Forty Sermons

indeed, to which I pay all the devotions I perform! And when with so much care and time I have arrayed and marshall'd myself, that I should spend as much more too in the complacencies of viewing this! with eager eyes and appetite surveying every part, as if I had set out, exposed them to myself alone, and only dressed a prospect for my own sight! and since Nature, to my grief, hath given me no eyes behind; that I should fetch reliefs from Art, and get vicarious sight, and set my back parts too before my face, that so I may enjoy the whole Scene of myself! And why all this? for nothing but to serve vain Ostentation, or negotiate for Lust, to dress a Temptation, and start Concupiscence. And that the half of each Day should be spent thus! the best part of a reasonable Creatures and a Christians life, be laid out upon purposes so far from Christian or reasonable!

And truly Luxury will easily eat the remainder up, that sure Companion of Idleness. For when the Israelites were in the Wilderness, where they could not eat but by Miracle, and the Rock must give them drink; yet, having no Employment, they made Feasts: They sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. Nor would eating to the uses of their nature serve them, but they must have entertainments for their wantonness. Had they been employed to get their Bread, their labor would have made their morsels sweet: But since God, as the Wiseman says, sent them from Heaven bread prepared without their labor, they must have varieties to sweeten it; they require him to prepare a Table also in the Wilderness, and furnish them with choice. And although they had the food of Angels, able to content every man's delight, and agreeing to every taste, and serving to the appetite of the eater, it tempered itself to every man's liking, and what could they fancy more? The latitude of Creatures, the whole Universe of Luxury could do nothing else; in every single morsel they had sorts, Variety, all choice; as if that Desert had been Paradise, that Wilderness the Garden of the Lord: Yet so coy is Idleness, so apt to nauseate, that they abhor the constancy of being pleased. And though they were not sated neither, he that gathered much had nothing over, only to his eating, God as well providing for their Health and Virtue, as Necessity, and dieting their Temperance as he did their Hunger: Yet their very liking does grow loathsome to them. When their Bodies were thus excellently well provided for, having no employment, nothing to take up their Minds and Entertain their Souls, they require 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 meat for their Souls, meat not to serve the uses of their bodies, but to feed their fancies, their extravagant minds. Thus Idleness requires to be dieted. And all this but to pamper and feed high men's inclinations, so to make Temptations irresistible, and by consequence Vice necessary.

It were easy to recount more of those ways by which the Devil does make use of men's want of Employment to debauch their lives, and ruin all the hopes of Virtue in them. S. Jude finds more of its effects at Sodom: They gave themselves over to Fornication, and went after other flesh, and are set forth for an Example, suffering the vengeance of Eternal fire. Indeed these are most certain consequents of not being employed: Quaeritur Aegysthus —is too known an instance: and great holy David is another. But its dire influence is sufficiently visible in that which it rained down upon those Cities. Since it did fulfill the guilt of Sodom, and made Heaven furnish Hell for it, and God himself turn Executioner of fire and brimstone to revenge it; this shall serve to prove it is one of the Devil's Master-pieces.

3. Next succeed his fiery darts, as S. Paul calls them, namely, Persecutions, or Calamities of any kind: Which he manageth either by inflicting pressures, and he was so confident of the force of these, that he did tell God he would make Job curse him to his face with them: Or if he find men in necessities and pressures, then by tempting them to get from under them by methods which he shall direct; and he had such assurance of the strength of this Temptation, that by it he tried our Savior, to find out whether he were the Son of God or no, believing none but he that was so would be able to resist it.

Indeed the trials are severe which this Temptation does present, to draw men from their Duty, and to overcome their Constancy; Whether it solicit by inflicting punishment (as on the Mother and her Children, 2 Maccab. vii.) or by offering to withdraw it, if they will submit to their unlawful terms (and so they tried her youngest Son there, verse 24.) or at leastwise by some feigned act, some ambiguous words or practices, will pretend compliance; (so they dealt with Eleazar, Chap. vi. 21. whom they would have had to bring flesh of his own provision, such as he might use without offense, and so only seem to eat forbidden meat.) Each of which is as great a trial also, and to stand against them reckoned up amongst as vigorous acts of Faith, as those that held out in the greatest tortures persecuting malice could invent: Heb. xi. 17. They were stoned, sawn asunder, were tempted.

Now to fetch an instance of the sad success of these, I shall not need to go so far as to those Persecutions of Antiochus, nor those of the primitive times of Christianity; when they had no other choices but these, to deliver up their Bibles or their Lives; either to sacrifice to Idols, or at least procure a Ticket which should certify that they had done it, or to be themselves an Holocaust, and give those Idols a Burnt-offering with their martyr-flames. Which made the Traditores, Lapsi, the Thurificati and the Libellatici to be so numerous. Through God's blessed mercy there is no use of such instances, as there is no fear of such a trial; 'tis not death to be a Christian now: For if the Son of Man or Satan 's self should come to try us at those rates, 'twere a great doubt whether the one or other would find Faith upon the Earth; whether they would sacrifice a life to our Religion, who are not content to sacrifice a little interest or pleasure to it; whether they are likely to resist unto blood fighting against sin, who will not resist to tears nor sober resolutions. Alas! what Religion should we be of, if God should raise a Dioclesian, come to tempt us with the fiery trial? Martyrs as we are to nothing but our Passions and our lusts! Nor shall I produce more known and near experiences, when, by reason of such storms of Persecution, men made shipwreck, if not of their Faith, yet of good Conscience. When by order or permissions of Providence they were brought to such a straight, that either they must let go their possessions or their honesty, acting against Principles, and Conscience of Duty: I shall not remember, how, when God did shake his angry hand thus over them, they fled to the Devils kindness, and made Hell their refuge, to save them from their Fathers rod: how they grew so Atheistical, as to believe a Perjury or other crime greater security, that would preserve their selves and their condition better than all God had promised; were such Infidels, that they did rather trust their being here to the commission of a sin, than to the Providence and the Engagements of the Almighty. For indeed what need I instance in these greater cases, where the trial was so sharp, as not to offer any easier choice than this, either to part with Conscience or with all they had? God knows, we find less Interests will do: The Devil by no more than this, driving the Gadarenes swine into the Sea, was able to drive Christ out of their Coasts. You have the story Matth. viii. from the 28. verse. A legion of those evil spirits did possess two men; and finding Christ would cast them out, and by that Miracle so far show forth his Power, that in probability the whole Country would believe on him, they fall upon this project to prevent it; they besought him, if he would cast them out, to suffer them to go into an herd of Swine there feeding; hoping by destroying them to incense the Owners against Christ: And, to try them, he permitted this. The possessed Swine ran violently down into the Lake, and perished. Now a man would think the virulency of these Devils, which were so destructive when they were at liberty and not restrained, would have endeared the mercy that had cast them out of the poor men, and came to dispossess the Country of them; and that their astonishment at so great a Miracle would possess them all with Reverence and belief of him; and that they would therefore seise and possess him also, and not let the mercy go: But, on the contrary, the whole City and Country came out to meet Jesus, and in consideration of the loss of their Swine, desire him to depart out of their Coast. Lo here an equal Enemy to Christ and all his Miracles, that was indeed too hard for them. The Senate of Hell had no project to keep out Religion like to this, to make Religion thwart an Interest. Rather no Christianity than lose an Earthly satisfaction by it: Rather have the Swine than Christ himself.

4. But if he chance to fail in this Assault (as by our Savior he was beaten off) he hath yet a reserve in which he places his last, strongest confidence; with which he ventured to charge Christ, when it is probable he knew he was the Son of God. He takes him up into an high Mountain, and shows him all the Kingdoms of the Earth in the twinkling of an eye, and the glory of them, and says, All these things will I give thee. He thought it was impossible for such a Prospect not to make impression on the Appetite, raise some desire, or stir one Covetous or Ambitious thought: which if it could but do, he made no scruple then to clog the Gift with such conditions as that there, All these things will I give thee. if thou wilt fall down and worship me. 'It is said indeed, the Covetous man is an Idolater: And here we see the God he does do homage to, and worship. The Devil does require, that those whom he gives Wealth to (now 'tis he that gives it to the Covetous, to all indeed that get it with injustice or with greediness; ) he requires, I say, that these should pay all their Religion to Himself: And the Ambitious, in however high a place he sets them, must fall down to him. And truly these two dispositions can give worship to no other God but such an one as is Abaddon, the Destroyer of Mankind. For all the great Commotions of the World, all those Convulsions that tear Provinces and Empires, all Seditions and Rebellions with those Armies of Iniquities that attend them, and that wage their Designs, which are upheld by legions of Villanies as well as men, all the Disturbances of States and Church, are but attempts of Covetous and Ambitious spirits, men that are unsatisfied with their condition, and desire a change, and care not how they compass it: They can charge through Seas of Blood and Sin, over the face of Men and Conscience, to get out of that condition, which they therefore are not well content with, because something they like better beckons their ambitious and their covetous Desires. Would you see what one of these will venture at? When Christ our Savior was to be betrayed, when a Person of the Godhead was to be delivered up and Crucified, the Devil had no passion to employ on that Design so fit as the desire of getting money; and when that desire was once entertained, we see he enters really in person, and possesses such a Soul: and when he is there, he designs no farther but to warm and stir that passion: 'It is sufficient fruit of his possession, he hath done enough in such an heart wherein he dwells, if he but keep alive that desire of Money; For he knows that will make the man adventure upon any guilt; for it made Judas undertake to betray Christ. And as for the other passion which the Devil did design the glories of his prospect to give fire to, though he could not stir it in our Savior, yet he knew it vanquished him himself when he was Angel. What height is there which Ambition will not fly at, since it made this spirit aim at an equality with the Most High? Heaven itself was not sufficient to content him, while there was a God above him in it. And since this affection peopled Hell with Devils, 'tis no wonder if it people Earth with Miseries and Vices.

5. The remaining Trial with which Satan did assault our Savior, when he tempted him with Scripture and God's Promises, and sought to ruin him with his own privileges: with that also,

6. His being a lying spirit in the mouth of all the Prophets; by which long ago he did destroy an Ahab, in the 1 Kings xxii. 22. But since by sad experience we know, he ruined the best King, purest Church, and most flourishing State, by the same Stratagem. But these, with those other which S. Paul does call his wiles, I must omit; sufficient hath been said already to enforce the necessity of resisting, which is the Duty, and the next considerable.

Resist the Devil: That is, do not you consent to his Temptations: for there is no more required of us, but this only, not to be willing to be taken and led captive by him. For let him suggest, incite, assault and storm us, no impression can be made upon us till we yield, and till we give consent no hurt is done. It is not here as in our other Wars: In those no resolution can secure the Victory, but notwithstanding all resistance possible, we may be vanquished; yea, sometime men are overpress'd and die with Conquering, and the Victor only gains a Monument, is but buried in the heaps of his slain Trophies. But in these Wars with the Devil, whosoever is unwilling to be vanquished, never can be: For he must first give consent to it, and will the ruin; for men do not sin against their wills. Only here we must distinguish betwixt Will and thin Velleity and Woulding. For let no man think when he commits deliberate iniquity with averseness and reluctancy of mind, allows not what he does, but does the evil that he would not, what he hates that he does; that this is not to be imputed to the Will; that in this case he is not willing, but here the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, and yields through mere infirmity: For, on the contrary, the Devil finds the Flesh so strong in this case, that with it alone he does assault the mind, and breaks through its reluctancies and aversations, bears down all its resolutions, triumphs over all that does pretend to God or Virtue in him. Where 'tis thus, let no man flatter or persuade himself he does what he would not, when it is plain he does impetuously will the doing it. Let him not think that he allows not, but hates that which he does; when it is certain, in that moment that he does commit, not to allow that which he does resolve and pitch upon and choose; to hate what with complacency he acts; or to do that unwillingly which he is wrought on by his own Concupiscence to do, and by his inward incitations, by the mutiny of his own affections which the Devil raises, and when it is the mere height and prevailency of his appetite that does make him do it (as it must be where there is reluctancy before he do it, his desires and affections there are evidently too strong for him) or at last, to hate the doing that which 'tis his too much love to that makes him do, are all impossibilities; the same things as to will against the will, desire against appetite. But do but keep thyself sincerely and in truth from being willing, and thou must be safe: For God expects no more but that we should not voluntarily yield to our undoing. He hath furnished us with his own complete Armor for no farther uses of a War, but to encourage us to stand. Take unto you the whole Armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the Devil: And again, Put ye on the whole Armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. There is no need to do more than this, not to be willing and consent to fall; for no man can be beaten down but he that will fall.

It were very easy for me to prescribe you how to fortify against those Engines of the Devils battery which I produced to you. But that I may not stay upon particulars, directing those whom he prevails upon through want of Employment to find out honest occasions not to be idle (and sure it is the most unhappy thing in the World, for any man to be necessitated to be vicious by his having nothing else to do, and because, while the World accounts it a Pedantick thing to be brought up by Rules and under Discipline, he cannot learn how to employ himself to his advantage) to pass by these, I say, the universal strength against this Enemy is Faith. Your adversary the Devil, like a roaring Lion, goeth up and down seeking whom he may devour; whom resist steadfast in the Faith. And that not only as it frustrates all that he attempts by means of Infidelity, but it also quenches all his fiery darts; whatsoever bright Temptation he presents to draw us from our Duty, or whatever fiery trial he makes use of to affright and martyr with. For the man whose Faith does give him evidence and eye-sight of those blessed Promises eye hath not seen, and gives substance, present solid being to his after-hopes, and whose heart hath swallowed down those happy expectations which have never entered in the heart of man to comprehend; what is there that can tempt or fright him from his station? To make all that which Satan gave the prospect of prevail on such a Soul, the Kingdoms of the Earth must out-vie God's Kingdom, and their Gauds out-shine his Glory, and the twinkling of an eye seem longer than Eternity: For nothing less than these will serve his turn, all these are in his expectations. Or what can fright the man whose heart is set above the sphere of terrors? who knows calamity, how great soever, can inflict but a more sudden and more glorious blessedness upon him; and the most despiteful cruel usage can but persecute him into Heaven. 'It is easy to demonstrate that a Faith and Expectation of the things on Earth, built upon weaker grounds than any man may have for his belief of things above, hath charged much greater hazards, overcome more difficulties than the Devil does assault us with. For sure none is so Sceptical, but he will grant that we have firmer grounds to think there is another World in Heaven, than Columbus (if he were the first Discoverer) had to think there was another Earth; and that there are far richer hopes laid up there in that other World, for those that do deny themselves the sinful profits and the jollities of this, and force them from their inclinations, than those Sea-men could expect who first adventured with him thither. For they could not think to gain much for themselves, but only to take soism of the Land (if any such there were) for others covetous Cruelty; could get little else but only richer Graves, and to lie buried in their yellow Earth. Nor are we assaulted in our Voyage with such hazards, as they knew they must encounter with; the path of Virtue and the way to Heaven is not so beset with difficulties as theirs was; when they must cut it out themselves through an unknown new World of Ocean, where they could see nothing else but swelling gaping Death, from an Abyss of which they were but weakly guarded, and removed few inches only: And as if the dangerousest shipwrecks were on shore, they found a Land more savage and more monstrous than that Sea. Yet all this they vanquished for such slender hopes, and upon so uncertain a belief. A weak Faith therefore can do mighty works; greater than any that we stand in need of to encounter with our Enemy: It can remove these Mountains too; the golden ones that Covetousness and Ambition do cast up: Yea more, it can remove the Devil also; for if you resist him steadfast in the Faith, he flies; which is the happy issue, and my last Part.

