Forty Sermons

quod opes ab inquinamento, & animum ab avaritiae sordibus purgat, because

1. Alms purgeth our wealth from the pollution and filthiness that adheres to it. As among the Jews it was not lawful for any man to use the increase of his own land or cattle, to eat part of his own harvest, nor feed on his own vineyard, or employ the profits of any one beast of his own herd or flock, till he had given up to God the first-born of that beast, offered the first fruits every year of his fruit-yards, and dedicated a first sheaf of his harvest: this must sanctify all the rest, which till then was unclean, not to be used by him; to this, it seems, our Savior do's look in his direction. There is an unclean tacke in everything that comes from earth, it do's derive a soil and tincture thence, and tastes of the place from whence it came, there is a kind of unsanctifiedness in wealth, which must be purged away. Our Savior do's imply this, when he says, all things shall be clean to thee, intimating, that without some such course be taken 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 all our possessions are unclean to us; and S. Paul says expressly of meat, it must be sanctified. Now says he, the way to cleanse thy meats (and so for all thy wealth) is to give up part of thy meat to God by the now Christian way of sacrificing. Alms: this the truest way of blessing a meal, by engaging God a guest to it, who brings his blessings always with him, and he hath still a share in that meal that the poor partake in. This course is of so great importance to be taken in every sort of our wealth, that holy Job presses an imprecation on himself, if he have not don so, Job 31. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23. If I have withheld the poor from their desire, or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail, or have eaten my morsel myself alone, and the fatherless hath not eaten thereof; for from my youth he was brought up with me as with a father, and I have guided her from my mother's womb: if I have seen any perish for want of clothing, or any poor without covering; if his loins have not blessed me, and if he were not warmed with the fleece of my sheep, then let my arm from my shoulder-blade, and mine arm be broken from the bone; for destruction from God was a terror to me, and by reason of his highness I could not endure. So that Alms makes 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , all our possessions, all our moderate enjoyments clean, if sanctifies them to our use.

But secondly, which is mre to our design, their second reason is, animum ab avaritiae sordibus purgat, it do's draw off the heart from worldly mindedness, and by that means from all unclean carnalities: but to not mistake me, Brethren, that a few, though perhaps noble acts of charity will necessarily take a man off from all vice; he may perchance be willing in some good humor to part with some wealth, that will not part with a lust or an ill custom, and his profuse and inconsiderate bounty may come in amongst his prodigalities, and be his vice, so far it will be from lceasing him from vice. But the thing is this, he that hath thus far conquered his heart, and unwrapt is out of the entanglements of riches, that he is perfectly disposed in mind, not once, but by a constant course to dedicate a good portion of what he hath for those compassionate uses, and is very well pleased to look upon such a share as not his own, but set aside and consecrated: 'tis certain that if this be hearty, he that can resolve to part with such a part of income for those uses, must also resolve to part with all worldly or carnal advantages of that income, such things as it procured him, and he cannot have without it. If I will cut off so much from my estate on that good consideration, then I must cut off such degrees of superfluity, I must abate such and such pomps and vanities, I must retrench excesses, and I must part with heights of pleasures, for these are virtually resolved in the other; I cannot have these if I give away the foment, the thing that is to feed and preserve them, these therefore I disposed of with that part of my revenue, nor shall I think them fit to vie with those necessities, that beg or Christ his sake, nay with those wants of Christ himself that begs in those poor men's request and needs, nor shall I for such things draw back or grudge my charities. I can much easier want some portions of those contents, than see so many souls want necessaries; compassion strikes me deeper than those satisfactions, and finds me much more pliant, and more sensible. Lo here a man already brought within the mediocrities of virtue, there too where virtue finds the greatest oppositions of temptation; those of intemperance, and pride, and pleasure, in all these he is moderate and calm, merely by virtue of his bountiful-mindedness: and if he be not so, 'tis certain that the person is not free-hearted, unless it be unto his sins or the companions of them. For if he love his pride, and heights, and honors, and all those pomps that are to serve them and his emulations; or love the superfluities of riots, or love immoderate delights, 'tis certain he loves wealth implicity, altho he take no notice of it, and he is covetous in his heart, though he do's not discover it; because he cannot but desire passionately that which is to furnish his eager desires, and love immoderately that without which he knows, if he consider what he do's, he cannot have that whicih he loves immoderately; and if he do resolve to serve those still, and yet do give away, 'tis out of inconsiderateness, not from bounty; he is not liberal but rash and careless, will not weigh how the wealth serves the other ends, but still resolving upon thees, not minding what he do's, disposeth of the other. No he tha is truly compassionate and liberal, resolves to deprive himself of somewhat to relieve others wants, that is to say, if he consider what he do's, (and if he do not, 'tis not liberality of heart) to deny himself some of the advantages of his estate, (for to consideration those and his estate are all the same) pomps, profits, and pleasures to sustain those that need: and he that do's so, he hath plainly brought himself into the bounds of all virtues, and for the rest that concern men, 'tis sure he that is so fully disposed in heart, as to deny himself his own advantages merely to do good to others, cannot be inclined to do ill to others for his own advantage, these inclinations cannot dwell together; so that in one word, this bounty of heart engages into all Morality, he will be humble, sober, contented in himself, and live righteously and justly with other men. 'It is such a leading quality, that merely by virtue of that disposition of mind, when it is seated there in earnest, the other parts of that which we call honesty, come in. And then for all Religion and Piety, if he that out of obedience to God and compassion to the afflicted have brought his heart to such a pass, that he can draw out his soul to the needy, 'tis certain that in doing so he lays up treasures in heaven, v. 20. and by the verse that follows he that lays his treasure there, he sets his heart there also; and he whose heart is set on heaven, I shall not fear to pronounce of him, his actions will drive him thitherwards with all religious violence. Do but think with yourselves how you pursue the things you hearts are set upon in earnest, what out-goings of soul you have to this rencounter of the object of its strong affections, no rest but in the labors that work towards it, no calm but in those violences. And much of this there must be in Religion, where the heart is set upon the hopes of it, on heaven. He must be eager in it, as the covetous is on his gains, the proud man on his pomps, the pleasurist on his sports, the Epicure on his excesses. It is not possible a man should have no heart to that on which his heart is set. He therefore that hath set his heart on heaven, must be religious and holy; and so it is concluded that the liberal-minded must needs be so. The progress of which proof is this, he whose heart is in heaven, his conversation will be there, his life will be Christian and holy: he whose treasure is in heaven, his heart is in heaven: he that hath taken off his heart from the world, and out of liberality of heart gives alms, he lays his treasure up in heaven, and then it is concluded that he is religious.

And this now may apply itself without my help to press it to you. Ah my Brethren choose and strive towards a virtue that will help you to all the rest, that will calm and moderate your affections to this world and the dying follies of it; and that will draw your hearts to heaven, and set them on the world to come. Who would not labor for one disposition of mind that comes with such a train of pieties, that hath all Christianity in its attendance, and brings all into the soul with it? Who would not give alms, if by doing so he give himself a shole of virtue? to whom is this man bountiful, but to himself indeed? Here is a ground for men to beg after the fashion of Lombardy, Be good to yourself, Sir, and bestow an alms upon me: for he indeed is good unto himself, who what he gives lays up in heaven as a treasure for eternity, and at the same time entertains the disposition to all piety in his heart, receives all virtue into him. I sahll not need to call in accessory proofs, fetch in auxiliary motives, tell you that works of charity are called good works in Scripture, and the liberal man good. So Rom. 5. 7. the good man signifies, and Tit. 2. 5. where the women are commanded to be good, it is merciful; so works of mercy are called good works, Acts. 9. 36. doing good, Matt. 12. 12. Heb. 13. 16. good fruits James 3. 17. So to work good signifies Gal. 6. 9. and every good work 2 Cor. 9. 8. is works of mercy, as if he did engross all goodness, and that same virtue did fulfil the title. Nay I tell you more, that the merciful man and the perfect man are but two words for the same person, Matt. 5. 48. Luke 6. 36. all Christianity is so sure appendant to this disposition of the heart, (when it is in the soul I tell you, not when it is now and then in the actions) that this alone is perfectness, 'tis entire lacking nothing. And then here is a clear account, why at the last great trial nothing should come upon account but charity, that is the only thing the Judge takes cognizance of at the day of final doom; When I was hungry, ye gave me meat: the words of everlasting Judgment pass only in relation to this, nothing but charity do's come into that sentence, for all the rest is implied in this: and where the heart is liberal, the whole life will be Christian; this is an evidence will pass at God's Assise, stand before the Searcher of the heart and reins. And therefore it may well be a sign to us, and make proof, that this grace in the heart, bounty of mind is a great evidence of a truly Christian heart: the second Proposition.

Blessed Savior, thou that wert all bounty to us, that didst empty thyself to enrich us, and didst choose rather to die thyself than not relieve us when we were sick to everlasting death; give us grace to be like-minded, shed into our hearts this disposition of soul, that will make us so remember thee, a disposition that will make our affections even and moderate to things of this earth, which by teaching us to part with wealth contentedly, will work us out of the world, and teach us not to be enamored on the advantages of wealth, not to be passionate for pomps or pleasures, or for any superfluities which wealth procures, which will set our hearts in heaven, and lay up treasures for us there; which if it rob us of the pomps and the magnificences of this world, will give us for them pomps of piety, the whole train of virtues, a long attendance of graces; if it deprives us of some heights or some excess of pleasures, it will recompense with the satisfactions of relieving Christ in his members here, and reigning with him hereafter in Kingdom:

SERMON XXII. THE LIGHT OF THE BODY is the Eye.

PHILOSOPHY do's say that all virtues are so annexed and tied together, that it is not possible for any man to have any one truly and complete, but he must needs have all; they are like pearls upon the necklace, from which if any violence pull one, the string is broke, and all are shattered and disordered. And S. James saith, c. 2. 10. Whosoever shall offend in one point, is guilty of all; and sure the virtue of the Text makes good both these Positions: if liberality of heart be that one point, he that excludes it from his Soul, shuts out the rest at once. All the graces are as train to that leading virtue, are its such close attendants, that they must needs have the same fate, and either dwell together in the heart, or all together be thrust thence: for, if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light; but if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. An envious discontent, uncharitable mind, makes the whole life un-Christian, and he that do's offend in that one point, must needs be guilty of all; and if Charity, that bond of perfectness in S. Paul, that tie of graces that do's unite them to itself, and with each other, if that be there, all graces must be there, and liberality of heart makes the life Christian; for if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But

I am now to show you that bounty in the heart is a great Sign of a true Christian heart, that that person who not out of easiness or modesty of constitution not knowing how to deny when he is asked, nor out of inconsideration or vanity bestows an alms, or else when importunities do's beg it; but he who out of real compassion to the wants of others, and hearty sense of their calamities, and out of sincere obedience to God resolves with himself to deny himself such and such advantages of his condition to such a good proportion of what God hath bestowed upon him, purposes in his heart to set aside such a portion from his own uses, knowing and considering that by so doing he do's part with such and such satisfactions which did accrue to him by that wealth, yet will do it for the relief of others necessities, that their souls may be comforted, and they may praise God in his behalf. This person hath in himself a great evidence of an heart truly and sincerely wrought upon by the Gospel, and wrought over into the realities of Christianity.

I shall prove this to you, and though I know there be many virtues which seem to have no connection with liberality, and many inclinations in the heart which bounty hath no direct influence upon, several evil tendencies of soul which it hath no formal opposition to, that it should thrust them out of the heart; yet that such a complexion of mind do's either directly or by consequence so oppose them, as not to endure them in the heart, I shall very briefly show you in gross, and by retail.

And first that in gross that is a sign of a true Christian heart, see Col. 3. 12. Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness; it seems that bowels of compassion and bounty is a sign of being such full Christians, that the Apostle takes in all words to complete the Character, and do's it in words of a beloved sense: and let men take them in what sense they please, they do my work, whether as persons chosen out before all time; it seems then to be liberal is a sign of that, and they will have very little reason to conclude themselves elected an eternity before they were, who now they are, and are called and taught by God, do not find this disposition in their hearts: or to take them in their naked meaning, be liberal, as being God's choice and precious ones, (so it signifies, elect, precious, 1 Pet. 2. 6, and in other Scripture elect is the choicest, best,) such as are prized and valued by God: as the elect of God, holy, such as have his sanctifying Spirit poured out upon them; and such are beloved by him; as choice and precious things are always dear to us. Now then to be compassionate and bountiful is to be as thus, and liberality of heart is one mark of Election and Holiness, and they that have it, are as God's choice, sanctified, dear ones. Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of compassion and bounty.

2. As it is a sign of our being the Elect of God, and the Inhabitation of the Holy Spirit, so it is also a sign of our being like minded with Christ. S. Paul do's urge his example as a motive to the Corinthians liberality, Ep. 2. c. 8. v. 9. For ye know the grace (or charity) of our Lord Jesus Christ, that being rich, yet for your sakes became poor, that ye thro his poverty might be rich: and therefore for us to do so is to follow his example, and to have our hearts set to it is to be like minded, and truly that is to be Christian enough. If that a person of the God-head emtied bimself, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 Phil. 2. 7. exhausted himself of Divinity to relieve us; if the God of all the pleasures of the earth and the joys of heaven became the Man of sorrows to rescue us, if that the Lord of everlasting blessedness made himself Prince of sufferings and calamities to ransom us, if this be a temptation to the inclinations of our heart to set us upon going to do likewise in some low weak measure after the rates of our abilities; then to do so considerately, to deprive myself of some advantages, to exhaust somewhat for the sakes of those that want, is to have the like mind in us that was in Christ Jesus our Lord: but because this may possibly evince us to be like-minded only in one thing, therefore

3. In particular, he that is thus minded hath a great evidence of his having overcome the World, a wide and a vast conquest; for, my Brethren, 'tis not only he that is a slave to money, whose heart and actions do importunately pursue the ways of getting or of hoarding that, whom the world overcomes; but he is a slave to the world, whose mind is impotently set upon any of the advantages of this world, the man whose heart do's in too great a proportion either of time or whatsoever else pursue anything which this World is to furnish with, that man's heart is entangled in the pursuit, and it is fettered to the World, which is his motive and pretence for that too eager inclination. And therefore in our Baptism when we renounce the World, we do not only bid defiance to the love of money, but we renounce the Pomps and vanities of this wicked World; whatsoever either too great pleasure or height, excess or ostentation, or pride that this World ministers unto. Now then, when a man do's not only now and then give little to them that ask and beg of him, (for so it go's away in such small instances, as will not evidence either much consideration of it, or any great work wrought upon him as to not loving of the World,) but in devout retirements resolves to deny himself in such a proportion, and cut off such a part, 'tis certain he do's cut off such degrees either of pomp or vanity, or plenties, or whatsoever other thing that part of his estate did serve. Now he that can do this resolvedly in his soul, not out of any heat, but from deliberate purpose of heart, 'tis certain he hath to so great a degree disentangled himself from the snares of the pleasures or other advantages of this World, he hath unloosed their fascinations, and weakened all their sorceries; 'tis clear he hath so far withdrawn his heart from the degrees of whatsoever he did love that this World served him in, that he resolves none of them shall engage him to their superfluities: for to prevent that he cuts off their foment, the streams of those contents, they shall not overflow his soul; for he will turn the spring, and make the current run another way. 'It is evident he hath so torn all beloved earthly satisfactions from the embraces of his heart, as that he will not feed them, not with his own estate, if he cannot also to a virtuous degree feed the poor: he hath so far turned out the love of pleasures, or of pomps, or whatsoever, as that he willingly do's part with those degrees of them, cannot be retained together with his liberality. And such a heart sure is without the vicious degree of worldly contents: for vicious inclinations to them use to pursue them as far as they are able, and set no bounds to themselves but those of possibility, will not be limited in their prosecutions by considerations of a virtue as this man's are, and therefore he is too strong for these temptations, and so hath overcome the world.

And now if we consider the advantages of this conquest either in gross, it is a victory over such Enemies as were in Christ's opinion almost invincible, such as did so block up all passages and avenues to blessedness, that he affirms and repetes it is impossible for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Let men think what they will of those occasions of sin, which their dislikes of a low condition or of poverty makes them believe it do's abound with; but I tell you there are such ineluctable temptations to vice in an estate of plenty, as that without a greater measure of God's grace than is sufficient for any other state of life, a man will never overcome them. It is so insuperable a temptation to have that which will furnish him with all his heart or lust can wish for, to have everything that is in his desires put into his power, and so impossible to part with that which serves all his inclinations when God calls for it, as he do's when we cannot at once keep the estate and obey Christ, (which was the occasion of our Savior's words:) and wealth it do's so sauce and invite every vice, it do's so dress objects for lust, and feed with those full plenties, that heat men into it and strengthen for it, do's so pour in provocatives by idleness and excesses, it do's so fill with insolence, or pride, or ostentation and vain glory; it do's so swell and so puff up with heights and scorns, makes men contemn others and oppress them, think anything almost is lawful in their usage of them; yea become careless of Religion, and by degrees contemn it too, wax insolent with God, scoffers at piety, rude in profaneness, anything forsooth they may do; and a whole shole of other such like qualities are the almost certain appendages of men in estate, at least in some degree. In a word, it takes off the heart quite from the Love of God and those things that relate to him, it fixes them so to these worldly satisfactions: yea when it comes to such a pinch, that a man must either wound his conscience, do some great deliberate sin, or part with this so forsooth happy utensil, his estate; break with all the duty in the world rather than part with that which furnisheth him with such convenience of sins, that 'tis no wonder if it be impossible for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

And then for a man to have overcome the General of this great Army of ruinous vices, the only leader that can draw them up against him, to have cut off the source that feeds this inundation of mischiefs, these overflowings of ungodliness from the heart, is a good strong evidence to a man's heart, that he is well resolved against the vices, when that he do's resolvedly deprive himself of the instrument of them, the thing that do's advance them, and hath perfectly divorc'd from them: he needs not doubt but that if it please God to bring him to straits, that he shall rather be content to part with a good portion of his estate, than part with a good conscience, who is content to give away good part of his estate merely to exercise a virtue in obedience to God. He will give it if Christ call for it, who gives it if the poor call for it. He is well secured from feeding pride, excesses, and the other sins of fullness with his plenty, who gives all superfluities away to feed the hungry, his wealth is otherwise employed than in ministering to vice: and however 'tis certain his heart is taken off from the sins that are occasioned by riches, who heartily gives away the occasion of those sins; and though the gate of Heaven be as strait as any needle's eye, yet this wealthy Man, this Camel in one sense of the word as it do's signify a cable rope, when his wealth is divided thus and scattered, when the rope is separated into little threads, then it will go thro the straitest needle's eye, and this rich man enter inter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

And here were argument enough for the triumphs of comfort to an heart that can discern this sign of his Election, this fruit of the Holy Spirit, this instance of like-mindedness to Christ, this assurance of his conquest over that same Enemy, which is the Fleshes auxiliary, and the Devil's instrument, without which neither of them could much prevail upon us; for they do it by the aids the World do's bring, by the temptations and the baits which it do's minister. A consequent fit for Christ to glory in, I have overcome the World, saith he, Matt. 16. 33. and truly if any man, the religiously sincerely bountiful man hath don so to a great degree. He hath unglued his heart from it, they part with ease; you see how he distributes it, and throws it from him: and this is sure encouragement enough to set you upon searching whether you can find this Evidence within you, if it were not a certain sign also of more things, a sign of particular evidences and effects of having overcome the world.

