Englands Sickness Compared to Israels - Two Sermons

THE First Lecture.

S Icke is the daughter of Zion ; and the complexion of England gives her not to be sound. If she feel her own pulse, and examine the Symptoms of her ilnes, her works of disobedience; she must confess that her health is impaired, or if she feel it not, she is obstupe • ied.

The Coast I am bound for, is Israel : but (like faithful Merchants) if I can traffic or transport thence any good commodity into our own country, I will venter the welcome of it. Israel & England, though they lie in a diverse climat, may be said right Parallels ; not so unfit in Cosmographicall as fit in Theological comparison. And saving Israel's Apostasy, and punishment for it, we need not think it harsh to be sampled. They could plead much of God's mercy; if we can speak of more, let us thankfully embrace our transcendent happiness.

Two main passages are directed my discourse to sails through; which shall limit my speech, and your attentions for this time. 1. The Patient. 2. The Passion. The Sick, and the disease. The Person laboring of grief, is the daughter of Israel : her Passion or grief is sickness: Why is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered? These two coasts will afford us many subordinate observations, worthy both our travels.

The Patient, whom we must visit, is described, 1. Qu • sit, 2. Cuiui sit. God speaketh of her, 1. Positively, 2. Possessively. Positively, what she is of her self. The daughter of the people. Possessively, what she is by relation, in regard of her owner, populi mei, God's people.

Daughter. This title is usual according to Hebraism, Daughter of Israel, for Israel. Daughter of Zion, for Slon Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold thy salvation cometh &c. Daughter of Judah, for Judah The Lord hath trodden the daughter of Judah, as a Wine-press. Daughter of Jerusalem, for Jerusalem, Lament, 2. Of Babylon, for Babylon, Oh daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed, &c. So Christ calls himself the Son of man, because he took on him man's nature, Isaiah 2 1. Oh my threshing, and the son of my floor, for the floor it self, or the corn of it. And Augustine observes on the 72. Psalm, that by the children of the poor, is meant the poor themselves. This is an abstractive Phrase, and vox indulgentis ; implying propense favor in the speaker, and tenderness in the person spoken of; filia populi. It is a word of relation, simply taken: for daughter depends on the respect of Parent. Here it is Phrasicall, and therefore not to be forced. Yet because ( cunctae apices ) every letter and accent in holy West is divinely significant; let us not neglectfully pass it over, without some useful observation.

There is somewhat in it, that Filia non Filius dicitur, the name of Daughter, not of Son is here given to Israel. Iaraels offspring, must be a Daughter, that she may be married to the God of Israel's Son. Christ is the beloved : the Church is his Spouse. My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the Lilies. Betrothed to him in this life. ( I will betroth thee unto me forever: yea I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness &c. ) Solemnly married in the next: at what time the Saints shall sing: Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made her self ready : and verse 9. Blessed are they that are called to the marriage Supper of the Lamb. Thus God the Father, that had a Son by eternal generation, hath now a Daughter also by adoption. Hence the Church is called the Kings daughter, Ps. 45. ( The kings daughter is all glorious within, her clothing is of wrought gold. • ) because she is wedded to the Kings son. God is a Father in many respects.

• 1 In Creation, Deut. 32. Is not he thy father, that hath bought thee? Hath he not made thee, and established thee? He gave us all essentiam & formam, subsistence and form.
• 2 In Education, Esa 1. I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. We are brought up in this House of this world, and fed from the table of his blessings.
• 3 In compassion, Psal. 103, Like as a Father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. Yield, that a mother (which is rare and unnatural) can forget the Son of her womb ; yet God cannot forget the children of his Election.
• 3 In Correction, Heb. 12, Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. Qui excipitur à numero flagellatorum, excipitur à numero siliorum : He that scapes affliction, may suspect his adoption. We are not exempted from misery, that we may not be excepted from mercy. The rod walks over us, left we should grow wanton with his blessings.
• 5 In Adoption, and that most principally, Rom. 8. We have received the spirit of Adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father: God sent his son made of a woman, that we redeemed by him, might receive the adoption of sons.

All these may be reduced to three, God is a Father singularly, generally, specially. 1. singularly, the Father of Christ, by nature, 2, generally, the Father of all men, and all things by creation. 3. specially, the Father of the Elect by adoption. The first privilege belongs only to Christ. The second to many, who have made themselves by Apostasy the children of Belial. The third is blessed, and never to be forfeited.

This is a happy advancement, that the daughter of Zion is made the daughter of God; whom his equal and eternal son hath vouchsafed to marry. It was no small preferment in David's onpinion, by wedding Saul's daughter, to be made son in Law to a King : how far higher doth the Churches honor transcend, that by marrying the son of God, is made daughter in Law to the King of Kings? Specially, when this bond is indissoluble by the hand of death; uncancellable by the sentence of man, undivorceable by any defect or default in the Spouse : for he that chose her to himself, will preserve her from all cause, why he may not take pleasure in her beauty. And as Christ now in heaven, dwells with his Church on earth by grace: so she, though partly now on earth, dwells with him in heaven; all her members being Burgesses of that celestial Corporation. Since animus est, vb • amat, non vb • animat. Our conversation is in heaven, whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus Augustine, Et ill adhuc deorsum est, & no • iam s •• sum. His mercies are still descending to us, our affections ascending to him. The desires of the faithful Spouse are with her Beloved. Such is the insolubility of that mystical union, which no eloquence of man can express, no violence of devils shall suppress. Therefore ascendamus interim cord, vt sequamur corpore : let us send up our affections before, that our persons may follow after. As Christ hath sent thee down his spirit, as a pawn and pledge of this assurance: so do thou send him up thy heart, for a token of thy acceptance: yea of thy hopeful expectation and desire to be with him: Minus anima promisit se Christo, quae non praemisit se Christo : that soul hath nothing less then vowed it self to Christ, that houers and hankers about the world, and is loath to come at him.

This is ineffable, inestimable happiness. Hence the daughter of Israel (understand me not topically, but typically; not Israel in the flesh, but the Israel of God: children of that Jerusalem, which is above, or (at least from above, ) doth apportion all the riches of her Husband. If it be ( vox amici, Tuus sum totus ) the voice of a friend, I am wholly thine: it is more livingly, more lovingly ( vox mariti ) the speech of a husband. The Bride (among the heathen) on the first day of her marriage, challenged of the Bridegroom, vbi tu Gaius, ego C ••• , where you are Master, I must be mistress. Marriage is a strong bond by God's ordinance, and knows no other method but composition. God, that increation made two of one, by marriage made one of two. Hence the Daughter of Israel is made one with the son of God; by an union, which the heart may feel, but no art describe. Those gracious and glorious riches, which the master of all the world, is proprietarie of, are in some sort communicate toys. His righteousness, holiness, obedience, satisfaction, expiation, inheritance is made ours: as our sin, sorrow, sufferings, death and damnation were made his not by transfusion, but by imputation. His sorrow, pain, passion, for us, was so heavy, so grievous, so piercing such a Sic that all the world could not match it with a Sic • t Our joy by him is so gracious, shall be so glorious, that pro qualitate, pro aequalitate nihil in comparationem adm • titur : for quality, for quantity it refuseth all comparison. Oh blessed mutation, blessed mutuation • what we had ill, (and what had we but ill?) we changed it away for his good: what he hath good, (and what other nature can come from goodness it self?) we happily enjoy, vel in esse, vel in posse, either in possession or assurance. Our Savior died our death, that we might live his life. He suffered our hell, to bring us to his heaven.

It is somewhat, not unworthy the noting, that Filia dicitur, non filiae, Israel is called by the name of daughter, not of daughters. Zion hath but one daughter. The whole people is vnica, quia vnita: As she is one, she must be at one, not • arring, not repugnant to her self. Confusion belongs to Babel: Let peace dwell in the Palaces of Jerusalem. They are refractary spirits, unworthy to dwell in the Daughter of Zion's house, that are ever in preparation, for separation from her. The Church consists of a Communion of Saints, an united Flock under one shepherd, not a company of straggling sheep, getting schism, & forgetting their chrism : the unity of the spirit, that makes men be of one mind in one house, But as the spirits in man cease to quicken any member sundered from the body, and the scattered bones in Ezekiel's vision received no life, till they were incorporate into a body. So the spirit of God, which is anima corporis, the soul of his mystical body, forbears the derivation of grace and comfort, to those that cut off themselves from it.

She is one, vna vnica, that is mother of us all. Though there be threescore Queens, and fourscore Concubines, and virgins without number : yet my dove my undefiled is but one, she is the only one of her mother, the choice one of her that bare her. There is one body, many members, 1. Cor. 12. The eye must not quarrel with the hand, nor the head with the foot, If we be one against another, let us beware, least God be against all. We have one Lord, whose Livery is Love, John 15. ( By this shall all men know that you are my Disciples, if ye have love one to another :) whose doctrine is peace, Ephes. 2. ( He preached peace to you that were far off, and to them that were nigh :) Let us then serve him, professing one truth, with one heart. It is wretched, when sects vie number with Cities; and there are so many creeds as heads; Qui conātur vel corrumpere fidem, vel disrumpere charitatem, who strive either to corrupt faith or dissolve charity ; none performing his function without faction. It is testified of those pure and primitive times, that the multitude of them that believed were of one heart, and of one soul. One mind in many bodies? Behold how good and pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity, saith the Psalmist, when inter multa corpora, non multa corda, as August -sweetly; when among diverse men there are not diverse minds: Sic viuentes in vnum, vt vnum bominem faciant, so loving and living together in one, that they all make but (as it were) one man.

There is no knot of love so sure, as that which Religion ties: It is able to draw together East and West, sea and land, and make one of two, of ten, of thousands, of all. This is that, which gathereth the saints together, not to a local, but mystical union; whereby they are compacted under the government of one Lord, tied by the bonds of one faith, washed from their sinsin one laver, assigned, assured, assumed by one spirit, to the inheritance of one kingdom: but the unity of brethren agreeing, is not more entire, then their dissention, falling out is violent. Pro. 18. A brother offended is harder to be won, then a strong City: and their contentions are like the bars of a Castle : but their own loss is the enemies gain. It is usually seen, that ( amicorum dispen •• a, hostium compendia ) dissention is a Lent to friends, a Christmas to foes. They that so labor to untie unity, that true-lovers knot, which every Christian heart should wear, and never be weary of; find at last by miserable experience, that destruction doth strive to follow, where distraction went before. When in stead of the right hands of fellowship, struck for consent, they like the Atheni • ns will sacrifice for none but themselves, and their neighbors of Chios. Needs must the Daughter of Israel be disquieted, when such opposites, like Rebeccas twins, struggle in her womb. If the distraction of voices hindered the building of Babel : needs must the distraction of hearts hinder the building of Jerusalem.

Behold ye working spirits that must be doing, though you have no thanks for your labor; behold the daughter of Zion, -opposed on both sides, as Christ was crucified betwixt two malefactors; straitened as the Host of Israel, once betwixt the Aramites and the Syrians (when Joab & Abishai disposed themselves to mutual help, as need required.) Atheists on one side, Papists on the other. Bend all your forces against them, that make breaches in the walls of Zion ; and seek, ensue, procure the Peace of Jerusalem, who is the only Daughter of her Mother, and Spouse of her Savior.

I might here infer to your observation (without any non-residence from the Text ) that the Church is called Filia Jerusalem, the daughter of the people, for her beauty, for her purity ; I desire you to interpret by Church, not only that Church, then visible in the Jews, but the Catholic Church also, whereof theirs was but a part; many things being figuratively spoken of the particular, which properly belong to the universal. The Church of God (then and ever) may be called the daughter of Zion, for her virgins fairness, matchless by all the daughters of women. The Prophet in those solemn lamentations of Israel's ruin, gives her the title of Virgin, with this of daughter, Chap. 1. The Lord hath trodden the virgins, the daughter of Judah, as in a Winepress, and Chapter 2. What shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, oh Virgin daughter of Zion? The holy promise of God for her restauration is recorded by the same Prophet. to her under this unstained title. Again I will build thee Oh Virgin of Israel; thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabarets and shalt go forth in the dances of them that make merry.

This may insinuate ( intemeratam pulchritudinem Ecclesiae ) the unpolluted beauty of the Church. So Christ testifieth of his elected Spouse, Cant. 4. Tota pulchra es amica mea, Thou art all fair, my love, and there is no spot in thee. Now beauty consists in a sweet variety of colors and in a concinne disposition of different parts. So the foreign congregations call her, the fairest among women : Whither is thy Beloved gone, oh thou fairest among women, that we may seek him with thee? For her simplicity she is called a Dove, for her fruitfulness a vine: Mount Zion for her steadfastness: for her royalty, she is called a Queen, for her brightness and eminence, an Ivory Tower : for her beauty, the fairest among women. As the Cedar in the for rest. the lily among the flowers of the valleys, Zion among the mountains, Jerusalem among the Cities; as Di • a among all the daughtees of the land, so the daughter of Judah among her sisters. None so fair as the Shunamite to content king David, none else can plead that the Son of David takes delight in her beauty. But the kings daughter is all glorious within, Omnis decor ab intus. It consists not in outward face, but in inward grace. How comes she thus fair? Here her speak of her self? I am black O ye daughters of Jerusalem, but comely as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon. Black indeed by her own misery, white and fair by her Saviors mercy. Every soul is black by nature: originally soilde, actually spoiled. We have all primitiuam & priuatinum corruptionem, a penury corruption, that deprives us of all habitual goodness. We are borne Moors, and have increased this swarthiness, by the continual tanning of unceased sins. We have no nitre of our own virtual, enough to whiten us. Job had no water of snow, nor David of Hyssop, nor had the pool of Bethesda, though stirred with a thousand Angels, power to cleanse us. Let Nature do her best, we dwelt at the Sign of the Labor-in-vain. Only Christ hath washed 〈◊〉 , that we might have part with him. A medicine of Water and blood, let out of the side of Jesus by a murdering spear hath made the daughter of Zion fair. In this sacred fountain hath Christ bathed her crimson sins and vlcerated sores; till she is become whiter then wool, or the driven snow. He made her fair, whom he found foul, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. She must be pulchra, or not sponsa, to him that is higher then the heavens, and holier then the Angels. His Spouse must be no blowse: She is adorned by him, let him be adorned by her.

The useful benefit of this Observation teacheth us, to make way through our own natural wretchedness, to the admiration of our Saviors gracious goodness. He loved us tantillos & tales, paruos & prauos, so small in deserts, so vile in defects; without any precedent congruity, or subsequent cond • gnity, in nobis, quod à nobis, in our selves, that was or is of our selves: For all the beauty of S • ons daughter, is derived from God's son. Thy renown went forth among the Heathen for thy beauty: for it was perfect through my comeliness, which I had put upon thee, saith the Lord God. God said once to Jerusalem, Thy birth and thy Nati • ity is of the land of Canaan, Thy Father was an Amorite, and thy mother as i Iustite. None eye pitied thee, but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the loathing of thy person. But when I passed by thee, and • wor • thee polluted in thine own blo • d, I had compassion on thee : I washed thee with water, clothed thee with broidered woe • k, decked thee also with ornaments, put a Jewel on thy forehead, and a beautiful crown on thy head. We have all an Amorite to our Father, an H •• ne to our mother; I mean, are concei • ed and borne in sin; to • o • le, and full of corruption, that there could no temptation be shot from us, to wound the breast of Christ with love. Sported we were, and nothing but nakedness was left to cover us: sick, but without care of our own cure: deformed and luxate with the persecution of vanities; quadrupedated with an earthly, stooping, groping, groucling, covetousness: not only spotted and speckled ( in concret • ) but spots and blemishes, (in abstracto ) pollution it self. As Micah calls Jerusalem and Samaria, not pec • antes, but peccata: What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria and what are the high places of Judah? are they not Jerusalem? Or as Lucan speaks of the wounded body. Totum est pro vulnere corpus. The whole body is as one wound. Blood touched blood, and sore broke out into sore: all ulcers were coagulated into one by a general rupture; that even our righteousness was as filthy rags. Oh then how ugly were our sins! If old iniquities could provoke, or new ones revoke his favor, we had store to tempt him. If the raw and bleeding wounds of voluntary sins: if the halting foot of neutrality, the blear eye of ignorance, the ear deaf to his word, the tongue dumb in his praise: if the sullen brow of averseness, or the stinking breath of hypocrisy, (if these) could inflame his love, • oe our beauty.

What moved thee then. Oh Savior to love us? besides the incomprehensible delight, and infinite content, which God hath in himself; thousands of Angels stand about him, and ten thousands of those glorious spirits minister unto him, What then is man, Lord, that thou takest knowledge of him? or the son of man, that thou makest account of him? the meditation of Saint Augustine is pertinent to this consideration, and what son of man may not confess it with him? Neque enim equistime, aut egotale bonumsum, quo tu adi • veris: nec minor sit potestas tun carens obsequio men. Neither didst thou lack me, Oh Lord: nor was there that good in me, whereby thou mightest be helped: neither is thy power lessened through the want of my service. If we had been good yet God needed us not: being bad, whence ariseth his love? what a roughness of soul findest thou, Oh Christ, when though • embracest us? what deformity when thou beholdest us? what stench of sin when thou ku • est? when thou discoursest, what rotten speeches drop from us? when thou takest us into thy garden, what contrariety of affection to thy expectation? our embraces have been rougher then thy crosses, our persecutions like vinegar, hidden in the spunge of our sacrifices; our words swords, our oaths as bitter as crucifige, our kisses have been treasonable to thee; as Judas his: our contempts thy thorns: our oppressions a spear to gore thy side, and wound thy bowels.

Such was our kindness to thee, Oh blessed Redeemer when thou offeredst thyself to us, and to the Father for us The best thing in us, yea in the best man of us, had nothing of merit, nothing near it. Our wages is death; thy gift is life, bona naturae, melior gratiae, optima gloriae. Thou gavest us a good life of nature, thou gavest us a better of grace, thou wilt give us the best of glory. Whether it be pro via, or pro vita, for the way or the end, it is thy gratuital goodness, who hast promised of thy mercy, both donaere bonatua & condonare mala nostra, both to give us thy good things, and to forgive us our evil things, We had misery from our parents, and have been parents of our own greater misery, Miseri miserum in hanc lucis miseriam 〈◊〉 : Miserable parents have brought forth a miserable offspring into the misery of this world. And for our selves, even when we were young in years, we had an 〈◊〉 about us, Tantillus p • er, tantus pec •• tor. A little child a great sinner. Sic generant pater 〈…〉 regenera •• nt p • ter ca • sstis, So wretched our generation left us, so blessed our regeneration hath mad us. So beggarly were we, till Christ enriched us.