Resist the Devil, and he will Fly from you. And yet it cannot be denied but that sometimes when the messenger of Satan comes to buffet, though S. Paul resist him with the strength of Prayer (which when Moses managed he was able to prevail on God himself, and the Lord articled with him, that he might be let alone ) yet he could not beat off this assailant, 2 Cor. xii. 7, 8, 9. When God, either for prevention, as 'twas there, v. 7. or for exercising or illustrating of Graces, or some other of his blessed ends, gives a man up to the assaults of Satan, he is often pleased to continue the temptation long; but in that case he does never fail to send assistances and aids enough against it. My grace is sufficient for thee, • aith he to S. Paul there. And when he will have us tempted for his uses (if we be not failing to ourselves) he does prevent our being overcome; so that there is no danger in those Trials from their stay. But yet it must not be denied but that the Devil does prevail sometimes by importunacy, and by continuance of Temptation; so that Resistance is not always a Repulse, at least not such an one as to make him draw off and fly. It is not strange to find him siding with a natural Inclination, with the bent of Constitution, still presenting Objects, laying Opportunities, throwing in Examples, and all sorts of Invitation, always pressing so, that when a man hath struggled long he does grow weary of the service, not enduring to be thus upon his guard perpetually, watching a weak heart with strong inclinations, busy Devils do lay siege to; and so growing slack and careless, he is presently surprised: Or else, despairing that he shall be always able to hold out, lays hold upon a tempting opportunity, and yields; by the most unreasonable and basest cowardice that can be, yields, for fear of yielding; lest he should not hold out, he will not, but gives up; and puts himself into that very Mischief which he would avoid, merely for fear of coming into it. For which fear there is no reason neither; For 'tis not here as in our other Sieges, where, if it be close, continuance must reduce men to necessity of yielding, Strengths and Ammunitions will decay, Provisions fail, and, if the Enemy cannot, their own Hunger will break through their Walls, and make avenues for Conquest, time alone will take them; but in these Spiritual Sieges, one Repulse enables for another; and the more we have resisted, the Temptation is not only so much flatter, and more weak and baffled, but the inward Man is stronger: Victory does give new forces, and is sure to get in fresh and still sufficient supplies. For God giveth more grace, saith S. James: And, they shall have abundance, saith our Savior. So that where the Devil after several repulses still comes on with fresh assaults, we may be sure he does discern there is some treacherous inclination that sides with him: And although the man refuse himself the satisfaction of the sin, the Devil sees he hath a mind to it, his refusals are but faint, not hearty; though he seem afraid to come within the quarters of the Vice, he keeps, it may be, correspondence with the incentives to it, entertains the opportunities, plays with the Objects, or at best he does not fortify against him. Now this gives the Tempter hopes, and invites his assaults, and does expose the person to be taken by him.

But where he sees he is resisted heartily, his offers are received with an abhorrency, discerns Men are in earnest, watch to avoid all opportunities and occasions, and prepare, and fortify, and arm against him, there he will not stay to be the triumph of their Virtue. We may know th •• by his Agents, those that work under the Devil, whom he hath instructed in the mysteries of waging his Temptations. Where they are not like to speed (and as to this they have discerning spirits ) they avoid, and hate, and come not near, but study spite and mischief only there. The intemperate men are most uneasy with a person whom they are not able to engage in the debauch; the rudeness and brutality of their excesses are not so offensive to the sober man, as his staid Virtue is to them; they do not more avoid the crude egestions, shameful spewings of their overtaken fellows Riot, then they do the shame and the reproach that such a man's strict Conversation casts on them, which does in earnest make them look more foul and nasty to themselves. In fine, every Sinner: shuns the Company of those whom he believes Religious in earnest; 'tis an awe and check to them; they are afraid, and out at it, as their Great Master also is, who when he is resisted must be overcome: And as they that are beaten have their own fears also for their Enemies, which are sure to charge close, put to slight, chase and pursue them; so it seems he also is afraid of a sincere and hearty Christian, for he flies him: So he did from Christ, Matth. iv. verse 11. and so the Text assures, If you resist him, he will fly from you.

And now, although we all did once renounce the Devil and his works, were listed Soldiers against him, took a Sacrament upon it, and our Souls, the immortality of life or misery, depend upon our being true and faithful to ourselves and Oaths, or otherwise; nor is there more required of us but resolution and fidelity, only not to be consenting to our Enemies Conquest of us, not to will Captivity and Servitude: Yet as if, in mere defiance of our Vows and Interests, we not only willed the ruin, but would fight for it, we may find, instead of this resisting of the Devil, most men do resist the Holy Ghost; quench not the fiery darts of Satan, but the Spirit and his flames, by which he would enkindle love of God and Virtue in them. If he take advantage of some warm occasion to inflame their courage against former follies, heat them into resolutions of a change; as soon as that occasion goes off, they put out those flames, and choke these heats until they die. If he come in his soft whispers, speak close to the heart, suggest, and call them to those joys of which himself is earnest; to all these they shut their ears, can hear no whispers, are not sensible of any sounds of things at such a distance, sounds to which they give no more regard, than to things of the same extravagance with the Music of the Spheres. Nay, if he come with his more active methods, as the Angels came to Lot, send mercy to allure and take them by the hand, as they did, to invite and lead them out of Sodom; if that will not, Judgments then to thrust them out, as they did also, come with fire and brimstone to affright them; they not only like the men of Sodom, do attempt a violence and Rape upon those very Angels, but they really ally debauch the Mercies, and profane the Judgment, having blinded their own Eyes, that they might see no hand of God in either: using thus unkindly all his blessed methods of reclaiming them, till they have grieved him so that he forsake and leave them utterly. As if they had not heard that when the Holy Spirit is thus forced away, the evil spirit takes his place, 1 Sam xvi. 14. As if they knew not that to those who close their eyes and stop their ears against the Holy Spirit's motions, till they are grown dull of hearing and blind to them, God does send a spirit of slumber, that they should not see nor hear; and that for this dire reason, that they may not be converted, nor be saved. Five times he affirms it in the Scripture. Yea, once more in words of a sad Emphasis, 2. Thess. ii. 12, 13. He sends them strong delusions that they may believe a lie, that they all may be damned who believe not the truth, but have pleasure in unrighteousness: And that, because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. Blessed God! Is it so easy for such Sinners to believe and be converted, that thyself shouldst interpose to hinder it, and hide the possibilities of mercy from their eyes, that they may never see them, nor recover! What can then become of those for whom God does contrive that they shall not escape? when instead of those bowels that did make him swear he would not have the sinner die, but would have him return and live, he puts on so much indignation at such Sinners, as to take an order they shall not repent, and take an order that they shall be damned.

And yet all this is only to those men, who, being dull of hearing the suggestions of the Spirit, and not willing to give entertainment to his holy motions, grieve him so, that they repel and drive him quite away; and so by consequence only make way for the Devil: Whereas there are others that directly call him, force him to them, ravish and invade occasions to serve him. Some there are that study how to disbelieve, and with great labor and contrivance work out arguments and motives to persuade themselves to Atheism: Others practice, discipline, and exercise themselves to be engaged in Vice. Some dress so as to lay bai • s, snares, to entrap Temptation, that they may be sure it may not pass them: Others feed high to invite and entertain the Tempter, do all that is possible to make him come, and to assure him that he must prevail, when they have made it most impossible for themselves to stand and to resist.

Some there are indeed whom he does not overcome so easily, but is put to compound with them, takes them upon Articles: for when he would engage them to a sin to which he sees they have great inclinations, with some fears, he is fain to persuade them to repent when they have done; to lay hold upon the present opportunity, and not let the satisfaction escape them, but be sorry after, and amend. For where these resolutions of Repentance usher in transgression, there we may be sure it is the Devil that suggests those resolutions. But if he can get admittance once thus, by prevailing with a person to receive him upon purposes of after-Penitence; he is sure to prosper still in his attempts upon the same condition: For Repentance will wash out another sin, if he commit it; and so on. And it is evident that by this very train he does draw most men on through the whole course of sin and life: For never do they till they see themselves at the last stage, begin repenting. When they are to grapple with Death's forces, then they are to set upon resisting of the Devil: And when they are grown so weak that their whole Soul must be employed to muster all its spirits, all their strength, but to beat off one little spot of phlegm, that does besiege the avenues of breath, the ports of life, and sally at it, and assault it, once, again, and a third, many times, and yet with all the fury of its might cannot break through, nor beat off that little clot of spittle; when it is thus, yet then are they to wrestle with, and Conquer Principalities and Powers, all the Rulers of the utter darkness, pull down the strong holds of sin within, cast down imaginations, and every high thing that did exalt itself against the knowledge of God, and bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; and with those feeble hands that they are scarcely able to lift up in a short wish, or prayer, they must do all this; resist the Devil, and take Heaven by force.

Now sure to put it off to such a fatal season is a purpose of a desperate concern. In God's Name let us set upon the doing it while there is something left of Principle and vigor in us, ere we have so grieved God's Spirit, that he do resolve to leave us utterly; and before the Devil have so broke us to his yoke, that we become content and pleased to do his drudgery. We deceive ourselves if we think to do it with more ease when Constitution is grown weaker; as if then Temptations would not be so • rong: For the Habits will be then confirmed, Vice grown Heroical, and we wholly in the power of Satan, dead and senseless under it, not so much as stirring to get out. But if we strive before he have us in his clutches, we have an Enemy that can vanquish none but those who consent to, and comply and confederate with him, those that will be overcome: So that if we resist, he must be Conquer'd; and Temptation must be conquered too, for he will fly, and then by consequence must cease to trouble and molest us. This is the sure way to be rid of Temptations, to put to flight the great Artificer and Prince of them, subdue and overcome him and ourselves: And to him that overcometh thus Christ will grant to sit with him on his Throne, as He also overcame, and sat down with his Father on his Throne.

The Fourteenth SERMON, Preached at WHITE-HALL. Last Wednesday in LENT, 1667/8.

THough many by the Cross of Christ here understand any sort of Suffering for the sake of Christ or Religion (it being usual with the Scripture to entitle Christ to every evil that befalls a man for doing of his duty,) yet others looking on it properly as that on which Christ himself suffered, by the Enemies of the Cross understand those that set themselves against the whole design and influence of Christ 's death upon it.

Now to name that in few words, the Cross of Christ not only is one of the greatest Props on which our Faith of the whole Gospel leans, which it establisheth the truth of as Christ's Blood shed upon it was the sanction of the Covenant on God's part, who by that federal Rite of shedding Blood engaged himself; and we may certainly assure ourselves, he cannot fail to make good whatsoever he hath promised in that Covenant, who would give the Blood of his own only Son, who was so holy, and who was himself to Seal that Covenant; and his Blood is therefore called the Blood of the Everlasting Covenant.

But besides this extrinsic influence of it, all the blessed Mercies also of the Gospel, are the Purchase of this Cross, and all the main essential duties of the Gospel are not only Doctrines of the Cross, such as it directs and does enforce, but the Cross also hath an immediate efficacy in the working of them in us: For S. Paul saith by the Cross of Christ the World is Crucified to me and I unto the World. On it the Flesh is also crucified with the Affections and Lusts: And to say all that comprehensive Duty of the Gospel, Self-denial, is but another word for taking up the Cross: And then as for the Mercies of the Gospel on the Cross the satisfaction for our sins was made, the Price of our Redemption paid, and that effected: There was wrought our Reconciliation with our God; Lastly, that was the consideration upon which Grace was bestowed whereby we are enabled to perform our duty: With good reason, therefore S. Paul calls the Gospel 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the word or Doctrine of the Cross; so that the Enemies of the Cross of Christ are in a word the Enemies of Christianity, and so the blessed Polycarp in his Epistle to these same Philippians seems to understand it: And they that walk as Enemies to it, are such as do not only hate the Duties of the Gospel, those especially which the Cross directly does enforce; but their course of life is ordered so as to break the very Frame and Power of Christianity, they set themselves against all that Christ came to do upon and by the Cross, resist, and wage War with the Doctrines, and by consequence oppose the mercies of it.

The words being thus explained, I have no more to do but only answer two Enquiries which they give occasion for.

The first is, What sort of men those are that walk as Enemies to the Cross, and wherein their hostility does express itself?

The second is, What the danger and the sadness is of that condition, that they should make S. Paul think it necessary frequently to warn them of it, and to do it now with so much passion? For many walk, saith he, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, &c.

First for the first. And here I shall not strive to give you in a perfect list of all that walk as Enemies to the Cross, but shall take that which S. Paul hath made ready to my hands in the next words.

And first the Enemies which he brings up in the front, are the Sensualists, the Men whose God is their Belly.

Secondly, They whose glory is in their shame.

Thirdly, Who mind Earthly things, to which as being their confederates, and near Allies I shall add

Fourthly, Those that he reckons up in the 1 Cor. i. the wise men of this World.

First, The Sensualists.

That Men who diligently mind the serving of their appetite in Meats and Drinks, that study and contrive its pleasure, and with industry have learned, and practice Arts of Luxury, and in those have set up their delights, that these should be accounted Enemies of the Cross of Christ there is but too much reason. For their course of life is perfect opposition to that Cross, and to the whole design of Christianity, and to the very being of all Virtue. For since Virtue is but moderation and restraint of Appetites and Passions, and since sensuality indulges, and does raise and heat them: since the whole design of Christianity, is to mortify the deeds of the Body, those our members upon earth, that Body of Sin and Death; and since Voluptuousness quickens, pampers and does make them vigorous; lastly, since the Doctrines and the Influences of the Cross of Christ do aim at Crucifying the flesh with its Affections and Lusts, and Luxuries do gorge and make them ramping, sure the Enmity is too apparent to be proved.

It is the business of Religion to instruct and frame men into reasonable Creatures: God himself chose to die upon the Cross that we might live like Men here, and then afterwards die into Sons of God, and become equal to the Angels.

He suffered on the Tree, that we might be renewed into that constitution which the Tree of Knowledge did disorder and debauch. Before Man a • e of that, his lower Soul was in perfect subordination to his mind, and every motion of his appetite did attend the dictates of his Reason, and obey them with that resignation and ready willingness which our outward faculties do execute the Wills commands with; then anything, however grateful to the senses, was no otherwise desired than as it served the regular and proper ends and uses of his making; there was a rational harmony in all the tendencies of all his parts, and that directed, modulated by the rules and hand of God that made them: In fine, then Grace was Nature, Virtue Constitution.

Now to reduce us to this state as near as possible is the business of Religion (as it had been in some kind the attempt also of Philosophy.) But this it can in no degree effect, but as it does again establish the subordination of the sensual to the reasonable part within us: That is, till by denying satisfactions to the Appetite (which is now irregular and disorderly in its desires) we have taught it how to want them, and to be content without them, and by that means have subdued its inclinations; or by taking down the Body have abated of its powers and its provocations; and where it is stubborn, heady, and rebellious, there by cutting off provisions from the flesh, and by sharp methods vanquished and reduced it into a condition of Obedience; and (whenever that is also necessary) weakens so that insolent untamed part of our selves, that we make it lie fainting, groveling at our feet (these are the Doctrines of the Cross, and this the method of its Discipline:) And withal by those rational and divine heavenly encouragements which above all Doctrines in the World our Christianity suggests and furnisheth with infinite advantage, have so fortified the mind that it resumes its principality, governs, and carries on the lower Soul in its obedience to Duty easily without resistance, as they say the higher Heaven moves the inferior Orbs along with it although their proper tendencies are contrary: At leastwise if impressions from without or inbred inclinations stir, raise passions, and mutinies, yet the mind keeps so much power that they shall not beat it off, and force it from its prosecutions of good; nor shall, unless by a surprise, engage its consent in the pursuit of evil. This is that which Religion aims at, thus to make us men, teach us to live according to our nature, to put Reason in the Throne, and vindicate the Spirit from the tyranny of its own Vassal flesh.

But sensuality is most perfect opposition to this whole design; for it renverses that subordination without which there is no possibility of Virtue as I showed you; and it puts that whether Lust or Passion in the Throne, which either constitution, conversation, or whatever accident, did give possession of our inclinations to: And makes the strangest prodigy of Centaure where the Beast is uppermost and rides the man; where the Beast is God indeed; for the sensual man acknowledges no other God but his own belly, so S. Paul does character him here. And truly if we look on the attendances, and careful services he gives it, and how studiously and wholly he does consecrate himself to please it, one would think it most impossible he should have any other God: but if we number the drink-offerings, and meat-offerings, the whole Hecatombs he gives it, and whereas other Deities had only some peculiar appropriate Creatures for their Sacrifices, how this Votary rifles the Universe, goes through the whole latitude of beings for Oblations, one would think he did out • number all the Heathen Legions in his God's; and yet all this is only for his Belly. Now he that deifies his Appetite, and that is so attent and so solicitous in its service, he that sets up such an Antigod as this to Christ, appears a scornful insolent Enemy to Him, his Cross and his Religion, near the state of those men whom the Wiseman couples with the sensual, persons of an impudent mind, the very disposition of those Enemies of the Cross of Christ whom S. Paul brings up in the second place,

Those that glory in their shame.