For first, it is a sign of a perfect contentedness in ones condition; for apparently he is not unsatisfied with what he hath, who not only is content, but who contrives to have less, and gives away good part of what he hath. He cannot be discontented that he hath no more than he hath, who is resolved not to have so much, but searches for occasions to distribute what he hath. And if this be an infallible sign of a contented mind, (still I speak of the liberal heart, not only of a scattering hand,) it is an evidence of the greatest happiness in this world; for God hath prescribed one certain remedy for all the evils in the world, a contented heart. This is the only aim of all the arts and all the plenties of the world, it is for this alone men dig the mines of treasures, search the whole circuit of delights, run thro the hurry of an universe of pleasures, wherein, God knows, they seldom find it, but all intend only content. Whether they would be great or rich, or be luxurious, or everything, it is because they seek content in these things; which he that hath in whatsoever state he be, he hath the scope, the price of all the treasures in the world, he hath the sum and comprehension of its felicities, which therefore the liberal heart hath the sure sign of: yea in this he hath the certain evidence of S. Paul's temper that he so much exults in, Phil. 4. 11, 12, 13. I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound; everywhere, and in all things I am instructed, both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things thro Christ which strengtheneth me.

Secondly he hath an evidence, that he is freed from envy, and those black disturbing passions that attend it. For certainly he do's not envy other men's greater condition, who willingly diminisheth his own. I am not troubled others coffers are more full than mine, when out of choice • empty mine, and rather choose to lay up my revenues in the bowels of the poor. I do not envy their richer furniture, when I give mine away to furnish needy laboring families, and change the clothings of my rooms into the clothing of the cold bare Christians; and I can much more calmly see my chambers naked, than Christ's members. I have no emulations at the full plenties of other men's provisions; for why should I, when I send away my own provisions to cheer the hungry, to make the hearts of famishing souls rejoice? If I have not so many plenties in my dining Room, yet I make more feasts in the cottages, where every alms is a feast. 'It is certain he that will not use what he hath to his own interests and advantages, but gives them to advantage others, cannot envy the advantages of others: so that he is free from envy, that rottenness of the bones, that consumtion of the soul and body too, that which makes every other man's prosperity his own torment, and though he have a kind of malice wheresoere he sees anything of flourish or of excellency, yet by all those malices he only strives to vex himself; from this the liberal heart is clear.

Thirdly from Covetousness also, and all the griping and injurious passions that are in its train: for it is certain he cannot be inclined to do ill to others for his own advantage, who out of choice parts with his own advantages, that he may do good to others. And indeed I need not prove this; for that a man should be bountiful-hearted and covetous-minded is a contradiction. So that we see the man hath a certain Evidence of being of a contented spirit, and being free from envy and from covetousness, which to be free from will appear to be the great ingredients of a Christian, when you shall see that those three qualities of discontent and envy and of covetousness are the fountains of all the most un-Christian vices of the soul; which was the last Proposition from the later part of the words, For if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. That, as I proved, do's signify, if thy heart be discontented and unsatisfied in its own condition, apt to envy another's prosperity, and covetous of greater things than it possesses, the whole life will be full of most un-Christian actions; they will betray the man, and fill him full of all iniquity. A subject this of a most vast extent, and truly worth considering and staying on: but I shall only point at things, and show you how they are so in a word; for I will dwell no longer on this Theme. First then discontent in ones condition is the Mother of many provocations of God: for

1. It seems with many murmurs and rebellions of heart against the dispositions of God's Providence. You must not think, Beloved, that a discontented Soul is only unwise, though truly so he be to great degrees. He whom a tempest storms in open field, on whom the rain beats and the wind, is sure a fool if he sit down and cry at it, and vex. What relief is it to him to vie shours of tears with those the clouds drop, to return the blasts of wind with sighs and murmurs, and storm at the tempest? Sure there is no one so unwise, but would make hast and seek for shelter rather, and not sit down to fret and weep at it. And yet that is the fashion of the discontented heart; if the least cross be upon their mind, their sad and troubled thoughts make it look very big, (as thick and misty air do's make all objects,) they fancy it insufferable, they look upon it as if God's indignation did lie hard upon them, and he had vexed them with all his storms: and in these storms why do they not fly to God for shelter, nor run under the shadow of his wings for refuge, but vex and cry at it, yea murmur and repine? And what an insolence is this to be angry at the Almighty, because he do's not govern the world as they would have him; to quarrel, because his Providence disposeth of events otherwise than they think is for their interests? Some are discontented when God takes from them any thing they did possess. Now since neither health, nor wealth, nor any other good is thine or from thyself, but only lent, vouchsafed during his pleasure and discretion, and whatsoever he takes from thee is only thy not enjoying any longer what is no way due to thee, when he in his wisdom and in his love also to discipline thee calls for what he lent thee. Is this occasion for a contest with the Lord? Must he lend thee his mercies, when his wisdom sees fit to do otherwise in order to the ends of Providence? What irreligious Rebellion is this, to have risings of heart against God's dispositions, to fall out with their Maker, if he will not lend them his mercies as long, and in as great degrees as they would have him? Others are discontented, because they are not in a better, higher, or more plentiful condition; and why do they not as well quarrel with God, because he did not make them Angels; for what they are is his mere gift, and more than their deservings? He was no more obliged to make thee what thou art, than he was bound to make thee a Cherubim or an Archangel: and must thou murmur at the Lord, because thou hast not the disposal of his gifts to lay them out in what degrees thou pleasest? It is the sin of both these discontents, that they do not submit their hearts cheerfully to God's disposals. They that do not so, S. Peter says, are proud, and such as God resists and fights against. And surely then the discontented is a strange person that is proud towards God, and an unhappy person whom God resists and fights against.

2. He renounces his own Prayers; he begs of God, thy will be don, and yet do's murmur that it is so: and what a strange Petitioner is this, who repines if he be heard, and is vext that God do's grant his Prayers, is angry with the Lord because he do's what he desires? And then shall such a person ever hope that God should hear his Prayers at any time, who is displeased because the Lord do's not deny him?

3. All concupiscences are the effect of this; for because they are not satisfied with their own condition, they desire what is not their own: and so the breach of the tenth Commandment is the certain consequent of this disposition of mind, or indeed rather it is but several instances of forbidding discontentedness with our own condition; and in it, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, is not meant, thou shalt not desire to commit adultery with her; for that was forbidden in the seventh Commandment: but as thou shalt not covet his house, which do's not signify thou shalt not desire once to walk thro it, or to sit and dine in it, but thou shalt not desire the possession nor propriety of what is not thine own, shalt not desire it should be thy house, but be contented with thy lot; so here, thou shalt not be troubled that his wife or servant is not thy wife or servant, and think it as fit thy Neighbor should enjoy the comforts of a happy wife, if God have given him one, or the pleasures and splendors of an estate, or the advantages of a commodious servant, as thou dost think it fit thou shouldest enjoy what is thine; and not desire not only to be thief, but not the owner of them: be content with what is thine.

4. All the Seditions and Rebellions in the world, and those armies of Sins that attend them, that wage their wars, which are upheld by legions of villainies, as numerous as those of men, all the disturbances of States and Churches are but the effects of discontented spirits, men that were unsatisfied with their condition, desired a change, and cared not by what means they compassed it. They can charge thro seas of blood and sin, over the faces of men and conscience to get out of the condition, which they are not well content with.

I could assign more sins that do attend a discontented heart, when it hath opportunity to break into them: all the effects of anger, and of malice, and of concupiscence, and a whole shole of others are in its train, but that I must reserve one word for Envy.

2. Envy, to say all in one word, however slight a thing we may esteem it. For to envy at another person's having better qualities, or greater dignities, or richer furnitures, or wider estates, or handsomer provisions, this we think do's no mischief to the persons, and therefore is no crying crime. Yet besides that it is more unjust than hatred or than malice, for these have still pretences that do look like reason. I cannot hate a man, but because he do's me some wrong, and that is some reason; for I hate his injustice: but envy hath not any least pretence. Is it a wrong to me, because that person is better qualified, or better endowed? Is he unjust because he is rich, or learned, or well provided? and yet for this I envy him. Besides this, I say, to stab it with one thrust, Envy hath all the vices and all the ruins in the world for its issue, all sin and all damnation is its brood. The Devil envied man's felicity, and therefore tempted him, and so man lost Original Righteousness, and he lost Paradise; and he envies his recovery by Christ, and therefore temts him still until he ruin him eternally. Whatever guilt, and whatever misery is in the world, hence it springs, it is a feind-like devilish humor. And now would you take the prospect of these two qualities, discontent and envy. Lucifer was not satisfied with his condition, and he was therefore cast from Heaven, and all his fellow Angels became Devils; and then he envied man's condition, and changed his Paradise into everlasting misery. These two qualities robbed Heaven itself of those inhabitants that should have filled it, and the Son of God himself, and peopled Hell; it made Angels become Feinds, it made God die, and made men damned, and there is enough for that.

3. Covetousness, I am sure I can say no more of that, than what S. Paul hath said, nor more to my purpose, 1. Tim. 6. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Godliness with contentment is great gain; for we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out, and having food and raiment let us be therewith content. But they that will be rich, fall into a temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition: for the love of money is the root of all evil, which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves thro with many sorrows.

And oh that three such dismal qualities with their accursed trains should breed in that same little part, the eye! An evil eye is the womb wherein they are conceived, and if that one small faculty be so fruitful in guilt and in destructions, how shall we reckon the whole man? Miserable men that we are, who shall deliver us from a whole body of death, and from the state of those deaths, and from darkness, in which this evil eye engages us? A darkness which our Savior could not otherwise express, but by astonishment, How great is that darkness! A darkness great indeed, because 'tis willfully incurable, no state do's so withstand the light as this. The Sun of Righteousness, the Day-spring from on high, that came to visit us, could strike the light thro darkness, and make the shadow of death bright Luke 1. 79. that did shed light, that was a glory, Luke 2. 32. could not yet break in upon a Country clouded with this humor: his Miracles and he were both desired to withdraw, could have no least Reception, when interest and profit came to be touched; and a Legion of Devils, that did plot together, could contrive no surer means to keep out Christ himself, than by setting up an evil eye to look upon him and his Miracles, than by engaging this greedy affection against him, and that but in a small instance. We read a strange story Matt. 8. 28. Mark the contrivance and the policy; the Devils knowing that Christ would cast them out of the two possessed men, and by that Miracle so far show forth his power, that it would probably bring all the Country to believe on him, they desired to prevent this, and thereupon fall on this project, which might incense the men of that Country against him; and in order to it they besought Christ, that if he did cast them out, he would suffer them to go into the herd of Swine; and though he seldom wrought any destructive Miracles, yet that the people might see the virulency of these Devils, how destructive they were, if not restrained by his omnipotent goodness, and so they might understand the mercy don to those that were possessed, and likewise see the mercy now approaching to their Country by the coming of Christ, if they will accept of it, and withal to try whether their love to their Swine was greater than that to their own souls, he permitted the Devils to go into the Swine, he would not restrain them, and they went into them. They who fed the Swine gave to the owners notice of their loss, and did let them know, as the Swine were drowned on the one side, so two men possessed with Devils were recovered, and that Christ had don this since his coming thither. Hereupon the whole City, as being very much concerned in that which had happened, came out to meet and see Jesus, who did such Miracles; and instead of being wrought on by his cure on the men to desire his continuance among them, the consideration of the loss of their Swine made them desire and beseech him that he would depart out of their Coasts. Behold an equal Enemy to Christ and all his Miracles, an Enemy that was too hard for them, even a little worldly advantage! The Senate of Hell hath no project like this to keep out Religion, as this making Religion thwart an interest; rather no Christianity, than abate gain or greatness, or any earthly satisfaction; rather the Swine, than Christ himself.

But we have a worse instance yet than this, and more comprehensive as to our purpose. An evil eye could not endure to see the Son of God alive, and when the second Person of the Godhead was to be betrayed and crucified, the Devil had no other passion to employ on that design, but these same, discontent and envy and a greedy mind, and all these but at little trifles. We find that Judas bore the purse, and S. John says that he robbed it, John 12. 6. was deceitful in the discharge of his office of relieving the poor. Now it happened that a woman spent a box of precious ointment upon Christ, at which Judas was discontent, and envied it his Master, Matt. 16. 8. Mark 14. 4, 5. he murmur'd, and had indignation at it, says the places; his evil eye could not endure to see such a sum should pass his purse, (of which yet he could have purloin'd but very little, for the sum was not great) and missing that, for very envy (for it was immediately upon it Mark 14. 10.) his own covetous heart by the Devil's suggestion put him upon his project of gain to make some advantage by delivering Christ to the hands of the Jews, and upon his consenting to this suggestion the Devil was permitted by God to have this power over him, to enter into him, John 13. 2. and doing so incited him to make a bargain with the Rulers of the Sanhedrim, their great Council, and with their Officers to deliver up Jesus unto them; and he yielding to his incitation, and after Christ's talking with him, and telling him distinctly of it, and the sin and danger attending it, Mark 14. 21. and his not yet relenting, the Devil entered into him again more forcibly than before, John 13. 27. hurried him to the speedy execution: and he went and covenanted with them that he should have thirty shekels, Matt. 26. 15. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 Luke 22. 6. and thanked them, altho it were a low and a vile sum, as could be the price of a slave, Exod. 21. 32. yet Judas thanked them for the offer, so covetous he was and glad of an occasion to get money. We see the Devil enters at an evil eye, if that be envious, Satan gets in strait at that eye himself in person, and he possesses hearts set upon gain: and then no wonder if the Kingdom of darkness be in such an heart, when as the King of Hell, the Devil dwells there. Satan entered into him, and when he was there, what design hath he to fill an heart with? nothing but that of getting money, this is effect enough of his possession. The Devil hath don work enough in such a heart as he is entered into really, if he but make it set upon desire of money, though it be but a trifle of gain, but three pounds fifteen shillings. But, Lord God, what will not a worldly heart adventure on; what will not a mind undertake, which envies at another, and is greedy for itself? When such an one did set Judas upon betraying Christ for almost nothing: one vanity, one sport, one dress, one sin's engagement to damnation costs a man more, than what an envious covetous Soul did sell the Son of God, the Ransom of Mankind, the price of all the Souls in the whole world for, yea and was thankful for it too: so low, so fordid, and so base a soul it is that loves increase.

And now, my Brethren, there is no need that I should tell you, that you must bring no evil eye to the Lord's Table to see his body crucified, and his blood poured out in the Sacrament; no discontents, no murmurs, no envious intentions, nor covetous desires must come near that, for they were these betrayed him. If such a soul come thither, Judas is there again; the things that sold him come again to tear his body, and to shed his blood. And do you think that such shall be received and entertained by Christ? Oh no, the bread of the Sacrament will be their Sop; and not Christ, but the Devil enters into such. Oh sure no heart so fit to come to that same feast as the charitable; those that feed him, he will feed: and I could tell you, charity (the offertory I mean, an offering for the poor) was used as an essential part of the Sacrament, and was a service of so high esteem, that preparation was required for it as for the Sacrament; and by the first Councils men guilty of gross sins might not offer, their charities would not be received by the Church. Yea and there was an excommunication from this duty, and to be excluded from bringing their gifts for the poor was a greater censure, than to be shut out from the Sermon or the Prayers. But these are things our world do's not take notice of, nor will understand; to be censured from liberality, and to be excommunicate from bounty, and that receiving of men's alms should be a grace and an indulgence to the givers, are talks that men now have no notions of, nor much care for. But let them be sure no time so proper for our relieving the members of Christ, as when the body of Christ is relieving us to life eternal; no occasion more urgent for us to contribute towards the clothing of the naked body of Christ, than when Christ is clothing us with the crimson glorious garment of his Righteousness; no opportunity more pressing than this to visit his sick members, than when he administering to us 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 : nothing do's preach Charity like a Sacrament, nor no Sacrament more than this at the time of his Incarnation, when the Son of God did so exhaust himself for us, as to empty immensity of God-head into a span of weak, poor, helpless flesh, to become really one of the meanest objects of compassion, one that had no revenue in the world but Charity; for while he lived he had not an hole to put his head in, nor when he died a grave to put his body in, but as thro all his life his sustenance was alms, so at his death his burying place was alms too, and yet this was the Heir of both the worlds. And this he did to settle us in an inheritance of infinite, eternal glory; and the approaching day began this state to him, a day sure to be reckoned not with the riots, but with the charities of hospitality, with feasts not for our sins, but feasts for Christ, and for his members; feasts such as his own Table is fit to be the leading entertainment in.

O Lord, who hast taught us, that all our doings without Charity are nothing worth; send thy Holy Ghost, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of Charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee: grant this for thine only Son Jesus Christ's sake. Amen

ERRATA.

The First SERMON, Preached at WHITE-HALL. January 27. 1660.

SO great a flatterer is Man of himself, that from all kind of Events, how various soever, he will adventure to conclude himself in the right way to Blessedness; and rather than want Argument, contradictions shall conspire to make him happy. If he prosper, then God allows his doings; and the success of actions is his mark and Seal, that they are acceptable and dear to Him: And if this Argument be good, The Tribe of Benjamin while it conquered (as they did Conquer those that fought God's Battels; and that by his immediate commission: ) yet all that while, those Sodomites and foul Adulterers, the men of Gibeah were Saints; But when calamity does take away this Argument, then on the other side the Gibbet; though the punishment of Villany, is only execution of that Decree, whereby God hath predestinated them, To be conformed to the Image of his Son. As if they died most like Christ, who died with the most Guilt about them, and they will needs be Martyrs when they suffer for their vices; and, if this Argument be good, Egypt was blest with all her Plagues, and the consuming fire that ran upon the ground, was the light of God's countenance upon them. Yet both these Arguments have been made use of lately, by each several party of us, in the variety of God's dispensations to us. Now this each could not do of right. Some Parties of us made false and unjust pleas to them both. Now to decide which did so, not à priori, from the cause; though that alone does guild prosperity, and that alone too makes the Martyr, not the sufferings. But men will never be agreed of that, while whatsoever happens (whether their cause prosper or be oppressed) still proves them in the right. But I shall do it from a plain notorious effect: nor do I know what else can be more seasonable than while some men seem to stand candidates for sufferings, and choose Sedition and Schism, rather than lose the reputation of not being afflicted with their Party; and while others plead the merits of affliction, and Trumpet out their having suffered, as a pretence for the ambition and the covetousness, the luxuries and intemperance, and all the other vices of prosperity, which their late sufferings have before hand expiated; while it is thus on each side, to give both a 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 whereby to judge the Case, which my Text here presents; for, He that hath suffered in the Flesh, hath ceased from Sin.

The words make a single Proposition, and therefore cannot well be taken asunder, nor indeed need they; the Terms being very well understood. The Subject everyone is willing to assume to himself; no one I believe that hears me, but will say he hath suffered in the Flesh. Therefore we have no more to do, but to see whether the other Term agree as universally, which certainly it must, if our Proposition here hold good, if He that hath suffered in the Flesh, hath ceased from Sin.

Therefore in order to this, I shall offer at Three things.

First; Discourse of the truth of the Proposition in General, and see if we can discern how necessary, and how effectual this Instrument of Reformation is, whether it be such as may build a confidence of asserting; That He who hath suffered, hath ceased from Sin.