If you ask still, what moved Christ? I answer his own free mercy, working on our great misery. A fit object for so infinite a goodness to work on. He was not now to part a sea, or bring water out of a Rock, or rain Bread from heaven, but to conquer Death by death, to break the head of the Leviathan, to ransom captives from the power of hell to satisfy his own justice for sin; and all this by giving his own Son to die for us; by making him man, who was the maker of man. This was dignus vindice nodus, a work worth the greatness and goodness of God. Decet en • m magnum magna facere. For it becometh him that is Almighty, to do mighty works. Thus to make the Daughter of Jerusalem fair, cost the Son of God the effusion of his blood.

This gives us strong consolation. Qui dilexit pollutos, non deseret politos. He that loved us when we were not, when we were naught, will not now loose us, whom he hath bought with his death, interested to his life Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. vsque ad finem, nay absque fine, unto the end, in the end, without end. He will not neglect David in the Throne, that did protect him in the fold. He that visited Zacchaeus a sinner will not forsake him a Saint. If he bore affection to us in our rags, his love will not leave us, when highted with his righteousness, and shining with his rewels. If Ruth were lovely in the eyes of Bo • z, gleaning after the Reapers, what is she, made Mistress of the Harvest? He never meant to loose us, that laid out his blood to purchase us. Satan hath no trick to deceive him of us, us of him. As he had no power, to prevent the first, so none against the second Redemption. Christ was Agnus in passion, but Leo in R • surrection: a lamb suffering death, but a Lion rising from death. If he could save us being a Lamb, he will not suffer us to be lost, being a Lion. Fear not thou daughter of Zion ; he that chose thee sick, sinful, rebellious, will preserve thee sound, holy, his friend, his Spouse. There is neither death, nor life, nor principal • itie: nor power, nor h •• ght, nor depth that shall be able to separate us from his love, or pluck us out of the arms of his mercy. But tremble ye wicked; if ye have not fought in his Campe, you shall never shine in his Court.

To press this point too far, 1. were but to write Iliades after the Homers of our Church, 2. Besides there are many that offer to sit down in this chair before they come at it, and presume of God, that they shall not be forsaken, when they are not yet taken into his favor. Enow would be saved by this privilege, if there were no more matter in it, then the pleading of it. But in vain doth the beggars son boast himself of the blood royal, or the wicked soul of partaking the divine nature, when he cannot demonstrate his adoption, by his sanctification So that as we give comfort to them that except themselves; so terror to them that accept themselves, when God doth not, make sure to thy soul, that thou art once God's; and my life for thine, thou shalt ever be his.

Lastly, from this titular phrase observe, that the daughter of Jerusalem, is our mother Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all: 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . The holy Church is our mother, if the most holy God be our Father. She feeds us with sincere milk from her two breasts, the scriptures of both the Testaments ; those Oracles which God hath committed to her keeping. God doth beget us of unmortal seed, by the word which liveth and abideth forever ; but not without the womb of the Church . Non enim nascimur, • edrenascimur Christian • : we are not Christians by our first, but by our second birth. Neither is she the mother of all, but us all, whom God hath chosen before all time, and called in time to himself, Qui sic sunt in dom • Dei, vt ipsi sint dom • s Dei, who are so in the House of God, that themselves are the house of God. He that overcometh I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the City of my God, which is now Jerusalem, that cometh out of heaven from my God.

So that à quo dominatio, ab • o denominatio, our name is given us, according to her name that cherisheth, and is Mother unto us. Hence every believing soul is a daughter of Jerusalem, and a spouse of Christ. Anima credentis est sponsaredimentis. The soul of him that believes, is the spouse of him that saves. As a multitude is but a heap of unites; so the Church is a congregation of Saints. And as that which belongs to the body, belongs to every member: so the privileges of our mother Jerusalem, are the perogatives of all her children: not only the daughter of Zion her self, but every daughter of hers, every faithful soul, 'is a pure virgin, and so to be presented to Jesus Christ. As Paul to his particular Church of Corinth : I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. Mans soul is of an excellent nature, and like a beauteous damsel hath many Suitors.

1. First, the Devil, who comes like an old dotard, neatly tricked and licked up: his wrinkled hide smoothed and sleeked with temptations; he comes ever masked, and dares not show his face. Take away his visor, and the soul is worse then a witch that can affect him. And as when he tempts wretched Sorceresses to some real covenant with him, he assumes the form of familiar and unfeared creatures; left in a horrid and strange shape they should not endure him. So in his spiritual circumventions, for the more facile, fly and suspect • esse insinuation into mortal hearts; He transforms himself into an Angel of light.

The promises of this Sutour are large and fair; he offers the soul, if it will be his spouse, a greater Jointure. Judas shall have money, Esau pleasures, Nabal plenty. Christ himself shall be ioyntu • 'd in many kingdoms, but ever he indents, that we must love him, and join with him in marriage. Doeg shall have a place in the court so he will malign God's Priests. Pilate shall be Judge, so he will ply his usury hard. The Proctor shall be made an Eccle • asticall Judge. if he will promise more connivance, then conscience, and suffer Master bribery to give the censure. Every Bal • am shall be promoted, that is readier to curse, then bless the people.

These things to the wicked doth Satan form in speculation, though not perform in action. He is an ill wooer that wanteth words. Hear his voice, and see not his face; believe his promises, and consider him not as a liar, as a murderer, and he will go near to carry thy heart from all. But he that hath two infirmities, nay enormities that betray him: a stinking breath, and a halting foot.

1 For his breath, though it smell of sulphur, and the hot steam of sin and hell, yet he hath art to sweeten it. So he can relish covetise with thrift • nes, voluptuousness with good diet, idleness with good quiet, drunkenness, because it is very sour, fulsome, and odious • u • n to nature and reason, shall be seasoned, sweetened with good fellowship. Malice is the argument of a noble Spirit, and murder the maintenance of reputation. Lust is the direction of nature, and swearing a graceful testimony to the truth of our speeches. With such luscious confections he labors to conserve his lungs from stinking If it were not for those mists and shadows, sin would want both fautors and factors.

2 But his lame foot cannot be hidden (as they once foolishly fabled among the vulgar, that his cloven foot could not be changed) for his disobedience is manifest. If he saith, Steal, and God saith, Thou shalt not steal: Swear, when God saith, Swear not, dissemble, when he cries, Woe against hypocrites: be an usurer, when God saith, thou shalt not then dwell in my glory: what pretences soever gloss his Text, his lameness cannot be hidden. All his policy cannot devise a boot to keep him from this halting. This is the first & worst Sutour.

2 The World comes in like a blustering Captain, with more nations on his back, then crowns in his purse, or (at least) virtues in his conscience. This wooer is handsomely breasted, but ill backed: better to meet, then to follow: for he is all vanity before, all vexation behind, by the witness of him that tried and knew him. Sometimes trouble follows him, but surely follows him. The desire of money is the root of all evil, which while sons coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. He is like a Be or an Epigram, all his sting is in his tail. He is troubled with a thousand diseases, and is attended on with more plagues, then ever was Galens study. He is now grown exceeding old, and hath but a few minutes to live. He is decayed both in stature and nature: especially he is troubled with a stooping, and a stopping, a stooping in his joints, a stopping in his lungs. He neither hath an upright face, nor a light heart.

1 For the former, he is ever poring on the earth, as if he had no other heaven, or were set to dignity there for Paradise. His eye never looks up to heaven, but to observe what weather it will be. This is his curuitie, he is a warped, aged and decrepit Sutour. There is no straitness in him.

2 For the other, he cannot be lightsome, because he never did give good conscience one nights lodging which only, truly, can make the heart merry. He strives to be merry, but his mirth is madness. He cannot dance unless vanity be his mate, and iniquity his Minstrel. All his joy is vel in vitys, vel in diuiti • s, either in his wealth, or his wickedness. He cannot be merry, if God be in the company. For the good only keep Christmas all the year in their conscience, though not at their table. He hath three inducements to persuade, and three defects to dissuade the soul from accepting his love. If the former induce any to him, let the latter reduce them from him.

1. His first allurement is a mellifluous language, able to blanch mischief. His words drop Nectar, as if he had been brought up at Court. And by his Logic he can make quidlibit ex quolibet, anything of everything: so by his Rhetoric he can make (stones) hard hearted worldlings dance to his pipe, as it is fabled of Orpheus, Cusus ex ore non tam ver • a, quam mella fluunt, as I have read of Origem. Every syllable is like a drop of honey from his lips. Magicis verborum viribus, quasi transformat homines. There lies a magic in his tempt • ng speech, able to inchant, and transform men's hearts, making a voluptuous man a hog, an oppressor, a Wolf, the lustful a Goat, the Drunkard a Devil. His arguments are not empty, but carry the weight of golden eloquence, the musical sound of profit and pleasure.

2 Besides his captiuing elocution, he mends the ill fabric of his person with rich accoutrements. He wears all his clothes, as Saint Paul saith, in the fashion. He hath change of suites. He puts on pride, when he goes to the Court: Bribery, when he goes to the Hall: Ebriety, when to a Tavern: Prodigality, when he shuffles in among Gallants: Usury, when he would walk in the Exchange : & Oppression, when he would ride down into the Country. Only, Avarice is the girdle of his loins, he is never without it. It is fashion, to be of any fashion, & to apply himself to thy humor, whom he courts. He hath a suit to speed of his suite, to please thy affection.

3 This is not all, he tenders thee a fair and large jointure. Give him but marriage, and he will give thee maintenance. Iura, periura, Defraude, dissemble, swear, for swear, bribe, flatter, temporize; make use of all men, love only thyself; and riches (with preferment in his company) shall seek thee out. Thou shalt hazard no Straights, climb no Alps, prison not thyself in a study, nor apprentice thy life to the wars: entertain but the world for thy husband, and thou art out of all hunger and cold: wealth shall come trolling in evē whiles thou sleepest. (But happy is he, that can be rich with honesty, or poor with content.) These are the glories, whereof he would enamour thee: thus would he possess thee with his possessions. But he hath three deterrings: hear them.

• 1 He hath sore eyes, blear and raw with cares: for he is ever in expectation, either of remedy to griefs, or supply to wants. What opulency can boast immunity from sorrow, exemption from crosses? And such is the secure worldlings impatience, when once angered with afflictions, that a little misery makes him greatly miserable He makes his yoke the more troublous to him, because he hath not learned to draw quietly in it. Though he hath already more then enough, he keeps his eyes sore, with seeking for addition. In the quest of wealth he denies himself rest. Needs must his eyes be sore that sleepeth not. This is one disease incident to the world.
• 2 He hath swollen legs, diseased with surfeits. For the world comprehends more then covetousness, by the testimony of S. John : The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life is of the world. We renounced in our Baptism with the world, pomps and vanities Riot, lust, intemperance, Epicureanism, dissoluteness are members of the world as well as avarice. Tam I say, if not tantum. And therefore our Savior by that terrible sentence against rich men intends not covetousness for a sole and singular obstacle, (yield it a principal) but pride, ambition, lust, vain-glory, luxury, the effects of an opulent state, as well as covetise. There are more burdens to load the Camel when he should pass through the small postern of Grace, (that needless eye ) then only avarice affections. What lesson of vice is not the rich man apt to learn? Therefore this makes the world have swollen legs, as the other sore eyes. He is blind, he is lame, both ill qualities in a Sutour.
• 3 He hath a very weak tenur of all he possesseth, he is God's tenant at will, & hath leasse of nothing, but durante Domini been placito, during the great Landlord of heaven & earth his favor. At utmost, his hold is but for term of life; & that a warish, short, and transient life, scarce so long as the first line of an indenture. Nay, he, hath right to nothing; for he holds not in Capite, from the Lord of all, Jesus Christ. Therefore every worldling shall be accountant, for each crumb of bread, and drop of water, which they have received. For the right of the creatures lost in the first Adam, cannot be recovered, but by the second. So that he enters on them as an Intruder, and possesseth them as an Usurper his title being so bad, his tenure is certain in nothing, but in being uncertain. Sic transit gloria mundi : So the fashion of this world passeth away. What soul soever marries him, either he leaves his wife, or his wife must leave him, without ever being satisfied.

You see then the fraudulent proffers of your personable wooer, the world. What is there in him, that any daughter of Jerusalem should affect him? Only be you simple as Doves, in not loving him, but wi • e as Serpents, in living by him. Love not the world, saith Saint John : yet make use of it saith Saint Paul, Vtere mundo, fruero Deo : Use the world, but enjoy God: for the world, wax • th old as a garment, and fadeth away ; but Jesus Christ yesterday, and today, and the same forever. The world, like fire, may be a good servant, will be an ill Master. Make it thy slave, it is not good enough to be thy husband. How base is it, for a freewoman to marry her servant.

3 The third is the Flesh. This Sutour comes boldly in, like a home-borne child, and hopes to speed for old acquaintance. He can plead more then familiarity. even inherence, inheritance of what nature hath left us. He is not only collateral, but connatural to us. One house hath held us, one breath served us, one nutriment fed us, ever since one conception bred us. Like Hippocrates twins we should have inseparably lived together, and loved together, if the prerogative Court of grace and mercy had not divorced us. And even in the sanctified, this impudent, wooer cannot be quite shaken off, till death shall at once deliver that to death, us to life. For though with the mind, I delight in the law of God; yet I see another law in my members rebelling against the law of my mind, and bringing me unto captivity to the law of sin. His company is wearisome, his solicitings tedious, to the virgins-daughter of Zion. Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind we serve the Law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

He will perpetually urge his suit; and not after many rejections be said nay. Thy soul cannot be rid of him, so long as thou holdest him in any hope of success. And so long he will hope, as thou givest him a cold and timorous denial. Suitors are drawn on with an easy repulse, & take that as half granted, that is but faintly opposed. In whom this wooer prevails least, he wearies him with importunity, till a peremptory answer hath put him out of heart. The wavering and weakly-resisting spirit cannot sleep in the Chamber of quiet: whiles innumerable lusts (which are the solicitors and spokesmen of the flesh ) beat at the door with their early knocks: pressing more impudently for audience, then instruments of villainy to Machianell, or wronged Clients to an Advocate. Remiss answers provoke his fiercer attempts. He is shameless, when he meets not with a bold heart. He thinks that though

Only resolution can make him give back, give over.

His insinuations are many, 1. by promises. Pollicitis diues. He is neither a beggar, nor a niggard in promising They are the cheapest chaffer, a man can part withal, 2. By tedious and stintless solicitations, as if time could win thee.

As if the strongest sort were not long able to hold out, 3. By shadow (by real proffers) of friendship, Tut a frequensque via est, per amici fallere nomen, It is a safe and common way: by name of friendship to show false play. It was not mine enemy (saith David ) but my familiar friend, that did me the mischief. 4. By tendering to the soul, pleasing and contentful objects, as if Therefore he forms his insidious baits to our inclinations, diversifieth his lusts according to the variety of our humors. Hic Procus innumeris moribus aptus crit. This Wooer can vary his Protean forms, observe all strains, reserve and conceal his own, till he be sure, that the pill he gives will work.

This Sutour is dangerous, and prevails much with the soul: a handsome fellow if you pluck off his skin: for this saith Saint Jude, is spotted all over. A virgin well natured, well nurtured, that sets ought by herself, will not fasten her love on a lazar, leper, or ulcerous Moore. Why then. Oh why should the soul, so heavenly generate thus become degenerate, as to wed her affections to the polluted flesh. God, indeed, once married the soul to the body, the Celestial to a terrene nature, but to the lusts of the body, which Paul calls the flesh, he never gave his consent. This clandestine match was made without the consent of Parents, of God our Father, of the church our mother; therefore most sinful, most intolerable. Cashier then this sawey Sutour, who (like some riotous younger brother, with some great heir) promiseth much, both of estate and love; but once married, and made Lord of all, soon consumes all to our final undoing. He breaks open the Cabinet of our heart, and takes out all the Jewels of our graces ; and stints not his lavishing, till he hath beggared us. This is the third Sutour.

4 The last and best, and only worthy to speed is Jesus Christ. What is thy beloved more then another beloved, O thou fairest among women : Say foreign Congregations to the Church. To whom she answers: My beloved is white and ruddy (he hath an exact mixture of the best colors, arguments of the purest and healthfullest complexion.) The chiefest among ten thousand ; (Infinitely fairer then all the sons of men; who, alone may bear the standard of comely grace, and personal goodliness among all.) His head is as the most fine gold ; (the Deity which dwelleth in him, is most pure and glorious,) His locks are curled, and black as a Raven, (his godhead deriving to his human nature such wondrous beauty, as the black curled locks become a fresh and well favored countenance) His eyes are like doves, &c. who will, let him there read and regard his graces: His name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the Virgins love him.

He hath 1 a rich Wardrobe of righteousness to apparel us, 2. a glorious house, a City of gold to entertain us; whose foundation is Jasper and Sapphire, and such precious stone; the least of them richer then ten Escurials, 3. His Jointure is Glory, Jointure I may call it, for so we are with him joined heirs, though not joined purchasers. If the house of this World be so esteemed, wherein God lets his enemies dwell; what is the mansion he hath provided for himself, and his Spouse, the daughter of Zion • 4. His fruition is sweet and blessed, ob eminentiam, ob permanentiam, for perfection, for perpetuity, a Kingdom, and such a one, as cannot be shaken, which no sin, like a politic Papist shall blow up, no sorrow like a turbulent Atheist shall invade.

This Sutour is only beautiful, only bountiful: let him possess your souls, which with his blood he bought out, and with his power brought out from Captivity, for him am I deputed wooer at this time, (for as though God did beseech you through us we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God, ) who would fain • present your souls pure Virgins to Jesus Christ Forebear the prostitution: of them to any ravisher, to any sin: For peccare to sin, in the literal word, is to commit adultery: quasipellicare, id est cum pellice c • ire. Christ lays just Title to you: give yourselves from yourselves to him: you are not your own, unless you be his.

We have heard the Daughter of Zion described, qua sit : let us now hear cu • us sit, the daughter of my people saith the Lord. God was pleased with that Title, the God of Israel His own Scriptures frequently give it him, Ierem. 32. Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, &c. The children are usually called after the name of then Father: here the Father is content to be called after the name of his children. The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, &c. So Darius proclaims in his decree: The God of Daniel, Esa. 44 One shall say, I am the Lord's, and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob, and another shall subscribe with his hand unto the Lord, and surname himself by the name of Israel. Thus saith the King of Israel, &c. And Esa. 45. For Jacob my servants sake, and Israel mine Elect, I have even called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me. Here might be inferred the inutterable compassion of God to Israel. It is my people, that is thus sick. But I have not scanted this observation before.