Amongst the uses of the Cross of Christ, one chiefly meant, was by the ignominy of that most accursed infamous punishment to represent the vileness of Iniquity; to which shame and confusion were so due, that there were to be Contumelies as well as Agonies in the Death that was to expiate it; And it seems not sufficient that the Blood of God be shed for it, but that Blood must be stained too with the imputation of a Malefactor; Christ was to suffer the insulting scorns and vilifyings of his Crucifiers, his Honor must be sacrificed as well as his Life, Barabbas must be preferred even before that Pers • n of the Trinity to whom sin was to be imputed, and who was to bear the just shame of it, such infinite debasement and contempt being a most essential ingredient in the wages of Iniquity, of which this Cross of Christ was the express.

And then how is it possible for men to wage a more professed hostility against the Cross of Christ, than by endeavoring to put Reputation on the thing on which that Cross was set to throw Disgrace? by raising Trophies to themselves for that which raised a Gibbet to their Savior? giving themselves a value for the thing which hath such infinite diminution in it, that it made the Son of God esteemed worse than Barabbas.

These men are too successful Enemies of the Cross that thus triumph over it, and when it was erected as an Ensign to display the vileness of iniquity, and to shame sin out of the lives of mankind, vindicate and rescue sin from that contempt, and throw the Cross and shame upon Religion itself; while they exult in their commissions as in commendable things, and too truly verifying the Apostles aggravations against willful Sinners, Crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh and put him to an open shame, while they put scorns on that contempt he suffered: For the Agonies and Contumelies he endured on that account of sin must needs be most ridiculous to them who count Sin gay and Honorable. Thus they trample and insult upon his Passion, thus tread underfoot the Son of God even on his Cross, and upon that footstool they exalt themselves by putting sin in countenance and credit with the Age▪ For it is plain it is so when men once can glory in it▪ For our actions raise a glorying in us only in relation to the sentiments of others, that growing from a confidence of having praise and value for them in the World. So that they must assure themselves that most men or the most considerable will applaud their Vices; otherwise they could not glory in them, but would be ashamed. And such a judgment we may safely pass upon an Age or Nation, where great Crimes not only have impunity but Reputation; and men glory in them. Had it been so in the Heathen World when Christ and his Cross first appeared there, Christianity had wanted one of its convincing pleas. Tertullian in his Apology for our Religion to them that blasted it with all imaginable imputations of Impiety, discourses thus:

Omne malum out timore out pudore Natura perfudit: Nature hath dashed every Vice with fear or shame; all Malefactors labor to lie hid, and if they are laid hold upon they tremble, and deny when they are accused, hardly confess it to the Rack; and when they are found guilty they bewail, upbraid themselves, and aggravate confessions of their Crimes. Christianus vero quid simile? But what does the Christian like this? None of us is ashamed of his Religion, or repents, except it be because he was not sooner of it: If he be branded for it he rerejoyceth, if you accuse him of it he does own it, triumphs in it; if he be condemned for it he calls his Execution his Martyrdom, his sufferings his Crown. Quid hoc mali est quod naturalia mali non habet? Now what strange kind of impiety is this that hath none of the natural affections of it? not the shame nor fear, tergiversations or repentance, or deplorings of it? Quid hoc mali est cujus reus gaudet, cujus accusatio votum est, & poena faelicitas? What a kind of evil's this, which he that is found guilty of is glad? to be accused of it is his ambition? to suffer for it is his happiness?

Alas, the World hath taught Vice nowadays to use this plea with a much greater confidence, and he that would apply this argument to our experiences might plead thus for the Religion of sin. For now they are but piteous puisny sinners who feel those things which in Tertullian's days were natural and essential to sin, to blush, and be ashamed, and have regrets. Men do not only own it as those primitive persons did their Christianity, but they out-vie the Martyrs heats; for they accuse themselves, and boast of their performances in Villany, yea falsity, bely themselves in sin, and usurp Vice, steal the glorious Reputation of exceeding sinfulness, as if the impiety were meritorious.

And truly as that Christian Confidence and Magnanimity brought in the World as Proselytes to the Cross, so this other confidence brings Sholes of Votaries to Vice: For when once there is no need to be ashamed of it, there are but very few but will venture to commit it. And indeed this sort of men do manage their hostility so dexterously, as to use those very Weapons Christianity was successful with, against it self. 'Twas by a discipline of shame (for that was the great strength of the Church Censures ) that our Religion did at first prevail almost to the exterminating Vice out of the World: The temporal Sword was never so victorious as this weapon of our Spiritual Warfare was, which yet in those times drew no blood, unless it were into the face, in blushes. But since men have found or made pretexts to glory in iniquity, and several Crimes are become honorable; Virtues are dressed up as mean, poor spirited, sneaking qualities; some look melancholic, sad, are hypocondriack, some pedantic, some unmanly, some irrational, and worse; so that men are now ashamed of Duty; 'tis a disparagement to own the doing it: Thus they have as it were excommunicated Religion. It is accounted a contemptible, or at best foolish thing; which is the very sentence of the third sort of Enemies the Wise men of this World, though • e 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 that mind earthly things (the fourth sort) in whic • all their wisdom lies. Which two last sorts of Enemies I shall attaque together.

The Cross of Christ amongst its other ends was set to be an instrument whereby the World is to be Crucified to us, and we unto the World; to be the means whereby we are enabled to prevail upon and overcome our worldly lusts and inclinations; and to sleight, yea and detest all the temptations of its Wealth, Delights, and Heights, when they attempt to draw us into sin or take us off from Duty. Now to this it works by these three steps.

First, showing us the Author and the finisher of our Faith nailed himself to that Cross; his joints racked on it, his whole Body stripped, and nothing else but Vinegar and bitter potions allowed his thirst: and thus convincing us that if we will be his Disciples we must take up his Cross and follow him, at leastwise we must have preparedness of mind to take it up when ever it is fixed to Duty; to renounce all profits, honors, and delights of this World that are not consistent with our Christian profession: This is the Doctrine of the Cross of Christ; it being otherwise impossible to to be the Disciples of a Crucified Master. And when this great Captain of our Salvation was himself consecrated by his sufferings, and had for his Standard his own Body lifted up upon the Cross, we that are listed under him, and with that very badge the Cross too; crucis Consecranei, Votaries and fellow Soldiers of that Order, if we shall avoid our Duty when it is attended with a Cross, or straitened any ways, and the provisions of this World are cut off from it, and betake ourselves rather to the contents of Earth; we do not only shamefully fly from our Colours; Fugitive, and Cowards, Poltrons in the Spiritual Warfare; but are Renegadoes, false and traitors to ourselves too, such as basely ran away not only from our Officer, but from Salvation, which he is the Captain of; and which we cannot possibly attain, except we be resolved to follow him, and charge through whatsoever disadvantages to attend Religion, vanquishing all those temptations with which the World assaults us in our course to Duty. Thus the Cross of Christ first shows us the necessity we have to renounce and Crucify the World.

But to encourage and enable us to do so, it does also show us

Secondly, The certainty of a good issue in the doing it, assures us, that those who deny themselves forbidden satisfactions here, that will be virtuous maugre all the baits and threats of Earth, will embrace Duty when it is laden with a Cross, although so heavy as to crush out life, and kill the body; assures us that those lose not, but exchange their lives, shall save their Souls, and that there is another World wherein their losses shall be made up to them, and repaired with all advantage. To the truth of this the Cross of Christ is a most pregnant and infallible testimony. For as by multitudes of Miracles Christ sought to satisfy the World that he was sent from God to promise all this, and justified his Power to perform it by experiment, raising some up from the dead; so when they said he did his Miracles by Beelzebub, he justified it • urther with his Life; affirming that he was the Son of God (no 'tis impossible but he must know whether he were or no) and consequently sent and able to do all he promised, and resolved to do it also for our more assurance in himself, that he would raise himself up from the dead within three days; and saying this when he was sure he should be Crucified for saying so, and sure that if he did not do according to his words, he must within three days appear a mere Impostor to the world, and his Religion never be received.

Now 'tis impossible for him that must needs know whether all this were true or no to give a greater testimony to it than his Life. For this that Blood and Water that flowed from his wounded side upon Cross, which did assure his Death, is justly said to bear witness to his being the Son of God, and consequently to the truth of all this, equal to the testimony of the Spirit (whether that which the Spirit gave when he came from Heaven down upon him in his Baptism, or the testimony which he gave by Miracle; ) for there are three that bear witness upon Earth, the Spirit, the Water and the Blood. Thus by his Death Christ did bring Life and Immortality to light: his choosing to lay down his own life for asserting of the truth of all this, was as great an argument to prove it as his raising others from the dead: and Lazarus 's empty Monument, and walking Grave-clothes were not better evidence than this Cross of Christ.

4. Once more, this Cross not only proves the certainty of a future state, but does demonstrate the advantage of it; and assures us that it is infinitely much more eligible to have our portion in the life to come than in this life: That to part with everything that is desirable in this World rather than to fail of those joys that are laid up in the other, that to be poor here or to be a spoil, to renounce or to disperse my wealth, that so I may lay up treasures for myself in Heaven, and may be rich to God; never to taste any one of these puddle transient delights, rather than to be put from that right hand where there are pleasures for evermore; to be thrown down from every height on Earth, if so I may ascent those everlasting Hills, and Mount Zion that is above; that this is beyond all proportion the wisest course it does demonstrate; since it shows us him who is the Son of God, who did create all these advantages of Earth, and prepare those in Heaven, and does therefore know them both: Who also is the Wisdom of the Father, and does therefore know to value them, yet for the joys that were set before him choosing to endure the Cross and despising the shame. On that Beam he weighed them, and by that his choice declared the Pomps of this World far too light for that exceeding and eternal weight of Glory; that the whole earth was but as the dust upon the Ballance and despised it, and to make us do so, is both the Design and direct influence of the Cross of Christ.

But as at first the Wise men of this World did count the Preaching of the Cross mere folly, to give up themselves to the belief and the obedience of a man that was most infamously Crucified, and for the sake of such an one to renounce all the satisfactions, suffer all the dire things of this Life, and in lieu of all this only expect some after Blessednesses and Salvations from a man that they thought could not save himself, seemed to them most ridiculous: So truly it does still appear so to the carnal reasonings of that sort of men, who have the same objections to the Cross of Christ, as it would Crucify the World to them, and them to it; as it would strip them of all present rich contents, and give them certain evils, with some promises of after good things, which they have no taste for, nor assurance of.

Now this being in their account folly, then the contrary to this they must think Wisdom: as it is indeed the Wisdom of this World; which Wisdom since it does design no further than this World, and hath no higher ends than Earth and its Felicities, it must needs put men upon minding the acquist and the enjoyment of these Earthly things, for that is only to pursue and to achieve their ends, to catch at and lay hold on their felicity; and accordingly we see it does immerse them wholly in those cares. So that it is no wonder if their God and Religion can get no attendance from them, it being most impossible they should, when Mammon hath engaged them in the superstitious services of Idolatry; and when they sacrifice their whole selves to pleasure and make their bodies the burnt offerings of their Lusts, and when Ambition, even while it makes them stretch and climb and mount, causes them also to fall low, prostrate, make their temper, nature stoop, lie down to every humor, and to every Vice they think themselves concerned to court and please.

And though a man would think these so great boundless cares are very vain and foolish upon several accounts; for common sense as well as Scripture does assure us that this life and the Contents of it do not consist in the abundance of the things that we possess; that it is all one whether my draught come out of a small Bottle or an Hogshead; the one of these indeed may serve excess, and sickness better, but the other serves my Appetite as well; the one may drown my Virtue, but the other quenches thirst alike. And every days experience also does convince us, that the least cross accident, pain or affliction on our persons or some other that is seated near our hearts, or the least vexation or cross passion will so sour all those advantages, that we cannot possibly enjoy them while we have them; sickness makes the richest plenty only a more nauseous trouble, a more costly loathing; then the poorest Soul that is in health is that great rich man's envy.

And there's no man also but does see so far into futurity as to satisfy himself that he shall die, and then the shadow of Death will cloud and put out all these Glories. And universal Reason also does tell every man that to deny himself or want his present satisfactions of this helpless dying kind, and suffer present evils, is in prudence to be chosen for avoiding of a future evil or achieving of a good to come which do transcend those other infinitely, and to all Eternity continue. Sure as no man pities the poor Infant in the Womb because he lies imbrued in Blood, hath no inheritance there at all, is fettered, confined as it were in that dark Cell; if he be to be born to an Estate, to live a full age here in gaiety of mind, and health of body, in Reputation, and all plenty of delights, we never are concerned or troubled at his other nine months Dungeon. So if this life be to the next as the Womb is to this; and if our hopes be no more on the Earth than in the Belly; and we have no inheritance or abiding place here, as we had not there; although the waters of affliction, and to be in our blood should be as natural to us as to the Child, yet if we thus press forward to the other birth, to be delivered into immortality of joys, this state were not to be lamented, but endeavored for with all our powers. Lastly, the same reason does assure us, that if those futurities (which are most certain) were but only possible, yet to part with everything, and suffer anything here to prevent miscarriage in relation to those two Eternities is certainly the safest course, and then by consequence the wisest. And this does appear a truth to all men when they go to die: And if it be the truth then, 'tis always so.

Yet notwithstanding all this, he that minds these earthly things, whose heart is set upon them, whose desires the World serves, provides to satisfy every imagination of delight: His heart is so entangled in affections to them, and in prejudices for them, and hath so imbib'd the impressions of them, that he hath no taste for any other, and by consequence no satisfying notions of them: And if he hath not then it is not possible that he should really and from his heart, out of conviction and inward sense value these beyond the earthly ones: and it is plain we see he does not; and if he do not, to deprive himself of all the sweet contentments of his life, and tear out his own bowels that yearn after them, and cling to them; and instead of those embrace a Cross, and do this for things which he cannot value more, and counts uncertain, he must needs think a mad folly: Consequently to contrive and seize the present to the best most plentiful advantage is the wisest course; and therefore they that by whatever arts do thrive, advance themselves, live high and in delights, they are Wise men; because they do attain their ends, by means appropriate to those ends.

And now the enmity betwixt the Cross of Christ and the wisdom of the World appears: first, their designs are most directly opposite; the cross designs to take us up from earth and from its satisfactions, which have also thorns and briars in them, that Earths Curse, things that pierce and wound as fatally as the Nails and Thorns and other cruelties of Christ's Cross; and to lift us towards Heaven, to direct our hearts and our affections thither as our harbingers, to take possession for us of those joys the Cross did purchase for us, but no Cross can ever trouble. But the Wisdom of this World designs to lay out all its cares and its contrivances within this World, minds nothing else but earthly things, and does not lift an eye or thought to any other.

Secondly, Their Principles wage war: For earthly good things being the design, the main end of this worldly wisdom, consequently that does justify all courses without which men cannot gain those ends, by which they do, though they be never so unlawful by the Rules of that which we call Virtue and Religion; it does justify, I say, all such as prudent. But the Principles of the Doctrines of the Cross of Christ are positive, that we must renounce all earthly satisfactions, when they cannot be enjoyed without trangressing Christ's Commands, and embrace Duty even when it executes itself upon us.