Secondly; Because discoursing in General, is not so practical and useful, I shall endeavor to discover in particular, By what Artifice of method the Flesh engageth men into courses of sin, and how it works them up to the height of it, and then see how sufferings blast that method, and make the Arts of the flesh either unpracticable, or too weak.

Thirdly; I will attempt to view our own concerns in all this; propose to consideration, Whether this method hath had this effect on us; or, Whether indeed it be as easy to confute God's Word, as to break his Commandments, and contrive that his truth shall no more stand than his will does; but notwithstanding Scriptures bold affirmation here, yet they that have suffered have not ceased from Sin: and if so, then to propose the danger and infer Christ's Application that at least we begin to cease, and sin no more least a worse thing come unto us.

I. He that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from Sin: None but He, and He certainly:

When it appeared that Eden had too much of Garden for innocence to dwell in, and although man were made upright, yet amidst such delights he could not be so a whole day, but of the many inventions he found out, the first was to destroy himself immediately, and under the shadow of the Tree of life he wrought out death, and made the Walks of Paradise lead him towards Hell: God saw himself concerned to take another course: He sets a guard of fire about Eden, about the place of pleasure, as well as in the place of torments; and there was as much need of flame to keep man out of Paradise, as flame to fright him from Hell. He makes the Earth not spring with Garden anymore, but bring forth thorns and briars, that might scratch and tear man in the pursuit of things below, which, if the Soul should cleave and cling unto the Earth, might gore and stab it in the embrace; Nothing but sufferings will do us good: The Earth was most accurst to man when it was all Paradise, nothing but the malediction could make it safe and bless it to us; our happiness must be inflicted, executed on us, and we must be goaded into blessedness: and therefore God hath put afflictions into every dispensation since the first. Among the Jews sin did receive immediate punishment by the tenor of the Covenant, and though the retributions of our Covenant be set at distance, as far remote as Hell, yet Christ has dressed his very promises in sackcloth and in ashes, tears and trouble: when he would recompense heroic virtue, he says it shall receive an hundred fold with persecution, Mar. x. 30. and he does grant us sufferings; To you it is given in the behalf of Christ to suffer: Phil. 1. 29. so that the sting of the Serpent is now the tempter; his bitings and his venom moving us to obedience, as much as his lying tongue did our first Parents to rebellion, and when he does fulfill God's threat and wound the heel, he only drives us faster away from him, and makes us haste to him that flies to meet us with healing under his wings. This method God hath always used, and the experience confirmed by the blood of all Ages, even from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of this season: of all the Prophets that went before us, and the Apostles that came after them, as if those were men inspired for ruin, and what ever Judgment they denounced, it was their own burden; and as if these were men chosen out for, and delegated to Persecution, men appointed unto death, as St. Paul expounds their Office, none escaped: and the next succeeding times of Primitive Christianity were but Centuries of Martyrdom, so many years of Fire and Faggot, and worse tortures. This method hath not past by any Grandeur, but of those great ones that have been eminently good, their afflictions have vy'd with their Majesty, the Calendar hath had as much share of them as the Chronicle, the Martyrology as the Annals, and their blood, not their Purple put them in the Rubric. God's Furnace made Crowns splendid, gave them a Majesty of shine, and an Imperial glory, and so all our Crowns indeed must be prepared in the Furnace; he that told us we must be Baptiz'd with fire, saw there was something in us that the Christians water will not cleanse; Baptism may wash sullays but not dross away, That must be washed in flame, and nothing else but fire will take away our base alloy. And it cannot be otherwise, never was there any other way to Glory: for when God was to bring many Sons to glory, he sanctified the very Captain of our salvation through sufferings. Heb. ii. 10. Who though he were a Son, and that the Son of God, yet learned he obedience by the things that he suffered, Heb. v. v. 8. This therefore is the only and most effectual way of teaching it, when God speaks in Judgment: and indeed he counts all other of his Voices but as silence in comparison of this; and though he gave his Law in Thunder, and sent his Prophets daily to denounce wrath to transgression, yet he reckons of all this as if he had said nothing till he speak Plagues and command afflictions; Psal. l. 21. after a Catalogue of sins he tells the man, these things hast thou done and I kept silence; though my Law did warn thee, and my Messengers called to thee, yet I hardly expect that thou shouldst hear those whispers, with all those Voices I did scarce break silence; but now I will reprove thee, and thou shalt hear the rod or hear thy own groans under it: For that we may be sure to hear this Voice, God does by it open the ear, Job xxxiii. 14, 15, 16. God speaks once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not, in a dream and in a vision, then he opens the ears of men by Chastisements, as it follows in four Verses full of them, 91, 20, 21, 22. and sealeth his instruction that he may withdraw Man from his purpose, i. e. that he may make him cease from sin. It seems the place of Dragons is God's chiefest School of Repentance; and we may have a clearer sight of him in the dimness of anguish, than Vision itself does give. When men did not perceive that, saith Job, yet this opened the Ear, and so God sealeth the Instruction: And truly when the Soul dissolves in Tears, and when, as David words it. The heart in the midst of the body is even like melting wax, then only 'tis susceptible of Impression, then is the time for sealing the Instruction. Nor does Chastisement open the Ear only, but the Understanding also; I will give her trouble, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , I will take her into the Wilderness 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 saith he, and speak unto her Heart; There is convincing Experience of all this. Pharaoh that was an Atheist in Prosperity, does beg for Prayers in Adversity; before he suffers, Pharaoh says, Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go, Exod. v. v. 2. but yet Thunder preaches obedience into him, and Pharaoh sent and called for Moses and Aaron and said, I have sinned, the Lord is righteous, and I and my People are wicked, entreat the Lord that there be no more mighty Thundrings, (no more Voices of God, the Hebrew words it) and I will let you go, Exod. ix. 27. And in the Book of Judges you will find that whole Age was nothing but a vicissitude of sinning and suffering, divided betwixt Idolatry and Calamity. When God's hand was not on them they ran after other God's, as if to be freed from Oppression had been to be set free from God's Worship and Service; but when he did return to slay them, then they sought him, and they returned to inquire early after God, and they remembered that God was their Rock, and the high God was their Redeemer. Psal. lxxviii. 34, 35. So that from such induction the Prophet might pronounce, that when God's Judgments are in the Earth, the Inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness, Isaiah xxvi. 9. and S. Peter in the Text, they that have suffered in the flesh, have ceased from sin. Which calls me to my second Task;

2. To show first, by what arts the flesh engages men into courses of sin, and by what methods it does work them up to the heights of it. That I may Secondly declare how sufferings blast those methods, and make all the arts of flesh either unpracticable or too weak.

1. That the carnal appetite should reach after, and give up itself to sensual delights is so far from strange, that it is its nature; 'tis the Law of the members, the very signature of flesh, and inclination imprinted into it, of which it can no more divest itself, than the heated Deer can restrain itself from thirsting and panting after water-brooks: But when Reason and Religion have set bounds to this appetite, for it to scorn these mounds; for that Law in the members to fight with and prevail against the Law in the mind, those original dictates born in it, and Christian Principles infused into it, this is the Fleshes aim and sin. Now this it does by exciting to ill actions, as being sauc'd with pleasures and contents, and by indisposing to good actions, as being troublesome or not at all delightful to the sense, and as for all other delights, it hath no apprehension of, but indisposeth for them perfectly. So that this it does, it engages too much in Pleasures here, and it takes off all cares or thoughts of any joys hereafter; both these I will show you, and thus it works;

1. It prevails with us to indulge ourselves the full use of lawful pleasures, and for this the Flesh will urge, it is the end of their Creation; to do otherwise were to evacuate God's purpose in the making; Did he give us good things not to enjoy them?

Thus every sort of sin insinuates itself at first: Youth will not deny itself converses with temptations, although he have reason to fear they will commit a rape upon his warmer passions, which are chafed by such encounters. But God has not forbid him Conversation; and why should he be an Anchoret and recluse in the throngs of Cities and of Courts? Another that would not by any means be luxurious or intemperate, yet goes as near them as he can, and contrives to enjoy all those delights that do indeed but sauce Intemperance, and make Excess palatable: And truly why should he restrain himself from meats and drinks, and be a Jew again? All these believe they live righteously, soberly, and godly enough. This resolution works in every recreation, pleasure, honor, and advantage of this World, men are content to make as near approaches to the Sin as they can; and indeed believe they have no reason to be morose unto themselves: I will deny myself nothing that God hath not denied me, but enjoy as far as possibly and lawfully I may. But then, by doing thus it

Secondly, does oft take in somewhat of the immoderate and unlawful, which cannot be avoided, both because it is hard to set the exact bounds and limits of what is lawful: The 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the Line that meres out Virtue from its Neighbor Vice, is not so plain in every place as to chalk out exactly to this point thou mayst come, and no farther; hence the man sometimes mistakes himself into a fault; however the extremity of Lawful is, we know the confines and very edge of Vice. And then to him that plays upon the brink of sin, it is a very easy step into it, and indeed unavoidable, when a man is rusht and hurried on, not only by his inward stings and inclinations, but by the practice of the World, which makes use of that holy Name of Friendship, to bring Vice into our acquaintance, and to befriend us into everlasting Death (of such Friends I can have legions in Hell; and the God of this World will serve me, upon this account, to procure for my Sin and my Destruction:) but howsoever when the Appetite is heated, they are not to be denied.

Thirdly, this happening therefore sometimes proves a Snare and bait still to go on, both as it takes away the horror and the aversation of the sins which at the first seem uncouth, till a man be experienced in them; and also as it smoothes the way, for such beginnings do nurse up a Habit and prepare a Custom, and make Vice very easy, which at first it is not, while the Appetite is modest and not able to digest full Doses, till use enlarge and stretch it.

And now the Mind, which by these means tastes diverse Pleasures, and the Degrees of them, and finds a gust in them, yet not being satisfied in any one (as 'tis impossible it should be) stirs up the Appetite to vary and proceed; that that contentment which single pleasures could not afford, diversified might make up. Wretched Nature using that as an Attractive, which should repel; for who would hug a Cloud? embrace that which does not, cannot satisfy? but only Flesh which for that very reason, hunts on and follows the scent. And by doing so a while, it brings upon itself.

Fourthly, Something like a necessity of doing so: Thus Continence would be some men's Disease, and the Intemperate cannot live without his Vice, but gapes as much as Thirst and Fever do, and if he have not satisfaction, suffers as many qualms and pangs as his Riot used to cause in the Apprentisage of his sin; so that there is a kind of necessity of the practice, and he wisely seeming to make a virtue of necessity, begins to think them the only happiness, at least of this life, freely without reluctancy embracing them.

And now the Flesh is Callous, and if you doubt how it could so harden itself, as not to be pervious to any stings of Conscience, but Proof against all Pricks, though Experiment may persuade you; yet I will show you the Method.

As all Appetite you know is blind, so the Guides also of Carnal appetite; The senses are very short-sighted, they cannot look forward to the next Life, to the hopes of Heaven, or the pains of Hell, to bring them into the balance with the present pleasure, and see which does overweigh. The Flesh only lives extempore, looks but upon that which is before it, scarce on that. We have sufficient experience of this, for when one Vice will not look forwards a year or two to the penury and rottenness some courses do pull down: And when another Vice, as if it had learnt to fulfill our Savior's command, and take no care for the morrow, will not think of the next mornings pains and Headach; Nay, when the ambitious Usurper will not look just before him, to see where he does place his steps, on Precipices and Sword-points, to note how the Pyramids he does climb are made slippery with blood; Pyramids, did I say? pointed Reeds rather, things that have not strength to bear, but only sharpness to stab; and where the man's own weight makes his Upholders fail and wound him both together, at once sink under him and pierce him thorough. Nay, we see many whose sins inflict themselves, who may be truly said to bear their Iniquities, yet choose those sins that bring their Plauges along with them; for we see men with most excessive difficulty practice a Vice only that they may have the Vice, swallow sickness, drink Convulsions and dead Paralyses, foaming Epilepsies, only that all this may be easy to them. And this is but one instance of the many that might be made; just as the King of Pontus, that are Poison that so he might be used to it: Strange! that a man should torture himself with all those deadly symptoms that Poison racks the body with, only that he might eat Poison; yet just such is the Sinners Design, and all the ease and pleasure he acquires at last in sinning, is but familiarity of Poison, custom of Danger, and acquaintance of Ruin. Good God! that men should train and exercise themselves so for perdition! that they should go through a discipline of torments to get an Habit of destroying themselves! that they should work out their own condemnation with hardships and agonies! that as if 'twere too easy to go down the hill to Hell, the descent shall be made craggy, and they force breaches into it, and great headlong Precipices to make the way more painful, and more dangerous, to make the fall more wounding and more irrecoverable! And what shall give a check where difficulty does provoke, and torments do ingratiate.

Well: But though Flesh be so short-sighted and inconsiderate, the mind might trash it by suggesting other sorts of punishments that do await transgression. Why truly if rude and unmannerly Conscience do sometimes thrust in the thoughts of Hell, the Flesh, which I told you, is not terrified with anything but what it feels (now Conscience presents Hell as a thing of hereafter, not till Death be past) it satisfies Conscience with a Repentance of Hereafter, before Death come I will be sorry for my sins, and God is merciful. Conscience being thus quieted, and both Reins and Spur given to the Flesh, it takes its full Carier, and leaves behind all thoughts of Repentance, and indeed, of God, or Heaven; the hope and joys of which, are the only possible method that is left to take off the Man from his eager pursuit, or to divert him in his course. But as to that also, that I may show you the next heat.

The Mind that is immersed in body, and hath been long accustomed to taste no pleasure but the carnal ones, its fancy filled with those Ideas, it does imbibe such a tincture of sensuality, receives such an infusion of Flesh, and so impregnated with the fumes of Carnality, which clog the Spirit, that its complexion and temper is quite altered, it is diluted and deprest, and so grown stupid and unactive to all higher things. Heaven and all after-things, it may be, are the prejudice of such persons, not their persuasions; some thin conceptions of such things have been thrown into them, but never were improved; for their Mind hath otherwise been employed, and they can have no appetite to them, because they have never had any taste or relish of anything but sensual. And indeed that both longings after, and thoughts of a better Life should be altogether dead in the carnal man, is but a natural and necessary effect of the verge of his Delights. For what motive is there in Heaven to stir up his appetite, to whom Heaven itself would not be a place of Joy? For I am verily persuaded, were the Carnal man in those Eternal Mansions compassed with streams of Glory, it were impossible for him to take delight in them, and he would grope for Paradise in the midst of Heaven: As much impossible as for the most unlearned Idiot to satisfy himself with the pleasures of a Mathematical demonstration: Let him have the Hecatombe, and let Pyth • goras be an Epicure on the dimensions of a Triangle, the other hath no palate for these pleasures; and indeed how could the unclean lascivious please himself in the enjoyment of those Felicities that have no Sex, Where they neither Marry, nor are given in Marriage? Or how the Riotous, that Eats to eat, eats to hunger and provoke, not satisfy; how will he content himself there where their happiness is, they shall neither hunger nor thirst, or the Incendiaries that love to set all on fire, what should they do there where there are no flames but such as kindle Seraphim; so that flesh and blood, not only shall not, but cannot enjoy the Kingdom of God: And why then should they long after, or think of it? Nay, I would this unhappy Age, and an unlucky axiom of Aristotle's did not convince that they do think there are no such things; Sensual pleasures, are corruptive of Principles, saith he; and indeed where Damnation is the conclusion, 'tis a much quieter and more easy thing for Men of Wit and Understanding to deny the Principles, than granting them, to lie under the torture of being liable to such an inference; they therefore that resolve to love this Life and all the sinful pleasures of it, at the next step resolve there is no other Life. And now this pampered and puffed Flesh is got into the Psalmists Chair, the Chair of Scorners; and 'tis one of the Luxuries of their life to scoff at them who are so foolish as to be Religious, and to deny their flesh its present appetites and pleasures on such thin after-hopes; here their Wit also is an Epicure, and feasts and triumphs, dictates, and professes in that Chair; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , in the Chair of Pestilences, as the LXX translate, and very truly, for such men shed a Sphere of Contagion about them, and their Discourses are effluvia of the Plague, and the breath of Pestilence. But how to get Flesh down out of this Chair, that's the difficulty; yet that my Text will tell us, for all this progress of the Flesh is trasht and checked by Sufferings, for, He that hath suffered hath ceased from Sin. Which how, I will briefly show.

The Fleshes first Art was by immersing itself in the full Lawful use of Pleasures, and by consequence, in the immoderate; to prevail with the Soul to find a gust in them, and from a continued enjoyment to conclude them necessary; and so from the importunities of a perpetual temper and an accustomed satisfaction to think of nothing else in this life. Now it is plain Affliction made this Art unpracticable, for that it did do so, was every ones complaint; it robbed them of the immoderate, and even of the lawful use of Pleasures, it took off those customary Delights by which the mind was habituated and glued to them, by not allowing them; and made them so far from being necessary, that they were not acquirable. Thus by denying us even the Lawful use of them, it stabs the Flesh in its first onset: Indeed it does that for us which every man in every state of life in his most plentiful prosperity must sometimes do for himself; that is, Deny himself what he desires, and might enjoy without offense: Which he that does not do, but constantly gives his Appetite every sort and degree of lawful thing it asks, does teach it to crave on, and be importunate, and insolent, and not endure to be resisted, when it did always find him to be so obsequious to it. If David never checked Adonijah, did not at any time displease him, saying, Why hast thou done so? he easily takes confidence to say I will be King, and step into the Throne. 1 Kings i. 5, 6. But he that mortifies sometimes, that does acquaint even his most innocent desires with a denial, how can unlawful ones assault him? For can my Appetite hope to betray me into superfluities, who have taught myself not to wish for necessaries? Will he be tempted with Excesses, or hearken to the invitations of Luxury, that will not hear his bowels when they croak for bread? Or he gape for intemperate satisfactions, who will not let thirst call, but shuts his mouth against it? Why should he covet more that hath learnt to give away, and want that which he hath? Now Sufferings inflict this temper on us, and acquaint us with the necessity of all this, and in a while with the liking of it, teach us Content without Lawful Delights? yea, by degrees make that content appear better than an assured enjoyment: For were I offered the choice either of an uninterrupted Health, or of a certain Cure in all Diseases, sure I had rather never need a Potion than drink Antidote and Health itself. And even so the lawful good things of this Life are at the best but Remedies and Reliefs, never good but upon supposition: Therefore while Affliction taught us to want, it hath destroyed this Art of the Flesh.

