A Key Opening Mysterious Texts of Scripture

THE GALL OF ASPES: OR THE PANGS OF THE SECOND DEATH. THE XLV. SERMON.

I Hope time hath not razed those characters out of your memory, which I borrowed from time it self, to imprint my observations upon this Text in your mind. Sin (as ye have heard) may be considered in a reference to a three-fold time:

• 1. Past,
• 2. Present,
• 3. Future.

In relation to the first, it is unfruitful: to the second, shameful: to the third, pernicious and deadly.

The unfruitfulness of sin cannot but work upon all that have regard to their estate in this world; the shamefulness of sin cannot but touch near, and affect deeply all that stand upon their reputation and good name; but the deadliness or pernicious nature thereof cannot but prevail with all, to beware of it, that tender their life here, or immortality hereafter. If sin be unfruitful, have no fellowship with the works of darkness, but reprove them rather. If sin be shameful, hate even the garments spotted by the flesh; let not such things be named among you, much less practiced, which cast a blur upon your good name and fame among the Saints of God. If sin be pernicious and deadly, fly from it as from a Serpent: taste not the wine of Sodom, nor press the grapes of Gomorrah; for their wine is the blood of the Dragon, and the gall of Asps, which we know is present death.

The end of those things. That is, all the pomp and vanity of this world, the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, the pride of life: all sinful pleasures, wherewith ye surfeit your senses, shall have an end, and this end is death, and this death shall have no end. This is the last and most forcible argument of the three, wherewith the Apostle laboreth with might and main to beat down sin, and put to flight even whole armies of temptations. Ye may observe a perfect gradation in the arguments: the first, though strong and forcible, drawn from the unfruitfulness of sin, is not so necessary and constraining as the second, drawn from the shame and infamy thereof: nor that as the third, drawn from the wages thereof, which is everlasting death. As honor and glory is to be more set by than gain and commodity, life than honor, immortality than life; so shame and infamy is worse than loss and disadvantage, death than shame, hell than death. The holy Apostle hath now made three offers unto us, and put us to a three-fold choice.

First, he laid before us the fair fruits of Paradise, to be gathered from the tree of life; and corrupt & rotten fruit from the forbidden tree: that is, invaluable treasures to be got, and inestimable profit to be made by godliness; and irrecoverable losses to be sustained by ungodly and sinful courses of thriving.

Secondly, he tendered unto you glory and honor, to be purchased by the service of God; as on the contrary shame and infamy by retaining upon Satan, and pursuing sinful pleasures.

Now in the third place he setteth before you life and death; life by the gift of God, and death for the hire of sin. Shall I need to exhort you in the words of Moses, Choose life? how can ye do otherwise? Is the flesh appalled at the death of the body, though the pain thereof endure but for a moment? and shall not the spirit be much more affrighted at the death of the soul, the pangs and pains whereof never have an end? If there be any so reckless and careless of his estate, that he passeth not for great and irrecoverable damages and losses: so foolish that he esteems not of inestimable treasures: if any be so infamous, that he hath no credit to lose, or so armed with proof of impudency, that he can receive no wound from shame: yet I am sure there is none that liveth, who is not in some fear of death, especially a tormenting death, and that of the soul, and that which striketh all dead, everlasting. Therefore it is (as I conceive) that the Apostle, according to the precept of Rhetoricians, Puncta caeterorum argumentorum occulit, coucheth as it were, and hideth the points of other arguments, but thrusteth out this, putting upon it the sign and mark of a reason (For.) For the end of those things is death. And this he doth for good reason, because this last argument is worth all the former, and enforceth them all: it not only sharpeneth the point of them, but draweth them up to the head at the sinner. For therefore are lewd and wicked courses unprofitable; therefore we may be ashamed of them, because their end is so bad.

For the end. Why doth the Apostle skip over the middle, and come presently to the end? why layeth he the whole force of his argument upon the end?

1. Because there is nothing in sin upon which we may build, or have any assurance thereof but the end, as there is nothing certain of this our present life, but the incertainty thereof. Sin sometimes hath no middle, as we see in those fearful examples of Corah, Dathan, and Abiram, who had no sooner opened their mouths against Moses, but the earth opened her mouth to swallow them up quick: of Achan, who had no sooner devoured the accursed thing, but it was drawn out of his belly with bowels, heart and all: of Herod, who had no sooner heard the people cry, The voice of God and not of man, but he felt himself a worm and no man: of Zimri and Cozbi, who had no sooner received the dart of lust in their heart, than they felt a javelin in their bodies: of Ananias and Sapphira, who no sooner kept back part of the price for which they sold their possessions, but death seized upon them, and they gave up the ghost; and of many others whose deaths wounds yet bleed afresh in sacred and profane stories.

