Forty Sermons

had no seed, nor could have, if he should be slain: And he resolved at God's command himself to slay that Isaac, so to make him have no seed. His Faith indeed did not despute the great impossibility; but his obedience caused it. He did not question, how can God perform with me when I have offered up my Son? I cannot look that a large Progeny should rise out of the Ashes on the Altar; nor will those Flames that devour all my Seed at once, make my seed numerous, lasting and glorious as the Stars in Heaven, which he promised me: But much less did he question, why should I obey in this? He that does his Commands, can but expect what he hath promised; but if I should do this Command and slay my Son, I make his Promise void, and destroy my own expectations: And if I disobey I can but suffer what he bids me do; my own obedience will execute all that his Indignation would threaten to my disobedience. Though Abraham had three days time and journey to the Altar, that Nature might have leisure the mean while to reason with the Precept thus, and his Affection might struggle with his Duty; yet he goes on, resolves to tear out his own Bowels, and cut off his hopes, will Sacrifice his only Son, and Sacrifice God's Promises to his Commands.

And then, he that will trust to Abraham 's example of believing, yet will not follow him at all in doing, will obey no Commands; that is so far from offering up an only Son, he will not slay an only evil Custom, nor part with one out of the herd of all his vicious Habits; will not give up the satisfaction to any of his carnal, worldly, or ambitious appetites; not sacrifice a Passion or a lust to all the Obligations that God and Christ can urge him with, he hath, nor faith, nor friendship, no, nor forehead. 'It is true indeed, he that hath Abraham's faith may well assure himself he is Christ's Friend; but 'tis only on this account, because he that believes as Abraham believed, he will not stick to do whatever Christ commands; which is that universality of obedience, that is the next condition that entitles to Christ's friendship, and my last Part.

There is no quality so necessary to a Friend, or so appropriate to friendship, as sincerity. They that have but one Soul, they can have no reserves from one another: But disobedience to one Precept, is inconsistent with sincerity, that hath respect unto all the Commandments; and he that will not do whatever Christ prescribes, hath reserves of affection for some darling sin, and is false to his Savior. He is an Enemy indeed, so that there is no friendship on either side. S. Paul says so of any of one kind; the minding of the flesh, saith he, whether it be providing for the Belly, or any other of the Organs of Carnality, is desperate, incurable Rebellion: Now such a Rebel, is, we know, the worst of Enemies. S. James does say as much of any of those vicious affections that are set on the World: Whosoever will be a friend of the World, is an Enemy of God, James iv. 4. And he calls them adulteresses and Adulterers, who think to join great strict Religion to some little bylove of an Honor, or a profit of this World. Such Men are like a Wife, that not contented with the partner of her Bed, takes in another now and then, she must not count herself her Husbands Friend, though she give him the greatest share in her affections; no, she is but a bosom Enemy: And so any one Vice allowed is a paramour sin, is whoredom against Christ, and our pretended friendship to him in all other obediences, is but the kindness and the caresses of an Adulteress, the mere hypocrisy and treachery of love. If it be necessary to the gaining Christ's friendship, that thou do his Commands, 'tis necessary that thou do them all, that thou divorce thyself from thy beloved sin, as well as any other: Because his Friendship does no more require other obedience than it does that, but is as inconsistent with thy own peculiar Vice as with the rest. Indeed it is impossible that it should bear with any, they being all his murderers. If thou canst find one sin that had no hand in putting Christ to Death, one Vice that did not come into the garden, nor upon Mount Calvary, that did not help to assassin thy Savior, even take thy fill of that: But if each had a stab at him, if no one of thy Vices could have been forgiven, had not thy Jesus died for it, canst thou expect he should have kindness for his Agony, or friendship for the man that entertains his Crucifiers in his heart? If worldly cares which he calls Thorns, fill thy head with Contrivances of Wealth and Greatness, of filling Coffers, and of platting Coronets for thee, as the thorns did make him a C • own too, wouldst thou have him receive thee and these in his bosom, to gore his Heart as they did pierce his Head? If thou delight in that intemperance, which filled his deadly Cup, which Vomited Gall into it, can he delight in thee? That Cup which made him fall upon his face to deprecate, will he partake in as the pledge of mutual love? He that sunk under, could not bear this load of thine, when it was in his Cross upon his shoulders, will he bear it and thee in his Arms, when thou fallest under it? When thou wilt cast a shameful spewing on his glory too, if he own such a Friend? Thou that art so familiar with his Name, as thou wert more his Friend than any in the World, whose Oaths and imprecations, Moses says, strike through that Name, which they so often call upon, thou mayst as well think his Heart did attract the Spear that pierced it, and the Wound close upon its head with Unions of Love, as that he hath kindness for thee. If Christ may make Friendship with him, that does allow himself a sin, he may have fellowship with Belial: For him to dwell in any heart that cherisheth a Vice, were to descend to Hell again. But as far as those Regions of Darkness are from his Habitation of Glory, and the Black Spirits of that place from being any of his Guard of holy Myriads; so for is he from dwelling with, or being friend to him, that is a friend to any wickedness, to him that will not do whatever he commands.

And now if these Conditions seem hard, if any do not care to be his Friend upon these terms, they may betake themselves to others. Let such make themselves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness: A Friend indeed that hath not so much of the insincerities as many great ones have: For this will furnish them with all that heart or lust can wish for, all that necessity or wantonness proposeth to itself to dress out pomp or Vice: But yet when with enjoyment the affections grow, and become so unquiet, work them so, as not to let their thoughts or actions rest, make them quicken themselves, and like the motions of all things that go downwards tending to the Earth, increase by the continuance, grow stronger, and more violent towards the end, then when they are most passionate, it fails them: And having filled their life with most unsatisfied tormenting cares, it leaves them nothing but the guilt of all: When their great Wealth shall shrink into a single sheet, no more of it be left, but a thin shroud, and all their vast Inheritances but six foot of Earth, be gone, yet the iniquity of all will stick close to them; and this false Friend, that does it Self forsake them, will neither go along, nor will let its pomp follow them, raises a cry on them as high as God's Tribunal; the cry of all the Blood, all the oppressed rights that bribery till then had stifled, the groans of all those Poor that greatness, covetousness, or extortion had groun'd or crushed; the yellings of those Souls that were s • arv'd for want of the Bread of life, which yet they paid for, and the price of it made those heaps which will that day appear against their Friends and Masters, and prove their Adversaries to eternal Death.

Let others joy in Friends that Wine does get them; such as have no qualification to endear them, but this, that they will not refuse to sin and to be sick with their Companions: Men that do only drink in their affections, as full of friendship as of liquor, and probably they do unload themselves of both at once, part with their dearness and their drink together and alike. I know not whether in be heats of mutual kindness that inflame these draughts, and the desires of them, so as if they did drink thirst; but sure I am, that these hot draughts begin the Lake of fire.

Let others please themselves in an affection that Carnality cements. These are warm friendships I confess, but Solomon will tell us whence they have their heat. Her house, saith he, doth open into Hell, and Brimstone kindles those libidinous flames. There are strait bands, fetters in those affections indeed; for the same Wiseman says, The Closets of that sinner are the Chambers of Death: That none that go unto her return again, or take hold of the paths of life; it seems she is a friend that takes most irreversible dead hold, she is not only as insatiate, but as inexotable as the Grave, and the Eternal Chains of Fate are in those her Embraces. But God keep us from making such strict Covenants with Death; from being at friendship with Hell; or in a word, that I say all at once, with any that are good Companions only in sin • ing. Such men having no virtue in themselves, must needs hate it in others, as being a reproach to them, and therefore they are still besieging it, using all arts and stratagems to undermine it: and having nothing else to recommend them in men's affections, but their managery of Vice, no way to Merit but by serving iniquity, they not only comply with our own evil Inclinations, that so they may be grateful, and insinuate into us, but they provoke too and inflame those tendencies that they may be more useful to us, having no other means to work their ends. And then such friends by the same reason, must be false and treacherous, and all that we declaim at, and abhor in Enemies, when that shall be the way to serve their ends; because they have no Virtue to engage them to be otherwise: And to be such, is to be constant to their own designs, their dispositions and usances. These are the Pests of all Societies, they speak and live infection, and friendship with them is to couple with the Plague. These do complete and perfect what the Devil but began in Eden: Nurse up Original sin, chase inclination into appetite and habit, suggest and raise desires, and then feed them into Constitution and Nature: In a word, are a brood of those Serpents, one of which was enough to destroy Paradise and Innocence. 'It is true, a man would think these were our Friends indeed, that venture to Gehenna for us: Alas they are but more familiar Devils, work under Satan to bring us to Torments, and differ nothing from him, but that they draw us into them, and he inflicts them. And when sinful contents come home in Ruin, and pleasures die into Damnation; then men will understand these treacherous loves, and find such Friends are but projectours for the Devil; then they will hate them as they do their own Damnation, discerning these are but the kindnesses of Hell. Nay it is possible, I may slander that place in speaking so ill of it. Dives will let us see there are affections of a kinder and more blessed strain in Hell, Luke xvi. from the twenty seventh Verse; you find he did make truce with Torments, that he might contrive and beg only a message of Repentance for his Brethren; he did not mind at all his own dire Agonies, he minded so the reformation of his Friends. Good God! when I reflect upon these pieties of the Damn'd, together with the practices of those who have given their names in to Religion, when I see Fiends in Hell do study how to make Men virtuous, and Christians upon Earth with all their art debauch them into vice and ruin; I cannot choose but pray, Grant me such Friends as are in Hell. Rather grant us all the Friendship in the Text. But then, we must have none with any Vice. Friendship with that, engageth into Enmity with God and Christ I showed you. And to pass over all those after-retributions of Vengeance Christ hath studied for his Enemies, when he, that now courts us to be our Friend and we will make our Adversary, must be our Judge: For were there none of this, and should we look no further than this life; yet sure we of this Nation know, what it is to have God our Enemy; who for so many years lay under such inflictions, as had much of the character of his last execution; they had the Blasphemies and the Confusion, the dire Guilts, and the black Calamities, and almost the Despair and Irrecoverableness of those in Hell. And though He be at Peace with us at present, at least there is a Truce; yet I beseech you in the presence and the fear of God, to think in earnest, whether the present provocations of this Nation do not equal those that twenty years ago engaged him into Arms against us, and made him dash us so in pieces: Whether those Actions of the Clergy be reformed that made the People to abhor their Function and their Service, the Offerings and Ministers of the Lord, and made God himself spew them out. 'Twere endless to go on the profaneness, to the loose impieties and the bold Atheisms of the Laity, especially of the better sort; in short, what one degree, or state or Sex is better? Sure I am, if we are not better, we are worse beyond expression or recovery: who have resisted every method, and conquered all God's Arts of doing good upon us, been too hard for his Judgments and his Mercies both.

'It is true, when we lay gasping under his severe Revenges, we then pretended to be humbled, beg'd to be reconciled and be at peace with him, and vowed to his Conditions, promising obedience, and aliened our selves from our old sins, his Foes. But then, when Christ came to confirm this Amity, came dressed with all his Courtship, brought all the invitations of Love along, our Prince and our Religion, our Church and State, Righteousness and Peace, and the Beauty of Holiness, everything that might make us be an Happy and a Pious Nation, thus he did tempt and labor to engage that Friendship which we offered him and vowed to him: And we no sooner seized all this, but we break resolutions as well as duty, to get loose from him; and laden with the spoils of our defeated Savior's goodness, we join hands with his Enemies, resume our old acquaintant-sins, enrich and serve them with his Bounties, make appear that we only drew him in, to work such Miracles, but to assist our Worldliness, Ambitions and Lusts, to be our opportunities of Vice and provocation of him. And being thus affronted and refused, his Enemy prefer'd, not this God, but Barabbas, any the vilest thing for Friend, rather than Christ, must he not needs be more our Enemy than heretofore? And if he be, that question will concern us, Are we stronger than God? It should behove us not to fall out with him till we are. See how he does prepare himself for the Encounter, Wisd. v. Taking his Jealousy for Armor, putting on Justice, severe and vindicative Justice, as a Breastplate; and, his Wrath sharpening as a Sword; and, arming all the Creatures for Auxiliaries. Alas! when Omnipotence does express itself as scarcely strong enough for Execution, but Almightiness will be armed also for Vengeance, will assume Weapons, call in Aids for fury, who shall stand it? Will our Friends, think you, keep it off us, and secure us? did we consider how uneasy God accounts himself, till he begin the Storm, while he keeps off his Plagues from overrunning such a Land, we would expect them every moment, and they must come. Ah, says he, I will ease me of mine Adversaries, and avenge me of mine Enemies; and then in what condition are we, if God can have no ease but in our ruin, if he does hunger and thirst after it, go to his Vengeance as to a Feast? And if you read the 25th Chapter of Isaiah, you will find there a rich Bill of Fare, which his Revenge upon his Enemies does make; view the sixth Verse. He that enjoys his morsels, that lays out his Contrivances, and studies on his Dishes so as if he meant to cram his Soul, let him know what delight soever he finds, when he hath spoiled the Elements of their Inhabitants, to furnish his own Belly, and not content with Natures Delicacies neither, hath given them forced Fatnesses, changing the very flesh into a marrow, suppling the Bones almost into that Oil that they were made to keep; all • his delight the Lord by his expressions does seem to take in his dread Executions on his Enemies, a sinful People.

And if the vicious Friendships of the World have so much more attractive than Christ's love and favor, and the happy consequences of it, as to counterpoise all the danger of such enmity, you may join hands with them: But if His be the safer and more advantageous, then hearken to his Propositions and beseechings; for He does beg it of you: As he treated this reconciliation in his Blood, so he does in Petitions too. For saith S. Paul, We are Ambassadors for Christ, as if God did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead, Be you reconciled, and then be Generous towards your GOD and Savior; and having brought him as it were upon his knees, reduced him to entreaties, be friends, and condescend to him and your own Happiness. If He be for you, take no care then, who can be against you. His Friendship will secure you not only from your Enemies but from Hostility itself; for, when a man's ways please the Lord he will make even his Enemies to be at peace with him, Prov. xvi. 7. He will reconcile all but Vices. And afterwards see what a blessed throng of Friends, we shall be all initiated into, Heb. xii. 23. To an innumerable company of Angels, to the general Assembly, and Church of the First-born that are written in Heaven, to God the Judge of all, and to the Spirits of Just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new Covenant, &c. And of this blest Corona, we ourselves shall be a noble and a glorious part, inflamed all with that mutual love, that kindles Seraphims, and that streams out into an heavenly glory, filling that Region of immortal love and blessedness; and being Friends, that is, made one with Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, that Trinity of Love, we shall enjoy, what we do now desire to ascribe to them, All Honor, Glory, Power, Majesty, and Dominion, for evermore.

The Fifth SERMON, Preached at WHITE-HALL. Third Wednesday in LENT.

THE Words are part of a Debate which God had with the sinful House of Israel, in which there are three things offer themselves to be considered.

First, The Sinners Fate and Choice: He will Die; That's his End, yea, 'tis his Resolution, he will die.

Secondly, God's inquiry for the Ground of this, he seems astonished at the Resolution; and therefore reasons with them about this their so mad choice, and questions Why will ye die? Which words are also,

Thirdly, The debate of his Affections, the reasoning of his Bowels, and a most passionate Expostulation with them on account of that their Resolution, Why will ye die? which as it is addrest by God directly to the House of Israel, so it would fit a Nation perverse, as that; which mutinies against Miracles and Mercies, is false to God, Religion, and their own Interests; led by a Spirit of giddiness and frenzy, unsteddy in all things but resolutions of Ruin, that would tear open their old Wounds, to let out Life, and they will die. And though the Lord be pleased to work new prodigies of mercy for us, and to say unto us in despite of all our Enemies both Forein and Domestic, Live: The use we make of all is only to debauch the Miracles, and make God's Mercies help to fill the measure of our Judgments; live as if we would try all the ways to Ruin; and since God will thus deliver us from dangers, we would call for them some other way. But to prescribe to these is above the attempt of my endeavors: May the blessed Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding, the Spirit of Holiness and Peace, and Order, breath on their Counsels whom this is committed to. I shall bend my Discourse to the Conviction of Sinners in particular, and treat upon the words as if they had been spoke to us under the Gospel.

The first thing which my Text and God supposeth, is the Sinners Fate and Choice: He will die. Even the second Death, for it is appointed for all men once to die, and then cometh the Judgment which shall sentence him to another death that is immortal, in which he and his misery must live forever; that is, he must die everlastingly: Such is first his Fate.

That Sin and Death are of so near, so complicated a relation, as that though they were Twins, the birth and Issue of one Womb and moment, yet they are also one another's Off-spring, and beget each other, while Sin bringeth forth Death, as S. James saith, and is the Parent of Perdition, and yet the Man of Sin is the Son of Perdition, as S. Paul saith, and Iniquity is but destruction's birth, only itself derived. And that this Death and Perdition is Eternal in the most sad sense of the word there are a thousand Texts that say. This is the Message of God in the mouth and Blood of his Son, who useth all the artifice of Words affirmative, and negative, to tell us so, as if on purpose to preclude all doubt and subterfuge, calls it Eternal fire, and Eternal punishment, where their worm dieth not, their fire is not quenched, Torment forever and ever, and the like. Your Faith and certainty of which is as strong as your Christianity, and therefore by attempting any farther proof of this, to imply there is reason and necessity for doing so, were to suppose my Hearers Infidels.

But then this being granted that such is the Sinners Fate to lay down positively that it is his Choyce, and that he doth resolve for Death, is to suppose them worse than Infidels, more than irrational and brutish; Beasts cannot so desire against the possibilities of Appetite, break all the forces and instincts of Nature, as to will destruction, and choose misery. Yet that the Sinner does so is the ground of God's Expostulation here, Why will you die? David enquires as if it were a Prodigy to find, What man is he that lusteth to Live? And sure the vicious man does not, for Wisdom that is Virtue, says, He that sinneth against me woundeth his own Soul, and all they that hate me love death, Prov. viii. 36. And 'tis most evident, that they who eagerly, and out of vehement affection pursue and seize those things to which they know destruction is annexed inseparably, they love and choose destruction, though not for itself, yet for the sake of that to which it clings. He that is certain such a Potion, howsoever sweetened and made palatable, is compounded with the juice of deadly Nightshade, if notwithstanding he will have the Poisonous draught, it is apparent he resolves to die.

And that I may evince this is a settled obstinate incorrigible resolution in him, and by what ways and steps it comes to be so, I will lay before you the violent courses he does take to break through difficulties and obstructions that would trash and hinder him: And when the avenues to Death are strongly guarded, how he storms and forces them, overcomes all resistance possible, that he may seize on Sin and Death.

And First, When such persons have entered the Profession of Christianity in Baptism, and by early engagements tied themselves to the observation of its duties, if Principles of probity in Nature, fomented by others, instill'd with Education, have made impressions of duty on the mind, and wrought a reverence and awe of God and of Religion, which is a fence about them, and does keep off Vice, by making it seem strange, uncouth and difficult, while these fears and aversations are rooted in them; why then the first thing that they do, as soon as Youth and the Temptations do stir within them, is to poison these their own Principles by evil Conversation, and from that and Example take infusions, which shall impregnate them with humors of being in the fashion of the World: Thus they labor to strangle the then troublesome modesties of Nature and of Virtuous breeding; thus they look out ill Company to infect themselves: And surely they that seek the Plague and run into infection, we have cause to fear they have a Resolution to die. But,

Secondly, If notwithstanding this in the first practices of Vice, their former Principles stir, and ferment within, and fret the Conscience, set that on working; why then if the sin sting gently, do but prick the heart, and make an out-let for a little gush of Sorrow, then in spite of Scripture, they do teach themselves to think that grief Repentance, and by the help of that conceit this sorrow cools, and doth allay the swelling of the mind, washes away the guilt and thought of the commission, they have been sad, and they believe, repented; as if those stings opened the fountain for transgression, and those little wounds did flow with Balsom for themselves: And by this means that sting of the old Serpent sin, while it pretends to cure by hurting thus, proves indeed the Tempter to go on. For if this be all, why should a man renounce all the Contents and satisfactions of his Inclinations, and mortify and break his nature to avoid a thing which is so easily repented for? No, if it be no worse they can receive this Serpent in their bosom, dare meet his sting, and run upon these wounds, and they do so till the frequent pungencies, and cicatrices have made the Conscience callous and insensible, the heart hardened.

