, by the judgment of a v.'ise prince, is a great ornament to a man." — For as king Theodoric, in Cassiodore, said, " Neque dignus est a quopiam redargui, qui nostro judicio meretur absolvi :" " No man to reprove him, whom the king aught commends."
But I need no artifices to represent him worthy, his argu- ments of probation were within, in the magazines of a good heart, and represented themselves by worthy actions. For God was pleased to invest him with a marvellous sweet nature, which is certainly to be reckoned as one half of the grace of God : because a good nature, being the relicks and remains of that shipwreck which Adam made, is the proper and immediate disposition to holiness, as the corruption of Adam was to disobedience and peevish counsels. A good nature will not upbraid the more imperfect persons, will not deride the ignorant, will not reproach the erring man, will not smite sinners on the face, will not despise the penitent. A good nature is apt to forgive injuries, to pity the miserable, to rescue the oppressed, to make everyone's condition as tolerable as he can ; and so would he. For, as when good nature is heightened by the grace of God, that which was natural, becomes now spiritual ; so these actions which proceeded from an excellent nature, and were pleasing and useful to men, — when they derive from a new principle of grace, they become pleasant in the eyes of God : then obedience to laws is duty to God ; justice is righteousness, bounty becomes graciousness, and alms is charity.
And, indeed, this is a gra.ce in which this good man was very remarkable, being very frequent and much in alms, tender-hearted to the poor, open-handed to relieve their needs ; the bellies of the poor did bless him, he filled them with food and gladness ; and I have heard that he was so regular, so constant, so free in this duty, that in these late unhappy wars, being in a garrison, and near the suifering some rude accidents, the beggars made themselves guard, and rescued him from that trouble, who had so often rescued them from hunger.
He was of a meek and gentle spirit, but not too soft ; he
564 A FUNERAL SERMON.
knew how to do good, and how to put by an injury ; but I have heard it told by them that knew his Ufe, that being, by the unavoidable trouble of a s^reat estate, engaged in great suits at law, he was never plaintiff, but always upon the defensive part ; and that he had reason on his side, and justice for him, I need allege no other testimony, but that the sentence of his judges so declared it.
But that in which I propound this good man most imit- able, was in his religion ; for he was a great lover of the church, a constant attender to the sermons of the church ; a diligent hearer of the prayers of the church, and an obedient son to perform the commands of the church. He was dili- gent in his times and circumstances of devotion ; he would often be at church so early, that he was seen to walk long in the church-yard before prayers, being as ready to confess his sins at the beginning, as to receive the blessing at the end of prayers. Indeed he was so great a lover of sermons, that though he knew how to value that which was the best, yet he was patient of that which was not so ; and if he could not learn any thing to improve his faith, yet he would find some- thing to exercise his patience, and something for charity ; yet this his great love of sermons could not tempt him to a willingness of neglecting the prayers of the church, of which he was a great lover to his dying day. " Oves mese exaudiunt vocem meam," says Christ; " my sheep hear my voice ;" and so the church says, ' my sheep hear my voice, they love my words, they pray in my forms, they observe ray orders, they delight in ray offices, they revere ray ministers, and obey ray constitutions :' and so did he ; loving to have his soul recom- mended to God, and his needs represented, and his sins confessed, and his pardon implored, in the words of his mother, in the voice and accent of her that nursed him up to a spiritual life, to be a man in Christ Jesus.
He was indeed a great lover, and had a great regard for God's ministers, ever remembering the words of God, * keep my rest, and reverence my priests ;' he honoured the calling in all, but he loved and revered the persons of such who were conscientious keepers of their ' depositum,' ' that trust,' which was committed to them : such which did not for interest quit their conscience, and did not, to preserve some parts of their revenue, quit some portions of their religion. He knew that what was true in 1639, was also true in 1644,
A FUNERAL SERMON. 565
and so to 57, and shall continue true to eternal ages ; and they that change their persuasions by force or interest, did neither believe well nor ill, upon competent and just grounds ; they are not just, though they happen on the right side. Hope of gain did by chance teach them well, and fear of loss abuses them directly. He pitied the persecuted, and never would take part with persecutors : he prayed for his prince, and served him in what he could : he loved God, and loved the church ; he was a lover of his country's liberties, and yet an observer of the laws of his king.
Thus he behaved himself to all his superior relatives ; to his equals and dependants he was also just, and kind, and loving. He was an excellent friend, laying out his own interest to serve theirs ; sparing not himself, that he might serve them : as knowing society to be the advantage of man's nature ; and friendship the ornament of society, and useful- ness the ornament of friendship, and in this he was well known to be very worthy. He was tender and careful of his children^ and so provident and so wise, so loving and obliging to his whole family, that he justly had that love and regard, that duty and observance from them, which his kindness and his care had merited. He was a provident and careful conductor of his estate ; but far from covetousness, as appeared toward the evening of his life, in which that vice does usually prevail amongst old men, who are more greedy, when they have least need, and load their sumpters so much the more, by how much nearer they are to their journey's end; but he made a demonstration of the contrary ; for he washed his hands and heart of the world, gave up his estate long before his death or sickness, to be managed by his only son, whom he left since, but then first made and saw him his heir; he emptied his hands of secular employment ; meddled not with money, but for the uses of the poor, for piety, justice, and rehgion.
And now having divested himself of all objections and his conversation with the world, quitting his affections to it, he wholly gave himself to religion and devotion : he awakened early, and would presently be entertained with reading ; when he rose, still he would be read to, and hear some of the Psalms of David : and excepting only what time he took for the necessities of his life and health, all the rest he gave to prayer, reading, and meditation, save only that he did not
5G6 A FUXEUAL SERMON.
neglect, nor rudely entertain the visits and kind offices of his neiohbonrs.
But in this great vacation from the world he espied his advantages, he knew well, according to that saying of the emperor Charles V., " Oportet inter vitoe negotia et diem mortis spatium aliquod iiitercedere;" there ought to be a valley between two such mountains, the businesses of our life, and the troubles of our death ; and he stayed not till the noise of the Bridegroom's coming did awaken and affright him ; but by daily prayers twice a day, constantly with his family, besides the piety and devotion of his own retirements, by a monthly communion, by weekly sermons, and by the religion of every day, he stood in procincts, ready with oil in his lamp, watching till his Lord should call.
And, indeed, when he was hearing what God did speak to him of dutv, he also received his summons to give his account. For he was so pertinacious and attendant to God's holy word, and the services of the church, that though he found himself sick, he would not off, but stay till the solemnity was done ; but it pleased God at church to give him his first arrest ; and since that time I have often visited him, and found him always doing his work, with the greatest evenness and indifferency of spirit, as to tlie event of life and death, that I have observed in any. He was not unwilling to live ; but if he should, he resolved to spend his life v^'holly in the service of God : but yet neither was he unvv'illing to die, because he then knew he should weep no more, and he should sin no more. He was very confident, but yet with great humility and great modesty, of the pardon of his sins ; he had indeed lived without scandal, but he knew he had not lived without error; but as God had assisted him to avoid the reproach of great crimes, so he doubted not but he should find pardon for the less ; and, indeed, I could not but observe,, that he had, in all the time of his sickness, a very quiet conscience ; which is to me an excellent demonstration of the state of his life, and the state of his grace and pardon. For though he seemed to have a conscience tender and nice, if any evil thing had touched it ; yet 1 could not but appre- hend that his peace was a just peace, the mercy of God, and the price and effect of the blood of Jesus.
He was so joyful, so thankful, so pleased in the ministries.
A FUNERAL SERMON. 567
of the church, that it gave in evidence where his soul was most deUghted, what it did apprehend the quickest, where it did use to dwell, and what it did most passionately love. He discoursed much of the mercies of God to him, repeated the blessings of his life, the accidents and instruments of his trouble ; he loved the cause of his trouble, and pardoned them that neither loved it nor him.
When he had spent great portions of his time of sickness in the service of God, and in expectation of the sentence of his life or death, at last he understood the still voice of God, and that he was to go where his soul loved to be ; he still increased his devotion, and being admonished, as his strength failed him, to supply his usual forms, and his want of strength and words, by short exercise of virtues, of faith and patience, and the love of God ; he did it so willingly, so well, so readily, making his eyes, his hands, and his tongue, as long as he could, the interpreters of his mind, that as long as he was alive, he would see what his soul was doing. He doubted not of the truth of the promises, nor of the goodness of God, nor the satisfaction of Christ, and the merits of his death, nor the fruit of his resurrection, nor the prevalency of his intercession, nor yet doubted of his ov.'n part in them ; but expected his portions in the regions of blessedness, with those who loved God, and served him heartily and faithfully in their generations.
He had so great a patience in his sickness, and was so afraid lest he should sin at last; that his piety outdid his nature, and though the body cannot feel but by the soul, yet his soul seemed so little concerned in the passions of the body, that I neither observed, nor heard of him, that he in all his sickness so much as complained with any semblance of impatience.
He so continued to pray, so delighted in hearing psalms sung, which I wish were made as fit to sing by their numbers as they are by their weight, that so very much of his time was spent in them, that it was very likely when his Lord came he would find him so doing ; and he did so : for in the midst of prayers he went away, and got to heaven as soon as they ; and saw them (as we hope) presented to the throne of grace ; he went along with them himself, and was his own messenger to heaven; where although he possibly might
568 A FUNERAL SERMON.
prevent his last prayers, yet he would not prevent God's early mercy, which, as we humbly hope, gave him pardon for his sins, ease of his pain, joy after his sorrow, certainty for his fears, heaven for earth, innocence and impeccability, instead of his infirmity.
Ergo Quinctilium perpetuus sopor Urguet ! c»i Pudor, et Justitiae soror Incornipta Fides, nudaqne Veritas Qiiaiido ullani iuveiiiet parcm ?
Faith and justice, modesty and pure righteousness, made him equal to the worthiest examples; he was x/jjicttoj avrjf, ' a good man,' loving and humble, meek and patient, he would be sure to be the last in contention, and the first at a peace ; he would injure no man, but yet if any man was displeased with him, he would speak first, and offer words of kindness ; if any did dispute concerning priority, he knew how to get it, even by yielding and compliance ; walking profitably with his neighbours, and humbly with his God ; and having lived a life of piety, he died in a full age, an honourable old age, in the midst of his friends, and in the midst of prayer : and although the events of the other world are hidden to us below, that we might live in faith, and walk in hope and die in charity, yet we have great reason to bless God for his mercies to this our brother, and endeavour to comport ourselves with a strict religion, and a severe repentance ; with an exemplar patience, and an exemplar piety ; with the structures of a holy life, and the solemnities of a religious death, that we also may, as our confident and humble hope is, this our brother doth, by the conduct of angels, pass into the hands and bosom of Jesus, there to expect the most merciful sentence of the right hand, " Come ye blessed children of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world." Amen, Lord Jesus, Amen.
Grant this, eternal God, for Jesus Christ's sake ; to whom with thee, O Father, and the Holy Spirit, be all glory and honour, service and dominion, love and obedience, be confessed due, and ever paid by all angels, and all men, and all the creatures, this day, henceforth and for ever- more. Amen.
SERMON
PREACHED IN
ST. MARY'S CHURCH, OXFORD,
UPON THE
ANNIVERSARY OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON.
i
i
TO THE
MOST REVEREND FATHER IN GOD,
WILLIAM,
BY DIVINE PROVIDENCE,
LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY,
HIS GRACE,
PRJMATE OF ALL ENGLAND, AND METROPOLITAN CHANCELLOR OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, AND ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S
MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL.
MY MOST HONOURABLE GOOD LORD ! MAY IT PLEASE YOUIl GRACE,
It was obedience to my superior, that engaged me upon this last anniversary commemoration of the great goodness of God Almighty to our King and Country, in the discovery of the most damnable powder-treason. It was a blessing which no tongue could express, much less mine, which had scarce learned to speak, — at least, was most unfit to speak in the schools of the prophets. " Delicata autem est ilia obedientia, quae causas quaerit." It had been no good argument of my obedience to have disputed the inconvenience of my person, and the unaptness of my parts, for such an employment. I knew God, out of the mouth of infants, could acquire his praise.
dlxxii THE EPISTLE UEDICATOUY.
and if my heart were actually as votive as my tongue should have been, it might be one of God's * mag- nalia' to perfect his own praise out of the weakness and imperfection of the organ. So as I was able, I endeavoured to perform it, having my obedience ever ready for my excuse to men, and my willing- ness to perform my duty, for the assoilment of my- self before God; part of which I hope was accepted, and I have no reason to think, that the other was not pardoned.
When I first thought of the barbarism of this treason, I wondered not so much at the thing itself, as by what means it was possible for the devil to gain so strong a party in men's resolutions, as to move them to undertake a business so abhorring from Christianity, so evidently full of extreme danger to their lives, and so certainly to incur the highest wrath of God Almighty. My thoughts were thus rude at first; but, after a strict inquisition, I found it was apprehended as a business, perhaps, full of danger to their bodies, but advantageous to their souls, consonant to the obligation of all Chris- tians, and meritorious of an exceeding weight of glory ; for now it was come to pass, which our dear Master foretold, '* Men should kill us, and think they did God good service in it." I could not think this to be a part of any man's religion, nor
THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY. dlxxiii
do I yet believe it. For it is so apparently destructive of our dear Masters royal laws of charity and obedience, that I must not be so un- charitable as to think they speak their own mind truly, when they profess their belief of the lawful- ness and necessity, in some cases, of rebelling against their lawful Prince, and using all means to throw him from his kingdom, though it be by taking of his life. But it is but just that they who break the bonds of duty to their Prince, should likewise forfeit the laws of charity to themselves, and if they say not true, yet to be more uncharitable to their own persons, than I durst be, though I had their own warrant. Briefly, Most Reverend Father, I found amongst them of the Roman party such pre- vailing opinions, as could not consist with loyalty to their Prince, in case he were not the pope's subject; and these so generally believed, and some- where obtruded under peril of their souls, that I could not but point at these dangerous rocks, at which, I doubt not, but the loyalty of many hath suffered shipwreck, and of thousands more might, if a higher star had not guided them better than their own pilots.