As for the Second, Then the lulling asleep all sense or thoughts of any Life hereafter, neither minding the fear of one, or hopes of the other; Affliction surely met with this too: For Sufferings bring both the hereafters to remembrance, the Sad one, while every Punishment was an Essay and taste of that which is prepared for those that live after the Flesh, and the more insupportable our Fiery Trial was, the more it cautioned us to beware of that Fire which is never quenched▪ And for the other Life, surely when our Condition was such, that if we looked unto the Earth, behold nothing but Darkness and dimness of Anguish, and darkness as of the shadow of Death, we could not choose but turn away our Eyes and lift them up to Heaven. When the Soul is thrown down by Oppression, it mounts by a resiliency, and with the force of pressure is crushed Upwards; or if the Load be heavy, so as to make it grovel and lie prostrate, it is but pressed into the posture of Devotion: When she's disseised of all, turned out of every possession, then she begins to think of an abiding City, and eternal Mansions. For the Soul that is restless, when it sees nothing here below to stay upon, but all is hurried from her, roams about for some hold to rest on, and being able in that case to find nothing but God, there she does grasp and cling; and when the storms splits all enjoyments, and devours Friends which •• ke enjoyments comfortable, all perish in one wrack, then she sees she must catch at him that sits above the Water-Floods. I told you out of Job, Affliction did discover better than Revelation, and in the dimness of Anguish we might see more than by Vision; and truly of two Visions which our Savior gave to his most intimate Apostles Peter, James, and John, the one of Glory on Mount Tabor, the other of Sufferings in Gethsemane; showing in the one Heaven and Himself transfigured, a glimpse of beatifical Vision; and in the other Hell transfigured, and a sad Scene of all its Agonies, he thought this a more concerning sight, for when they fell asleep at both, at his Transfiguration, Luke ix. 32. Peter, and they that were with him, were heavy with sleep; yet he does not rouse them up to behold his Glory; when they did awake, indeed they saw a glimpse of it, but straight a Cloud did overshadow it, verse 34. But at his Passion he bids them Watch with him, Matth: xxviii. 38. and when he findeth them asleep, he says, What, could ye not watch with me one hour? ver. 40. and bids them watch again, ver. 41. and comes again a third time and upbraids their drowsiness, ver. 45. So much more necessary was it to behold his Agonies, than to see his Felicities: Glory does not discover or invite to Heaven, so much as Sufferings drive to it; and we are more concerned to take a view of that Garden in Gethsemane, than that of Paradise, and the going down from the Mount of Olives does more advantage us in climbing the Eternal hill, than all Mount Tabors height. Nor do Afflictions only drive us toward Heaven, but they beget an hope of it. Knowing that Tribulation worketh Patience, Patience Experience, and Experience Hope, Rom. v. 3. 4. And I will give them the Valley of Achor for a door of Hope, Hos. ii. 14. As if Despair oppressed them into Hope, and that low troublous Valley opened into the highest Firmament. Now he that rides at Anchor of this Hope, though his Anchor lie buried under Waves, yet those rolling Hills of Sea, swelled by storms of Affliction, and raised too by his Tears, do without Hyperbole mount him to Heaven: He that hath entertained these Expectations in earnest, how will he slight Temptations here below? What will he not sacrifice to Christ's Command? See, Abraham that did but hope for Canaan, and that far off too, to be possessed by the Posterity of his Son Isaac, yet when God commands him to slay Isaac before he had any posterity, and so to dash all his own Promises, and quite cut off the very motive to Abraham's Obedience, yet he hopes and obeys even to contradiction, Does both against hope. And had we but the shadow of his hope, as he had but the shadow of our Promises, how would we sacrifice a sin at his Command, and think a Fleshly lust a good exchange for the hope of Heaven, which Tribulation worketh? and he that had suffered in the Flesh, would certainly cease from sin.

And now my last work is to view our own Concern in this, and surely that must be all Exultation and Triumph, and this not so much that our sufferings are ceased, as that our sins are so; not that our Enemies are sunk, but that our flesh is vanquished, that sub hoc signo vinces is thus also come to pass, with the Standard of the Cross, that Cross on which ourselves were Crucified, we have overcome; and with this Christian Banner we have put to flight the Armies of our Heathen Vices. For thus it must be, if my Text be true; and sure it is not possible it should be otherwise: For look upon the Muster-roll of these our Foes which S. Paul does produce, Gal. v. v. 19, 20, 21. and see which of them could escape; it runs thus, Adultery, Fornication, Uncleanness, Lasciviousness, Idolatry, Witchcraft, Hatred, Variance, Emulations, Wrath, Strife, Seditions, Heresies, Envyings, Murder, Drunkenness, Revelings.

To begin with the great Commanders, those that lead the Van and bring up the Rear, Uncleanness, and Revelings; They that consider how they not only suffered for, but by these Vices, which did misplace men's watches and attendances; sins that were not only like Achan's in our Army, and ruined it by bringing the accursed thing into it, but were like Hannibal's Numidians in the Roman Army, that did at once betray to, and inflict Ruin; sins that did merit and effect Destruction, and made as well as provoked, overthrows; and sins that by God's goodness did cut off themselves, while they did bring men into a condition that would not bear such Vices. These are the guilts of Wealth and Splendor, that do attend Felicity and Pomp; it is not only hopeful that men did resolve to be revenged on these great workers of their mischief, and will no more reset such Traitors in their bosoms; But sure these sins are ceased that did put out themselves.

Then for Seditions; They who consider when they broke the Scepter, they left us nothing but the Rod of God instead of it; a Rod that turned straight into a Serpent, that changed our Seas into Blood, or rather made new Seas of our own blood; that brought Locusts over the Earth, and Frogs into the Temple also, to croak there; that struck Lights here worse than Egyptian Darkness, and destroyed all the first born of the Nation, all the Nobles of the Land; these will easily believe that we have selt this Rod too much to seize upon it hastily again; the Scepter is restored, and this Rod like to that in Israel, laid up, I hope, within the Ark together with the Tables of the Law, never to be dis join'd from God's Commands, nor taken thence against them.

Next for Heresies; Truly we have left us none to revive, or to make new; the mischief both of them and their Cause, the want of Government in the Church is now discerned and remedied: And for Divisions and Schisms, they who reflect on the said issues of them, how well meaning soever all their Causes were, will certainly avoid them: To see how while we quarelled for the Fringes of Religion, we tore the seamless Coat of Christ to pieces; yea, and the body too: How when we first dislik'd a Liturgy, the daily Sacrifice of Prayer was made to cease, and then the House of Prayer was demolisht; next, Christ's, our Lord's Prayer was rejected, that Liturgy of his own framing, thrown away in the Rubbish of his Temple, and then it was a sin to pray at all. His Table we must have removed, and then his Supper was so too; and that great Mystery of our Religion, the Sacrament of our Redemption, was buried in the Ruins of his Altar. To see how thus out of heats of Religion we destroyed all Religion, because that some adjacent Circumstances did not please us, and fetched a Coal from the Altar to set fire to and burn down the Temple, because the building of some out-Court was, we thought, irregular; is Document enough not to attempt this any more for Religions sake: For now it would be in despite of Christ, who hath almost verified the Jewish accusation of him, Destroy this Temple also, and in three days he will build it up again; and hath built it up we hope, as he did that of his own Body, never to fall again by us: Surely we will not kill this Body of his out of Love to him, and make his Temple his burnt Offering. When God hath set our sins in order thus before our eyes, shown them us in their sad effects, there is no fear that we should fall in love with them.

But where it is not thus, where God's last and most working Method hath been able to produce no good, I must, to keep my word,

Apply the Danger: In that case what remains but the Curse of the ground, Heb. vi. 8. which, if after all the Husbandmans methods of Care and Art, it brings forth only thorns and briars, it is rejected by him, he will bestow no more labor on it, but can hardly forbear cursing such an ill piece of ground, and its end is to be burnt: So we after God's Husbandry of Afflictions, when the Plowers plowed upon our backs and made long furrows, and the Iron teeth of Oppressors as it were harrowed us; if we bring forth only the fruits of the Flesh, we are rejected, reprobated, God will bestow no more Arts on us, we are not far from his curse, and there remains only a fearful looking for of Judgment and fiery Indignation. If any did continue refractory to the Rod, sin'd under and against Judgment, and did commit with an high hand even while the Lord's hand was stretched out against them, what shall reform, what can express their guilt? To have beheld that tragical iniquity we read of Lions, where when the City was so visited with the Pestilence that scarce any were free, that the Dead without a figure buried their dead, falling down one upon another, each being at once a Carcass and a grave; the Soldiers of the Cittadel would daily issue forth and deflour Virgins now giving up the ghost, defile Matrons even already dead, committing with the dust, warming the grave with sinful heats, and coupling with the Plague and Death; would not this have seemed the Landskip of Hell to us, when they suffer and sin together? Yet when a Church and State were on their death-beds, God's Tokens on them, visited with the treasures of his Plagues, and ourselves sinking in that our Ruin, if any went a whoring after their own flesh, still fulfilling the lusts thereof, and in the midst of Deaths searching for sins; what was this but to do the same things whose story does affright us, while the actions please? and in this case what method will be useful? do we think ourselves of that generous kind that will do nothing by compulsion, but will for kindness; and though we would not be chained, yet we will be drawn to Virtue by the cords of Love; and now God hath shewn mercy on us, we will return him service out of gratitude. Truly, I make no question but most of us have promised some such things to God, how if he would but save us from our Enemies that we might serve him without fear, that we would do it in holiness and Righteousness before him: And if he would restore his opportunities of Worship, how we would use them. Thus we did labor to tempt God, and draw him in to have compassion; and this was Ephraim's Imagination just, I heard Ephraim bemoaning himself, saith the Prophet, as a Bullock unaccustomed to the yoke, turn thou me and I shall be turned; turn my Captivity, and I will turn my life: But this was as a Bullock unaccustomed to the yoke, that did not like the straitness and pressure of it, and would promise anything to get it off, thought it more easy to reform than bear Affliction: But is this hopeful think you? The Soldiers of Lions that would ravish Death, and break into the Grave for Lust, it may be would have been modest, and retired from the fair Palaces that are prepared to tempt and entertain that Vice: Cold and insensible of all those heats that Health and Beauty kindle; but remember it was the taking off God's hand that hardened Pharaohs heart, and a release from punishment was his Reprobation.

And as for those that were humbled under the Rod, and when God had retrench'd from their enjoyments, did put restraints upon themselves, gave over sinning. I have a word of Caution for them, that they examine well and take a care it be a ceasing from sin, like that in the Text, a dying to it, that they no longer live the rest of their time in the flesh to the lusts of men: For if this Old Man be only cold and stiff, not mortified; by the calm and sunshine of Peace, likely to be warmed into a recovery; if thou owe all thy Innocence to thy Pressure, wert only plundered of thy sins, and thy Virtue and Poverty hand in hand as they were born, so they will die together, thy Vices and Revenues come in at once: What is this but to invite new Desolations, which God in kindness must send to take away the opportunities and foments of our ruining sins? 'It is true, when God has wrought such most astonishing miracles of mercy for us, when he did make Calamity contribute to our Happiness; when we were Shipwrackt to the Haven and the Shore; when Ruins did advance us and we fell upwards; it is an hopeful argument God would not do such mighty works on purpose to undo them, we have good ground of confidence that he will preserve his own mercies, and will not throw away the issues of his goodness in which his bounty hath so great an interest and share. But yet if we debauch Salvation, and make it serve our undoing, if we order these opportunities of mercy so, that they only help us to fill up the measure of our sins, if we teach God's longsuffering only to work out our eternal sufferings, these Mercies will prove very cruel to us, and far from giving any color for our hopes. When the Prodigal was received into his Fathers house and arms, had a Ring put on him, and the fatted Calf killed for him, if he should strait have invited the companions of his former Riot to that fatted Calf, and join'd his Harlot to him with that Ring, he had deserved then to be disinherited both from his Fathers house and pity, who would have had no farther entertainment, nor no bowels for him. To prevent such a fate, let us make no relapses, but quite cease from sin; which if we do not, a little Logic will draw an unhappy inference from this Text; if he that hath suffered hath ceased from sin, then he that hath not ceased from sinning hath not suffered, and then what is all this that we have felt and so lain under? What is it if it be not suffering! If this be but preparative, then what is the full Potion, the Cup of Indignation, when all his Vials shall be poured into it? If such have been the beginnings of sufferings, what shall the issues be? If the morning dew of the day of punishment have been so full of blood, what shall the Storm and Tempest be? the deluge and inundation of Fury? Take heed of making God relapse, 'tis in your power to prevent it, your Reformation will be his preservative and Antidote. That is the way to keep all whole; to settle Government and Religion both; at once to establish the Kings Throne and Christ's: For notwithstanding men's pretensions, these Thrones are not at all inconsistent: For that there must be no King but Christ, that there cannot be a Kingdom here of this World, because there is a Kingdom that is not of this World is such another Argument, as that there cannot be an Earth because there is an Heaven. Indeed if we fulfill my Text, then we shall reconcile these Kingdoms, and bring down Heaven into us; for that's a state where there is neither sin, nor suffering, where there shall be no tears because no guilt to merit them, and no calamity to •• ke them. Now Reformation does work this here in some degree, and afterwards our comforts that are checker'd with some sufferings, and our Piety which is soiled with spots, shall change into Immortal and unsullied Glories, he prepare us all Who washed us from our sins in his own Blood, and by his sufferings hath made us Kings and Priests to God and his Father, to whom be Glory and Dominion forever and ever, Amen.

The Second SERMON, Preached at WHITE-HALL. October 20. 1661.

'TWAS a false Confidence the Jews did nourish, That they should dwell securely in their Land, notwithstanding their provocations, because the Worship and the House of God was in it; They did but trust on lying words, the Prophet says, when they did trust upon The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord; As if the Temple were a Sanctuary for those that did profane it, and the horns of the Altar would secure them, when 'twas the blood upon the Altar called for Vengeance. Nor was that after-plea of theirs valid, We are the chosen Israel of God, We have Abraham to our Father; As if when by their works they had adopted to themselves another Parent, were of their Father the Devil, they could claim any but their present Fathers interest, or have the blessings of forsaken Abraham. Now if it be no otherwise with us, but because in our Judah God is known, his Name great in our Israel, with us in Salem, that is, in peace, he hath his Tabernacle now, and his dweling in Zion: And so much knowledge, such pretences to the Name of God, and to his Worship, are not with other Nations, nor have they such advantages to know his Law: If as each party of us does assume these Privileges to itself, so each do also rest in them, although their Lives answer not these advantages. If while they judge themselves Christ's chosen Flock, boast Covenants and Alliances with God, although they violate all those Relations, they yet trust those will secure them: For why? the being of such a Party and Persuasion is the signature and Amulet that will preserve them in God's favor, the charm through which he will not see Iniquity in Jacob, nor perverseness in Israel. Lastly, If we that were the distinctive Character of Israel, that of a Ransom'd, Purchas'd People (for sure our Rescues rise unto the number and the rate of those which brought the Sons of Jacob from the House of Bondage ) if we, as they, presume and furfeit upon goodness, and think these gifts of God too are without Repentance, beli ••• our being his Redeemed, his Church; conceit our Orthodox Profession (as once we thought our righteous Cause should do) will shield us from the danger of our Enemies, and of our Vices too, and neither let our Foes nor ourselves ruin us; with such my Text and my intentions prepare to meet, lest we should fill the Parallel; and as we equal Israel in our Deliverances, and imitate their practices, we do transcribe the fatal Pattern too in the most full resemblance, and repletion of an entire excision; for although God be truly loving to his Church; yet the ungodly does his soul abhor; however in a signal manner he be good to Israel, yet this his kindness does confine itself to such as are of a clean heart.

The words need not much explication; By Israel is meant the Church of God, and by his goodness to it, all his external mercies also and protections, as the Psalm evinces; and by such as are of a clean heart, those that to the profession of Religion and Holiness of outward conversation, do add internal purity and sincerity; for some trnaslate it, such as are of a clean heart, some, such as are true • hearted and sincere: And it signifies both.

The words thus explicated give me these Subjects of Discourse. First, a general Proposition, Truly God is good to Israel, to his Church. Secondly, an assignation of Conditions under which that general Proposition holds, All are not Israel that are of Israel, it holds only in such as are of a clean heart. And in this we have, first, a quality appropriate to the Church, Cleanness. Secondly, with its subject, the Heart; and there I shall inquire why that alone is mentioned, whether the cleanness of the Heart suffice, and having answered that, shall proceed. Thirdly, to consider them together, in both the given senses as they mean, a sincere heart, and a pure undefiled heart: In each of which Considerations, because the latter part of my Text is a limitation of the former, showing where that general Proposition is of force, where it is not; I shall as I proceed, view all the several guilts opposed to either notion of Cleanness, and see how far each of them does remoye from any interest in the Lord's goodness to his Church, which is the natural Application of each part, and shall be mine.

1. Truly God is good to Israel, his Church. And sure this Proposition is evident to us by its own light, to whom God proved his goodness to astonishment, by exercising it to Miracle; while he at once wrought Prodigies of kindness and Conviction; to which we have only this proof to add, That God hath been so plentiful in Bounties, that we are weary of every mention of them, and have so furfeited on Goodness that we do nauseate the acknowledgment. So that his kindness in sustaining his Compassions does vie with that which did effect them, who as he will not be provoked not to be good by such prodigious unthankfulness, so neither will he by the most exasperating use of his Favors: God did complain of Israel, Thou hast taken thy fair Jewels of my Gold and my Silver which I had given thee, and madest to thyself Images: My meat also which I gave thee, my fine Flour, mine Oil, and Honey wherewith I fed thee, and hast even set it before them for a sweet savor. And if men now do offer things, in which God hath the same propriety, to baser Idols, to their Vices; if they do sauce his meat, which he hath given them, to sacrifice to Luxury, take his silver and gold to serve in the Idolatry of Covetousness, and use his Jewels to dress Images also for foulest adorations. If Atheism grow against Miracle and Goodness too, and men do most deny God now when he hath given greatest evidences of his kind Providence; I know not by what argument encouraged, unless his in the Poet,

because they see they fare best now, though they deny him most; teaching his goodness to consute his being. If they do look upon the wondrous restitution of God's Service as but a shifting of the Scene of Worship, only another and more gaudy draught and Landskip of Religion shot on the Stage, and do accordingly esteem it as a variety and entertainment for their senses only; for nothing higher is engaged, I doubt me, in those Offices: If they assist in them not out of Principle, but mere indifference to all, and therefore these at present; It is not halting betwixt God and Baal this, it is the bowing of the knee to both, which they can do to each alike, when either is the uppermost, and truly count them Deities alike, I fear. Nay, when the only Ordinance, the Sermon, is but a prize within the Temple, the Preacher but Rhetor dicturus ad aram, that comes to do his Exercise before the Altar, in which men are concerned no farther than to hear and judge, not to be sentenced by: If God endure all this, and do continue still his Church, his Worship, and his other Mercies, then I may well conclude that Truly God is good to Israel.

But I will not be this fastidious Remembrancer: These arguments may prove his goodness, but sure these qualities will not preserve it to us; the limitation, my next part, must suggest them; which tells us. who they are God is good to: Even to such as are of a clean Heart.

1. Clean. Clean, Pure, and Holy, are so essential Attributes of the Israel or Church of God, that though I must not say the Church does take in none but such; For there are Tares, unwholesome Poppy too, and Darnel with the Wheat, yet I must say that 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the Church is but a Congregation of such as are called to be Saints, 1 Cor. i. 2.

In the first Israel almost the whole Discipline of their Religion was purity in type, and all the Ceremonies of their Worship were but figures, rather Doctrines of Cleanness, when they came first to enter Covenant with God at Horeb, and to receive their Law, they were to sanctify themselves and wash their clothes. What purity do those Commandments require, which they must not hear with anything that was unclean about them? which they must wash all to receive? and indeed nothing with them was enterprized without it; they were to cleanse themselves from the impurities of mere Contingency; yea, they were bound to wash their Dreams and purify their very sleeps; and all this is expounded by the Prophet Isaiah, i. 16, 17. Wash ye, make ye clean, put away the evil of your doings, cease to do evil, learn to do well.