But if their first essays of sin were made unfortunate by Notoreity, or some unhappy circumstance, and so the wound were deep, and the Conscience troublesome and restless, because this is very uneasy, these inward groans make discord in their cheerful airs, make their life harsh, they therefore find it necessary to confront the shame with Courage of iniquity, go boldly on that so they may outlook it, fear their own Conscience that its wounds may not bleed. And as those Fiends of Men who Sacrific'd their Children in the fire to Moloch, that they might not hear their Infants shriek, nor their own Bowels croak, had noises made with Timbrels to out-voice them: So these to drown the cries and howlings of their wounded mind, put themselves in perpetual hurry of divertisement and Vice, make Tophet about themselves, and with the noise of Ryots overcome all other, because they will not hearken to those groans that call for the Physician of Souls, and then sure these resolve to die.

Nay if this will not keep them quiet, you may see them sometimes ruffle with their own Consciences, desire present Convictions in the very instant of Commission, men so set on Death, that they Condemn themselves in that which they allow. And though a man would think there should be little satisfaction in those pleasures which Condemnation thrusts itself into, and which have an alloy of so sad apprehensions; yet such are it seems the satisfactions of sin: For while it slabs and gashes, He brave Hero of Iniquity, can charge the wounds and take the Vice.

Yea Thirdly, though the Lord himself appear, and take part in the Quarrel, join with our Principles and Conscience against the sin, and with importunate Calls alarm us, give us no rest, ordain a Function of men by whom he does beseech us, dresses their Messages with Promises of that which God is blessed in, and arms them too with Terrors such as Devils tremble at, and joins his Holy Spirit too, that Power of the Highest, sends him in Tongues of Fire, that he also may Preach this to our very Hearts, and fright us with more flame: And yet the Sinner breaks these strengths, and vanquishes the Arts and strivings of Divine Compassion. If these Ambassadors speak Charms, it is but what God tells our Prophet in this Chapter, ver. 32. And lo thou art unto them as a very lovely Song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an Instrument. And it does die like that, as it there follows, They hear thy words but they do them not. And if they flash in Hell against their Vices, in torrents of threatening Scripture, they concern themselves no more than they would in the story of a new Eruption of Mount Aetna or Vesuvius. Yea they do quench the Spirit and his fires, do not like the deaf Adder, stop their ears against his whisperings, and the charms of Heaven (that were a weaker and less valiant guilt) but are Religious in hearing them, curious that they may be spoke with all advantages to make it harder not to yield and live, that so they may express more resolution to perish, and with more courage and solemnity may sin and die.

Nay more, when God hath found an Art to draw themselves into a League and Combination against their Vices, bound them in Sacraments to Virtue; made them enter a Covenant of Piety, and seal it in the Blood of God, and by that foederal Rite with hands lift up, and seizing on Christ's Body, and with holy Vows oblige themselves to the performances, or to the Threats of Gospel, which they see executed in that Sacrament before their eyes, see there death is the wages of iniquity, they show themselves its damned consequences, while they behold it tear Christ's Body, spill his Blood, and Crucify the Son of God; yet neither will this frightful spectacle, nor their own ties hold them from sin and ruin, they break these bonds asunder to get at them.

The Wiseman says that wicked men seek death and make a Covenant with it, and so it seems: But sure they are strange willful men, that seek it at God's Table in the Bread of Life, that will wade through an Ocean of mercy to get at Perdition, and find it in the Blood of Christ, will drink Damnation in the Cup of blessing; men that poison Salvation to themselves: They that contract thus for Destruction, and tie it to them at the Altar, with such sacred Rites and Articles, are sure resolved and love to die.

Fourthly, God had provided other Guards to secure men from sin and Death, the Censures of the Church; of which this Time was the great Season, and the discipline of abstinence we now use is a piteous relique, all that the World will bear it seem: But as the Lord appointed them they were so close a fence, that our Savior calls them Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, as if they locked us in the Path of Piety and Life; and we must pick or break all that the Key of Heaven can make fast, burst Locks as well as Vows before we can get out, have liberty to sin. God having bounded in the Christians race as that among the Grecians was, which had a River on one side, and Swords points all along the other, so that Destruction dwelt about it on the borders: And God hath mounded ours with the River of Hell the Lake of Fire, and with these spiritual Swords (as S. Cyprian and S. Jerome call the Censures.) But yet a Mound too weak alas! to stand the Resolution and assaults of Vices nowadays; which do not only make great breaches in the Fence, but have quite thrown it down, and slighted it; and the Church dares not set it up again, should she attempt it they would scoff it down. Men will endure no bar in the way to Perdition; they will have liberty of Ruin; will not be guarded from it; so far from brooking Censures they will suffer no Reproof, nor Admonition, not suffer one word betwixt them and Death eternal.

But Fifthly, Though we will not let Almighty God restrain us with his Censures, yet he will do it with his Rod, and set the sharp stakes of Affliction in our walk, to keep us in; thus he makes sins sometimes inflict themselves, and then we straight resolve to break off from them; and while we suffer shame, and feel destruction in the Vice we shrink and uncling: And now the Sinner would not die, especially if his Precipitance have thrown him to the confines of the grave; and while he took his full careers of Vice, the fury of his course did drive him to the ports of Ruin, and Death seemed to make close and most astonishing approaches, when standing on the brink of the Abyss, he takes a prospect of the dismal state that must receive him and his Vices, then he trembles and flies, his apprehensions swoon, his Soul hath dying qualms, caused as much by the Nausea of sin as by the fear of Hell: he is in agonies of passion and of Prayer both against his former courses, he never will come near them more; and now sure God hath catched him, and his will is wholly bent another way, now he will live the new life if God will grant him any: But alas! have we never seen when God hath done this for him, stretched out his Arm of Power, hal'd him from the brow of the Pit, and set him further off, how he does turn and drive on furiously in the very same path that leads to the same Ruin, and he recovers into death eternal?

And now this Will is grown too strong for the Almighty's powerful methods, and frustrates the whole Counsel of God for his Salvation, neglects his Calls and Importunacies whereby he warns him to consult his safety, to make use of Grace in time, not to harden his heart against his own mercies, and perish in despite of mercy. And when he can reject God's Graces and his Judgments thus, defy his Conscience and his own Experience too, there is but one thing left wherein this Resolution can show its courage, and that is,

Sixthly, His own present Interests; All which the Sinner can break through and despise, to get at Death. It is so usual to see any of the gross wasting Vices when it is once espoused, murder the Reputation, and all those great concerns that do depend upon a man's Esteem, eat out his Wealth and Understanding, make him pursue pernicious ways and Counsels, besot him, and enslave him, fill his life with disquiet, shame and neediness, and the sad consequents of that, Contempt, and all that's Miserable and unpitied in this Life; and yet the sin with all these disadvantages is lovely, not to be divorc'd nor torn off from him, that I were vain should I attempt to prove a thing so obvious. I shall give but one instance of the power of the Will, the violence and fury of its inclinations to Ruin.

The man who for another's inadvertency, possibly such as their own rules of Honor will not judge affront, yea sometimes without any shadow of a provocation, merely becaue he will be rude, does that upon which they must call one another to account, and to their last account indeed at God's dread Judgment-seat; whither when he hath sacrificed two Families, it may be all their hopes and comforts in this Life; two Souls which cost the Blood of God, having assaulted Death when it was armed and at his heart, and charged Damnation to take Hell by Violence; he comes with his own and his Brother's blood upon his Soul to seize his Sentence, Go ye Cursed into everlasting Fire: 'It is plain against all Interests of this World and the World to come, this man will die. And yet this is one of the laudable and generous Customs of the Age. Neither doth this man stand alone, the desperate Rebel would come into the Induction, that without any hopes sets all on fire, to consume all here, and to begin his Flames hereafter.

But I have said enough to prove the Resoluteness of a Sinners Will, which is so great indeed that it is this especially which does enhance the guilt of sin into the merit of an endless punishment, this persevering obstinacy does deserve Hell and make it just.

For whatsoever inequality there is betwixt the short-lived pleasures of a sin, which die while they are tasted, and put out themselves, and those eternal never-dying retributions of Vengeance, (As sure there is also betwixt the life of Man, and several of those petty felonies that forfeit it) yet the Law does not murder when it Executes. (I might have instanced in the gathering sticks upon the Sabbath day in Israel. ) For since the preservation of public safety and propriety is valuable with the lives of many men, and to secure that and affright the Violation, it was necessary to affix such punishments to such offenses; they that know the penalty, and willfully, merely to feed their other Vices, run upon it, justly suffer it: So that Man might not rob himself of that Immortal Glory which God had ordained him when he did see it absolutely necessary, thus to hedge Vice with Eternal Death: And as he set Angels and Flaming Swords to keep him out of Paradise, so to set Fiends and Flames to guard Hell from him, and to entail those Torments on Man's sin, which he had prepared for the Devil, and sealed the Deed in the Blood of his Son. If notwithstanding men renounce the blessedness, and against all their Interests and Obligations, in spite of all the Arts and Powers of Heaven, they will have the Torments; and, (what they never would attempt for Paradise) invade those flames to get to Hell, 'tis very just that God should let them have it; should not break his Decrees, dispence with Holy Laws so confirmed, merely to gratify those that are obstinate for ruin, and against his whole Gospel quench Hell fires because men are resolved to run into them. This Will does, as it were, even the Scales betwixt the Sin and the Damnation, equal the pleasure to the punishment, and fill the distance from a moment to Eternity.

But though this Will do clear God's Justice, yet it does not satisfy his Reason, he seems astonished at the choice; God himself cannot find a Ground for such a Resolution; and therefore does inquire, Why will ye die? Which is God's question, and my second Part.

It is the present pleasure sin does tempt your sensuality withal, whose agitations are so quick and strong that they surprise or break the forces of your Reason, and your Principles, put the Mind in disorder, and then seize it with such violence as to lead it captive to the Law of Sin and Death? 'It is true indeed thus both of them had their original, so they prevailed in Paradise, for when the Woman saw the Tree was good for food, and pleasant to the eye, and a Tree to be desired to make one wise, she took thereof and she did eat, although she knew that God had said, In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die, Gen. iii. But there was generous pleasure here, such as tempted the Soul, assaulted it with the appearances of Wisdom, and divine Knowledge: Ye shall be as God's, Gen. iii. 5. And sure 'tis no great wonder if the proper pleasures of the mind engage it, therefore when God would give a Precept liable to a Temptation of being broke, he laid it in the sphere of those things that delight the Soul, of Knowledge; but far be it that those of sensuality should ever have prevailed; Man may yield to the pleasure of being like God, but for pleasure to make himself a Beast is contradiction to Nature. For pleasure is but satisfaction of our appetites, and the more natural the inclination is, the higher and more powerful that Nature, and the desire eagerer, so much the more delightful is the satisfaction. Now it is certain that the reasonable faculty, the Soul or Spirit is the highest and most proper nature of a man: In all the rest he's not a step removed from Beasts, unless it be in shape, but in the accurateness of his senses is below them far; and therefore must be so in sensual satisfactions; but in his Soul he borders upon Angels, and does come towards God.

Now then that Soul being man's peculiar nature, the highest part of him, It follows its delights, Spiritual reasonable Joys must needs be the most natural and most proper for it, most conformed to it, and therefore the most taking with it. This may be cleared most irrefragably.

A Beast hath several ingredients of Nature in his making, he is an heavy body, and a Vegetable, and he hath also Sense which is his highest nature. Now though the only inclination of heavy bodies be to fall down to the Earth, and this be also natural to a Beast, we do not find that 'tis his greatest pleasure, sure he had rather feed than tumble in the Pasture; his chief delight lies in the satisfaction of his chiefest faculties, wherein he does excel, his Senses; and as Beasts differ and transcend in these, so do their pleasures also differ and exceed. A man also, as Aristotle says, does live a threefold Life: At first he is but a Plant-man, a growing span of living Creature, and he's born only into Animality, a Life of Sense, and at last educated into reasonable. Now the delights of his first Stages, whilst only Vegetation and Sense live, although proportioned to those states, yet have no savor to the mind; he grows through Nuts and Rattles to the use of Reason, and the pleasures of it also; these must keep even with the growing faculties and become higher, rational, and manly: Which if they do not, but the man still dwell upon the satisfaction of sense, he does confound the Stages, contradict the progresses of Nature; he hath the age and strength of Reason but to play the Child with, to exert it in those things that are but a Man's Rattles, hath the sagacity of an Intelligence merely to find out how to be a brute with greater luxury and relish.

Come therefore, show me now the sins which the delights of Reason do betray you to, and I will admit the Plea: But if you live your own reverse that you may die; renounce all your own pleasures first, that so you may renounce the joys of God and Heaven; and fall from Nature that you may fall into Hell, this case hath no pretence; and those pleasures cannot toll man on to death, which till the man be dead, and the brute only live within him cannot be his pleasures. And it is plain they are not pleasures to a Sober man that lives the life of Reason, not to say of Grace: Nor are they such to any man till he have trained and exercised himself into an habit of enduring them, and by a discipline of Torment made himself experienced for Vice and for Damnation: Nor is there ever any pleasure in some Vices. What is there in the dismal Wishes of man's imprecating passion? there cannot be music in those harsh horrors, and yet the Sinners will destruction so as that they call to God to pour it on them, and tear it down from Heaven, so that Pain and Disease seem to sauce those delights, and Death to be the tempter to the pleasure; 'tis evident men's reasons and their Practices must be first debauched, that they may count them Pleasures, and therefore pleasure cannot be the first mover in the Sinners race to Death.

But I will grant, that the Spirit and Flesh of Man by their so strait alliance and perpetual converse, may grow to have the same likes and dislikes, have but one appetite, and this alas! be that of flesh; to whose only satisfactions the man useth himself, by long Custom of which, the Soul doth so imbibe the Inclinations of the Body, that nothing of another kind can possibly be relish'd. In this case sensuality hath pleasures, yet such as cannot answer God's enquiry; for do but consult man's other Choices and you find a present satisfaction cannot work his Resolutions to forego great after-hopes, or run upon a foreseen ruin. Who will exchange his right to the Reversion of a Crown, which from his Father he shall certainly inherit and succeed to if he do out-live him, for a present Scene of Royalty, and choose a painted Coronet, the pomps and adorations of a Stage, and the applauses of a Croud before the real Glories of his Kingdom, the love and the obedience of his Subjects? And yet my Soul, the disproportion of the Sinners terms is infinitely greater; and there is no hazard, which to make his choice of present things more flattering, the others hopes are liable to: For that Heir of the Crown may die before the Crown fall to him; but it is impossible that we should miss of ours except we put ourselves by, by such choices; except we change it thus. And on the other side we know, men will adventure the Sentence of the Law by Robberies and murders to provide for Lusts, while they hope to be undiscovered: But sure a Prison made delightful by all arts of pleasure, and all plenties of it, will not hire a man to own those actions which shall forfeit him to certain shameful Execution the next Sessions, and yet this is the Sinners state exactly, he is ti'd and bound in the chain of his sins, they are it may be chains of Gold and softened with delices, but they reserve him to the Judgment of the great Assise: And yet he chooses these and puts them on as Ensigns of delight and honor.

Once more; Do not men choose a present Agony to keep off an afterevil, they tear their bowels with a Vomit to prevent a Surfeit, they cup and scarify, and with all artifice or pain upon themselves kill a Disease, yea they are well content to prolong torment so they may but prolong life; and though the preservation of it prove only continued pangs, and all they can effect is only this, that they are longer dying, yet they are glad to be so in all cases, except where the prescription is Virtue, and the death prescribed against Eternal.

Now why do you choose thus only in Sin and Hell? 'It is clear the very pleasure you change Heaven for, cannot invite you from this Life, and then you that will suffer anything rather than you will die, Why against all resistance will you die forever?

It is Secondly, because you know not what it is to die the second Death? at least your notions of it are so slight and easy, that they cannot fright you from a pleasure or cope with a temptation to it; and so though present satisfactions are not able to engage you upon present ruin they can upon the after-death.

Indeed the Sinner would have reason if it meant no more than hath been taught of late by one that hath gained many Proselytes among the Virtuosi of Religion; After the Resurrection the Reprobates shall be, saith he, in the state that Adam and his Posterity were in after his Sin (i. e.) the state we are now in, Live as we do, Marry and give in Marriage, and cease to be when they have got some heirs to succeed them in Tophet. Poor unhappy Souls these! that never had any sin to merit being there, nor any Sentence to condemn them thither but this man's: Who must put them there successively one after other, to find employment for Everlasting fire. A Doctrine such as had an Angel Preach'd from Heaven by S. Paul 's award he must have been Anathema; when the Devil made Religions, and Theology came from the bottomless Pit, he never found out such an Engine to convey men into it as this pleasant notion of the punishment of sin therein; as if Leviathan were made to take his pastime in that Lake also, by such interpretations, which surely were contrived to make out the Assertion of that Romish Priest, who says, that those in Hell love to be there; nay more, that 'twas impossible for God to do a kinder thing for them than to put them there. Doctrines to be abhor'd as Hell itself; and yet upon these grounds he builds their Church by demonstration, so strong as that the Gates of Hell cannot prevail against it; and in truth they have no reason to assault it on these terms. But to pass by such dotages and frenzies, you will be able sure to check all those presumptions which grow from sleight impressions of the second Death, if you but take that prospect of it which the close of this time gives: look forward through this season, which is designed for you to prepare the way of the Lord to his Passion in, and you shall see the Death that does await iniquity.

If you behold him coming to Jerusalem with Hosannas and Palms about him, as if Death were his Triumph, his Passion so desirable, that he rode to meet it, which he never did at any other time; and then complaining he was straitened until it were accomplished; as he had throws of Longing after it, and singing when he went out to it, you would believe the Sinner never chose his death, sweetened by his most pleasant sin, with a more cheerful eagerness. But then open the Garden and you see his apprehensions of it throw him on his Face to pray against it. See how he sweats and begs, his very Prayer is a Passion, the zeal of it is Agony! and canst thou choose that he so dreads and deprecates? and when he durst not meet the apprehensions, wilt thou stand the storm? see what a sting death hath, when it makes out-lets for such clots and globes of Blood, and stings the Soul so too, that it pours out itself in Sweat. And then he sinks again under the deprecation of it, and prays that that Cup may pass from him. Blessed Savior! when thou hadst just now made thy Death thy Legacy, thy Sacrament, dost thou entreat to scape this death? if this Cup pass from thee, what will the Cup of Blessing profit us? thou hadst but now bequeathed a Cup to us which was the New Testament in thy Blood, and now wilt thou not shed that Blood? But dost thou refuse thy Cup? Oh 'twas a Cup of deadly Wine, red with God Indignation, poisoned with Sin! And can the Sinner thirst for the Abyss of this, the Lake that hath no bottom? and when he goes again, and prays the same words the third time, be yet not only so supine as not ask to scape it, seldom and very sleight in any Prayer or wish against it, but also so resolved to have it, as to gape that he may swill it down to everlastingness? Follow him from that Garden and you see him even dying under his Cross, he cannot bear that when it is laden with sin, who yet upholdeth all things by the word of his Power. 'It is said the time will come when the Sinner will cry out to the Hills to fall on him, any weight but that of iniquity, the burden of that is intolerable, 'tis easier for him to bear a Mountain than a Vice, and yet Christ saith he hath a beam in his Eye, and can he shrink at any weight whose part, that is most sensible, tender to an expression, can bear that which shoulders must fall under, only Pillars can sustain? Oh yes; that which did sink the shoulders of Omnipotence: Then the Mountains rather and the Rocks to cover; but in vain, they will not cover, for thy very Groans will rent them: Christ's were so sad that his did, they tore the Rocks, and that which is much more inflexible, the Monuments: Death started at them, and the bonds of the Grave loosened, and the Dust was frighted into Resurrection; and more, the Hypostatick Union seemed rent by them, the God to have forsaken his own Person. And can the Sinner hope to stand this shock? will the courage of his Iniquity make his heart harder than those Rocks, more insensible than the Grave, and better able to endure than he that was a God? and will you die into this state eternally? which it was necessary for him to have the assistance of Divinity in his Person, that he might be able to endure one day, and which yet notwithstanding made one day intolerable.