I could not, therefore, but think it very likely, that this treason might spring from the same foun- tain; and I had concluded so in my first medita-
dlxxiv THK EPISTLE DEDICATORT,
tions, but that I was willing- to consider, whether or no it might not be, that these men were rather exasperated than persuaded, — and whether it were not that the severity of our laws against them might rather provoke their intemperate zeal, than reliiifion thus move their settled conscience. It was a material consideration, because they ever did, and still do fill the world with outcries against our laws, for making a rape upon their consciences ; have printed catalogues of their English martyrs ; drawn schemes of most strange tortures imposed on their priests, such as were unimaginable by Nero, or Dioclesian, or any of the worst and crudest enemies of Christianity, endeavouring thus to make us partly guilty of our own ruin, and so washing their hands, in token of their own inno- cence, even then when they were dipping them in the blood royal, and would have emptied the best veins in the whole kingdom to fill their lava- tory. But I found all these to be but calumnies, strong accusations upon weak presumptions, and that the cause did rest where I had begun, I mean, upon the pretence of the Catholic cause, and that the imagined iniquity of the laws of Enoland could not be made a veil to cover the deformity of their intentions, for our laws were just, honourable, and religious.
THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY. dlxXV
Concerning these and some other appendices to the business of the day, I expressed some part of my thoughts, which because happily they were but a just truth, and this truth not unsea- sonable for these last times, in which (as St. Paul prophesied) *' Men would be fierce, traitors, heady and high minded, creeping into houses, leading silly women captive;" it pleased some who had power to command me, to Mash me to a publi- cation of these my short and sudden meditations, that, if it were possible, even this way, I might express my duty to God and the King.
Being thus far encouraged, I resolved to go something further, even to the boldness of a dedi- cation to your Grace, that since I had no merit of my own, to move me to the confidence of a public view, yet I might dare to venture under the pro- tection of your Grace's favour. But since my bold- ness doth as much need a defence, as my sermon a patronage, I humbly crave leave to say, that, though it be boldness, even to presumption, yet my address to your Grace is not altogether unrea- sonable.
For since all know that your Grace thinks not your life your own, but when it spends itself in the service of your King, opposing your great en- deavours against the zealots of both sides, who
dlxXVi THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY.
labour the disturbance of the church and state, I could not think it cc7r^o(T^iouv<rov to ])resent to your Grace this short discovery of the king's enemies, ug lirmov^ixv ^ao-jXixtv (piXoCuariXs7, and proper to your Grace who is so true, so zealous a lover of your Prince and Country. It was likewise appointed to be the public voice of thanksgiving for your University (though she never spake weaker than by so mean an instrument), and, therefore, is accountable to your Grace, to whom under God and the King, we owe the blessing and prosperity of all our studies. Nor yet can I choose but hope, that my great obligations to your Grace's favour may plead my pardon (since it is better that my gratitude should be bold, than my diffidence ungrateful) ; but that this is so far from expressing the least part of them, that it lays a greater bond upon me, either for a debt of delin- quency in presenting it, or of thankfulness, if your Grace may please to pardon it.
I humbly crave your Grace's benediction, par- don, and acceptance of the humblest duty and observance of
Your Grace's Most observant and obliged Chaplain,
JER. TAYLOR.
SERMON,
But iohen James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that ice command Jire to come from heaven, ujid con^ same them even as Eiias did? — Luke, ix. 50.
1 SHALL not need to strain much to bring my text and the day together. Here is ' fire' in the text, ' consuming fire,' like that whose ' Antevorta' we do this day commemorate. This fire called for by the disciples of Christ ; so was ours too, by Christ's disciples at least, and some of them entitled to our great Master by the compellation of his holy name of Jesus.
I would say the parallel holds thus far, but that the per- sons of my^ text, however * Boanerges,' ' sons of thunder' and of areprovable spirit, yet are no way considerable in the pro- portion of malice with the persons of the day. For if I consider the cause that moved James and John to so incon- siderate a wrath, it bears a fair excuse ^ : the men of Samaria turned their Lord and Master out of doors, denying to give a night's lodging to the Lord of heaven and earth. It would have disturbed an excellent patience to see him, whom but just before they beheld transfigured, and in a glorious epi- phany upon the mount, to be so neglected by a company of hated Samaritans, as to be forced to keep his vigils where nothing but the welkin should have been his roof, not any thing to shelter his precious head from the descendino- dew
of heaven.
Qiiis talia fando
Temperet •* ?
It had been the greater wonder if they had not been angry.
« Ver. 53. ^ JEn. ii.
VOL, VI. P 1'
578 A SERMON ON THE ANNIVEUSAUY
But now if we should level our progress by the same line, and guess that in the present aflhir there was an equal cause, because a greater tire was intended, — we shall too much betray the ingenuity of apparent truth, and the blessing of this anniversary. They had not half such a case for an excuse to a far greater malice, it vvill prove they had none at all ; and, therefore, their malice was so much the more malicious, because causeless and totally inexcusable.
However, I shall endeavour to join their consideration in as near a parallel as I can; which, if it be not exact, — as certainly it cannot, where we have already discovered so much difference in degrees of malice, yet, by laying them together, we may better take their estimate, though it be only by seeing their disproportion.
The words, as they lay in their own order, point out, 1. The persons that asked the question. 2. The cause that moved them. 3. The person to whom they propounded it. 4. The question itself. 5. And the precedent they urged to move a grant, drawn from a very fallible topic, a singular example, in a special and different case. The persons here were Christ's disciples, and so they are in our case, designed to us by that glorious surname of Christianity : they will be called catholics; but if our discovery perhaps rise higher, and that the see apostolic prove sometimes guilty of so reprovable a spirit, then we are very near to a parallel of the persons, for they were disciples of Christ and apostles. 2. The cause was the denying of toleration of abode upon the grudge of an old schism ; religion was made the instrument. That which should have taught the apostles to be charitable, and the Samaritans hospitable, was made a pretence to justify tlie unhospitableness of the one, and the uncharit- ableness of the other. Thus far we are right ; for the malice of this present treason stood upon the same base. 3. Al- though neither side much doubted of the lawfulness of their proceedings, yet St. James and St. John were so discreet as not to think themselves infallible, therefore they asked their Lord : so did the persons of the day ask the question too, but not of Christ, for he was not in all their thoughts; but yet they asked of Christ's delegates, who, therefore, should have given their answer * ex eodem tripode,' from the same spirit. They were the fathers confessors who were asked.
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON. 579
4. The question is of both sides concerning a consumptive sacrifice, the destruction of a town there, of a whole kingdom here, but differing in the circumstance of place whence they would fetch their fire. The apostles would have had it from heaven, but these men's conversation was not there. Ta Karco^ev, ' things from beneath,' from an artificial hell, but breathed from the natural and proper, were in all their thoughts. 5. The example, which is the last particular, I fear I must leave quite out; and when you have considered all, perhaps you will look for no example.
First of the persons ; they were disciples of Christ and apostles : " But when James and John saw this." When first I considered they were apostles, I wondered they should be so intemperately angry ; but when I perceived they were so angry, I wondered not that they sinned. Not the privilege of an apostolical spirit, not the nature of angels, not the con- dition of immortality, can guard from the danger of sin ; but if we be overruled by passion, we almost subject ourselves to its necessity. It was not, therefore, without reason altogether, that the Stoics affirmed wise men to be void of passions ; for sure I am, the inordination of any passion is the first step to folly. And although of them, as of waters of a muddy resi- dence, we may make good use, and quench our thirst, if we do not trouble them ; yet upon any ungentle disturbance we drink down mud instead of a clear stream, and the issues of sin and sorrow, certain consequences of temerarious or inor- dinate anger. And, therefore, when the apostle had given us leave to * be angry,' as knowing the condition of human nature, he quickly enters a caveat that * we sin not;' he knew sin was very likely to be hand-maid where anger did domineer, and this was the reason why St. James and St. John are the men here pointed at ; for the Scripture notes them for ' Boanerges,' ' sons of thunder,' men of an angry temper, " et quid niirum est filios tonitru fulgurasse vo- luisse?" said St. Ambrose. But there was more in it than thus. Their spirits of themselves hot enough, yet met with their education under the law, whose first tradition was in fire and thunder, whose precepts were just, but not so merciful ; and this inflamed their distemper to the height of a revenge. It is the doctrine of St. Jerome •= and Titus
« Epist. ad Algas.
580 A SF.UMON ON J' HE ANNIVERSARY
liostrensis ""j — the law had been their schoolmaster, and taii;;lit them the rules ofjustice, both j)unitive and vindictive ; but Christ was the first that taught it to be a sin to retaliate evil with evil ; it was a doctrine they could not read in the killing letter of the law. There they might meet with prece- dents of revenge and anger of a high severity, * an eye for an eye,' and * a tooth for a tooth/ and * let him be cut off from his people:' but forgiving injuries, praying for our perse- cutors, loving our enemies, and relieving them, were doctrines of such high and absolute integrity, as were to be reserved for the best and most perfect lawgiver, the bringer of the best promises, to which the most perfect actions have the best proportion, and this was to be when Shiloh came. Now then the spirit of Elias is out of date,
Jam ferrra prinium
Dcsinit, ac toto suigit gens aiirea ninndo.
And, therefore, our blessed Master reproveth them of ignor- ance, not of the law, but of his Spirit, which had they but known or could but have guessed at the end of his coming, they had not been such abecedarii in the school of mercy.
And now we shall not need to look far for persons, disciples professing at least in Christ's school, yet as great strangers to the merciful spirit of our Saviour, as if they had been sons of the law, or foster-brothers to Romulus, and sucked a wolf; and they are Romanists too : this day's solemnity presents them to us, '^■iXog a't/xan Tncpu^ixEvo^^ \ and yet were that washed off, underneath they write Christian and Jesuit.
One would have expected that such men, set forth to the world's acceptance with so merciful a ' cognornentum,' should have put a hand to support the ruinous fabric of the world's charity, and not have pulled the frame of heaven and earth about our ears. But yet — ' Ne credite, Teucri !' Give me leave first to make an inquisition after this antichristian pravity, and try who is of our side, and who loves the king, by pointing at those whose sermons do blast loyaltv^ breath- ing forth treason, slaughters, and cruelty, the greatest ima- ginable, contrary to the spirit and doctrine of our dear Master. So we shall quickly find out more than a pareil for St. James and St. John, the Boanerges of my text.
•* In Lucam. « Sneton. Tib. ft?. B. Cms. t. i. p. 454.
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON. 581
" It is an act of faith, by faith to conquer the enemies of God and holy church," saith Sanders, our countryman f. Hitherto nothing but well ; if James and John had offered to do no more than what they could have done \Aatli * the sword of the Spirit, and the shield of faith,' they might have been inculpable, and so had he if he had said no more ; but the blood boils higher, the manner spoils all. " For it is not well done, unless a warlike captain be appointed by Christ's vicar to bear a crusade in a field of blood." And if the other apostles did not proceed such an angry way as James and John, it was only discretion that detained them, not rehgion. " For so they might, and it were no way unlawful for them to bear arms to propagate religion, had they not wanted an opportunity;" if you believe the same author: " for fighting is proper for St. Peter and his successors, therefore, because Christ gave him commission to feed his Lambs s." A strange reason !
I had thought Christ would have his lambs fed with the sincere milk of his word, not like to cannibals,
solitisqiie ciiientnm
Lac potare Getis, et pocula tingeie venis,
To mingle blood in their sacrifices (as Herod to the Galileans), and quaff it off for an * auspicium' to the propagation of the Christian faith. Methinks here is already too much clashing of armour, and effusion of blood, for a Christian cause ; but this were not altogether so unchristian-like, if the sheep, though with blood, yet were not to be fed with the blood of their shepherd Cyrus, I mean their princes. But I find many such ' nutritii' in the nurseries of Rome, driving their lambs from their folds, unless they will be taught to worry the lion.
Emanuel Sa, in his Aphorisms, aflarms it lawful to kill a king ; indeed not every king, but such a one as rules with tyranny ; and not then, unless the pope hath sentenced him to death, but then he may, though he be his lawful prince *>.
f Sandenis de Clave David, lib. ii. c. 15. ' Ibid. c. 14.
^ Tyrannice gubei nans juste acqiiisituni dominiimi non potest s^poliari sine publico judicio. Lata veio senteiitia, qnisque potest fieri executor. Potest autein a popiilo etiain qui juravit ei obedieutiain, si ruoiiitus, non vnlt corrigi. — Verb. Tyrannus.
582 A SERMON ON THE ANXIVEIISARY
Not the necessitude which the law of nations hath put between prince and people, not the oblii2;ation of the oath of allegiance, not the sanctions of (lod Ahnighty himself, must reverse the sentence against tlie king when once passed ; but any one of his subjects, of his own sworn subjects, may kill him.
This perfidious treasonable position of Sa is not a single testimony. For 1. it slipped not from his pen by inadver- tency ; it was not made public until after forty years' delibe- ration, as himself testifies in his preface '. 2. After such an avisamente, it is now the ordinary received manual for the fathers confessors of the Jesuits' order.
This doctrine, although — * Titulo res digna sepulcri' — yet is nothing if compared with Mariana''. For 1. he affirms the same doctrine in substance. 2. Then he descends to the very manner of it, ordering how it may be done with the best convenience : he thinks poison to be the best way, but yet that, for the more secrecy, it be cast upon the chairs, saddles, and garments of his prince. It was the old laudable custom of the Moors of Spain'. 3. He adds examples of the business, telling us that this was the devise, to wit, by poisoned boots, that old Henry of Castile was cured of his sickness. 4. Lastly, this may be done, not only if the pope judge the king a tyrant (which was the utmost Emanuel Sa affirmed), but it is sufficient proof of his being a tyrant if learned men, though but few, and those seditious too, do but murmur it, or begin to call him so™. I hope this doctrine was long since disclaimed by the whole society, and con- demned * ad umbras Acherunticas.' Perhaps so; but yet these men who use to object to us an infinity of divisions among ourselves, who boast so much of their own union and consonancy in judgment, with whom nothing is more ordinary than to maintain some opinions quite throughout their order, (as if they were informed by some common ' intellectus agens') should not be divided in a matter of so great moment, so much concerning the monarchy of the see apostolic, to which
• Praesertim cum in hoc opus per annos fere quadraginta diligentissinie incubnerim.
k Ue Kege et R. [nstitut. lib. i. c. vi.
' Qui est I'artifice dont je ti onve que les rois Mores ont souvent us>^, c. 7.
» Postquam a panels seditiosis, sed doctis, creperit tyrannus appellari.