But Thirdly, there's no enmity so fatal to the Cross of Christ as is the practice of those men who minding Earthly things, and all their wisdom lying as to them, they therefore think themselves concerned to represent the Doctrines of the Cross, which does so contradict their wisdom, as mere madness, and the Cross itself as the Ensign of folly; And accordingly they do, treat it en ridicul; and make the proper Doctrines of it, the strict duties of Religion, matter for their jests, and bitter scoffs: They character Religion as a worship that befits a God whose shape the Primitive persecutors painted Christ in, Deus Onochaetes, as if Christianity were proper Homage only to an Asses person, as Tertullian words it; And the Votaries transformed by this their service and made like the God they worship, were what they were called then Asinarii creatures only fit for burden, to bear, what they magnify, a Cross and scorns. No persecutions are so mortal as those that Murder the reputation of a thing or person; not so much because when that is fallen once then they cannot hope to stand, as because those murder after death, and poison memory, killing to immortality. They were much more kind to Religion and more innocent that clothed the Christians in the skins of Bears and Tigers, that so they might be worried into Martyrdom; Than they that clothe their Christianity in fools Coat, that so it may be laughed to death, go out in ignominy and into contempt. If to sport with things of sacred and Eternal consequence were to be forgiven, yet to do it with the Cross of Christ: Thus to set that out as foolishness which is the greatest mystery the Divine wisdom hath contrived to make mercy and truth meet together, righteousness and peace kiss each other, to make sin be punished, yet the Sinner pardoned: Thus to play and sin upon those dire expresses of God's indignation against sin, are things of such a sad and dangerous concern, that S. Paul could not give a caution against them but with tears, For many walk, saith he, of whom I have told you often and now tell you even weeping, &c. Which calls me to my last Consideration.

Indeed the Cross of Christ does represent Almighty God in so severe a shape, and gives the lineaments of so fierce displeasures against sin, as do exceed all comprehension. There was a passion in Christ's Prayer to prevent his Passion, when he deprecated it with strong cries and tears, yea when his whole body wept tears as of blood to deprecate it; and yet he cried more dreadfully when he did suffer it; The Nails that bor'd his Hands, the Spear that pierced his Heart and made out-lets for his Blood and Spirits, did not wound him as, that sting of death and torments, sin did, which made out-lets for God to forsake him, and which drove away the Lord that was himself out of him. Neither did his God forsake him only, but his most Almighty attributes were engaged against him: God's Holiness and Justice were resolved to make Christ an example of the sad demerit of Iniquity, and his hatred of it: Demerit so great, as was valuable with the everlasting punishment of the World, fallen Angels and fallen Men; for to that did it make them liable. Now that God might appear to hate it at the rate of its deservings, it was very necessary that it should be punished, if not by the execution of that sentence on Mankind as on the Devils, yet by something that might be proportionable to it, so to let us see the measures God abhors it by, to what degrees the Lord is just and holy by those torments, torments answerable to those attributes.

Now truly when we do reflect on this we cannot wonder if the Sinner be an enemy to the Cross, and hate the prospect of it, which does give him such a perfect copy of his expectations, when our Savior's draught which he so trembled at shall be the everlasting portion of his Cup: For if God did so plague the imputation of Iniquity, how will he torment the willful and impenitent commission of it.

But then when we consider those torments were the satisfaction for the sins of man, methinks the Sinner should be otherwise affected to them: Christ by bearing the Cross gave God such satisfaction, as did move him in consideration thereof to dispence with that strict Law, which having broken we were forfeit to eternal Death, and to publish an act of Grace whereby he does admit all to pardon of sins past, and to a right to everlasting Life that will believe on him, forsake their sins and live true Christians. He there appears the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the World, for that he does as being a Lamb slain, then he was our Sacrifice, and that Cross the Altar. And the humbled Sinner that repents (for, notwithstanding satisfaction, God will not accept a Sinner that goes on; by all those Agonies his holiness would not be justified, if when he had forsaken and tormented his own Son for taking sin upon him, he should yet receive into his favor and his Heaven, Sinners that will not let go, but will retain their sins: but the penitent) may plead this expiation: Lo here I poor Soul prostrate at the footstool of the Cross lay hold upon the Altar, here's my Sacrifice on which my fins are to be charged, and not on me, although so foul I am, I cannot pour out tears sufficient to cleanse me, yet behold Lord, and see if there ever were any Sorrow like the sorrow of thy Son wherewith thou didst afflict him for these sins of mine: And here is Blood also, his Blood to wash me in: and that Blood is within the Vail too now, and that my Offering taken from the Cross up to thy Throne, thou hast accepted it, and canst not refuse it now my Advocate does plead it, and claims for me the advantage of the Cross.

Now that men should be Enemies to this, and when they are forfeit to eternal Ruin, hate that▪ which is to redeem the forfeiture; that they should trample on the Cross whereon their satisfactions were wrought; tread down the Altar which they have but to lay hold on and be safe; wage war with, beat off, and pursue a Lamb, that Lamb of God that comes to take away their sins: and make a spoil and slaughter of their Sacrifice; hostilely spill upon the ground that Blood, that was appointed for their Blood upon the Altar, for their blood of sprinkling, and was to appear in Heaven for them. If men resolve to be on terms of Duel with their God, and scorn that Satisfaction shall be made for them by any other way than by defiance; and although their God do make the satisfactions for them to himself, yet not endure it, but choose quarrel rather; this is so perverse and fatal an hostility as no tears are sufficient to bewail.

But possibly men sleight these satisfactions because some terms are put upon them which they know not how to comport with; the merits of the Cross must not be accounted to them but upon conditions which they are not able to perform; they are required to master all their wicked Customs, their untamed appetites, and settled habits, to keep under their Concupiscence, to calm their inclinations and their passions: Now on such severe articles friendship with the Cross they think is too hard bought.

But therefore Secondly, the Cross was the consideration upon which Grace is o •• er'd us, whereby we are enabled to perform all this; th • power to will and strength to do, all necessary aids from Heaven are granted to us as Christ merited them for us by his Sufferings; and that Blood he shed upon the Cross it is the Fountain, 'tis the Ocean of all Grace: And if temptations storm thee, lay hold on that Cross, it is the Anchor of Salvation thou hast hold on; tell thy God although thou art not able to resist and stand, thou hast the price of strength, that which did purchase it was paid down for thee on the Cross, and is at his right hand, he hath it: give me therefore grace for it, let me have the value of that Blood, the Blood of God in spiritual succors, which may make me able to resist thy Enemies, and do thy will. Now God will never be unjust to deny any man those aids that were so dearly purchased for him, and for which he hath received the price.

And then that men should be Enemies of the Cross which is their Magazine of strength against their Enemies! As men that do resist the having Grace, lest it should change their inclinations! as men that will not be impowered against Vice, but will oppose the Aids of Heaven, fight against the succors that are given them, and destroy their own forces, lest with them they should be able to encounter sin and overcome it! Thus willfully to run against and charge their Anchor of Salvation; to poison to themselves the Fountain the whole Ocean of their graces, is the state of them only that do resolve and that had rather perish.

Once more, on that Cross was wrought a reconciliation betwixt God and Man; and that upon such terms of honor to us Men, that God does seem to condescend as far in this his Treaty, as in coming down from Godhead into Flesh; there is Exinanition in his yieldings and compliance. He sent his Son to move us to be reconciled, as if he did acknowledge us the offended party; and as if he meant to give us satisfaction, in his Blood, he dies upon the Cross to effect that Reconciliation. When our Savior would magnify a Love he thus expresses it, Greater love than this hath no man, that a man lay down his life for his friend: But behold here is greater love, for Christ commended his love to us in that when we were Enemies he died for us, only out of hopes to make us friends; Love strong as doath indeed, that brought him to the Grave who could not die. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , affection violent as Hell, that brought God to 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , and made him descend to Hell: For so low he stoop'd; thus he humbled himself to persuade us to be reconciled, and to prevail with us to be at peace with God.

And is a Reconciliation with the Lord so hateful to us, that we will be Enemies to the Cross that works it? are we so assured of worsting God Almighty, that we will resist whatever makes towards a peace with him? are the Sinners expectations so tempting? do we look for such advantage from the Covenant we have made with Death, and the agreement we are at with Hell, that we will have the League defensive and offensive? will be foes to their foes? and will have War with God because he is their Enemy? are we thus resolved to be revenged upon the Triumphs of the Cross? and because our Savior spoiled Principalities and Powers, triumphing over them on it; therefore set ourselves against that Trophy of his Victories over our friends the Devil and his Fiends? is the love of Christ so injurious to us that we will be Enemies to the Expresses of it? and when his affection threw him down so low for our sakes, humbled him to Hell to beg and to procure our friendship, will we go to trample on him there rather than not go thither, and rather than we will not be forever there?

W •• 〈…〉 for this! O blessed Savior, that thou didst pray against thy Cup 〈◊〉 earnestly, because of Man's ingrateful 〈◊〉 to it • because th •• • ast to 〈◊〉 God Almighty's Indignation in it, and the Si •• ers hatred for it? because it was the Cup of the Lord's 〈◊〉 , and 〈…〉 squeezed into it all the d • egs of his Wrath, and 〈…〉 into it? and when the one will make thee drink it up, the 〈…〉 it in thy face? was it not because thou wert to take a Cross up which thou couldst not bear the Torments of, and 〈◊〉 will not endure the blessings of? but most despitefully treads down that 〈…〉 thou art sinking under it laden with their weight? this is, alas, a state so sad that neither S. Paul's tears, nor Christ's blood hath sufficient compassion for.

And yet though one wept the other died for them, these men have neither tears nor pity for themselves. Yet one would think this were a subject worthy of them: 'It is storyed of Xerxes, that when he took a view of his vast Army which he went to Conquer Greece with (an Army such as the Sun never saw, and it could scarce see that, which the Historian says did Coelo minitari tenebras, as it covered and drank up the Sea, and took up and devoured the Earth, so it did seem to darken Heaven too: An Army which consisted, saith Herodotus, when mustered at Thermopylae, of Five Millions, Two Hundred Eighty Three Thousand, Two Hundred and Twenty Men, besides Laundresses, Harlots, and Horses; and it had Twelve Hundred Gallies for Sea-fight, besides Twenty Hundred Ships for carriage.) When upon this view he had for a while gloried in his happiness to behold and Gommand so many Nations, and so Powerful a Fleet and Army: notwithstanding on a sudden he burst into tears on this Consideration, that in one Hundred years there should not one survive of that great marvelous multitude: (And truly through his folly in one hundred weeks scarce any one but was the prey of Enemies, and Death and Infamy.) But 'tis a sadder Contemplation to reflect on the far greater Army of the Enemies of the Cross, who, if they do not end that quarrel, will in fewer years be all dead and in Hell. I know not whether such a sad reflection called out S. Paul 's tears, but sure I am it does deserve their own: And there is nothing will avail in their behalf without their tears. It may be tears are piteous things for such brave Sinners: But then what will these insulting Enemies of the Cross do, when they shall see that Sign of the Son of Man coming in the Clouds of Heaven? When this Cross shall usher in the great Assize? When they shall look on him that they have pierced and Crucified upon it? And when that Crucified offended Enemy shall come there to be their Judge? That takes himself to be offended much more in his kindness, than his Person; and will judge this more severely that we would not let his Cross and Passion do us any good, than that we Crucified him on it.

Let us then be cautioned in the fear of God to be no longer Enemies to that which is to reconcile our judge to us. If we have his Friendship on the Cross, we may be sure to have it on the • udgment Seat. He that on the Cross parted with Godhead and with Life for us, will on the Bench adjudge us that Inheritance which his Cross did purchase for us. He sits there to pronounce happiness upon all faithful 〈◊〉 Christians, to proclaim Come ye blessed of my Father inherit the Kingdom prepared for you.

To which, &c.

SERMON XV. WHITE-HALL. Novemb. 15. 1668.

THE Kingdom of God, especially as it is concerns the forepart of the Text, signifies nothing else but that of the Messiah, or in one word, Christianity; and that both as to the profession and the practice, the Doctrine and the life of it: For so the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , by which Theophylact expounds the words, the Preaching of the Doctrine is itself called the Kingdom of God by our Savior, Mat. 21. 43. 'It is not delivering of a message only in weak empty words, 'tis Jurisdiction and exercise of Sovereignty: And the Commission that authorized to it was the delegation of the Powers of Omnipotence: All Power, saith our Lord, is given to me both in Heaven and in Earth, And (which the Syriac adds in that place also) as my Father sent me, so send I you, go ye therefore and teach all Nations, teaching them to observe whatsoever I have Commanded you. As if this were execution of the greatest and most Kingly Power, and every Doctrine had the force of Proclamation, every denunciation were Sentence; as it will be certainly to them that do not give obedience to it.

Which obedience is Secondly, and that most properly entitled the Kingdom of God; Rom. 14. 17. for by that he Reigns; without this our great universal Lord were a Prince of no Subjects, had a Kingdom but of Rebells only: So that to receive the Kingdom of God is by the obedience of Faith to submit to the Gospel, to receive the Doctrines of it by believing, and the Precepts by obeying them: The duty which our Savior here directs, and which with such severity he threatens non-performance of, even with exclusion from that blessed Immortality of Joyes which the Kingdom of God imports, which is that sense it bears in the last words of my Text. In which we must consider,

First, the Object both of the Duty and the Threat a Kingdom, and that the Kingdom of God.

Secondly, our concern and duty in relation to that Kingdom we have only to receive it. Whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God.

Whatever bustl • men are well content to make to g • t possession of any Earthly Dignity or Power, sometimes to wage War with their Conscience and all obligations, violate all Rights both Human and Divine, and assault greatest difficulties and yet greater guilts, to invade men's Crowns, and other rights, there's no such need in this; we have no more to do but let this Kingdom come, and not resist the having it. For therefore also,

Thirdly, the manner we are by our Savior here prescribed to receive this Kingdom in is, as a little Child. Whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little Child, as one that cannot stand against the power of a Kingdom when it comes; that hath not strength nor malice, neither force nor will to oppose; which they that do must needs keep themselves out of it; Which is,

Fourthly, the thing threatened, they shall not enter therein; there being neither reason, nor indeed a possibility men should possess that which they will not receive.

Lastly, Christ's asseveration is added to all this, Verily I say unto you whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little Child, h • shall not enter therein.

But because the main thing Christ intended in the Text (which he so oft repeated upon several occasions) was by the significative emblem of a little Child, visibly to inform us of some dispositions that are absolutely necessary to the entertaining Christianity, either in our minds by Faith, or in our lives by practice; I shall therefore wholly attend that design of his in the words, and handle them particularly as they seem here to be spoken in relation to the Doctrine of it. This being most of use now in an Age when men not only tear Religion with disputes, but aim to baffle it with reproaches quite out of the World: Now against such the Text is positive, Whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God, the Doctrine of Christianity as a little Child, be cannot enter therein, neither into the possession of the Promises of Christianity, nor indeed into the profession of it.

And here I need not labor much to find that in a Child which Christ requires of those that come to be Disciples in Religion; for it is plain that Children being impotent, unable to sustain or to direct themselves, they give themselves up to the aids and the directions of others, those especially whom they are committed to, and with whose cares of them they are acquainted; to whose guidance they resign themselves entirely, laying hold on them in any dangerous appearance, and not trusting to themselves at all: And when their Age first makes them capable of having anything infused into them, being empty and unseason'd Vessels they will easily receive all and sincerely without taint: And being neither filled beforehand with prejudicate opinions, nor with windy vain conceits of their own skill or knowledge, they must needs take in without any let 〈◊〉 hindrance whatever is infused, and submit themselves to be directed wholly by their teachers, without contradiction or dispute, for they Judge not, nor examine, but receive. Now such a resignation seems the proper disposition which our Savior expects in a Disciple. It is plain that his pretended Vicar and that Church expect it, that men shall submit their Faith entirely to the Church, believe whatever she proposeth as revealed by God merely on that account as she proposeth it, for otherwise it is not a right faith: Yea she requires that men give their assent to the determinations of her head, the Pope, in matters of fact also, where they are as competent to Judge as he; and though with all their industry, and using the same means, they cannot find the fact to be as he determines, yet they are obliged in conscience to that superior to depart from their own Judgment, and to yield and sign their assent to his determinations. Witness the matter of Jansen. Yea their great Cardinal is positive that If the Pope could err so far as to call evil good, good evil, to prohibit virtues or command vices, the Church were bound in conscience to believe those vices good and honest, and those virtues evil. So far he.