And in our Israel by our Covenant there is as much of this required, for we were all initiated into our profession by Washing, regenerated in a Laver, and born again of Water, becoming so Tertullian's Sanctitatis designati, set aside for Holiness, consecrated to cleanness, and made the votaries of purity. How clean a thing then must a Christian be who must be washed into the Name? nor is he thus washed only in the Font, there was a more inestimable fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness, Apoc. xi. 5. Jesus Christ hath washed us in his own blood; And Heb. ix, 14. The blood of Christ did purge our Consciences from dead works to serve the living God: How great is our necessity of being clean, when to provide a means to make us so, God opens his Sons side, and our Laver is drawn out of the Heart of Christ: yet we have more effusions to contribute to it, 1 Cor. vi. 11. But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified by the Spirit of our God, and we must be Baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire. A Laver of flame also, to wash away our Scurf as well as sullages, and beyond all these, some of us have been purged too with the fiery trial, and molten in the furnace of Affliction, to separate our dross and purify us from alloy, that we may be clean and refined too; may become Christians of the highest Carrect.

Such, among others, are the Obligations, such the Instruments of cleanness in a Christian: Let us inquire next into the importance of the quality, and the degree that is exacted.

And here I need not say that it stands in direct opposition to the licentious practices of Vice; this Scripture calls corruption and pollution, 2 Pet. ii. 19, 20. and the Sinner is there styled the servant of corruption; sure a worthy relation this, a Servant is we know, meaner than whom he serves, at least he is in that consideration as he serves; and then I pray you, in what rank of things is he or she who is below and baser than Corruption? David does also call such open Sepulchers; things all whose horror does not lie in this, that they enclose rottenness and putrefaction, but open Sepulcres are gaping frightful noisomeness; and they do also shed a killing stench. A man that is engaged in conversations with impure sinners, is in a like condition with him who hath no air to draw into him, but that of Funeral Vaults, and does suck in only the breath of Pestilence.

But it is a small thing to say the cleanness of a Christian does abhor such licentious impurities; for it is such that though it may consist with those little stains that come by slips and failings of infirmity (these are the spots of Children ) and also with some single fouler acts, into which the man may be surprised, provided they be suddenly washed off in tears: Yet can it not consist with continuance in a known sin, though it be but a breach of a single Commandment: And though the man be strict in other things, yet if he do allow himself one Vice, he is of the number of the unclean; for partial obedience does imply also partial disobedience, and to the worst and foulest mixture; therefore no purity. Herod feared John the Baptist, knowing that he was a just man and an holy, and observed him, and when he heard him he did many things, and heard him gladly, Mark vi. 20. Could you but pardon him one Crime, he were a most Religious person, but that indulged makes him the wicked Herod: The matter of Uriah threw dirt; perpetual sticking dirt, into the Character of David, that man after God's heart. There are few persons but some sin or other finds a particular engagement on, and does insinuate especially above all others into them; the vice of Constitution, the Crime of my Bosom, 'tis my own flesh and blood, I cannot tear that from me: Or else another sin does get into my Coffers, the profits of it bribe me to make much on it, and it brings such a reward with it I cannot be unkind to it; Or else the custom of a Vice hath made it my acquaintance and my friend, and then it is so jointed into me that there is no divulsion of it. Now when a Vice hath got any of these relations to me, rather than use a violence upon myself, I must find out some salve now to quiet Conscience, and yet keep the Vice. And truly if it be but one thing that a man transgresses in, he is apt to be gentle to himself, and finds plump grounds to be so. The best man hath his fault, and this is his, only in this the Good Lord pardon him; in other things he will be strict, but this is his particular infirmity, to which his very making did dispose him, having been poisoned by its Principles without his fault or conspiration.

'It is true, indeed, men have someone or other sinful inclination, which is a weight and violence upon them, and which they did derive from Adam, whose sin like an infection taken in by divers men, breaks out in several Diseases, according to variety of Constitutions: But truly Adam gave them no ill Customs, and they have no Original habits, themselves did educate their inclinations into Vices: and for those inclinations that are derived into them, the water of their Baptism was therefore poured upon them to cool those inbred heats, and quench those flashings out of Nature, wash away those foul innate tendencies in that Laver of Regeneration; which therefore they who spare and are tender to, because they are original and natural, they spare them for that very reason, for which they there engaged to ruin them, and do renounce their Baptism, as to the aims and uses of it. There thou didst list thyself a Soldier to fight against the Devil, World, and Flesh; now whichsoere of these gets most into thee, wilt thou think fit to spare thy Enemy, because he is thy bosom one? the Risque is greatest when the Foe is Rebel and Traitor too, is got in thy own Quarters, shuffled with thy own Forces, entered thy Holds and thy Defences, and mixes in thy Counsels, does counterfeit thy Guard, so that thou but command'st, and leadst on thy own ruin. Sure here is need of strictest care to rid thyself of so much treacherous danger; so far is it from a defense to say, this is the single force and bent of Nature in me, that if I no not therefore most resist it, I am perjuriously confederate with my Destruction; and howsoever pure I keep myself from other Vices, I am not clean. David will tell me when I am, Psalm xviii. 23. I was uncorrupt before him, and eschewed my own wickedness. God hath not given us Authority to pick and choose our duties; observe him where we like, and leave the rest; and when in the severe contritions of Repentance we come to judge our Lives, we have no leave to spare a Vice because custom hath made it our Companion and Intimate, or 'tis as near to us as the close inclinations of our hearts. He that does so, although he live a careful life in other things, yet all his Innocence is only this, he hath a mind to but one sin; and those he does not care for he forbears, but that which pleaseth him, that he commits. And sure God is beholden to him that there is but one way of provoking which does take him, and therefore must allow him what he hath an inclination to, and pardon him because he does abstain from those he does not like. I shall now only add that in this case S ^t James 's Aphorism holds, that Whosoever shall keep the whole Law, and yet offend in one point only, he is guilty of all; he that allows himself to break one Precept, does keep none, but shall be reckoned guilty of those things which he does not commit. For whosoever keepeth the whole Law, and yet thus offendeth in one point, is guilty of all.

And then I need not prove such have no Title to the goodness of the Text, but may conclude, if God be good to Israel, it is to such as are of a Clean Heart; And so I fall upon the subject, Heart.

And here I must first caution not to think the Heart is set as if it were the entire and only Principle by which a judgment might be past upon our doings; as if our Actions so wholly derived denomination from it, that they were pure which came from a clean upright heart; In opposition to which, I shall not doubt to put, That the external actions may have guilts peculiar to themselves, such as are truly their own, not shed into them by an evil mind; and a man may be wicked in the uprightness of his heart, when he does not intend any such thing, but rather the clean contrary. Our Savior tells his Apostles, The time will come that whosoever killeth you will think he doth God service, John xvi. 2. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , that he does offer an Oblation or Worship, shall think his Murder Sacrifice; that that would propitiate for other faults; his Crime should seem Religion and atonement to him. (We have seen guilts put on such colors too:) and yet by these same actions which their hearts pursued with Holy aims, out of a Zeal to God, as S. Paul says, Rom. x. 2. they sacrificed themselves and their Nation to God's Vengeance. Once more St. Paul does find reason to call himself the chief of Sinners, 1 Tim. i. 15. for the commissions of that time of which he says that he served God with a pure Conscience, ver. 3. did what he was persuaded in his heart he ought to do, pursued sincere intentions; and after says, he had lived in all good conscience before God until that day, Acts xxiii. 1. So that here was enough of the clean heart, a good and a pure conscience, and could his fiery persecutions by virtue of that flame within be Christened Holy Zeal? Could his Pure Conscience make his Bloody hands undefiled? Oh no! 'twas blasphemy, and persecution, and injury, for all 'twas Conscience; for all his heart was clean from such intentions: I was before a Blasphemer, and a Persecuter, and Injurious, ver. 13. We may not think to shroud foul actions under handsome Meanings and an Innocent Mind; a Conscientious man may yet be chief of Sinners; St. Paul was so, he says, and a clean Heart will not suffice alone. Therefore Heart is put here accumulatively, as that whose cleanness must be added to the purity of Conversation to complete it; and it implies what elsewhere he does set down more expressly Clean Hands, and a Pure Heart, all which a clean Heart may be set to signify, because under God's Holy Spirit it is the principal and only safe agent in the effecting of the rest, as that which only can make the other real, valuable, and lasting.

When a Disease hath once insinuated itself into the Vitals, spread through the Marrow, and seised the garrisons of Life, the Souls strong holds, and after fallies out into the outer parts in little pustles and unhandsome Ulcers; they who make application only to those outward Ulcers, may perchance smooth and cure the skin, make the unhandsomness remove and shift its seat, but all that while the man decays, the Forts of Life are undermin'd and sink, the vitals putrefy, and the whole Skin becomes but the fair Monument of its own rotten Inwards: Just so we have a 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 an inward deep infusion, bed or seedplot of malignity, which sometimes shows itself in outward gross commissions; but if we only use the Lance or corrosive to these, we may perchance make a man shift a sin (thus it is possible that the profane may alter into Factious, or contrary, the profuse Proud man turn Covetous ) but till the ground of these be purged away the man's not cured, but only the Disease is changed, and he is as unsound as ever. God's severe Judgments that did lie so long so close upon us, like strong repercussives, may have stricken back the breakings out of former sins or inclinations: But then no care being taken of the Heart, the first heat sent them out again, and Mercy made a restauration of Vices too. But if the Heart once entertain a real and sincere sense of Religion, if it consent to thorough resolutions of Piety, as far as the man discerns, so far the Cure is perfected, and such are fitted for God's goodness; for truly God is good to Israel, even to those that are of such a clean Heart; And so I fall upon them both together, first in the former sense proposed.

That Clean heart signifies sincere true-hearted men, I have not only the assurance of Translations, and among them the Syriac, but the Text itself does evince it, because such only are indeed of Israel; for so our Savior says, Behold an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile, John i. 47. One like the Father of them 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . Gen. xxv. 27▪ a man unfeigned, that did seem nothing he was not, all Heart. And such each Israelite, each man that does expect an interest in that goodness which the Lord hath for Israel, must be, sincere and without guile.

1. In his Conversation with Men:

I am not here to say, Sincerity is much, most generous, when it looks like a disingenuous fear to be afraid of my own mind, when my Heart dares not look into my Face, or speak in my Tongue, but must lurk under a disguise of words, or countenance, that are assumed and not its own. Nor is it Secondly, my business to say it is the greatest prudence, or as we call it Policy, and that not only because it hath most reason to attend and to expect God's Blessing, which other false acts cannot; but because though bold open Truth breeds Anger frequently, yet insincerity breeds hatred and contempt; there being no so ignominious thing as Reputation of Falsness, which yet is unavoidable, for events must discover insincerity, and then how piteous a thing he is when he must turn and wind still in more Mazes, till he be quite lost in his own shifts, and having no clue for his own Labyrinths, betrays himself more by his not knowing where he is; and men must needs be much more angry at pretences when they find them, than they were at unpleasing truth at first; when they discern their wants and expectations too deceived, themselves refused and mocked, find nothing but a Vizard for a Friend: nay, find an Enemy indeed, for so is the Dissembler to mankind. Great Casuists do tell us, that the moral Obligations to speak truth depend upon a right that each man hath who is a member of human society; Man being a sociable Creature merely by virtue of his Speech: But speech could not contribute to cement Society, if there were not an obligation to speak truth; hence they conclude, that Children, Fools, and Madmen who are not truly members of Human society, and also open Enemies, with whom we are in a state of War, and have broke that society as to all things but Laws and Articles of War; all these and these alone we may deceive, and then surely the false insincere man either esteems all others Fools and Madmen, or holds himself in a state of War with all Mankind, out of all Laws and Obligations of Human society, and is an Enemy to the World; a Creature by himself, but that there are so many of them. But to pass by such Arguments, God's Precepts of not lying to one another, oblige us and all those that require faithfulness and his Command that Love should be without Dissimulation; that while we speak gently, we should not be hard-hearted, give melting language soft as the airs of Flattery, but yet have crusted inwards, that cannot yearn nor stretch into compassion, Jacob's voice but Esau 's rough red hands; Besides God's reasons do enforce this, Putting away lying, speak everyone truth to his Neighbor, for we are members one of another: So that Dissimulation is as great a Treachery as for the Eys to seek Traps to ensnare the Feet, the Hands to sauce stones for a Meal, which may perchance delight the Palate with a transient gust of that they are condited with, but cannot be digested into Nourishment. Go prepare for your hungry stomachs only festival Smells, which may encourage fainting Appetite, but do but mock its emptiness; go warm a cold part with a painted light, cover a naked member with a shadow; when your own parts would take it well from one another to be thus insincerely dealt with, then, not till then, will it be tolerable to Dissemble. For we are members one of another; all fellow-members of Christ's Body the Church; this Israel to which the Text says God is truly good, not in presence or color only, he hath not the hypocrisies of kindness. Now such a true good God he will not be to them who are but counterfeit and mock-parts of his Israel, for what is there in such a man that he can be good to? To the good kind well-spoken part? Alas, that is but shape and varnish, 'tis not the man that speaks, 'tis all a motion and artifice, he puts it on, and then it vanisheth and dies, is not a subject for God's kindness; or to the heart, but that is hard, and is not qualified for his Goodness, our true good God being only such to those that are of a clean, true, and sincere heart towards their brethren.

2. And much more, Secondly, is he such only to them that are sincere in their Religion to him. Christ hath nothing but woes for Hypocrites; the 23d Chap. of S. Matth. is made up of them; when he would word God's Vengeance to Sinners, he says, he shall give them their portion with Hypocrites and Unbelievers. Things strangely coupled sure, that they whose Life does seem all Faith, all Godliness, should be only fit Company in Tophet for the Unbelievers, ranked and condemned with them; that all their strong belief cannot remove them from an Infidel; Sure they are far enough from the goodness of the Lord, when the portion of Hypocrites is Rhetoric of Hell, is its Torments expressed with Art.

They whose heart is not clean to God in their Pieties, but let their strictnesses take in some temporal aim besides, as Reputation with their Party, or getting Praise, or Wealth; they serve Mammon or Fame with God's Religion, and make the very Worship of the Lord be the Idolatry of Covetousness or of Honor. If Jehu in his Executions on Ahab and his Family intend the cutting off the Regal Line as well as Baals worship, and with their Blood to purple his own Royalty, though God did bid him shed that blood, yet does it stain his Soul with crimson guilt; and God will punish him for his Obedience, I will visit the blood of Jezreel upon the House of Jehu, Hos. i. 4. But he that lets a vicious aim mix with his Virtue, and does good to an ill end, addresses God's Religion to the Devil, and makes Christ minister to Belial; he does sin multipliedly, both in his vicious intention, and in debauching Virtue to serve Vice, and he might much more innocently not have been Pious. Neither is that Virtue or Heart sincere whose intentions are not purely and merely virtuous, but intend to compass some Religious end by means that are not lawful; For such intentions are not clean but mixed with Vice; and 'tis sure I cannot please God with such kind of holy meanings. If Saul will sacrifice with the Sheep and Oxen he was bid to destroy, his very worship loseth him the Throne of Israel: Nor an I serve God with such Pieties. God never does require an action which he sees I cannot compass without sin, for he requires no man to sin, for that were to command me to break his Commands, and I were bound to disobey him in obedience to him, Shall I speak wickedly for God, saith Job? and then shall I do so? Such Religious intentions, the justice of those ends, will never qualify me for God's goodness, when it but makes Damnation just to me, for so S. Paul affirms, Rom. iii. 5, 6, 7, 8. In fine, if there be any wickedness in the heart, it gives so foul a tincture to whatever pious actions we perform, that they become sin to us. 'It is true, Prayer is as the Incense, David says, and the lifting up of our hands is like the Evening Sacrifice; but if the heart of him that Prays have any heats of Malice in it, truly that man does light his Incense with strange fire, kindles his sacrifice with the flames of Hell, for so S. James does call those heats. He that gives God any of his performances, and hath a naughty Heart, like Nadab and Abihu, he presents his Offering in an unhallowed Censer, and all his holy worship will get nothing else from Heaven for him but a consuming fire as theirs did. He that will offer anything to God, must take a care it be not tainted with such mixtures, which spoil all the Religion, making it not sincere, and also spoil the Heart by making it not clean, and undefiled. The last remaining sense,

A Clean and undefiled Heart.

Of those things which our Savior says defile the man, some are merely sins of the Heart, such as may be consummated within the Soul; and for the perpetration of which a spirit is sufficient to itself; such are Pride, especially spiritual pride, the sin of those that think none holy as themselves, and cast the black doom of Reprobation upon all that do not comply with their Opinions and interests: such also are uncontentedness with our estates, inward repinings at the dispositions of Providence concerning us, black malice, bitter envyings. Now in these as the mind does need no outward members to consummate them, requires no accessory Organs to work them out; so neither does it require any outward accessory guilt to make them liable to condemnation: we know 'twas one sin of the spirit only that made Angels Devils. If a foul body be abominable to the Lord, shall a foul spirit be less odious? he that defiles his Soul offends God in a much nearer concern of his, because that speaks nearer relation to him than the Body: this was only his workmanship, made out of Earth, the Spirit was created out of himself; a foul body is but filthy Clay, but he that does pollute his Soul does putresie the Breath of God, and stains a beam of the Divinity.

The other sort of things that are said to come from the Heart, and to Defile, are those which S. Paul calls works of the Flesh, such as if they be committed must be committed outwardly, Murders, Drunkenness, Revelings, Revenge, Wrath and Contentions, Seditions, Factions, Schisms, all Vncleannesses, &c. In these indeed the Heart can be but partial Actor, the utmost it can do, is to desire and to intend them, and to contrive and manage the designs of compassing them; which yet Providence or the Innocence of others may put out of the reach of man's power, or his own temporal fears may make him not dare to set upon them, though he do cherish the desires. Now if they be obstructed from committing, most men use to conclude gently of their guilts while they do keep within the Heart; the Execution of them is the only thing that does look mortal; and till the sin be perfected there is no death in it. And truly I confess that, as it happens many times, on a sudden surprise of soul, when a bright gilded temptation strikes the heart, and dazzles the mind, we see that the Will rushes on it instantly, consents and wishes heartily; yet within a while the Spirit does recover out of the surprise, puts by the thrusts of fancy, and the stabs of the temptation, and that Will languishes and dies like a velleity, as if it had been nothing but a woulding; and now the man would not by any means consent to the commission: In this case though there be a guilt to be repented of, and cleansed with many tears, yet this is Innocence in the comparison; but if the Will purpose, contrive, and do its utmost, it is the same to the man as if he had committed. 'Twere easy to demonstrate this, that whatsoever evil thing a man intends and does fixedly resolve, he is guilty of, though he do nothing, or though the thing he chance to do be never so much lawful. Those sayings of St. Paul, I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is no meat unclean of itself, but to him that esteemeth anything unclean, to him it is unclean, Rom. xiv. 14. and he that doubteth is damned if he eat, ver. 23. These could have no truth in them, unless the heart by choosing and pursuing to the utmost anything that it does judge unlawful, incur'd the guilt of that unlawfulness, even to Damnation; and all that merely by itself without the Action, which in that case had nothing sinful in it. A weight that is upheld by a man's hand, and otherwise would rush down to the earth, does surely gravitate as much, it is as heavy though it do not fall quite down, as if it did, and, were it let alone, it would: A settled tendency, a resolved inclination to sin, that presseth with its utmost agitation is that weight, which though it may perchance be stopped in its career, yet it tends to the Abyss, its center, and will not rest but in that Pit that hath nor rest nor bottom; the Heart in this case is as liable as it can be, because here it hath done its worst, and such a Will shall be imputed to its self.