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON. 583
they are vowed liegemen. But I have greater reason to be- lieve them united in this doctrine, than is tiie greatness of this probability. For 1. There was an apology printed in Italy, * permissu superiorum,' in the year 1610, that says, *' They were all enemies of that holy name of Jesus, that condemned Mariana for any such doctrine." I understand not why, but sure I am that the Jesuits do, or did think his doctrine innocent : for in their apology put forth in the name of the whole society against the accusations of Anticoton, they deny that the assassin of Henry IV., I mean Ravaiilac, was moved to kill the king by reason of Mariana, and are not ashamed to wish that he had read him". Perhaps they mean it might have wrought the same effect upon him, which tlie sight of a drunkard did upon the youth of Lacedaemon ; else I am sure it is not very likely he should have been dis- suaded from his purpose by reading in Mariana, that it was lawful to do what he intended. 3. I add, they not only thought it innocent, and without positive hurt, but good and commendable ; so that it is apparent that it was not the opi- nion of Mariana alone, but that the Moors of Spain had more disciples than Mariana. 1. He says it himself; for, commend- ing the young monk that killed Henry III., he says that he did it " having been informed, by several divines, that a tyrant might lawfully be killed"." 2. The thing itself speaks it, for his book was highly commended by Gretser? and Bo- narscius'J, both for style and matter, — higher yet by Petrus de Onna, provincial of Toledo, who was so highly pleased with it, he was sorry he wanted leisure' to read it the second and third time over, and, with this censure prefixed, was licensed to the press. Further yet, for Stephen Hoyeda, visitor of the Jesuits for the same province, approved it not only from his own judgment, but as being before approved by grave and learned men of the Jesuits' order', and so with a special commission from Claudius Aquaviva, their general, with these approbations, and other solemn privileges, it was printed at
" Quodammodo optandum esse iit ilie Alastor Marianam legisset. ° Cum coguito a thcologi.s qiios eiat sciscitatus, tyiaiinuiii jure iiiterimi posse. Cap 6.
P Chauvchaurit polit. i Anipliitli. Honoris, lib. i. c. 12.
■■ Iteruni tt teitio factuius, si per otium tt tenipus litiiisset.
* Ut approbates prius a viris doctis et gravibus ex eodeni nostro ordiue.
584 A SERMON ON THE ANNJVEUSAKY
Toledo' and iMeiitz"; and lastly, inserted into the catalogues of the books of their order by Pelrus Kibadineira.
What negligence is sufticient that such a doctrine as this should pass so great supervisors, if in their hearts they dis- avow it? The children of this world are not such fools in their generations. The fathers of the society cannot but know, how apt these things of themselves are to public mis- chief, how invidious to the Christian world, how scandalous to their order ; and yet they rather excuse, than condemn, IVIariana : speaking of him, at the hardest, but very gently, as if his only fault had been his speaking a truth 'in tem[)ore non opportune,' ' something out of season ;' or as if they were forced to yield to the current of the times, and durst not profess openly of what, in their hearts, they were persuaded. I speak of some of them, for others, you see, are of the same opinion. But I would fain learn why they are so sedulous and careful to procure the decrees of the rector and deputies of Paris, rescripts of the bishop, revocation of arrest of the parliament which had been against them, and all to acquit the fathers of the society from these scandalous opinions ; as if these laborious devices could make what they have said and dune, to be unspoken and undone, or could change their opinions from what indeed they are ; whereas they never went ' ex animo' to refute these theorems, never spake against them in the real and serious dialect of an adversary, never condemned them as heretical, but what they have done they have been shamed to, or forced upon, as Fere Coton by the king of France, and Servin to a confutation of Mariana (from which he desired to be excused, and after the king's death, wrote his declaratory letter to no purpose) ; the apolo- gists of Faris, by the outcries of Christendom against them ; and when it is done, done so coldly in their reprehen- sions with a greater readiness to excuse all, than condemn any. I say, these things, to a considermg man, do increase the suspicion, if at least that may be called suspicion, for which we have had so plain testimonies of their own.
I add this more, to put the business past all question ; that when some things of this nature w^ere objected to them by Arnald, the French king's advocate, they were so far from
'By Pen us Rlioclriques, 1599. " By Balth. Lippius, iGOj.
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON. 585
denying them, or excusing them, that they maintained them in spite of opposition, putting forth a book, entitled, * Veritas defensa contra actionem Antonii Arnaldi.' What the things were, for which they stood up patrons, hear themselves speak- ing", * Tum enim id non solum potest papa, sed etiam debet, se ostendere superiorem illis principibus. Exceptio heec sto- machum tibi commovet, facit ut ringaris, sed oportet haurias, et de csetero fatearis tibi nee rationem esse, nee conscientiam.' Hard words these ! The advocate is affirmed to be void both of reason and honesty, for denying the pope's dominion over kings. The reason follows, " The pope could not keep them to their duties, unless he kept them in awe with threatening them the loss of their kingdoms." But this is but the least part of it. They add, "If the subjects had been but dis- posed as they should have been, there was no time but it might have been profitable to have exercised the sword upon the persons of kings^." Let them construe their meaning, those are their words. But see further.
The damned act of Jacques Clement, the monk, upon the life of Henry III. of France, of Jean Chastel and Ra- vaillac upon Henry IV., are notorious in the Christian world, and yet the first of these was commended by F. Guig- nard^, in a discourse of purpose, and by Mariana, as I before cited him. The second had two apologies made for him, the one by Constantinus Veruna% the other'', without a name indeed, but with the mark and coffnizance of the Jesuits' order, and the last was publicly commended, in a sermon by a monk of Cologne, as it is reported by the excellent Thuanus.
Not much less than this is that of Baronius, just, I am sure, of the same spirit with James and John, for he calls for a ruin upon the Venetians, for opposing of his Holiness. " Arise, Peter, not to feed these wandering sheep, but to de- stroy them; throw away thy pastoral staff, and take thy sword." I confess here is some more ingenuity, to oppose murdering to feeding than to make them all one, as Sanders <: doth, but yet the same fiery spirit inflames them both, as if
" Page 7, 1st edit. y Page 67, 1st edit.
^ Voyez ie Proces du Parleni. de Paris centre le pere Guignaid pretre Jesiiite.
* Vid. cap. 3. '' Luudiiiii, dcjusta abdicatione Hen. HI. 16)0.
' De clave David, c. 14. Vid. page 7.
58G A SKllMON 0\ THK AXXIVKUSARA'
all Rome were on fire, and would put the world in a com- bustion.
Furtlier yet. Guipiard, a Jesuit of Clerimont collet>-e in Paris, was executed, l)y the couiuiaiul of the parliament'', for some conclusions he had written, which were of a high nature treasonable ; and yet, as if, either there were an infallibility in every person of the society, or as if the parliament had done injustice in condenniing Guignard, or lastly, as if they ap- proved his doctrine, he was apologized for by Lewes Riche- ome*', and Bonarscius'". I know they will not say, that every Jesuit is infallible, they are not come to that yet ; it is plain, then, they are of the same mind with Guignard, or else (which 1 think they dare not say) the parliament was unjust in the condemnation of him; but if they do, they thus proclaim their approbation of these doctrines he was hanged for ; for that he had such, was under his own hand, by his own con- fession, and of itself evident, as is to be seen in the arrest of the parliament against him.
Lastly, more pertinent to the day is the fact of Garnet, — who, because a Jesuit, could have done nothing for which he should not have found an apologist, for even for this his last act of high treason he was apologized for, by Bellarmines, Gretser'', and Eudaemon Johannes'.
Thus far we have found out persons fit enough to match any malice ; Boanerges all, and more than a pareil for James and John : but I shall anon discover the disease to be more epidemical, and the pest of a more catholic infection ; and yet if we sum up our accounts, we shall already find the doctrine to be too catholic. For we have already met with Emanuel Sa,aPortuguese ; Mariana andRibadineira, Spaniards; Bonarscius, a bas Almain ; Gretser, a German ; Eudeemon Johannes, a false Greek; Guignard, Richeome and the apologists for Chastel, Frenchmen ; Bellarmine and Baronius, Italians ; Garnet and Sanders, English.
The doctrine, you see, they would fain make catholic; now, if it prove to be but apostolic too, then we have found out an exact parallel for James and John, great disciples and
<i Arrest, tie Parliain. 7 de Tanv. 1595.
e Expostul. Apologet. pro Societ. Jes. 'Ampliitli. Hor.or. lib. i.
e Ai>ol. adv. K. Angliu;. •* Sligni. Miseric.
' Apol. pro Garnetto.
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON. 587
apostles ; and whether or no the see apostohc may not some- time be of a fiery and consuming spirit, we have so strange examples, even in our own home, that we need seek no farther for resolution of the ' Quaere.' In the bull of excommunica- tion put forth by Pius Quintus, against queen Elizabeth, of blessed memory, there is more than a naked encouragement, as much as comes to a " Volumus et jubemus ut adversus Elizabethan!, Angliaj reginam, subditi arma capessant." — " Bone Jesu ! in quse nos reservasti tempora ?" Here is a command to turn rebels, a necessity of being traitors. " Quid eo infelicius, cui jam esse malum necesse est."
The business is put something further home by Catena and Gdbutius, who wrote the life of Pius Quintus, were resident at Rome, one of them an advocate in the Roman court ; their books both printed at Rome, ' con licenza,' and * con privi- legio ''.' And now hear their testimonies of the whole business between the queen and his holiness.
" Pius Quintus published a bull against queen Elizabeth, declared her a heretic, and deprived her of her kingdom, absolved her subjects from their oaths of allegiance, excom- municated her, and gave power to any one to rebel against her, &-C.'" This was but the first step; he, therefore, thus proceeds ; ** He procures a gentleman of Florence, to move her subjects to a rebellion against her for her destruction'"." Further yet ; he thought this would be such a real benefit to Christendom to have her " destroyed, that the pope was ready to aid in person, to spend the whole revenue of the see apostolic, all the chalices and crosses of the church, and even his very clothes, to promote so pious a business as was the destruction of queen Elizabeth"."
The witnesses of truth usually agree in one. The same story is told by Antonius Gabutius°, and some more circum- stances added. First, he names the end of the pope's design,
^ 1588, et 1605.
' Pio piiblifco una bolla e scntczza contra Elisabetta, dichiarandola lieretica, e piiva del regno,- • in tal forma concedendo, che ciascuno andar contra le potesse, &ic. Girolanio Catena, p. 114.
>" II quale • • • • muovesse gli animi al sollevameuto per distruttione d'Elisabetta, p. 113.
" L'andare in persona, impegna e tutte Ic sostanze della sede apostolica, e calici, e i proprj vestinienti, p. 117.
° De Vita et Gestis Pii V., lib. iii. c. y.
5SS A SEllMON ON' THE A N N 1 VERS A 11 V
it was " to take her life away, in case she would not turn Roman catholic." — " To achieve this, because no legate could come into England, nor any public messenger from the see apostolic, he employed a Florentine merchant to stir her subjects to a rebellion for her perdition p." Nothing but ' soUevamento,' ' rebellion,' perdition and destruction to the queen could be thought upon by his holiness.
INIore yet ; for when the duke of Alva had seized upon the English merchants' goods which were at Antwerp, the pope took the occasion, instigated the king of Spain to aid '• the pious attempts of those who conspired against the queen:" they are the words of Cabutius'i. This rebellion was intended to be under the conduct of the duke of Norfolk, * viro catholico,' ' a Roman catholic ;' Gabutius notes it, for fear some heretic might be suspected of the design, and so the catholics lose the glory of the action. However Pius Quintus " intended to use the utmost and most extreme reme- dies to cure her heresy, and all means to increase and strengthen the rebellion." I durst not have thought so much of his holiness, if his own had not said it ; but if this be not worse than the fiery spirit which our blessed Saviour reproved in James and John, I know not what is.
I have nothing to do to specify the spirit of Paulus Quintus in the Venetian cause; this only, Baronius"^ pro- pounded the example of Gregory VII. to him, of which how far short he came, the world is witness. Our own business calls to mind the bulls of pope Clement VIII., in which the Catholics in England were commanded to see, that however the right of succession did entitle any man to the crown of England, yet, if he were not a catholic, they should have none of him, but with all their power they should hinder his coming in. This bull, Bellarmine^ doth extremely magnify ; and, indeed, it was for his purpose, for it was (if not author) yet the main encourager of Catesby to the powder- treason. For, when Garnet would willingly have known the pope's mind in the business, Catesby eased him of the trouble of
V Qui incolanim animos ad Elizabethee perditioneni, rebellione facia, coiiimoveret.
1 Efflagitabat ai) rege, lit Anglonim in Elizabetliam pie conspiiautiiim studia foveret.
f Hildebiatid. » Apol. adv. R. Angl.
%
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON- 589
sending to Rome, since the pope's mind was clear. " I doubt not" (said Catesby) " at all of the pope's mind, but that he, who commanded our endeavours to hinder his comino- in, is willing enough we should throw him out^" It was but a reasonable collection.
I shall not need to instance in the effects which this bull produced ; the treason of Watson and Cleark, two English seminaries, is sufficiently known ; it was as a ' prseludiuni' or warning piece to the great ' fougade,' the discharge of the powder-treason. Briefly, the case was so, that after the pub- lication of the bull of Pius Quintus, these catholics in England durst not be good subjects till F. Parsons and Campian got a dispensation that they might for awhile do it ; and ' rebus sic stantibus,' with a safe conscience profess a general obe- dience in causes temporal : and, after the bull of Clement, a great many of them were not good subjects; and, if the rest had not taken to themselves the privilege which the pope" sometimes gave to the archbishop of Ravenna, " either to do as the pope bid them, or to pretend a reason why they would not :" we may say, as Creswell, in defence of cardinal Allen, *' Certainly we might have had more bloody tragedies in England, if the moderation of some more discreetly tempered had not been interposed "." However, it is no thank to his holiness ; his spirit blew high enough.
But I will open this secret no farther, if I may have but leave to instance once more. If I mistake not, it was Sixtus Quintus who sometimes pronounced a speech in full con- sistory y, in which he compares the assassinat of Jacques Clement upon Henry III., to the exploits of Eleazar and Judith ; where, after having aggravated the faults of the murdered king, concluded him to have died impenitent, denied him the solemnities of mass, dirge, and requiem for his soul, at last, he ends with a prayer, " that God vi'ould finish, what in this (bloody) manner had been begun." — I will not aggra- vate the foulness of the thing by any circumstances (though I cannot but wonder that his holiness should say a prayer of so much abomination) ; it is of itself too bad.
If his holiness be wronged in the business, I have no
' Proced. agt. Trajtors.
" Innoc. Decretal, de rescript, cap. si qnaiuio.