2 Because there is nothing permanent of sin but the end: the duration, if it have any, is very short, like to that of Jonahs gourd, which rose up in a night, and was eaten up with a worm in the morning.

3 Because nothing is so much to be regarded in anything as the end; for fines principia actionum, the end setteth the efficient on work; and all is well that endeth well, as we say in the Proverb. O that they were wise, saith God by Moses, then they would consider their latter end. If we invert the speech, it will be as true, O that men would consider their latter end, and then they would be wise. For assuredly he that in his serious contemplation beginneth at the end of sin, in his practice will end at the beginning. To consider the end of sin, is to take a survey of all the miseries and calamities incident to intelligent natures; of all the plagues that light upon the bodies, and souls, and estates of impenitent sinners in this life, with a fearful expectation of hellish torments; then a violent separation of the soul from the body, which is no sooner made, but the soul is presented before the dreadful Judge of quick and dead, arraigned, condemned, and immediately upon sentence hailed and dragged by ugly fiends to the dark and loathsome dungeon of hell, there in all extremity of pains and tortures, without any ease or mitigation, to continue till the general day of the worlds doom; when meeting again with the body, her companion in all filthiness, iniquity, and ungodliness, they are both summoned to the last judgment, where all their open and secret sins are laid open to the view of men and Angels, to their inexpressible and astonishable confusion: after conviction the sentence, at which not the ears only shall tingle, the teeth chatter, the knees smite one the other, but the heart also melt; the sentence, I say, of eternal damnation shall be pronounced in their hearing, Go ye cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his Angels. A most heavy sentence, never to be recalled, and presently to be put in execution, the Devil with reviling and insultation carrying them, with all their wicked friends and associates, to the place of endless torments, to endure the full wrath of God, and the pains of everlasting fire. O what will it be to feel the second death, which it is death to think or speak of! who can read the description thereof in Saint Prosper with dry eyes? To be banished forever from our celestial country, to be dead to all joy and happiness, and to live to eternal death; forever to be cast out with the Devil thither where the second death serveth for a banishment to the damned, and life for a torment, there to feel in that unquenchable fire the torment of heat, and not receive any comfort of light; to be cruciated with heart burning sorrow, and ineffectual repentance, to be gnawne with the immortal worm of conscience, to frye perpetually in crackling flames, to have their eyes put out with the smoke of the river of brimstone, to be drowned floating in the bottom of hell.

The end, &c. Understanding by end the final effect, not the final cause of sin: by those things, all those things he spake of before: and by death, that death which is opposed to eternal life; each of these words, Finis Horum Mors, yieldeth a most wholesome and fruitful observation:

• 1 That all sinful courses and ways have an end: Finis.
• 2 That all sins are mortal (of which before): Horum.
• 3 That eternal death of body and soul in hell, is the wages which the impenitent and obstinate sinner shall receive to the uttermost farthing: Mors.

That all sinful pleasures and delights have an end no man can doubt; for they cannot survive our life here, our life often surviveth them: and what is our life, but fumi umbra, the shadow of smoke, or dream of a shadow? that is, less than nothing. Seneca out of his own experience found honor to be of the nature of glass, quae cum splendet frangitur, which when it most glowes and glisteneth in the furnace, suddenly cracketh; and pleasure to be like a spark, quae cum accenditur extinguitur, which is quenched in the kindling. And surely all comforts and contentments of worldly men are like bubbles of soap blown by children out of a wallnut-shell into the air, which fly a little while, and by the reflection of the sun beams make a glorious show, but with a small puff of wind are broken and dissolved to nothing. But alas it is not so with the pain of sin as it is with the pleasure, that is as lasting as the other is durelesse: Leve & momentaneum est quod delectat, aeternum est quod cruciat; The delight of sin is for a moment, but the torment remaineth forever. Who will be content to fast all the week for one good meals meat? to lie in prison all the days of his life for one hours liberty and jollity? These similitudes fall short, and reach not home to the representing of the sinners folly, who for swimming an hour in the bath of pleasure, incurreth the danger of boiling forever in a river of brimstone, and torrent of fire: Momentaneum est quod delectat, aeternum est quod cruciat. Those things whereof ye are ashamed have an end, and how soon ye know not; but the death which is the end of them hath no end, and this we know. That we may more fully understand what is meant by this end, we are to take notice of a double death:

• The first commonly called death temporal,
• The second which is death eternal.