Indeed if that Church be the Mother and Nurse of all Christians, 'tis from her breasts only they must seek the sincere Milk of the word: Now that she is so, they must take her word, as Children do their Parents words that they are so. And indeed this is properly to receive the Doctrine as a little Child, not judge, nor reason, not examine, but believe it. And such legendary doctrines as well as Histories, which they deliver are most fit to be received by such as Children. Yet as if this had been the proper method among Christians always, in S. Austin 's time we find the Manichees derided Christianity, that discipline of Faith because by that men were commanded to believe and were not taught how to distinguish truth from falsehood by clear reason, and again, that it requires us to assent before we have a reason for it. And long before that Celsus did advise the Christians to receive no doctrines but on the account of reason, credulity being the inlet to deceit, saying, they that without grounds believe, are like those that admire and • e satisfied with juglers, and take appearances and sleight of hand for truth, adding many of the Christians, neither would receive, nor give a reason of their faith but used to say 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , do not you examine, but believe, 'tis your faith shall save you; and as if from the beginning it were so we cannot but have heard the story of that man that reading Genesis where Moses says, In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth. And he said let there be light and there was light, &c. Swore at him, saying, this Barbarian only asserted boldly but proved nothing. As if Argument and Reason never had place in the Jewish or the Christian Religion, only those who were the in • titutors of each Religion, did deliver it; others had no more to do but to believe it, that is, to receive it as a little Child.

Whether these reproaches, and the Oath of these known enemies may go for proofs that it was so, I shall not now inquire. But it is certain on the other side S. Paul requires of his new Christian Corinthians, that they be not Children in understanding, that they be in malice Children, but in understanding Men. Now a Man and a Child differ not in this, that the one hath an understanding reasonable soul, and the other hath not; but in that the one cannot use his understanding or his reason, and the other where he acts as man does: So that our Religion in requiring that we be in understanding men, does require of us that we use our reason in it.

And since assenting to a thing as truth is an Act of the highest faculty of the soul of man as it is properly and truly reasonable, namely as it understands and judges, it is not possible a man should really believe a thing unless he satisfy himself that he hath reason for so doing. Yea, whether that be true or not which many men so eagerly contend for, that the will though free is bound, and cannot choose but will that which appears best at that time it wills, yet it is sure that he who with his understanding, which is not free in her apprehensions and judgments, but must necessarily embrace that which hath most evidence of truth: He I say who really assents to any proposition does satisfy himself that he hath better and more cogent reasons for that then the contrary: And therefore it is impossible that any man can verily believe a thing which he is thoroughly convinced is contrary to clear and evident right reason, for he cannot have a better reason for the thing that is so; and were it possible for any man to believe so, there could be neither grounds nor Rules for such a ones belief; for there is nothing in the World, so false and so absurd although he were assured it were so, but he might assent to it, for whatever demonstrations could be offered why he should not, yet it seems he might believe against acknowledged evident truth and reason, but this were only wish, or fancy and imagination, not belief. And to prevent such Childish weak credulity was the great work and care of Christ, so far is he from requiring we should be as Children in this kind. For when he was ascended up to heaven he gave some Apostles, some Evangelists, some Pastors and Teachers, he shed down the Holy Spirit and his gifts, that we might not be as Children tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of Doctrine; Eph. 4. 14.

First, For want of rational grounds instable in our Faith as Children are in body, and in judgment also, taking all appearances for truths. If men were only to believe, there must needs be as great variety of Religions as of teachers. And though God hath appointed that some Church should be as perfectly infalliable as that of Rome pretends to be; yet since there are so many Churches, and the true one therefore could be known no otherwise then by some marks, there must be disquisition before Faith; and men must reason and examine ere they can believe upon good grounds; for were they to receive Religion as a little Child, be nursed up with the Doctrine as with milk, a Child we know may suck infection from the poison'd breast of an unwholesom mother, or some other person, for it knows not to distinguish; and so may be nursed to death. A soul like theirs that is but rasa t • bula, white paper, is as fitted to receive the mark of the beast, as the inscription of the living God, just as the first hand shall impress. Therefore we are bid not to believe every Spirit, not every Teacher though he come with gifts, pretend and seem to be inspired, but try them; and our Savior forewarned the Jews of false Christ's that should come with signs and wonders. Something therefore must be known first and secured, before the understanding can be thus obliged to give up its assent; and Captivate every thought into obedience, as S. Paul directs. Now what that was here to the hearers in the Text is easily collected, namely that he was the Christ that does require it: And S. Paul expresses it in the forecited place; where he says we must bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ, to wit, of that Christ, who as he does himself profess that if he had not done among them the works which no other had done, they had not had sin: John, 15. 24. If his demonstrations had not convinced them it had been no fault not to believe: So when he had made appear he was that person whom their prophesies had pointed out, the Messiah, the Son of the living God, and this not only his Disciples had acknowledged; but the multitudes; yea, when his miracles had made one of the Pharisees confess, Rabbi we know thou art a Teacher come from God; for no man can do these miracles, except God be with him. Then if the Pharisees dispute against his Doctrine of Divorce, urge the authority of Moses and God's Law; and the Disciples press the inconveniences that will happen, If the case of Man be such with his wife; he may answer them: He that will not receive my Doctrines without dispute, that is to say, He that will not receive the Kingdom of God as a little Child shall not enter therein. This King that cometh in the name of the Lord may well determine how we shall receive the Kingdom of God. If he propose strange precepts to our practice, it appears that he is sent from God, and God's commands are not to be disputed but obeyed; if his revelations present dark unintelligible Mysteries to our faith, his promises offer seeming impossibilities to our hope, why yet he hath made proof he comes from God; and surely we are not so insolent as to doubt that God can discover thing above our understanding; and do things above the comprehension of our reason. Therefore since we are as Children to all these, it is but just we should receive them even as little Children: With a perfect resignation of our understandings and of our whole souls. Here 'tis most true what S. Austin says, Those are not Christians who deny that Christ is to be believed, unless there be some other certain reason of the thing besides his saying, Si Christo etiam credendum negant • isi indubitata ratio reddita fuerit Christiani non sunt. For to them that are convinced of that, 'tis such a reason that he is the Christ.

There is indeed no other name now under heaven, to whom we are obliged to give such deference, for however the modern Doctrines dare assert, that Christ hath given the very same infallibility which himself had to all S. Peters successors as often as they speak ex Cathedrâ; and that in matters both of right and of particular fact; yet not to countenance this monster by admitting combat with it, nor to put my self into the circle which these men commit who talk of the Authority of the Church, to which they require us to resign our Faith. I shall not stay to rack them on that their own wheel: This I dare affirm, it is impossible for any person or assembly to produce a delegation of authority in more ample terms then the great Council of the Jews could show, signed both by God and Christ. According to the sentence of the Law which they shall teach thee, and according to the Judgment which they shall tell thee thou shalt do; thou shall • not decline from the sentence which they shall show thee, to the right hand, nor to the left, faith God, Deut. 17. 11. compared with 2 Chron. 19. 8, 9, 10, 11. And our Savior says, They sit in Moses Chair, all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do, Mat. 23. 2. Let them of Rom • produce you a better and more large commission. Yet did not this suppose that Council was infallible either in the interpreting the Law, or in attesting of tradition, or in judging of a Prophet, or that the Jews were blindly to give up their assent and their obedience to their sentence; God did not mean the people should imagine that when he prescribed a Sacrifice for expiation of their errors in their Judgment when they found it out. Lev. 4. 13. As their own Doctors do expound it: Therefore God supposed that they might err, and we know that their Traditions did evacuate the Law, Mat. 23. 15. They judged and slew true Prophets, v. 37. They declared the Messiah an impostor, Mat. 27. 63. and blasphemer, and for that condemned him, Mat. 26. 65. and decreed what the Apostles told them they must not obey, Act. 5. 25.

But though there be no such Authority that's absolute, over the Faith of Men now upon Earth; yet if this Jesus did acquire such by his Works; if by the Miracles he wrought, his raising others from the Dead, his own Death and his Resurrection, he sufficiently justified the Divinity of his Doctrine; (And if those Miracles were true, they were not doubt sufficient) and if those that did pretend they were eye witnesses and ministers of all this, his Apostles and the Seventy Disciples, and those others that accompanied him, who conversed with him continually, and could not therefore be deceived if they profess they heard and saw all this, and Preacht it in the face of those that would have contradicted if they could, and rather than their lives have proved all false; yea Preacht it everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the Word with signs following. If they consign'd that Word in Writing also which they Preacht, to be a measure and a Standard of that Doctrine to fnturity; which Word so Preacht and Written by agreeing, would in aftertimes give mutual illustrious evidence to one another; and if any Heter •••• ies should at any time creep by degrees into the Articles or the external practice of the Church, they might he easily discovered by those Records.

And if the multitudes that heard, and saw, and did receive all this, and which were grown extremely numerous almost in every Nation of the then known World, while those Apostles and Disciples lived; if these delivered what they must needs know whether 'twere true or not, delivered both that Doctrine and those Books of it as most certain truth, by Preaching, and by Writing, and by Living to it, and by Dying for it, and engaging their Posterity to do so; and they also did that to all Ages; if all this, I say, be true, then it is easy to conclude that we are to receive the Doctrine of that Jesi • , and this Book the Records of it, with the resignation of a little Child, and absolutely to submit our Faith to them.

But that it was thus; first as sure as any of us here, who have not seen the thing can be, that Christianity is now professed; the Bible now received in all the Regions round about us throughout Europe, or indeed that there are •• ch Regions and places, so sure we may be, for we have the testimony of the World, that for example in the days of Dioclesian 'twas over the World professed both with their mouths and lives; owned in despite of Spoyl, of Torments, and of Death; and they did value the Records of this Doctrine so much dearer than their Lives or their Estates, that in prosecution of those Edicts, wherein the Christians were required to deliver up their Bibles to be burnt, in one Month 17000, were put to death: And the Persecution lasted at that rate for ten years time; so that in Egypt only it is said there were slain 144000, and 70000 banished. ( The Laity it seems were allowed Bibles then. ) Or put the case higher in Adrian 's, or Trajan 's time, who both lived within an Hundred years of Christ, who Martyred them 'till weariness slackened the Execution, and they gave off only as it were that so they might cease to persecute themselves; and we have the Officers engaged attesting this, all which must needs be as notorious as the Light.

Now Secondly, 'tis most impossible those so vast multitudes of every Nation should have met together, forged a Code of Doctrines, and agreed so uniformly in professing a Religion, and in dying for it; for we may as easily believe that there were never any men before this Age we live in but that these began the kind, as that those of that Age began the Christian Religion.

Thirdly, 'tis as impossible that their immediate Ancestors who lived in the Apostles Age, who heard their Preaching, received their Writings, saw the Miracles they did, if they did any, and many of them must have seen Christ also after he was risen if it were so; yea multitudes of them were themselves parties in the gifts of Tongues and Miracles, if there were any, and so could not be imposed on, but must necessarily know whether they were truths or forgeries: It is as Impossible, I say, so many should agree together to betray all their Posterity into the profession of a Religion from which they could look for no advantage but the certain total Ruin of themselves and their posterity; it was not possible they could have done this if they had not thought all this was true; and since they did know whether it were true or not, if they thought it was true, they did know it was, and if they knew it was, then it is certain that it was so; and these Scriptures, and the Doctrines Christians deliver (so far as they have not varied since that time from these Authentical Records) they have the Seal of God, Miracles to attest they come from God.

I might have urged completion of Prophecies to prove the same. First those in the Old Testament of the Messiah, which so eminently came to pass in Christ, that they sufficiently clear those Books to be Divine: Next Christ 's predictions in the New, particularly those about Jerusalem, which saith Eusebius He that will compare with what Josephus an eye-witness and no Christian, writes of it (or what ourselves know of that Nation and that place indeed) he must acknowledge the Divinity of his words. But enough hath been said to prove they come from God, and therefore we must so receive them as the Word of God, with perfect resignation of our Souls, and submission of our judgments, denying every apprehension that would start aside from and not captivate itself to that prime truth which cannot be deceived nor lie; and renounce all discourses Reason offers that resist such abnegation of itself and all our other faculties, that is, receive this word of the Kingdom as a little Child. 〈1 page duplicate〉 〈1 page duplicate〉

I do not here affirm, by saying this, that our Religion does disdain, or keep distance from the service of any of Mans faculties, for it sometimes admits them not as Ministers only, but as Judges: 'It is plain the senses were the first, I do not say conveyance only, but, Foundation of Faith, which was built on the first believers eyes and ears; they heard the Doctrine, saw the Miracles, were sure they saw and heard them, and so, supposing the signs sufficient to confirm the Doctrine to have come from God, were certain of their truth, without any Authority of a Church to influence that faith into divine: And S. John therefore does not only call in, and admit, and urge their testimony, That which we have heard, which we have seen with our Eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the word of Life, that declare we unto you; But our Savior in the highest point of Faith appeals directly to their Judgment: Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands, and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side, and be not faithless but believing: And S. Austin also gives them the decision of a point of Doctrine which of all others now troubles the Church most; for speaking of the Eucharist, he says, that which you see is Bread, and 'tis a Cup, it is that very thing which your eyes tell you 'tis. Tertullian also long before that had appealed to them in that very cause. And in an instance where their sentence passes, 'tis not strange if Reason also take the Chair, and do pretend to Judge. And truly when the Scripture that does call those Elements Christ's Body and his Blood, does also call them after Consecration Bread and Wine; and since they must be called one of them by a figure, for they cannot be in Substance both; and since that Scripture hath not told us where the Figure lies, hath not expressly said, 'tis this but in resemblance, that in Substance: Here if Reason that hath Principles by which to judge of Bodies, which are exposed to all the notices and trials of our several faculties, and to which a Trope is not a stranger, it can judge of figurative speeches; when it therefore finds if it admit the figure in that form This is my Body, 'It is but just the same which was in the Jews Sacrament the Paschal Lamb: which they called the Body of the Passover, though it were but the memorial, a figure which was always usual in Sacraments, and is indeed essential to Sacraments: And which is used in all things that are given by exhibitive signs. But if it should resolve it to be Bread and Wine only in a figure, besides a most impossible acknowledged Consequence, that a man can be nourished by them, which the Romanists dare not deny; nor yet dare grant that men can feed upon a trope, be nourishit with a figure; besides this, if reason shall resolve that, it must judge against all Rules it hath of judging by, and judge in contradiction to known Principles, and trample on all Laws of sense and understanding, which (especially when the Scripture hath nowhere defined expressly) must be most unreasonable; yea most impossible, to judge that true (that is to say, believe that thing) which it sees is most irreconcilable with known truths. Here therefore Reason is not insolent if it give verdict by its proper evidences; men are not bound to swallow contradictions as they do the Wafer, or receive as a little Child, that discerns the Lord's Body, no more then it does the repugnancies that are consequent to their Hypothesis concerning it.

Or to make another instance, when the Scripture says, God is a Spirit, yet does also give him hands, and eyes, and ears, and wings, and these of strange prodigious dimensions; neither tells us which of these is proper and which figure: Here if Reason that can prove God cannot be a Body, and cannot endure his God should be a monster, shall be called in to pass sentence; they that make Philosophy interpret Holy Writ in this case, and give the last resort to Reason, do no more usurp or trespass on Religion, then they that make use of Authors, or a Dictionary judge of the sense of any Greek or Hebrew word in Scripture.

But notwithstanding this we may not think the mysteries of Faith are to be measured by the Rules of natural Reason, so to stand or fall as they approve themselves to its discourse or Principles: for though it be impossible that any Revelation can contradict right Reason (truth cannot be inconsistent with truth:) yet it is very possible God can reveal those truths which we have neither faculties analogal, nor Principles or notions proportioned to, nor any natural ways of judging or examining. And if those faculties which are not capable of cognizance will judge; and judge of things removed from all our notices; (such as Spiritual, Infinite, Eternal being is) and do it by principles gathered from the information of our Sences, and by analogy with things of another kind; corporeal finite things that are about us; reason need not be informed how liable such judgments must be to mistakes; and how that which we call repugnancy in one may have no place in the other. Here therefore to submit ourunderstandings, and believe is but modest justice, and to receive as Children what our Heavenly Father says.