^ Pliilop. p. -212, 11. SOC. y Sep. 11, 1589.
690 A SEUMON ON THE ANNIVERSARY
hand in it; the speecli was printed at Paris'-, three months after the murder of the king, and avouched for authentic by the approbation of three doctors, Boucher, Decreil, and Ancelein ; let them answer it; I wash my hands of tlie accusation, and only con^sider the danger of such doctrines, if set forth with so great authority, and practised by so uncon- trollable persons.
If the disciples of Christ, if apostles, if the see aposto- lic, if the fathers confessors, prove ' boutefeus ' and incen- diaries, I'll no more wonder if the people call for fire to consume us, but rather wonder if they do not. And indeed, although it be no rare or unusual thing for a papist to be ' de facto ' loyal and duteous to his prince, yet it is a wonder that he is so, since such doctrines have been taught by so great masters ; and at the best he depends but upon the pope's pleasure for his loyalty, which upon what security it rests, you may easily guess from the antecedents.
Thus much for consideration of the persons who asked the question ; they were Christ's disciples, they were James and John.
But when James and John " saw this." Our next in- quiry shall be of the cause of this their angry question. This we must learn from the foregoing story. Christ was going to the feast at Jerusalem, and passing through a village of Samaria, asked lodging for a night * ; but they, perceiving that he was a Jew, would by no means entertain him, as being of a different religion. For although God appointed that all of the seed of Jacob should go up to Jerusalem to worship, avijfeSn ya^ h m tottu Tr^oa-KuvYja-if^, yet the tribes of the separation first under Jeroboam, worshipped in groves and high places ; and after the captivity, being a mixed people, half Jew, half Gentile, procured a temple to be built them by Sanballat, their president*^, near the city Sichem, upon the mountain Gerizim, styling themselves " pertinentes ad montem benedictum <•," by allusion to the words of God by Moses, " they shall stand upon the mount Gerizim to bless the people, and these upon mount Ebal to curse." And in case arguments should fail to make this schism plausible, they will make it good by turning
^ l$y Nicliol. Nivelle, ami Rollin Thierry. =» Ver. 60.
'' Clirysost. in Ininc locnm. <^ Johtplii Aiiliq. lib. xi. c. 6.
<! Postellus tic Liiiguis. lilj. xii. dciit. 27.
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON. 591
their adversaries out of doors : they shall not come near then" blessed mount of Gerizim, but fastening an anathema on them, let them go to Ebal, and curse there. And now I wonder not that these disciples were very angry at them, who had lost the true religion, and neglected the offices of humanity to them that kept it. They might go near now to make it a cause of religion ; asixvoTt^ov ovoixa ryjg Euas^slag, as Nazianzen * speaks, might seem to apologize for them ; and so it might, if it had not led them to indiscreet and un- charitable zeal. But men care not how far they go, if they do but once think they can make God a party of their quar- rel. For when religion, which ought to be the antidote of our malice, proves its greatest incentive, our uncharitableness must needs run faster to a mischief, by how much that which stopped its course before, drives it on with the greater vio- lence. And, therefore, as it is ordinary for charity to be called coldness in religion, so it is as ordinary for a pretence of religion to make cold charity.
The present case of the disciples, and the same spirit, which, for the same pretended cause, is taken up by the per- sons of the day, proves all this true ; with whom fire and fagot is esteemed the best argument to convince the under- standing, and the inquisitors of heretical pravity, the best doctors and subtlest disputants, determining all with a ' viris ignem, fossam mulieribus <".' For thus we had like to have suffered ; it was mistaken religion that moved these traitors to so damnable a conspiracy, not for any defence of their own cause, but for extirpation of ours. For else what grievances did they groan under? *' In quos eorum populum exsestu- antem soUicitavimus ? quibus vitae periculum attulimus?" it was Nazianzen's question to the apostates. Give me leave to consider it as applicable to our present case, and try if 1 can make a just discover}' of the cause, that moved these traitors to so accursed a conspiracy.
1. Then there was no cause at all given them by us; none put to death for being a Roman catholic, nor any of them punished for his religion.
This hath been the constant attestation of our princes
* Orat. 12. ' Decrct. Carol, qiiiiiti, pro Flaiidris.
s Orat. 2. in Julian.
592 A SERMON ON THE ANNIVERSARY
and state, since the first laws made against recusants ; and the thing; itself" will bear them record''.
From ' primo of Elizabeth to undecimo,' the papists made no scruple of coming to our churches ; recusancy was not then so much as a chrisom, not an embryo. But when Pius Quintus sent forth his briefs of excommunication and depo- sition of the queen, then first they forbore to pray with us, or to have any religious communion. This, although every- where known, yet being a matter of fact, and so as likely to be denied by others, as affirmed by us, without good evidence, see it therefore affirmed expressly by an act of parliament in * decimo-tertio of Elizabeth,' which specifies this as one in- convenience and ill consequence of the bull; " whereby hath grown great disobedience and boldness in many, not only to withdraw and absent themselves from divine service, now most godly set forth, and used within this realm, but also have thought themselves discharged of all obedience," &c. Not only recusancy, but likewise disobedieilce ; therefore both recusancy and disobedience.
Two years, therefore, after this bull, this statute was made, if it was possible, to nullify the effects of it, to hinder its execution, and, if it might be, by this means to keep them, as they had been before, in communion with the church of England, and obedience to her majesty. This was the first statute that concerned them in special, but yet their religion was not meddled with ; for this statute against execution of the pope's bulls, was no more than what had been esta- blished by act of parliament in the sixteenth year of Ri- chard II., by which it was made ' prsemunire ' to purchase bulls from Rome ; and the delinquents in this kind, with all their " abettors, fautors, procurators, and maintainers, to be referred to the king's council for further punishment." There was indeed this severity expressed in the act of decimo-tertio of the queen, that the putting them in execution should be capital ; and yet this severity was no more than what was inflicted upon the bishop of Ely, in Edward III.'s time, for publishing of a bull against the earl of Chester, without the king's leave ; and on the bishop of Carlisle, in the time of
'' Vid. L. Biiileigli's book called " Execution for Treason, not Religion." King James's Declaration to all Christian Kings and Prisices, and the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury's Speech in Star-chamber in Burton's case.
OF THE GUiVPOWDER TREASON. 593
Henry IV., for the like offence. Thus far our law& are innocent.
But when this statute did not take the good effect for which it was intended, neither keeping them in their ancient communion nor obedience, but for all this, Mayne, Campian, and many others, came as the pope's emissaries for execution of the bull, the state proceeded to a further severity, making laws against recusancy, against seditious and traitorous books, and against the residence of Romish priests in Eng- land ; making the first finable with a pecuniary mulct, the two latter capital, as being made of a treasonable nature. Of these in order :
1. The mulct which was imposed for recusancy, was not soul money, or paid for religion ; and that for these reasons : 1, Because it is plain, religion did not make them absent themselves from our churches, unless they had changed their religion since the bull came over : for if religion could con- sist with their communion with us before the bull, as it is plain it did, then why not after the bull ? unless it be part of their religion to obey the pope, rather than to obey God commanding us to obey our prince. — 2. Their recusancy was an apparent mischief to our kingdom, and it was the preven- tion or diversion of this that was the only or special end of these laws.
The mischief is apparent these two ways : 1 . Because by their recusancy they gave attestation that they held the bull to be valid ; for else why should they, after the bull, deny their communion, which, before, they did not ? Either they must think the queen, for a just cause, and by a just power, excommunicate ; or why did they separate from her com- munion ? Now if the queen, by virtue of the bull, was excom- municate, why should they stop here ? She was by the same deposed, they absolved from all allegiance to her, and com- manded to take arms against her. I confess it is no good argument of itself to say, the pope might excommunicate the queen, therefore depose her from her kingdom : but this concludes with them sufficiently, with whom excommunica- tion not only drives from spirituals, but deprives of temporals, and is not to mend our lives, but to take them away. I speak how it is in the case of princes, and I shall anon prove it ; for they being public persons from whose deposition much
VOL. VI. Q Q
594 A SERMON ON THE ANNIVERSARY
may be gotten, are like to suffer more. " Ut ex tunc ipse (pontifex) vassallos ab ejus fidelitate denuntiet absolutes, et terram exj)onat catliolicis occupandam ;" as they are taught by pope Innocent 111., in the eighth Lateran council. Such is their exconununication for matter of heresy, as was this pretended in the queen's case, so that in respect of them, the danger was apparent.
2. It is plain that recusancy and disobedience came actually hand in hand : I say not that one was the issue of the other, but that they were coetaneous, for the same per- sons that moved them to recusancy by virtue of the bull, moved them to the execution of it * per omhia.' Now see whither this would tend. They by recusancy were better able to judge of their forces in England, and what party they were able to make for execution of the bull ; whilst by that, as by a discriminative cognizance, they were pointed at as abettors of the catholic cause.
Thus far they suffered not for their religion or conscience, unless it were against their conscience to be good subjects ; and then it was not religion, at least not Christian, that was inconsistent with their loyalty ; and so hitherto, in respect of us, their machination was altogether causeless.
2. For the second, — I mean the writing and publishing of seditious and traitorous books ; 1 shall not need to say any thing in defence of its being made capital, though sometimes they accuse our laws for it ; for they were ever so, and of a high nature treasonable, and the publishers of them, by the canons of the church, were ' ipso facto ' excommunicate '. This I noted, because the same censure involves more, by virtue of the same canon : I mean not only the seditious libellers, but impugners of the king's regalities ; as also the bringers, pub- lishers, and executioners of the bull ; as is to be seen in th6 constitution of archbishop Stephen, in a council held at Ox- ford.-— But, secondly, whether they were or were not, it mat- ters nothing : this 1 suppose was no part of their religion, therefore this might be made treason, and yet their religion and peace of conscience undisturbed. 3. But the next is
' Apnd Liuwood de senten. excominuDicat. Item omnes illos excom^ mnnicationis innodamus sententia, qui pacera et tranquillitatem Domini Regis et Regni, injiiriose perturbare pr<£siiiuiint, et qui juia Domini Regis inJHstedetinere contendunt.
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON. 595
the main outcry of all, the very * conclamatum est ' of the catholic cause, if suffered : it wtis made treason to be a priest, or at least if any of their priests should be found in England, he should be adjudged a traitor ; and these laws were not yet repealed, but then in execution.
When certain sycophants told Philip of Macedon, that some of his discontented subjects called him tyrant, his an- swer was, ' Rudes sunt Macedones, et scapham vocant sca- pham.' I wish these men who object this, had the same ingenuity, and would acknowledge that the rudeness of a Macedonian tell-truth is no apparent calumny : and truly, as the case then stood, it was no worse. For consider that the statute against priests was not made till sixteen years after the bull of Pius V., and after much evidence, both by the confession of some priests themselves, and divers lay persons, that at least many of them came into England with this errand, that they might instigate the queen's liege people to the execution of it. This is very plain in the case of Mayne the Jesuit, and M. Tregion, who were executed atLaunceston for the same business ^.
The state could not certainly know what would be the issue, but yet could not but think it likely to produce more and worse consequences for the future. " Ideo leges in facta constitui, quia futura in incerto sint'." The queen then pro- viding for her safety, banished these priests out of her domi- nions. This was all ; and this done with so much lenity and mo- deration, as if of purpose to render good for their e vil ; such visas' her innocence ; — and yet to provide for her safety, such was her prudence. She gave them forty days' time of preparation for their journey, imposed no penalty for their longer stay, in' case that any of them were less healthful, or that the winds' were cross, or that the weather served not : provided tha't during their stay, they gave security for their due obedience' to her laws, and that they should attempt nothing against her person or governrnent, for this was all she aimed at; but if they obeyed not the proscription, having no just; cause to the contrary, such as were expressed in the act^ thenj* should be adjudged their errand was not right,- and, there-
^ 1577. ' Tacitus, lib. iii. Aiinal. c. 6'.'. Rttjicit. p. 172.
51)6 A SERMON OX T H E ANNIVERSARY
fore, not their religion, hut tlieir disohedience, treason-' able.
This was the hi^ihest a^/xrj of the severity of this state against them. Now first I shall briefly show, that this pro- scription, which was the highest penalty, was for just cause, as the case then stood, and deserved on their part. 2. It was but reasonable, in case they obeyed not the proscription, their stay should be made treason. 1. Because the priests did generally preach the pope's power, either directly over tem- porals, or else in order to spirituals, — of which the pope being judge, it would come to the same issue, and this was dangerous to the peace of the kingdom, and entrenched too much upon the regalty. In particular, the case of bringing from the see of Rome, and publishing of bulls, was by the lords of the parliament, in the sixteenth year of Richard the Second, judged to be " clearly in derogation of the king's crown and of his regalty, as it is well known, and hath been of a long time known ;" and, therefore, they protested " together and every one severally by himself, that they would be with the same crown and regalty, in these cases specially, and in all other cases which shall be attempted against the same crown and regalty, in all points, with all their power." I hope then if the state, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, having far greater reason than ever, shall judge that these bulls, the publishing of them, the preaching of their validity, and recon- ciling, by virtue of them, her subjects to the see of Rome, be derogatory to her crown and regalty, — I see no reason she should be frighted from her just defence with the bugbear of pretended religion ; for if it was not against religion then, why is it now ? I confess there is a reason for it, to wit, because now the pope's power is an article of faith, as I shall show anon, but then it was not with them, any more than now it is with us : but whether this will convince any man. of reason, I leave it to himself to consider.
But one thing is observable in that act of parliament of Richard the Second, I mean this clause, " As it is well known, and hath been of a long time known." The pope's encroachments upon the state of England had been an old BOre, and by its eld, almost habituate ; but yet it grieved them nevertheless, nor was the less a fever for being hectical :
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON. 597
but so it is, that I am confident upon very good grounds, it may be made as apparent as the noon sun, for these six hundred years and upwards, that the bishops of Rome have exercised so extreme and continual tyranny and exactions in this kingdom, that our condition was under him worse than the state of the Athenians under their thirty tyrants, or than our neighbours are now under their Belgic tributes. So many grievances of the people, expilations of the church, abuses to the state, entrenchments upon the royalties of the crown, were continued, that it was a great blessing of Almighty God, our kingdom was delivered from them upon so easy terms, which Grosthead, bishop of Lincoln, thought would never be done, but in ' Ore gladii cruentandi :' and now to have all these mischiefs return with more strength upon us, by the attempts of these priests, had been the highest point of indiscretion and sleepiness. I said, zcith more strength, — because what anciently at the highest was thought but a privilege of the church, began now to be an article of faith; and, therefore, if admitted, would have bound stronger and without all possibility of redress.