The first death driveth the soul out of the body, being unwilling to part with it; the second death keepeth the soul against her will in the body: the first death is the separation of the soul from the body, the second death is the separation of body and soul from God; and by how much God is more excellent than the soul, by so much the second death is worse than the first. The first death is good to good men, because it endeth their sorrows, and beginneth their joys; but evil to evil men, because it ends their joys, and beginneth their everlasting weeping and gnashing of teeth: the second at it belongeth to none that are good, so it is good to none. Both of these doubtless are due to sin, and shall be paid at their day: the sentence pronounced against Adam, morte morieris, by the reduplication of the word seemeth to imply as much as thou shalt die again and again, the first and second death; the first death is as the earnest-penny, the second as the whole hire, both make up the wages of sin: the first is like the splitting of the ship, and casting away all the goods and wares; the latter as the burning both, with unquenchable fire. In this death which is the destruction of nature, that Maxim of Philosophy holdeth not, Omnis corruptio est in instanti: for here is corruption in time, nay, which is more strange, and to the reason of the natural man involveth contradiction, Corruptio aeterna, & mors immortalis, an eternal corruption, and an immortal death. In this life men cannot properly be said to be dying, or in death, but alive or dead: for whilst the soul remaineth in the body we are living, and after the separation thereof we are dead: whereas they that are in hell cannot be said properly to be dead, because they are most sensible of pain; nor to be alive, because they suffer the punishment of the second death; but continually dying, and never shall it be worse with man in death, than where death it self is without death, where life perpetually dieth, and death perpetually liveth. Saint Gregory sweetly quavereth upon this sad note; Mors sine morte, finis sine fine, defectus fine defectu, quia & mors vivit, & finis incipit, & deficere nescit defectus: The death of the damned is a deathless death, an endless end, and undefcizible defect; for their death always liveth, and their end beginneth, and their consumption lasteth. And that this death is meant in my text either only or especially, the correspondency of this member to that which followeth, but the gift of God is eternal life, maketh it manifest. Yet for further confirmation hereof, that the wages of sin is eternal death, I will produce manifold testimonies of Scripture beyond all exception, not so much to convince the error of Origen, who was of opinion that all the damned, yea the Devils themselves, should in the end be released of their torments; as to settle a doubt which troubleth the minds of the godly, how it should be just with God to inflict eternal punishments upon men for temporal transgressions.

For your better satisfaction herein, may it please you to take notice of two opinions concerning the rule of justice and goodness: the first maketh the will of God the rule of good, the latter goodness the rule of God's will. If ye embrace the former opinion, to prove that it is just to repay eternal punishments to temporary and finite offenses, it will be sufficient to show that it is God's will and good pleasure so to do: if ye incline to the latter opinion, it will be farther requisite to show the congruity of such proceedings with the principles of reason, and rules of justice among men. It is very reasonable to think that God hath always a reason for his will, yet it is safest for us to take his will for a reason. For God cannot will anything, but as he willeth it, it is just and good: and that it is God's will and decree to torment them eternally who die impenitently, appeareth by the words of our Savior; These shall go into everlasting pain: and of Saint Paul, These shall be punished with everlasting perdition, from the presence of the Lord, and glory of his power: and of Saint John, And the Devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false Prophet shall be tormented day and night for evermore. Thus much of the torments in general; in special, that the fire is unquenchable we read in Saint Matthew, The chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire: and in Saint Jude, Which suffer the vengeance of eternal fire. How should the fire ever go out, since as the Prophet Isaiah informeth us, The breath of the Lord, like a river of brimstone, continually kindleth it? And that the worm likewise is immortal Christ teacheth, Where the worm, saith he, never dieth, and the fire is not quenched: and that the darkness likewise is perpetual we hear out of Saint Peter, They are Wells without water, clouds carried about with a tempest, to whom black darkness is reserved forever: yea the chains of this prison wherewith the damned are manacled and fettered, are everlasting: for the Angels that kept not their first estate, saith Saint Jude, God hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day: and lastly, The fume and the stench of the brimstone lake riseth up perpetually, and the smoke of their torment shall ascend for evermore. Neither can it be answered in behalf or comfort of the damned, that indeed hell torments shall still endure, but that they shall not be always in durance; that the rack shall remain, but they shall not be everlastingly tortured on it; that the Jaile shall stand, but that the prisoners shall not always be kept in it: for the Scripture is as express for the reprobates enduring, as for the during of those pains: They shall go, saith Christ, into everlasting fire: They shall suffer, saith Saint Paul, the pains of everlasting perdition: They shall be tormented, saith Saint John, with fire and brimstone for evermore: and therefore the fire is called their fire, ignis eorum, because it burneth them; and the worm their worm, because it feedeth upon them; and the torments their torments, because they pain and torture them. These texts are so plain, that Cardinal Bellarmine himself professedly refuteth those of his own side, who give credit to the legend, which relateth that by the prayers of Saint Gregory the soul of Trajan was delivered out of hell. The good will and pleasure of God concerning the condition of the damned being thus made known unto us, we are to tremble at his judgments, and quell and keep under every thought that mutines against them. To call God's justice in question concerning the everlasting torments of the damned, is to bring ourselves in danger of them. Are not God's actions just because we see not the squire by which they are regulated? though we cannot comprehend all God's judgments, yet we may not reprehend any: Multa Dei judicia occulta sunt, nulla injusta, many judgments of God are secret, none unjust. In particular, concerning this point much hath and may be said in justification of God's proceeding with the damned, even by human reason.