That which I would now direct my speech, and your attention to, is the strangeness of this complaint; agrota ^t Israel. Others to have been sick, not so rare. It had been no wonder in Egypt, Ammon, Edom, Babylon, Israel hath the best means for health, therefore the more inexcusable her sickness. They should have been so mannered, as they were manured; and brought forth grapes according to their dressing: Sidon shall judge Chorazin; Niniuch Jerusalem ; In Sidon where was no Prophet, was less wickedness: in Nineveh, where less prophesying, greater repentance. This conviction was demonstrated in many particulars. The praise of the Centurion, is the shame of Israel. The mercy of the Samaritan, the Priests and Levites condemnation. The very dogs licking Lazarus sores, confute the stony bowels of Dives. The returning of the strange Leper, with a song of thanksgiving in his mouth, was an exprobration to all the nine; when Christ had the tythe of a person, he least expected.

God reproacheth this daughter of Zion, Ezek. 16: that Samaria and Sodo •• e were of her Sisterhood, yea, as if their abominations were a very little thing, thou wast corrupted more then they in all thy ways. Nay; thou hast justified thy sisters, in that their abominations came short of thine, by the one half? The people of thy holiness, as the Prophet Isaiah calls them, are become by the same Prophets testimony, a sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity. They that were not called by thy name, are not so rebellious. E • sunt deteriores, quo meliores Deus reddere conatus est. It is grievous, that God's goodness should make men worse; and the more kind God hath been to them, the more unkind they should be to themselves, the more unthankfull to him. Christ for the Jews turned their water into wine : the Jews for Christ, turned their wine into vinegar, & offered it him to drink. They that were the richest of God's own making, became the most bankroute sin religion. They changed Cathedrā magistery, wherein God placed their Doctors, in sodem pestilentiae, into the scorners chair, contemning his benefits: they had a Vineyard at an easy rate, yet paid no fruits of obedience. It is hard to say, whether God was more gracious to them, or they more grievous to him. This boldly, never was more piery required with less piety. God sowed mercy, and reaped a crop of iniquity.

God can brook this in none, but as he forsook his Temple in Zion, when it became a den of thieves, so he will take out his ornaments where with he graced the temple of the soul, when we set up the Dagon of this world in it; and withdraw his riches, as from a divorced Spouse, running after other lovers. Whiles Adam served God, God served him; he provides for him a 〈◊〉 a companion, and sustentation. We read of nothing, that God did six days together (and his works were not small nor few) but work for Adam ; as if he had been hired to labor for him: Is it not strange that such a child should rebel to such a father? Let none think, his fault was small, in eating an apple, or that his punishment weighed heavier then his trespass. His sin was so much the greater, because against a God(and) so good unto him. The more gloriously the Sun and Summer have apparrelled a tree, the more we admire the blazing; when God hath planted a soul in his own holy ground, watered it with those sacred, purifying dew of his graces, shone on it with the radiant beams of his soul reviving mercies, spent much ( & opera & olei ) both of care and cost upon it; and hath his expectation required, abused with a mere flourish of seaues; with either ( anequam, ornequic quam fructus ) none or evil fruits; there goes out a curse, Never fruit grow on thee more. When God hath put his grace into our unworthy vessels, how abusive is it, to empty our selves of that precious liquor, and swell our spirits with the poison of hell? How just is it with him to take away, what he gave, Luke 8. and to put a consumption into our vital parts? Hence (without wonder) our judgment rusts, like a never drawn sword: our knowledge looseth the relish, like the Jews putrefied Manna. Our faith dissolves as a cloud, our zeal trembles, as if held with a palsy; our love freezeth the harder, as water that once was warm. Our repentance turns to ice, & our hope to snow : which the heat of affliction melts to water, not to be gathered up; the image of death is upon all our religion.

Was this strange in Israel ; and is it nothing in England : Look upon the inhabitants of the earth, somewhat remote from us, to whose face the Sun of the Gospel hath not yet sent his rays; people blinded with ignorance, blended with lusts. What were our desires or deserts, former mater or latter merit, congruity before conversion, or condignity after, more then they might show; that God should put us into the Horizon of his Grace? whiles they sit in darkness and shade of death ? Want they nature, or the strength of flesh? are they not tempered of the same mortar? are not their heads upward toward heaven? have they not reasonable souls, able for comprehension, apt for impression, if God would set his Seal on them, as well as we? Are they not as likely for flesh and blood, provident to forecast, ingenuous to invent, active to execute, if not more then we? Why have we that star of the gospel, to light us to Christ Jesus, standing over our Country, whiles they neither see it, nor seek it: It is clearly, merely God's mercy. Now why are our lives worse, our knowledge is better? Why devour we their venom, refusing our own healthful food; whiles they would feed on our crumbs, and have it not. Woe unto us, if we scant God of our fruits, that hath not scanted us of his blessings.

Bring presents to the King of glory ; ye children of his holiness, and worship before him. Endanger not yourselves to the greater misery, by abusing his great mercy. He hath loved us much and long in our election, when we could not love him: in our redemption, when we would not love him. His love was not merited by ours: let our love be deserved, inflamed by his. If God prevent us with love, we can do no less then answer him in the same nature, though not (it is impossible) in the same measure. Publicans will love those, that love Publicans. The Poet could say,

But God loved us, even being his enemies, Eitu charitas est substantia, nostra accidextalis. His love is a substance, ours only accidental. His, ignis accendens, ours ignis accensu • . His love is that holy fire, that enkindles ours. If we return not our little mite of love for his great treasures, his great love shall turn to great anger; and we shall fare the worse that ever, we fared sowel. God (as he hath advanced us into his favor) so hath he set us as a light on a hill ; among the Nations: if darkness be on the hill, what light can be in the valley? A small scar on the face is eminent. If one eye-brow be shaved, how little is taken from the body, how much from the beauty? We are now the worlds envy; oh let us not become their declamation.

Is the daughter of God's people sick ? it may then be in ferred, that the Church may be sick, though not die and perish; die it cannot. The blood of an eternal king bought it, the power of an eternal spirit, preserves it; the mercy of an eternal God shall crown it. The heathens have imagined to vaunt themselves and daunt us, with the downfall of our Church. Ad certum tempus sunt Christiani, postea perihunt, r • dibunt Idola, & quod fuit antea. These Christians are but for a time, then they shall perish, and our Idols shall be returned to their former adoration. To whom that father replies: Verum in cum expectas, miser Infidelis, vt transeunt Christiani, trāsis ipse sine Christianis. But whilst thou O wretched Insulei, exp •• test the Christians to perish, thou doest perish thy self, and leave them safe behind thee. Whiles they boast in their self flatteries, that we had a time to begin, and shall have a time to continue, themselves vanish and we remain to praise the Lord our God from generation to generation. Indeed, Matth. 15. Every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up : But whom he loves, forever he loves. Yet may his Church whiles it is not freed from militancy be very sick in the visible body of it. Aegrotat Israel, yet in Israel was the true Church of God. It was so sick in Elias time, that Rom. 11. he complaineth, Lord they have killed thy Prophets, and digged down thine altars, and I am left alone, and they seek my life. The Church was sick you see; yet the next verse of God's answer frees it from being dead, I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, that never bowed the knee to the Image of Baal.

What Church since hath been so happy, as to joy in her freedom from this cause of complaint? The Church was from the beginning, shall be to the end without limitation of time, of place. Yet she is a Garden, (Cant 4. A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse ) sometime by diligence kept neat and clean, sometimes by negligence over-run with weeds. She is a Moon, est clear and beautiful, est waning and waxing dark esome. Die then it cannot, be sick it may. Time was, saith Chrysostom, that Ecclesiacalum fuit, spiritu cuncta administrant &c. The Church was a heaven, the holy Spirit governing all things &c. Now the very steps and tokens thereof do but scarcely remain. Mali prosiciunt, boni deficiunt : Wickedness grows strong, goodness faints. The lambes are few, the goats swarm,

We have read often the Church compared to a body, Cuius caput Christus, whose head is Jesus Christ. In the 4. 10 the Ephesians, we have it likened to a man, Cuius anima Christus, whose soul is Christ. Till we all come to a perfect man &c. Now the soul increaseth in a man, not augmentatively, but secundum vigorem ; transfusing into the body her virtual powers and operations more strongly. Christ is ( semper Idem objective, subjective, effective, ever the same in himself, and to us: but this body grows up with the head, this man with the soul, this Church increaseth with the increasing of God. Sickness then to the Church cannot be mortal, yet may the body be distempered: her doctrine may be sound, her members want health. Why is not the health of the daughter &c.

But to descend from the universal to a particular, from the invisible to a visible Church ; this may be sick, 1. Either by some inbred distemperature, 2. or by the accession of some outward malady. There may be grievances in either respect, to afflict the daughter of Israel.

1 Inwardly, Corruption may gather on it by degrees, & put it in need of physic. For as the natural body of man, when it is over charged in the veins and parts with rank and rotten humors, which it hath gathered by misdiet, surfeiting, or infest airs; the man grows dangerously sick, til by some fit evacuation he can be discharged of that burden. So the body of a Church being infected with humors, and swollen with tumours of unsound doctrine, of unsounder life, superstitious ceremonies, corrupting the vital pores and powers thereof: troubled with the cold shakings of indevotion, or taken with the numbness of induration, or terrified with windy passions of turbulent spirits. cannot be at ease, till due reformation hath cured it. Now such a Church sometimes is more swelling in bigness, & oftents a more bulky show; but once truly purged of such crude superfluities, it becomes less great and numerous, but withal more sound, apt and fit for spiritual promotions.

Our particular Church of England, now fined from the dross of Rome, had a true substantial being before, but hath gotten a better being, by the repurgation wrought by the Gospel, maintained of our Christian Princes, the true defenders of the faith of Christ. God had doubtless his Church among us before; for it is Catholic and universal: but his floor was full of chaff. The Papists demand where our Church was before Luther's time. We answer, it lay hid under a great bulk of chaff: and Mat. 3. since Christ vouchsafed to come with his fan to purge it of the chaff, it now shows it self with greater eminence, and is clearer both in show and substance. It was before a wedge of pure gold, but coming into the hands of impostors, was by their mixtures & sophistications, for gain and such sinister respects, augmented into a huge body and mass, retaining still an outward fair show and tincture of gold. They demand, where was the gold? demonstrate the place. I answer in that Mass. But for the extracting thereof, and purifying it from dross, God hath given us the true touchstone, his sacred Word, which can only manifest the true Church : and withal reverend Bishops, and worthy Ministers, that have been instruments to refine & purge it from the dross of superstitions, foul ceremonies, and juggling inventions.

The Papists brag themselves the true ancient Church, and tax ours of novelty, of heresy. But we justly tell them, that Eccles •• enomen tenent, & contra Ecclesiam dimicant ; that they usurp the name of the Church, yet persecute it. For the truth of our Church, we appeal to the Scriptures. Nolo humanis documentis, sed diuinis oraculis sanctam Ecclesiam demonstrari : It is fit the holy Church should be proved rather by divine oracles, then human precepts or traditions. We stand not upon numbers (which yet, we bless God, are not small) but upon truth. You see, as the Church of the Jews, so any particular Church may be sick inwardly. To describe these internal diseases, I will limit them into 4.

• 1 Error, indeed Heresy cannot possess a Church, but it gives a subversion to it. Errare possum, Hereticus esse non Possum, saith that Father, I may err, an heretic I cannot be. Now, Quic quid contra veritatem sapit, heresis est, etiam vetus consuctudo. What is diametrally opposed against the Truth, is heresy, yea though it be an ancient and long received custom. But Logic, which is a reasonable discourse of things, shows a great difference between diuersae and contraria. A Church may be sick of error, and yet live: but heresy (a willful error against the fundamental truth, violently prosecuted and persisted in, kills it. Therefore Haeresis potius mors, quam morbus : Heresy is rather death then sickness. When the truth of doctrine or rather doctrine of truth, hath been turned to the falsehood of Heresy. God hath removed their Candlestick, & turned their light into darkness. Error may make it sick, but so that it may be cured. The Churches of Corinth, Galatia, Pergamos had these sicknesses: the holy Ghost by Paul and John prescribeth their cures. If they had been dead, what needed any direction of Physic? If they had not been sick, to what tended the prescription of their remedy.

  To God alone, and to his majestical word, be the impossibility of erring. That Church that man shall in this err palpably, that will challenge an immunity: whosoever thinks, he cannot err, doth in this very persuasion err extremely. I know there is a man on earth, a man of earth, (to say no more) that challengeth this privilege. Let him prove it. Give him a term ad exhibendum, and then for want of witness ho may write, Teste meipso, as Kings do, Witness our self, &c. Nay ask his Cardinals, Friars, Jesuits. This is somewhat to the Proverb, Ask the son • if the Father be a thief. But he cannot err in his definitive sentence of Religion. Then belike he hath one spirit in his consistory, and another at home: and it may in some sort be said of him, as Salust of Cicero. Al •• d stan • , aliud sedens de Republica loquitur. He is of one opinion sitting, of another standing. Let God be true, but every man a liar. One of their own said; Omnis homo errare potest in side, etiamsi Papa sit : Any man may err in faith, yea though he were the Pope. If they will have Rome a sanctuary, let them take along with them Petrarcha's catachresicall speech, calling it a Sanctuary of Errors. What particular Church then may not err? now can it err, and be sound? Be the error small, yet the ache of a finger keeps the body from perfect health. The greater it is the more dangerous. Especially, 1. either when it possesseth a vital part, and affecteth, infecteth the Rulers, of the Church. It is ill for the feet, when the Head is giddy, 2. or when it is infectious and spreading, violently communicated from one to another, 3. or when it carries a color of truth. The most dangerous vice, is that which bears the countenance, and wears the cloak of virtue, 4. or when it is fitted to the humor, and seasoned to the relish of the people. Sedition, affectation, popularity, covetousness, are enough to drive an error to an heresy. So the disease may prove a Gangrene, and then enserecidendum, ne pars sinceratrabatur : no means can save the whole, but cutting off the incurable part: Pereat vnus potius quam vnitas.

• 2 Ignorance is a sore sickness in a Church, whether it be in the superior or subordinate members. Especially when the Priests lips preserve not knowledge. Ill goes is with the body when the 〈◊〉 are blind. Devotion without instruction often winds it self into superstition. When learnings head is kept under Avarices girdle, the land grows sick. Experience hath made this conclusion too manifest. Our forefathers felt the terror and tyranny of this affliction; who had golden Challices, and wooden Priests, that had either no Art, or no heart to teach the people. Sing not, thou Roman Syr • n, that Ignorance is the damme of devotion, to breed it: it is rather a damme to stifle, restrain and choke it up. Blindness is plausible to please men, not possible to please God. Grant that our faults in the light, are more heinous then theirs who wanted true knowledge. Ex furibus enim leges eos grauius puniunt, qui interdiù furantur : For the laws do punish those thieves most severely, that fear not even by day to commit outrages. Yet in all reason, their sins did exceed in number, who knew not when they went awry or what was amisle.

  Rome hath (by a strange and incredible kind of doctrine) gone about to prove that the health, which is indeed the sickness, of a Church, Ignorance. Their Cardinal Cusaen faith, that Obedientia irrationalis est consummata obedientia & perfectissima, &c. Ignorant obedience, wanting reason, is the most absolute and perfect obedience. Chrysostom gives the reason, why they so oppose themselves against reason, Haeretici sacerdotes Claudunt ianuas veritatis, &c. Heretical Priests shut up the gates of Truth: For they know that upon the manifestation of the Truth, their Church would be soon forsaken. If the light which maketh all things plain, should shine out, Tunc hi qui prius decipiebant: nequaqua • ad populum accodere valebunt, post quam se senserint intellectos : then they who before cozened the people, could preserve their credits no longer, being now smelt out and espied. Hence the people aim at Christ, but either short or gone, and not with a just Ieuell. But Nemo de Christo credat nisi quod Chr • stus de se credi voluit. Let no man believe other thing of Christ then what Christ would have believed of himself. Non minus est Deum fingere, quam negare, saith Hilary. It is no less sin to fain a new God, then to deny the true God. The Priests call the people Swine, and therefore must not have those precious pearls. And so the people ( Amant ignorare, malunt nescire, quod iam oderunt, ) had rather continue ignorant, as not loving to know those things, which they cannot love, because they know not.

  But alas, Ignorance is so far from sanity and sanctity, that it is a spilling and killing sickness. Men are urged to read the Scriptures, that never emptied Treasur-house of knowledge: they answer, Non sum. Monachus, vxorem habeo, & curam domus, I am no Priest, I have a wife, and a domestical charge to look to. This is that Pestilence (no ordinary sickness) that infects to death many souls; to think that knowledge belongs only to Priests. This is a work of the Devils inspiration, not suffering us to behold the treasure, least we grow rich by it. Dices non legi, non est haec excusario, sed crimen : Thou sayest I have not read: this is no excuse but a sin. The Romists stick not, as once the Valentinian heretics ( veritatis ignorantiam, cognitionem vocare ) by a Paradox, Pseudodoxe, to call the ignorance of the truth, the true knowledge thereof. Like those, Wisd. 14. that living in a war of ignorance, those so great plagues they called peace. But Quiea quae sunt Domini nesciunt, a Domino nesciuntur : They that will not know the Lord, shall not be known of the Lord. It is objected, 1. Cor. 8, Knowledge puffeth up. Let Iraeneus expound it. Non quod veram scientiam de Deo culparet, alioquin seipsum primum accusaret, Not that he blamed the true knowledge of God, for then he should first have excused himself.

  Beloved, Let the word of God dwell in you plenteously. Do not give it a cold entertainment, as you would do to a stranger, and so take your leave of it; but esteem it as your best familiar, and domestical friend: making it (as our Postill sweetly) your chamber fellow, study-fellow, bedfellow. Let it have the best room, and the best bed, the parlor of our conscience, the resting place in our heart. Neglected things are without the doer, less respected with in, but near the door; Sed quae pretiosae sunt, non vno seruantur ostio : the more worthy things are not trusted to the safety of one door, but kept under many locks and keys. Give terrene things not only regard, preserve them with a more removed care. But this pearl of inestimable value, this Jewel purer then the gold of Ophir ; lay it not up in the Porters lodge, the outward ear, but in the Cabinet, and most inward closure of thy heart, Deut. 11. Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart & in your soul Mary thought that place the fittest receptacle for such Oracles. This is that Physic, which can only cure the sickness of Ignoranc • s Vbi ignorans in • : nit quod 〈◊〉 , contum • x quid timeat, laborans quo praemiaetur, 〈◊〉 quo nutri • tur, famelicus conuiuium, vulneraetus remidium : where the ignorant may find what to learn the refractary what to fear, the laborer wherewith to be rewarded the weak nourishment, the guest a banker, the wounded a remedy to cure him. Be not ignorant be not sick: Search the Scriptures, read, observe. This is not all. Non prodest Cibus, qui statim sumptus emittitur, the meat nourisheth not, which tarrieth not in the stomach, It must be digested by meditation and prayer. Meditatio docet quid desit, oratio obtinet ne desit. Meditation shows our want; prayer procureth supply. Let it not be said of our perfunctory reading, as it was of the Delphian Oracle, Quoties legitur, toties negligitur, that we disregard what we read; Read to learn, learn to practice, practice to live and live to praise God forever.