The sum is this, a Person so desiring Death and yet so dreading it, and sinking under the essays of it, and this Person the Son of God, and that dread merely because there was sin in the Death, (for if this were not in the cause, no Martyr but had born death with more courage but that Son of God) all this as it does leave no Reason for the Sinners choice of death Eternal, so neither doth it leave a possibility of bearing it: And if so, give me leave in God's Name to Expostulate, the last employment of these words, Why will ye die?

After this killing Prospect, while the damp of it is on you, let my Bowels debate with you, which yearn more over you than they did over my Beloved Son in whom I was well pleased; when I have sent my only Son, God, one with my own Self, to be made Man, that he might suffer what was necessary to be suffered to preserve you from eternal sufferings; when I have laid on him that was brought up with me from everlasting, and that was daily my Delight, all your Iniquities and my own Indignation, that so you might be freed from both: When I have found out, made an Expiation, with which I am more pleased than ever your transgressions offended me, which hath quite blotted out your sins and my Displeasure; when your Redemption from death is made, the Ransom paid, the Price is in my hand, why do you then refuse yourselves, your own Eternal Blessedness which was thus dearly purchased and is ready for you? Why will you seize that Indignation which you are redeemed from, and force those sufferings on yourselves, which have been laid already and inflicted on another? 'It is a small thing that you refuse me, the return of my Expence, that which I gave my Son for; but do you renounce Happiness because my Love and Blood is in it? and will you die because you may, and I desire you should live? when my Son went from the essential felicities of my Bosom to embrace Agonies, and died for you; why will you also die? as you have slain his Person, will you Crucify his Kindness too? and crucify yourselves rather than have it? and having used him most despitefully, will you therefore use his favors so? and not let his Death and Passion do you any good? contemn his methods of Salvation, his divine Acts of making you forever Blessed? is your Savior and Life itself so hateful to you? and after such Redemption of your persons is there no redemption of your Will from perishing? nothing of value that can bribe your choice against it? nothing that can betroth you into a desire of Life, and take you off from your resolves to die? had I set no advantage on the other side, if sin had sweetened misery to your Palate, it had been no such great despite and contradiction to Appetite; but when Heaven and the Joys of God are in the Scale against it, to prefer Misery is Wretchless beyond aggravation. Oh why will you rather die? Those very things that tempt your Wills were they abstracted from the death they do inveigle you into, were they sincere and innocent, if they were set against that Life, that blessed life, immortal Life, would vanish quite in the comparison when you should see they are but frolicks of delight, that never take you but when you are turned up to them, in moods and fits; and the complacencies you take in them are but starts of Appetite, that swells and breaks out to them and then falls again, and so the pleasures die even in the birth, and therefore cannot satisfy; indeed do but disquiet an immortal appetite such as man's is, so that it were impossible to choose a life, these rather, although there were no misery annexed to them, if you considered: For it were to resolve that a few drops were more than an immence Ocean of Delight, a Moment longer than Eternity, a Part were bigger than the Whole, an Atom greater than an Infinite. Now there is nothing then that can prefer these to your choice but the Death only; and Oh will ye without and against all Temptation, Will ye die?

O thou my Soul! take other Resolutions, thou seest the things that men with so much care and sin provide to make their lives delightful here, although success answer their care, are vain and helpless things, and life itself as vain, and I must die, and drop from Heaven; and therefore be thou sure to take a care their treacherous comforts do not make me die into the everlasting want of them and of all comforts.

The Artificial pleasures of the Palate whether in meats or drinks, forced tastes, that do at once satisfy and provoke the Appetite, will relish ill when I begin to swallow down my spittle; but sure I am, I am invited to the Supper of the Lamb, to drink new Wine with Christ in my Father's Kingdom; The fatted Calf is dressing for my Entertainment, and shall I choose to be a while a Glutton with the Swine, rather than the eternal Guest of my Father's Table and Bosom? and refuse these for a few sick Excesses which would end in qualms, and gall, and vomits, if there were no guilt to rejolt too, and which will kindle a perpetual Feaver? The Honors and the Glories of this Life will lose their shine when I am going to make my Bed in the Dark, in a black lonely desolate hole of Earth; my Gayeties must die, when I must say to Corruption, thou art my Father, and to the Worm thou art my Mother and my Sister: And if there were pride or ambition in them, their Worm will never die, that Pride will make me fall as low as Lucifer, that Glory will go out into utter darkness, and that Ambition change my Honor into everlasting Shame, Envy, and Torment: But sure I am that there are Glorious Robes, and Thrones, and Scepters in God's Promises; and let thy gayety, my Soul! be in the Robe of Immortality, the Throne of thy Ambition that of Glory.

When I shall lie tortured or languishing in my last Bed, Palaces and Possessions will no more relieve me, than the Landskip of them in the Hangings can do it. And if there were Covetousness, Bribery, Sacrilege, or Injustice in them, I shall be carried out of these, and have no other Habitation assigned me, but with the Devil and his Angels, shall inherit and possess nothing but the Almighty's Indignation forever.

But in my Father's House are many Mansions, Places prepared for me, and an Inheritance as wide as Heaven, as Endless and Incorruptible as Eternity, and God Himself: And sure if I may choose, there I will live where there is neither Will nor possibility to die; where there is Life, fullness of Joy, Pleasures for Evermore. To which, &c.

The Sixth SERMON, Preached at WHITE-HALL.

MY Text is the result of the Pious man's Audit, the foot of the account in summing up his whole that he hath either in Possession or Desire; and instead of nice Division of the Words I shall observe in them these Subjects of Discourse.

First, the different tenure, or condition of Estates in the two different Countries we relate to, this here is a Land only of desires, the other is a place of enjoyments, Have in Heaven, Desire on Earth. Yea

Secondly, Though our estate here in this Earth be present, and that other seem removed far off, yet the possessions of that are present and in hand, but the most native satisfactions of the Earth are still at distance, only the object of our aims and expectations I have, now I have in Heaven, on the Earth I but desire.

Thirdly, Here is the matter of both these desires and enjoyments to the Pious man; No Person or nothing (for so it bears also) but God: There is nothing upon Earth that I desire besides thee. And as to Heaven the negation is expressed emphatically by a Question, Whom have I in Heaven but thee?

Yet least this Question should look like an Expostulation, and he that asks it seem unsatisfied with his Portion, we will therefore,

Lastly, see the Importance of it to the Christian, since our Savior is gone up into Heaven, see whom the Christian hath there: And if the Psalmist could find none but God, and David (if he were the Author) could not see the Son of David there, yet since Christ is set at the Right hand of God, the Christians present Interest in Heaven is such, that looking with contempt on all that worldly men applaud themselves in the enjoyment of, rejecting all but thee O Christ, he justly triumphs in resolving of this question to himself, and being satisfied in having thee, he does renounce even the desiring anything but thee.

Of these in their order beginning here on Earth, where our tenure even of earthly things is but desire, this World does give no satisfactions in hand, but still they are only the objects of our Expectations and wishes.

When God hath given Man an erect Countenance, Eyes that do naturally look towards him, and the very frame of him is such, that Heaven is his constant Object; it were no wonder if his looks and thoughts were always there, since both the duty and necessity of that does seem imprest upon him in his making, and to desire things above, is, as it were, the Law in his members.

But when he swims in delicacies here upon the Earth, is immersed in the plenties of all kinds, that these should give him nothing but desires of themselves, that the delights should not be present to him, but he should still pursue and need that which he is encompassed with, that while with open mouth and in a most intemperate current he swills down the pleasures, yet his open mouth should gape only with thirst, and he be sensible of nothing but the want of these, is strange even to astonishment: Yet such it seems the nature of them is. When S. John would enumerate all that is in the World the particular that he gives in is thus, 1 John ii. 16. All that is in the world, the lust of the Flesh, the lust of the Eyes, and the Pride of Life. He does not say, the objects of these Lusts that are to serve and satisfy them, for there's no such thing as satisfaction, but only lust; and if we make enquiry into the particulars we shall find it.

To begin with that of the Eyes, Covetousness, or the love of Money: 'It is evident that where an Object is not useful to the faculty, it cannot satisfy, for satisfaction is fulfilling of our needs and uses, but Money is not useful to the sight, nor indeed does it prove useful to, or serve any of the Covetous man's occasions or faculties; rather the contrary in every kind, he does bereave himself of good because he hath it; He is in agonies of trouble and solicitude, lest he should need, and not have that, which when he hath acquired he will still need, and will not have enjoyment of. Nor is it possible it should be otherwise, for since there is no natural original or cause of this his Appetite, for 'tis not emptiness that makes him hungry, who is more ravenous the more full he is, whose most empty bowels shrink and cling together, and having learned not to expect repast, while his bags and desires stretch, and are enlarged by being stuff'd.

Nor is it fear of future want that makes him eager to provide so, for why should he be so unsatisfied in his providing against want, that will want more the more he is provided?

And since as there is no natural cause, so there is also no natural measure for this Appetite of his; for Natures measure is our real uses of the Object. But this man heaps up useful things that he does never mean to use: Since therefore it hath neither bound nor cause in Nature, 'tis monstrous, and must needs be an unlimited lust, uncapable of satisfaction: And all this man's Wealth does purchase nothing for him but desires, and is not the content but the Lust of his Eye.

And the same reasoning will conclude the next, the Pride of life, which is the Lust of a Sense as wholly unconcerned in all the Pomps and garnishes of Pride, as the Eye is in Wealth: 'tis a Lust of the Ear, all is but the man's passion to hear himself, his trappings, or condition commended. The Learned man that's proud, does think of no return for all his toils and watches, all the present racks and tortures of his mind, and all the after-ones that he does pull upon his body, but to be spoken well of: He fasts, mortifies, and denies himself more than the Covetous man can do, merely to fill himself with wind; he reconciles the Babel of all Languages, and Sciences too in his own head but for a word, only to hear an Euge, and this with such solicitude that if the breath of men's Applause should fail him he would straight expire, as if his Soul breathed only at his Ear. If my pride lies in gayeties, all Natures Wardrobe must be rifled, the beauties of the Universe desloured, the Art and Sweat too of all Nations employed to attire my person, or to dress my Room, rather indeed to dress the Tongues and furnish, out the talk of other persons, who must entertain mine Ears with the discourse of my own splendors; which is all the use I can make of it; the Eastern Rocks must send me Diamonds, merely to dart a line of light into another's eyes, which may return to me in a report that I have such fine Jewels, and I have nothing else of all my sumptuous glories but the mere Echo of their shine, which is reflected and beat back to me in commendations. With so much expense anxiety and sin, I do provide only for other men's discourses, or it may be, envies. Now these are none of my enjoyments, and therefore I have nothing of them but the Lust and the desire.

As for those of the flesh, the third remaining kind, they seem indeed to be exempted from this reasoning; the sensual person gorges his desires, and in Solomon's phrase makes his Soul enjoy good: Yet the same Solomon salves that appearance too, in saying when provisions increase, they are increased that eat them; and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes? My broad and my cramb'd Tables do not more enlarge or serve my appetite, give me no satisfaction but only that of seeing many Dishes full, and many men consuming them, as if Luxury also were a lust of the Eye. It hath been said indeed, that the Eye is the Gluttons most unsatisfied and greedy part, and it must needs be so if its lust lie to all that other men devour, and if it crave not only for the man's own stomach, but for throngs of Clients, Parasites, and attendants. And 'tis too plain the other Twin Intemperance lusts by the same rules and laws: It does not only claim its seat in the Eye, which makes itself a Judge of Liquors for the Palate, and does not choose them by the uses of their moisture, but by their body, by their air, and by the mode, and other Rules of the authentic standard Drinkers; as if men thirsted in the fashion only: But this Eye also, as the Riotous man's did, gapes for company, and thirsts to see the Vice go round, it drinks in nothing with so much delight as the Wine, when a weaker Companion returns it back again in Vomit, at that foul horrid spectacle it sparkles and triumphs. Now 'twere in vain to ask Solomon's question, What good is there in this? or what enjoyment? to urge that meats and drinks cannot give satisfaction to the Eye that hath no Palate, and then cry out Oh Prodigy that it should Lust thus! As for the other kind of Riots, where with arts of Epicurism men contrive to feast and entertain their private Appetites, and put a Patrimony into sauce for their own Palats, men sordidly Luxurious. 'It is evident that these are studied to provoke, men choose such Wines as they may longest drink, and with elaborate condiments make forced hunger as well as dishes, so that the Riotous design only to Lust, and the whole mystery of Luxury is to create desires.

Lastly, for that one that hath ingross'd the name of Lust, it gives in a full Evidence against itself. For the Adulterer, much more irrational than the most greedy Miser; is insatiate in desiring what he hath, and his Lust will not use his remedy, lest so it should allay and quench the Lust: And whilst with so much fever of desire, he courts nothing else but the change, and values that alone equal with all the discontents of this life, all the miseries of that to come, and will go to the Devil merely for variety, as it is plain: Adultery hath nothing proper to itself but the desire, is a mere looseness of the Fancy, which ranges in wild lusts, and which hath no enjoyment that's peculiar to it but the lusting only; so 'tis also plain that this Lust must be endless, for that principle of Change which gives it all its incitation must never let it rest; for then 'tis not variety. S. John said therefore most expressly, All that is in the World is Lust; men only can desire here, pursuing their desires just as they do their shadows, no eagerness or hast can bring them nearer, still they only pursue, yea like him that would hug and force a Cloud, his empty arms return upon his breast with strokes; and while they seek to catch the Object wound his Bosom: And thus it must be till we fix our passion there, where only there is satisfaction even on God; the object of the pious man's desire, and my next Part.

Nothing besides thee, or with thee: so it signifies also.

There is nothing upon Earth that I desire with thee.

Had he said, Nothing without thee, the emptiness of everything below which the Lord and his Blessing is not in, had made this his determination just and necessary: But sure when God hath put other needs in my making, and hath provided supplies for them, those also are as just and necessary objects of desire, while they are with and under him: But yet, he that had brought all his affections into David's frame, might well say he desired nothing upon Earth besides, nothing with God; for he had weaned his very Flesh and all the craving appetites of Sense from their own objects, and had fixed them upon God in all their strength and vigor. My Soul, saith he, thirsteth for thee, (elsewhere, my Soul gaspeth unto thee, even as a thirsty Land,) and my flesh also longeth after thee, Psalm lxiii. 1. How! My Soul thirsteth for thee? with thee indeed is the Well of Life: But Thirst is an Appetite, gasping a consequent defailance and impatience of the Body; to both which the Soul is a mere stranger, as it is also to the ways by which the Body does desire; • or the Soul is drawn by moral engagements, by persuasions and motives, there is place for deliberation and Choice in her Desires, she can demur in her pursuits, divert her Inclinations, and quench a Desire with a Consideration; but the Flesh pursues in a more impulsive manner, is drawn and spur'd on by such impetuous propensions as are founded in matter: You can no more persuade a thirsty Palate not to thirst, than you can woo a falling Stone to stay its hast, or invite it to turn aside from its direction to the Center. Yea but the Soul also exerts itself in all these appetites of flesh and matter, and with all their violence when it looks on God, when we have once had a taste, or when indeed we but discern our needs of him, whether our Temporal, or Spiritual, those of the Soul or Flesh, all the desires of both then fly at him, and with a tendency most close and uncontrollable, then nothing besides him. For all the appetites of Body crowd into the Soul that they may catch at God, that Thirsts and Gaspes. And the Soul does put on the violent impetuous agitations of the Bodies Appetites; My Soul thirsteth for thee, and my Flesh also longeth after thee. What Longing is, whether an Appetite or Passion of the Flesh or Mind, whose signatures are more express indeed upon the Flesh than those of any other, yet whose impulses are so quick and so surprizing, as they were Spirit; I shall not now inquire: but sure if the Flesh long it should be for some carnal Object, for that is proportioned to it; Flesh and the Creature use to close indeed, and they imbibe each other, as if they knew to fill and satisfy each other; yea some there are that have brought down their Souls to the propensions of Flesh, have given to their very Spirits an infusion of carnality, for they mind only fleshly things. But by the rates of David 's practice it should seem the pious man does the just contrary; sublimes his Flesh into a Soul, drains all the carnal Appetites out of it, weans it from all its own desires, and teacheth it those of the Spirit only, makes it long for God. Now he whose flesh is defaecated thus, and as it were inur'd to the condition which it shall put on, when it awakes from its corruption, as if it were already in that place, whose happiness and desires have no use of Body, and were in that state where their Bodies neither hunger or thirst, for these he hath translated from his flesh; 'tis his Soul only thirsts, and that for God: As if he were indeed like Angels now, how can this man desire anything on Earth besides the Lord, who is and does already what they are and do in Heaven, where we have nothing but thee?

But notwithstanding this exalted temper, though we should arrive at this Seraphic constitution of desires, and though God hath now made himself to us the proper object of these appetites, for since God struck the Rock for us which Rock was Christ; since the true Bread came down from Heaven, if our Flesh long for God there is a satisfaction ready, he hath made his Flesh be meat indeed; if our Souls thirst for God, he can furnish drink for a Soul, the Blood of God.

But yet while this Soul sojourns in this earthly Tabernacle, the man will still want other supplies, and may be not desire them; or can he choose indeed? For they that tell us stories of some men, whose hungers and thirsts after God as they devoured all other desires in them, so also gave themselves no other satisfaction but panem Dominum, that 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 Supersubstantial daily Bread, the Lord; these men I say, would find it hard to make out how bare Species could nourish and sustain a bodily life. Yea Christ himself when he was upon the Earth did hunger, and although it was his meat to do his Father's Will, yet when he was an hungered Angels came and ministered unto him, and then may not our earthly needs desire something besides him?

That while we are upon the Earth all those necessities are in our constitution is certain; but that we need not desire for them, or anything besides Him, is as certain: Because to them that desire him all these things shall be added, they are annexed by Promise, Matth vi. 33. it is for such to be solicitous who would have something they must have alone; something that cannot come along with God. But if I be assured that all my needs shall be supplied in him, I need desire nothing besides him; now this Promise he must perform; for he that when he put Man in a state of Immortality in Paradise, provided him a Tree of Life that might forever furnish and sustain him: For that Age also that he does design a man a being for his Service here upon the Earth, he must allow him necessaries for his being and his Service, otherwise he can nor serve, nor be: And then if they be certain what need he desire them? 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 saith S. Chrysostom; These are not objects for our careful wishes, but our trusts and confidences, we may assure ourselves of these if we have him, these are his Appendages, and then why should I put them with him into my Devotions? when my Soul lies gasping towards God in Prayer, my desires seizing on his Blessednesses, to take them off from him, and to make my desires turn aside to little earthly things and fix them there, is to affront not my God only, but my Prayer too; and when these things are sure, seems to betray a mind too Earthly and too apprehensive of these needs: Surely I were most strangely necessitous, or strangely greedy, if both God and that which shall be added to him were not enough for me: More wretched, or else more unsatisfied than Hell, if the Almighty were not sufficient for me; if he be my provision, then I need desire nothing besides him.

But yet Necessities will crave; Hunger does croak aloud, Thirst makes the insensate Earth to gasp; as if with open mouth it gap'd not only to receive but beg God's showers, and God expects to be entreated for these things: He feeds but those young Ravens that do call upon him, and the young Lions roar to him and seek their meat at God: The eyes of all things wait on him for that; yea, this our Psalmist in this very Psalm desires other things; and Christ himself hath put into his little Summary these needs and these desires, Give us this day our daily bread; and my Text does but regulate not exclude these desires, if we shall read it in the old Translation, there is none upon Earth that I desire in comparison of thee 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 There's none or nothing that I desire or delight in equally with thee, like thee, so we translate the same word, ver. 5. I shall not doubt to beg what my needs crave: But if God, and any the most signal earthly advantage stand in competition, and I cannot have one with the other, his Providence or his Commands have made them inconsistent, that I will not desire with him, then he shall be my Choice alone: Rather Obedience and my God than any satisfaction how desirable soever!