And therefore they that will presume to comprehend what ere they are commanded to believe, and those that will believe nothing but what they are able to comprehend, are alike insolent, if not pernicious. 'It is true God by the Gospel hath revealed and brought to light many things which before appeared only as he himself did in the Temple, in a Cloud; namely concerning the Divine nature, Persons, Properties, and the Eternal being, and the Incarnation of his Son; but still, as God himself is said to do, these also dwell in Light, that no man can approach unto. Which he that will needs gaze and pry too near to, must be dazzled into blindness, and be only so much more in the dark. But he that proudly does conceit his little spark of Reason can bear up with that Divinity of brightness, and enlighten him to look through all those inaccessible discoveries, with Lucifers assuming he hath reason to expect his fall. The one of these that will needs clear all mysteries, the other will take them all away; the one that with his Pencil will presume to figure him who is the brightness of God's glory, and trace out the lineaments by which that everlasting Father did impress the character, and express Image of his person on him, and the other that with a bold hand dashes out the Person from the Nature; the one that will untie the knots of the Hypostatick union; and the other that will cut them and the union too asunder; the one that will needs prove by Reason whatsoever is in Scripture, and the other that speaking of Christ's Satisfaction, saith for my part if it were not only once but oftentimes set down in holy Scripture, yet would not I therefore believe it, because forsooth it was against his reasonings: Neither the one or other of these sure receive revelation as a little Child, not like young Samuel, Speak Lord for thy Servant heareth.

But these, as all extravagance is wont, are profited into much worse: The one that would be proving, making reasons for, the mysteries, often God knows framed only shadows, and the other by their light of Reason being able to dispel and make those shadows vanish, that so easy victory encouraged them to frame reasons against, and to attaque the mysteries themselves; and then others finding there was something that was taken to be reason not agreeing with some chief heads of Religion, as they had been still received; took occasion thence to conclude against the whole Religion; and by scruples at some Articles taught themselves to dispute all the Creed; and now a difficulty in one Doctrine makes the rest suspected, and regarded only as things made to amuse, and the unusual wording of a Command is thought ground enough to turn all Christian duty into Raillery.

For instance; If Christ intending by prescribing patience, to teach men how to escape not only from the guilt, and present torture that a Spirit which will needs return each sleight offense is subject to, but also from the future and eternal recompenses of revenge, shall in phrasing his injunctions but bid them turn the other cheek, no Gentleman can be of his Religion; and that is cause enough I hope not only to renounce, but scorn it. If in mere compassion meaning only to make virtue easy, by advising us against the snares and the occasions of Vice, he word his Counsel in prescriptions to pull out the right eye, cut off the right hand: His Religion is a much worse Tyranny then the Covenant Na • ash offered to the men of Jabesh Gilead, and they think themselves as much concerned to make parties against it: In fine, if that he might at once instruct us how to pull up the root of all evil, he forbid us to lay up treasures upon the Earth, and tell us that our treasures should be laid up in Heaven, and say it is impossible for a rich man to enter into Heaven; here they cry out mainly he supposeth us, and treats us just as Children: This Command requires indeed that they who do receive it should be Children, whom we use to cheat of gold by the same methods, telling them it is not good for them at present that it shall be laid up for them; and therefore when Religion does attempt to deal with men so, 'tis concluded it designs to cozen them, as they think it does indeed, and is a cheat, and all that minister about it are mere fourbes: And truly if we racked the Consciences of dying men, and if so be they would give so much to this Cloister or that Order promised them remission of their sins, and worse than Judas, sold the purchase of Christ's Blood at those base rates, and betrayed the Redemption so, on God's name let them so account us; but if we do attempt on nothing but men's vices, and would only steal their Souls from Hell, and cheat them into piety and blessedness, these we hope are very unreproachful frauds. But alas! to talk to them of these after-things, of Heaven and Hell is altogether as much liable to their contempt as the commands are. If we tell them of a Resurrection to Judgment, and of everlasting fire to punish wicked men, because their reason cannot comprehend how flame can hurt a Soul; or for the Body how devouring fire can repair the food it preys upon, that it may keep alive and nourish torment to eternity; or how each man's peculiar dust that is digested into several men's being and so become no one man's peculiar, when it shall be also blended with the ashes of the Universe, can be singled out and parted to its proper owner, when there are so many own it, because their reason cannot comprehend all this, therefore Scriptures lake of fire must be no more then the Poets Acheron; and Resurrection was framed (as the apparition of a Ghost is wont to do) to fright men merely; and however 'tis attested Christ did never rise, but all is fable: Thus from such premises as these our rational disputing men conclude.

And here I shall not ask how these men dare presume, that if there be a God who hath declared that he will bring such things to pass, yet he must be unable to affect them, if they cannot comprehend the manner how he does them; or be confident they can look through those beams that come out of his hand, in which the hiding of his Power is: But this I shall say to our men of reason, theirs is the most unreasonable way of arguing in the world; to dispute against plain matters of fact, the being and the Works of such and such so many ages since, and witnessed by a greater testimony then the World can show for any other thing; and ever since appearing in their visible and vast effects, as the Conversion, Suffering, Faith, of the whole Earth almost. Now to attempt the confutation of such matter of fact by reasonings drawn from difficulties in some things which those men are witnessed to have delivered, or to conclude, that there can never have been any such persons in the World, because they cannot understand all that those persons taught, or possibly because they can take some occasions to buffoone on what they taught, is most ridiculous. Thus History must have been false, and several known places not to have been, because the story hath been turned into Burlesque: Thus he that with the Ancients cannot comprehend how it is possible that there should be Antipodes, or the Earth can be anything but a plain flat, otherwise he thinks the inhabitants must fall down to Heaven; may as rationally despise all the discoveries of the Earth, assure himself our constant Navigations which persuade us 'tis a Globe inhabited on both sides, bring home from the Indies nothing else but false relations, and that indeed there are no Indies.

I need not urge how Christianity approves itself even to the reasoning of the sober part of mankind; and the morality of it had the suffrage of the World before itself appeared: For while the evidence stands good, if the matter of fact be true, the Doctrine must be true, and the commands obeyed: and to use such arguings to resell such matter of fact is just like that which Zeno did attempt, namely, by subtleties to prove it was impossible there could be any motion, while another did disturb his Lecture by his motion up and down the Schools; it is the same thing as to take a bowl to cut with, or the vessels of the Danaid's to carry water in: For such reasonings are alike improper for that work.

And indeed these arguings are not the exceptions of reason, but the strugglings of men's vices against Religion. And it must be impossible so many Thousands would give up their Bodies, rather then their Bibles to the fire in Dioclesian 's days, because it is a book which they can find no other pleasure in but that of railling it, or helping them with subjects to be profane upon. It must be false that Christ did feed 5000 with 5 loaves and 2 small fishes, 'till 12 baskets full of broken pieces did remain; yet not so much because they know not how their eating could nourish the victuals so, and make it grow; as because they are angry with the worker of the miracle, who forbids and upbraids the excesses of their luxury, which can easily, and does daily consume the price of that that would suffice 5000, without miracle on 5 single persons; and all that when 'tis dressed according to the modern mode of eating well, dissolved, turned into juyces, and exalted into the Elixir of the Epicure, shall leave, alas! no broken pieces for the Alms-basket: This is the quarrel; this does make the miracle impossible. And yet methinks upon the same account they should allow, that at a feast he turned so many pots of water into wine, because that seems to gratify the thirsts of their intemperance. In fine, we do not live as men prepared or willing to be called to an account of all our doings, therefore we have no mind to rise again to give it: When we are thus minded, it is not hard to meet with difficulties that encourage the opinion that we shall not rise. Which difficulties when we look into, we cannot find how it is possible we can be raised, and 'tis easy then to think we cannot, that it is impossible, especially when it is our will and interest to think so; and then it must be false whatever is in Scripture that we shall. These are the processes of those that reason against Christianity, such the grounds that they dispute upon: But their reasons are but Sophisms of lust and interest, which will guild and paint whatever they are much in love with, and it is no wonder they find colors for it, and can think them reasons, for they always did so against present evident conviction. When Moses by his miracles endeavored to let Pharaoh know who was the Lord, and to persuade him to let Israel go; while God permitted the Magicians to counterfeit those miracles, it looked like reasonable indeed that Pharaoh should not be convinced; but when they could not imitate, but did confess the finger of the Lord, and themselves suffered those plagues which they could not either conjure up or down; then if Pharaoh will not be persuaded, 'tis plain nothing but his interest, not the wonders which were brought by the Magicians, were the reasons that prevailed with him; for those were not reasons against more and greater miracles; yet they were effectual with him to the destruction of himself and his nation. Again when they who knew the mighty works Christ did, and were forewarned by him of false Christ's and false Prophets, that would come with signs and lying wonders; God allowing Satan leave to struggle at his last gasp, and to make a blaze when he was to fall from heaven as lightning, but far beneath the glory of his only begotten Son: when they who knew both these, chose yet to follow a Barchocab, a false falling Meteor, who came indeed with greater show, and not with such strict mortifying Doctrines, nor only with the thin encouragement of after-expectations as Christ did, for he gave them hopes of present temporal enjoyments; but he did no wonder besides spitting fire (S. Jerome says) and throwing great stones from his kn • e as from an Engine, say his followers; which yet could not scare the Soldiers, neither did the Roman Eagles (which were true-bred) fear those flames he spate, but destroyed some millions of them. Now 'tis evident by the comparison of the several signs that Christ and this Barchocab wrought, the only reasons that gave efficacy to that sleight imposture, and did make it over-power Christ's mighty works, was their earthly desires and affections which Christ's severe Doctrines could not gratify, and therefore they receiving not the love of the truth, but having pleasure in unrighteousness, gave themselves up to delusions to believe a lie; yet still those delusions went for reason with them. Once more Tertullian challenging the Heathen says, Produce before your judgment-seats some, whom you will, of those who are inspired by any of your God's, when gaping ore the Altar they have in its fumes (according to their custom) taken in the Deity 'till they are great with it, & ructando conantur, while they are in travel with him, as it were, have belching throws, that they burst almost 'till they are delivered of the inspiration: while it is thus, let but any Christian adjure them by the name of Christ, and if the spirits that they are possessed with do not presently confess that they are Devils, ibidem illius Christiani procacissimi sanguinem fundite, let the saucy petulant Christian lose his life. He speaks of this as a known frequent trial. And Minutius Felix says, their chiefest God's have been forced out of their Votaries, and acknowledged they were evil spirits. Now here was reason and experience; the miracle was so evident, that Tertullian braging says, do not believe it if your eyes and ears can suffer you; and the reason was more pressing then the fact, Nec enim Divinitas deputanda est quae fubdita esthomini, it being most impossible that that should be a God which a man could rule and triumph over, so imperiously manage him, as with a bare command to force him from his hold, and make him shame himself so villainously before both his adorers and his enemies, as to say, He was a Devil. Yet the Heathens still found colors to do out all this conviction; and their old acquaintance with their God's, together with the Custom of their vicious Worships, had more force with them then miracle and reason. And while the Christian dispossessed their Deities, he was himself turned out of all his own possessions; and although he made their God confess himself a Devil, yet still poor he was made to suffer as a malefactor.

And 'tis not strange if men now stick as closely to their vices, as those did to the God's that patronized them, and it be as hard to exorcise the Devil out of their affections and practices, as it was then out of Heathen Votaries or Temples. They are as fierce against the Christian Religion for their lusts sake, as those for their Venus, and the very same account that made those Heathen Customs, or the lying wonders of false Christ's, or Pharaoh 's Magicians sings, be more persuasive then the other more real miracles; namely, because they sided with their inclinations and interests. This very account makes little difficulties (which Almighty God hath left in our Religion, as he suffered signs and lying wonders heretofore, for trials) yea, makes cavils, mere exceptions, pass for reasons most invincible, be disputed, urged with great concern and passion, against all those methods of conviction which God hath afforded Christianity.

Now if this be to receive Religion as a little Child, 'tis with the frowardness of Children, when they are displeased or ill at ease; who resist and quarrel with the thing that is to make them well or please them, and return the Parents cares to ease and quiet them with little outrages and vexing. And do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? Is not he thy Father that hath bought thee? Hath he not made thee and established thee? Ask thy Father and he will show thee, thy Elders and they will tell thee, Deut. 32. 6, 7. Now have Children any other way to know their Parents, then to let their Father show them, and their Elders tell them? Or should we cast off the relation and renounce all the obedience due to it, because we are not sure of it ourselves? For ought we know those may not be our Parents, we have only testimony for it: Thus we serve our God on that account; and yet Hath he not made thee and established thee? As he began us, so did he not nurse and bear us in his arms, and carry us in all our weakness and difficulties, 'till he brought us up to a full strength? 'Till by a miraculous and signal providence he had established, settled us? and after all these cares bestowed upon us, do we prove a generation of vipers only, such as do requite the bowels that did bear and nourish them, by preying on them and consuming them? Or like the of-spring of a Spider, who, when he hath spent himself with weaving nets, and working of them into labyrinths, to be the granaries and the defences of his brood, to catch them prey, and to secure them; then the strongest of his young ones, when he is by these his cares established and grown ripe to destroy, makes those threads fatal to his parent, which he spun out of his bowels to be thread of life to him. And shall we be such Children to our Father that established us? Make all his plenties turn to poison in us, and invenome us against himself? make his miraculous mercies furnish us for the abuse and provocation of him? His blest Providence serve only to afford us arguments against itself; help to confute itself because it hath so prospered, doth still suffer us? but after all this, is he not thy Father that hath bought thee? who to all his titles to us, his endearing obligations, notwithstanding our despites and provocations of them; yet did give the life of his own Son to purchase over again the same relation to us, that we might have right to the inheritance of his Kingdom: And then however we have hitherto affronted, let us be content now to be bought and hir'd, to receive that Kingdom of God as his Children; for if Children then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ, who died to make us Kings and Priests to God and his Father.

SERMON XVI. IN S ^t PETERS WESTMINSTER. January 6. 1660.

AND as they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the holy Ghost said,—

Although that ministering to God by prayer and fasting, be the indicted and appropriate acts to preface such Solemnities as this; and that not Sermons, but Litanies and intercessions, are the peculiar adherents of Embers, and of Consecrations; and those vigorous strivings with Almighty God by Prayer are the birth-pangs in which Fathers are born unto the Church: Yet since that now this Sacred Office is itself opposed, and even the Mission of Preachers preached against, and the Authority that sends despised as Antichristian, whilst separation and pretence unto the Holy Ghost set up themselves against the strict injunction of the Holy Ghost to separate; the Pulpit that otherwhiles hath fought against it, must now atone its errors, by attending on the Altar, and the bold ungrounded claims of Inspiration, that false Teachers have usurped, be superseded by the voice of the Holy Ghost himself, who in this case becomes the Preacher, and says, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.

My Text is a Commission parole from Heaven, in it you have,

First, the Person that sends it out; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , The Holy Ghost said.

Secondly, the Persons to whom it is directed; implied in the verb 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 separate, more particularly expressed in the foregoing words.

Thirdly, the thing to which they were impowr'd by the Commission, or which was required of them; set down in the remaining words of the Text, wherein you have.

1. The Act enjoin'd; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , separate.

2. The Object; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , separate me Barnabas and Saul.

3. The end for what; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 for a work.

4. The determination of that work; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 for the work whereunto I have called them.