• 3 A third sickness, which may inwardly afflict a Church is Dissention : a sore shaking to the joints, an enervating the strength, and a dangerous degree to dissolution. The world being but one, teacheth that there is but one God, that governs it, one God; that there is but one Church, one truth. The Church is not only ( Columna veritatis, sed columba vnitatis) the pillar of truth, 1. Tim. 3.15. but also the Dove of Unity. Cant. 6. My Dove, my vndesiled is all • ne. Dissensions like secret and close Judases have given advantageous means to our common enemies, both to scorn and scourge the Church. Clemens Alexand ••• brings in the Heathen, exprobrating our Religion for untrue, unwarrantable, • Quia omnis Secta Christianismit • tulum sibi vendicat, tameu aliae aliam execratur & condemnat. Because every sect challengeth to it self the city and right of true Christianity, yet one curseth and condemneth another. Within how much the narrower limits this distraction is pent, it so much the more violently bursteth forth and strives to rend the bowels of a Church. Like some angry and furious vapor, or exhalation restrained. that shakes the very earth for vent and passage. Such hath been the distractedness of sometimes, that men have labored to be neuters, and studied more to be indifferently disposed to either side, then to be religious at all. Such a time doth Erasmus mention, Quando ingeniosares fuit esse Christianum, when it was a point of policy, and wit to be a Christian.

  I confess indeed, that Unity is no inseparable and undoubted mark of the Church, for there was an unity in those murdering voices, Crucify him, Crucify him, The Kings of the earth have banded themselves together against the Lord. Those favorers and factors of Antichrist, Reu. 17. that make war against the Lamb, are all said to have one mind. Nay Chrysostomo saith, that Expedit ipsis Daemonibus obaudire sibi inuicem in Schismate. It is necessary for the very Devils to hearken one to another, and to have some mutuallity in their very mutiny, an union in their distraction; yet cannot it not be denied, but that dissention in a Church, is a sickness to it. It goes ill with the body when the members agree not. Those that dwell in one house should be of one mind. It endangers the whole building to ruin, when the stones square and 〈◊〉 one with another. What detriment this hath been to whole Christendom, he hath no mind, that considers not no heart that condoles not, we may say with the Athenians, Auximus Philippum nos ipsi Athenienses. We have strengthened King Philip against us by our own contentions. Christian Nation fighting with Christian, hath laid more to the possession of the Turk, then his own sword. Where is the Greek Church once so famous? ⁱ Graeciam in Greece quaerimus, saith Aeneas Syluitu, We seek for Greece in Greece, & scarce find the remaining ruins. Behold we have laid wast our selves, who shall pity us? our own seditions have betrayed the peace of our Jerusalem. He hath no tears of Christian compassion in his eyes, that will not shed them at this loss. If you ask the reason, why the wild Bore hath spoiled the Vineyard: why the Iim and Zym, filthy and unclean Birds roost themselves in those sanctified dominions; Why Mahomet is set up like Dagon, where the Ark once stood, and Paganism hath thrust Christianity out of her seat, it is answered; Israel is not true to Judah, the renting of the ten Tribes, from the two, hath made both the two, and the ten miserable.

  It is one of the forest plagues, (oh rather let it fall on the enemies of God and his Church ; let his own never feel it) when men shall be fed with their own flesh, and shall be drunk with their own blood, as with sweet wine. frighting and fighting one against another, till an utter extirpation devour and swallow all. The malignity of this sickness hath been terrible to particular Churches. They that have been least endamaged, have little cause to joy in it. Our own home-bred jars, have lately more prejudiced our peace then foreign wars. The Spanish blades have done less hurt to us, then English tongues. Our contentions have labored about trifles, our damage hath been no trifle, but (I know not whether more) to our loss, or our enemies gain. Look but one the effects, and you will confess this a dangerous sicknesses. Rome laughs, Amsterdam insults, whiles the brethren scuffle in the Vineyard, Atheists and persecutors shuffle in to spoil it. God's Sabbath, his worship, his Gospel is neglected. Some will hear none but the refractary, and refusers of conformity: others take advantage of their disobedience, to contemn their Ministry. Witched hearts are hardened. good ones grieved, weak offended. Is this no sickness ? is it unworthy our deploring, our imploring redresses.

  We are all brethren, both by fathers and mothers side. It is more then enough, that our fallings out have been a grief to both our parents. If we proceed, the brethren shall smart for all. Whither we be victor or vanquished, we may beshrew our selves. Let us think, we behold our Mother calling to us, to stay our quarrels, and to lay down the cause at her feet. Otherwise, as Iocasta told her two sons,

  Bella geri placuit, nullo; habitura triumphos.

  We undertake a war, whose victory shall have a sory triumph. Let every Star in our Orbe know his station and run his course without erring: the inferior subieting themselves to the higher powers; whiles the courses of Superiors be wisely tempered with moderation and clemency. For Et si omnibus verbis ministris commune idemque sit officium, sunt tansen honoris gradus. Though the office of all God's ministers be common, and the same, yet they have different degrees and places.

  We have adversaries enow at home, to move our tongs and pens against. (Oh that arguments of steel and iron might supply the weakness of the other.) We have the Edomites with their no god, and the Babylonians with their new god; dissolute Atheists, resolute Papists: the former scoffing us for believing at all; the latter, for believing as we do, as we ought. These oppose (with us though under the pent-house of night) Mass against Service, Sacrament against Sacrament, Prayer against Prayer; confounding the language of England, as the Jews once of Israel. Whiles we are praying in one place, Oh Lord God of Abraham, &c. they are mumbling in another place, Oh Baal hear us. Whiles we pray for fire to consume the sacrifice, they for water to consume the fire: we for the propagation, they for the extirpation of the Gospel; hating us, and our Christian Princes more mortally, then if we were Saracens. For as no bond is so strong, as that of Religion: so no hostility is so cruel and outrageous, as that which difference in Religion occasioneth. Hence they cross, they curse, they persecute, they excommunicate. Nothing but our blood can stay their stomachs.

  We know, they hate us: let us the more dearly love one another. The manifestation of enemies should confirm the mutual league and amity of Brethren. Oh pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Pray we that the deceived may find their error, correct their opinions, and submit their judgments and affections to the rule of truth. Yea, that the wandering sheep ; yea that those, who are yet goats may become sheep, and brought into one fold, under one Shepherd, whiles they continue cokle, there is small hope. Yet Paul was once a rare, who after proved good wheat, and is now in the Garner of heaven: Recte dicitur glacialem niue calidam esse non posse: nullo enim pacto quamdiu nix est, calida esse pot • st: It is truly said: that the frozen snow can by no means be made hot • : for so long as it is snow, and frozen it admits not to be cal • fied : Yet if that snow be melted, the liquidity thereof may be made hot. God that is able to turn a stony heart into a heart of flesh, work this change upon them; unite all our heats to himself; • o one another and heal our souls of this sickness.

• 4 To omit many; (for sins as they are innumerab • e for multitude so diverse for quality; and many •• an def • ne sin, but few decline sin.) The last of these in • ard sicknesses is irreligious Profaneness : a grief of all time, a disease of all Church. Other time have been notable for this, our • notorious. Not that I praise the former, which doubtless were conscious of evils enough. They know theirs, we our own. The deeds of the flesh (if ever) are now manifest, not only to God, b • f • re whom all things lie naked, a • a dissected Anatomy: b • t even to the observing e • e of man. Oppression the • 〈◊〉 self in open field, depopulating, ruining City, Country Church, Drunken re • les in the street; and Gluttony desire, not to be house'd. Malice not only discovers, but oftenteth hir devilish effects. Bribery opens his hand to receive in in the very Courts. Robbery and murder swagger in the high ways. There is emulation in open school: Superstition in open Temple: Sects in open Pulpit. Brokery stands, like a sign, at the userers door, and invites foolish want to turn in thither, for a (miserable) supply. Whoredom begins to neglect curtains, and grows proud of an impudent prostitution. Pride holds the restraint of concealment a plague; and rather would not be, then be unnoted. Oaths are louder then prayers; men scarce spend two hours of seven days at their supplications, whiles they swear away the whole week. If profaneness be not our sickness. I will almost say, we are sound.
  —Niger omnibus aris,

  Ignis & in nullis spirat deus integer extis.

If this sickness be not lamentable, rejoice triumph, and say, you have no need to mourn. If a temporal loss salure us, we entertain it with ululations and tears. Let Pirates and rocks spoil us at sea, the oppressing Sabaeans in the field, the fire at home: see we our houses and towns 〈◊〉 , our gold and goods (worldlings gods) transporting our wives, children, friends shrieking under the hand of slaughter, we need not call for mourning women, Ier. 9. to wail for us, our own eyes would run down with tears, and our eye lids gush out with waters. Let profaneness lift up his wicked hand against God, to blaspheme his name, despise his truth, disallow his Sabbaths, abuse his patience, deride his treatings, his threatenings, his judgments; this we see and suffer without compassion, without opposition But knowing the judgment of God (that they which commit such things are worthy of death) not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

These Sicknesses may afflict a Church inwardly. She may be sick outwardly. 1. by the persecution of man. 2. by the affliction of God.

By persecution of man, I need not call your thoughts back to elder times, & weary you with antiquities, to justify this assertion. This Church of ours so well remembers this sickness in Q. Mary's days, as if she were but newly recovered; whence descended those evils, but à culmine Pontifieio, as one calls it, from the top tower of the Pope : yet the Romists stick not to answer this laid to their charge, by averring paradoxically, that their persecution was in love, as Sara to Hagar. In love they tyrannized, slandered, beat, imprisoned, manacled, massacred, burned us; all in love. As Philippides cudgelled his father, & pleaded it was in love. If this were charity, then sure the very mercies of the wicked are cruel : their love is worse then others hatred, Nunquid ouis lupum persequitur aliqnando? non, sed lupus ouē. Quem videris in sanguine persecutionis gaudentē, lupus est, saith Chrysost. doth the sheep ever persecute the wolf? no, but the wolf the sheep? whom thou seest delighting in the blood of persecution, let him plead what he will, he is a very wolf We tell the Papists, as Augustine told the Donatists, notwithstanding their distinguishing by tenses and pretenses, that their persecution exceeded in cruelty the very Jews. For the Jews persecuted ( Christicarnem ambulantis interra : these Christi evangelium sedentis in caelo. ) the flesh of Christ walking on earth; the Papists the Gospel of Christ sitting in heaven. But their cruelty is our glory, we have sprung up the thicker; for their cutting us down, Plures efficimur, quoties matimur : Contrary to the rules of Arithmetic, our subtraction hath been our multiplication: The Church of God ( morte vinit, vulnere nascitur ) receiveth birth by wounding, life by dying, Occidi possumus, vinci non possumus ; as the inevitable invincible truth hath manifested. We may be killed, we cannot be conquered, For thy sake we are killed all the day long, as Paul saith from the Psalmist (to show that both the Church of the old Testament, and of the new give experimental testimony of the truth) yet in all these thing we are more then conquerors, through him that loved us If our plant had not been set up by the all-prospering hand of God, the malignancy of these enemies would have soon rooted it up. They have verified in their persecutions against us, what one of their own writes of the Turkish Alcoran. Omnium, quae in Alchorano continentur, vltima resolutio est gladius. The last resolution, propagation, propugnation of all things contained in the Alchorā, (in the Popes decretals) is (not the word, but) the sword. But blessed be our God, that hath limited this rage, and sealed us our Quietus est. Though they will have no peace with us, we have peace with him, that can over-rule them.

But have we no persecutors still? Oh that no Israelite would ever strike his brother. There are two sorts of Porsecutors remaining, Esau's and Ishmael's ; nourished with the same air, borne on the same earth, and carried in the indulgent bosom of the same Church. But nobis ignominia non sit, patià fratibus, quod. passius est Christus; ne{que} illis gloria, facere quod fecit Judas. Let it be no more shame for us, to suffer of our brethren, what our Savior suffered of his; then it is glory for them, to do the works of Judas. Some persecute with the hand, others with the tongue. Exercent hi sapientiam, illi patientiam Ecclesiae. The latter exercise the wisdom, the former the patience of the Church. We are secured from Ahab's, and Herod's, and Nero's ; the teeth of the dogs be broken, and the jaws of the wolves pulled out: the Bonners and butchers of the Church are husht in their graves. Oh that the Serpents also, which hiss and spet their venom at our peace, when all the birds of our air sing acclamations to it, were at quiet. But as then be that was borne after the flesh, persecuted him that was borne after the spirit, even so it is now. Now so, and will be so. We cannot see an end of these things, without the end of all things. Our turn is still to suffer, we return not blow for blow; but instead of sounding a point of war, we cry one to another, patiamur potius, Let us rather suffer. Let the Roman affections, like so many pestilent rivers, run all ( in mare rubrum, or rather in mare mortuum, ) into the red Sea, into the dead sea, and snatching the sword of vengeance out of his hand that owes it, quit themselves on their (imagined) enemies, with • loud and death. Let him that is styled the Servant of servants, show himself the Tyrant of tyrants. Philosophy teacheth, that external accidents change inward quality • s. but without an absolute mutation ipsius speciei, they change no substances. A Church may indeed at one time be better or worse disposed, then at another; more hot or more cold; more sick or more whole. But as it were a strange fit, that should transform Apuleius into an Alie: so it were a strange variation of accidents in a Church, that should turn patience into cruelty, humili • y into pride, a Tutor into a tormentor. Let their motto be ferio ; (the term whereon all their arguments r • lf) let ours be fero. It is far better to suffer, then to offer wrong. Let savage persecution sit under the Ensigns of wolves; meekness and patience be our arms and armors.

This outward malady of a Church, Persecution discovers the malignity of it self in many extentions. Especially, 1. in martyring her professors 2. in treason against her Sovereigns, 3. in seducing her Seers.

1 Martyrdom, God hath in all ages of his Church suffered some witnesses of his holy truth to be purified like gold in the fire. Though they are blessed that have so suffered, & the Church hath in conclusion gained by this loss. yet during the turbulent working of these thunder exhalations in our air, we have lamented miseram regionis f • ciem, the miserable state of our country, whose face hath been scratched and torn by the bloody nails of these persecuting bears, Needs must the land be sick, where the Governors, like ill Physicians have purged away the good humor, and left the bad behind them. When they have imprisoned stripped, scourged, famished, drowned, burnt the innocent, and rewarded the wretched instruments of such deces. When the poor infant falling out (by the midwifery of fire) from the mothers womb. hath been call back again into the • others flames. When the bodies and bones of the dead, which by the law of nature should rest in quiet have been digged out of their Sepulchers, violated, curled, burnt, as if (saith their Proverb) they would kill god-have-mercy on's soul. When women have been dragged out of their • ous • s sick men from their beds: & the woods have abounded with saints, whiles the temples with their persecutors wild desar • s have been frequented with true worshippers, & the consecrated Churches with Idolaters. When the hoy boo • was either not had or must be hid. It is no impeachment of a churches health to have these assaults go • ing her sides? Such a time will give cause to complain with Israel, I • m in distress, my bowels are troubled: mine heart is turned with in me, for I have grievously rebelled. Abroad the sword bereaveth, at home there is death. This is the main blow of persecutiō

2 Treason is a fearful and prodigious evil. Needs must the body of that Realm be in hazard, whose head is broken. They mean Israel no good that strike at the life of David. I confess that this evil is not so properly (in strict terms) a sickness as a danger. Yet as a man that hath ill humors in him, though by good diet & strength of nature they are kept from uniting their forces, and casting him down cannot be said in health, whiles those enemies • emaine within him, watching their time of mischief. So the Church, though it be not s • nsit us of the sever, which (such raw & undigested crudities as) traitors can put her into, til it be upon her, vet can the nor be perfectly well, till purged of such pernicious and malignant adversaries: were not the Faeux • s of that horrid treason a disease & burden to the stomach of the land, till it had spewed them • ut? did not those pray against her & prey •• other? Would they not as willingly have 〈◊〉 , through the fire to than Moloe • of Rome the whole church, as those principal • llars of it, they plotted to blow up • t • y wanted not will but power They would have swelled their vengeance, till it had run over the verges, and comprised in one work ( Mille actus vetitos, & milie piacula ) innumerable stratagems, the easiest whereof was the intention of murder; till they had made a Catholic end with an heretic church, as they call it: But the God of Jerusalem prevented the children of Edom : who is blessed forever. It appears then Regicides are no less then Regnicides ; for the life of a king contains a thousand thousand lives) and traitors make the land sick which they live in. This is the second dangerous blow of persecution.

3 The third is, Seducing a Churches Seers, and perverting the children of the Prophets, which is most commonly done, rather with error then with terror; by beguiling, then affrighting them, I have read, that Julian's cruellest persecution was with rewards. How many have been wasted over the seas with golden hands? Promotion rather then devotion hath cast many on the shores of Rome. There lies an exorcism, an enchanting power in gold, that coniures many weak spirits into that superstitious circle. Then at last home they come, and prove caltrops to wound the Countries sides, that breed and feed them. Antichrists spel is gold; and they that will worship a piece of red earth, will not stick to adore that glorious Beast. Self-conceit blows them up with a swelling imagination of their own worth & if our church doth not ( & numerare & munerare inter dignissimos ) give regard & reward, estimation and recompense according to their proud desires, they will shift Realm and Religion too, for a hoped guerdon. You will say, there is little loss to the body, in dropping off of such rotten members. It is true, that the damage is principally their own: yet what mother doth not grieve at the Apostasy of her children? There is some hope, whiles they are at home; little, when revolted to the enemy. Meantime, let it not be denied, but the seducers are persecutors, and great enemies to the Churches health.

Thus may a Church be outwardly sick by man's Persecution ; she may be sick also by God's affliction. This is diverse, accordingly as our sins deserve, and his judgment thinks fit to punish us; 1. By war, 2. by famine, 3. by pestilence; the easiest of them heavy enough, and able to deprive a Church of health. Though the first might seem to be man's weapon, and so fitter to have been inserted among the former persecutions; as Israel termed her enemies, Our persecutors are swifter then the Eagles of the heaven, they pursued us upon the mountains; they laid wait for us in the wilderness : yet because God calls Ashur his rod : and it is He that sends either peace or war ; and no adversary sword can be lifted up against us; but by (more thē) his permission; for he hath a punishing hand in it. Let us see how he can make his Church of Israel sick.