This is the Touchstone of a Pious man's desires; 'tis not unusual for inclinations to things below, more to possess our thoughts, employ our faculties than any other, and we are far more sensible of their impressions, more busy in the pursuit, and more tender in our cares of them: But if upon contest betwixt God and our inclinations, upon debate betwixt a Pleasure and Command, we can decree for God and for Obedience, pass Sentence with the Precept, we are safe, here the desire is not inordinate. 'It is a known instance, and you may have seen, a tender Mother spending almost her whole time in caressing her little Infant, you would think she had Eyes for no uses but to view it, and that she had her Arms and Breasts but to embrace and suckle it, to whom these are so wholly given up as if they had no part for any other, as the Husband, had no share in her entertains and caresses of whom are far more sleight and not so pressing: But should it come to this pinch once, that she must straight resolve to part with one of these, however close her Arms would grasp her Child to rescue him (to force whom thence were like the tearing of her bowels from her) yet would she give those bowels to redeem her bosom guest, and the Husband would be the Choice; so that although the other inclinations were more expressive, these are the stronger and the better settled. So it may happen, we may be more sensibly affected to some dear things here below, our thoughts, and Eyes, and our embraces cling and fasten more to these; but if it come to this that we must leave one, break with the Duty or the Passion; if we resolve however not to part with God, but lay hold there and let the other go, then our affections are not only regular when we desire nothing in comparison with him, but our desires are enjoyments, seize and take possession of him, and we have him: So my Text implies here, Whom have I in Heaven but thee? importing that we have him: Which brings me to the other parts that yet remain to be discoursed of.

Three things are here to be considered.

1. That Heaven is the place of Possessions in opposition to this Land of Desires. 2. That God is the possession there. 3. That the Pious man hath this possession in present.

The first of these is so much common place, I shall not stay upon it; those only qualities that make this World to be a Land of Desires, have no place there, to wit, the instability and emptiness of all things in it, he that lays hold on them does but grasp Mercury, which the more he clasps the more he forces it to slip away, and he retains only the soil and the defilement of it, like Lightning which but passes by, stays not to cherish, only dazzles, and, it may be, scorches: So the shine of Earthly glories startles the mind, amuses us, inflames desires of them, and goes out. But then above the tenure is Eternity, and that assures immutability; yea, if it be nunc stance, an indivisible Infinity of permanent duration, whose every point does coexist to every point, a perfect and entire possession, all at once, of an interminable life that never can be all possessed; then nothing can pass by us, or cease from us, but we shall always every moment have, what we shall have in every any moment: Our enjoyment also being like him that we enjoy, all in the whole and all in every part; being not only endless in the mass, but every moment of it is immortal: And then there can be nothing but enjoyment; no place for desire there, where there is nothing absent, where all past and all futurity is always present; and where also the Infinite and all-sufficient God is the Possession; which is my next Proposition, and that God himself affirms.

Gen. xv. i. I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward. Yea, this he hath present possession of, which my third Proposition and my Text asserts, in saying, Whom have I in Heaven but thee? importing thee I have.

The things we call most our possessions he both personal and real, and our portions and inheritances: Now David claims God under both these dues, Thou art my portion O Lord and the lot of mine Inheritance; as other men maintain themselves by these, so I live upon thee: And that we may not think that God is such but in Reversion, those are present possessions which men reap the uses of in present to themselves.

Now what is there of God the Pious man hath not the present uses of? His Eyes are over him, and his Ears are open to his Prayers, watch to attend each motion of his heart, and underneath him are the everlasting Arms to carry and sustain him, his right hand wears him as his signet, and his left hand pours down Blessings on him; his wings are spread for him to nestle in that warm security, and hide him in the shadow of; his bowels found and turn within him with compassion over him, and himself self is about his Bed and about all his paths; not so much to spy out his ways, as to preserve him in them all, and he waits that he may be gracious. In a word, all the Securities that God's Preserving Mercies signify, the watches of his Providence, the Blessings that fulfill his Attributes of goodness, all are exerted upon his occasions, are made the present objects and the satisfactions of his nearest senses, and he may taste and see how gracious God is.

And then give me O Lord! seizin of this the Pious man's Estate, I shall not envy other men's possessions; though one lay House to House, and Land to Land till he become the Lord of his Horison, and his Eyes cannot travel out of his Demesne: For notwithstanding that we may have known ill Courses or ill Accidents consume all this, or Force throw him out of all, and that great Lord have no House but a Goal, nor Land enough to make a Grave: But sure I am, that I shall be provided for in all necessities, unless there happen such a one for which there's no relief in God; nor can I be disseis'd, they must void Heaven e're they can disfurnish me: For thee I have in Heaven.

But yet, though chance nor violence cannot put me out, yet I may forfeit this Possession too; for Sin will separate betwixt me and my God, cast me out of his presence and enjoyments, as sure as it did Adam out of Paradise. And then alas! if I had none but him in Heaven, he is now become my Adversary, holds possession against me, as he did that of Paradise with flames; so he does Rain snares, fire and brimstone thence, and this is all the Sinner's portion, Psalm xi. All that I am like to get, unless I have a person that will attribute the cause, or mediate, there is no hopes of a recovery for me if I have none in Heaven but thee.

Now here my last Consideration will come in.

If while my Soul lies groveling under fearful Apprehensions of its Forfeiture, casting about for help and finding none upon the Earth, if it look upwards and inquire whom have I in Heaven? have I none there but my offended Adversary God? it may resolve itself with comfort he hath other interests there. For,

First, I have an Intercessor there, Rom. viii. 34. a Master of Requests, one that will not only hand in my Petitions, get access for my Prayers and my tears to God, but will make them effectual: For saith S. Paul, Seeing we have a great High Priest that's passed into the Heavens, let us come boldly to the Throne of Grace, that we may obtain Mercy and find Grace in time of need, Heb. iv. 14. 16. For though my supplications have not strength nor ardour that can mount them into Heaven, and are too impure, however washed in my repenting Tears, to draw nigh to the Lord, yet being put into the High Priests Censor with the Altar coals to give them holy flame, and wrapped up in his Cloud and Smoak of Incense that will cover all the failings of my Prayers, they may get access into his Ears and his Compassions. Indeed how can they choose when Christ does join his Intercessions? for my requests will go where the High Priests do go; he carries them, now He himself doth sit at the right hand of God: The intercessions that are made for me are made upon the Throne, and therefore cannot be repuls'd from thence, and such desires command and they create effects.

But should my Prayers fail, and should God hide himself from my Petitions, withdraw himself and hide his face from them, although they be even before his face. Yet.

Secondly, I have an Advocate there too, 1 John ii. 1, 2. If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins; one that not only pleads for me, but brings the satisfaction of my Forfeiture in his hands, makes the just value plead; appears there with his Blood, and proves a recompense.

'It is Jesus Christ the righteous Advocate, that does propitiate and atone son, what he pleads for; purchase what he begs. 'It is true, that poor Worm, saith he, hath provoked thee often Lord! but thou didst smite the Man that is thy fellow for it; Behold my Hands, and look into my Sides, see there thy Recompence; wilt thou refuse that Satisfaction thy self didst contrive, and thy beloved Son did make? why did a Person of the blessed Trinity descend from Heaven and Divinity to be made Sin and be a Curse; but to Redeem him from the Curse and Sin, and to entitle him again to the possession of Heaven and God? Why was I Crucified but that thou mightest be aton'd and he be pardoned? Thus he solicits for us there, presents himself in our stead, as our Attorney. He was not a public Person only on the Cross, but he is so at the right hand of God; as he was there our Representative and bore our sins, so he is here our Representative and bears our wants; was there our Proxey to the Wrath of God, is here our Proxey to his Mercies and Compassions. He looks upon himself as in our case, whose Cause and Persons he supplies, and so is prompted to desire and beg for our poor sakes, and he looks upon us as on himself, and so obtains as for his own beloved sake, pleads as ourselves, and then as to himself he does decree Sentence and grant: For

Thirdly, I have there a Judge, and this is he, who sits at the right hand of God to Judge the quick and dead; I might have said a Savior, for he was exalted to a Savior to give Remission of Sins: But my Judge is as kind a word. For however there be some will cry for Rocks and Hills to hide them from his Face, yet this they are afraid of is the Face but of the Lamb, Apoc. vi. 16.

And it is strange that they who can look upon Hell, and charge Fiends in a sin, should tremble at a Lamb, and fly him so: But to the Faithful and sincere endeavoring Christian though be sins, as his Advocate is his propitiation, so his Judge is his Sacrifice; is that Lamb that does take away the sins of the World, is his • in-offering, his expiation only removed off from the Altar to the Judgment-Seat, indeed the Mercy-Seat, the Throne of his Atonement, and his Absolution: Where his Judge notwithstanding that his Forseit shall Decree Possession to him, Come ye blessed of my Father inherit the Kingdom prepared for you.

Lastly, we have our first fruits, for so S. Paul does call our Savior; and then in whatsoever sense that which is done to the first Fruits is applicable to the Harvest (all this being hallowed in their Consecration) in that sense we ourselves are raised to the right hand of God together with this our First Fruits. And now O Lord! whom have I in Heaven but thee? I have myself in pledge and earnest there.

And then they that rather than have these Interests, these Heavenly possessions in present, will have only desires here on Earth, are certainly of a preverse and Reprobate choice. Sure it would make Consideration sick to think of the comparison betwixt the after-expectations of a Pious man, and those things which our worldly persons call present Enjoyments; how for the little spangles of their pride, they are so taken with its rustling Pomp, they reject Glory that can never wither, fade, or sully; forfeit the being clothed upon with Immortality. How they lose all that everlasting Heaven means, for little things that go by in a Whirl-wind, come in storm and so they pass away; refuse inmortal Hallelujahs for a Song, cast away solid Joys, and an Eternal weight of Blessedness for froth, for the shadow of smoke. Perchance this may be said for them, the nearness of the object does impose upon them, they choose something in present rather than dry future hopes. But then when that advantage to lies on the other side, their Choice hath no Temptation; when the Pious man's possessions are in hand, the others only in desire; in view indeed they may be, he does catch at and pursue them still; But the hinder Wheel of the Chariot that presses and with larger turns and rowlings hastens after, may as soon hope to undertake the first, as that man reach a satisfaction; still it removes, and he does only heat his appetite in posting after it, only get more desire. Now 'tis prodigious that these great Men of Sense should be men of such Faith and Expectation as to trust and hope in things that have so constantly, so daily mocked their confidences and desires, yet be not only Infidels to all God's blessed preparations which they have nor reason nor Experience against, but also have no sense nor relish of himself in present: Not taste nor see how gracious the Lord is.

'It is said, that the desires of Earthly sensual things do make the greatest part of the Torments of Hell: Now though this Doctrine be false and pernicious, yet 'tis plain that Torment must attend strong passions, and most infinite desires which are radicated in the Sinner's heart, and which he carries hence and cannot there deposit, and to which yet satisfactions are impossible, against his knowledge to be mad, to have what he knows all the World cannot make it possible for him to have, this tears his Soul. Affections, these that may be said in some sense to fulfil some of the expressions of the Torments of that place, their Envy makes the gnashing of their Teeth, and their Desires are their Vultures. Thus Tantal • s 's riotous hunger that does gnaw his bowels, is his Worm that never dies; and his intemperate thirst his everlasting burnings; and his Water that he cannot reach or taste of, is his Lake of fire without Metaphor; So that desire alone without its satisfaction, is so much of Hell, and yet this is the worldly sensual man's estate exactly here on Earth; for he hath nothing but desires and lusts; and his condition is not easier at all, for how is Tantalus more wretched than a Midas, or than any covetous wretch, who in the midst of affluence and heaps, hungers as much as Midas did for meat and for Gold too, and an touch neither for his uses? so that the Worlds delights are very like the miseries of Hell, and men with so much eager and impatient pursuit do but anticipate their torments, and invade Damnation here.

And if the case be so, sure there is no great self-denial in our Psalmist here, when he resolves to desire nothing upon Earth in comparison of his God: 'It is no such glorious conquest of my Appetite to make it not pursue a present Hell, and an eternal one annexed to it before a Savior: Yet the World does so.

Some there are that desire Money rather; and although when Judas did so, this desire could not bear itself, but cast all back again; and though it did disgorge, it burst him too; the Sin itself supplied the Law, and his guilt was his Execution. Yet this will not terrify, men will do the like, betray a Master, a Savior, and a God; only not for so little money peradventure. Others, when the Lord paid his own Blood for their Redemption, yet if their wrath thirsts for his Blood that does offend them, their revenge makes their Enemies the sweeter blood, though their own Soul bleed to death in his stream. To others the deservings of the Partner of an unclean moment, are much greater than all that the Lord Jesus knew to merit at their hands or purchase for them. And it is no wonder they are so ungrateful to their Savior, when they are so barbarous to themselves, as to choose not to have present Divine Possessions rather than not suffer the vengeance of their own Appetites; choose merely to desire here, though that be to do what they do in Hell, rather than have in Heaven. O thou my Soul! if thou wilt needs desire, propose at least some satisfaction to thy Appetite, do not covet only needs thirst for a fever, and desire merely to inflame desire and Torments: But seek there where all thy wants will find an infinite happy supply, even in thy Savior; covet the riches of his Grace and Goodness, thirst for the fountain opened for transgression, for the waters of the well of Life, desire him that is the desire of all Nations; yet why should we desire even him? when we have him in Heaven, and we have nothing upon Earth left to desire, but that God who hath exalted him unto his Kingdom in Heaven, would in his due time exalt us also to the same place, whither our Savior Christ is gone before. To whom, &c.

The Seventh SERMON, Preached at WHITE-HALL. Third Wednesday in LENT. 1663/4.

I Shall not break this single short Command asunder into Parts, but shall instead of doing that observe three Advents of our Savior in this Life, before that last to Judgment: For each of which as it must concern us, there must be preparation made by us. In pressing which I do not mean to urge you to do that which none but God can do; It is not in man to direct his own ways, much less the Lord's; The very preparations of the Heart are from him. Therefore supposing the preventings of his Graces, I shall subjoin, that the Comporting with those graces, the using of his strengths to the rooting out of ourselves all aversation to Virtue, and all love of Vice; and planting other inclinations, even Resolutions of good life, is the only thing that can make way for Christ and for his benefits.

Now of those Advents, the

First was, when he came Commission'd by God to reveal his Will, to propose the Gospel to our belief, the coming of Christ as a Prophet, which particularly is intended in the Text. The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is written, prepare ye the way of the Lord. The

Second was, that coming which the Prophet Isaiah did foresee, and in the astonishment of Vision asked, Who is this that comes from Edom? with died garments from Bozrah, travelling in the greatness of his Strength? Why is he red in his Apparel, and his garments like him that treadeth in the Wine-fat? And it was the Prospect of him when he came to tread the Wine-press of the Wrath of God, to Sacrifice himself for us upon the Cross, his coming as a Priest. The

Third is, when he comes to visit for Iniquity, coming coersively as a King with his Iron Rod, to execute his threats on the rebellious; those that will not have him reign over them: This coming also was considered in my Text; for in the parallel place of S. Matth. it is said, Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, for this is he of whom it was spoken by the Prophet Isaiah, saying, the Voice of one crying in the Wilderness, prepare yet the way of the Lord.

For each of these in order, I shall show you what prepares his way, beginning with the first, His coming as a Prophet, appearing in the World to reveal his Fathers' Will, the Gospel.

Now the Preparative for this Appearance is discovered easily; we find both in this Chapter, and the parallel places, that John came to make way for it by the Baptism and Preaching of Repentance; and it was Prophecied of him, that he should go before him in the Spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the Fathers with the Children, and the Disobedient to the Wisdom of the Just, (to the minding of just things) so to make ready a people prepared for the Lord, Luke i. 17. And this is a preparative so necessary, that the Nation of the Jews affirm, it is merely for the want of this that he does yet defer his coming: And though the appointed time for it be past, yet because of their sinfulness and impenitence he does not appear; adding If Israel Repent but one day presently the Messias cometh. And it is thus far true, that though it hindered not his coming, yet it hindered his receiving; although it did not make him stay, it made him be refused. I may lay all down in this Proposition.

Where there is not the preparation of Repentance, where there are not inclinations and desires for Virtue; if Christ come with the glad tidings of the Gospel, He is sure to be rejected, his Religion disbeliev'd.

If the Word of the Son of God might be taken in his own case, this would be soon evinced, for when He came unto his own, they were so far from preparing his way, that they received him not, but did reject and would not entertain him as one sent from God; of all this he only gives this account, that he found no other opposition but from vicious humors. John. viii. 43, 44, 45. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my Word: Ye are of your father the Devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do; and because I tell you the truth ye believe me not. As if he should have said; the reason why you do not regard me or my Doctrine, but reject us both, is not because my Doctrine hath not means to convince your understandings, but 'tis not agreeable to your inclinations: The Works that I have done to make my person be received, and my Words credible, are such as no heart how hard or blind soever can withstand; but the Doctrine I bring along is most unwelcome, ye cannot abide to hear it. Now as he that shuts his Eyes, or turns away his Face because he hates to look upon an object, may not see it though it be all clothed with day; as visible as Sunshine; so your blindness proceeds hence that ye hate the light because your deeds are evil. Neither do you love to hear that which you have no mind to practice; and you will not be persuaded to believe that is your necessary duty, which you are not willing to perform; but will rather choose to think I do my Works by a confederacy with Belzebub the Prince of Devils; although it be apparent that those Lusts which you will do, and which my Works and Doctrine come to drive out of the World, they are Lusts of the Devil; and I, because I tell you the truth, truth I confess somewhat severe, and not so agreeable, therefore you will not believe me.

And is it not strange when nothing can be acceptable to the Understanding but as it hath appearance of Truth, and when Truth comes with evidence and demonstration, though it be but speculative useless truth, yet it does seize and force aslent, that yet Christ's truths, which did not want conviction, for they came to them with that infallibility which Miracles can give, should be therefore not believed because they were truths? not strange at all: for his truths were not for their turns, nor humors.

And therefore he says to them, Mat. xxi. 32. Ye repented not that ye might believe them. As if they assented not with their Understandings but their Appetites: And we ourselves have seen too much unhappy evidence of men, whom Libertinism hath made Antimonians, whom a desire of being loose from duty hath made Solifidians, of them whom sensuality hath made Atheists; men that become Proselytes to their Lusts; the converts of their base affections.

And we cannot expect it should be otherwise. For certainly that men who are averse to the duties of Christianity, and cannot bend their minds to the observance of that which Christ's commands, should not care to believe they are his Precepts or their duty is but very natural, they were unwise should they do otherwise, it being far more reasonable to deny the duty and obligation, than granting both, to trample on that obligation which they do acknowledge, and to renounce that Duty which they do confess. Is it not far more prudent to believe that there is not a God that does regard our foolish actions here below, (which are not more worthy or more likely to enter into his considerations, than the buzzings of flies into the notices and observations of a Statesman;) than if we do believe one does severely mark, will take a strict account of, execute a vengeance for them, yet not incline our minds to leave them? if we did suffer this belief to creep into our minds, to lie close unto our hearts, sure it would fret off our averseness to Piety and inclinations to sin; we durst not entertain them both together, these thoughts would prove very ill company; they would distract and tear the mind, our Souls would tremble and disjoint, and we be sure to put one of them off.

Covetous and Adulterous Felix when he began to think that S. Paul 's Sermon of a Judgment to come might be true, straight be began to shake, and then immediately to turn the Sermon off, bid S. Paul depart till another time. Nor can there any other reason be assigned for this; for in the System of Christ's Religion there is not anything but is so suited to the very Constitution of a natural being, that the Soul would instantly embrace and suck in, if the prepossessions of Vices, which the mind will not resolve to part with and repent of, did not infect, taint the Palate with prejudices, did not keep out the belief. For the morality which it enjoins did long before the birth of this Religion make its way into the Tenants and the Faith of every Sect of whole Mankind, it broke through all the oppositions of corrupted Nature and depraved Habits; nor could all the Devils arts (who then governed the World) stifle or quench the Light of Reason, which through all that darkness did discover such deformity in Vice, such strict agreement betwixt that which we call Virtue, and a rational Creature, that they accounted it, and truly, the essential duty of his nature; he that was wicked was reputed false to his own being; as great an aberration from, and contradiction to Nature, as an Animal that were insensible, or as cold fire.