And now, if after all this, any man should doubt of the justice of these laws against the priests obtruding upon the state the pope's power, I only refer him to the parhament of Paris, where let him hold his plea against those great sages of the law, for their just censures upon Florentinus Jacobus, Thomas Blanzius"", and John Tanquerell, who were all condemned to a solemn honorary penance and satis- faction to the state, and not without extreme difficulty escaped death, for the same cause : but this is not all. I add,
Secondly; the pope had his agent in England, to stir up the subjects to rebel against the queen, as I proved before by the testimonies of Catena and Gabutius. It is not then imaginable that he should so poorly intend his own designs, to employ one on purpose, and he but a merchant ; and that the priests who were the men, if any, most likely to do the business, should be unemployed. I speak not of the argument from matter of fact (for it is apparent that they were employed, as I showed but now);
1661.
598 A SERMON ON THE ANNIVEUSAUV
but it is plain also that they must have been employed, if we had had no otlier argument but a presumption of the pope's ordinary discretion. Things then remaining in this condition, what security could the queen or state have, with- out the absence of those men who must be the instruments of their mischief/
Thirdly, there was great reason those men might be ba- nished, who might from their own principles plead immunity from all laws, and subordination to the Prince. But that so these priests might, I only bring two witnesses, leading men of their own side. Thus Bellarmine " : " The pope hath exempted all clerks from subjection to princes." The same is taught bv Emanuel Sa in his * aphorisms,' verbo " clericus," I must not dissemble that this aphorism, however it passed the press at first, yet in the edition of Paris it was left ■out. The cause is known to every man : for that it was merely to serve their ends is apparent ; for their French freedom was there taken from them, they durst not * par- ler tout' so near the parliament ; but the aphorism is to this day retained in the editions of Antwerp and Cologne.
If this be their doctrine, as it is plain it is taught by these leading authors, 1 mean Sa and Bellarmine, I know no reason but it may be verv just, and most convenient to deny those men the country from whose laws they plead exemption.
Secondly : It was but reasonable, in case they obeyed not the proscription, their disobedience should be made capital. For if they did not obey, then either they sinned against their conscience, in disobeying their lawful prince, and so are auTOHaraic^iroi, and inexcusable from the law's penalty, which may be extended at the pleasure of the law- giver, where there is no positive injustice in the dispro- portion ; or if they did not sin against their conscience, then of necessity must they think her to be no lawful prince, or not their lawful prince, nor they her subjects, and so ' ipso facto' are guilty of high treason, and their execution w'as for ' treason, not religion ;' and so the principle is evicted which I shall beg leave to express in St. Cyprian's language, •' Non erat ilia fidei corona, sed poena perfidise ; nee religiosae virtutis exitus gloriosus, sed desperationis interitus°."
» Lib. 1. c. 28. De Clericis. " De Siniplic. Praclat,
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON. 599
For if Valentius banish Eusebius from Samosata, and Eusebius obey not the edict, if Valentius puts hitn to death, it is not for his being a Christian that he suffers death; but for staying at Samosata, against the command of Valentius p. Such was the case of the priests, whom for just cause, as I have proved, and too apparent proof of seditious practices, the queen banished. Now if the queen was their lawful sovereign, then were they bound to obey her decree of exile, though it had been unjust as was the case of Eusebius; or if they did not obey, not to think the laws unjust for punish- ing their disobedience. I say again, their disobedience, not their religion : for that it was not their reUgion that was struck at by the justice of these laws, but the security of the queen and state only aimed at, — besides what I have already said, is apparent to the evidence of sense. For when Hart and Bosgrave, Jesuits both, came into England against the law, they were apprehended and imprisoned : for the laws without just execution were of no force for the queen's safety ; but when these men had acknowledged the queen's legitimate power, and put in their security for their due obedience, they obtained their pardon and their liberty. The same proceedings were in the case of Horton and Rishton, all which I hope were not apostates from their order or religion, but so they must have been, or not have escaped death, in case that their religion had been made capital. Lastly, this statute extended only to such priests who were made priests, since * Primo of Elizabeth,' and were born in England. It was not treason for a French priest to be in England, but yet so it must have been, if religion had been the thing they aimed at. But it is so foul a calumny, I am ashamed to stand longer to refute it. The proceedings of the church and state of England were just, honourable, and rehgious, full of mercy and discretion, and unless it were that as C. Fimbria complained of Q. Scsevola, we did not open our breasts wide enough to receive the danger, there is no cause imaginable, I mean on our parts, to move them to so damned a conspiracy, or indeed to any just complaint.
Secondly : If these were not the causes (as they would fain abuse the world into a persuasion that they were), what
p Theodorct, lib. iv. c. 1-A.
coo A StHMON ON IHE ANNIVERSARY
was? I shall tell you, if you will give me leave avudiv rriv TTvyvv ^lo^uTTeiv, ' to derive it t'roui its very head,' and thou 1 will leave it to you to judge, whether or no my augury fails me.
First, I guess that the traitors were encouraged and pri- marily moved to this treason, from the prevailing opinion which is most generally received, on that side, of the lawful- ness of deposing princes that are heretical. I say, generally received, and I shall make my words good, or else the blame shall lay on themselves for deceiving me, when they declare their own minds. I instance, first, in the fathers of the so- ciety''. Bellarmine teacheth that kings "have no wrong done them, if they be deprived of their kingdoms, when they prove heretics." — Cresvvell, in his ' Philopater' goes further, saying, " that if his heresy be manifest, he is deposed without any explicit judicial sentence of the pope, the law itself hath passed the sentence of deposition '." And therefore,
Bonarscius is very angry ' at Arnald, the French king's advocate, for affirming that religion could be no just cause to depose a lawful prince ; if he had been brought up in their schools, he might have learnt another lesson ; " papa potest mutare regna, et uni auferre, atque alteri conferre, tanquam summus princeps spiritualis, si id necessarium sit ad ani- marum salutem," saith Bellarmine'. He gives his reason too, " Quia alioqui possent mali principes impune fovere hee- reticos";" which is a thing not to be suffered by his holiness.
This doctrine is not the private opinion of these doctors, but " est certa, definita, atque indubitata virorum clarissimo- rum sententia," saith F. Creswell", I suppose he means in his own order ; and yet I must take heed what I say, for Eudae- mon Johannes y is very angry with Sir Edward Cooke, for saying it is the doctrine of the Jesuits. Do they then deny it? No surely, but " Non est Jesuitarum propria," it is not theirs alone, " sed, ut Garnettus respondit, totius Ecclesiae,
1 Nee ulla eis injuria fiet, si deponantnr. Lib. v. de Rom. Pontif. c. 7.
' Ex ipsa vi juris et ante omneni sententiam snpremi pastoris ao judicis contra ipsum prolatam. Lugduni impres. 1593, p. 106. n. 157. Aniphith. Honor, p. 117.
' Sed lieus, Arnalde, a cujiis institutione liausisti nullam posse intercidcre causam, qua? regem cogat abire regno ? Non rcligionis?
' Bellar. de Pont. R. lib. v. c. 6. " Cap. 7.
■^ Ubi supra, p. J 07. y Apol, pro Garnet, c. 3.
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON. 601
et quidem ab antiquissiniis temporibus consensione recepta doctrina nostra est ;" and there he reckons up seven and twenty famous authors of the same opinion. Cresvvell, in his Philo- pater ^ says as much, if not more : " Hinc etiam infert uni- versatheologorum et jurisconsultorumecclesiasticorura schola, et est certum, et defide, quemcunque principem Christianum, si a religione catholica manifeste deflexerit, et alios avocare voluerit, excidere statim omni potestate ac dignitate, ex ipsa vi juris, turn humani, turn Divini." You see how easily they swallow this great camel. Add to this, that Bellarmine » himself proves, that the pope's temporal power, or of dis- posing of princes' kingdoms, is a catholic doctrine ; for he reckons up of this opinion, one and twenty Italians, fourteen French, nine Germans, seven Enghsh and Scotch, nineteen Spaniards, and these not ' e fsece plebis,' but ' e primoribus,' all very famous and very leading authors.
You see it is good divinity amongst them, and I have made it good, that it is a general opinion, received by all their side, if you will believe themselves; and now let us see if it will pass for good law, as well as good divinity.
It is not for nothing that the church of France protests against some of their received canons ; if they did not, I know not what would become of their princes. Their ' lilies' may be to-day, and to-morrow be cast into the oven, if the pope either call their Prince ' Huguenot,' as he did Henry IV.; or ' tyrant,' as Henry III. ; or ' unprofitable for the church or kingdom,' as he did king Childeric, whom pope Zachary, ' de facto' did depose for the same cause, and inserted his act into the body of the law as a precedent for the future, " Quod etiam ex autoritate frequenti agit sancta ecclesia ;" it is im- paled in a parenthesis in the body of the canon'', lest depo- sition of princes should be taken for news. The law is clear for matter of fact; the lawfulness follows.
" Hsereticis licitum est auferri quae habent = ;" and this not only from a private man, but even from princes, " Nam qui in niajore dignitate est, plus punitur;" or take it, if you please, in more proper terms. " Dominus papa principem secularem deponere potest propter hseresim'';" and so
^ Num. 157. '' Contra Barclaium in piiiicip. fere.
'' Cnii. Alius. Cans. 15. q. 6. '^ Ci. 1. in Snnnna 23- q. 7.
^ Gl. cap. Kxcouimunicanms, tit. dc iiteieticij, iil). v.
C02 A StUiMON 0\ THE ANNIVERSARY
another may be chosen, Uke the Palatines and Castellans in Iceland, just as if the king were dead, *' Nam per hirresim j)Iusquam civihter mortuus censetur," saith Simaucha", and tliat. by virtue ot" a constitution of" Gregory IX., by which every man is freed from all duty, homage, allegiance, or sub- ordination ^vhatsoever due to a heretic, whether due by a natural, civil, or political right; " Aliquo pacto, aut quacunque firmitate vallatum. — Et sic nota," saith the gloss, " Quod papa potest absolvere laicurn de juramento fidelitatis."
1 end those things with tlie attestation of Bellarmine', "Est res certa et explorata, posse pontificem maximum justis de causis temporalibus judicare, atque ipsos temporales prin- cipes aliquando deponere." — And again, that we may be sure to know of what nature this doctrine is, he repeats it; " Sic igitur de potCvState in temporalibus, quod ea sit in papa, non opinio, sed certitudo apud catholicos est." And now let any man say, if this be not a catholic doctrine, and a likely ante- cedent to have treason to be its consequent.
But I fix not here, only this, it is plain that this proposi- tion is no friend to loyalty ; but that which follows is abso- lutely inconsistent with it, in case our prince be of a different persuasion in matters of religion. For,
2, It is not only lawful to depose princes that are he- retical, but it is necessary, and the catholics are bound to do it ' sub mortali.' I know not whether it be so generally, I am sure it is as confidently taught as the former, and by as great doctors.
" Ecclesia nimis graviter erraret, si admitteret aliquem re- gem, qui vellet impune fovere quamlibet sectam, et defenders hsereticos :" so BellarmineS. And again*", " Non licet Chris- tianis tolerare regem haereticum, si conetur pertrahere subditos ad suam haeresim." But F. Creswell* puts the business home to purpose, " Certe non tantura licet, sed summa etiam juris Divini necessitate ac praecepto, imo conscientiae vinculo arctissimo, et extreme animarum suarum periculo ac dis- crimine, Christianis omnibus hoc ipsum incumbit, si praestare rem possint." Under peril of their souls they must not suffer an heretical prince to reign over them. " Possunt, et debent
• Cap. 45, (ie Poenit. ' Contra Barclaium, cap. 3.
P Lib. Y. de Kom. Pont. c. 7. •> Ibid.
» Philopat. p. 110. n. 162.
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON. 603
eum arcere ex hominum Christianorum dominatu, ne alios inficiat, &c>"
3. He that saith subjects ' may, and are bound to depose their princes, and to drive them from all rule over Christians, if they be able,' means something more : for what if the prince resist? still he is bound to depose him if he be able. How if the prince make a war? the catholic subject must do his duty nevertheless, and war too, if he be able. He that says he may wage a war with his prince, I doubt not but thinks he may kill him ; and if the fortune of the war lights so upon him, the subject cannot be blamed for doing of his duty.
It is plain that killing a prince is a certain consequent of deposing him, unless the prince be bound in conscience to think himself a heretic, when the pope declares him so, and be likewise bound not to resist; and besides all this will perform these his obligations, and as certainly think himself heretical, and as really give over his kingdom quietly, as he is bound. For in case any of these should fail, there can be but very slender assurance of his life. I would be loth to obtrude upon men the odious consequences of their opinions, or to make any thing worse which is capable of a fairer con- struction; but I crave pardon in this particular; the life of princes is sacred, and is not to be violated so much as in thought, or by the most remote consequence of a public doctrine : but here indeed it is so immediate and natural a consequent of the former, that it must not be dissembled. But what shall we think, if even this blasphemy be taught ' in terminis?' See this too.
In the year 1407, when the duke of Orleans had been slain by John of Burgundy, and the fact notorious beyond a possibility of concealment, he thought it his best way to employ his chaplain to justify the act, pretending that Orleans was a tyrant. This stood him in small stead, for by the procurement of Gerson, it was decreed in the council of Constance, that tyranny was no sufficient cause for a man to kill a prince. But yet, I find, that even this decree will not stand princes in niuch stead. First, because the decree runs " ut nemo privata, autoritate, &c. ;" but if the pope com- mands it, then it is 'judicium publicum,' and so they are
^ Pag. lotj, n. \b7.
604 A SKUMOX ON THE ANMVERSAHV
never the more secure for all this. Secondly, because Mariana' tells us, that this decree is nothinp;. " Nanique id decretum (Concilii Constantiensis) Romano Pontifici Martino quinto probatum non invenio, non Eusjenio aut successoribus, quonnn consensu conciliorum ecclesiasticorum sanctitas stat." Thirdly, because though the council had forbidden killing of tyrannical princes, even by public authority, though this decree had been confirmed by the pope, which yet it was not, yet princes are never the more secure, if they be con- victed of heresy ; and, therefore, let them but add heresy to their tyranny, and this council, ' Non obstante,' they may be killed by any man; for so it is determined"" in an apology made for Chastel, " Licitum esse privatis et singulis, reges et ]irincipes hjereseos et tyrannidis condemnatos, occidere, non obstante decreto concilii Constantiensis ;'' — and the author of the book ' De justa. Abdicatione Henrici 111.' affirms it not only lawful but meritorious.