• 1 War is that miserable desolation, which finds a land before it like Eden, and leaves it behind like Sodom, and Gomorrah, a desolate and forsaken wilderness. Happy are we that cannot judge the terrors of war, but by report & hear-say. That never saw our towns and Cities burning, whiles the flame gave light to the Soldiers to carry away our goods. That never saw our houses rifled, our temples spoiled, our wives ravished, our children bleeding dead on the pavements, or sprawling on the merciless pikes. We never heard the groans of our own dying and the clamors of our enemies insulting, confusedly sounding in our distracted ears: the wife breathing out her life in the arms of her husband, the children snatched from the breasts of their mothers, as by the terror of their • laughters to aggravate the ensuing torments of their own. We have been strangers to this misery in passion; let us not be so in compassion. Think you have seen these miseries with your neighbors eyes, and felt them through their sides.

  Let it somewhat touch us, that we have been threatened: Octog • simus octanus mirabilis annus, Have we forgotten the wonderful year of 88? an enemy of a savage face and truculent spirit; whose arms were bent to harms, to ruin, to blood, to vastation: whose numbers were like locusts, able to lick up a country, as the ox grass: the Ensigns of whose ships were Assurance and Victory : whiles they cast lots upon our nation, and easily swallowed the hope of our destruction: a mortal enemy, an implacable fury, an invincible nauy. Loe in the heat and height of all, our God laughed them to scorn, sunk them, drunk them up with his waves; tottered, sca • tered them on the waters, like chaff on the face of the earth, before the wind and tempest of his indignation. All their intentions, their contentions, their presumption of conquest were disappointed, dissolved, discomfited. These things, though they have not seen, let our children's children to the last generation, that shall inhabit this land, never forget: that we and they may praise God, who hath made fast the bars of our gates, and hath settled peace in our borders.

• 2. Famine is a sore outward sickness ; an affliction sent by the immediate hand of God. For it is he that withholdeth the influence of heaven, and the kindly heat of the Sun, and the nourishing sap of the earth. I have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places, saith the Lord. As it is his blessing, that our valleys are covered over with corn: so it is his plague, that we have sown much, and bring in little ; that the mower filleth not his hand, nor he that bindeth sheaves, his bosom. When he is pleased, he will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth, and the earth shall hear the corn and wine and oil, and they shall hear us. England hath felt the smart of this sickness ; and she that out of her abundance hath been able to lend others, hath also been glad to borrow of her neighbors. The satte kin • of Bashan, rich gormondizers have not been acquainted indeed with this misery; and therefore have not sorrowed for the affliction of Joseph. But the poor, the poor have grieved, groaned under this burden: whiles cleanness of teeth, and swarthiness of look were perceived in the common face. Whiles these arrows of famine wounded our sides, and our staff of bread, whereon our very life leans, was broken, we could then cry, hic digitus dei: here is the finger of God. In our plenty, saturity, satiety of these earthly blessings, we acknowledge not ( manum expansam ) his whole hand of bounty opened to us; though then we confessed ( digitum extensum ) his finger striking us, and bewailed the smart.

  Famine is terrible enough of it self; more dire and tetricall in regard of the company she brings along with her. For

  Saua farms semper magnorum prima malorum

  Est comes.
  Raging famine is the prime companion of many fellow-mischiefs. Ex vno grano oritur aceruus : of one grain of this starving misery, ariseth a whole heap of lamentable woes. The attendants of famine are murders, robberies, rapes, killing of children, that the same vessels become the wombs and tombs of little ones; and innumerable stretchings of conscience, to the revoking of former, and provoking of future judgments. No marvel if hunger disregard the mounds and fences of God's laws and man's, when it breaks through stone walls. The Poet, somewhat morally describes Famine.
  Qu • esit am que famem lapidoso vidit in antro, &c.

  Behold hunger in her stony den, tearing up the grass with her long nails and sharp teeth, her neglected hairs grown rough and tangled, her eyes hollow, her cheeks pale, her skin rugged and swarthy, left only as a thin scarce to hide her lank entrails; nothing clean about her but her teeth, her dry bones starting up, her breasts hangi • g over in the air, her joints swollen big and huge, her sinews shrunk, as unwilling to hold her limbs together. This is that monster, that turns men into Cannibals, unnaturally to devour one another's flesh. I have read, that at Turwyn in France, the famine was so deadly, that man's flesh was sold for food. This sickness is worse then death. Happy are we, that God's mercy hath banished this plague from our land, Oh let not our iniquities revoke it.

• 3 The Pestilence we better know, as one that hath but a little while been kept out of our doors; and watcheth when our iniquities shall again let him in. He skulks about, and will not be rid away, till repentance hath made our coast clear. This is God's Purseuant, that hath rode circuit in our land, and to whomsoever God hath sent him, he never returned with a non est muentus, but always brought ( Si non corpus taemen animam sum causa ) if not the body, yet the soul with the cause before his judgment seat. This is he that rides on the pale horse, Reu. 6. and catcheth men as with a snare, perhaps when they have most hasted from him. How hath this plague left the very streets of our Cities empty, when they seemed to have been sowed with the seed of man; how astonied the living, frighted the dying; disjoined the mutual society and succor of friend to friend, and that in a time, when comfort would have been most seasonably welcome, trembling hands, pulling dead bodies into the graves with hooks, or rolling them into pits.

Turn back your eyes, that now live in the Appeniue height of peace and health, and think you see the lamentable state of your Country, as few years past discovered it. Imagine you behold the hand-wringing widows, beating their bosoms over their departing husbands: the distracted mothers falling into swoons, whiles they kiss the insensible cold lips of their breathless Infants: poor desolate Orphans, that now mourn the untimely loss of their parents, as being made by years more sensible, of their want, then when deaths pestilential hand took them away: the loud groans and struggling pangs of souls departing: servants crying out for Masters, Wives for Husbands, parents for children, children for mothers; grief in every house, striking up alarums; belles heavily tolling in one place, ringing out in another: Numbers of people, that not many hours before had their several Chambers delicately highted, now confusedly thrust together into one close room, a little noisome hole, not twelve foot square. They have marble bosoms that will not be shaken with these terrors, and have sucked Tigresses in the wilderness that cannot compassionate these calamities. How did they grieve a Church to feel them, when they affect, afflict, and make us Sick to hear them?

I know you have long looked for an end. I never delighted in prolixity of speech. What remains? but the more terrible we conceive these sicknesses of a Church, the more we bless GOD for the present health of ours. Let not our sins call back these plagues: let us not provoke our GOD, least earth, air, heaven renew their strokes upon us. Wars and famines from the earth, plagues from the air, judgments from the Clouds; they are all restrained at our repentance, let loose at at our rebellions. Oh serve we the Lord our God with fear and obedience; that he may delight to do us good, and we to praise his name. That we our selves, and our Children after us, and the generations yet unborn, may see the Peace of Jerusalem all their days. That the golden Belles of Aaron may be freely rung; and the Trophies of Victory over all Antichristian enemies may still be seen amongst us. Even till this Easter & Feast of the Resurrection of our Savior Jesus, overtake take the Resurrection of all his Saints.

Grant this O Father for thy mercies, Oh Christ for thy merits; Oh blessed Spirit for thy holy names sake: To whom, three persons in glorious Trinity, one only true and immortal God in unity be all power, praise, majesty and mercy acknowledged forever, Amen.

ENGLAND'S SICKNESS. THE Second Lecture.

W E have described the Person, the Church of Israel, as she is her own, as she is her owners: what in regard of her self, what in respect of her God. It remains now only to inquire, how she is affected. She is Sick ; which is necessarily implied from God's complaint. Why is not the health of my daughter recovered? She was sick, and so sick, that the Prophet complains, Her wound is incurable, for it is come (even to the heart) unto Judah. Incurable, in regard of her own misery, not of her Saviors mercy. She was low brought in the Babylonish Captivity. Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and like unto Gomorrah? It is of the Lord's mercies, that we are not consumed, because his compassions (though our obedience) fail not. But her honor lay in the dust, when her Apostasy had forfeited her happiness: Superstition taking the upper hand of Devotion, and the traditions of man getting the start and ascendency of God's precepts ; When her disease grew too frenzy, and her sickness so excluding from it self all recoverable hope, that she had slain her Physician, and killed him that should have carried her.

Whence it appears, that a particular visible Church might and may fall away from grace, and have the Candlestick removed. The Papists brag of their numerous multitude, and promontorious celsitude. Rome boasts that their Church stands upon an hill. So it doth on six hills too many. She is mounted high enough, if this could iustif • e her. She had better bate of her height, and • ise in her goodness. There may be a local succession, but if not in faith and doctrine, mole ruit sua, her top-heavy weight overthrows her. May it not be said of her, as Jeremiah of Egypt? Go up into Gilead and take balms, Oh virgin the daughter of Egypt: in vain shalt thou use many medicines, for thou shalt not be cured. It is no wonder then, no wrong, if we depart from her, that hath departed from the truth of the Gospel, and faith of Christ.

I will not descend into the view of her apostasy, though just occasion may seem here offered; but turn myself and speech to our selves, who are sound in doctrine, sick in conversation; but (I trust) not without good hope of recovery.

But so soon as the Romish malignancy hears me say, we are sick ; they instantly insult, reproaching our doctrine. But do men try the faith by the persons, or the persons by the faith? It is a silly argument (à moribus ad doctrinam) from the life to the doctrine. Yet (though we desire and strive to have our own lives better) we fear not to match them with theirs. Our sickness would be esteemed less, if we would go to Rome for a medicine. (For the Papist may better steal the horse, than the Protestant look on.) But so long as we have approved Physicians at home, what need we walk so far to a Mountebank? It is a false rumour, there is no sound air but the Romish. Is it not rather true, that thence comes all infection? And that they who have forsaken us to seek health there, have gone out of God's blessing into the warm Sun?

Our lives trouble them: this they object, this they exprobrate ad nauseam vsque. But do they not stumble at our staws, and leap over their own blocks? cavil at our motes, and forget (or justify) their own beams? The swelling on the Foxes head shall be a horn, if the Pope will so judge it: a Catiline, Lopus, Garnet, Faulx, an honest man, a Catholic, a Saint, if he will so interpret, so canonize him. If I should but prick this rank vein, how would Rome bleed? Would not ( haec prodidisse, be vicisse, as Erasmus said of Augustine's dealing against the Manichees ) the very demonstration of these things, be a sufficient conviction? Unnatural and hideous treasons, conspiracies against whole kingdoms, deposing, dethroning, touching with a murderous hand ( Christos Dei ) the Anointed of God; oaths, uncleannesses, perjuries from whom are they produced, by whom practiced, if not mostly, if not only by Papists? They pry, search, deride, censure the forepart of their Wallet, wherein they put our iniquities: whiles their own sins are ready to break their necks behind them. The greatest evils we have are theirs; fathered by those that will not be mothered of our Church: Haec non ad frument a Christi, sed ad eorum paleam pertinent: These belong not to Christ's wheat, but to the ch • ffe of Antichrist. These are • onsters bred of that viperous dam, that have shook hands with huma • ity, with civility, though they reserve the form of Religion.

Si quid in his possem, facerem sterilescere matrem ; as one of their own said. It were well, if either the children would forsake their kind or the mother become barren: Yet must these men be Saints, and stand named with red letters, in the Popes Calendar; red indeed, so died with the Martyred blood of God's servants.

But I am not delighted to stand upon comparisons, if their exclamations had not put me to them, that like blown Pharisees, they cry out with ostentation of sanctity, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, or as this Publican, What age, people, Church were ever yet so holy, that the Preachers found no cause of reproof, of complaint against it? Chrysostom speaketh of his times: Christians now are become like Pagans or worse : Yet who will say that the Religion of Pagans was better then the Christians. The Priest and Levite had no mercy, the Samaritan had: yet their Religion was the true, and not the Samaritans. If some Papists amongst us (and those very few) live in more formal and moral honesty; et this commendeth not their whole Church. They are now in the time of their persecution as they take it, (though their prosperity and numbers evince the contrary) we are in our peace, and who knows not that, an easy occasion of wantonness.

I deny not, that we have grievous offenders: we mourn and pray for them. Do the Papists rejoice at this? Woe to him that is glad of God's dishonor. Let them brag their perversion of some which were ours, but such and so affected to viciousness. If we had lost more of Atheists, sacrileg • ous Adulterers, l • centious hypocrites we had as little reason to complain, as they to be proud. We are the fewer, they not the better. We desire, endeavor reprove, exhort, instruct all, with purpose of heart to save them in the day of the Lord Ie • u • ; if they wish not the same. We are content to differ as far from them in our desires, as we do in our doctrines. If there were none sick, we might lay aside our Physic, but there are many, too many, all in some measure, some in all measure, beyond measure, therefore we must proceed.

Sickness is the Subject, and the observations that shall limit my short ensuing speech, are quadruple. 1. The precious benefit of spiritual health, which we shall the better discern, if we compare it with corporal, 2. What sickness is incident to man, 3. That the Sickness of the Soul is most dangerous, 4. Lastly, who are the sick ?

1 Health is precious, Cara est cui{que} salus, Every man's health is dear to him. Exclude from this comparison the gifts of the mind, which are truly of a more pure and changeless condition, and then what earthly benefit will not give place to health? It is one of the positive virtues, grafted in man's nature with the creation. Weigh it in the balance with some rivals.

1 Riches are the desire of many hearts, the special fruit which their hands reach to gather (passing by all the better trees in God's orchard) the object of most endeavours: How vain, how tedious, how odious are they without health? Let them bind gold to their a king head, drink Cleopatra's draught, (precious stones dissolved) to ease their rasping stomach, involve and wrap their conu • lsed joints in furs and silks, empty their coffers in the Physicians study; if (nature and her Ordinator) God deny health, how invaluable are their riches, how unavailable their projects! How complain they (after all experimented succors) their unabated anguish! Therefore the son of Sirach truly saith; Better is the poor being sound and strong of constitution, then a rich man that is afflicted in his body. Health and good state of body are above all gold, a strong body above infinite wealth. There is no riches above a sound body, and no joy above the joy of the heart.

Health gives means to be rich, riches give no means to be healthful. Nay, they are rather traitors and adversaries to it: Not scaffols whereby health is built up, but stairs to descend by to the grave. The Rich man's quotidian delicacies rotted him for death. Where there is a full purse, and an esurient ambitious appetite, there is a close and unsuspected conspiracy against the health. Thus we do not more eagerly pursue opulency in our soundness then in our sickness we contemptibly despise, loathingly dislike it.

2 Is there any ascendency in Pleasure above health ? will not that carry up a brave forehead without being beholding to it? Alas! cold is the entertainment of delight to a warish and sickly carcase. Misera est voluptas, vbi periculi memoria adest : Pleasure is unpleasant to the memory guilty of instant danger. It is Epicurean, profane, and idle physic to sorrow.

Why doth not, then that Chaldean Monarch continue his carousings, and wash away the Characters of that fatal hand from his heart, with floods of wine? alas! sorrow will keep a man sober, and restrain him from any drunkenness but it own. To omit, that mortem dabit ipsa voluptas, and the end of mirth is heaviness, what pleasure can fasten her slippery hold on the afflicted heart It is loathed while it objects and prostitutes it self to our sight, courting and wooing our affections: the more greedily we draw on Pleasure, the sooner it looseth the nature, and is turned into the contrary. Miserable Comforter; as Job's friend were justly called) whose requested mitigation turns to aggravation of our misery. When Pleasure opens the shoppe of all her delectable wares, and prays the sick hand to choose what best affects it, shows perfumes, colors, wine, junkets, sports, company, music, she is answered with nothing, but Away with them, away with them ; they are no medicines for the headache, one dram of health is worth a talent of pleasure.

How dotingly do men (in their wanton days) take it up? nay how doth it take up them? as the Philosopher truly. Non nos voluptaetem, sed voluptas nos habet; cuius aut inopia torquemur, aut copia strangulamur: miseri, side serimur ab illa, miseriores, si obruimur : We possess not pleasure, but pleasure us; whereof we are either perplexed with the want; or strangled with the abundance, we are wretched if it leave us, more wretched if it overwhelm us. But sickness when it comes, mars the relish of it to the mind, as of meats to the palate, and sends it away without a welcome, not without a check and defiance. Sickness a stronger power (if weakness may be called strength) then pleasure hath gotten possession of a man and laughs at the vain endeavor of vanity to remove it. This is the time to say to Laughter, thou art mad, and to esteem mirth a tedious, odious, irksome guest. They that ( non voluptates sibi emunt, sedse voluptatibus vendunt ) buy not pleasure to themselves, but sell themselves to pleasure, as Esau did his birthright for it, find in sickness the memory of what they do love and must leave, an addition to their present malady. So ( foelicitas hath no more left but the first syllable, fell gall, and) pleasure hath no pleasure but this, that it is short during the sweetness, long in the bitterness necessarily following it. Health then is beyond pleasure also, without which, it is either not delightful, or is not at all.

3 Both these have lost the prize, let us see if Honor can win it, Alassed what is it to sit groaning in a Chair of State? or to lie panting on a bed of down? It is little content to have many knees bow to thee, whiles thine bow to sickness, to have many uncovered heads attend thee, and thine own (though covered) find no ease. How wouldest thou be glad to change places with thy meanest servant, on condition thou mightest change bodies with him. How much of thine honor wouldest thou lay out, for a little of his health ? He that lives in the height of honor and wealth, repines at nothing more, then to see the hungry laborer feed on a crust, whiles his own nice and queasy stomach (still weary of his last meal) puts him into a study, whether he should eat of his best dish or nothing.

How poor, how weak, how nothing besides, a name is honor, when sickness hath dismounted it? when the Coach is turned to a littour, the feather to a kerchief, public and popular magnificence, to the close limits of a Chamber, whether sickness (like a great commander) hath confined him, the imperious tongue fainting and failing in the wonted tunes, of go, come, do, &c. as the Centurion spake: the curious attire thrown by with neglect: alas, now what is honor ? but a mere property, a Pageant, which health like the day sets out, and the night of sickness takes in again? Sickness hides pride from a man, saith Elihu,

What inferior benefit shall we then match with health that it may glory of the priority or equality, in comparison This is precious and desirable, whether to body or soul. To the S • ule simply, to the body (but secundum quid in respect) if it may not prejudice the health of the soul. For though corporal health be so good, that all other worldly good things are but troublesome without it; yet it is often seen, that the worse part draws away the better, and a vigorous strong able body, without any difficulty makes a wanton and diseased soul.

1 Bodily health is generally desired; (far more then endeavored) it being an action of that natural propenseness, engraffed in all men, to their own good. Parents are provident to the bodies of their children, even those who set to slight a thought on their souls (showing herein plainly that they brought forth their bodies, not their souls). Large and lavish is our indulgence, at all partes to this frail Tabernacle; yea so profuse, and not withholding, that whiles we seek more health, we loose that we had. Quaerendo perdimus, we seek it in full dishes, and behold there we lose it. For prohibent grandes patinae. Would we know how to preserve health ? I am no Physician, nor will I wade further in this argument, then divinity & reason leads me Let us observe moderation, labor in our calling, abstinence.