Of these in their Order: and first,

Of those five things for want of which the second Jewish Temple sunk below the first, and its Glory seemed faint in the comparison, the Chiefest was the Holy Ghost; who became silent; his Oracles ceased then, and he spake no more by the Prophets. A thing not only confessed by the Thalmudists, (who say our Rabbins have delivered to us, that from the time of Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 The Holy Ghost was taken away from Israel ) but so notorious in experience, that when St. Paul meets Disciples at Ephesus, Acts 19. 1. and asks them if they have received the Holy Ghost, whether at their Baptism the Spirit came down upon them as he did then on others; they answer ver. 2. We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost, any extraordinary effusions of the Spirit, whether he do come down in Gifts and Afflations, such as we know were usual in the first Jewish Temple, but have not been for a long time, and we have not yet heard they are restored, (for of this pouring out of the Holy Ghost they must needs mean it, not of himself, of whom they could not doubt, nothing was more known in the Jewish Church. )

But as our Savior did supply the other four with all advantage, and so fulfilled the Prophecy, and made the glory of that Temple greater: so for the fifth, the spirit, he was restored in kind with infinate improvement, that of Joel fulfilled, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, for they were all baptized with the Holy Ghost; baptized in rivers of living waters, which did flow out of the belly of themselves, for this he spake of the Spirit, which all that believed on him should receive Joh. 7. 39. so that Joel did scarce feel or fore see enough to prophesy of this abundance, but the inundations were almost like Christ's receivings, without measure. Nor were his Inspirations as of old, dark and mysterious Oracles, direction in rapture, where the Message itself was to have another revelation, and it must be prophecy to understand as well as utter: But in the Gospel his effusions run clear, and transparent as the Water that expresseth them, revealing even all the unknown languages that were the conduits and conveighances; all plain express direction, such as that of the Text.

Now amongst all the several uses of the Holy Ghost for which he was poured out in this abundance, amongst all the designs he did engage himself in, and advance, he does not seem to have a greater agency nor to interess himself more in any, than in qualifying for, and separating to Church-Offices. This seems to be his great work: And indeed how can he choose but be particularly concerned in those Officer which are his own 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , his gifts? Timothy's is expressly called so, in each of his Epistles, 1 Tim. 4. 14. 2 Tim. 1. 6. And when our Savior, Ephes. 4, 8. is said to give the gifts of the Holy Ghost to men, it is added how, ver. 11. He gave some Apostles, some Evangelists, some Pastors and Teachers, for the perfecting of the Saints, for the work of the Ministry, namely because those gifts enabled for those Offices, and all the reason in the World that he should have a special hand in giving, where himself is to be received. Receive the Holy Ghost, that was from the beginning, and is yet the installation to them: And if we take them from their divine original, from that great Pastor and Bishop of our souls, who was the maker of them too, Thus he was consecrated; the spirit of the Lord is upon me, therefore he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel, Luke 4. 18. And when he comes to ordain succession, he says, as my Father sent me, so send I you: And he breathed upon them, and said, Receive the Holy Ghost, Joh. 20. 21. And after bids them tarry at Jerusalem 'till they should be endued with power from above, Luk. 24. 47. That is, endued with the Holy Spirit, Act. 1. The present Barnabas and Saul were sent by his Commission in the Text; and v. 4. And Saint Paul tells the Elders of the Churches of Asia, the Holy Ghost made them overseers, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , Act. 20. 28. Timothy had his Office, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , by immediate designation of the Holy Ghost, 1 Tim. 4. 14. Clemens Rhomanus saith, the Apostles out of those they had converted, did ordain Bishops and Deacons 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , having first tried them by the Holy Ghost, and so taught by his revelation who should be the men. And Clemens Alexandrinus says, John after his return to Asia, ordained throughout all the regions about, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , such as were signified and designed by the Holy Ghost. So that Oe •• menius pronounces in the general, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the Bishops that were made, they made not inconsiderately on their own heads, but such whom the Spirit did command. Chrysostom said as much before, and Theoplylact. Nor can we doubt that he maintains his interest in this affair even at this day: But that our Veni Creator Spiritus, come Holy Ghost eternal God, does call him to preside in these so concerning Solemnities; For Christ, when he commissioned his Apostles, assuring them, behold I am with you even to the end of the World; which promise he performs only vicriâ Spiritûs prasentiâ, by the presence of the Holy Ghost, who is his Vicar, as Tertullian expresses; nor can the Spirit be with them till then, but by making them be till then; which being done by Ordination, that Ecclesiastical procreation, (for so they derive themselves to the Worlds end; ) upon the strength of that promise we may assure ourselves he does assist as truly, though not so visibly, as when he said here, separate.

The Holy Ghost 's concernment being thus secured, I have this one thing only to suggest; that they who set themselves against all separation to these Offices and Orders, in and for which the Holy Ghost hath so appeared, (what they be I dispute not now) they • ight against the Holy Ghost, and thrust him out of that in which he hath almost signally interested himself. And they that do entitle the Spirit to this opposition, do not only make God's Kingdom divided against it self, or raise a faction in the Trinity, and stir up division betwixt those Three One Persons; but they set the same Person against himself and make the Holy Spirit resist the Holy Ghost. You know the inference pressed upon them that did this but interpretatively in the Devils Kingdom, and did make Satan cast out Satan: And isit not here of force? And they who make the Spirit cast out the Holy Ghost, contrive as much as in them lies God's Kingdom shall not stand. I will not parallel the guilts. Those Pharisees blasphemed the Holy Spirit in his Miracles, ascribing that to Beelzebub which was the immediate work of the Holy Ghost: (and such indeed do sin unpardonably, because they sin irrecoverably; for Miracles being the utmost and most manifest express wherein the Holy Ghost exerts himself, they who can harden their understandings against them have left themselves no means of conviction, and cannot be forgiven, because they cannot be rectified or reclaimed.) These others do blaspheme the Spirit in his immediate inspirations and 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , ascribing to the spirit of Antichrist all those Offices and Orders, which these gifts of the Holy Ghost were power'd from Heaven immediately to qualify for, and separate to; things in which he hath as signally appeared as in his Miracles: and as he made these means to convince the World, so he made those the Officers of doing it, and set them to out last the other. Now in the same nearness that these two guilts come up one towards the other, just to the same degree these sin the sin against the Holy Ghost. For the Holy Ghost said, separate.

So I pass to the second, to those whom this Injunction is directed to. And thence I do observe in general, that

Notwithstanding all the interest and office that the Holy Ghost assumes in these same separations, yet there is something left besides for Man to do. Although he superintend, they have a work in it: He is the Unction, but it must be applied by laying on of hands. I have called them, saith he in the Text; and yet to them that ministered, the Holy Ghost said, do ye separate. I do not now examine what degree and order of men they were whom the Holy Ghost here commissions for this Office. The Judgment of the Antient Church in this affair is enough known, by the condemnation of Arius, and by the Fate of Ischyras and Colluthus: and for the present instance, in which they are called Doctors that are bid to do it, there hath enough been said to prove 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 a Title of a Bishop; to which I shall only add, that it was a variation of Name that stuck by them until Bede 's age, in which, what Bishops signified does come under no question; for he does say, that Austin called together to the Conference, Episcopos sive Doctors, the Bishops or the Doctors of the Province. Besides that there was then in Antioch a Bishop 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , In the time of Claudius Emperor of Rome, and of Euodius, whom the Apostle Peter had ordained at Antioch, those that before were called Nazarenes and Galileans, were called Christians: A thing which happened a little before this separation in the Text, as you find Chap. 11. 26. But who they were that used to separate for every Execution of these holy Offices, will appear from the Instances that I shall make to prove the present Observation, that, besides that of the Holy Ghost there was an outward call: And whom soever the Spirit sent, he commanded that they should have Commission from Men. And all my former Testimonies for the Holy Ghost, bear witness for this too. The Text is positive; here was a Conge d'estire for Barnabas and Saul. Timothy had his Office 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , be designation of the Spirit, 1 Tim. 4. 14. yet 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , with laying on of hands, ibid. yea 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , by the laying on of my hands, 2 Tim. 1. 6. And Timothy was placed at Ephesus, as Titus also left at Crete, to ordain others in the same manner; St. Paul providing for the succession of the Rite and Ceremony as well as of the Office. And in St. Clement 's Testimony, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ; the Spirit tried, but the Apostles constituted. And down as low as Trajan 's time, when St. John 's date was almost out, his life and his Commission expiring, and the Churches of Asia to be provided with succession, the Men were 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , signified by the Holy Ghost: But the Chron. Alex. saith, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 that he went clean throughout Asia and the adjacent Regions, constituting not only Bishops, but others of inferior Clergy: And even in the lowest thus it was; when the first Deacons were to be made, Men full of the Holy Ghost and Wisdom were to be looked out, Act. 6. 3. But yet that did not authorize them, the Holy Ghost and Wisdom did not make a Deacon: For besides that, the Apostles will appoint them over their business, ibid. and they are brought to them, and they do lay their hands upon them, v. 6. Thus it was in those times of full effusion of the Holy Ghost: Men always had to do in giving that Commission: so that whoever pleads an Order of the Spirit for his Office, (although such a Commission of the Spirit, if he had it, would evidence itself, and if it were, it would appear, for 'twas the manifestation of the Spirit that was given to every man to profit withal; yet) if we yield him his pretensions, and let his own incitations pass for inspirements, and his strong fancy for the Holy Ghost, if the Holy Ghost did call him, who did separate him? Whom the Holy Ghost calls, he sends to his Officers to empower; they both work, He says, do ye separate.

And here a Consideration offers itself unto those holy Fathers, whom the Spirit makes his Associates in separating men to sacred Offices; that when they set apart even to the lowest stalls of the Church, they labor to perform it so that the Holy Ghost may be engaged, and act along with them in the performance: Separate such as they may presume the Spirit hath called, and will own. He does not call the ignorant, or appoint blind eyes for the Body of Christ, or make men Seers to lead into the pit. The Holy Spirit calls not the unclean, or the intemperate; we know it was another fort of Spirit that went into the swine: nor does he ever say, Separate me those who separate themselves, the Schismatics: the Spirit calls not such as break the unity of the Spirit; nor sets into the rank of higher members in Christ's body those who tear that body, and themselves from it: the factious, those that will not be bound neither in bonds of peace nor of obedience, but break all holy tyes, that make commotions, and rave and foam, sure 'tis the Legion that sends them, and not the Holy Ghost. He whom the spirit will call, must not be under the reputation of a Vice, but should be of a good report, lest he fall into reproach, and so into the snare of the Devil, 1 Tim. 3. 7. i. e. lest he fall into reproach, and then his teaching do so too, and men learn to slight or not heed the doctrines of such a one as is under scandal for his life, and so the Devil get advantage over them, and do ensnare them. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . For to be to any an occasion of falling, is to be the Devils snare. Now Christ's Fishers of men, those whom the Holy Ghost appoints to spread nets for the catching Souls to God, their lives must not lay snares for the Devil, and entangle Souls in the toils of perdition. Those also that come to you out of Ambition or of greediness of gain, the spirit calls not neither: He calls we see 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , to a work; so that they who seek more then they can well attend the labor of, or are qualified for the work of, they are not of his sending. But of all men the Holy Ghost will least deal with the Simoniacal, that come not to a work, but to a market, that contract with Patrons for the spirits call, or, worse than their master Simon, would hire the Holy Spirit himself to say, Separate me them: The Successors of the Apostles have a Canonical return to these, Your money perish with you. They whom the Holy Ghost does call must have his gifts and temper; St. Paul hath set all down to Timothy and Titus, and those who minister in this employment, if they will be what he hath made them, joint Commissioners with him, and his Co-workers, they must order it so that he may work and act, which he does not but where he calls, nor does he call but those whom he hath qualified: And 'tis of those only whom he hath called, that he says, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , Separate.

The Third particular, the thing enjoin'd; And the Holy Ghost said, Separate.

The separateness of the Functions of the Clergy, the incommunicableness of their Offices to persons not separated for them, is so express a doctrine both of the Letter of the Text, and of the Holy Ghost, that sure I need not to say more, though several heads of Probation offer themselves: As first the condition of the Callings, which does divide from the Community, and sets them up above it; And here I might tell you of bearing rule, of thrones, of stars and Angels, and other words of as high sense, and yet not go out of the Scripture bounds, although the dignity did not die with the Scripture Age, or expire with the Apostles: the age as low as Photios words it thus, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . That Apostolical and Divine Dignity, which the chief Priests are acknowledged to be possessed of by right of Succession. Styles which I could derive yet lower, and they are of a prouder sound than those the humble ears of this our age are so offended with. But these heights it may be would give Ombrages; although 'tis strange that men should envy them to those, who are only exalted to them, that they may with the more advantage take them by the hands to lift them up to Heaven. Those nearnesses to things above do but more qualify them to be 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , in Theoph. and to draw near to God on your behalf, that those your Angels also may see the face of your Father which is in Heaven, and those stars are therefore set in Christ's right hand, that they may shed a blessed influence on you from thence.

The 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 and the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , The Work and labor of the work, (the one is the 〈◊〉 , and the other Saint Paul 's word) require a whole man, and therefore a man separate: and if St. Paul, one of our separated persons here, who had the fullness of the Spirit, and the fullness of Learning too, that was brought up in the Schools, and brought up in Paradise, taught by the Doctors, and taught by the mouth of the Lord in the third heaven, snatched from the feet of Ga • aliel to the presence of God, to have a beatifical Vision of the Gospel, if after all this he cry out, who is sufficient for these things? sure they are not sufficient, who in those little intervals which their trades and necessities afford them, fall into fits and fren • ies of Religion, have a sharp Paroxysm of irregular convuls'd Divinity, as if they were its 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , possessed with their Theology 'till their weariness, and not knowing what to say do exorcise them.

But not to speak only to the wild fancies of this Age, the Scripture says of the men of these callings, they are taken from among Men, and ordained for Men in things pertaining to God. And such discriminations are evinced by all the expressions of a Church in Scripture. 'It is called the body of Christ: Now the parts of a body, as where they are so separate that they divide from one another, they do not make a body, but are an Execution; so where they are not separate in a diversity of Organs, for several faculties and operations, it may be a dead Element, as similar bodies are, but canno • be that body which St. Paul describes, 1 Cor. 12▪ Which is not one Member, but many, ver. 14. And if they were all one member, where were the body? v. 19. and indeed all that Chapter is inspired for this Argument. In Christ 's Church 'tis as impossible that everyone can be 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 an Overseer, as that every part in the body can be an Eye: And the whole frame of Man may be nothing else but a Tongue, as well as every Christian may be a Preacher: And if it might, where indeed were the hearing? as St. Paul does ask. The Church is also called a building, and God's house: Now it is true that every Christian is by St. Peter called a lively stone, and all of them built up a Spiritual house, an holy Priest-hood, 1 Pet. 2. 5. and they all are a Royal Priest-hood, an holy Nation, a peculiar separate people, verse. 9. Yet all this is no more of privilege than is affirmed in the very same words of the Jewish Nation, Exod. 19. 6. Where yet God had his separated Levites, Priests and High-priests too. But sure 'tis manifest enough that in this building, as in others, stones have their separate places and distinct; everyone cannot bear up the Corner, or be a pillar and foundation-stone; much less can every one place itself in the Ephod, assume to be one of the Urim and the Thummim-stones, and there break out in Oracles, and give Responses; and every rubbish stone set itself in the Mitre, and shine in the head ornaments, as if it were one of the precious stones of Zion. In fine, (to speak now out of Metaphor, ) not only the transactions of the Text, which is a precedent for men to commission such and such, but also all Scripture rules direct a Choice; and where there is Election, there is also dereliction, and both evince a separation: And if all the Nations in the World have had their distinct Officers for Religion, and, as it were, to signalize the separateness of their function, in many Nations they did live apart from Men: The Priests had their ady • a as well as the Deities; dark solitary Groves were made choice of, not so much for the God, as for his Officers retirement; so that every appearance of him also was a Vision, and the Priest was revealed as well as the Oracle▪ and all this at the first to make a kind of sacred Pomp for the solemnity of awfulness, (though afterwards it often proved but opportunity for foul performances.) And if to this uniform practice of the World God's attestation be set, who ordered it in his own Government; nor that as a Levitical or Jewish administration, but it was practiced amongst his own from the beginning, and when dominions were but greater families, there were still distinct persons for the employments of Religion; that was the office and the privilege of the first-born: Esau was called profane for sell • ng that birth-right of his: (And the word in the Text here, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 separate, is the same which God does word the sanctifying the first-born for him with, Exod. 13. 2.) 'Twere easy to deduce all this out of all ancient Jewish Records. And when the practice ever since hath been the same in Christ 's Religion; after all this, sure nothing else but absolute defection of the Notions of Mankind, and blotting out all the impressions of Universal Nature and Universal Religion, or else an absolute Command from Heaven, could alter this Establishment; from which command we are so far, that 'tis the Holy Ghost himself that said expressly 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 separate.