How much less then this is that of Bellarmine " ? "Si temporalia obsintfini spirituali, spiritualis potestas potest, et debet coercere teniporalem, omni ratione ac viii." If * omni ratione,' then this of killing him in case of necessity, (jr greater convenience, must not be excluded. But to confess the business openly and freely, it is known that either the consent of the people, or the sentence of the pope, or consent of learned men, is with them held to be a * publicum judi- cium,' and sufficient to sentence a prince, and convict him of heresy or tyranny. That opinion which makes the people judge, is very rare amongst them, but almost generally exploded"; that opinion which makes the learned to be their judge is, I think, proper to Mariana, or to a few more with him ; but that the sentence of the pope is a sufficient con- viction of him, and a complete judicial act, is the most catholic opinion on that side, as I shall show anon. Now whether the pope, or learned men, or the people, be to pass - this sentence upon the prince, it is plain that it is an universal doctrine amongst them, that after this sentence (whosesoever it be) it is then without question lawful to kill him ; and the most that ever they say is, that it is indeed not lawful to kill a king, not lawful for a private man, of his own
' Of Rrg. ft J-.. Inslil lib, i. c. 6. " lianr. Vrmni. Const p. 2. t. i. » Ut I'unl K. lib. \. r. h. " Vnlt P. I). M. Image ol' both Churches.
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON". 605
head, without the public sentence of liis judge ; but when this judge (whom they affirm to be the pope) hath passed his sentence, then thev doubt not of its being lawful. That I say trucj I appeal to Gregory de ValentiaP, TolefJ, Bellar- mine^ Suarez ', Salmeron ', Serarius ", Molina", Emanuel S^y, Azorius==. Martinus Delrius % Lessius'', Gretser% Be- canus '', Sebastan Heissius % Richeome*', Eudaemon Johannes s, Salianus ^ Filliucius ', Adam Tanner ""j and their great Thomas Aquinas 'i
All these, and many more that I have seen, teach the lawfulness of kiUing kings after public sentence ; and then, to beautify the matter, profess that they deny the lawfulness of
* regicidiura,' by a private authority. For if the pope sen- tence him, then he is no longer a king, and so the killing of him is not ' regicidium ;' and if any man doth kill him after such sentence, then he kills him not ' privata autoritate,' or
* sine judicio publico ;' which is all they affirm to be unlawful. • And thus they hope to stop the clamour of the world
against them, yet to have their opinions stand entire, the way to their own ends fair, but the prince no jot the more secure of his life. I do them no wrong, I appeal to the authors themselves ; there I will be tried. For that either the people, or that a company of learned men, or to be sure the pope may license a man to kill the king, they speak it with one voice and tongue. And now after all this we may better guess wh»t manner of counsel or threatening (for I know not which to call it) that was which Bellarmine ■" gave sometimes to king James of blessed memory. " Si securus regnare veht rex, si vitse suse et suorum consulere cupiat, sinat catholicos
P Tom, iii disp. 5. q. 8. punct. 3. '' In Sum. lib. v. c. 6.
"■ Apolog. ad K. Angl. c. 13. » Defens. Fidei, lib. vi. c. 4.
• In 13 cap. ad Koin. disp. 5. " Qusest. p. in c. 3. Jnd.
* De Just, et Jure, toni. iv. tr. 3. d. 6.
y Apliori?.. verb. Tyrannus. » Instit. Moral. 2 p. lib. xi. c. b. q. 10.
• In Hercul. Fuient. '' De Instit. et Jure, c. 9. dub. 4.
<= Chanvesauris polit. ** In Resp. ad Aplioris. Calvinistaruni.
* Contr. Calvinist, y^phorism. c. 3. ad Aplioi-. I. ' In Expostul. ad Henrici. Reg. pro Societate.
t In Apolog. pro Henrico Garnetto. '' Ad annum mundi, ii669, n. 7.
' Tract, 'i^9. p. 2. de quinto precepto Decai. n. 12.
^ Tom. iii. disp. 4. q. 8. dub. 3. n. 3ii.
' Opnsc. 5J(). et lib. i. de Regim. Fraecip. c. 6.
•» In lib. sub nomine Torti, edit. Colon. Agrip. 1610, p. i\.
006 A Sl-.RMON ON THE A N' N I V EKS A KY
frui religione sua!" — If this be good counsel, then in case the cathohcs were hindered from the free profession of their religion, at the best it was full of danger, if not certain niin. But I will no more rake this Augean stable; in my fnst part I showed it was too catholic a doctrine, and too much practised by the great Cisalpine prelate. I add no more, lest truth itself should blush, fearing to become incredible.
Now, if we put all these things together, and. then we should prove to be heretics in their account, we are in a fair case, both prince and people ; if we can but guess rightly at this, we shall need, I think, to look no further why fire was called for to consume both our king and country, nor why we may fear it another time.
The author of the * Epistle of Comfort to the Catholics in Prison,' printed by authority, in the year of the powder treason, is very earnest to persuade his catholics not to come to our churches, or communicate with us in any part of our divine service ; afi'righting them with the strange ' terri- culamenta' of half Christians, hypocrites, deniers of Christ, in case they joined with us in our Liturgy ". Strange affrightments these, yet not much more than what is true, if they esteem us heretics. For if they think us so, we are so to them ; and they communicating with us, do as much sin, as if we were so indeed.
But if we be not heretics, what need all this stir, ' per- missu superiorum :' the counsel of recusancy w^as unreason- able, dangerous, schismatical, and as the case then stood, very imprudent. In charity to their discretion, we cannot but think them uncharitable in their opinion of us.
But there is no need we should dispute ourselves into a conjecture, themselves speak out and plain enough. Hear Bellarmine", under the visor of Tortus, affirming that the kino-'s edict commanded the catholics to go to heretics' churches, speaking of ours. But more plain is that of Champ, the Sorbonist, in his treatise of ' Vocation of Bishops.' " Therefore, as Arianism is a condemned heresy, and the professors thereof be heretics, — so likewise is pro-
ipEiVSa;, xttt a<fo^i(ii7-S'ji. 36 Can. Apost. 33 Laodic. "0«-i ou Jsf aigETixor?
■ E"
Ka^a
" Apo). ad R. A'Dg)
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON. 607
testantism a condemned heresy, and those that profess it be also heretics?."
By this time we see too plainly that the state of pro- testant princes is full of danger, where these men have to do. They may be deposed and expelled from the government of their kingdoms, they must be deposed by the catholics, under peril of their souls, it may be done any way that is most convenient ; they may be rebelled against, fought with, slain. For all this, it were some ease, if here we might fix a * non ultra.' For, perhaps, these princes might put in a plea for themselves, and go near to prove themselves to be no heretics. All is one, for though they do, yet unless they can persuade his holiness not to judge them so, or declare them heretics, all is to no purpose, for to him they must stand or fall. "" Nam judicare an rex pertrahat ad hceresim necne, pertinet ad pontificem." So Bellarmine. They need not stay till his heresy be of itself manifest, he is then to be used, like a heretic, '* when by the pope of Rome he shall be judged heretical."
But what matter is it if the pope be judge, for if they may be deposed, as good he as any else? What grievance then can this be to the state of princes more than the former? Yes, very much. 1. Because the pope, by his order to spirituals, may take away kingdoms upon more pretences than actual heresy. It is a large title, and may do any thing. Bellarmine 'i expresses it handsomely, and it is the doctrine of their great Aquinas '. " The pope," saith he, " by his spiritual power may dispose of the temporalities of all the Christians in the world, when it is requisite to the end of the sniritual power." — The words are plain that he may do it for his own ends (for his is the spiritual power), that is, for the advancement of the see apostolic ; and thus (to be sure) he did actually with Frederick Barbarossa, John of Navarre, the earl of Thoulouse, and our own king John. 2. The pope pretends to a power, that to avoid the probable danger of the increase of heresy, he may take away a territory from the rioht owner, as is reported by the cardinal D'Ossat; and this is soon pretended, for who is there that cannot make proba-
P Cap. 11. p. 119. Duuav, 1&16. "i Ubi supra,
f De Kegini. Priucip.
608 A SERMON ON TIlF. ANNIVERSARY
bilities, psppcially when a kingdom is at stake? 3. We find- examples, that the pope hath excommunicated princes, and declared them heretics, when all the heresy hath been a not layino; their crowns at the feet of St. Peter. The case of Lewis IV. is every where known, whom John XXIII. excom- municated. Platina ' tells the reason. He called himself emperor without the pope's leave, and aided the Italian deputies to recover Milan. Doubtless a most damnable and fundamental heresy. 4. How, if it proves in the pope's account to be a heresy to defend the immediate right of princes to their kingdoms, dependent only on God, not on the see apostolic. If this be no heresy, nor like heresy to say it, I would fain learn the meaning of Baronius '■ con- cerning the book of Johannes de Roa, who some time had been a Jesuit, but then changed his order, and becan)e Augustan, saying, " it was sentenced to the fire before it had escaped the press." And good reason, " Nihil enim tale a patribus societatis didicit." Good men, they never taught him any such doctrine as is contained in that pestilent book, " de juribus principalibus defendendis et moderandis juste." Now, if this be heresy, or like it, to preach such a doctrine, then likely it will be judged heresy in princes to do so, that is, to hold their crowns without acknowledgment of subordi- nation to St. Peter's chair. And if it be not heresy to do so, it is in their account as bad, for so the Jesuits, in their ' Veritas defensa' against the action of Arnald the advocate, affirm * in terminis,' that the actions of some kings of France against the pope, in defence of their regalties, were but " examples of rebellion, and spots to disgrace the purity of the French lilies." 5. But in case the pope should chance to mistake in his sentence against a prince, for the cause of heresy, yet for all this mistake, he can secure any man to take away the prince's life or kingdom. His lawyers will be his security for this point. For although, in this case, the deposition of the prince should be, and be acknowledged to be, against God's law, the prince being neither tyrant nor heretic, yet his holiness commanding it, takes away the un- lawfulness of it, by his dispensation. So D. Marta"; and for
» In Clement. Quinto.
' Baron, torn. vi. Annal. An. Dom.447. n. 8.
" De Jiirisd. cas. Ixiv. v. 14.
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON. 609
this doctrine he quotes Hostiensis, FeUnus, Gratus, the abbot, the archbishop of Florence, Ancharanus, Johannes Andreas, Laurentius de Finn, and some others. Indeed his divines deny this, " sed contrarium tamen observatur," as it is very well observed by the same doctor^ ; for he brings the practice and example of pope Martin V., Julius II., Celestine III., Alexander III,, and Sixtus Quintus, all which dispensed in cases acknovtledged to be expressly against God's law. 6. Lastly, how if the pope should lay a claim to all the kingdoms of the world, as belonging to St. Peter's patri- mony, by right of spiritual pre-eminence ? I know no great security we have to the contrary. For, first, it is known he hath claimed the kingdom of England, as feudatory to the see apostolic y. Which when I considered, I wondered not at that new and insolent title which Mosconius gives his holiness of * Defensor fidei.' He might have added the title of ' Rex Catholicus,' and * Christianissimus.' For Dr. Marta, in his treatise of "^jurisdiction^, which he dedicated to Paulus Quintus, hath that for an argument why he dedicated his book to him, because, forsooth, the pope is the only monarch of the world. But of greater authority is that of Thomas Aquinas % affirming the pope to be the vertical top of all power, ecclesiastical and civil. So that now it may be true which the bishop of Patara told the emperor, in behalf of pope Sylverius. " Multos esse reges, sed nullum talera, qualis ille, qui est papa super ecclesiam mundi totius ^"
For these reasons, I think, it is true enough, that the constituting the pope the judge of princes in the matter of deposition, is of more danger than the thing itself. The sum is this. However schism or heresy may be pretended, yet it is but during the pope's pleasure, that kings or subjects shall remain firm in their mutual necessitude. For if our prince be but excommunicate or declared heretic, then to be a
^ Num. 17.
y Rex Anglorum est subditiis Romano pontifici, ratione directi dominii, quod in regnum Anglise et Hiberniae Romana habet ecclesia. Bellaini. Apol. adv. R. Angl. c. 3.
^ De Majest. milit. Ecclcs. c. 1. p. 25. " Tibi a quo emanat omiiis jurisdictio, unicus in orbe pontifex, iniperator et rex, omnium principum superior, rerumque et personarum supremus et dominus." Epist. Dedicat.
» 2 Sent. Dist. 44. et lib. iii de Rcgini. Princ.
^ Lib. erat. iu Breviar. de Causa Nestorian. c. 21. VOL.V I. R R
610 A SEKMON ON THE ANNIVEllSAliY
good subject will be accounted no better than irrellgion and anti-catholicisni. If the conclusion be too hard and intoler- able, then so are the premises, and yet they pass for good catholic doctrine amony; themselves.
But if truly, and ' ex animo,' they are otherwise affected, they should do well to unsay what hath been said, and declare themselves, by public authority, against such doc- trines : and say whether or no their determinations shall be * de fide ?' If they be, then all those famous catholic doctors, Thomas Aquinas, Bellarmine, Creswell, Mariana, Emanuel Sa, &.C. are heretics, and their canons teach heresy, and many of their popes to be condemned as heretical, for practising and teaching deposition of princes, by an authority usurped against, and in prejudice of, the Christian faith. But if their answers be not * de fide,' then they had as good say nothing, for the danger is not at all decreased ; because if there be doctors on both sides, by their own assertion '^ they may without sin follow either, but yet more safely, if they follow the most received and the most authorized ; and whether this rule will lead them, I will be judged by any man that hath considered the premises. Briefly, either this thing must remain in the same state it is, and our princes still exposed .to so extreme hazards, or else let his holiness seat himself in his chair, condemn these doctrines, vow against their future practice, limit his * ordo ad spiritualia,' contain himself within the limits of causes directly and merely ecclesiastical, disclaim all power, so much as indirect over princes' temporals, and all this with an intent to oblige all Christendom. Which when I see done, I shall be most ready to believe that nothing in popery doth, either directly or by a necessary consequence, destroy loyalty to our lawful prince ; but not till then, having so much evidence to the contrary.