In this all the most distant Factions conspired in despite of Principles. The Stoic, who by fettering all Events, all Consultations and Designs in the lines of inexorable Destiny does seem to make all Virtue worthless, all endeavors towards it useless, yet requires it with as strict necessity as his Fate prescribes with; his reasons are as ineluctable as her Laws. Nay he does seem to break his Adamantine Chain, to make way for this Chain of Virtues, though his Jupiter were bound by that, yet for the sake of these he leaves 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , our appetites, and actions in our power, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , that so there may be place for doing well while it is in our choice, and we are free to do it. And on the other side, the greatest enemies to their necessity and to choice too, the Sect that made all actions and things in the whole World to be, not effects of any Agent that intended them, but merely sports of Chance and matter; who taught that their own souls were but the concretion of some Atoms casually met together without any direction and to no end; yet the great Master of it in his Ethics would not suffer any of this blind Contingency to have to do in Human actions, regulating them by strictest Rules and Laws, and in plain contradiction to his Tenants (from which our Age derives the most of their impiety) although he held there was no God looked on, nor after-life attended, none that did see, or would reward or punish any of his actions, yet requires highest Virtue, yea, and lived such too they say. In a word, many of them raised Morality to such a pitch, as if it had arrived at the same heights from whence our Christian Revelation did pretend to come. And there is nothing so peculiar to Christ's Doctrine in the points of Morality, but you may find it recommended by the Heathen as a thing which no external obligation did impose, but the Law of their making did prescribe, which they read in themselves, and Christian Morality is but a fairer and more perfect Copy of the impressions of Reason on our Soul, cleared from the blurs and defects which they had been tainted with; but Naturales Tabulae Natures Decalogue, wrote by the Finger of the Lord: So that to quarrel with Christ for requiring it, is the same thing as to be angry with our Savior because the nature of the Fire is such as does require that it should burn. Nay many of them were so sensible of the unhappy state of their Corruption, found so great pressures in themselves from the weights of their vicious inclinations, discerned so perfect an antipathy betwixt their being and their actions, that when with all the arts of Reason and the practice of their Philosophy they could not ease themselves, they went to Sorcery and Magic for a Cure, received Catharticks, and a discipline of purity from Hell, the Region of uncleanness; the Devil making them believe he would assist in casting out himself: Such were the stress, the restlessness, the groans, the cry of Nature to be rid of its impurity. These poor Souls were mistaken in their Method; but if the Devil by those worships of his which they were used to, had not stopped the avenues, sure one would judge they had prepared the way for Christianity; there being no obstuction to it, nothing that can hinder its acceptance, but the low esteem and aversation of Virtue: For if men believe the Moral truths, they have no reason in the world to doubt the Supernatural, these being intended for the most part as encouragements to those other, as God's last attempts to kindle in us love of Virtue by such strong incentives; that, that wherein Philosophy was ignorant, and the Law weak, as having neither Promises nor Terrors equal to the force of our Corruptions, that the Gospel might effect, as having both to the utmost possibility of Divine Contrivance: Now this requires us to believe those Supernaturals mostly for this reason, by believing them to make us perform what it enjoins. And it is apparent that because men would not do this, therefore they will not believe those. Shew me but any one that is sincere and strict in Christian duties that does doubt the Principles; if there be such an one be cannot doubt them long, not only for Christ 's Promise sake, If any man will do my Will, he shall know of the Doctrine whether it be of God, he will soon know that Doctrine is from God that does prescribe such Godlike lives; nor only for the Churches judgment, which did make Synesius a Christian Bishop before he did believe the Resurrection, upon that confidence they had of him by reason of his Piety: But in reason why should he that does embrace the Piety, disbelieve that which was proposed to his belief only to urge him to embrace, only to crown that Piety? Indeed he that accounts his Vices but sleight tricks of wit, or folly; only pleasant satisfactions to the desires of his Nature; (for he understands no nature but his carnal one) he hath no reason to believe there was a Passion of the Son of God, by making him a Sacrifice for sin so to condemn sin in the flesh; is not prepared to think that there is an Eternal weight of Indignation due and ready for it. He that hath but mean thoughts of Virtue, counts it only pedantry, or as it were the Flatus of the Mind, making the Soul Hypocondriack, it is impossible that he should think God was Incarnated and died to teach it by his Doctrine and Example, and to purchase graces to enable us to live it; or that there is a Resurrection to reward it, a Trinity engaged in working out Salvation for it. I must confess I would believe, that men persuade themselves that the reason of their disbelief is only this, that these things are not testified sufficiently; because I find the Man in Hell would have one sent to his Brethren from the Dead, to testify unto them of that place of Torments, Luke xvi, 28. as if those Truths did want witnessing. But this is not because enough hath not been done for their conviction in the truth of Christ's Religion; for there is hardly anything besides in the whole World that men believe, but they believe upon less grounds. The whole World was convinced in such a manner, as that millions chose to die rather than not confess it; that many Ages proved but Centuries of Martyrdom unto that Truth; all Torments were more eligible than the belief of this Religion, which was confirmed so, that against all arts and power of Opposition, against the Wit and Fury of the World, though all the Subtlety, and all the Strength of Earth resisted it, yet it over-spread the Universe. Besides it is most prudent to believe it too, for if there be another World what then? There was enough done therefore; but Corruptions suffer them not to attend to that which hath been done. And 'tis no wonder they should do so at this distance, for they contrasted with Christ's Miracles when present; and they were so uneasy under the conviction of them, that rather than be pressed so by the mighty power of his Works, they did design to rid themselves of him that wrought them, John xi. 47. you may find them struggling with his demonstrations to keep off the Evidence, What do we? for this man doth many Miracles. Yea, they do conspire against the Miracles themselves, and would put Lazarus also to death, because he was raised from the dead; they could not let the Evidence and the Conviction live, but they must murder that too. Nay more, as if the pertinency of their prejudices could do mightier Works than Christ, and could control, and were above the power of his Miracles, it is said to have bound his hands, and he could do no mighty Works at Nazareth because of it, Mar. vi. 6. At least as saith Theophylact, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , he could not do them where men were not capable they should be done. So that Christ did pronounce from Reason and Experience, If they believe not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead. Such an amazing argument might probably astonish, but would not convince, unless it met with honest inclinations; for after the surprise of it were over and had vanished, then the corruption that Bosom Sophister, would stir, and goad; and urge incessantly; so that to ease himself, the Man must find out some cross Scruple to weaken the force of that Evidence, and the Conviction would vanish like the Ghost. And if we should examine the Experience of ourselves and others, we should find that just according to the rate of virtuous inclinations and dispositions of heart to part with sin, so are men prepared for the belief of Christ; so are their cares and regards of his Religion: He that is honestly inclined opens his Soul to Christianity, for it speaks to his heart, 'tis right to the grain of his Soul, he looks upon the Promises as made to him, and lays them up as God's encouragements of his inclinations, everything in the Gospel fits the temper of his mind. And he that is but pretty well disposed, that loves Virtue for the most part, but does allow himself someone corruption, he always hearkens to Religion where it sets itself against those Vices, which he hates, but as to his own particular evil inclination there he is a little Infidel, cannot persuade himself that God will be so stern against a single pleasure, that one petty indulgence should be so considerable, that it should provoke to those extremities the Bible threatens; and can by no means believe S. James, that he that offends in one point thus, is guilty of all. And they upon whose constitutions there are weights and Plummets, that incline them to some vicious courses, and by loose Education have those pronenesses of temper pampered; and by having their inclinations followed and indulged taught them to crave, then to get head and to command; and then by conversation with others that mind nothing but satisfaction of those bents of the Brute part, that allow themselves all the desires of constitution, are come to swill the pleasures, profits, and the Honors that do wait on those practices: Or whosoever by whatever steps arrive at an habit of doing thus, and a great liking of them, and so to improbity of Heart, to utter aversations of the strictnesses of Piety, all which they have lived so out of: 'It is known that not enduring to be bound up in those narrow paths of Piety and Virtue, they burst all the Obligations to them; seek little things to cavil at, or to deride, hoping with those their poisoned Arrows, through the skirts, and the Extreamer parts to send a Wound into the very Vitals of Religion; for they aim at the Heart, when they pretend to strike only the out Lap of its Garments; and to say all at once, grow down-right Atheists. And though as once at Corinth, now again the World by Wisdom knows no God; there being Skill and Manage in this Mystery of Infidelity, and it requires Study, Wit, and Parts; yet they proceed just by the Method of King David's Fool, first, he says in his heart there is no God, before he say it in his thoughts and Opinions: He wishes it, and so comes to believe it, the Atheism is rooted in the Seat of the Affections, and it branches thence into the Mind, at least into the Mouth, and finding Hell the greatest check to their Delights, which they cannot determine with themselves to leave and to repent of; therefore because they will not quench it with their tears, they study how to put it out with Arguments: And merely for this reason, that they will not live like Men, they resolve therefore to believe that they shall die like Beasts. But alas! they must live forever with the Devil and his Angels, it that Christ whom they reject, does not lay hold on them, and rescue them from thence as he is in his passage to his Cross, the next Way we must prepare for him; and my next Part.

The Solemn days approaching will discover to you this Way, namely, the Passage from the Garden in Gethsemane to Golgotha; There you will see he does begin his Journey with the Amazements of an Agony, and ended it in something like the horrors and the outcrys of Despair; he travailed under such a load as made his life gush out through all the parts of his whole Body, the weight of it did make his Soul faint by the way; and when he was upon the Tree, crushed it out, and made it expire sooner than the stress of Nature would have done, and forced it to burst out away in Prayers and strong Cries, that so he might sooner escape from under that sad pressure. And then do but consider and look on him under that representation which S. Paul does show of him, how all that time that he was creeping under that dire burden in that dolorous way, he was merely pressing on with all the haste he could to overtake us in our course, and rescue us from Ruin. For that Journey was a Race, and we the Prize. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , I have been laid hold on, saith he, Phil. iii. 12. laid hold on in the Agonistick sense, as in a Race, he so expresses it: And that he was laid hold on by these sufferings, the Epistle to the Hebrews does evince; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , saith Chrysostom, in that Way he pursued me till he catched me; his Agony was but his strife to overtake me, his Sweat the issue of his Race: When he came down from Godhead in his Incarnation, he pursued us then into our nature, he laid hold of our Flesh, and followed us from Heaven to the lowest parts of the Earth. But when he went thus to his Cross here, he pursued us then into our guilts, he laid hold of our sins, and took them up and bore them on the Tree, then he descended into Hell to follow us. This as it was formally done once for all, so in its virtue, influence, and blessed effects, 'tis still in doing, as to thee, and me, and all of us; and the approaching season is to represent it so. Now sure we need no motives to prepare the way for him who runs that he may obtain our Salvation, who though he labored under such a dismal burden, yet still presses on to catch us, so to rescue us from sin and Hell: If he think fit, and can endure to strive thus, I will make all ready, and stand fair to have my guilt seized from me, and to be laid hold on for my Blessedness, to be the Prize, the Crown of all Christ's Agonies, that which he thinks worthy with so much struggling to contend for.

Now the same Preparation is required here, that made way for his other coming, that is, Repentance, in one word, a disposition and sincere desire of heart to part with every evil and corrupt affection, to quit every sin. Sin lying in the way made it so dreadful, God laid upon him the iniquity of us all, and that weight threw him prostrate on the Earth, and sunk him into 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 : And yet if any were more galling, 'twas the weight of those that were clogged with Impenitence, this was more heavy, more afflictive to him than his Cross. To bewail this and the issues of it he left off to consider his own Sufferings and required others also to do so, Weep not for me, weep for yourselves. And sure it was for want of such Tears to dilute and temper his sad Potion that his Cup was so amazing to him: It was for this the Angel that came from God's presence to comfort him, left him still in Agonies, could not do it, because the joys and comforts of that presence are at Sinners that Repent, Luke xv. 10. And God himself in Hosea seeing Ephraim would not reform cries out, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . Consolatio abscondita est ab oculis meis: Comfort is hidden from mine Eyes; so the LXX also. Now they that refuse to do themselves this Honor that the Angel could not do, to comfort their God in his Agony, how will he ease himself on them? How will he laugh at their Calamity? be comforted in their Destruction at his coming as a King in Executions? the next Way that we must prepare, and my last Part.

A Progress this, I confess, that is not usual to our King, nor is according to the Method of his Government: God called it his strange Work under the Law, and much more is it so under the Gospel, when he Governs by the Law of Faith: For Faith being the evidence of things not seen, shows us Rewards and Punishments not present, but at distance, out of sight, in the World to come, to keep us in our Duty. And then why should the Ax be now laid to the root of the Tree? when as there is to be an universal Conflagration, where every Tree that beareth not good Fruit shall be cast in? And upon this we see events do not discriminate deservings, things happen to the good and bad alike; we may have seen the wicked in great Power, spreading himself like a green Bay-tree; like a triumphal Garland, as he were all Ensign of Victory, all verdant spreading Conquest. Yea, and when the Ax is at the root of the Tree, we know not whether it designs it for the Temple or the Kitchen, to make a Fire, or to make a God. The Day that cometh shall declare all, when the delay both of Rewards and Punishments shall be compensated with interest: And it does scarce seem equal to inflict them twice. But yet O Lord! in days when Scoffers appear: that walk after their own lusts, and say, where is the promise of his coming? For except that the Fathers fell asleep, some men are dead and others risen in their place, all things else continue as they were from the beginning, there always were vicissitudes of Flourish and Decay in every Nation, and in these things there are no footsteps of a Providence or Judgment: In days when men resist and deny thy Hand because they do not feel it; and since thy Judgments are removed out of their sight, defy Thee too, and dash thyself out of the World; in such days 'tis but just that thou shouldst come to their conviction, and confute them with thy Judgments into Ruin. And truly since it must be horrid provocation that makes him come beyond the compass of his Covenant to Revenge, the Executions are mostly very fatal, as if they were what they seem to prevent, the last Day, and the final Doom upon such Nations. For to the Jews they look as if they had fulfilled all that the Prophecy was mistaken to foretell, and were as irreversible and utter as the Sentence of the Day of Judgment.

Now to prepare for such Approaches of the Lord our King, there is one only means, that is, resolving Fealty and Allegiance to him, and that not formal only, or but idle Homage, but renouncing all Confederacy with his Enemies, Sin, and the Devil, and serving him with all the heart and all the strength. For he is that King in the 19. of S. Luke, who did not only cause his contumacious Enemies, such as would not have him to reign over them to be slain before him, v. 27. making his way over their Necks whose Hearts he could not set up his Throne in; not did only cause those Servants who were so far from preparing his Way, that upon confidence he delayed his coming they smote their fellow Servants, and did eat and drink with the drunken; were unjust to others, and indulged themselves in all licentious living, cause them to be cut asunder, and to have their portion in the Region of weeping, where these intemperate should have only tears to drink, and for their Riots only gnashing of teeth, Teeth ready to revenge their former Luxuries on themselves, gnashing as to devour one another, Matth. xxiv. 48. But he is that King too that Executed Sloth as well as Treason, in Matth. xxv. 30. who having given one a Talent, trusted him with abilities of doing service in the station he had put him in, which for his not endeavoring to do, though he corrupted not his faculties, because he buried them and did not use them, but indulged to idleness, condemned him therefore to utter darkness, to the proper Mansion of the slothful, all whose time can be nothing but night, since his whole Life is but as sleep. But in a word, S. Matthew hath said all, Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand; as it is written, prepare ye the way of the Lord.

And here to stop, and to reflect at once upon ourselves and this which hath been said: And first, on this last way by which he comes as a King in Executions.

Here I cannot but take notice, that we have some that do design and act among us as if they were this King's Harbingers, his Pioneers rather, to prepare the way for his invasion on us; or were his forlorn hope sent out to give the onset of his Executions, and were sure of Him in the reserve to second them: Truly their Threats and their Attempts are big and Insolent, and most men's expectations are not very comfortable.

To say with some, this Confidence of theirs is built on the non • execution of the Laws (which seems slighter than in the old Comparison of Cobwebs) for notwithstanding their fine close contexture, there are holes left for Spiders to creep through; and not the great Flies only, every ruffling and befriended Sinner whether by his Money or Relations, but the lesser too, now they have learned to fly in Swarms, break through, to say that were a Complaint out of my sphere.

And ▪ truly when I think on the temper of their fury, how it is hardened in the fire of Execution, charges Death not only in the Field, but on the Scaffold too; I must needs think it hath some stronger Ingredients, and there is something of Religion in it.

Now really there can be nothing else of that but an opinion of the great defection of Virtue in their Enemies: Open Profaneness, public Licence, living without fear of God or Man, makes them look upon them as men designed for excision. Achior is said to give this counsel to the Captain of the Host of Babel, when he went against Judea.

My Lord and Governor, If there be any Error in this People, and they sin against their God, let us consider that this shall be their Ruin, and let us go up and we shall overcome them: But if there be no iniquity in the Nation, let now my Lord pass by, lest the Lord defend them, and their God be for them, and we become a Reproach before all the World. And sure that they who when they were a formidable Body, furnished with Principles as bad as now they can be, and with Weapons too; and flesh'd with Victories and mischief, should at once depart from these advantages, quietly lay them down and all their Interests; and now when they are scattered and disfurnish'd, destitute of every strength but what ourselves afford them, that they should make Attempts which no Courage can sustain, nor Reason countenance; all this I say, admits of no account but this, that they who were amazed at God's exertings of himself, when they saw him appear so visibly on our behalf, and locked upon us as a party purified in the Furnace of Affliction, and the dross and scum gone out of us; (for we had some Reputation then:) Now seeing the return we make to God, as we had been delivered to commit Abominations, they are grown confident God is engaged against us, that we have filled up our measure, have been Fatted for a Sacrifice and are ripe to bleed: And if our supineness give them Weapons, and our iniquities give them Courage, there are enough will count our slaughter an Obligation to the Lord. O! give me leave to contradict the Counsel of my Text, prepare Not this way of the Lord, do not thus make ready for his coming by provoking him to hasten it in Fury; rather Block up all Passages and stop his March; you have wherewith at hand; The duties you are now practicing, those of this Season, Humiliation and Amendment, are Barricadoes strong enough against him, he cannot break through them. He had sent out his Executions against Israel, and Ahab did but Fast and put on Sackcloth and they straight retired, were beat off for a whole Life, Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself? because he humbleth himself I will not bring the evil in his days. The habit of Repentance, if Piety and Virtue get but Countenance, it will divert him in his March; and it must needs, for it prepares his other way, that to the place of Expiations, to the Throne of Grace, his Cross; the Second thing.

And should we not prepare his Way to that by our Repentance, we were false to our own actions that pretend to do it, unjust to the time that calls for it, but most unkind to Christ and to our Souls.

What in that fatal Race, and under all that load he did stretch and press on so to lay hold upon us, to seize our sins and Sacrifice them in himself, that then we should retain them, should not let him have them, but cling to them still; that when he was upon the Cross with naked Breast and open Arms, as it were ready to receive all wounds sin could inflict, and every wickedness of ours had a stab at his Heart, that we should still reserve the envenom'd Ponyard, keep the malice of the wickedness to Crucify Him to ourselves afresh, and kill ourselves also for ever! That we should suffer him to swoon and Die under the burden of our guilt, yet we ourselves resolve to keep and not to quit the guilt! For do not you deceive yourselves, Christ did not take away the guilt of any one sin, from any man that does not part with it, but still retains the sin; that would imply a contradiction: Such men are so far from preparing the Lord's way to his Cross, that that whole Journey was to them in vain: They will not let him have their sins to bear upon the Tree, deny their Priest a Sacrifice for them when he was going to the Altar.