1 Moderation, as the Philosopher said, that he never corrected himself with repentance for his silence, but often for his speech: so our forbearing of junkets should not grieve us, but our immoderate devouring them, Haec est sana & salubris forma vitae, vt corpori tantum indulgeas, quantum bonae valetudini satis est. This is a wholesome form of living that the body be so far pleased, as the health be not displeased. It is certain, that surfeit kills more then famine. It was one of Hippocrates Aphorisines; Allimmoderations are enemies to health. It was one of Plato's monsters of nature that he found in Sicilia ; a man eating twice a day. A thing of so little admiration with us, that it is wonderful in him that doth not. Perhaps a breakfast goes before, and a banket follows after both these. Neither is the variety less then the quantity. We plead; Nature bids us eat and drink. It is granted, Yea, a solemn Festival invites us to more liberal feeding. It is not much denied, if rare, if seasonable for thy appetite if reasonable for the measure. But many content not themselves (only to steal the halter, except there be a horse at end of it, as the shriven thief said in his confession to the Priest) only to feed and drink, to pleasure, but to sle • pe • o surfeit, to ebriety, disabling themselves to any sober exercise. Turpe est stomachum non nosse modum • : It is vile, (and worse then bestial) when the stomach 〈…〉 measure.

Seneca's rule is good, Dandum ventri quod debes non quod potes : Allow thy belly what thou shouldst, not what thou mayest. I shame not to convince this error, even from the example of Heathens; that if Religion cannot rule us as Christians, yet nature may correct us as men. Whiles others (saith Socrates, viuunt vt edant, ego edam vt viuam ) Live to eat, I will eat to live. It is perhaps easy to find some that abstain, but how few for conscience of God's precept? The sick, the poor, the covetous, the full, all moderate, but to what purpose? The sick man for his healths sake, the poor man for his purse sake: the covetous for miserableness, the full for the loathing of his stomach. But let us that are Christians moderate our selves in conscience of God's commandment; because Gluttony is a Work of darkness ; and the night is now past. So shall we at once, provide well for our bodies, and better for our souls.

2 Labor in our callings is no small furtherance of our healths. The bread of him that laboreth (as Solomon says of his sleep ) is sweet and relishable, whether he eat little or much. Therefore drink waters out of thine own cistern: live of thine own labors: the bread thou hast earned shall never be gravel in thy throat. He that tilleth his land shall be satisfied with bread, whereas others shall either eat, and not have enough ; or have enough and not eat: Hence surfeits light so frequently on the rich, and the gentle blood grows so quickly fowl: because they think themselves bound to no labors, so long as they may live on their lands. It was the Fathers charge to his eldest son, Son go and work today in my Vineyard. The privilege of primogeniture must not exempt him from labor. He sends him to the Vineyard, to dress it before he hath it, he will keep it the better when he hath it: Industry in our vocation is not only a means in nature, but even by the ordinance and blessing of God, to the conservation of health.

3 Abstinence. I mean more than moderation, that which we call Fasting. Ie • unium ieiunantis, a free and voluntary fast, when the body refraineth such refections as nature taketh pleasure in, and that only for healths sake. As the tree by a gentle shaking knits faster at the root: this moderate weakening begets strength. So that at once, it may be a help to devotion, (for repentance comes not before God with a full belly, and meat between the teeth) and a preservative to health, physic to defend from the need of physic, a voluntary medicine to prevent a necessary trouble. Thus of the Body.

2. The Souls sanity is not less precious, though more neglected. It was made in the image of the most high God. which Image consisted ( in lumine mentis, reclitudine cordis, affectuum moderation, as some.) in the brightness of the mind, rightness of the heart, and just governance of the affections. Or as others: It was ( libertas arbitrij, intellectus sapientiae, & potentia obedientiae. ) freedom of will, wisdom of understanding, (kingdom or) power of obedience: for here to serve was to reign. Herein consisted the health. The privation of these perfect habits, is not less than the sickness of it. This health thus lost, cannot be recovered, but by him that was sick to the death for us: neither is it hindered!, when he will bestow it. For grace is not refused of the hard heart, because it takes away the hardness of that heart it lights on. Christ modifies it with his water, and mollifies it with his blood, both which issued out of his side at one wound, and followed the murdering spear of a Soldier, to save them which fight under his Standard.

Thus from man's sickness ariseth his better health, and he now stands surer by his first fall. Such is the greatness and goodness of God, such his power and mercy concurring, that it works health out of sickness, good out of evil. There is an infinite Good, but not an infinite evil. For the Good cannot by any means be diverted into evil. but the evil may be converted to good. By the conspiracy of Jews, Gentiles, Judas, Devils, against Christ, is our salvation wrought. From the horridest and most unnatural treasons, God hath advanced his own glory, advantaged his children's security. We labor of three diseases, birth, life, death: all these are cured by those three answerable in Christ. Our unclean birth is sanctified by His so pure from the least spot of sin. Our transgressing life is reformed by the virtue, informed by the example of His. That tyrannizing, wounding Serpent, Death hath the sting pulled out by His death, that we may embrace him in our secured arms. The Conqueror of us all is conquered for us all, by Him that foiled the Giant in his own den, the Grave. Thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Oh death where is thy sting. Oh grave where is thy victory? This is our insultation and holy triumph. Provided ever, that He be believed of us, that hath thus relieved us. Believe and fear not. A good conscience is never faild of a good confidence, of a good consequence. Hence ariseth the souls sanity.

What can endanger, in damage this health ? no losses to the estate, no crosses to the flesh. The spiritually-sound man, values all the fortunes of the world, less then the freedom and health of the mind. He that wants this armor is wounded by every blow of affliction. Other security is but a shield of wax against a sword of power. They cannot choose but fear, even where no fear is, and testify their inward guilt and sickness, by their pale and trembling looks. Timida nequitia dat testimonium condemnations, & semper praesumit saeua, perturbata conscientia. Fearefull wickedness gives testimony of it own damnation; and the troubled conscience imposeth and presumes to itself terrible things, but the health of faith is health indeed; yea this health is life, a life Angelical, a life Evangelical, whether for obedience or peace: inspired, spirited, sealed, assured by the word of Truth: Which is life to all that find it, and health to all their flesh, No fear shall invade him, no troubles involve him, so that he cannot be extricated. For the fear of the Lord tendeth to life, and he that hath it, shall not be visited with evil, His innocence may speed in the world, as deserts in a lottery, be rewarded with a blank. But he in whom he affies, shall put the marrow of health into his bones, distill the sap of grace inio his spirit.

Low in the world; lowly in himself, in his estimation, who sees not that the clambering goats get upon rocks and promontory places, whiles the humble sheep feed in the bottoms and dejected valleys. Only one day, the Sheep shall be advanced above the Sun and stars, and set in heaven with Christ ; when the goats shall be cast down to the depth of depths. Rich Dives was well enough known to the world, yet nameless in the sacred Records. So we brand our sheep, let the Goats go unmarked.) God sets his seal on his chosen: Nouit qu • sui sunt, lets the wicked run without his cognizance.

Thus different is the state of God's servants, and the worlds slaves. They think none sick but we: we know none sick but they. If equal crosses befall us both, our estate is soon descried. We differ as the Camel and the Camomell: the one is stunted, the other thrives by his burden. Afflictions that so scatter them, and loosen the joints of their vain hopes, do more knit and consolidate our healths. As soon as they take themselves it is as easy to prove, as to reprove their diseases. Though I confess in the days of their Joviality; he hath great wisdom, that can make them sensible of their sickness. Were Solon, nay Solomon alive to declare it, they see t not, 'they will not feel it. If the want of health were perceived, how amiable, admirable would the benefit appear? Gratior est saint as redita, quā retenta, vix aliter quā perdendocognoscimus. Returning health is more welcome, then if it had not been lost. We scarce know what health is, but by the want. Let others spend their times, wits treasures, to procure health to their bodies, which I embrace when it is offered, and would not loose by my own errors) give me a sound and clear conscience, and let me not want this health, till I envy theirs.

2. Thus having inquired what health is, leaving a while the consideration thereof as it is in it self; let us descend into it as respectively; casting an oblique eye unto that which is diverse from it, or adverse to it. There is a significant and lightful demonstration or commentary, which one contrary nature gives to another, when they are diametrally opposed. The day would not seem so clear, if the departing Sun should not leave night to follow it. The foil adds grace to the Jewel. It (no less then) glorifies learning, that the malicious tongue of ignorance barks at it. He knows the benefit of heat, that hath felt the sharpness of a freezing cold. If there were no sickness to trouble us, health it self would be thought sickness. The very enmity of these repugnances help the beholders judgment, either to embrace or reject them. Even their opposition is an exposition of their natures, deformity, darkness, sickness, sin, all those privative, corruptive. destructive things, which as they had no creation from God so give no direction to the good; yield (by a sober meditation) an unwilling luster to those virtues, graces, and happy habits; against which they vaunt their contrariety. That if any lewd, vain, ill judging, worse affecting mind, shall still love the desolation of sin, rather then the consolation of spiritual health: it may appear to be, not because this object is not wretched, but because he is blind and bewitched.

There is a twofold Sickness incident to man, 1. in sin, 2. for sin. The former of these is only spiritual: the latter is not only corporal, but sometimes spiritual also: and of all the Vials of God's wrath, holden to the mouth of miserable men by the hand of justice, it is the forest, when sin shall be punished with sin, and the destitution of grace, shall permit a lapse to impenitency.

1 The Sickness in sin is double, according to the cause, which is a defect either of right believing, or straight living, a debility of confidence, a sterility of good works: lack of faith, wrack of charity. These effects (or rather defects) are produced by two errors in our Souls diet: the one excessive, the other deficient, 1. By Fasting too much from Christ, 2. By feeding too much on the world. In what we should affect, we are abstinent, in what avoid, very indulgent.

1 The first cause is, by forbearing that sacred meat, living and life giving bread, which came down from heaven, to translate thither those that eat it. This is the Son of the most high God, not disdaining to become the food of the affamished sons of men. Out of the strong came sweetness : the mighty is become meat: the Lyon of Judah yields honey, such as never came out of any earthly Hive, He is our invincible Captain, to him we supplicate (as distressed Nerua to Trajan. )

Oh Savior defend and keep us, yet he that is ( Victor ) a conqueror for us, is also ( victus ) food to us. But this is ( Cibus non dentis sedmentis ) meat for our faith, not for our teeth, manducaemus intus non foris, We eat it inwardly, not outwardly. Christ is verily ( panis verus, non panismerus ) true, not mere natural bread. Thus our Feeder is become our Food, our Physician, our Medicine. He doth all things for us, guide, feed, mediate, medieate: let us meditate on him, and noi disappoint the intention of his mercies by our averseness. No hope but in him, no help but by him. The Law could not satisfy our hunger (not through it own, but our insufficiency) the Gospel gives not only present satisfaction; but even impossibility of future famine. There is no abiding the law, except the Gospel be by: not of that thunder, without his rain of mercy to quench it.

Who gives this food to us, but He that gave himself for us? that shepherd that feeds his Lambes (not on his grounds, but) with his wounds▪ his broken flesh, and sluiced blood, Hence from this great Parliament of Peace, made in that once acted, and forever-virtual sacrifice ) derive we pardon for our sins, without impeachment to the justice of so high a Judge, as we had offended. Thus the King of eternal glory, to the worlds eye, destating himself (though indeed not by putting off what he had, but by putting on what he had not) was cast down for us, that we might rise up by him. Learn of me to be humble, wherein he gives us a precept and a pattern: the one requiring our obedience, the other our conformity. The Pelican rather then her young ones shall famish, feeds them with her own blood. Christ for the better incorporating of his to himself, feeds them with his own flesh, but spiritually. So that we eat (not only panem Domini, as the wicked, but panem Dominum ) not only the bread of the Lord, but the bread the Lord, in a Sacramental truth.

They that have ransacked the riches of nature, searched earth, sea, air for beasts, fishes, birds, and bought the rarest at an inestimable price, never tasted such a iunket. The fluid transient, passing, perishing, meats of earth, neither preserve us, nor we them from corruption. This banket of His flesh, richer then that Belshazzar made to his thousand Princes, this cup of his blood more precious then Cleopatra's draught, shall give ( vitam sine morte ) life without death to them that are received, to receive it. We perceive a little the virtue of this meat.

Now then, as the withdrawing of competent meat and drink from the body, lesseneth that radical moisture (which is the oil whereon the Lamp of life feeds) and makes way for drines: whence the kindly heat (which like other fire might be a good servant, must needs be an ill master) getting more then due and wonted strength▪ for want of resistance, tyrannizeth, and not finding whereupon to work, turns upon that substantial vividity, exciccating & consuming it This oversparing abstinence wastes, weakness, sickens the body, dangers it to an Ecticke or some worse disease, of no less hurt, then too great repletion, So when the Soul (either through a mad frenzy of wickedness, or dull melancholy darkness of ignorance or sensual perverseness of affections) forbears, forbids herself to feed on that sacred and vital substance, Jesus Christ the vivid sap of grace and virtue, (which keeps true life and soul together; stilled into the heart by the holy Ghost) begins to dry up, as a morning dew: shrinking at the thirsty beams of the rising Sun, and the fire of sin ; gets the predominance. Now where that unruly Element reigns in a mortal body, it hazards the immortal soul to death. There is then no marvel, if the soul descends into the fall of sickness, into the valley of death, when she shall refuse the sustentation, health and very life thereof, her Savior: who is not only ( cibus, but ipsa salus ) meat, but health it self, as Paul calls him ipsam vitam, qua viuimus, quam viuimus, the very life whereby we live, which we live, We live in Christ, we live by Christ, nay, we live Christ, for our very life is Christ. Now live not I, but Christ liveth in me.

This is He, that once suffered for our sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. He suffered our sins, the cause most odious: the just for the unjust, the persons most unequal, that he might bring us to God, the end most absolute How well then may we yield (and if there might b • any pride or glory in us, it should be in our sufferings) to suffer for him. The Apostles did so rejoicing, O Jesus, S • adeo dulce est st • re pro • e, quam dulce erit gaudere de te ? Oh Christ, if it be so happy to suffer for thee, what will it be to rejoice in thee? It cost him much, (oh how much!) trouble, sorrow, beating, grinding, before he became bread for us. There may be a scarcity of other bread, there is none of this, to those that rightly seek it. It is dear in regard of the preciousness (they that have it will not part with it) not dear in regard of the price we pay nothing for it, but faith and love. Though thousands pray at once with the Disciples. Lord evermore give us this bread ( Joseph's may) Jesus his storehouse can never be emptied, Least the world perish through famine. He only ( nec accipiendo proficit; nec dando deficit ) grows not r • ch with receiving, neither grows poor with giving. Rejoice then, Beloved, in done, in Domino. The Lord is the giver, the Lord is the gift. Let not your souls be starved w • th those inferior things, which are ( pauca, parua praua ) few in number, small in measure, bad in nature, Whiles there is bread enough in your Fathers house. Why should we sicken • ur spirits in a voluntary want; and fast from that which is able to feast a world of faithful guests. This is the first degree of our spiritual sickness.

2 The excessive occasion to procure ill health to our souls, is by feeding too heartily too hastily on the world. This is that too much oil, which quencheth our Lamp. For as in a body overcharged with immoderate quantity of meats or drinks, when the moisture swells (like a tide above the verges) and extinguisheth the digestive heat: that their kindly embraces are turned to conflicts, and the superfluities want their former dissolution, and egestion, the necessary event is distemperature and sickness. So the aff • ctions of the soul ouerloaden with the devoured burden of worldly things, suffer the benign and living fire of grace to be quenched. Hence the fainting spirits of virtue swoon and fall sick, and after some weak resistance (as a cole of fire in a great shower,) yield the victory to the floods of sin, and are drowned. Neither are the affections only (which they call the neither part of the soul, as if this dropsy were only in the feet ) thus diseased; but the sickness • taketh the head of the soul, the understanding and the heart of it, the conscience: that faith (which is religious reason) is impaired, and the instrument, the tongue, the Organ of God's praise is hindered. As we see it in these corporal effects by drunken men, the feet are too light, and the head too heavy: the legs cannot stand, the tongue cannot speak: so both understanding and affections are stifled in this deluge, inward faith, and outward profession falling sick to the death.

For how can it be otherwise, that the soul (of so high and celestial a creation) should thrive with the gross and homely diet of vanity? Man is, saith the Philosopher, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , God's kinsman. And Paul taking such a sense from the Poet, makes of a conceit of nature a sanctified truth, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , For we are also his offspring. And Peter saith, that (though not really, but in regard of renovation) We are partakers of the divine nature. Why then contemn we not with a holy disdain, the rude, crude and unwholesome morsels of the world; sensual pleasures? I • we considered aright the natures; either 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , or 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , of the things nourishing, or things nourished, we would strive ( aut non admittere, aut cito emittere ) either not to let in, or soon to throw out such unsavory repast. For the nourishment of the body, if it be alienum, it is vene • um, if strange and contrary to nature, it is as poison to him that eats it, Quae nutriuntur, familiaribus & naturalibus rebus nutriuntur, contrarijs corrumpuntur : for creatures that live by nourishment, with natural and familiar things are nourished, corrupted with their contraries. Otherwise the food makes work for the Physician and his elder brother death.

Spiritual and celestial delicates, the diet of grace, and sanctification, nourish and cherish the souls health, and put the good blood of holin • sse into her veins, give her a fresh and cheerful look, roses and lilies, (the pride of nature in their colors) make not so beautiful a mixtur. But the world-affected, and sin infected delights pale her cheeks, drink up her blood, and sap of virtue, dim her intellectual eyes, lame her feet the affections, crase her health, crush her strength, and which is most wonderfu • l, for morte carent animae, even kill her immortality.

Now they are not simply the things of this world, that thus sicken the Soul, but our extravagant desires and corrupt usage. For all these were made for man's delight and comfort in the second place, yield them immediately for the makers glory, and we offend not to serve our necessities in them it is their abuse which brings this sickness. It is with nutritive things to the soul, (in some sort) as with all meats to the body. They are of three kinds, Contraria, naturalia, neutralia, contrary, natural, indifferent. Contraires hurt, natural and kindly help, neutral or indifferent, either hurt or help as they are received, 1. Food merely contrary to the soul is, Sin, this kills, 2. natural and proper to it is grace, this saves, 3. indifferent, or of a middle nature, are the inferior things of this world, house, lands, riches, &c. these either hinder or further our souls health, as they are used or abused. They may be consolations, they may be desolations, ladders of ascent, or stairs of descent, as our regenerate or degenerate minds shall embrace them. Now the reason why earthly things do neither strengthen our spirits, nor lengthen our joys is doub • , 1. They be transitory, 2. They be not satisfactory.