And now I need not tell those who are still designing sin, or mischief in the heart, although it never dares come out of those recesses, how far they are removed from the goodness of God to Israel. A Father finds a way to prove such souls have larger doses of God's Vengeance, who when he had asserted that the soul does not die with the body, and then was asked what it did in that long interval, for sure it is not reasonable that it should be affected with any anticipations of the future Judgment, because the business of the day of Judgment should be reserved to its own day, without all prelibation of the sentence; and the restitution of the Flesh is to be waited for, that so both soul and body may go hand in hand in their Recompences as they did in their demerits, joint Partners in the Wages as they were in the Works: To this he answers; The Soul does not divide all its operations with the Body, some things it acts alone, and if there were no other cause it were most just the Soul should there receive without the Body the dues of that which here it did commit without the Body: That's for the former sort of sins, those merely of the Heart: And for the latter sort, the Soul is first engaged in the commission, that does conceive the sin, lays the design of compassing, and does contrive and carry on the machination; and then why should not that be first in Punishment, which is the first in the Offence?

Go now and reckon that thy outward gross Transgressions are the only dangerous and guilty ones and slight thy sins of Heart; but know that while thy flesh is sleeping in the quiet Grave at rest and ease, thy Spirit then's in Torments sor thy Fleshes sins, and feels a far severer Worm than that which gnaws thy Body: Poor Soul! Eternity of Hell from Resurrection to For-ever, is not enough to punish it, all that while it must suffer with the Body, but it must have an age of Vengeance besides particularly for itself, to plague it for those things it could not execute, and punish it for what it did not really enjoy; only because it did allow itself to desire and contrive them; and it must be tormented for those unsatisfied desires: And though indeed desires where they are violent, if they be not allayed by satisfaction, are but so much agony, yet do they merit and pull on them more; these Torments shall be plagued, and the soul suffer for its very passion, even from Death to the last Judgment; and 'tis but just that being it usurped upon the pleasures and the sins of Flesh, it should also seize on and take possession of the Vengeance appointed for those sins, it should invade and should usurp their condemnation.

But why do I stand pressing aggravations against uncleanness of Heart in an Age, when God knows Vice hath not so much modesty or fear to keep within those close and dark restraints? Instead of that same Cleanness which the Text requires, we may find Purity indeed of several sorts, but 'tis either pure Fraud, or pure Impiety; the one of these does make a strange expression very proper, pure Corruption, for so it is, sincere and without mixture, nothing but itself, no spots of Clean to chequer it, but all stain: The other is pure white indeed, but it is that of whited Sepulcres; a Life as clean as Light, a bright pure Conversation, but it shines with that light only which Satan does put on when he transforms himself into an Angel of Light, and it is but a glory about a fiend. But yet this shines however, whereas others do stand Candidates of Vice, and would be glorious in wickedness; and that is such a splendor as if Satan should dress himself with the shine of his own flaming Brimstone, and make himself a glory with the streamings of his Lake of Fire. And yet thus is the World, we do not only see men serve someone peculiar vicious inclination, and cherish their own wickedness, but they make every Vice their own, as if the Root of bitterness branch'd out in each sort of Impiety in them, such fertile soyls of sin they are, here insincerity were to be wished; and where there is not cleanness that there were a Mask, that there were the Religion of Hypocrisy. We may remember God was good to Israel of old by Obligation and performance; the one as great as he could enter, the other great to Miracle and astonishment; when after seventy years Captivity and Desolation, he did rebuild a Temple where there was no Monument of its Ruines, and raised a Nation and Government of which there was no Relics. And yet at last when the Religion of some turned into Faction, of others into Profaneness; when the strictest Sect of them, the Pharisees, became most holy outwardly, to have the better means 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , to mischief those that were not of their Party, and got a great opinion of Sanctity, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , so as to be believed in whatsoever they did speak against the King or chief Priests; and that so far as to be able openly to practice against both, and raise Commotions. They are Josephus 's words of them; and when another Sect, the Zealots, the most pernicious of all, saith Bertram, did commit Murders, Sacrilege, Prophanations, and all kind of Villanies, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , with good Intentions, saith the same Josephus; and when those who did not separate into Sects, but were the Church of Israel, became lukewarm, supine, and negligent in their Profession, yea, and licentious and Profane, fit only to be joined with Publicans, in Christ's expressions; when sin grew generally Impudent; when they did live as if they would be Scandalous as well as vicious, as if they loved the guilt as much as the delights of sin, and cared not to be wicked to themselves, but must debauch, as if they did enjoy the ruin of other persons, sinning just as the Devil does, who does not taste the sin, but feasts upon the Sinners Condemnation: Then did God execute a Vengeance whose prediction was fit to be mistaken for that of the Day of Judgment, and whose event almost fulfilled the terrors of that day.

I need not draw resemblances, show how God's goodness to our Israel does equal that to them; applying to ourselves their Raptures; how when the Lord turned the Captivity of our Zion, we also were like them that dream, surprised with Mercy. Indeed as in a Dream; Ideas are not always well connected, there is no chain or thread of fancies, and the thoughts are not jointed regular and even; but there are breaches and disorder in them still, the Images of sleep being like Nebuchadnezzar 's, made of such things as do not well unite. So there is something I confess, like this in our condition, for with our gold and silver, our precious things that are restored, there is Iron and Clay, not only meaner mixtures, but such things as will not close, or be solder'd, but do incline to part asunder, and would molder and tend towards dissolution; and just as in a Dream, the composure of things is no so undisturb'd, but that there is some confusedness; neither our affections nor practices do perfectly cement; but yet I hope it is no dream of mercy, 'tis not a Phantasm or an Apparition of God's kindness, but the Lord will be truly good to us.

Yet if we do proceed as Israel, and equal it in provocations:—

But I will make no parallels, public clamors do that too loud; these do display the factions of iniquity among us, and muster up the several parties of our Vices too; and each man is as perfect in the guilts of all sides that he is not of, as if their memories were the books that shall be opened at the Day of Judgment; some men can point you out our Pharisees and Zealots; others can show you our profane licentious Professors, Lay and Clergy both; and indeed we need not go far to seek any or all of these; nor do we want our Sadducees. Now if all this be true, then as those were the signs of the Son of Man's coming to them in Judgment, so we may fear they are his Harbingers to us. If they be, I am sure the only way to make his coming good to us, is to prepare for it by cleansing from all filthiness and insincerity; then though he come clothed with a Glory of flaming Vengeance, yet will those streams of Fire find nothing to consume or wash away in us; but through that flame the pure in heart shall see God, so as that that sight shall be the Beatifick Vision: Yea, they shall see the Goodness of the Lord in the Land of the Living, they shall see Jerusalem in prosperity all their life long, and Peace here upon Israel, and in his light hereafter in the Jerusalem that is above, To the state of which glorious Light He bring us all, who is the brightness of his Fathers Glory: To whom be Glory, and dominion forever and ever.

The Third SERMON, Preached at WHITE-HALL. Second Wednesday in Lent.

THE words are one Single Precept concerning one part of the Celebration of a Day: I shall not take the Precept asunder into parts, for it hath none; but shall frame my Discourse to answer three Enquiries that naturally offer themselves to be considered from these words: And they are,

1. What the Importance of the thing commanded is? What is required in this Injunction, Ye shall afflict your Souls?

2. What Usefulness and Efficacy this Duty had upon that time in which it was prescribed? what the Afflicting of the Soul contributed to the work of that Day? that it should be made so indispensable an ingredient of its performances, tied to it by a Statute forever?

3. Whether that forever do reach us? which is the Application, and brings all home to us.

First, What the Import of the thing commanded, the Afflicting of the Soul is?

The Arab. and Targum of Jerusalem Translate it Fasting; yea, and a Learned Rabbi says, that wheresoever these two words are put together, that is meant. And indeed they are often joined in Scripture to express it, Psalm XXXV. 13. I afflicted my Soul with Fasting. And the Prophet Isaiah speaking of this Day in my Text, says, Is it such a Fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his Soul? Isa. lviii. 5. Somewhat a strange expression it is; for Fasting does afflict the Body properly, and yet we find the like too in the other Extream: We read of pampering the Soul, Psalm lxxviii. 18. They required 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 meat for their Souls; not to supply the Hunger of their Body, that they had before; but to indulge the Lusts of their mind; they did not want for food, but variety; Festival diet, and a Table furnished they would have; and this luxuriancy and wantonness of Meat the Scripture calls meat for the Soul: Such as God says in other places the Soul lusteth after. Indeed forced meats, and things that please merely by being rare and dear, or by being extravagant, these do not feed the Appetite but Opinion, and the Mind; it is the Soul that only hungers after these: Thus when I look after Wine in the glass, and make my Eye a Critique of its accidents, and by the mode and fashion of it teach it to please or displease my judgment, I do not thirst after the cool moisture of it, but the sparkling flame, and do not drink the Wine, but the flavour and color, and this is all but Notion. Now certainly these are not proper objects for our Appetites, meat for the Body, says the Scripture, and it is the Stomach and not the Imagination that is hungry; nor is it Fancy or the Soul that thirsts, but 'tis the Palate, so that these are unnatural and monstrous satisfactions.

And yet to bring men's selves to this, is one of the great masteries of Wit and Art, to force themselves to find a relish in these things, and then contrive them, is a piece of Skill which the advantages of parts and fortune are desirable mostly, as they are useful to: And a well studied Epicure, one expert in the mysteries of Eating, is a singularly qualified and most grateful Person.

It were in vain to ask what else such men can be good for? that being their Profession, they are out at most other things: Indeed the Soul that dwells in Dishes, and is stew'd in its own Luxuries, grows loose and does dissolve, its sinews melt, all its firmness of mind forsakes it, the man is strong for nothing but for Lusts, his faculties are choked and stifled, they stagnate and are mir'd within him, and there corrupt and putrefy. And then what Cranes will force out thence, and wind up such a Soul into the practices and expectations of Piety? will make it mind and entertain the hopes and Duties of Religion? what macerations, what Chemistry will defecate a Spirit so incarnated, and rectify it into such a fineness as befits that state where all their blessedness have no sensual relish, but are sublimed into Divine and purely Spiritual.

Lord God! that thou shouldst shed a rational Angelic Soul into us, a thing next to the Being of thy Self, to animate only the Organs of Intemperance, and Gluttony, and their appendant lusts! Only inspire us how to be but more sagacious, indeed but more luxurious Brutes, when thou hast set us here to train and discipline ourselves for a condition of such glorious Joys as are fit to entertain Souls of Reason with, and to make them blessed; which to enter upon, our Bodies must drop from us, our Souls must be clarified from Flesh, and Flesh itself refined into Spirit; that we should make ourselves Antipodes to this, walk contrary to all, and so debase our spirits as that they are qualified for no other satisfaction, but those of dull sense and carnality.

Adam fell his great Fall by Eating, but ever since men fall further by riotous intemperate Eating. He fell from Paradise, and they from Reason; the Man sinks into Beast, and the Soul falls into very Flesh, and hath no other faculties or appetites but fleshly ones.

Such people of all others are not to be raised up by Religion; their fullness gives no place to that, but does exclude it. God did complain of this of old, Deut. xxxii. 15. Jesurun waxed fat and kicked: that we may see they want to brutish quality, who do allow themselves the appetite of Brutes; they that pamper themselves like to fed Horses, will also neigh like them and kick even him that fed them; thou art waxen fat, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God that made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his Salvation. When they came once where they did suck honey cut of the Rock, and Oil out of the flinty Rock, they could not mind the Rock of their Salvation.

Indeed this sensuality as it consumes Estates, eats Time, and all the faculties of the Mind, so it devours all Religion too, it hath not only a particular opposition to someone duty as the other Vices have, but by a direct influence it destroys the whole foundation of Virtue and obedience to God; I mean subordination of the lower appetite to Reason and Religion, which it renverses quite, and breeds an universal cachexy of the Soul as well as Body.

For ever since Adam did eat of the forbidden Fruit, the carnal mind we know is neither subject to the Law of God, neither indeed can be, as S. Paul says, Rom viii. 7. because God's Commands are restraints upon those things which Flesh desires eagerly. Now therefore while that Mind is unsubdued, it must needs lust against the Spirit for those things that are forbidden, nor endure to be limited; which he that feeds it, is so far from working towards, that he does give it still more provocation and more power, and makes the Flesh more absolute; for it is clear that Plenty does increase all its desires and their unruliness; it ministers both vigor to it by which it is enabled to fulfill its lusts, and it ministers aptness and incitation also, both by custom of satisfaction, and by adding heat which makes it more prone to rebel, and more impossible to be kept under. The progress of this is apparent in the Scripture, Exod. xxxii, 6. The People sat down to Eat and Drink and rose up to Play: Lusum non denotasset nisi impudicum; he means, to play the wantons. But Jeremy is plainer, Chap. v. 7, 8. How shall I pardon thee for this? thy Children have forsaken me, when I had fed them to the full, they then committed Adultery, and assembled themselves by troops in Harlots houses: Nor stays it there, but does increase as well as feed to an Excess; we may discern that by the Wisemans Prayer, xxiii. Ecclesiast. 6. O Lord, Father and God of my Life, Let not the greediness of the Belly, not the lust of the Flesh, take hold of me, and give not over me thy Servant to an impudent mind, Giant-like he had called it in the Verse before; and sure the Wiseman in the Proverbs apprehended it as such, and dreaded it accordingly; as if Bellies full gorg'd were those Mountainr which the Giants cast up to storm Heaven on: He looked upon this Vice as that which would bid defiance to God, and out him, and therefore thinks it necessary to beseech the Lord not to afford him so much as would furnish Plenty, Prov. xxx. 8. Give me not Riches, feed me with food convenient for me; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 with an Allowance, with no more than is sufficient for me, lest I be full and deny thee, and say who is the Lord. It seems such persons know no other God besides their Belly; nor is it any wonder if a Soul made Flesh cannot well apprehend a Deity that is a Spirit, or believe it, but thinks all Notions of such beings to be contradiction, when once by the suffusions of Carnality all the impressions of a Spirit are wrought out of itself: And truly this is the most natural and certain way to become Atheists.

Whether this time that hath been almost always set aside for strict Severities, and to work out Repentance (and if it be not so intended now, I know not what pretence did call us hither) (for though there be some relaxation of the severer Dyet of this time, sure there is no indulgence of that Penitence which the strictness of this time designed) and let some men talk what they please of the Intention of their Statutes, yet these Assemblies certainly were not intended for th • increase of Cattle, and advance of Fishing; these were for higher aims of Piety: Now whether we employ if so much towards this as to afflict our Souls, i. e. our appetites, and to revenge our superfluities upon ourselves, and to teach our desires to be denied: Or whether we do teach the Dyet of this season to be but a variety of Luxury, and if the Law did not command it, and so make it Pressure by giving it the inconvenience and the uneasiness of being duty and obedience; ourselves could make it be one of the changes of our Vice, only another course, a diverse service of the same Riot, and so defeat the Law by our obedience to it: Or whether we do break the Law outright, and to our superfluities add disobedience to Authority, whether we do the one or other is not for me to say. But if the Nation and we ourselves have any sins to be repented of, and we design this season for that use (as sure some season must be so employed, and why not this as well, rather indeed than any other;) if we be not of those that would be glad to see all thrown again into Confusion; glad to see a return of the same Vengeance, as indeed a return of the same sins, and the abuse of Mercies seem to call for it, while men do live as if they thought God had wrought all these Miracles merely to give them opportunity to serve their Vices or their other ends, to put them in a way to get Places, Estates, and Dignities; and by uncharitable gains, hard-hearted griping, yea by false unworthy treacherous Arts, to heap up Wealth, to raise their Families, or feed their Lusts: These, these cry out to God to renew his Commission to the Sword, to pass through all the Land again, and embowel itself in Church and State; these call for it as loud as the hatangueing Prayers of Seditious Men; and the Lord knows there are too many hands that would unsheath it, if God do not interpose to hinder, and well we have deserved he should. But if we would endeavor to engage him by Repentance, that will require the Afflicting of the Soul by some severities. Do not mistake yourselves; Repentance, as it cannot be wrought out amidst our courses, that were contradiction to return, and yet go on; so also it will not be wrought out amidst the Comforts as we call the jollities, of life.

Tertullian is very pleasant with those who did dislike that in their Penitencies, they were by the Church prescribed to put off Mirth and put on Sackcloth, and take Ashes for Bread; Come, says he, reach that Bodkin there to braid my Hair, and help me now to practice all those Arts that are in Mode to attire it; give me the washes of that Glass, the blushes of that Paper, the foils which that Box hath to beautify and dress my Cheeks; come and set out and dress my Table too, let me have Fowl with costly forced and not a natural Fat; or let me have cramb'd Fish, and cram my Dishes also; get me cheerful Wine too: and if any one ask why I do thus indulge myself? Why I will tell him, I have sinned against my God, and am in danger of Perdition, and therefore I am in great trouble; I macerate (do you not see the signs of it?) and excruciate myself, I take these fearful careful ways that I may reconcile God to me whom I have offended.

Alas, to humble ones self thus in fullness, and to afflict the Soul in cheerful plenties, is such a thing as none but he that sinks under the surfeit of those Plenties understands. I am sure the Lord, when he required his People to repent, required them then to discipline, and use severities upon themselves; they were to fast or die: God took the execution, for whatsoever Soul it be that shall not be Afflicted that same day shall be cut off from among his People, Levite. xxiii. 29. Even cut off by God himself.

And I do verily persuade myself, that one great cause, why men that have sometimes thought to reform their lives, and do resolve against their Courses, yet repent of their Repentance, their resolutions untwist, and become frail as threads of Cobweb, the first assault of a temptation does break through them, is, they do not use mortifications, to work their aversations high and strong against their sins, and fix their resolutions. The universal sense of the whole Primitive Church gives me confidence in this persuasion, who for that very reason in their penitential Excommunications did inflict such severities, as 'tis almost incredible that Christians would submit to; yet they begged to be censured into; and those had S. Paul for their precedent. But now Repentance are but dislikes, little short unkindnesses at our sins, and wouldings to do better: On some moving occasion, if God's Hand or his Spirit lash, it may be Tears will gush out of the Wound, and we in angry sadness do intent against our Vices; but when that fit is over, and the Flesh by indulgences prepared to make or answer a temptation, we fall again, and then it may be shake the head and curse the sin; but yet again commit it, if the invitation be fair: And then are very sorry, account ourselves unhappy, who lie under such a violent infirmity, but act it still. Now if we consider how it comes to pass that we go round like men enchanted, in a Circle of Repenting and of Sinning, we shall find it is for want of Discipline upon ourselves; for had we strove to make our humiliations more low and full of pungent sorrow, the Soul would start and fly at the first glance of that which cost it so much anguish; but who would fear to act that sin which puts him to so little trouble to repent of? as a sad thought, a sigh, a wish, and a loose purpose, thin intentions, and that's all.