Indeed they that come to the Celebration of his Passion thus disposed, plant troubles in his way to his Cross, and make it more grievous; yea they obstruct his passage thither even when they wait upon him to it: Those that come with indevotion to attend that sad Procession, such as they usually go to their Prayers with; these are so far from making his Way smooth and easy, that 'tis they that throw him in that Journey prostrate on his Face, and cast him into Agonies of Prayer, so to expiate and instruct their little sense of that to which such Sufferings were due, and which must have such deprecations. They that come thither with their swelling scornful Pride's and their Ambitions, lay Hills in his way, and when he is so heavy laden and so weak, they make him climb up Precipices, whence their Scorns too throw him down again with his Cross and Incumbrances upon him. All these heights must be level'd and the Mountains be brought low, if we prepare the way for him. The Gaudy people, they that spend the severe hours of this sad Season, and of the preparation for that Passion in the Arts and labors of Attire, that mortify and punish themselves only in cares and in Contrivances to make and dress up Beauties, and the study of these enters with, thrusts out the grand concerns of their own Souls, and the employments of this time, even which they are about: These doubtless are attir'd in Funeral conformity to wait upon him to his Cross, on which he had no other dress but the rags of his own Skin: Come they not rather to expose his nakedness, and shame him from themselves, that so he may go by and not take notice of them in his passage, nor be concerned for them in his Sufferings? The Hypocrites either to God or to their Brethren, that have only the Ceremonies, the Civilities of Honesty of Religion, make show of both, but yet are false to God, and insincere with Man, cruelly betraying or deluding, yea enraging those necessities which with fair speeches they pretend to smooth and salve; they act over again the treacherous malice of his Persecutors, who under the kindness of the Cup of Consolation which was given to them that were condemned to Die, namely, Wine mingled with Myrrh to cheer the Heart and cloud the Understanding, and so lessen sense of Suffering, in scorn and mischief gave him Vinegar and Gall, which though it counterfeit the other taste, serves only to prolong life for more future Torment. The Swearer stabs him all along his Journey; and the Men of Black Designs and Malice, they pour Venom in those Wounds.

But why stand I thus to enumerate particulars? All such come not to the Redemption of the Day, but only to the Scene: Amidst other like Entertainments of this Holy severe Time which the Theater affords, they come also to see the Tragedy of Jesus, to behold the dead march to Golgotha, indifferent and unconcerned in that (as in the rest) whether there were such a procession in earnest, or whether he did come at all indeed; which casts me on his other coming, the last thing, his coming in the first Revealing of the Gospel.

And here I hope I shall have no reflections to make as to preparing for this coming. Christ certainly did find his Way prepared so to this Nation, that we believe he was more early entertained in it, than almost anywhere in the whole Gentile World: And ever since his cares for it were so particular, that they, who would fulfil the Revelation in this Church, seem to err with some reason, when as his regards were so peculiar for this, as if he had not concerned himself in any other. And sure none other ever had so long, such opportunites and advantages; so that I cannot press you to prepare the Lord's Way, since he is among us. Righteous art thou O Lord! and wonderful in thy Mercies! yet if I might plead with Thee concerning them, I would inquire what hast thou done here all this while after thy so long abode among us? what are we the better? The last attempt of God to reclaim Man, when he had shown the World all other means were fruitless, was by Thee his Son! by whom he did convey all the full measures of his Graces; and now what effect of these is there in us? Shew me how all this care and cost hath made us be more just, sober, or chaste; in any way more virtuous than those Heathens whose Religion came from Hell? We find Thee saying, I beheld Satan as Lightning fall from Heaven, his Power vanishing like that which does but flash and perish, never can be recollected. But alas! that falling flash hath kindled foul heats that will break out into Fire and Brimstone. Idolatry 'tis true, is profligated hence; the Devil is not worshipped as he was with a Religion of Impieties, Uncleannesses, Drunkenness, and the like: But yet the same things are now made to consist with thy Religion, as well as with that of the Devil, and we can do all those things and be Christians. Some, as if their Profession were a Charm which made them shot-free from God's threats do they what they will, they will adventure any the most desperate Impiety and choose Damnation in a sin, and yet believe, be confident, and so secure. On others it does work indeed the Form of Godliness, makes them such perfect Pageants of Religion, that they oft fall in love with their own Vizour, and please themselves as if their dress were Nature, while yet under that form there are the greatest falsnesses, and black treacherous designs, the most unjust and Bloody practices that even make the Form of Godliness look dismal; and yet all this joined with so much superciliousness, with such difference to Christ, that you would say the Pharisees were now all of Christ's side. And is this all the Lord came hither for? to be a Sanctuary for the profane, a Cloak for Hypocrites? Give me leave to relate a Story I have read of four or five Vessels of Portugals who were Shipwrack'd to the drowning of almost five hundred men, only fifty three escaped, and they were left naked and hurt upon an Island Desolate, as the Israelites Wilderness, which needed the same Miracle to sustain them, and found the like: For God as it were rained Fish upon them; and so did that which kept them alive, till at last they espied a large Boat of Chinese making to the shore to take in Water in that Island, and the people coming all to Land for their refreshment; which they seeing, resolved to make themselves the Masters of their Boat and Goods, and go away in it: A man would have thought their own sad state in that Land of Desolation should have taught them Compassion; at least God's Mercies to them should have taught them Justice to others. But when men have received great signal instances of God's Protecting mercies, they think then that they are his Favorites, and then they may do anything: They therefore got into a Wood near the Shore and Boat, and it was ordered among them, that when the Captain should pronounce Jesus three times, then they should run out of the Wood and seize the Vessel.

Lord! would not such a word be a Spell and Charm against unmerciful, inhumane, and unjust Designs? would it not exorcize all impious Contrivances? It is no new thing to preface mischief with an holy Name, and bring in Jesus in the Prologue to Iniquity; to talk of God and act the Devil. They seized it, and driving from the Land, left the true Owners of the Vessel to possess their misery; Being secure, they searched and found no person in it but a Child of thirteen years of age, and they fell to what Victuals they met, and having eaten, with hands lifted up they praised God solemnly, and then proceeded to cut out and share the Silks and Riches of the Vessel: The Boy seeing all this, and drowned in Tears would not be comforted by them, who promised him all friendly usage; but he desired rather to go Die with his Father than live with such wicked people: Being reprehended for that Speech, Would you know, said he, why I said it? Because I saw you when you had filled your Bellies praise your God with hands lift up, and yet for all that, like Hypocrites, never care for making restitution of what you have stolen, but be you sure that after Death you shall feel the rigorous Chastisement of the Lord Almighty. The Captain admiring would needs persuade him to be a Christian: Whereunto earnestly beholding him, he answered; I understand not what you mean, declare it first, and you shall know my mind: And being told by them of the blessed Author and the purity of our Religion, what God did to Redeem us from our sins, and what holy Laws he hath left us: With Eyes and Hands lift up, he weeping, said; Blessed be thy Power O Lord! that permits such people to live on the Earth that speak so well of Thee, and yet so ill observe thy Law as these blinded Miscreants do, who think that Robbing and Preaching are things that can be acceptable to thee: And so returned to his Tears and obstinacy.

To see the strictness of the Christians Obligations, and the looseness of their Lives, to see their Practices dash against their Professions! 'It is such a thing as makes them be the Scorn of honest Heathen Children. And is this all that men are required to prepare the way of the Lord for? Is this all he can do after so many Centuries of the abode of him and his Religion among us? While there is no more of his influence appears, I must suspect he is not here, the Lord is not among us, but is gone. And certainly if it be possible to drive him out, if there be any Art of doing that, we have Professors of that Mystery, and the Drolls are they. That men should sin against him by transgressing of his Laws is no wonder, for there is invitation to it in the Blood: That some did count him an Impostor is not strange, they had not met it may be, with means of Conviction, or were prepossessed with prejudice; but while men own his Person and Religion, to have a God only to make them sport, as it hath no temptation, so it hath no measures of its guilt: Atheism is an honest refuge from this Vice; it being much more sober and rational to think there is no God, than 'tis to make a mock of him whom they profess to be so. This is indeed to prepare his way to his Cross, for so the Jews and Soldiers did, they put a Scepter in his hand only to take it out and smite him with his Scepter, they bowed the knee and cried Hail King, and so humbly spit in his Face, and they put a Crown, but 'twas of Thorns, on his Head: thus they Worship'd him in scorn and Crucify'd him with his Dignities. And so we serve Religion: When we would have a Scene of Mirth, that must be put in a ridiculous disguise to laugh at, the Son of God must enter Travesty, and our Discourse is nothing but the Gospel in Burlesque. And is it not time for him to retire? But O prepare not this path for him to go away in. The Heathens thought it much more possible to Chain their Deity, than to be safe if he were gone, Any the strangest contradiction is more easy, than Security without him. Now if you but make up S. Peter 's Chain, that will hold your God sure: Add to Faith (that's the first Link that unites us to him,) Virtue, and to Virtue Temperance, and the other Graces named there. If he were going; yet Return unto me, and I will return unto you saith the Lord: If you do but prepare to meet him in the Duties of this Season, you are sure to find him at his Cross: and if we do but lay hold on him there, and by the mortifications of a true Repentance partake in his Death; He that is the Way and the Life will through that dust and ashes from that Death, make a way for us to his Eternal Life. To which, &c.

The Eighth SERMON, Preached at WHITE-HALL. October 9. 1664.

THese Words, though they explicitly make only one single Proposition, yet they imply several.

First, That the State of Christianity is a state of Warfare; He that is born of God must fight we see, for he must overcome; which is the

Second; In this War he must not satisfy himself with being on his Guard; defensive, looking to secure himself, but he must Assault and Conquer, nothing else will serve his turn but Victory.

Thirdly, The Enemy which he must have no Peace with, but must vanquish, is the World.

Fourthly, Faith is sufficient forces to assist him in his Conquest.

Fifthly, Faith where it is rightly made use of is a certain Victory.

But I shall not handle these in Thefi thus, but for the more practical treating of them shall make and answer three Enquiries.

First, What the way is that the World does wage War in? where its Strength lies? and how it manages that force so as to get advantage over men? and how it does improve each such advantage till it gets a perfect Conquest?

Secondly, What the strengths of Faith are? how it charges, breaks the forces of the World, and does enable the Believer to overcome?

Thirdly, How far the Believer must pursue his Conquest? what must be the measures of his Victory? that he may know how to vanquish it so as that the World may not rebel again; not do like Joash smite three times, then leave, but Smite until he make an end of danger: Having answered these, I shall endeavor to apply all to ourselves.

Now for the better handling of the first of these, I must show you how the Will of Man may be attaqued and taken.

To which purpose I observe, that whatsoever liberty there is in human choice, yet every appetite seems in some sense determined in its tendencies to fix on that which appears simply best for it, for that instant which it chooseth in; I do not say that whensoever Reason peremptorily concludes a thing is best that the Will is determined instantly to that; for by a too unhappy evidence we know, that if the lower Soul does but beckon the Will another way, she can suspend and stop her prosecutions, and too oft finds cause to go along with that against the dictates of the Mind: But this I say, that in her last Executive Determinations she always tends to that which hath the fairest and most vigorous appearances of being best for her at that present time. If it seem strange how, since the Understanding can account the certain expectations of an happy everlastingness much better for the present, than a momentary worldly satisfaction; (for we have our Rules and our proportions by which we rate and choose Reversions rather than Possessions, and those of the other World exceed these beyond all the measures of proportion, and the Understanding does inform impartially of this:) How then if the Will can let those go and take these it can be said always to choose the better for the present? if it may be said to do so though it let those go, then by what wash or Chymick Artifices does she blanch or paint these so as to make them look better for the present? Now we may discover how these both may be, if we only reflect upon the manner of the actings of our own Souls. Where the things that stand in competition for our choice are both of the same kind, and have one common measure of their good or ill; (as for example, are both painful, or both profitable, or delightful) and no con • ideration of any other motive comes into the Ballance; here the Will must needs choose the best, refuse the worst. For merely out of aversation to pain to run into the stronger Pain, avoid the less; or out of Covetousness to refuse greater Wealth; or for delights sake only to prefer that which is less delightful, are practical contradictions. Where the Objects are of different kinds, one for example, profitable or delightful, but not without sin; and the other Virtuous, and spiteful Reason taking Virtues part, suggests the motives to it, God's Commands, his Promises, and Threats; here, though the inferior faculties prostitute all their baits, they cannot equal those proposals to the Will 'tis true; yet by their importunacies still pressing her, goading her by their stings, they can and do prevail with her to call the Understanding off from her attention to those other motives, and employ the thoughts upon the present Object that does importune her so, and which by the agitations it does cause within the sensual part, puts the mind in disorder presently, distracts the thoughts, then seizes them; so that the Understanding being now intent to this, the better motives are let go and sink, and then the only ones in view are those of sense, which straight the Will rushes into the embraces of, and the other being vanished and no better than appearing, 'tis plain in those she sixes on the best. But if the mind will not be taken off, but Conscience fly in the Man's Face and will not let him rest, nor his Will fix, why then in this unquietness of hers she sets the thoughts on work and will not let them fix till they find out some salvo that can satisfy Carnality and Conscience too, that will let the Man have the sin and not deprive him of God's Favor: And if either application of God's Decrees and Promises without Condition absolutely to himself, and the assurances of Faith and trust will do it, (as we may know it will in some) or if not that, then if hopes of mercy, resolutions of repenting afterwards and leaving off the sin, (as this does do with most) then it is evident in choosing to obey his inclinations, with such salvo the man chooseth that which does appear best for the present. But if the mind unsatisfied with these, and not daring to trust such rotten planks against the very face of storm, object the uncertainty, at least, of these Principles, and the unsafeness of those after-hopes, not fit to be security against God's Threats, and would convince the man that conscience of resisting a temptation, and by that keeping himself free from the clutches of the Devil, and the fears of Hell, together with present assurance of God's favor, are more satisfying at the present than the pleasures of the sin: Yet those pleasant apprehensions of the Conscience of resisting re-encountering with the seeming impossibility of resisting always that which presses so, and will some time or other seize upon him, and finding the temptation to have sharper stings than his Religious fears of things which are not present, and of which he hath had no experience: And besides, he having never had any great sense of God's favor and rewards, the Landskip of them is but dim and faint upon the mind like those representations blind men have of Beauty (to whom if you discourse of exact features, perfect harmony of colors, of a graceful presence, cheerful air, and a good mine, and all those other know not whats, that being seen commit a Rape upon men's faculties, yet his conceptions of them are but very dark, who never hath had any notices of these but such as his Ears give) and though the Understanding chance to be positive and resolute in its determinations concerning them, yet still the apprehensions of them are not clear; futurity, which is one sort of distance, making objects, as all things afar off do, look but confused, and their Ideas not distinct, nor bright or brisk, therefore they move the Will but very coldly: Whereas the other pleasure being known, the apprehensions of it are more vigorous, the draught is strong and lusty on the Fancy, there is force in every line, the very image of it lives, and therefore is more efficacious, and by that prevails, that looking fairest and most tempting at that present, so that from this experience of our selves in every sort of instance thus deduced, the Will does seem always to fix on that which appears simply best for it, for that instant which it chooseth in; the man still takes what he likes better at that present, and he likes better that which looks better for that present: And things are made to look better by these Arts which I have shown you.

This being now the temper and the disposition of the Will, and such the method of her actings, this is the thing the World makes use of, here's its strength, namely, in making things look better for the present. Which how it manages so as thereby to get advantages upon us, how it does improve each such advantage till it get a perfect Conquest, I shall give you in few words; by showing you how the World gets first possession of our Souls, and there raises in us passionate desires that expect present satisfaction, which it hath at hand to serve them with, which by these arts are made look better than any other expectations.

It was observed by the Philosopher most truly, that a Child is born only an Animal, is to be Educated, and brought up into a Man: His reason is the birth of time and institution, for a while nothing but sense does live in him. Now all that while he is incapable of being affected with any other things, but such as strike the senses, things of this present World; and by that means only such possess his mind and inclinations too, the uses and advantages of everything about him are those he is first sensible of, and those alone: and so the World does make the first impressions on our Souls, it does prevent all other in our inclinations, hath our first love and enjoys our first embraces, from which it must be with great reluctancy that we are torn; and whereas these impressions should be weakened and defaced by the infusion of other Notions and Principles, and the Soul should be weaned from too great liking of these sensitive satisfactions by the cares of those which should be as assistant souls to us, denying us everything that was not very requisite or very moderate, that we might learn to want them, and be taught not to desire them. The contrary alas! is practice'd every way, as soon as e're the mind is capable of being trained into the World's snares we betray it into them, we teach it how to understand and be affected with the bait, and those pomps which we but just before made them renounce, we make them before any things know, and be pleased with; and the first blossom of the mind wherein the Soul exerts itself for the most part is Pride: And for the rest the old complaint is true, ante palatum eorum quàm os instituimus, we teach their Palates sooner than their Tongues, and they can cry for what they cannot name; and yet among their first half words they can name Dainties; and what will he not lust for when he is grown up, that is taught to desire provocatives e're he can chew them? Thus we teach the gayeties and the delights of the World how to insinuate into and take the heart; we water and keep warm the seeds of Worldly Inclinations that are there, make them sprout and cherish them, nurse up original propensions into temper: And as Understanding grows up, we impregnate it with Principles and arts of serving them, turn Reason into a sagacity and skill of catering for those Inclinations, making them like Aristotle 's observation backwards, educating them into Creatures of mere sense, teaching them to be rational understanding Brutes. Yet the World thinks sic fiunt homines, this is called making them Men betimes: And when they are thus made, when the age of satisfying all their inclinations is come, and when Temptations are understood, and multiply by Conversation, and the World hath Objects for them all at hand; Objects, that what ever way they turn their Eyes are still before them and thrust themselves into the mind and the advantages that do attend them, and by constant importunacy stir and work desires and serve them too; then we are in that state in which the World hath those advantages I told you of, whereby it does not only war against the Principles of Reason and Religion in us, but it also leads the Will into Captivity, and enslaves her to itself. For it is plain the World hath got possession of the heart, and hath a strong party of heady passions, which whensoever a Temptation does alarm them, presently are up, raise a mutiny, and with the heat of Fancy and commotion of affections they disorder the Understanding so, that it cannot rally up considerations against the assault, but either it concludes, or disputes very faintly: If it do make an effort and struggle, it is but with a slender company of thin weak notions of things afar off, which the man hath had no proof of, nor hath any great confidence in; which while it is in recollecting and enforcing, the World hath its powers ready, seizes on the Will by the means of a corrupted fancy that does give it earnest, foretaste, even the possession of the well-known pleasures that it does invite to, and so melts him down into the sin. Now while the present Profits, Pleasures, Honors that I have from the World fill me, while they feed and clothe me, and provide me all that my necessity or wantonness can wish, and furnish me in hand with whatsoever any of my natural or my forced Appetites do gape for, and lull me with that constant variety of those delights which it procures, the use of which hath so drunk up my Spirits, and my Soul hath so imbib'd the joys, that I know not how to retrench from them, nor from that which is to furnish them. Must I leave all these for things that I have had no taste nor relish of? leave all in present for some future hopes which I have no great confidence of compassing if I should try? and which I also see that very few venture for? Whereas Mankind is swallowed up in the pursuit of these, and to be stored with them does not only serve my needs and Luxuries, but it is the only state of Reputation and Honor. 'It is not from a rich stock of virtuous qualifications, nor from great and glorious Actions that Esteem and Dignities do generally grow, but from worldly advantages, these constitute conditions, and these are their only Characters. And being it is so, they that are in a Sphere above the ordinary ranks of people, must contrive those things that are become essential to their condition; and they must have worldly Pomps although with the expense of Piety, or Charity, and Justice, yea, of every Christian Duty; of Morality indeed, and Heathen virtue, of Humanity itself: They will extort, be ravenous and cruel, will be false and treacherous, cheat and betray to get, and purchase at the price of the most disingenuous, sneaking and unmanly sins: To undermine another they will dig to Hell, as if they meant to give fire to their Mine with the flames of that place whence they have the malice and the arts to do it: And as if they did not care to sink him thither who stands in their way to stop their rise; they are content to die their purple with their own most guilty blushes, and the blood of any one that is their Rival or Competitor.