1 They be transient. Meats of a washy and fluid nature, that slip through the stomach, and tarry not for concoction, do no more feed a man's health, then almost if he lived on air. They that have no other sustentation to their souls, but such light, sleight, and empty food, (except they live by miracle) cannot be like David, ore rubicundo, nor like Daniel of a fresh hew, and cheerful complexion, I mean the constitution of their soul, cannot thrive. The Soul fed only with the frail circumstuous, humid, cloudy vanities of this world, is so far from remaining sound, and retaining health, that she pines, languisheth, dwindleth away, as a tree, whose life-feeding sap is dried up: So perishable are all the things of this world. Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings, they fly away like an Eagle toward heaven. Not like a tame birde that returns, nor like a Hawk, that will show where she is by her bells, but like an Eagle, whose wings thou canst neither clip nor pinion. Aut deserunt, aut deseruntur : either they forsake, or are forsaken. All their certainty is their uncertainty; and they are only stable in this, that they cannot be stable.

Riches are not forever, and doth the Crown endure to every generation ? Hence they are called Riches of the world ; which is a bar in the Arms of Riches, to demonstrate their slippery hold: for the world it self being transitory, they must needs savor of the soil. Our judgments must of necessity be convinced to confess this, though our affections will not yield it: wherefore tend all those Writings for covenants, if these earthly things were not uncertain? What are those labors and appendances, but bands and ties, to keep close to us mad and starting Riches ? We plead, it is for the mortality of men, but we mean the mortality of riches. If then these earthly things will boast of anything, let them boast (as Paul did) their frailties. They are either i • Journeying, not got without labor, or ventured on the Sea, (yea, together with goods) bodies and souls too, to make such ill Merchants full adventurers. In peril of robbers, public and notorious thieves: In peril of false brethren, secret & tame thieves, Lawyers, Usurers, flatterers. Fire in the City Free-booters in the Wilderness, Pirates on the S •• ; for weariness, painfulness, watchings, &c. who doubts the miserable partnership twixt them and riches.

Could the world be thought thy Servant, (which is indeed thy Master. Oh Worldlings, as Christ's Maxim inferreth. No man can serve two masters : none indeed; for he that hath God for his obeyed Master, hath for his obeying Servant the world;) yet is it but a vagrant and runagate servant. It hath a madding mind, and a gadding foot. And though by the greatness of the stature and proportion, it may promise able service, yet it will be gone when thou hast most need of it. Neither will it slip away empty, but rob thee of thy best Jewels, carry away thy peace, content, joy, happiness, soul with it. Behold the Cosmopolite; Luke 12. planting, transplanting, rebuilding, s • udying for room to lay up his fruits; Non in visceribus pauperum, not in the bowels of the poor, but in his enlarged Barns, if ever their capacity could answer his enlarged heart. He builds neither Church nor Hospital (either in cultum Christi, or culturam Christiani, to the service of Christ, or comfort of any Christian) but Barns. He minds only Horreum suum, & Hordeum suum, His barn and his Barley. Behold at last he promiseth his Soul peace, ease, mirth, security: but when his Chickens were scarce hatched, whereon he long • ate & thought to sit long brooding, he hears a fatal voice confiscating his goods, and himself too. Thou fool, this night shall thy soul be required of thee: then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided ? No marvel then if the Soul be famished, when she is only fed with such fugitive meat which vanisheth like Tantalus Apples, or Ixions cloud in the Poet: and like Medicines rather then food, or like poisons rather then medicines, wash away the good they find, and leave the bad (made yet worse by their accession) behind them.

2 They be not satisfactory, and therefore confer no true content to the mind: no more then the dreamed bread of the Sluggard, who walks with an empty stomach. Thou shalt eat, but not be satisfied. All things are full of labor, man cannot utter it, the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. There is nothing but emptiness, vanity, vacuity in them: Simuloriuntur & moriuntur, they at once are borne, and die, as Plutarch said of the Lightning, as Jonah found in his gourd. Like the Mermaid,

The motion of the mind following these wandering Planets of earthly delights, is ever errant, ever incessant, Ahab is sick of his neighbors field, though he have a whole Kingdom to walk in. And Alexander finding himself Lord of the whole world, is discontent, as if he wanted elbow room. The poor man is not more perplexed because he hath neither barn nor grain, then the covetous wretch, because he hath not barn enough for his grain. What Cosmopolite ever grasped so much wealth in his gripulous fist, as to sing to himself a Sufficit. He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase. His cares fill up as fast as his coffers. He hath much in his keeping, yet doth neither enjoy it, nor joy in it.

It breeds a disease in the soul, like that in the body, which they call Caninum appetitum, an immoderate desire of meat; whereafter the body looks thin, wan, sickly, as if it were starved. The cold, feculent, viscous, vicious humors of covetousness, desire an unreasonable quantity of worldly goods; yet leave the soul more weak, warish, sickly, then if she neither had, nor had will to do anything. This is the infallible effect of these coveted vanities, vel sequendo labimur, vel assequendo laedimur, the soul either falls in the seeking, or fails in the finding. She is not the better, nay, she is the worse for her longing after them.

The mind may riot and grow rank for a while with these puffings up, but how soon doth a tabe and consumption take it down, when the joy answers not to the expectation of the heart? The world may set such a man in high estimation, The rich hath many friends, but the poor is separated from his neighbors. But all this while others are more satisfied with the sight, then he with the possession of his own Still his soul is hungry, and he knows not how to appease it.

I persuade not all abjuration of the world, as if it could not be used. but it must be abused. As the Philosopher of old, that threw his money into the sea, purposing to drown that, least that should drown him. Or as the new found and fond Votaries, that profess a voluntary want, as if all coin were diseased, and had for the circumscription, à noli me tangere. So the Empiricke to cure the fever, destroys the patient: so the wise man to burn the mise, set on fire his barn. Is there no remedy, but a man must make his medicine his sickness? I speak of things as they are, not as they should be. He that feeds too hungerly on the world, falls with much ease to neglect Christ. As he that was once following him, no sooner heard of his fathers death, but presently left him; thinking perhaps that he should get more by his fathers Executorship, then by his Saviors Discipleshippe, and therefore would leave to minister in Christ's service, that he might administer on his Fathers goods. Hence fall many souls into this spiritual sickness, when they forsake the solid and substantial nutriment of Jesus Christ, to gape for the fugitive and empty air of worldly riches: which if they do carry to their deaths, yet they must then leave all, exuendo, expnendo, donec nihil vel intus vel foris manserit, by putting off, by spuing up whatsoever their covetousness hath devoured. Nature shall turn thē out naked & empty. Thus the righteous eateth, to the satisfying of his soul, but the belly of the wicked shall want. They are not satisfactory.

In a word, that we may a little perpend the effects, as we have perceived the causes; all spiritual sickness is either in faith or conversation.

1. In Faith. This is a general & dangerous sickness. General, AEgrotat sides iam proxima morti. Faith is so sick, that it is ready to die. These are those last and Apostate times, wherein faith is become so little, that the scarcity gives expectation of the general doom. We swear away our faith at every trifle, and then no marvel (being so prodigal of such oaths,) if our stock of faith be sworn and worn out. Dangerous, we affie the world, which we have vowed to defy; and loosing that confidence we should live by, (for the Just lives by faith ) How can it be, but the Soul must become Sick ? Whiles the shield of faith is lost, we lie naked to the fiery darts of Satan : and many wounds will let out the life blood. The Sun in the heaven passeth through the 12. Signs of the Zodiac. Christ is our Sun, the 12. Articles of our Creed, the 12. Signs, Faith is our Zodiac; do you wonder why in this day of the Gospel, the Sun beams of grace lived in so few hearts? They have lost their Zodiac. Their faith is form, and the clouds of infidelity have eclipsed those Signs. They believe not beyond the extension of sense, they have a sensual, a senseless faith. It is the forest shipwreck, which the vast sea of this world and the Pirates of sin can put men to, the sinking of their faith ; It was Paul's happy triumph that he had kept the faith, though he bore about in his body the market of our Lord Jesus. Needs must the soul be sick, whose faith is not sound.

2 The other degree of our spiritual sickness is, in conversation, Our lives are diseased? the ill beating of those pulses show we are not well The fruits manifest the tree, Vbicaro est regnant, peccatum est praegnans : Sins are rife, where the flesh reigns: plentiful effects will arise from such a working cause. In vain, (and not without the more hazard) do we plead our soundness, when the infallible symptoms of our disobedience evince the contrary. Saul stands upon his observation of God's charge: What then (saith Samuel) meaneth the bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear ? Whence flow those streams of impiety; merciless oppressions, Church-devouring sacrileges, bestial luxuries, cunning circumventions, detracting slanders, heaven-threatening blasphemies, malicious fires of rage & hatred, monstrous treacheries, behaviors compounded of scorn and pride, close Atheism, open profaneness, guilded hypocrisy. Whence if these vicious corruptions, if not from our ulcerous conversations? Shame we not to call sickness health ; and to maintain that Atheistical Paradox, Adoxe, Pseudodox, which judgeth evil good, and darkness light ? If thy life be so unsound suspect thyself, thou art not well.

2 Now (not unfitly) after the sickness in sin, follows the sickness for sin, which distributes it self into a double passion, corporal and spiritual.

1 All corporal sickness is for sin. The sick man heard it from his heavenly Physician, Go thy ways sin no more least a worse thing come unto thee. So sung David in the Psalm ; Fools, because of their iniquities are afflicted, their soul abhorreth all manner of meat, and they draw near to the gates of death. This Elihu grounds against Job, that sin causeth sickness: So that his life abhorreth bread, and his soul dainty meat. His flesh is consumed away, that it cannot be seen, and his bones that were not seen, stick out. Weakness proceedeth from wickedness: if the Soul had not sinned his body should not have smarted. Indeed this blow is easy, if we respect the cause that drew it on us. For if the Wages of sin be death, Sickness is a gentle payment, Sickness is the malady of the body, Death is the malady of sickness. But such is God's mercy, that he is content to punish sometimes corporaliter, non mortaliter ; and to put into our hearts a sense of our sins, by casting us down, not by casting us out. But whether the affliction be quoad introitum, or quoad interitum, a more gentle entrance or more piercing to death, all is produced by our sin.

You will say, that many afflictions, wherewith God scourgeth his children, are the Fatherly corrections of love ; yet they are corrections, and their intention is to better us. Now what need the bestowing such pains on us, to make us good, if sin had not made us evil. Still Sin is the cause, whether it be sickness : therefore I will make thee sick in smiting thee, because of thy sins. Or whether more despairful calamity, I will wail and howl, I will make a wailing like the Dragons, mournings as the owls: for her wound is incurable. Still the reason is, verse 5. For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel. Oh that our sick bodies, when the hand of Visitation hath cast them down) would convey this lesson to our souls, All is for our wickedness. Our stomachs loath meat, because we have overburdened them with God's abused blessings. We have made the Creatures (ordained for our comforts) an occasion of our falling. And now, loe, we abhor to be cheered by those things, wherewith we have erst oppressed our selves. That delicates poured upon a mouth shut up, are as messes of meat, set upon a grave.

Our sins, that remain unpurged by repentance in our bosoms, are not only diseases themselves to our consciences; but vigorous and rigorous enough, to engender diseases in our carcases. We are framed and composed of four Elements, Fire, Air, Water, Earth; and have the kindly concurrence of those four original and principal qualities, heat and cold, moisture and dryness to our making up. Their harmony and peaceful content preserve our little world in health; but if those brethren of one house fall at variance with themselves, their strife will vndoev • . So easy is it for God to take rods from our own bodies, wherewith to whip us. Though those outward Elements fire, water, and the rest, forbear to lay on us the strokes of vengeance: yet we have those (primordial) humors within us, whose redundance, defect, or distemperature are means able enough to take our breath from us. How evident is this, when

Some have been burned in the pestilent flames of their hot diseases; the violence whereof hath set their blood on fire, wasted their bowels, scorched their veins, withered away their vital spirits, and left the whole body ( flagrantem rogum ) as it were a burning pyle.

Some have been choked up with the fumes and vapors ascending from their own crude and corrupted stomachs, and poisoned their spirits no less then with the contagion of infected airs. How many obstructed lungs suck in far better air then they breath out.

Others have been drowned with a deluge of waters in their own bodies, a •• oud running betwixt their skin and bowels, glutting and overcharging nature so violently, that the life hath not been able to hold up her head: and the soul (like Noah's Dove) returns unto God the Ark of her strength, as not able to set her foot dry in her former habitation.

And yet others have buried themselves alive in the grave of their own earthly melancholy; which casteth such a thick fog and dark obscurity over the brain, that it not only chokes up the spirits of life, like the damp in a vault that extinguisheth the lights, but even offers offensive violence to the Soul. Melancholy men are (as it were) buried before they be dead; and as not staying for a grave in the ground, make their own heavy, dull, cloudy, cloddy, earthen cogitations their own Sepulchers. From what sink arise all these corrupt steams, but from the sins in our ownselves, as proper and fit to ingender these sicknesses, as these sicknesses are to bring dissolution? It is our own work to make death better then a better life, or continual sickness, that our meat gives no more sent nor savor, then an offering doth to an Idol. He that sinneth before his maker, let him fall into the hands of the Physician.

6 Spiritual sickness for sin, is yet far more perilous and mortal: nay, well were it for some thus sick, if it were mortal. If the disease would decease, the soul might revive and live. It varies (as some diseases do in the body according to the constitution of the sick ) thereafter as the soul is that hath it: whether regenerate or reprobate. The malignancy is great in both, but with far less danger in the former.

1 In the Elect this spiritual sickness is an afflicted conscience, when God will suffer us to take a deep sense of our sins, and bring us to the life of grace through the valley • f death, as it were by hell gates unto heaven. There is no anguish to that in the conscience: a wounded spirit who can bear? They that have been valiant in bearing wrongs, in forbearing delights, have yet had womannish and cowherd spirits, in sustaining the terrors of a tumultuous conscience. If our strength were as an army, and our lands not limited save with East and west, if our meat were man • a, and our garments as the Ephod of Aaron ; yet the afflicted conscience would refuse to be cheered with all these comforts. When God shall raise up our sins, like dust and smoke in the eyes of our souls, and the arrows of his displeasure drink up our blood, and his terrors, seem to fight against us ; when he buffets us from his presence, and either hides his countenance from us, or beholds us with an angry look; loe then! if any sickness be like this sickness, any calamity like the fainting soul. Many offenses touch the body which extend not to the soul; but if the soul be grieved, the sympathizing flesh suffers deeply with it. The blood is dried up, the marrow wasted, the flesh pined as if the powers and pores of the body opened themselves, like so many windows to discover the passions of the distressed Prisoner within. It was not the sense of outward sufferings,) for mere men have borne the agonies of death undaunted) but the wrestling of God's wrath with his spirit, that drew from Christ that complaint, able to make heaven and earth stand agast: My soul is heavy unto the death.

There is comfort even in death, when the clock of our life runs upon her last minutes: but is there any disease during the torments of a racked conscience? This wearisome guest doth God often lodge with his own children, suffering the eye of faith to be shut, and the eyes of flesh and blood open, that sorrow is their bread, and tears their drink, and the still perplexed mind knows not where to refuse it self. Always reserving and and preserving his Children (but never d • ing) grace of his Spirit in their hearts: a substance of bl • ssing 〈◊〉 the oke, though it hath cast the leaves, though the barrenness of the boughs, drines of the bark give it for dead and withered. Faith being in a swoon may draw the breath inwardly, not perceived: but destroy it not, for there is a bl • ssing in it.

Neither is this sickness and trouble of conscience properly good in it self, nor any grace of God, but used by God as an instrument of good to his, as when by the spirit of bondage he brings us to adoption. So the Needle that draws the thread through the cloth, is some means to join it together. This is the godly souls sickness for sin, full of sharp and bitter ingredients, but never destitute of a glorious event and victorious triumph. I may say of it as Physicians speak of agues, (which make a man sick for a while, that he may be the sounder a long time after.) This sickness is physic to procure better health.

2 Spiritual sickness for sin in the reprobate hath other effects. To restrain their number, they principal appear in two diseases, or disasters rather, Impenitency and Despair.

1. Impenitency, the symptom of an obdurate and remorseless heart. Who being past feeling, have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. Saint Paul calls it a reprobate mind : a death rather then a sickness. He that labors hereof, is rather deceased, then diseased. This is a heart so hard and impenetrable, that all the holy dew of instructions cannot soften it; all the blows of God's striking rod put no sense into it. It is invulnerable to any stroke, save that which makes a fatal and final end with it. Thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved, &c. It is just with God, but fearful on whom soever this iu • gement lights, to plague sin with sin, that peccatum sit paena peccantis. For there is evermore some precedent impiety in those ungracious persons, procuring God to deal thus with them. For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie. That they all might be damned that believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. First Pharaoh hardens his own heart &c. God all this while holds his peace, gives him the hearing and looking on. In the end he saith I will harden Pharaohs heart ; and then puts iron to iron, adamant to adamant, and there is perfected a relentless repentless obduracy.

This is that retaliation of sin, which God returns into their bosoms that foster it, that since they loved cursing, it shall be unto them. So David in the Psalm. (Though indeed it was not in him Precantis votum, but Prophetantis vaticinium : he did not desire it should be so, but he knew it would be so.) Add iniquitieto their iniquity. Neither doth God this by infusion of wickedness, but by subtraction of his spirit. He is causa deficiens, not efficiens ; as the revoking of the sun from us causeth darkness: the privation of grace, the position of all ungodliness. It is in him (not peccatum, sed iudicium ) not sin, but judgment. When he leaves us to our selves; it is no wonder if we fall into horrid and prodigious sins. Peccatum est malum in se: effectum prioris mali, & causa subsequentis: est & supplicium, & causa supplicij. Sin is evil in it self, the effect of former evil, the cause of future▪ It is both punishment it self, and the cause of punishment. In all the store house of God's plagues there is not a greater vengeance. With other punishments the body smarteth, the soul groaneth under this. Hence sins multiply without limits, that the plagues may be without end. Every affliction is sore that offends us; but that is direful which withal offends God. Such do at once act and suffer: it is both an active and a passive sin. The punishment they suffer, is (in them) sin; the sin they do, is (from God) a punishment.