Now this 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , this Separateness in Function, does infer upon us a separateness in Life and Conversation, and they who are thus set apart from the World, must keep themselves unspotted from the World. To separate and Consecrate are but two words for the same thing: Separate three Cities is the Command in Deut. 19. 2. and they sanctified three, Josh. 20. 7. Our Offices assume them both, and all are holy Orders. Now separate and pure are both so primitive, and so essential notions of holy, that truly I cannot determine which of them is original, and which secondary: Our Consecration does challenge both; and as we will be separate in our calling, so we must be separate in our lives, not conforming ourselves to the World, for I have chosen you out of the World, saith Christ. A torrent license of an Age must not carry us along; an Universal Custom of the World must be no precedent, and can be no excuse for us to do what is irregular. We are 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 separate; and that the World does such things is no more a plea for us to do so, than that because the World is Common ground, therefore the Church is so too, fit to be put to all the uses of the field, or of worse places. Were it a reasonable argument; because I see that the whole Country 's tilled, why should I not break up the holy places, and plow the Temple? Why, so we are enclosed for God, and separated for the uses of Religion, and to preserve our selves pure for them. Our Savior says that the Community of Christians is a City upon an hill; and then sure the consecrated Persons are the Temple of that City, the separate places of it; and then as they are most in sight (the Church is ordinarily the most visible building ) so truly he that sees one of them, it should be as if he saw an open Church, where there is nothing else but holy duty, as if his life were Liturgy, public Service▪ and Worship of God. Hath your zeal never rose, at least your indignation, at the profane fury of this Age, which never made a stop in violation of things sacred, when to its heap of other Sacrileges, it added most contemptuous defilements of God 's ho ••• s; making the place that Angels met us in to Worship, and God dwelt in to bless us there, the place appointed for the Divinest Mysteries of our Redemption, for the Celebration of Christ 's Agonies, for the Commemoration of the blessed Sacrifice, the place for nothing but Christ 's Blood, then to become the place of a most odious and insolent uncleanness? If I had worded this more aggravatingly, it had been only to infer that then to see a consecrated person to polute himself with those black foulnesses that made hell and made fiends, is sure a sadder and a more unhappy spectacle. If an Apostle become wicked, he is in our Savior 's Character a Devil; Have I not chosen Twelve, and one of you is a Devil? Yea if the good Saint Peter do become a scandal; tempt to that which is not good; Get thee behind me, Satan. Christ calls his nearest Officers Stars; Emblems of a great separateness those, that teach them how far their Conversation should be removed from Earth; for they are of another Orbe, Heaven is the Region of Stars: But they are Emblems of a greater purity; there's nothing in the World so clean as light, 'tis not possible so much as to fully shine; it may irradiate dung-hills, but they do not defile it; you may Eclipse a Star but cannot spot it; you may put o • the light, you cannot stain it. 'It is a word for God 's purity: only his light is glory; and as his holiness is so separate that it is incommunicable, so his Light is inaccessible; Yet sure they that are stars in Christ's right hand, they do come near, and mix their light with his; and they of all men must be pure and holy, whom the spirit calls to that place, as he does all whom he calls to that separation that he did Barnabas and Saul, the Persons and the next Part; Separate me Barnabas and Saul.

I intend not to make particular reflections upon these persons, although the Character of Barnabas be registered the 11. Chap. v. 24. He was a good man, full of Faith, and of the Holy Ghost, and the good influence that that had upon the people follows; And much people was added to the Church. And as for Saul, though he began the Christian persecution, and was baptized in the first Martyr-blood, and breathed out threatenings, so that nothing but thunder could out-voice him, and at last was born as an 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , as an untimely birth, aborting through those wounds which his own hands had made in the Church, and making himself a birth with ripping up her bowels; yet this Abortive proved the strongest birth, and 'twas a Miscarriage into the chiefest Apostle. As he began the after-sufferings of Christ in Stephen; so he fulfilled the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , and made up all that was behind, in himself, being in deaths more than those he inflicted. The sound of his preaching was louder than that at his Conversion, out-voic'd the thunder; for this went out into all lands, as if himself alone meant to execute the whole Commission, Preach the Gospel to every creature: which he did almost, not only preaching to those places where Christ was not named, without the other Apostles line; but even where the rest employ'd themselves, he wrought as much as they, in Asia as Saint John, at Antioch as Peter; yea and at Rome too, having as much to do in their foundation: If I had said more, I could have brought the Popes own Seal for evidence; where not only both are, but Saint Paul hath the right hand: And truly if they had had the luck to think at first of founding all their pretensions on Saint Paul, his care of all the Churches would have born them out, as well as feed my Lambs does now. But these considerations I pass; though they would give a Man that hath done mischief in the Church a pattern for the measures of his future Service to the Church. The thing I shall concern myself in, is the solemn separation here of those who were before separated to the work of the Gospel; Barnabas sent by the Church of Jerusalem to Antioch, Act. 11. 22. and Paul not only separated from his Mothers womb, Gal. 1. 15. but chosen by express Revelation, and by the laying on of Ananias 's hands that so he might receive the Holy Ghost, qualified to Preach the Gospel to the Gentiles and to Kings. In which work both of them had for some years • ercised themselves. Yet here is a new consecration, and they are taken up to a condition more separate and distinct from what they were before. And all those vast advantages in which these persons did excel; the one of Faith and fullness of the Holy Ghost, the other, besides those, of express and immediate mission from Heaven; and the most strange success their labors had been blest with, all these I say, did not qualify them to assume these powers which the Holy Ghost commands another separation to enstall them in: And 'twas this 〈◊〉 that called Paul to be an Apostle, Rom. 1. 1. (as from this time he is always called Paul, not sooner.) Nor do we find any least footsteps of their being Apostles before, though Barnabas were sent to Antioch, yet he does not undertake what Peter and John did at Samaria in the very same case; for they confirm and give the Holy Ghost, Act. 8. 15, 37. but Barnabas does nothing but Exhort, Act. 11. 23. and he and Paul together Preacht the Word abroad, but we find nothing else they enterpriz'd: but from this time they exercise Jurisdiction, settle Churches, and ordain them Elders in the Churches, Ch. 14. 22, 23. and (as it does appear) singly derived these powers to others, to be exercised by them singly. To Titus most expressly, Tit. 1. 5. the like also to Timothy, with all the other Acts of Jurisdiction, (of which their Epistles are the Records ) particularly that of Censures, which Paul himself had inflicted on offenders in the Churches he had planted. Powers these, which by such steps and by degrees of separation an Apostle himself receives, and does not execute 'till he ascend the highest, that which they have a new solemnity ordained from Heaven to enstate them in, by a new laying on of hands, and the holy Ghost himself commanding, separate.

The separateness of this highest order in the Church is a doctrine handed down to us both by the writings of all Ages and the practices; (two things, which as they scarcely do concur in such a visible degree in any other things in our Religion, so also when they do concur, they make and secure tradition beyond all contradiction, give it sufficient infallibility: and truly he that does refuse the evidence which such tradition gives to all the motives of believing Christianity, if he be not a Socinian, he must be an Enthusiast, and can receive his Religion only from Revelation. ) Now the matter of fact of this tradition is a subject for Volumes, not for a discourse, and it hath filled so many, that there is nothing left unsaid, or to be said against, as to the main: And they that pick some little sayings seeming against this order out of those Ancients which were themselves of it, and wrote much expressly for it, and think by those means to confute it, do the same thing with that Romanist, who tore some little shreds, that look as if they favor'd some opinions of the Romanists, out of the Books of Protestants, most of which were directly writ against the Church of Rome; and putting those together went about by them to convince the world there never were any such things as Protestants, but they that did profess to be so were all Papists.

But I will say no more then my Text hath done, which evidences it not a separation only of Degree, but Order, by a new Ceremony, and commissionating to new powers. If I would stay on words, 'tis expressed here by one that speaks very great distances, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , separate, which does in Scripture word the distances that the censures of the Church do make, Luke 6. 22. and still in the Greek Liturgies, when absolution is given, 'tis said to be 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , to free them from all curse and separation; as if to pass into the bounds of this uncall'd, were such a thing as to leap over the Censures of the Church, over the Line of Excommunication; and to break through this wall of separation, were to break through Anathema's and Curses: Yea, 'tis used to express the distance betwixt the Lord's two hands, his right hand and his left, at the day of Doom, Mat. 25. 32. betwixt which hands there is a 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , a most insuperable gulf.

But these I shall urge. Indeed the Fathers of the Church have been in these last days counted 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , separate in the severest sense, cast out as the dung of the Earth; and the calling itself was under reprobation, as if it separated only to the left hand of God: But so it was with their Predecessors in the Text, Saint Paul says of himself and the rest of his Order, that they were counted 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 and 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , as the filth of the World, and the off-scouring of all things, 1 Cor. 4. 13. and as if they were called only to ruin, and consecrated for a sacrifice, he says, the Lord hath set us forth as men appointed to death, verse. 9. Indeed since God hath pleased to own you as his Churches, Angels, we are not troubled if some have counted you as the off-scouring of the Earth, while we know Angels do relate to Heaven: And let them consider how they will reprobate those to the left hand of God, whom Christ calls stars in his right hand, and he is at the right hand of his Father; and while you were accounted so you did but follow them that went before in Sufferings as well as Office; and to do so was part of the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the work that they were separated to; which is the next part, For the work.

I shall but run this over, and reflect upon it as I pass, according as it is of persent Concernment; and

First, Saint Paul 's work was to Preach the Gospel, and we find him doing it from this time forward to his End. The high Priest of the Jews was called the Angel of the Lord of Hosts; of which name an Heathen does give this account, that he was called so, because he was, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the Angel or the Messenger of God's Commands: so Diodorus Siculus. And Malachi gives the same reason, Mal. 2. 7. he was the Substitute to him upon Mount Sinai, and gave the Law also, only without the thunder. Our Governors succeed into the Name, they are the Churches Angels; and when we hear the word from them, we have it as it were from Heaven again, and we receive our Law too 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , by the disposition of Angels. Indeed the Case now is not like Saint Paul 's, the Gospel then was to be first revealed to all the World, and by continual inculcating secured against the depravations which all the malice of the Devil and the World sought to infuse, and the unskillfulness of infant Christians did make them apt to entetrain: But now we are all confirmed Christians: Yet truly the time is now such as did give occasion for Saint Paul 's charge to Timothy, 2 Tim. 4. 1, 2, 3. a time wherein they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers. He therefore that is in Timothy 's place must heap up Reproofs and Exhortations; or he must heap good sound dispensers of them: Such as will feed the Lambs with sincere milk, not chaf'd and heated with commotion and busy restless Faction; not embitter'd with overflowings of a too-full gall; not sour'd with eager sharpnesses of a malicious or a dissatisfied mind; not empoisoned with the foul tinctures of a scandalous life, nor the Corrosive infusions of Schismatical and turbulent opinions. He that caters thus for his flock, and provides such as by doctrine and by practice do instruct them to live quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty; He, like the Angel on Mount Sinai, gives the Law to a Nation together, preaches to his whole Diocese at once, Continually.

The second work was praying for, and blessing them: This does begin, and close every Epistle; that he asserts of himself constantly, and 'tis well known the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , gifts of those times inspired for this Work. Now thus our Angels also are Angels of Incense, the High Priests Office in especial: Those that did daily Minister performd a service of Incense too, that did accompany the prayers of the people, and sent them up in perfume; but the High Priests Incense was part of the Expiation, and was the Cloud that covered the transgressions of the people when he came with them all about him before the Mercy-seat. And they who shall consider that the prayer of Moses (Now Moses and Aaron were among the Priests, Psal. 99. 6. and He was the chief Priest) did withhold the Arm of God when it was stretched forth in fury to destroy, and did commit a violence upon the Lord, such as he could not grapple with, but seems to deprecate, and fain avoid, and says, Let me alone, that I may destroy them, Exod. 32. 10. If thou wilt permit me, my fury shall prevail upon them, saith the Arabic, but if thou pray it cannot; therefore let go thy prayer, saith the Chaldee. and let me alone. And they who shall consider also that his prayer did maintain a breach against the Lord, when he had made one, and was coming to enter in a storm of indignation, then this made head against him, and repulsit him, Psal. 106. 23. They that consider these effects, will certainly desire the Prayers and Benedictions of those God's chiefest Officers of blessing, those that are consecrated to bless in the Name of the Lord; and will have them in love for his works sake.

Their Third work is Government, which may be some do look upon as privilege and not as work; the expectation and delight of their ambitions, and not the fear and burden of their shoulders. But ambition may as rationally fly at Miracles as Government, and as hopefully gape after diversity of Tongues, as at presiding in the Church, the powers of each did come alike from Heaven, and were the mere gifts of the Holy Ghost, 1 Cor. 12. 18. It was so in the Law; when God went to divide part of Moses burden of Government amongst the Lxx, he came down and took off the Spirit that was upon him, and gave it to the Lxx, Num. 11. 25. A work this that may have reason to supersede much of that which I first mentioned: For notwithstanding all Saint Paul 's Assistances of Spirit, he does reckon that care that came upon him daily from the Churches amongst his persecutions, and it sums up his Catalogue of sufferings, 2 Cor. 11. Such various Necessities there are by which Government is distracted, and knows not how to temper itself to them. For sometimes it must condescend: Paul notwithstanding Apostolical decrees made in full Council that abrogated Circumcision, ( as the Holy Ghost had declared it void before, ) yet is fain to comport so far with the violent humors of a party as to Circumcise Timothy, at the very same time when he delivered those decrees to the Churches to keep, Act. 16. 3, 4. yet afterwards when Circumcision was looked on as Engagement to the whole Law, and to grant them that one thing, was but to teach them to ask more, and to be able to deny them nothing; then he suffers not Titus to be Circumcised, nor gave place to them by submission, no not for an hour, Gal. 2. 3, 5. Thus the Spirit of Government is sometimes a Spirit of meekness, does it work by soft yieldings, and breaks the Adamant with Cushions which Anvils would not do: The Ocean with daily billows and tides, helped on with storms of violence, and hurried by tempests of roaring fury, assaults a rock for many Ages; and yet makes not the least impression on it, but is beat back, and made retire in empty some, in insignificant passion: when a few single drops that distil gently down upon a rock though of Marble, or a small trickle of water that only wets and glides over the stone, insinuate themselves into it, and soften it so as to steal themselves a passage through it. and yet Government hath a rod too, which like Moses 's can break the rock, and fetch a stream out of the heart of quarre; and which must be used also: The Holy Spirit himself breathed tempest when he came, blew in a mighty boisterous Wind: nor does he always whisper soft things, he came down first in a sound from heaven, and spoke thunder; nor did it want lightning, the tongue was double flame. Of some we knowwe must have a Compassion, but others must be saved with terror, Jude 22. 23. which drives me on to the last piece of their work.

The Censures of the Church, the burden of the Keys; which (passing by the private use of them in voluntary penitences, and discipline upon the sick) as they signify public exclusion out of the Church for scandalous Enormities, and re-admission into it upon repentance, have been sufficiently evinced to belong to the Governors of the Church. The Exercise of these is so much their work that Saint Paul calls them the Weapons of their spiritual Warfare, by which they do cast down imaginations and every high things that exalteth itself against the Knowledge of God, and bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ, 2 Cor. 10. 4, 5. A blessed victory even for the Conquered; and these the only Weapons to achieve it with. If those who sin scandalously, and will not hear the admonitions of the Church, were cast out of the Church; if not Religion, Reputation