1. Saint Augustine rightly observeth, that in punishing offenses we are not so much to regard the time, as the quality; the duration, as the enormity. A man justly lieth by it the whole year for a rash word spoken in a moment: another is condemned to the Gallies all his life for a murder or a rape committed on the sudden in hot blood; therefore howsoever the sins of the reprobate are but temporal, yet the circumstances of them may be so odious, and the number of them so great, and the nature so heinous, that they may deserve eternal punishments.

2. Where the guilt still remaineth, it is not against justice that the party still suffer: but in the souls of all infidels and impenitent sinners, whose consciences were never washed, neither in the salt water of their own tears, nor in the sweet laver of regeneration, the guilt of all their sins still remaineth; and therefore justly they may be eternally punished for them.

3. An impenitent sinner, if he should always live upon the earth, would always hold on his sinful course; and that he breaketh it off at his death it is no thank to him: had he still the use of his tongue, he would still blaspheme and curse: had he still the use of his eyes, he would still look after vanity: had he still the use of his feet, he would still walk in crooked ways: had he still the use of his hands, he would still work all manner of wickedness: had he still the free use of all the faculties of his soul, and members of his body, he would still make them weapons of unrighteousness. Inchinus the Romish Postillar giveth some light to this truth by an inch of candle, whereby two play at tables in the night, and are very earnest at their game; but in the midst of it the candle goeth out, & they perforce give over, who (no doubt) if the light had lasted, would have played all night. This inch of candle is the time of life allotted to a wicked man, who is resolved to spend it all in sinful pleasures and pastimes: and if it would last perpetually, he would never leave his play: and therefore since he would sin eternally, though by reason that the light of his life goeth out he cannot, he deserveth eternal punishment.

4. Though the sins of the reprobate are finite in respect of the time and the agents, yet (as they are committed against an infinite Majesty) the guilt of them is infinite.

Here it will be objected, That if sins be infinite in any respect, they must needs be all equal, because infinity admitteth no degrees: nothing can be more or less infinite. I answer, that although Campian and other Papists charge the reformed Churches with that absurd Paradox of the Stoics, That all sins are equal: and consequently, that it is as great a wickedness to kill a Capon to furnish a luxurious feast, as to kill a man: yet their heart cannot but smite them for so notorious a calumny: for they themselves teach, That mortal sins, as they are committed against God, are of infinite guilt, and deserve infinite and eternal punishments; and yet they hold not, that all mortal sins are equal, their Casuists teaching, that parricide is a greater sin than murder, incest than adultery, blasphemy than perjury: all of them being mortal. As for the knot of the former objection, it is thus easily untied, That sins may be considered either in a genericall notion, as they are breaches of the eternal Law, & offend an infinite Majesty; in which respect as they are infinite, so they are equal: or in a specifical reason, as they are of this or that kind clothed with such & such circumstances, as they are breaches of the first or second Table, as they are committed immediately against God, or mediately, once or often, on the sudden or unadvisedly, ignorantly or willfully, out of infirmity or presumptuously, tending much or little to the hurt or prejudice of our neighbor: In all which and divers like respects, the guilt of sin is improved or diminished, and one sin is more heinous and less pardonable than another.