There is nothing more wretched, then a wretched man recking his own wretchedness. Either they do not feel as blocks, or they will not feel as Stoics. You know a seared conscience is not sensible: and usual whipping makes some careless of the rod; except it be a stroke that shall fetch blood of the soul. Indeed we are all of one mould, but some are more cloddy and hard, others more soft and relenting. The best in their sorrows, may be more then Conquerors, not more then men. And let the Stoic brag his tetricall conclusions to the world, that no pain can bring sorrow to a Wise man; &c.. Let him (being put into that torturous engine of burning brass, called the Horse) bite in his anguish; smother his groans, sigh inwardly, and cry to the Spectators, non sentio, I feel not. The wicked may laugh out lighter punishments; and like the surde deaf, and dead rocks of the sea, not regard the waves of easier judgments beating on them; letting fall no tears of repentance for so many blows. But when God sees that thou digestest his Physic as diet, and with a strange kind of indulgency, wilt neither grieve that thou hast offended, nor that thou art offended: God will strike home, and sharpen at once both his blow & thy sense. Now thou shalt feel ; even thy seared heart shall bleed. In a word, the wicked may be senseless Stoics, they cannot be insensible stones. There is in all men an impossibility of impassibility.

But these remorseless wretches, so spiritually sick (not of the stone in the rains, but) in the heart, at least regard not to offend God, whiles God forbears to offend them. They speak softly, they set their mouth against the heavens. The reason is, They are not in trouble, nor plagued as other men. At first they liberally sin and spare not: God lets them alone. loe, now they sin and care not. Impiety, impunity, impenitency thus swiftly follow one at the heels of another. There are some sick of this disease, but not so far gone; of whose recovery there is a little (& but a little) more hope. These have by the chidings of their accusing conscience, a notion, a relish, a guess of the number and nature of their own sins, which because they suspect to be monstrous, they would by no means admit a sight of. Hence they fly the temple, the society of the good, the voice of exhortation, whence soever it soundeth: lest it should call the Souls eye home, to glance at the own estate, and so leave it amazed. Hence he hath ( animum inscium, inscitum ) an ill sight, an ill-sighted mind.

So timorous is this Patient, that because he knows his wound deep, he will not suffer the Surgeon to search it, willing rather to kill his soul, then to • isquiet it. Such is the folly of his partial indulgence to his conscience, that whiles he would softer it, he doth fester it. They write of the Elephant, that (as if guilty of his own deformity, and therefore not abiding to view his snout in a clear spring:) he seeks about for troubled and muddy waters to drink in, This sick wretch (without question induced by the like reason) refuseth to look into the glass of the Law, or to come to the clear springs of the Gospel, or any perspective that may represent his evil conscience to his eyes, but seeks to muddy and polluted channels, Taverns, Theaters, societies of sin, to drown the thought of former iniquities with floods of new. (And if he be enforced to any such reflection, he spurns and tramples that admonition, as Apes break the glass that represents their deformity, He runs himself prodigally into so deep arrearages and debts, that he cannot endure to hear of a reckoning. Whiles he despairs of sufficiency to pay the old, h • e recks not into what new desperate courses and curses he precipitates himself. And as it was in the Fable with the blind woman and the Physician: the Physician coming often to her house, ever carried away a portion of her best goods; so that at last recovered, by that time her sight was come again, her goods were gone. So this wretch will not see the ransacking of his soul, and spoil of his graces, till his conscience be left empty, and then he sees, and cries too late, as Esau for his blessing.

2 That other spiritual sickness for sin, befalling a reprobate soul, is final and total desperation. This is that fearful consequent, which treads upon the heels of the former sickness. Presumption goes before, Despair follows after. Cain's fratricide, Judas treachery, presumptuous, aspiring, heaven-daring sins, find this desperate catastrophe, to cut themselves off from the mercy of God. This is insanabilis plaga, when the Physician promising help of the disease, the patient shall thrust • is nails into it, and cry, Nay, it shall not be healed. As if the goodness of God, and the value of Christ's-all sufficient ransom, were below his iniquity. As if the pardon of his sins would empty God's storehouse of compassion, and leave his stock of mercy poor. This is that agony, whose throbs and throws, wrestles, turbulent, implacable cogitations cannot be quieted. Let rivers of those waters of comfort, which glad the City of God, run with full streams unto it, they are resisted and driven back.

This is that sin, which not only offers injury and indignity to the Lord of heaven and earth, but even breaks that league of kindness, which we owe to our own flesh. To commit sin is the killing of the soul, to refuse hope of mercy, is to cast it down into hell. Therefore Saint Jerome affirms that Judas sinned more in despairing of his masters pardon, then in betraying him. Since nothing can be more derogatory to the goodness of God, which he hath granted by promise and oath (two immutable witnesses) to penitent sinners, then to credit the Father of lies before him Ianuas aeternae foelicitatis spes aperit, desperatio claudit: Hope opens the door of heaven, desperation shuts it. As faith is heaven before heaven, so despair is damnation before the time.

Shall the blood and death of Christ put sense into rocks and stones, and shall man tread it under his desperate feet, enervate his cross • , annihilate his ransom, and die past hope? did he raise three dead men to life, one newly departed, another on the Bear, a third swelling, in the grave: to manifest that no degree of death is so desperate, that it is past his recovery? And shall these men; as if twice, dead and pulled up by the routes, deny to the grace and glory of God, a possibility of their reviving? 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , God (and the unfeigned repentance of their own hearts) forbid it.

3 Thus we have heard the malignancy of spiritual sicknesses, whether in sin, or for sin. Now let us take a short consideration, how far spiritual sicknesses, are more dangerous then corporal.

The Soul is; at all parts, more precious then the Body. It is that principal, most divine, and excellent half of man. Dum viuisicat, anima: dum vult, animus, dum scit, men's: dum recolit, memoria, dum iudicat ratio, dum spirat spiritus: dum sentit sensus. It is called for quickening, a soul, for knowing, mind, for remembering, memory, for judging, reason, for breathing, spirit, for feeling, sense, when the soul is sick : all these are sick with it. The soul is compared to heaven, the body to earth. The heaven is glorious with Sun, Moon Stars; so the soul with understanding, memory, reason, faith, hope, &c. The body like the earth, whereof it was made, is squalid with lusts. The earth hath no heat nor nourishment, but from heaven, nor the body comfort, but from the soul. How then? oh how terrible is the souls sickness, or death?

How indulgently should we tender the health thereof? We keep our chicken from the kite, our lamb from the Wolf; our fawn from the hound, our doves from the vermin; and shall we yield our darling to the Lions, our soul to those murdering spirits, which endeavor to devour them? The Soul may be well, when the body is full of griefs: but ill goes it with the body, when the soul is sick. Nay even corporal diseases are ofen a means to procure spiritual soundness. Therefore one calls it ( optabile malum, cum mali remedium sit maioris, ) a happy evil, which is the remedy of a greater evil. We may say of many healthful bodies, tutius aegrotassent, they might with less danger have been sick. Nusquam peius quam in sano corpore, ager animus habitat. A sick mind dwells not rightly in a sound body. But to find a healthful and sound soul in a weak, sickly body is no wonder. Since the Soul (before smothered with the clouds of health) is now suffered to see that through the breaches of her prison, which former ignorance suspected not.

Corporal sickness is a perpetual Monitor to the conscience, every pang a reproof, and every stitch reads a lesson of mortality; ready ever to check for evil, or to invite to good, which duty weighed, a man hath less reason to be over fearful of sickness, then over glad of health. The Spiritual detriment that may ensue on health, is more dangerous then the bodily pain that pursues sickness. If a man fear not death, what power hath sickness to make him miserable? Tolerabilis est morbipraesentia, si contempseris id quod extre • um minatur. Sickness hath little terror in it, if thou shall contemn that which it threateneth, Death. If it teach thee by the sight of the first death instant, to prevent the fury of the second; behold it makes thee blessed. Such good use may the wise Soul make of the bodies enemy. I have read it said, that singulus morbus, paruula mors, every disease is a little death. Therefore God sends us many little deaths, to instruct our preparation for the great death. The oftener a man dies, the better he may know to die well.

I yield, if in sickness we contract and narrow up the powers of our soul, and direct them (as our finger) to the grief of our bodies only; forgetting either that God strikes us, or that we have first stricken God: either flying to ill means, or affying to good means more then to God; our sickness may be deadly to body and soul too. Asa was sick but of his feet, his feet stood far from his heart, yet because he relied more on his Physicians, then on his Maker, he died. Or if there shall be no less confusion and hurly butly in the faculties of the Soul, then there is distemperature in the partes of the body: when Reason which should be the Queen, and dwell in the highest and choicest room, is deposed from her government, When the Senses, which are the Court-guardes, and the Princesses attendants, that give all admission into the Presence; are corrupted: when the supreme faculties, which are the Peers, are revolted; and the Affections which are the Commons perverted: and all this insurrection and disturbance, dethroning the Queen, corrupting the Guard, drawing from fealty the Peers, and the Commons from allegiance, wrought by those violent passions which are refractory and headstrong Rebels, having once gotten head. Alas, how far is this miserable distemper and perturbation of these spiritual parts, above the distress or distraction of the corporal members? neither is the future peril hereof only more full of prodigious desolation, but even the present sense is also more tetricall, piercing, and amazing with horror.

We shall find the perplexity of this spiritual sickness ; (how far?) exceeding the corporal, if we either compare them generally, or particularly, instance in any special disease.

1 Generally, The excellency of health, is measured according to the Life, which holds it: and the dignity of Life is considered by the cause that gives it, 1. The Life of the Plant is basest, because it consists but in the juice which is administered by the earth to the root thereof, and thence derived and spread to the parts, 2. The Life of the brute creature excels, because it is sensitive, and hath power of feeling, 3. The Life of man is better then both, because it is reasonable, conceiving & judging of things by understanding 4. The Life of a spiritual man is better then all the former, and it hath two degrees, 1. The life of inchoate regeneration, and it consists in grace, 2. the perfect life of imputed righteousness, conferred and confirmed by Jesus Christ, 5. The Life of Glory exceeds all, whereof there are also two degrees, 1. the fruition of glory in soul, 2. the full possession in the union of the body to it. These two last sorts of Life transcend the former in two main respects, 1. Because the other may die, must die; these have a patent of eternity sealed them, 2. Because the other have transient causes: These have the Grace and Glory of God.

Now as by all consent, the Life of reasonable man is better then the vegetable of plants, or sensitive of beasts; so the health of man must needs be more precious: and as that virtue excels in goodness, so doth the defect exceed in miserableness. Respect man distinctively, as he is a Body only, and then to be sick, and die are common to him with plants and beasts; and what suffering is there in the one, more then in the other, save that as the Beast is more sensible of pain then the tree; so man is more apprehensive then the beast, the bodies of all return to the earth. But man hath a soul, wherein his reason is placed; which fainting or sickening through sin, or the punishment for sin, there is offered a passion and grief, whereof the other are not capable. Death to the rest is not so terrible, as this sickness. The goodlier the building is, the more lamentable the ruin.

2 Particularly, This will best appear, if we single out some special disease, and confer the perplexity it can offer to the body, with the sickness of the soul. Take for instance, the plague of the Leprosy. It was a fearful and unsupportable sickness, every way miserable, as you may find it described, Levite. 13. &c. ver. 45.46. His clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean. He shall dwell alone, without the Campe shall his habitation be.

The Leprosy infected their very garments and houses, sticking contagion in the very wool and walls. But our Leprosy of sin hath (with a more vast extension) infected the Elements, Air, Earth, beasts, plants, &c. sticking scars on the brow of nature, and making the whole Creature groan under the burden of corruption.

2 The Leprosy was violent in spreading, running eftsoons over all the body, as in Gehazi, and making it all as one ulcer; yet could it not penetrate and enter the soul; the mind might be clean in this general defiling of the carcase. Behold the Leprosy of sin hath not content it se • fe to insult, pollute and tyrannize over the body, but it defiles the Soul also, and turns that purer parte of Man into a Lazar. Our righteousness is become filthy rags, our heart is poisoned, our Consciences defiled.

3 The Leprosy was an accidental disease, casual to some, whiles other escaped it. It was God's Pursuiuant to single out and arrest some for their sins, his mercy spa • ing the rest. But the Leprosy of sin is ( haereáitarius morbus ) an hereditary sickness. We derive it from our great Sire Adam, with more infallible conveyance then ever son inherited his fathers lands. It is original to us, borne with us, borne before us. So that ( natalis would be fatalis ) the birth day would be the death day, if the blood of that immaculate Lamb should not cleanse us.

4 The Leprosy was a dangerous disease, yet curable by natural means: but ours is by so much the worse, as it admits not man as Physician, nor nature it se • fe as Physic, sufficient to cure it. The medicine is supernatural; the Blood and Water of that man, who is God. Faith must lay hold on mercy: Mercy alone can heal us.

5 The Leprosy is a sore disease, so entering and eating, that it is even incorporate to the flesh: yet still ( cum carne exuitur ) it is put off with the flesh. Death is a Pysician able to cure it. Mors vna inter •• t & leprosum & Lepram. Death (the best Empericke) kill • at once the Leaper and his Leprosy. But the Leprosy of sin cleans so fast (not only to the flesh, but) to the Soul, that if spiritual death to sin do not slay it, Corporal death shall neither mende it nor end it. It shall not fly the Soul, when the soul doth fly the body: but as it accompanies the one to the judgment fear of God, so it shall meet the other in hell, if they both cannot be rid of it, through Christ on earth,

6 The Leprosy makes man loathsome to man, that (seorsim habitaturus sit) he must dwell alone. So was the Law, He is unclean, he shall dwell alone; without the Campe shall his habitation be. Yea, though he were a King, he must content himself with an unvisited and removed lodging; yet what is it to be secluded from man's (and not to be destitute of the Lord's) company? God forsakes not the clean heart, though man abhors the leprous flesh. God alone is a thousand companions; God alone is a world of friends. He never knew what it was to be familiar with heaven, that complains the lack of friends whiles God is with him. Were thy Chamber a prison, thy prison a Dungeon; yet what Walls can keep out that infinite Spirit? Even there the good soul finds the Sun of heaven to enlighten his darkness, in comparison of whom all the stars in the sky are the snuff of a dim candle. Every cloud darkens our Sun, nothing can eclipse that. But the Leprosy of sin separates a soul from God's fellowship, from the company of Angels. We lie, if we say we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness. Your sins have separated betwixt me and you saith the Lord of hosts. They unhouse our hearts of God's spirit, and expel him from the temple of our souls, who will no longer stay there, when the Dagon of sin is advanced, adored. It is customable with men to eschew the society of their poor, maimed, afflicted, diseased Brethren, and to show some disdain • by their averseness: but to keep company with drunkards, adulterers, swearers, userers, &c. of whom alone we have a charge, de non tangendo, they reck not, E • te not with them? Turn away from them, saith the Apostle, from those so diseased in Soul, not in body. But now ^d ( melior est conditio vitij, quam morbi. ) the estate of sin is better then of sickness. But God looks unto (and is with) Lazarus living, and takes him into his bosom dying, though he was full of sores: and lets healthy, wealthy, flourishing Dives go by unnamed, unaccepted.

7. The Leprosy kept men but from the fading city, terrestrial Jerusalem. This Leprosy unpurged by repentance, restrains men from that Jerusalem which is above; a city built upon Jaspers and Sapphires and precious stones ; flowing (instead of milk and honey ) with bliss and glory. For into ^f it shall enter nothing that defileth, nor whatsoever worketh abomination or lies. Now as the pleasures and treasures of this City are more, so much worse is the cause hindering our entrance. You may judge by this taste, how far spiritual sickness is more bitter then corporal. Every circumstance before hath reflected on this; but nunquam satis dicitur, quod nunquam satis addiscitur, it is never taught enough, that is not enough learned.

4 I should now lastly inquire who are the sick, wherein (as the Philosopher said of men; Non vhi sunt, sed vhi non sunt, faoile demonstratur, I can easily show you where they are not, not where they are.) It is a small matter to find out the sick, the difficulty is to find any sound. I know ^g there are a few names in our Sardis, that have not defiled their garments ; but they are so few, that it is hard to find them. Run to and fro through the streets, and seek in the broad places of our Cities, if you can find a man, if there be any that executes judgment, and seeketh the truth. The whole World is very old and sick, given over, as man in his dotage to covetousness.

Wonder you at this? • nder is the daughter of ignorance, ignorance of nature. God hath foretold it, event hath fulfilled it. Saint Paul gives the symptoms of this general sickness. Redeem the time, for the days are evil. Our Savior premonish • th the great decay of faith and love, to insue the Apostasy of the latter times. His Apostles testify no less. Paul to Timothy, Know that in the last days perilous times shall come. Men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, &c. (read and observe.) Peter (with others) to make up a cloud of witnesses, prophecieth the like, if not with addition; that men shall be so debauched, as even to deride and scoff at goodness, as a thing rather derisory, than necessary. The plague of sin rankles, and (helped with fit instruments of dispersion) infects the times.

The Scribe points to the Publican, and thinks that destruction comes on the city for his sake. The ungodly Protestant lays the fault on the profane Gallant, that the days are evil, and says that pride devours all. The proud on the covetous Churl: the well conceited Hypocrite on the dissolute; the dissolute on the Hypocrites. Even the wicked think the godly the cause, but the godly know the wicked the cause. Atheists will live as they list. Loquuntur grandia. They lift up their mouths against heaven, and acknowledge no other deity then their own guts. If good cheer may be their sickness, they care not though gluttony be their grave. Grace is fain to give place to wantonness, Religion to Idolatry, honesty to profaneness. Many live, as the Apostle saith of Hymenaeus and Philetus, as if the resurrection was past, or would never come.

I know, there was never age not complained of, not judged as worst. Laudamus veteros &c. We see what is, not what hath been. Some times have been evil, others worse, ours worst of all. We are so much worse than all, because we have more means to be better. We have Atheists that serve no God, 〈◊〉 that serve their money, Idolaters that serve creatures, Apostates that forsake God, worldlings, temporizers, neuters, that serve many, serve all, serve none. Love is banished, temperance gives place to drunkenness, humility stoops to pride, hope yields to sense, and religion it self is used either for a show of good, or for a cloak of evil. Men's words disagree from their deeds, their hearts from their words. If any say this world is not so sick, as we give it, I durst tell them that they are a great part of the sickness ; and but for such we had less need to complain.

Satan's violence now doubling his forces, shows it to be the last and worst time. For the Devil then rageth most when he knows he shall rage but for a while. The world is sick, the days are evil. You hear what makes them so. Shortly, either doing or suffering ill: sin originally, misery by consequent. If we would bate of our sins God would decrease our miseries. What plagues the world with the sword, but malice and ambition? What turns the poor from their right, but injustice? What brings famine but covetousness? Proud Courtiers make rich Merchants and both make miserable Commons. We multiply sins against God, God's punishments upon us: the former from our unrighteousness, from his righteousness the latter: both together make the world sick, the days evil. I would hope, it were now vain to bid you loath the world. Is he less then mad, that can love and dote on such a cheek? The beauty of it is black without by the miseries, and more foul within by the sins: if any wretch shall now make it his choice, he is not worthy of envy, if of pity, now as a moderne Poet well.

Seeing we are thus sick, why speed we not to means of