Do not complain of the Infirmity of the Flesh for this, and say thou wouldst live Spiritually, but the frailty of thy sensual part betrays thee; its stings and incitations make thee start from duty, and goad and force thee into actions which otherwise thou neither shouldst or wouldst commit. 'It is thou thyself that arm'st thy Flesh with all its stings; thou givest it strengths, whereby it does subdue the Spirit; thou waterest thy desires with Wines; thou feedest them with strong meat and teachest them to crave; thou cocker'st them with thy indulgence, and thou dost treat Temptations to sin, dost invite wickedness, and nourish the occasions of Ruin; and then it is no wonder if thy resolutions be not strong enough, there is no way but by Austerities to mortify all inclinations that stir against the Spirit, and by denying satisfactions to thy Appetite, to calm and moderate thy affections to everything below, and then Temptations will have neither Aid nor Avenue.

But Secondly, You shall Afflict your Souls, cannot be meant only that ye shall Afflict your Bodies; the Spirit also must be troubled, and we must rent the Heart as well as Garments; that is indeed a Sacrifice fit for a Propitiation day, for it is such a one as God will not despise, Psal. li. 17. and without which all others are but vain Oblations.

God may call fasting the Afflicting of the Soul, because it is the most appropriate and natural means to work it; but when he calls it so he does intend it should produce it. Austerities are humilificandi hominis disciplina, as Tertul. says, Humiliation Discipline; but yet they have not always that effect. The Pharisee that fasted twice a week did not mortify at all, but his Humiliation made him lofty, his emptiness filled him with wind, and puffed him up, and the Publican was more justified than he. And late experiences have taught us, that Fasting does not always humble, when it did gape for Sovereignty, and did afflict then into Power only, when there attended it a sacra fames, an hunger after Holy things, and such as all the relicts of old Sacrilege could not allay, but it devoured Church and State, and yet craved still: And the throat of these fasting men was an open Sepulcher indeed; open to bury, and that could no more be satisfied than the Grave.

But 'tis not only these demure impieties, and those that are devout in wickedness, and act it in Religion and the Fear of God, I have to speak against:

But in the general, If Fasting do not humble, and those severities that wear the Flesh break not the heart too and make it contrite, then they are lost upon us, and do not profit us. All these strictnesses of bodily and outward exercise, as S. Paul calls it, are acts of discipline prescribed to make the Sorrows of Repentance more severe and operative, and so to be the Correctives of the distempers of the Soul, to quell the risings of the Appetite and Passions, and bring the sensual part of us under obedience to Reason and Religion; to make all calm and even in us, and put us in the frame of Men and Christians, of Rational and Pious Creatures. And if they do not work this in us, if the Soul do not meet in the performances, they are not acceptable in themselves at all; These are only the mint anise and cummin of our Pieties; and as Origen says, the condimenta actuum the sauces of Religion, not the main standing parts of it, which he therefore that offers solitary gives God a Sacrifice of Sallads, and thinks that will be a Sin-Offering. They do mistake themselves who cherish any hope from having spent a day, or Lent of abstinence; if the Excesses of their Vices be not made over, and evacuated by it; if they continue still full gorg'd with their iniquity; or who think all is well, they have atton'd by having bowed down the head like a bulrush; if the Soul were not also humbled in them; for as S. Paul does say, I may give all my goods to feed the poor, yet have no Charity, and I may give my body to be burnt, yet in those Martyr-fires there may be no heats of Love to God, and then all these profit me nothing, 1 Cor. xiii. 3. So I may chasten myself too, and yet yet receive correction or be disciplined, and then God's punishments are still due to me.

That Church indeed which hath found out the easy expiation of Indulgences, that hath the Treasure of Christ's merits and all the supererogations of the Saints at her dispose, and by Commission can issue them at pleasure out, and apply those merits to men's uses not by Sacraments, but by a Bull or Brief, and not require Gospel conditions of Faith and Repentance in the Persons that receive them, but visiting a Church in Rome, ascending the steps in such a Chapel in the Lateran on such a day, shall give a plenary remission from sin and punishment; the saying of such a Prayer over daily shall do it for fourscore thousand years (could they but make a Lease for men to live and sin out the indulgence too, that would get them good store of Chapmen) that Church I say, may give encouragement to hope that God may be compounded with at easy rates; that for a Surfeit I may give a Meal and God will pardon it, and let me have Wine too into the bargain (for they allow afflicting of our Souls in Wine) that some weeks change of Dyet may go for a change of Life, for indeed these come up somewhat nearer the just value than some of their Prices. But though there be all the reason in the World they should let men out of Purgatory on what condition they please, when themselves only put them in, and make the breath of a few Pater noster 's quite blow out those flames which burn nowhere but in their Doctrines: Yet when without any commission from Christ they make Attrition able to secure men from Hell, and an Indulgence able to release them out of Purgatory; when they make new conditions of Pardon, that is new Gospel, new ways of application of Christ's Merits, and though our Savior God when he found in his heart to die for us, yet in the Agonies of his Compassion could not find in his heart to give us easier terms of Life than such as do require Contrition, Humiliation, and Amendment, which they commute so cheaply with his Vicar: We justly stand astonished at such usurpation on Christ's Blood and Merits, that does assign them at these rates.

I make no question but easy expiations get them many Converts. Rome from its first foundation grew from being an Asylum to the dissolute; but they that go away upon such hopes, 'tis to be feared that easiness betrays them into sins from which those Expiations cannot rescue them, and at once makes them Proselytes to Rome and Hell. Nor are our trusts much more secure, if we rely upon our opus operatum, too, our little outward strictnesses, unless the Soul be engaged, and except there be inward life of Religion, all those will not avail: If I deny myself my meals, and give myself my sins, that is so far from expiation that it aggravates: I am an argument against myself that my crimes are incorrigible, when I will have them though I cut off the Instruments and foments of them, and though I meddle not with the Temptation, yet I seize the sin.

What S. Austin does say of Alms, In meliùs vita mutanda, & per eleemosynas de peccatis praeteritis propitiandus est Deus; non ad hoc emendus quodammodo ut semper liceat impune peccare. This is applicable to these performances also, our lives must be Reformed, and so on that Repentance and these strictnesses God will be reconciled, and our offenses done away; but he will not be bribed by these to let us alone in them; he is not gratified by such performances so as to wink at Vices for their sakes, and suffer us in our Rebellions upon such compositions as these; take a Reward to spare the Guilt: Nor is he such a soft and easy God as to take them for payment of that infinite Debt we owe; that which he bought off with the Blood of God shall not be ours at such unworthy prices. The Prophet Micah seeking for a Present to appease him with, rejects all the Jewish rites though God prescribed them, as insufficient; and in them all things of the like external kind. Mic. vi. 6, 7. Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and How my self before the most high God? shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with Calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of Rams, or with ten thousand Rivers of Oil? shall I give my first-born for my Transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? If I do offer up whole Hecatombs to God, will that atone for having offered up too plentifully to my Genius? Or if I do remove my Riots from my Table to the Altar, and change my few extravagant Dishes into whole Herds of thousand Sacrifices, shall I by doing so remove the guilt too of my Luxuries? If I give God ten thousand Rivers for my overflowing Cups, will the Intemperance be washed away in those? Or shall I think to expiate an Adultery with a Child? and for that momentary and unclean delight give up the lovely and first issue of my lawful Bed? And who will be content to be his own Priest in such manner? to pay such Sacrifices for sins? But yet that will not do, as it cost more to Redeem Souls, which not Rivers of Oil can cleanse, but streams must flow out of the Heart of Christ to do it; nor the fruit of Mans body make a satisfaction for, but the eternally begotten Son of the Divinity, and none but the first born of God alone, for thus expiation of sins was wrought: Even so to make that expiation mine, besides reliance on it, I must transcribe the Copy of the Sufferings of that Son, transplant the Garden of Gethsemane into my breast. If his Soul be sorrowful even unto Death, my Soul must be afflicted too; Humiliations must prostrate me upon my face to deprecate that Fire and Brimstone, burning Tempest that is the portion of the Sinners Cup, saith David: O my Father let this Cup pass from me! The lustful Fevers of my blood must excern themselves in cold sweat of fear and grief, in Agonies of Penitence; and my excessive draughts not only make me to cry out I thirst, but give me Vinegar and Gall to drink; sorrow as bitter as my riotous egestions have been; my Oaths that have struck through the Name of God, must pierce my Soul with grief as pungent as his Thorns and Nails. In a word, I must so afflict my Soul as to crucify the body of sin, and nail it to his Cross. And this is that which in its own proportion was required of the Jews this Day here in the Text, to the work of which Day how the Afflicting of the Soul in both the given senses does contribute, was my Second and the next Enquiry.

Secondly, What this Day was the Verse before the Text informs us, it was their Day of Expiation or Atonement. Now that the Jews esteem Fasting and Humiliation expiatory Sacrifices, appears from a Form of Prayer which even yet they use on such a day where he that fasted says, O Lord the Governor of all the World, I have now finished my Fast before thee, thou knowest that when we had a Temple standing, the man that sinned was bound to expiate it by a Sacrifice, the Blood of which was poured out, and the Altar consumed the Fat to make amends for his offense; but now by reason of our many wickednesses, we have neither a Temple, Altar, or Priest to make Atonement for us; I beseech thee therefore O Lord my God the God of my Fathers, to accept of that little portion of my own Flesh and Blood which this days Fasting hath torn from me, in lieu of a Sin-offering, and be thou reconciled unto me for thy mercies sake. Thus when he cannot give a Lamb for his Transgression, he gives some of himself, he offers Hunger for Shewbread, and Thirst for a Drink-offering, he consecrates a Meal instead of a Beast, and sheds a sower fasting sigh for Incense; and this he hopes God will accept as Sacrifice. And truly the Text says no day of Expiation could be kept without it. Nor does the Scripture want great instances of its effect towards Atonement of God's wrath: How when Judgment was given on a Nation or Person, and Execution going out against them, yet this reversed the Sentence; Ahab is a great proof of this, 1 King. xxi. 27. And it came to pass when Ahab heard those words, that he rent his Clothes, and put Sackcloth upon his flesh, and Fasted, and lay in Sackcloth and went softly: And the word of the Lord came unto Elijah the Tishbite saying, Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself before me? Because he humbleth himself before me I will not bring the evil in his days. On Fasting-day secured a Life; the weaknesses it brought upon the body, upheld it against all God's threats, Vengeance pronounced and coming out against him falls to ground if Ahab humble and afflict his Soul. God's stretched out Arm will not strike Sackcloth, nor wound through Fasting Garments: One fit of it removes his Judgments a whole Age; and had it been sincere and persevering, how had it wiped them out to everlastingness?

Nineveh is another instance of the practice and success of this even among the Heathens.

Nor should it seem to have less Efficacy among Christians: The Primitive Fathers call these severities Satisfaction for sin, and Compensations, the Price with which they are bought off, the things that cover them, and blot them out, and which Propitiate and appease God for them; not in their sense who force up these Expressions to a strange height of meaning; and yet have quite beat down the Practice as to the public wholesome use of them out of the Church. But though these sayings assign not the Power and just Efficacy of that discipline in itself, yet they do the acceptance and effect of it by virtue of Christ's Satisfaction: A Fainting Body cannot bear indeed the weight of our iniquities, nor will lowest prostrations in the dust bury them in the dust, or Tears alone blot out our Guilt; but Christ having done that which is effectual to all this, and requiring no more of thee to make that thine (as he does everywhere most solemnly avow) but faithful humbling of thyself in an afflictive sorrow for what's past, and so to mortify as to work out Repentance; the doing this is doing what he does require, and consequently will accept: These satisfy the Command, and therefore God, though not by a condignity of performance, yet as Conditions which his Covenant of Grace hath set us, which when they are fulfilled then God is satisfied, thy sins are expiated, and thou art pardoned: And so in this lower sense these are thy Satisfactions with which God is well pleased.

And thus these self Afflictions of the Sinner supply God's Indignation and divert it; They leave no place nor business for it, and by these short severities upon himself he does make void, he does expunge the Sentence of eternal Torments, saith Tertullian: As thou becomest severe against thy self, so will the Lord abate of his severities, and he will spare, and he will pity thee in that he sees thou wilt not spare thyself. How can he choose but be appeased towards thee when he shall see thee executing his Sentence even upon thy own self? and punishing his Enemies although they be thy Members? so that by this means thou dost censure thyself into God's Absolutions, afflict thyself into his Pardons, and dost condemn thyself into eternal Life.

Our Church says the same thing; That in the Primitive Church there was a Godly Discipline; that at the beginning of Lent such Persons as were notorious Sinners, were put to open Penance, and punished in this World, that their Souls might be saved in the Day of the Lord; and she does wish (if her wishes be of any force and value when her Orders and Constitutions are not) that Discipline could be restored. But this I shall not press; if all those whom the Primitive Church Condemned, or S. Paul sentenced were so used, if every Schismatic that lies tearing himself and others off from the Lord's Body were rejected, and if the Fornicator that joins himself to his unclean Accomplice were disjoined from Christ, and not suffered to make his members be the members of an Harlot; if every scandalous debauching Offender that lies corrupting Christ's Body, spreading Contagion, thrusting the Gangreen forward, were cut off, and these and all the rest delivered up to Satan, alas what part would Christ have left of his own Body? Sed illos defendit numerus junctaeque umbone phalanges, and that I fear too in more senses than the Poet means. Therefore I shall not urge the Churches Wish, but only see whether the Statute in the Text says anything to this, and whether the forever do reach us: Which is my Third and last Enquiry.

Thirdly, Divers of the Jews Rites are said to be, and be prescribed forever, although those very Rites and the whole economy of their Covenant were to be changed and cease; among other Reasons, as the Fathers say, because they foresignifie and point at things in the new Covenant, which were to last till Covenants and Rites shall be no more, and so their meaning and signification was to be forever.

Now truly that their Expiation Performances, those which I am upon, did so, the whole Epistle to the Hebrews is employed to prove; the Margin of your Bibles in this Chapter so refer you to the places, that I shall not need to make it out. Christ did fulfill the Temple and the Altar part, yea and the refuse outcast part of the Atonement satisfied the Religion and the contempt of that days Offices, He was the whole true Expiation.

Now does this Expiation as theirs did, require afflicting of the Soul in its attendance, or was that but a Ceremony of their Rite? and though a Jew must mourn and Fast to see his sin killing a Beast, and when he does behold his wickedness eating up a Goat for a Sin-offering, he must deny himself his daily bread, and suffer thirst if his Iniquities drink but the blood of Bullocks; yet when we behold ours embrew themselves in the Blood of the Son of God, not only lay hands and Confessions on his Head, but drive Thorns into it, make him cry out, almost despair and Die; we need not be concerned so much as to do ought of that either in order to the better Celebration of that Expiation, or on the very day of it.

Indeed if we consider most men's practices, it would appear most probable that if we were to expiate our sins as the Jews did by sacrificing of our Flocks not of our Jesus, those satisfactions would more afflict our Souls, and more restrain our Vices than that which was made for us by the Death of Christ, and how can this be rectified, unless by some severities upon ourselves, we give ourselves a piercing sense of what our sin deserves, and grateful apprehensions of what our Surety suffered for us? When in sad private earnest I have thought fit to Afflict my Soul with some austere mortifications, and when my fainting Spirits are scarce able to sustain my Body that sinks under the load of itself, then I may have some tender apprehensions of that weight that sunk the Son of God, and 'twas my weight that he fell under. But he that cannot think fit to revenge a year of follies and of Vices with a few weeks severer life, sure thinks his Savior suffered much in vain; quorsum perditio haec? why must the Blood of God be paid for sin, when I cannot afford a little self-denial for it? Why such great Agonies of the Holy Jesus, when I cannot find in my heart to bear a little strictness for it?

But I could easily deduce (were I not to suppose it done before) that sure as if the Church had thought a Statute had annexed these two forever, they have been join'd from the beginnings of our Christianity; it was the Fast that did attend our Savior's sufferings that in part caused the Contest about Easter, which Polycarp S. John 's Disciple managed; and then there was a Fast so soon: and he that tells us this, Irenaeus, Scholar to that Polycarp, says some observed it many days, some forty days also, if we can take the Antient Ruffinus 's authority but for a Comma. And if the Antient Fathers do expound aright, Christ himself thought that men were interested so much in his Death, that they would Fast by reason of it; When the Bridegroom is taken from them, then shall they Fast in those days: Upon which words they say the Season was determined to this Duty by the Gospel.

But they may say so, who knew how to persuade men to take up restraints of strictest discipline and of severest Piety. But we cannot engage them into Order or from Scandal; they made them fast, we cannot make them temperate. Blessed Savior! what kind of Christians didst thou hope for thy Disciples, of whom thou wert so confident they would so concern themselves in thy Passion as to Fast because of it? when in our times Christians will not be kept from their Excesses by it? not in those days of Fasting which thy Primitive followers did Celebrate with abstinencies, that did almost mortify indeed and slay the Body of Flesh as well as Sin, and we in imitation of them, in answer of thy confidences, will not abate a Meal, nor an intemperance, will eat and Riot too, and make a Lent of Bacchanals: Thus we prepare load for thy Day of Passion, sin on to add weight to thy Cross, and yet we ourselves will not be humbled under them. It is in vain to tell men thou expectest they should mortify, that it will spirit their Repentance, for they will have no kind of Penitence for sin, but such as will let them return to sin again, suffer no discipline with which their Vices too cannot consist, for they can scarce live if they make not themselves cheerful with them, even in this time of Sadness, and in sight of the Memorial of thy sufferings for them.

Indeed when I consider how this Season is hodg'd in from Vice by all God's Indignation, threatened at first, suffered at last, pronounced in Commination, executed in Passion: Ashwednesday gave us all God's Curses against Sinners, all which Good Friday shows inflicted on our Savior. Thus we began, Cursed are the Vnmerciful, the Fornicators, and Adulterers, the Covetous persons, Worshippers of Images, Slanderers, Drunkards and Extortioners; and we shall see the Son of God made this Curse for them; yea we ourselves said Amen to all, as testifying that that Curse is due to all. When I consider this I say, I cannot choose but be astonished to behold how men can break through all God's Curses and their own to get at Vice, first seal God's Maledictions, then provoke and incur them instantly, as if they loved and would commit a Rape upon Perdition; as if because men have so long in Oaths begged God to damn them, and he hath not done it yet, they would now do it in their Prayers too; make their Devotions as well as Imprecations consign them to the wrath of God. He that does love cursing thus in the Passive sense, surely as David says, it shall come unto him, it shall be unto him as the Garment that covereth him, it shall enter into his bowels like Water, and like Oil into his Bones, Psal. Cix. 17, 18, 19. And truly amongst those things which we did Curse, there are that will fulfill all that most literally; the Riots of thy gaudy bravery that make thee gripe, extort, spend thy own Wealth and other men's, undo thyself and Creditors, be sordid and in Debt, merely to furnish trappings to dress thyself for others eyes and, may be, sins; these bring a Curse to cover thee as does thy Garment, yea and they gird it to thee. The draughts of thy Intemperance carry the malediction down into the Bowels like Water, yea like the Wine into the very Spirits: There is another of them too that will convey the Curse like Oil into the Bones, till it eat out the marrow, and leave nothing but itself to dwell within them, yea till it putrefy the Bones, till it prevent the Grave and Judgment too, while the living Sinner invades the rottenness of the one, and torments of the other; and then the Lents and abstinencies that the sin prescribes shall be observed exactly, only to qualify them for more sin and condemnation, may be at the best but to recover them from what it hath inflicted; when • et alas! they are too soft and tender, the Lord knows, to endure any • rities to work out their Repentance and Atonement: and yet sure • se the Sinner does go through have nothing to commend them which these others do not much more abound with. If those are not grievous to thee because they are so wholesome, and though it be a miserable thing to go through all their painful squalid methods, yet, how disgustful soever, by the benefit of their Cure they excuse their offensiveness, and ingratiate the present injury they do the Flesh, by the succeeding health they help thee to, and by the Death they do secure thee from: Why sure (to omit, that the other have all these advantages, none have so calm and so established health as the abstemious and continent, and their mind is still serene, their temper never clouded, but besides this) the Christians bitter Potions do purge away that sickness that would end in Death eternal, his fastings starve that worm that otherwise would gnaw the Soul immortally; his weepings quench the everlasting burnings, yea there is cheerful Pleasure in the midst of these severities, when God breaks in in Comforts into them: The Glory of the Lord appears in that Cloud too that is upon the penitent sad heart; when he is drench'd in tears the Holy Ghost the Comforter does move upon those waters, and breaths Life and Salvation into them; and he who is the Unction pours Oil into those wounds of the Spirit; and we are never nearer Heaven than when we are thus prostrate in the lowest dust, and when our Belly cleaveth unto the ground in humble penitence, then we are at the very Throne of Grace: And this our light afflicting of the Soul which is but for a moment, does work for us a far more exceeding weight of Glory. To which, &c.