Thus much was occasioned by consideration of the cause of the disciples' query, which was when they saw this, that their Lord and Master, for his difference in religion, was turned forth of doors, which when they saw, '* They said. Lord :" it was well they asked at all, and would not too hastily act what they too suddenly had intended ; but it was better that they asked Christ ; it had been the best warrant
* Charity maintained by Catii. c. 7.
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON. 611
they could have had, could they have obtained but a ' ma- gister dixit.' But this was not likely, it was too strange a question to ask of such a Master, "■ a Magistro mansuetudinis licentiam crudelitatis." Nothing could have come more cross to his disposition. His spirit never was addicted to blood, imless it were to shed his own. He was a Prince of peace, and set forth to us by all the symbols of peace and gentleness, as of a sheep, a lamb, a hen, a gentle twining vine, the healing olive : and is it likely that such a one should give his ' placet' to the utter ruin of a company of poor villagers, for denying him a night's lodging, moved thereto by the foregoing scandal of a schism ? he knew better what it cost to redeem a man, and to save his life from destruction, than to be so hasty for his ruin. And if tbe fathers con- fessors, who were to answer the question of the day, had but reflected upon this gospel, they might have informed thsir penitents better, than to have engaged them upon such anti- christian and treasonable practices, as to destroy an assembly of Christians, as to depose or kill a king.
It is the proper cognizance of Mahometanism, by fire and sword to maintain their cause, and to propagate their religion, by ruin of princes, and conquering their kingdoms. But it is the excellency of Christianity, that by humility and obe- dience it made princes tributary to our dear Master, and homas:ers to his kingdom. When Valentinian sent Calli- gonus, his chamberlain, to St. Ambrose, to threaten him from his faith, his answer was, " Deus permittit tibi, ut impleas quod minaris. Ego patiar, quod est episcopi; tu facies, quod est spadonis." He did not stir up the numerous people of his diocese to rebel against the emperor, or depose him, employed no agent in his court to undermine his secu- rity, nor assassin to take his life. He and the rest of those good fathers, would not have lost their possibility of being martyrs for the world, unless it were by persuading the emperors to the Christian faith. " We pray for all our governors, that they might have long life, a secure govern- ment, a safe house, strong armies, good subjects, quiet world." So TertuUian ^.
I had thought that the doctrine and example of our blessed
*■ Apologet.
612 A SERMO\ ON THE AN N I VEllS ARY
Saviour, the practice apostolical and primitive, had been ties enough to keep us in our obedience to God and the king, and in Christian cliarity to all ; but I find that all these precepts come to nothing ; for the apostles and primitive Christians did not actually depose kings, nor alter states, nor call for fire to consume tlieir enemies : not because it was simply un- lawful so to do, or any way adverse to the precepts of Christ, liut because they wanted power. So Bellarmine •" : " The church gave leave that the faithful should obey Juhan, be- cause then they wanted forces." — And F. Creswell'' is very confident of the business, '* They might without all question liave appointed to themselves other kings and princes, if the Christians had been strong enough to bring their intendments to pass." But because they could not, therefore it was not lawful for them to go about it, nor is it for us in the same case, " especially if the prince hath quiet possession, and a strong guard about him, then by no means is it lawful for a single man, by his own authority, to assault his prince that rules tyrannically." So Salmeron?. But who sees not that this way murder may be lavvful ? For true it is God commanded us, saying, '' Thou shalt not kill ;" that is, if thou art not able to lift up thy hand, or strike a stroke : thou shalt not blaspheme, that is, if thou beest speechless ; thou must be obedient to thy prince, that is, if thou canst not tell how to help it. Good doctrine this ! And indeed it might possibly be somethinsT if God had commanded our subordination to princes only ' for wrath/ for then ' si vires adsint,' if we can defend ourselves we are secure, we need not fear his wrath ; but when he adds, " also for conscience' sake," I cannot suflBi- ciently wonder that any man should obtrude so senseless, so illiterate, and so impious an interpretation upon the Christian world, under the title of catholic doctrine.
Christ when he was betrayed, and seized upon by his murderers, could have commanded twelve legions of angels for his guard, " Non defuerunt vires ;" and, in all human likelihood, such a * satellitium' as that would have moved them to a behef in him, or else, I am sure, might have destroyed the unbelievers. Shall I say more against this
c De Pontif. R. lib. v. c. 7. ' Pliilopater, p. 107. n. 158.
g Disp. 5. in c. 13 ad Roman.
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON, 613
rude 'giosseraa?' Then thus. It is false that the primitive Christians had not power to defend themselves against their persecutors. Hear St. Cyprian; "Nemo nostrum, quando apprehenditur, reluctatur, nee se adversus injustitiam, et vio- lentiam vestram, quamvis nimius et copiosus noster sit populus, ulciscitur." They could have resisted and that to blood, but they had not so learned Christ. Prayers and tears were the arms of Christians, and then they had a defence beyond all this, when they were hard put to it, " Mori potuerunt;" a submission of their bodies to martyrdom was their last refuo-e.
Thus St. Agnes, Lucia, Agatha, Christina, Domitilla saved both their faith and chastity, " non armis, sed ignibus et car- nificis manu ;" the tormentor's last cruelty defended them from all succeedino- dansfer.
I will not yet conclude, that that which these men obtrude for catholic doctrine is flat and direct heresy ; I will instance but once more, and then I shall. In the fourth council of Toledo, which was assembled when the usurping and tyran- nizing Goths did domineer in Europe, themost whereof were tyrants, usurpers, or Arians ; the council decreed that if any man did violate the life or person of his king, " aut potestate regni exuerit," kill him or depose him, " Anathema sit," &c. he should be accursed in the sight of God and his holy angels, and together with all the companions of his iniquity, he should be separated from the catholic church. And now, I hope, I may say that these men who either practise or advise such practices as killing or deposing kings, are as formally condemned for heresy, and anathematized, as ever was Manichee or Cataphrygian. I know not, but, perhaps, this mioht be thouoht of when the Jesuits were inscribed heretics upon the public pillar before the Louvre, at Paris, upon their banishment : however, let them answer it as they may, it concerns them as much as their being catholics comes to, " Et considerent, quia qus prsedicant tantopere verba, aut ipsorum summorum pontificum sunt suas fimbrias extenden- tium, aut illorum qui eis adulantur," as said ^neas Sylvius ^ ; but at no hand can it be Christian doctrine.
I instanced in these things to show the antithesis between
'' De Gestis Concil. Basil, lib. i.
G14 A SKUMOX OX THE AXNIVERSAIIY
tlie spirit of our blessed Saviour, who answered the question of the text, and the fathers confessors, of whom was asked the question of the day.
lint give me leave to consider them not only as misin- forming Uieir penitents, but as concealing their intended purpose; for even this way, the persons to whom the question was propounded made themselves guilty of the intended machination'. For by all law, ecclesiastical and civil, he that conceals an intended murder or treason, makes himself as much a party for concealing, as is the principal for con- triving.
Ob. But these fathers confessors could not be accused by these general laws, as being exempt by virtue of special case, for they received notice of these things only in con- fession, the seal of which is so sacred and inviolable, that he is sacrilegious who in any case doth break it open, though it be to avoid the greatest evil that can happen, so Bellarmine''; to save the lives of all the kings in Christendom, so Binet ' ; though to save a whole commonwealth from damage, tem- poral or spiritual, of body or soul, so Suarez ■".
A considerable matter ! On the one side we are threat- ened by sacrilege, on the other by danger of princes and commonwealths ; for the case may happen, that either the prince and whole state may be suffered to perish bodily and ghostly, or else the priest must certainly damn himself by the sacrilegious breach of the holy seal of confession. Give me leave briefly to consider it, and, both for the acquittance of our state in its proceedings against these traitors, and for the regulating of the case itself, to say these two things.
1. This present treason was not revealed to these fathers confessors in formal confession. 2. If it had, it did not bind to secrecy in the present case. Of the first, only a word.
1. It was only propounded to them in way of question or consultation " (like this in the text), as appeared by their own confessions, and the attestation of then Sir Henry Moun- tague, recorder of London, to Garnet himself. It could not,
' Cap. quantae de senten. excom. et c. delicto ibid, in 6. 13. q. 3. q. 3. lib. i. Occisorum ad Syllanian. et lib. 1. sec. ]. ad L. Cornel, de Falsis. 1. qiiisquis ad I. Jul. Majest.
" Apol. adv. R. Aiigl.
' Casaub. ad Front. Due. In 3 part. D. Thorn, disp.
» 33. Sect. J. n. 2. " Vide Casaub. Ep. ad Front. D. p. 133.
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON. G15
therefore, be a formal confession ; and, therefore, not bind to the seal. It is the common opinion of their own doctors : " Non enim inducitur obligatio sigilli in confessione, quam quis facit sine ullo animo accipiendi absolutionem, sed solum consilii petendi causa"."
2. It was propounded to these fathers confessors as a thing not subjectable to their penitential judicature, because it was a fact not repented of, but then in agitation, and resolved upon for the future. How then could this be a con- fession, whose institution must certainly be in order to abso- lution, and how could this be in any such order, when it was a business of which they could not expect to be absolved, unless they hoped to sin with a pardon about their necks ; and on condition God would be merciful to them in its re- mission, would come and profess that they were resolved to anger him ? In reason, this could be no act of repentance, neither could it, by confession of their own side. It is the doctrine of Hostiensis : and Navarre p, and Cardinal Alban ^ confess it to be most commonly received.
3. It was not only not repented of, but by them reputed to be a good action, and so could not be a matter of confes- sion. I appeal to any of their own manuals and penitentiary books. It is culpable, say they. I am sure it is ridiculous in any man to confess, and shrive himself of a good action ; and that this was such in their opinion, it is plain, by that impious answer of Garnet, affirming it a business greatly meritorious, if any good might thence accrue to the catholic cause ^
4. By this their pretended confession they endeavoured to acquire new complices, as is evident ' in the proceedings against the traitors.' They were therefore bovmd to reveal it, for it neither was, nor could be, a proper and formal con- fession. That this is the common opinion of their own schools, see it affirmed by ^gidius Coninck^
The first particular then is plain. Here neither was the form of confession, nor yet could this thing be a matter of
° De Soto, in lib. iv. Sent. d. 18. q. 4. art. 5. concl. 5. Navar. c. 8. n. IQ. Suarez. disp. 33. sec. 2. Coninck. de sigil. conf. dub. 1. n. 7. P Cap. Sacerdos. 3. q. n. ii6.
1 In Lucubrat. ad Bartohim, in L. ut vim. n. 22. ff. de Justitia et Jnre. •■ See Proceedings against late Traitors. * Ubi supra.
616 A SERMON OX THE ANNIVERSARY
confession ; therefore supposing the seal of confession to be sacreclly inviolable, in all cases, yet they were highly blamable for their concealment in the present.
2. But the truth of the second ])articular is more to be inquired of. That is, that though these things had been only revealed in confession, and this confession had been formal and direct, yet they were boimd, in the present case, to reveal it, because the seal of confession is not so inviolable, as that in no case it is to be broken up, and if in any, especially it may be opened in the case of treason.
I never knew any thing cried up with so general a voice, upon so little ground, as is the over-hallowed seal of confession.
True it is that an ordinary secret, committed to a friend in civil commerce, is not to be revealed upon every cause, nor upon many ; but upon some it may, as they all confess. If thus, then much rather is this to be observed in the revela- tion of the secrets of our consciences, not only from the ordinary tie to secrecy, but likewise, lest sins should grow more frequent, if so great a remedy of them be made so odious, as to expose us to a public infamy or danger of the law. The council, therefore, that first introduced this obli- gation, was very prudent and reasonable, pleads a thousand years' prescription, and relies upon good conveniences. This is all that ever could be proved of it, as may appear anon ; but these are too weak a base, to build so great a structure on it, as to make it sacrilege, or any sin at all, to reveal con- fessions, in some cases.
1. For first, if because it is delivered as a secret, and such a secret, it is the more closely and religiously to be kept ; it is true, — but concludes no more, but that it must be a greater cause that must authorize a publication of this, than of the secrets of ordinary commerce between friend and friend.
2. If the licensing of publication of confession be a way to make confession odious, and therefore that it may not be published, — I say, if this concludes, then, on the contraiy, it concludes far more strongly, that therefore, in some cases, it may be published, because nothing can make a thing more odious and intolerable, than if it be made a cover for grand impieties, so as to engage a true subject, quietly and know- ingly, to see his prince murdered.
3. If it be discouragement to the practice of confession.
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON. 617
that some sins revealed in it must be published, though with peril to the delinquent's fame and life, then it will be a far greater discouragement to the sin, when that it shall, by an universal judgment, be so detested, that its concealment may not be permitted, though it be with the hazard of discou- raging the holy duty of confession : and when the being guilty of such a sin, shall reduce men into such straits, that either they shall want the benefit of absolution, or submit themselves to a public satisfaction, and so, even in this particular, the benefit is far greater than the imaginary inconvenience.
The conveniences of the seal force no more, than that it is inconvenient to be observed, not simply and absolutely, in all cases necessary. And perhaps Suarez, the great patron of it, perceived it ; however, he lays the burden " super com- muni consensu ecclesise, ej usque perpetua traditione'." If then I can show, that there is no such catholic consent of the present church, nor any universal tradition of the ancient church, for the inviolable seal, but plainly the contrary, then our church, in her permission of the priests to reveal some confessions, is as inculpable as those of the present church, who (besides herself) teach and practise it, and as the primi- tive church, whose example in this, as in other things, she strictly follows.
Of the first, the church of England, which observes the seal of confession, as sacredly as reason or religion itself can possibly permit, yet forbids not disclosure, in case of murder or treason, but, in these particulars, leaves us entire in our obedience to the common laws of England ; and these com- mand it".
That the church of England gives leave, in some cases, to reveal confessions, is argument enough to prove, that the seal is not founded upon the consent of the present catholic church : for it is no more a begging of the question (nor ap- parently so much) to say, the chuixh of England is a part of the catholic church, and therefore her consent is required to make a thing universal, than to say, the church of Rome is the whole catholic church, therefore her consent is sufficient to make a thing catholic. But I shall not need to proceed this way. For,
* In 3 part. D. Thorn, disp. 33. sec. 1. ii. 2. " Can. 113. A. D. 1604.