Add to this, that when these pretences of Condition have got footing in the heart, besides those passionate desires which they stir for themselves, they work out most unquiet Emulations, Envies, Discontents at others. In whatsoever any other does exceed me, his Abundance is my want, straight I am in necessity, not from my own needs, but from his possessions, and I suffer his enjoyments; I labor, fret, and sink under the burden of his Honors, and his greatness is inflicted on me. Nor can I ever be at rest till I am got from under the sad pressure of that deep necessity of having what I see another have. And thus it will be, till Ambition have no further Object, till there be no greater heights to mount. And now this Lust is in its pride, and the victorious World in its Triumphal Chariot. Not that I dare pretend that I have shown you all the Chains by which it drags captive Souls after it, or all the Arts of Tyranny that it does execute: I could name many more, but he alone is able to discover all, that in the twinkling of an Eye did once show all the Kingdoms of the World, and all the beauty of them, and who promised to bestow them all for but one single act of Worship, and whose gift the Glories of it are for the most part, and purchased by those very means. My business is to pull it down from this great height, and show you how to triumph over these Conquests; which my Text says is done by Faith, for this is the Victory that overcometh the World even our Faith: Which how it does, is my second next Enquiry.

It seems a prejudice to this Assertion of my Text, that the great pretenders to Faith, the men that lay the whole stress of their Everlasting Being on believing only, have been branded to be very Worldly; and the Factions of Godliness were the mysteries and arts of Thriving; as if their Faith laid hold indeed upon the Promises of this Life, and if it overcame the World, it was for them to seize and be possessors of. But this is not the Victory my Text secures, a Conquest for the Faith only of Mahomet to make: And while Christian Votaries do only mind such Conquests, and are candidates of Turcism, do they not call it in, and make way for their Sword and their Religion? But the Faith that lays hold on Christ's Promises cannot consist with any such affections. For since Christ's Promises are made only to those that overcome all such desires, and that do it to the end, and none other can be safe; It is impossible for him that does not overcome to trust upon those Promises, and to apply them to himself by Faith: For at once to believe I shall be saved, and yet believe those sayings which affirm none such can be saved, these are most inconsistent. It being then as easy to make contradictions be at peace, as Faith and Worldliness, they cannot suffer one the other; it follows: He that hath this Faith in sincerity must needs overcome the World. And to show you in a word how it is done, you need not but to consider, that Faith is as S. Paul saith, the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen, Heb. xi. 1. Which as the Syriac translates, does say, that Faith is such a certainty of those things that we hope for, as if we actually had them; and it is the revelation of those things that are not seen, it hath so strong a confidence in God, that the Believer assures himself of all God's Promises and Threats, as much as if they were in sight; and though we see them through a glass but darkly, yet we see them by it, 1 Cor. xiii. 12. it being 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . It represents the things of which we have no demonstration from Sense or human reasoning, as convincingly to the mind as if they were before our Eyes: And it is 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the substance, the subsistence and the very being of things that are not yet in being, but in hope: So that the Eye of Faith, like that of God, does see those things that are invisible, and futurity is present to it. Now by this alone it is of force to break the powers of the World, which as we saw while the things of the other World were looked upon as at a great distance, afar off, taking advantage of their absence stormed the mind with present forces, and had supplies at hand for fresh assaults, so overcame it. Whereas, had the powers of the World to come been present (now by Faith they are made so we see) the other which are so inferior that there is no more comparison than of immensity to a point, a moment to Eternity, could not stand before them. 'It is too notorious that this is the case: For should a man cry fire in the House, how it had seized the strengths of it, were blotting out the glories of it in thick Smoak, devouring all their shine in flame, we would leave our Devotions, our most eager pleasures to prevent this, and no speed were swift enough to serve our cares and fears. But though a Prophet of the Lord cry Tophet is prepared, the pile thereof is Fire and much Wood, and the Breath of the Lord like a stream of Brimstone kindling it, and do this till his Lungs crack, not one heart is moved, nor brings a drop of tear to quench the flame, because these fires are not present as the other, neither have men any sense of them, were they alike convincing, alike present to the apprehension, 'twere impossible according to what we have demonstrated (that the Will in her choices and her aversations, where the Objects are of alike kind, and have one common measure of their good and evil, is determined to avoid or take that which appears the greatest always; 'twere I say impossible) not to fly these which the Devils do believe and tremble at, with greater dread wherever they appear: Now a strong lively Faith must paint them out and show them in each sin the World insnares into. Neither would any of those rotten planks, which, while the Will does fluctuate betwixt her worldly inclinations and these fears, and is tossed about, offer themselves, as I declared to you, for her to escape upon, though she does dash herself upon God's Threats choosing the present sin; such as the application of Decrees or Promises made absolutely to himself without any condition, confidence in God's Mercies, hopes of Pardon; none of these would be security to one that were convinced in earnest. He that did believe and as it were discern that height which his ambition goads him to aspire to, were upon the brink of the bottomless Pit, whither when he arrived, that very sin that tempts him with the glories of the prospect, would then tumble him down headlong into that Abyss, he would no more dare to ascend it by such false and guilty steps upon such hopes of mercy, trusts on Promises or Decrees, than he would dare to throw himself off from a Pinacle in confidence God was Almighty and Almerciful, able enough, and kind enough to stretch out his right hand and catch him in the fall, or trusting to that Promise, He will give his Angels charge concerning thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone: Or leaning upon any such Decree as makes the term of life immovable and fatal; neither to be hastened or retarded; none of these will make him mad enough to break his Neck, neither would the same presumptions encourage him to cast away his Soul, had he but equal apprehensions of the danger. And it is plain, all the temptations of the World, and all these false encouragements cannot work upon a man, when Death once looks him in the Face; and the great Champions of Profaneness are tame then, not that God's Threatenings are more true, or made more evident to sense or reason than they were before, but their Faith is active, and they apprehend more strongly then.

To see myself trampled upon by pride and malice, or worse yet, begging of him whom my blood it may be helped to streams of plenty, begging like Lazarus the portion of his Dogs, Dogs that are taught to snarl and bite, and make more sores, not lick them; this is a state more killing than my want, able almost to tempt a man to any courses. But then if with the Eye of Faith I do but look beyond the gulf, and there behold the Rich man in his flames begging for water, and although it be the Region of eternal weeping, yet not able to procure one drop of his own tears to cool his Tongue. O then I see 'tis better to be Lazarus, although there were no Abraham's bosom! But if my Faith look through that bosom also into that of God, and there behold the Son of God leaving all the essential felicities of that Bosom to come live a life of Virtue here on Earth, and to teach us to do so; choosing to do this also in a state of the extremist poverty, consecrating want and nakedness, contempt and scorn, making them thus the Ensigns of a divine Royalty.

And to encourage us not to sink under any of the Worlds assaults, he hath proposed Rewards of Virtue, such as God is blessed in; did my Faith give me but a constant view of all this, sure the paint and varnish of these little things below, the twinkling exhalations of the glories of this World could not dazzle my mind and captivate my Soul, I should burst these entanglements to catch at those. 'It is evident, and 'tis acknowledged, that when our belief shall be all Vision, and our expectation possession, when our Understanding shall become all Sense in Heaven, and we see and taste and have those glories, then we cannot sin, cannot be tempted from them: And therefore by the measures of the nearness of these Objects, of our sight, and of our interest, so are our strengths to stand and overcome Temptations. Now Faith is sight, gives presence we have seen, and it gives interest too, He that believes is born of God, saith the Apostle, and therefore hath a right: Now to be born of one is to receive from him a principle of life: He then that hath received from God a Principle of life such as he can derive, life like his own, such as is led in Heaven; when he does consider his original and looks upon himself as born of God, and consequently heir of God's possessions, which his Faith gives him a prospect of, how will he look down on the tempting glories of this World, on all that makes it grateful and desirable, as upon abject things, and sleight and undervalue whatsoever worldly men, poor Souls! do fear or hope, or long for, and pursue? The Mathematics say that the whole Globe of Earth to one that looks upon it from the Fitmament is but as a point, and sure it is demonstrable it must be so: And then how low and how contemptible must it needs seem to him that looks on it as from the Region of the Blessed, from God's Mansion? and when his Soul having defecated and freed itself from all earthy, muddy, gross affections, and become expedite and light, expatiates through those unbounded, unfathom'd extensions of Heaven and glory, and looks upon all as his own, that he is very shortly to come to take the full enjoyment of, and hath already seisin of it by his Faith, how will he despise those narrow, those ridiculous bounds which the great ones of this World with Fire and Sword contend for? when he • ees this little point half covered with the Sea, almost as much too hid from us and not to be discovered by our arts or industry; of that which is, much Desert, some parts Frozen, some burnt up, and not inhabited; and then the little remnant of this point to be the strife and the vexation of Mankind, while multitudes of Nations tear one another's bowels, spill the Blood and Souls of Myriads for some little patch or other of it; and those that are not doing so, yet in their sphere too they oppress, deceive, do anything to get; and all the rest are in perpetual hurry of vexatious employments, or of toilsome pleasures, or of ruining Vices: Will he not look on this more unconcerned than we do on the busy labors of a little World of Ants about a Mole-hill, which Philosophers compare us to? The spectacle is much more to be pitied indeed; the crowds and Squadrons of those Ants, though they should have as many traverses and walks as men have, they have not Soul enough to have their guilt: Probably had they Human understandings, they would then divide their Mole-hill into Empires, would be false and treacherous to one another, Cheat, Defraud, Oppress and Murder one another for the present share; and had they Reason, they would be more Brutes, than now they are but Pismires: For Beasts have less folly too because they are not Men. But he whose Faith mounts him to Heaven his Birth-place, where he nestles in the secret Bosom of his Father, he needs not be concerned in any of the carriages of this World, he is above them all, without the sphere of their attraction or magnetism, without the dangers of temptations from them: The World is but as his slave, and it hath no command upon him, he treads it all under his feet, and therefore certainly hath overcome it: the Condition and degree of which Victory is the next and last thing we are to inquire into.

If you ask the Stoic who is this great Conqueror that overcomes the World, he will answer somewhat to this purpose. It is not any of those great successful Robbers that with Armies forage Nations; it is not he that people's the whole Sea, filling it with his Navies; nor he that sets his Confines on the remotest parts of the Inhabited World, that can call all his own that the Sun views, so that it shines not out of his Dominions: But the Man that hath conquered his own Inclinations to the things below; he that hath raised his mind above the Crosses or Contents of this World, that can march among them both dreadless and unconfus'd; the man whose Soul is nothing dazzled by the brightness of Wealth, it shall not blind his Eyes, but through the varnish or the glory that the shine of it does shed, he can discover and will hate an evil action: he that can severely look on all those blandishments that Prosperity furnishes and decks out pleasure in, and can sit continent and abstemious in the midst of its delights, that when it is all Halcyon day with him, nothing but Sunshine, and he swims in the calm streams of flowing Plenty, is not melted by one or other, does not become loose and dissolute at all; the man also that is not shaken by the tumults of Adversity, when like an Earthquake she renverses all, his mind then stands unmov'd, that does not so much suffer, as receive and welcome all that happens, as if he would not have it happen otherwise: In a word, it is the man that hath raised his mind above all casualties, the man that does but remember that he is a Man, that is, considers if he do abound, and the World prostitute itself to his Delights, that this cannot continue long; or if the World conspire to make him miserable, remembers that he is not so, except he think he is so, a man greater than his perils, stronger than his desires: And thus far the Stoic's Wiseman is victorious. Christ's Believer goes a little farther: That man hath the World Subject to him; but the Christian does not stay at that, he must not treat it as a Subject, but a Traitor, one whose Service is Conspiracy, that does attend on us only to watch and to betray us, to know our weak part, and to storm us there. Therefore as the Lord commanded Israel concerning Amalek, that did by them as the World doth with us in our journey to Canaan, comes upon advantages and smites the feeble, Deut. xxv. 17, 18, 19. Therefore said the Lord, remember what Amalek did to thee by the way, how he met thee by the way and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary, therefore thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under Heaven, &c. So must we also with the World, put all to death, not spare the best and goodliest as Saul did; yea more, put all to the pomps and cruelties of Death as Gideon used the men of Succoth, tear their flesh with thorns and briars; or as David used the Ammonites, put them under Saws and Iron Harrows; so the Christian must serve the World: Whatever Instruments of Tyranny that used upon his Savior on the Cross, those he must exercise on it again, those Thorns, those Nails, that Spear he must employ like Gideon's Briars, and like David's iron Harrows, it must be Crucified, and then he is a glorious Conqueror, Gal. vi. 14. God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby the World is Crucified to me and I unto the World. He that does march under the Banner of the Cross that Conquering Ensign, as he thereby declares himself upon such terms of enmity with the World that he does look upon himself as one despised by it, counted as an accured thing, for so was that that was Crucified, as it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on the Tree: So also he does look upon his Standard as the Instrument of Execution to the World, on which it must be Crucified unto him, and so it is: He is so taken off from finding any stirring delights in the glories of it, that he accounts it a dead thing, that hath no more attraits than a Carcass; yea, he does look upon this World as on a detestable and accursed thing, as it was indeed; whose Thorns and Briars do not only scratch and tear, and do it most when we embrace it most, but also are a Refuge for the cursed Serpent to lurk in, and add his Stings to their sharps, that Devil Serpent that was doomed into it, and is always in it, and then most when it is most Paradise. Now he that hath thus used the World, he that hath nailed it to the Cross of Christ hath overcome the World.

Should we now cast an eye at once upon ourselves and that which hath been thus deduced tracing all back again; then

First, It would appear so evident that I were vain, if I should stay to prove that those which have such desires to any of the profits, heights or pomps, or any dear thing else whatever of this World, as that they are impatient if they miscarry in them, and full of strange complacencies if they do answer their desires, these have not overcome the World to any such degree. For had I overcome and Crucified it, sure I should not be so affectionate as to desire, court, and pursue what I had Executed; I should as soon adore the Paintings of my Enemies Tomb, embrace and make love to his Carcass: And were I Crucified to it, had I but one Thorn of my Savior's Crown struck through my Head, but one Nail in my Foot of those that nailed him to his Tree; were my Soul fastened to a Cross, how were it possible I should run gadding after the gay follies of the World, hasty in my desires of it: Nor could I be impatient if the World do not answer my desires and expectations, disquieted and discompos'd, if I be disappointed, when anything in it is not subservient to my heights, and I miss of those respects I looked for; were the World vanquished, Crucified to me, should I look for services from my dead Enemy whom I had slain? or be troubled if the person on the Cross did not do fitting reverences to me? or be impatient if I had not respects and the Attendances of Pomp from one upon the Gibbet? or if I were Crucified to it, certainly these heats would not warm the dead; these are none of the troubles of an Executed person when he is racked upon that instrument of Death, he is not grieved because the Nails were not of Silver, the Spears head not bright, or the Cross was not hung with Arras: Aud suppose it were, sure I were very weak if I should please myself with that, and let such poor contents thrust out all the just sadness of my Sentence and demerit: And yet it is as strange to find delights in having any of the Worlds advantages, and pride myself in the possession if I be Crucified to it. But much less is it Crucified to them that will do actions of injustice for the sake of any of the Pomps or profits of the World; there are that grind, and screw, and rack all that they have to deal with; others that deceive and rob in Vizours, plunder in the disguises of fair words and of false arts; Some that dress their Pomps in none of their own trappings, such as they never mean to have a right to, because they never mean to satisfy for them if they can avoid it; they furnish the grandeur of their own condition with the goods of others which they never care to make their own by any recompense, at least not in such ways and seasons as the needs of those that owned them, and the rules of Justice do require; they cram and sauch their Dishes with the vital Blood indeed of those who starve for want of, and who own all that which does provide them their excesses. Now would a man do this to entertain, and feed, and dress the Carcass of his vanquished, his dead Enemy? would he be so vain, so guilty to provide to deck the Cross on which he Crucified his Foe? least of all would he retrench from the proportions of Charity or Piety, deny the calls of Mercy and compassion or Religion for his profits sake, or to furnish out the trains of Pomp, take the Lord's portion to serve the dead World with? If it were overcome and Crucified, they would not feed it with hallowed things (and the Poor's portion is such,) nor rob the Altar to give it excesses, take Consecrated things to make a cursed Carcass gay and proud, strip Christ's Body, starve their Savior (so He does interpret to deny a portion to the naked and hungry) to make Pomps and Riots for an Executed World. In any of these cases he is far from being overcome: And if so, the

Second Proposition will apply itself to such, and must conclude they have no Faith; for if they had that were a Victory; and however goodly they pretend, they are but Infidels: But it may be they will boldly own the Consequence, for nowadays it is not gentile to believe any thing of Christ's Religion. And sure 'tis for the Reputation of the gallantry and courage of our love unto this World, that when the covetousness of the Gadarenes would not suffer Christ in their Coasts, and for their Swines sake drove him out, when that of Judas would not let him be upon the Earth, but for thirty Silver pieces did betray him up to Death; that of this Age proceeds, and will not let him be in Heaven neither, but it scoffs him thence, and his Faith from the Earth: And because they like this World so well, they will not suffer there should be any other. It is not my part to Combat these; I undertook only to show a way to overcome the World, if they will not use it let them enjoy their Bondage. And yet without all doubt these candidates of Infidelity and Atheism have faith enough to do the work in good degree; for certainly there's none of them but does believe but he shall die, and it is easy for his Faith to look through that thin vapor which our life is styled by, to the end of that small span, and there see a Bed, though gay now and soft as the sleep and sins it entertains, then with the Curtains close, the gayety all clouded in a darkness, such as does begin the desolateness of the Grave; if you draw the Curtain to his Faith it sees a languishing sad Corps which nothing in the World can help or ease, forethrowded in his own dead hue, himself preluding to his winding-sheet, in which within a little while he shall be cast from the society and sight of men, and shall have nothing else of all his Wealth and Pomp: To see all this is no great monstrous difficulty for his Faith. Now though while he is in his prosperity and health, and the World serves every of his desires, and if I should tell him all his superfluities, all that is beyond a mere convenience are but empty things, mere shadows of delight, that only mock his fancy; should I tell him that the silver furnitures of his Tables, and those more wealthy shining ones those in his Cabinet, and the Silken ones of his Rooms, and the more exquisite pieces of rich Art which people must have skill to understand the pomp of, must have been the Disciples of the Pensil to discern how they do serve Pride; tell him these are phantasms, only dreams of Pomp, advantages nowhere but in imagination, I shall not persuade him, but he will despise me. But then if he will ask his Faith how all these will look to him in the state which is now before his thoughts, what his opinion of them will be then? he knows he may as well go to his Pictures now, and entertain his Mirth and Luxuries with them, and hearken to their painted sounds, and dine upon the images of Feasts, as hope in that sad hour from all his Wealth to find coment or ease, though his hand sweat under the weight of Winter Jewels they will not heal one aking joint: His Plate the greatest Riot of his Table will not make one morsel taste savory; yea more, he knows that then all the worldly uses of these superfluities such as satisfying curiosity, and emulation, and the estimation of the World, to be the talk of people, and the like; these will appear most evidently to be insipid things, mere conceits of delights; things of which there can be no real enjoyment or advantage any time. And if it then appear evidently that in themselves they are so, then they are so always; and a constant Contemplation of that time will make them always seem so. So that a Faith that cannot see into another World, that will but look through this, must needs take off our hearts from the entanglements of those advantages, when it appears how small a thing can dash them all so as that we cannot enjoy them while we have them, and that the enjoyment of them while we do is but imaginary.

And really when we consider how unquiet and disturbed a thing Man is, except he raise himself above the Power of all these, how till the Mind escape out of the whirl and circuit of the Worlds allurements, it cannot but be in perpetual agitations; at every ebb or flow of things without, there is a tide within of swelling or sinking affections; every change abroad does make a change of thoughts and of designs, cross Accidents have cross Passions, and I am as much an Universe of various thwarting contradictious affections, as the World is of motions.