The Fourth SERMON, Preached at WHITE-HALL. October. 12. 1662.

THE words are a conditional Assertion of Christ 's concerning his Apostles, and in them all Christians: And they do easily divide themselves into two parts. The

First is a positive part, wherein there is a state of great and Blessed advantage, which they are declared to be in present possession of: In these words, Ye are my Friends.

In which there are two things that make up that advantage, 1. A Relation, 2. The Person related to. Friends, and My Friends. The

Second is a Conditional part, wherein there are the terms, upon which that Possession is made over, and which preserve the Right and Title to them: in these words, If ye do whatsoever I command you: in which there are two things required as Conditions.

I. Obedience, If ye do what I command you.

II. That Obedience Universal; If ye do whatsoever I command you.

The first thing that offers itself to our consideration, is the Relation, Friends.

It is a known common-place Truth, that a Friend is the most useful thing that is in whatsoever state we are: It is the Soul of life, and of content. If I be in prosperity: We know abundance not enjoyed, is but like Jewels in the Cabinet, useless while they are there: It is indeed nothing but the opinion of Prosperity. But 'tis not possible to enjoy abundance otherwise than by communicating it: a man possesseth plenty only in his Friends, and hath fruition of it merely by bestowing it. If I be in adversity; to have a person whom I may intrust a trouble to, whose bosom is as open and as faithful to me, as 'tis to his own thoughts, to which I may commit a swelling secret; this is in a good measure to unlade, and to pour out my sorrow from me; thus I divide my grievances which would be insupportable, if I did not disburthen myself of some part of them: Now there is no bosom so safe as that where friendship lodges; take God's Opinion in the case, Deut. xiii. 6. If thy Brother the Son of thy Mother, or thy Son, or thy Daughter, or the Wife of thy bosom, or thy Friend that is as thine own Soul. This is the highest step in the Gradation; And there is all the reason in the World; for though Parent and Child are as near one to other as anything can be to part of itself; Husband and Wife are but two different names of the same one, yet these may become bitter and unkind: A Parent may grow cross, or a Child refractory, a Mother may be like the Ostrich in the Wilderness, throw off her bowels with her burden; and an ungracious Son is constant pangs and travail to his Mother, his whole life gives her after-throws which are most deadly: Dislikes also may rest within the Marriage-Bed, and lay their heads upon two wedded Pillows; but none of these unkindnesses can untie the Relation; that ends not where the bitterness begins, he is a Parent still though froward, and a Child though stubborn; but a true Friend can be nothing but kind; it does include a dearness in its essence, which is so inseparable from it, that they begin and end together: A man may be an Husband without loving, but cannot be a lover, that is a Friend, without loving.

And sure to have no one Friend in this Life, no one that is concerned in any of my interests or me myself, none that hath any cares or so much as good wishes for me, is a state of a most uncomfortable prospect. The Plague that keeps Friends at a distance from me while I live out of the sphere of my infection, and after gives me Death, hath yet less of Malignity than this; that leaves me the Compassions, the Prayers, all the solitary Comforts, all indeed but the outward entertainments of my Friends; that, though it shut the Door against all company, yet, puts a Lord have Mercy on the Door: But this I now described hath none of that, hath no good wishes, nothing else but hate, is worse than a perpetual Pestilence.

Yet neither is this state so comfortless, in respect of this life, as not to have a Friend in the concernments of the Life to come; none that hath so much kindness for my Soul as every man hath for his Enemies Beast, which if he see fallen in a Ditch he will at least give notice that it may be helped out thence: No one, that when a sin, like to that Falling sickness in the Gospel (and it is such indeed without a Parable) is casting me into the water, quenching my parts, my Reason, and the Immortal spark within me; or throwing me into the Fire, raising Lascivious heats within, which after will break out into Hell fires; none yet that will stretch out his hand to catch me, or to pull me out: None that does care to see me perish to Eternity, or that values my Soul, which yet did cost the Blood of God, at a word speaking: This is to be like Dives in the Flames, to whom they would not lend the help of the tip of a finger, or give the kindness of a drop of Water: I am as it were on the other side the Gulf already, Here is the use of Friendship, the only noble one, that's worthy of that blessed quality: When I have one that will be an assistant Conscience to me, who, when that within me sleeps, or is benumbed, will watch over my actions; will testify them to my Face, will be as faithful to me as the Conscience should be, hold a Glass to my Soul, show me the stains and the proud tumours, the foul Ulcers that are there, and then will fret, and rub, or prick, lance, and corrode, to cure those Tumours, and do off those spots, such an one is a familiar Angel Guardian, is truly of that blessed Heavenly rank, and only less than the Friend in the Text, the Person related to, and my next Part.

My Friends. There are three things from which men use to take the measures of a Friend.

First, From the good things he bestows on them: He that thinks to keep friendship alive only with Air, that gives good words, but parts with nothing, that entertains only with Garbs and Civilities, is but the pageant of a Friend: They that own having but one Soul, and seem to clasp as if they would have but one Body too, cannot keep such distinct and separate proprieties in other little things, as not to have communication one from the other. And,

Secondly, The friendship of these benefits is rated by the measures of our need of them. When Midas was ready to die for hunger, his God was kinder to him in a little bread, than in making all that he touched turn into Gold: Great things engage but little where there is but little use of them: And all these,

Thirdly, Are endeared by the Affection they are given with. Good turns done with design, what need soever I have of them, are hire, and not friendship; it is the kindness only that obligeth, the gift without the love does but upbraid and scorn my want.

Now to measure the Friend here in the Text, by these, were an impossible undertaking, whose Friendship did exceed all bounds and measures. I shall do no more towards it but read the words before my Text, which were the occasion of it, Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his Friends, and then it follows, Ye are my Friends. The token therefore of his Friendship, the gift he gave them was his life, rather that was the least he gave: He gave his glory first, that so he might be qualified to give his life, for 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 Phil. ii. 7. He lessened himself from the condition of being Lord of all, into that of a Servant, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 Heb. ii. 9. being diminished, made lower, meaner than his Creatures for the suffering of Death. Now with the price of such Divine essential glory to buy only a life, rather only a possibility of Death, that after he might give that life for us, and with his Death purchase us an immortal life, is such a gift as no Romance of friendship ever fancied or did aim at: We may have heard of two Companions that would die for one another, that never quarrelled in their lives, but for this, who should suffer first to save the other, and strave only for Execution: But for a Person of the Trinity to leave his Heaven to come down to us; to dwell with Agonies that he might be at one with us: and be tied to the Cross, that he might be united to us; this is a friendship fit for Ecstasies of apprehension. Of all the things that court thy kindness here below, that spread snares, and lay baits for thy friendship, if any bid so fair, so temptingly, if any will give such a price, in God's name let it have thy love, I shall not blame him that engageth his Affection there: But sure Heaven cannot give a greater gift than this; for what can God give greater than himself? Yea I may say God could not give so much, for he must be Man too, to give his life, and this, saith he, he gave for his Friends, even in our stead, who must have perished else eternally, which intimates the second thing, the need we had of this.

A need great as the gift, necessity invincible, that could break into Heaven, rifle the Trinity to serve itself, throw Death into those Regions of Immortality, and which would not be satisfied but with the Blood of God.

And now is not the kindness and the condescension of Friendship in his expressions too, when he saith, greater love than this hath no man: which was the third Endearment.

There never were such wounds of Love as those that tore this Heart; never such meltings of Affection as dissolved this Lover into sweats of Blood. There was no motive to all this, but his mere love: For all this he designed to us before we were, and therefore sure before we were deserving: And O our God! thou that from all Eternity didst lay Contrivances to give thy Life for us, so to redeem, and then to glorify us; what were we then that thou shouldst do this for us? what were we then when we were not? and yet that thou from the Abyss of Everlastingness, shouldst think thoughts of such kindness to us, and such blessedness for us, who then were not, and deserved nothing; and who since we were, have deserved nothing but Damnation.

And as there was no other motive to all this design but love, so neither was there anything but love in the fulfilling. Look on your Savior in the Garden, and upon Mount Calvary, and you shall find him there in as great Agonies of Affection as Torment, and hanging down his head upon the Cross with languishments of kindness more than weakness. His Arms stretched out and racked, as if on purpose to the posture of receiving you to his embraces, and his side opened not only to shed Blood for you, but to make you a passage to his very Heart. Look on him offering up his Tears, his Prayers, and his Soul for Sin, and in the midst of all, projecting happiness to you, as it were praying, O my Father, here I charge myself with all the guilt of those my Friends, I thy only Son God, one with thee, am content to suffer Torments that they all may be acquitted; Here I lay down my Life that they may have eternal Life, let me be Crucified, so they be Glorified. Which was the purchase and the gift of this his Passion to all his Friends, even to those that do what he Commands; which is the first Condition that entitles to his friendship, and my next Part.

Ye are my Friends if ye do what I command you.

I shall not urge, that Great men upon Earth will not take any to their Friendship but upon these terms; nor will I plead the reasonableness of this in Christ, there being no cause why he should be a Friend to any that will daily disoblige him and dishonor him: Nor will I press the whole Economy of Scripture, which says, all the advantages Christ ever gave or meant us, and all the acts of Friendship that he ever did for us were with this design. He gave his grace that brings salvation to save us into an estate of sober Virtue. Tit. ii. ver. 11, 12. He gave himself also to Ransom us from our own evil doings, and to redeem us into his Obedience, Tit. ii. ver. 14. Without which no dependence on him will avail. Matth. vii. 21. He will own no acquaintance with, nor services from them who have friendship with sin; though they have cast out Devils in his Name, if they retain their Vices; though they do Miracles, if they do wickedly, he will bid them depart, profess he never knew them, ver. 22, 23. He will not let such have a bare relation to his Name, nor have the friendship of a Title, 2 Tim. ii. 19. All his Rewards also that he will give are promised to none other, but them that do what he commands, Apoc. xxii. 14. that is, do Evangelically, heartily and faithfully endeavor it, and do this with all diligence expressed by words, that import all strife imaginable, as Running, Wrestling, Fighting, Warring. And persevere also by patient continuance in well-doing, Rom. ii. 7. and he hath nothing else but Vengeance for all others, 2 Thes. i. 8. and we have neither Christ, nor Gospel, nor Religion, but with these terms.

But I shall wave all this, and bound myself within the present words, Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his Life for his Friends. Ye are my Friends if ye do what I command you. When Christ is boasting of his love, making comparisons, and vying friendships with mankind, nay more, contriving heights and depths of Mercy, such as Man hath no comprehension, nor fathom for; when he was preparing to do an act of compassion almost equal to his Divinity, when he had resolutions of so much kindness as to give his life that he might show kindness. Yet could he not then find in his heart to offer or declare one jot of kindness to the men that will not do what he commands, but in the midst of such Agonies of compassion, he thought of nothing but infinite indignation and eternal vengeance to the disobedient. I have but now given my Body and my Blood even to the Traitor Judas, to one who is a Devil: I am going to give my life even for my Enemies, for the World: But I will give no love to any, have no friendship with any but the virtuous: no, though they be my own Disciples, ye are my Friends, ye my Companions and Apostles are my Friends, only on this condition, if ye do what I command you.

And then is it not matter of Astonishment, to see men fancy they have a right in all Christ's Actions and Sufferings, presume upon his favor and their own happy condition, though they do nothing, or but very little towards this, and the main of their life be disobedience, as if all Christ's Commands, appointed them to do no commands, and Christianity were but a liberty from virtue? To pass by those that do nothing but Evil, that which the Devil does suggest, or their flesh dictate, and to consider the Demurer sort of Christians, that pretend a respect to Christ, and to Religion, and see what they will do.

Why sometimes you may find them troubled at their Vices and themselves; and those troubles breath out in Sighs, and in warm wishes that they could do that which Christ prescribes; to will is sometimes strongly present with them, but to perform they know not how. Alas Christ does not tell you that you are his Friends, if you wish well to him, and his Commands, but he requires that you shall do them. These are but vapors of a troubled Soul, which howsoever they may chance rise warm, catch a strong sudden heat, breath up in flashing thoughts. They are but Meteors, little shooting flames that only do catch fire and fall and die; show fair, but they warm nothing: And so these thoughts do never, heat the Heart into Devotions and holy resolutions, the fire is not strong nor does it live enough, to melt and work away the filthiness of the Soul: No, though they grow to aversations; For you may find such men, when wearied with the pursuit of their sins, hating their customs, and the engagements to the practice of them; complaining thus, I know 'tis ill, and 'tis against my heart, that I obey the motions of my passions or Lusts: The incitations of my Appetite, the usance of the World, the Obligations of Civility or mistaken honor do indeed prevail upon me, but 'tis with great reluctancy of mind that I yield to them, but I cannot avoid it. There are not few that satisfy themselves with this condition. Now sure Christ does not say, Ye cannot be my Friends except you sin against me and against your Knowledge, and your Consciences too. 'It is strange that men should think the Heathen instance of a Witch that cried,

I know, and do approve of better things, but cannot choose but follow these that are the worser) strange, that this Fury that had the Devil for Familiar, should make Christ a friend; that this should be the state of Gospel Saints, and of God's favorites. 'It is possible some therefore go yet further to good purposes towards Obedience, and have holy Intentions, but this is not sufficient neither, if to do his Commands be necessary: for to purpose and intend to do them, is not certainly to do them. Yet where are any that do aim at doing anymore? and there is none of these but does presume upon his interest in Christ, and satisfies himself and is secure.

Yet is it hard to find a ground of this their confidence, unless it rise from the unhappy use they make of God's preserving Mercies, and his kindness to them in the concernments of this life. They see without their cares, and upon very weak entreaties indeed, against all provocations both of God and danger; yet his protections secure them, although they neither mind the asking them, nor mind the walking worthy of them. The man whose Sins, not Prayers, prepare him for his Bed, he sleeps well: perhaps more soundly than he who at his Bedside throws himself on his face into God's Arms, and there bequeaths himself to the Securities of the Almighty: And he, whose Sleeps only refresh him for returns to Sin, does often live as long, as safely, and as merrily, as he that daily most Religiously does beg Protections from above. And others that afford the Lord some little homages, themselves some Prayers when their pleasures or occasions permit, God hath a care of them, and their desires flow into them, all does succeed well with them. Now they take confidence hence to conclude, these are the Tokens of God's friendship, and all his mercies will come in at the like easy rates; that such a short Petition as committed them to the refreshments of the night, and after which they wak'd into renewed strengths and pleasures, such another shall lay them down in safety, to the sleeps of that long night, that afterwards will break in happy Resurrection: For why? God will not sure fail his own mercies, but be as friendly to their Souls as he is to their Bodies.

And thus God's Preservations here, in mere defiance of our provocations, which are the arts of his longsuffering, his strivings of Compassion, merely to give us opportunities of being reconciled to him, and to invite us to be so, while we make them occasions of carelessness and security, they are so far from being pledges of his Friendship, that they have all the aggravations of affornted goodness, become Temptations and degrees of Ruin! 'Twere fine indeed it Christ's eternal preparations for his Friends, would come in to us, without care or doing anything, as an accession to our pleasures; if when we had lived many years as in a Garden, our days all flower'd with delight; we might expire into Paradise, and in soft Airs of Music breath into Hallelujah 's But alas! the smooth easy way leads down the Hill, and he must strive and pant that will get up into the Mansions and the Bosom of his Savior, and whosoever will be his Friend, must do that he commands.

But is there nothing less indeed will qualify? The Scripture saith, that Abraham believed God, and it was imputed to him for Righteousness, and he was called the Friend of God, James ii. 23. and then, is Christ more inaccessible, and harder to be made a Friend?

Why, truly God and Christ both are so much Friends to all true Believers, that the Life of Christ was given for them; for, God so loved the World that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life, John iii. 16. Nor are there any qualities more signally peculiar to friendship, more engaging than confidence and trust, dependence and relying, embosoming my self in him: Now these are but the exercise of Faith; and 'tis most certain if we heartily endeavor to do what he commands, there is employment then for all this work of Faith, place for its applications and assurances. My Text does make this good. But when his friendship is made over on Conditions, as 'tis not only in these words, but every where in Scripture; (there being not one Promise absolute that does concern God's favor, justification, and eternal Life: he does not once offer Remission of sins, but to those that amend their Lives; nay, does express as if he could not give it otherwise, peradventure they will repent that I may forgive them, Jer. xxxvi. 3.) The Promises therefore being conditional, Faith must be answerable to the Promises that it does rest on and apply; and at the most, can be but an assurance that you shall be partaker of what's promised, that is to say, partaker of the favor and the life of Christ, if ye do his Commands. But then if I perform not this Condition, to trust upon his friendship which I am not qualified for; to think by Faith to receive a Pardon, which in that case I am, was never offered me; to apply to myself Promises which were never made me, for none were ever made to them that do not do: and to assure my self Christ will transgress his everlasting Covenant for my Vices sake, merely to give me leave to enjoy my sins; will do that which God may not do, forgive one that will not repent: If I believe thus against Promise, and against Decree, am confident whether Christ will or no, and will rely upon him in despite of him, if such a faith will make us friends, affronts do reconcile. This is indeed to lay violent hands on his favor, and to invade his friendship, and without Metaphor, take Heaven by force.

But sure I am, that this is not the Faith made Abraham be called the friend of God in that place of S. James, but a Faith that was perfected by doing, ver. 22. of that Chapter, a Faith that made him offer up his only Son upon the Altar, ver. 21. 'It is true, he did in hope believe against all hope, Rom. iv. 18. So that his faith was stronger than a contradiction, but yet his resolutions of obedience seem stronger than his faith; for he did that even to the cutting of the grounds of all his faith, and hope. He trusted God would make his Promise good to him, make all the Nations of the Earth be blessed in the seed of Isaac; though Isaac had no seed, nor could have, if he should be slain: And he resolved at God's command himself to slay that