G18 A SFllMOX OV THE ANN'IVKUSARV
1. It is apparent, that, ot" their own side, Altisidiorensis largely and professedly proves the lawfulness of publication, in some cases, as is to be seen. Lib. 4. Sumniai tract. 0". cap. 3. q. 7. and Garnet himself, — the man who if any had most need to stand iu defence of the seal, that the pretence of it miiiht have defended him, — vet confessed of his own oc- cord, "Leges quee celare hsec prohibent, apprime esse justas et salutares"." He adds his reason, and that is more than his authority ; for, saith he, it is not fitting that the life and safety of a prince should depend upon the private niceties of any man's conscience. If two, nay, if one dissent, it is enough to destroy a consent. But see further.
There are many cases, generally confessed amongst them- selves, in which the seal of formal, and, as they love to speak, sacramental confession, may be broken open. I instance but in two or three.
First, confession may be revealed to clear a doubtful case of marriage. It is the opinion of many great canonists^, as you may see them quoted by Suarez de Paz, and Covaru- vias'^, and the case of the Venetian, who married a virgin that Avas both his sister and daughter ; — and that at Rome, under pope Paul III. almost to like purpose, — were long disputed on both sides, whether they were to be revealed or not ; so that at most, it is but a doubtful matter in such cases, whe- ther the tie of secrecy doth oblige. Now if for the proof of marriage, the seal may be broken up, that man and wife might live contentedly, and as they ought, strange it should be unlawful to reveal confessions, in case of treason, for the safety of a prince or state !
In case of heresy, the seal binds not, by their own general confession. It is a rule amongst them,
" Hjeresis est crimen, quod pon confessio celat."
Now I would fain learn wjiy treason is not as revealable as heresy ? Is heresy dangerous to souls ? Then surely so is treason, unless it be none, or a very small crime. May heresy infect others? So may treason, as it did in the present. It may then as well be revealed as heresy. Now
'^ Actio in prodit. lat. p. 99. ' ^ Practic. Crini. Ecclesiast. c. 109. » Kesol. do Matrinion.
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON. 619
that it may something rather, I have these reasons. 1. Be- cause it is not so certain, that such an opinion is heresy, as that such a fact is treason. 2. Because, although both treason and real heresy be damnable and dangerous to souls, yet heresy kills no kings as treason doth. I confess that heresy may, and doth teach it, but then it degenerates into treason. Now, if some heresy may be treason, then that treason is heresy; and so a case of treason may occur, in which, from their own confession, treason is revealable.
3. By the most general voice of their own side, any man may license his confessor to reveal his confession. It is the doctrine of Scotus, Durandus, Almain, Navarre, Medina, and generally of all the Thomists. I infer, if a private man may license his confessor to reveal his confession, then the seal of confession is not founded upon any divine com- mandment ; for if it were, the penitent could not give the priest license to break it. But, if the penitent may give his confessor leave, because the tie of secrecy is a bond in which the priest stands bound to the penitent, and, he giving him leave, remits of his own right, then much rather may a whole state authorize this publication^; for, whatever per- sonal right a private man hath, that the whole state hath much rather, for he is included in it as a part of the whole; and in such cases as concern the whole commonwealth, as this of treason doth most especially, the rule of the law holds without exception, " Refertur ad universes, quod publice fit per majorem partem''," the delinquent gives leave to the publication of confession, therefore, because the whole state doth, whereof he is one member. I add, that in the case of treason, this is much rather true, for here the delinquent loseth all his right whatsoever, prsedial, personal, and of privilege ; and, therefore, the commonwealth can the better license the publication, and the breach of the bond of secrecy, in w^hich the confessor stood tied to the penitent by virtue of implicit stipulation.
4. Lastly, even in special, in the very case of treason
» L. quod Major fF. ad Municipalem.
^ ff.de Regul. Juris, ad sec. lefcitur. Lib. vii. sec. ult. ff. de pact.
620 A SERMO?^ ON THE ANNIVEHSAUY
confessed, many of their own do actually practise a pub- lication, when either they are loyal of themselves, or dare not be otherwise.
I instance first in the church of France. For this, see Bodinus*^, who reports of a Norman gentleman, whom his confessor discovered for having confessed a treasonable pur- pose he sometimes had, of killing Francis I., of which he was penitent, did his penance, craved absolution, obtained it, but yet was sentenced to the axe by express commission from the king to the parliament of Paris'*. The like confession was made by the lord of Haulterville, when he was in danger of death ; which when he had escaped, he incurred it with the disadvantage of public infamy upon the scaffold. I instance not in the case of Barriere, it is every where known as it is reported partly by Thuanus, but more fully by the author of ' Histoire de la paix.' Nor yet is France singular in the practice of publication of confessed treason. For at Rome there have been examples of the like, I mean of those who confessed their purpose of killing the pope, who were revealed by their confessors, and accordingly punished^.
Thus then the first pretence proves a nullity, and either our laws are just in commanding publication of confession in case of treason, or themselves very culpable in teaching and practising it in the same, and in cases of less moment. The second is like the first, for it is extremely vain to pretend that the seal of confession is founded upon catholic tradition. Judge by the sequel.
The first word I hear of concealing confessions, is in Sozomen*^, relating how the Greek church, about the time of Decius the emperor, set over the penitents a public peni- tentiary priest, who was bound to be " Vir bonse conver- sationis, servhnsque secretum," " a good man, and a keeper of secrets ;" for, indeed, he was bound to conceal some crimes, in particular, those which an adulteress had conr fessed, I mean, concerning her adultery, as appears in the
c Dc Republ. lib. ii. c. 5. '' Histoire de Lapaiz.
« Dominic, e Soto memb. 3. q. 4. concl. 2 de rat. regendi secret. f Hist. lib. vii. c. 16.
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON. 621
canons of St. Basils. But yet this priest who was so tied to a rehgious secrecy, did * publish many of them in the con- gregation before the people/ that they might reprove the delinquent and discountenance the sin. The same story is reported by Cassiodore and Nicephorus from the same author. The lawfulness and practice of publication, in some cases, is as clear in Origen''. " If," (saith he) " the physician of thy soul perceives thy sins to be such as to need s*j harsh a remedy, as to have them published before the assemblies of the people, that others may be admonished, and thou the better cured, he need be very deliberate, and skilful in the application of it." Hitherto, no such thing as an universal tradition for the pretended inviolable sacramental seal ; for Origen plainly, and by them, confessedly speaks of such sins, as first were privately confessed to the priest ; how else should he deliberate of their publication ? but yet he did so, and for all the seal of confession, sometimes opened many of them to no fewer witnesses than a whole assembly. Thus it was, in the Greek church, both law and custom. But now if we look into the Latin church, we shall find that it was taken up from example of the Greeks and some while practised, that some particular sins should be published in the church before the congregation, as it is confessed in the council of Mentz, and inserted by Burchard into his decree \
But when the lay-piety began to cool, and the zeal of some clergymen wax too hot, they would needs heighten this custom of publication of some sins, to a law of the publish- ing of all sins. This being judged to be inconvenient, ex- pressed the first decree for the seal of confession in the Latin church. Now see how it is uttered, and it will sufficiently inform us both of the practice and the opinion, which anti- quity had of the obligation to the seal.
" lUam contra apostolicam regulam prsesumptionem," &c. that is, ' it was against the apostolical ordinance, that a law should enjoin that the priest should reveal all those. sins which had been told him in confession k.' It might be done, so it were not required and exacted, and yet might be so
S Tas y,oi^iv^Bis-a<; yvveuKaq v.aX l|ayog6u5-ttj li ih'Ka.Buti.t irifjioa-iivitv ovk liii'Kivg-ctlt 01 nstTEpEj hfA-aiv, Epist. ad Amphil.
^ Homil. 2. in Psal. xxxvii. 'Cap. lO. et '21. lib. xix. c. 37.
^ Decret. S. Leonis. P. M. Epist. 80. ad episc. Cainpau.
622 A SERMON ON THE ANNIVERSARY
required, so it were not a publication of all. " Non enini om- nium hujusmodi sunt peccata;" saith St. Leo : 'some sins are inconvenient to be published :' it is not tit the world should know all, therefore some they might, or else he had said no- thino-. The reason which he gives, makes the business some- what clearer, for he derives it, not from any simple necessity of the thing, or a Divine right, but lest men, out of inordi- nate love<^o themselves, ' should rather refuse to be washed than buy their purity with so much shame.' The whole epistle hath many things in it excellently to the same purpose.
I say no more ; the doctrine and practice of antiquity is sufficiently evident, and that there is nothing less than an universal tradition for the seal of confession to be observed in all cases, even of sins of the highest malignity.
Thu& these fathers confessors are made totally inexcus- able by concealing a treason, which was not revealed to them in a formal confession, and had been likewise culpable, though it had, there being, as I have shown, no such sacredness of the seal as to be inviolable in all cases whatsoever.
I have now done with the several considerations of the persons, to whom the question was propounded ; they were the fathers confessors in the day, but it was Christ the Lord, in my text. The question itself follows, " Shall we com- mand fire to come from heaven and consume them?"
The question was concerning the fate of a whole town of Samaria; in our case it was more, of the fate of a whole kingdom. It had been well if such a question had been silenced by a direct negative, or (as the judges of the Areo- pagus used to do) put off ' ad diem longissimum,' that they might have expected the answer three ages after.
" De morte hominis nulla est cunctatio longa ;'' no demur had been too long in a case of so much and so royal blood, the blood of a king, of a king's children, of a king's king- dom, rif/a/xoj TlpiafA.o7oT£ '!saihi;, king and kingdom should have been made a solemn sacrifice to appease their so- lemn deliberate malice. I said ' deliberate,' for they were loth to be malicious without good advice, and therefore they asked their question, worthy of an oracle even no less than Delphic, where an evil spirit was the ' numen,' and a witch the prophet. For the question was such of which a Christian
OF THE GUNPOWDER TllEASOX. G23
could not doubt, though he had been fearfully scrupulous in his resolutions. For who ever questioned the unlawfulness of murder, ofmurderino- innocents, of murdering- them who were confessed righteous ? For such was their proposal ; being rather willing that catholics should perish with those whom they thought heretics, than that there should be no blood spilt.
But to the question. It was fire they called for, the most merciless of all the elements, no possibility of relenting when once kindled, and had its object. It was the fittest instru- ment for merciless men, men of no bowels, whose malice, like their instrument, did "■ agere ad extremum suarum vi- rium," 'work to the highest of its possibility,' Secondly; it was fire indeed they called for, but not like that in my text, not fire from heaven. They might have called as long and as loud as those priests did, who contested with Elisha; no fire would have come from heaven to have consumed what they had intended for a sacrifice. God's anathemas post not so fast as ours do : " Deus non est sicut homo." Man curseth often whom God blesseth; men condemn whom God acquits ; and, therefore, they were loth to trust God with their cause, they therefore take it into their own hands. And cer- tainly, if to their anathemas they add some fagots of their own, and gunpowder, it is odds but then we may be con- sumed indeed; and so did they; their fire was not from heaven.
Lastly, it was a fire so strange, that it had no example. The apostles, indeed, pleaded a mistaken precedent for the reasonableness of their demand, they desired leave to do but * even as Elias did.' The Greeks only retain this clause, it is not in the bibles of the church of Rome, and really these * Romano-barbari ' could never pretend to any pre- cedent for an act so barbarous as theirs. Adramelech, indeed, killed a king, but he spared the people ; Haman would have killed the people, but spared the king ; but that both king and people, princes and judges, branch, and rush, and root, should die at once, (as if Caligulas were actuated and all England upon one head), was never known till now, that all the malice in the world met in this, as in a centre. The Sicilian even-song, the matins of St. Bartholomew, known for the pitiless and damned massacres, were but k^t^vqu a/tUi
G24 A SERMOX ON THE ANNIVERSAIir
ova^, ' the dream of the shadow of smoke,' if compared with this great tire. " In turn occupalo sa^culo fabulas \ uigaris nequitia non invenit" Tiiis was a busy age ; Erostratus must have invented a more subhnied mali'-c than the burning of one temple, or not liave been so much as spoke of since the discovery of the powder-treason. But 1 must make more haste, I shall not else clime the sublimity of this im- piety. Nero was sometimes the ' populare odium,' was * popularly hated ;' and deserved it too ; for he slew his master, and his wife, and all his family, once or twice over, opened his mother's womb, fired the city, laughed at it, slandered the Christians for it, but yet all these were but ' principia malorum,' the very first * rudiments of evil.' Add then to these, Herod's master-piece at Ramah, as it was deciphered by the tears and sad threnes of the matrons in an universal mourning for the loss of their pretty infants ; yet this of Herod will prove but an infant wickedness, and that of Nero, the evil but of one city. I would willingly have found out an example, but I see I cannot, should I put into the scale the extract of all the old tyrants famous in antique stories,
" Bistonii stabulum regis, Bnsiiidis aras, Antipliatffi mensas, et Taurica regna Tlioantis."
Should I take for true story the highest cruelty as it was fancied by the most hieroglyphical Egyptian, this alone would weigh them down, as if the Alps were put in scale against the dust of a balance. For had this accursed treason prospered, we should have had the whole kingdom mourn for the inestimable loss of its chiefest glory, its life, its present joy, and all its very hopes for the future. For such was their destined malice, that they would not only have inflicted so cruel a blow, but have made it incurable, by cutting off our supphes of joy, the whole succession of the line royal. Not only the vine itself, but all the ' gemmulae,' and the tender olive-branches should either have been bent to their intentions, and made to grow crooked, or else been broken.
And now after such a sublimity of malice, I will not instance in the sacrilegious ruin of the neighbouring temples, which needs must have perished in the flame, nor in the dis- turbing the ashes of our entombed kings, devouring their
OF THE GUNPOWDER TREASON. G25
dead ruins, like sepulchral dogs, these are but minutes, in respect of the ruin prepared for the living temples.
Stragem sed istam non tnlit Christus cadentum principum Impune, ne forsan sui Patiis periret fabrica.
Ergo quae poterit lingua retexere LaucJes, Cliriste, tuas, qui domitum struis Infidum populum cum duce pcrfido' ?
Let us then return to God the cup of thanksgiving, he having poured forth so largely to us of the cup of salvation. We cannot want wherewithal to fill it, here is matter enough for an eternal thankfulness, for the expression of which a short life is too httle, but let us here begin our hallelujahs, hoping to finish them hereafter, where the many choirs of angels will fill the concert.
Praise the Lord, ye house of Levi ; ye that fear the Lord, praise the Lord. Praise the Lord out of Sion, which dwelleth at Jerusalem ■".
' Prudent. Hymn. " Psal. cxxxv. 20, 21.
END OF THE SIXTH VOLUME.
0
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