How the Beasts are free, serene and quiet Creatures in comparison, for they not understanding many Objects, consequently have few inclinations, and their satisfactions very obvious; whereas the Comprehensive mind of Man that looks into a world of things, and out of them creates a world of temptations, finds out varieties of Pleasures or of Profits, and then starts as many eager affections in himself to pursue them; his copious understanding does but procure him various Lusts, and his Reason does but make him sagacious in searching out occasions of disquiet. Nor is it possible it should be otherwise, for while my inclinations are chained to those external movements, and my slavish mind attends upon those inclinations, I must needs suffer as many servitudes as the world hath changes of temptation: And then putting these two Considerations together, how unsatisfying and how uneasy too it is to be engaged in the Advantages of this World, which are merely Dreams of good things that disturb our rest and make our sleep unquiet, with the working of Imagination, yet do but delude the Appetite, and we find we have had nothing when we awake; sure if I thought there were no other World, yet would I not be greedy after the great things of this, when 'tis more easy far to want them, here would I indulge my self the sensuality of a Contented mind, the luxury of an Ataraxy, of an indifference as to all these things, of being quiet and untroubled by not having them, free from the hurry and disorder of them. The Moralists did so account it certainly, when they called this living according to our Nature, as if all the other were a Violence upon us; and upon the same ground they accounted it not hard to overcome the Allurements of this World, it was only not to invade and use a force upon themselves and vanquish their own natures: And sure we that are Christians, and are so no farther than as we have this Faith here in the Text, we must not count it hard; we who have the Revelations and Example of the blessed Jesus, all that he hath done to make it easy, now saith he 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 Courage, for I have overcome the World: They are but broken forces we are to resist, we have the Strengths of Heaven on our side, and therefore sure we may adventure to encounter them; and if we do begin to faint, we have an Almighty Captain of Salvation, and if we have but Faith to lay hold on him, and be not false to our own selves, but keep our hold, if we be foiled, Christ must be vanquished too, and we may fear impossibilities as well. When those poor Heathen marched on naked, had none of our Weapons to assault the World, or to defend themselves, had neither Shield of Faith, nor Helmet of Salvation, no Sword of the Spirit the Word of God, and yet master'd it in great degrees, shall we that are harnessed turn our selves back in the day of Battle? and confute this Scripture; and make good that they do overcome the World most easily who never heard that Jesus was the Son of God? 'It is not only base for us to faint most who have most advantage, but it is a contradiction for them to be overcome that have the Victory: Now this is the Victory that overcometh the World even our Faith; the Victory that overcomes both Worlds indeed; it tramples upon this, and lays hold upon that to come, out-doing what S. Paul sings of it in his 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , Heb. xi. His Heroes through Faith subdued earthly Kingdoms, but by Faith we overthrow the Kingdom of the Prince and God of this World, and the Kingdom too of the Almighty suffers violence from it, and our Faith takes that by force, forces even a right to it: By it they stopped the mouths of Lions in the Wilderness; by it we stop that roaring Lion's mouth that compasses the Earth seeking whom he may devour; by it they quenched the violence of Fire, we the Everlasting burnings; by that Women received their dead raised to life again: by it we shall rise to Immortality of Life and blessedness, receive all that we do believe, more than we can comprehend, receive the end of our Faith the salvation of our Souls: Which God of his Mercy state us all in for the sake of Jesus Christ the Author and the Finisher of our Faith, and the Captain of our Salvation:

The Ninth SERMON, Preached at WHITE-HALL. Sixth Wednesday in LENT, 1664/5.

THE Ancient Observation of this Time would justify my Choice, make the Text Seasonable in the most Severe sense it can put on, when in their Exomologeses they ate only the Bread of Sorrow, and tears were their Drink day and night, so as that in the Agonies of their Repentance they did Crucify without a Meraphor, and mortify the Body of Flesh as well as Sin. But it seems to have happened in our Sins as in our great Diseases, men are grown more skillful, and have found out much more grateful ways of Cure, there is no need of going through a discipline of Torments, a whole course of Medicinal Cruelty, but they can heal, at least palliate with more ease and speed. Besides that, Christianity is now of a more delicate and tender make, and cannot bear austerities, neither come I here to call for them, or to provoke their Constitutions; if they have found a softer and more pleasant way to Heaven, on God's Name let them walk in it; only in our walk we are now coming within ken of the Cross of Christ, and we can bear commemorations of his Passion; they make the closing Ceremony of this Season, which was set aside on purpose by the preparations of Humiliation to fit us for the performances and expiations of that Day, by Repentance to put off our Old Man, the whole Body of Sin, that we may hang it on his Cross as we go by. That is the only use of this time, and the only application of that Day. Which I crave leave to show you how to make at once: And without this that Ceremony howsoever solemn, will be merely Pageantry, not Worship; the observation but dramatick; and we shall have no part in the Atonement, only in the Scene of that days Tragedy, rather than Sacrifice: He only Celebrates that Passion, only he partakes that Offering, who can say with S. Paul, I am Crucified with Christ.

In which words we shall first endeavor to discover what this Person is,

Secondly, What the Nature is of that Condition and estate which S. Paul does affirm here of that Person; and that

First, In itself, Crucified; I am Crucified.

Secondly, In its adjunct; with Christ, Which because it cannot signify conjunction in time, he is not now upon the Cross, that I might say, now I am Crucified with him, nor when He was, was I, that I might say then I am Crucified with Christ; but we shall find it hath other importances. First it implies a likeness to Christ's Passion, I am Crucified as he was, so it means through the whole Rom. vi. and the being crucified with Christ is what S. Paul elsewhere expresses by the being made conformable to his death.

Secondly, It imports more, even Communication and partaking with him in his Passion, being planted together in the likeness of his death, Rom. vi. 5. and I am Crucified with Christ, does mean I have a fellowship of his Sufferings, as he words it Phil. iii. 10.

Thirdly, It means also a conjunction of causal Relation, that there is a Virtue and Efficacy in the Cross of Christ to work the Sinner into Crucifying of his sin so the particle must needs import, Ephes. ii. 6. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 he hath set us together with him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Where we are neither in conformity, nor fellowship, but only in our head and in our cause; so I am Crucified with Christ does mean his Passion hath an influence to Crucify and cause in me the death of Sin.

Of these in order; and

First, what this Person is? I say not who? we know it was S. Paul, but what? and the reason of the Enquiry is because we find indeed elsewhere crucifying the Flesh with the Affections and Lusts required, and we are also bid to mortify our members that are on the Earth; such as Fornication and Uncleanness, Covetousness and the like. But these are not I, how am I mortified in these? Is it because it may be they are grown so dear to me, that I am Crucified in their destruction? and long practice and acquaintance hath riveted them into my very heart? Now the Wen we know though an excrescent tumour, but an accessory bag of noxious humors, yet if it lay hold on any noble part, take in some Nerve or Artery, then he must cut the thread of Life that cuts it off: So he must rent my heart indeed that tears my pleasures from me; Life itself does seem to have so little salisfaction without them, that it is a death to me to part with them. Or else hath the Old Man no Soul? is he all Flesh? and hath Iniquity debas'd the whole of him, so that his very Spirit is become Body of Sin, so as that Wickedness should be our very Being, be all one with us, and I, and my corruptions prove denominations of one importance, signify the very same? so it is indeed: Besides the carnal part that is sold under sin, and consequently does deserve the Cross, that punishment of Slaves, the part also that is in the quite opposite extreme, that lusts against the flesh, that must be made away. Be ye 〈◊〉 ansform'd by the renewing of your mind, Rom. xii. 2. And if there be any sublimer and more de ••• cated past in that, it must submit to the same Fate, 〈…〉 in the spirit of your mind, Ephes. iv. 23. Corruption hath invaded that: To 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 the diviner ruling part, is grown a slave to the Beast part of him, it hath debauched its notions whereby it should discriminate good from evll, so that now it can discern no natural difference between them, but does measure both merely by his present inclinations and concerns, and the eternal Laws of Honesty are blotted our, and principles of interest and irreligion raised there in the place, and buttress'd by false reasonings and Discourses. Now all these Fortresses of Vice that maintain and secure a man in sin must be demolished, all such imaginations cast down, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and every thought brought into Captivity to the obedience of Christ: That Spirit of the mind must be destroyed, and we transformed into persons of new notions and reasonings. But above all the remaining part of Man, his own Will must be mortified, which besides its natural 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 and 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , by perverse inclinings to solicitations of flesh is most corrupted, and most dangerous, in that which way soever it inclines, it draws the whole Man after it: If anything in us be crucified in a Conformity to Christ, it must be this; for in that death wherein Christ offered up himself upon the Cross (where although the Divine Nature gave the value, 'twas only the Human Nature made the Offering) there it was the crucifying his own Will, that above all other the ingredients made his Death a Sacrifice, and the price of our Redemption. God that had given him his Blood and Life, might call for it again when and how he saw good, and being due, it was not properly a price that could be given him for sin; but his free voluntary choice, his being willing to endure the Agonies and Contempts of the Cross, his stabbing his own natural desires with a resolute determination, Not my will, but thine be done: This his own Will was his own Offering; and such is ours, if we be Crucified with Christ, made conformable to his death; if we present ourselves a Sacrifice acceptable to the Lord; for our will is not given up to him, till it do perfectly comport with his; but that it cannot do, till we renounce our own desires, till we have brought ourselves to an indifference in outward things, to such a resignation as she is storied to have had, who being in her Sickness bid to choose whether she rather would have Health or Death, made answer, Vehementissime desidero ut non facias voluntatem meam Domine, this above all I desire, that thou wilt not do my will, I would have thee not do what I desire and would have. So that 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the whole of us, the Spirit, Soul and Flesh, go to make up this Person; and the body of Sin is the Old man entire. I, whole I am nothing but a mass of guilts, my Senses are the bands of wickedness, that procure for my evil inclinations, my members are the weapons of unrighteousness, my Body is a Body of Sin and Death, and the affections of my Soul are Lusts, its faculties are the powers of Sin, yea, and the Spirit of my mind, that Breath of God is putrefied; that 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , that Angel-part of me is fallen and turned Apostate; and however I be partly Son of Man, and partly Son of God, yet I am wholly Child of Wrath, and so fit to be Crucified.

Which calls me to the next Enquiry, to the nature of the duty here intended, I am Crucified.

What is designed by it S. Paul does perfectly declare Rom. vi. 6. Our old man is crucified with Christ that the body of Sin might be destroyed, that we should no longer serve sin: So that it means a through Repentance, and abandoning of former evil Courses: A Duty which there are few men but in some instants of their life think absolutely necessary, and persuade themselves they do perform it. At some time or other they are forced to recollect and grow displeased and angry at their sins, and have some sad reflections on them, beg for mercy and forgiveness, and do think of leaving them; and when they have returned to them again, they shake the head, and chafe, and curse at their own weakness, and renew their purposes it may be; and do this as oft as such a Season as this is, or other like occasions suggest it to or move them: And with this they satisfy themselves, and hope if God do please to take them hence in some such muddy, gloomy fit of their Repentance, all's well. Now shall we call this being Crucified? are there Racks and Tortures in this discipline? hath a Spear pricked them to the heart, and no blood nor no water, no tears gush out thence? hath it made no issue for some hearty Sorrow to purle out?

Indeed I must confess, the Scripture does sometimes word the performance of this Duty in expressions that are not so sower, but of an easier importance; as first, put off the Old Man, as if all were but Garment; put it off I say, not as they stripped our Savior in order to his Scourgings and his Cross, but intimating to us what an easy thing it is to cast off Sin for them, who do begin with it betimes, before it get too close to the heart. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , &c. saith Theophyl▪ even as easy as putting off thy Cloaths, and thy Repentance is but as thy Shift, thy change of life like changing thy Apparel.

But alas! for all the easiness which this expression hints, where the sins also lie in the Attire, as besides emulation, pride, vainglory, great uncharitableness and inhumanity, cruel injustice and oppression often do, when many are undone through want of those dues which do furnish other men with the excesses of this kind: when the sins therefore lie in the Attire, and they may put them off without a Metaphor, yet it is so hard that it cannot be done; sometimes the worth of a whole Province hangs upon a slender thread about a Neck, a Patrimony thrust upon one joint of one least Finger, and these warts of a Rock or a Shell-fish with the appendages eat out Estates and starve poor Creditors; for whom indeed they should command these stones to be made bread; but that's a Miracle too stubborn for their Virtue. And then how will they proceed to the next expression of this Duty? Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskin of your hearts, Jer. iv, 4. These are harder and more bloody words, they differ in the pain and anguish that they put us to, as much as to uncloath and flea would do. It appears indeed this punishment of fleaing often went before the Cross. To 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 saith Ctesias of one, having his Skin pulled off he was Crucified: And the scourges in some measure did inflict this on our Savior, when they put off his Cloaths they stripped his Skin also; left him no covering but some rags of that which whipping had torn from his flesh. Yet this expression sounds harsher, when it bids us circumcise the foreskin of our hearts, and tear it from thence, flea that: When long Conversation with the pleasures of a sin hath not only given them Regallias, but hath made them necessary to us, so as that we cannot be without them; when Custom craves with greater fever than our thirst; when if we want it, we have qualms, saintings of Soul, as if the life were in that blood of the grape, when men can part as easily with their own bowels, as the Luxuries that feed them; if you take away their Dishes, then you take their Souls which dwell in them; when the sins of the Bed are as ne • dful and refreshing as the sleeps of it; when to bid a man not look, not satisfy his lustful eye, is every jot as cruel as that other, I • thine eye offend thee pluck it out: For if he must no more find pleasure in his sight, he hath no use of it; yea if this be indeed a kindness not to leave him Eyes to be to him the same as Appetite to Tantalus, that which he must not satisfy, and is his hell: 'It is easy if the Lust be got no further than the Eye to pull them out together; but if through that it shoot into the Blood and Spirits, mix heats with those, if it enwrap the heart, twist with its strings, and warm the Soul with its desires; so that it Spirit all the motions, all the thoughts and wishes of the heart; when it is thus, to make the heart to stifle its own motions, stab its thoughts, and strangle all its wishes; to untwist and disentangle and to tear it thence, if this be to be Circumcised with the Circumcision of Christ,▪ and he that hath not the sign of this, the Seal of the New Covenant, as he that in the Old had not the other, was, must be cut off; our long habituated hardened Sinners must not think that there is anything of true Repentance in their easy, perfunctory, sleight performances; there is something like Death in the Duty, which yet is required of us farther under variety of more severe expressions; for we are bid thirdly to slay the Body of Sin, Rom. vi. 6. to mortify our members, Col. iii. 5. and to Crucify, Gal. vi. 14. which how it may be done, the next consideration of S. Paul 's condition in the Text, and my next part declare. I am Crucified with Christ, that is, first as he was, by being made conformable to his Death.

And truly should we trace him through all the stages of his Passion, we should hardly find one passage but is made to be transcribed by us in dealing with our sins.

First he began it with Agony, when his Soul was exceeding heavy, for it labor'd with such weight of indignation as did make the Son of God to sink under the mere apprehension: And he was sorrowful unto Death, so as that his whole Body did weep Blood. The Sinners passion, his Repentance is exactly like it, it begins always with grief and sense of weight, whoever is regenerate was conceived in sorrow, and brought forth with pangs, and the Child of God too is born weeping. And for loads, the Church when she does call us to show forth this Death of Christ, as if she did prescribe that very Agony, requires that we should find that Garden at the Altar, makes us say we are heartily sorry for our misdoings, the remembrance of them is grievous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable. So that the Sinner's Soul must be exceeding heavy too.

Secondly, There he is betrayed by his own domestic, sold for the poorest Price imaginable, as a Slave for thirty pieces of silver. I shall not mind you what unworthy things the love of Money does engage men to; to sell a Christ, a Savior, and a God! and rather than stand out, at such a base rate, as we scorn to buy a sin at; every single act's engagement to Damnation, costs more than the Ransom of the World is sold for; and the Blood of God is purchased cheaper than any one opportunity of Vice does stand us in! But I only mind you here, that he shall have a better hire that will but be a Judas to his own iniquities: do but betray the Regent sins, deliver them up and thou shalt have everlasting Heaven.

Thirdly, We find him next carried before the High Priest. And the strictest times of Christianity would serve their sins so, to receive his doom upon them, to be excommunicated into Reformation: But I shall not urge how we can discover to a Physician our shames, all our most putrid Guilts as well as Ulcers, and make him our Confessor in our most secret sins; neither will I be inquisitive why the Physicians of our souls are balk'd; but will pass this part of the Conformity, and follow Christ to Pontius Pilate. And for this part we ourselves are fitted, the whole furniture of a Judicial Court, all that makes up both Bench and Bar is born within us. God hath given us a Conscience whereby we are a Law to ourselves, Rom. ii. We have 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , which the Jews did want; such evidence as is sufficient to condemn us; the same Conscience that is privy to our doings, and stands by our thoughts, and sees through our intentions, is a thousand witnesses: And that there may be a Prosecutor, our own thoughts accuse us saith S. Paul; and if we will give them way, will aggravate each Circumstance of guilt and danger, bark, and howl, and cry as loud against us, as the Jews did against Christ, for Sin is of so murthering a guilt it will be sure to slay itself: and that he may not want his deserved Ruin, the Sinner makes his own Indictment, yea, and his own Sentence too, for our own heart condemns us, saith S. John: And when ever it does so, Oh that we would follow it through all the gradations that brought Christ to Death! and use our wickedness as he was used; strip it from its Cloaths, bare it from its fair pretexts it useth to be dressed in! Lay our anger naked from all those excuses which our provocations, that either wrath or humor will be sure to think intolerable, do make for it! strip our Pride and Vanity from those paints and dresses which the Custom of the Age, that does require and warrant strange things, dawbs the sin with! use our Luxuries and Intemperances so, and the other greater and more thirsty dropsy, that of Wealth, and of unjust unworthy gains, which there are richer Luxuries in too! And there are none of these but have their pleas, their colors which they set themselves out in, to please the Appetite and to deceive the Mind, all which we must strip off; and then when we have laid them naked, spit upon them, vomit all our spleen and contumelious despite at that which hath made us so ugly in God's sight; scourge it with Austerities, and buffet it as they did Christ, and S. Paul did himself, 1 Cor. xvi. 27. And when the Body of Sin is thus tamed and weakened, it will be easy then to lead it out and crucify it. A Crucifiction this that does make our Good-Friday be a day of Expiation and Atonement to us: A sight which next to that of his own Son upon the Cross, is the most acceptable to the Lord; when he does see us execute his Enemies although they be ourselves, and Crucify the dear Affections of our bosom as God did. This is indeed to be conformed unto the death of Christ.

If I might have leave to go before you and to let you into the Example, draw the Curtain from before the Passion, I would call my Sins out, drag them to behold that Prospect, hale them into the Garden, show them how he was used there. You my Extravagancies of my youth my mad follies and wild jollities, come see my Savior yonder, how he swoons when guilt began to make approaches towards him! and can I make myself merry with nothing else but that which made him die? tickle, cheer, and heighten myself with Agonies? You my intemperate Draughts, my full Bowls and the riotous Evenings I have past, look yonder what a sad night do these make Christ pass! look what a Cup he holds, which makes him fall lower to deprecate, than ever my Excesses made me lie. You my lazy Luxuries, Fulness of Bread, and Idleness, whereby I have control'd God's Curse, and only in the Sweat of others Faces eat my Bread, and in that dew drank up the Spirits of those multitudes that toil to faintings to maintain my dissolute life, see how he is forced to bear the whole Curse for me! how the Thorns grow on his head, and how he Sweats all over. You my supine Devotions which do scarce afford my God a knee, and less an heart, not when I am deprecating an Eternity of all those Torments which killed Christ! look yonder how he prays, behold him on his Face petitioning, see there how he sweats and begs. You my little Malices and my vexatious Angers, that are hot and quick as Fire itself, and that do fly as high too, that are up at Heaven strait for the least wrong on Earth! look how he bears his, how his patience seems wounded only in a wound that fell upon his Persecutors! and when one that came to apprehend him wrongfully was hurt, as if the Sword of his defense had injured him, he threatened and forever cursed the black deeds of that angry Weapon, and made restitution of what he had not taken, made his Adversary whole whom he had not hurt! See how with his cruel Judges he is as a Sheep, that not before his shearers only, but before his Butcher too, is dumb. You my Scorns, and my high Stomach that will take no satisfaction but Blood and Soul for the faults of inadvertency, for such as not the wrong, but humor makes offenses: lookhow they use him, they buffet, and revile and spit upon him. Ye my dreadful Oaths and bitter imprecations which I use to lace my speeches with, or belch out against any one that does offend me in the least, making the Wounds and Blood of God, and other such sad words, either my foolish modes of speaking, or the spittings of my peevishness. There you may see what 'tis I play with so, you may behold the Life of Christ pouring out at those Wounds which I speak so idly of, and what I mingle with my sportive talk is Agony, such as they that beheld afar off struck their breasts at, and to see them only was a Passion. Ye my Atheisms and my Irreligion