We have said enough to these words for their coherence, sense, and construction: let us now see what they say to us for our further use and instruction. There is no physic, but if it work maketh the patient sicker for the present; and for the most part the smarting plaster most speedily cureth the wound. These observations are true in corporal physic, and much more in spiritual, because the smart of sin, and trouble of conscience for it, are not so much signs and symptoms of maladies, as the beginning of cures. Some say, the fear of the plague bringeth it; but if we speak of this plague, and other judgments of God for sin, it is certain, that the fear of them is the best preservative against them: he only may be secure of the avoiding Hell torments, and escaping the pangs of eternal death, who feareth them as he ought; and he that feareth them not, is in a most fearful case. O death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee! It was spoken of the first death, but may with greater reason of the second: some tastes whereof I will give you at this present, as well to make you loath the morsels of Satan, as the better to relish the fruits of the tree of life. The first shall be out of Saint Matthew, Clausae sunt sores, the doors were shut: Conceive ye that to be now, which, if ye prevent it not, certainly shall be, that after ye have heard the Archangel sound the last Trump, and with him a Choir of heavenly spirits singing an Epithalamium or marriage song, ye should see the gates of Heaven opened, and the Son of man marching out of them with an innumerable company of Angels, presently sent abroad to gather the Elect from the four winds, and soon after infinite troupes of them assembled from all parts in goodly order and glorious armor, accompanying our Savior in his triumphant return into heaven, to receive each of them a crown of glory, and you caught up into the clouds, pressing hard after them to enter with them into heaven, should be presently stayed, and the gates shut against you and fastened with everlasting bars: O! what a corrasive would this be? what a disgrace? what an unspeakable grief, to have a glimpse of the celestial Jerusalem, and to be excluded forever out of it? to see those whom ye sometimes scorned, reviled, and trod underfoot, admitted into Christ's Kingdom before your face, and you repelled with a non novivos, Away from me, I know you not?

Have ye enough of this taste? or do ye yet desire a second? ye have it in Saint Matthew, Projicite in tenebras exteriores, Cast the unprofitable servant into utter darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Suppose ye were stripped stark naked, and then bound hand and foot with iron chains, and thrown into a deep, dark, loathsome, and hideous dungeon, full of Adders, Vipers, Basiliskes, and Scorpions, hissing, croaking, biting, stinging you in all parts of your body, you being not able to stir a joint, or make any resistance at all. Are ye affrighted at this? The torment of the damned is far worse: for the stinging of Serpents is nothing to the tormenting with Devils; nor the darkness of a dungeon to the horror of Hell. For though there be fire there, yet it yieldeth no comfortable light: but as the flame in the bush had the light of fire, yet not the consuming heat; so on the contrary, the flames of Hell have the scorching heat, but not the comfortable light of fire.

As ye like this, take another taste: Vermis eorum non interit. Imagine that whilst ye lie in the dark dungeon bit & stung in your outward parts, there should be a venomous worm within your bowels, gnawing at your very heart; and upon remembrance of every heinous sin, giving you a deadly bite: what pain and torment might this be? yet it is nothing to that which Christ there addeth, Ignis eorum non extinguitur, Their fire is not quenched. There is none such a block, but apprehendeth what unsufferable pain it is to lie soultering in the fire, or boiling in a river of brimstone, or frying in the flames of a furnace, and crying but for one drop of water to cool the tip of the tongue, and not obtaining it.

If these tastes affect you not, take you yet a fourth, made of the very gall of Asps, Non habebunt requiem die vel nocte, sed cruciabuntur inaeternùm. Each of the former torments is of it self intolerable, and all of them most insufferable; yet all must be endured without all means of ease, or hope of release: the banishment is perpetual, the chains everlasting, the worm immortal, the fire unquenchable. No loss so great as of the Kingdom of Heaven, no prison so loathsome as the dungeon of Hell, no sight so gastly as of the ugly fiends, no shreeking so lamentable as of damned ghosts, no stench so loathsome as of the lake of brimstone, no worm so biting as the remorse of conscience, no fire so hot as the wrath of God; but such losses never to be recovered, such chains never to be loosed, such darkness never to be enlightened, such sights never to be removed, such noise never to be stilled, such fumes never to be dispelled, such a worm never to be plucked off, such fire never to be quenched, such torments never to be released, such misery never to be ended, maketh up such a punishment, as exceedeth all human eloquence to express, & patience to endure. What shall I say more? Who of us is able to hold out long with a vehement fit of a burning fever, or colicke, or stone, though lying in a sweet room upon a soft bed, having the best means of physic to mitigate the pain, and comfort of friends to strengthen our patience? If the Physician should tell us, that after a month or a year we should be out of our extreme fits, he would be so far from cheering us up, that he would near drive us to despair: how then shall we be able to endure the scorching flames of the brimstone lake in the dark dungeon of Hell, where we have no other comforters about us than insulting Devils, or perhaps some of our dearest friends and kindred tormented with us? Yet if these pains lasted but for a year, or an age, or a thousand years, or the duration of the world; though so great misery could admit of no possible comfort, yet there might be some hope: but now after many ages and millions of years spent in this insufferable torment, to endure as many more, and again as many more, and after all this to be nothing nearer to the end, than at the first day of their entrance into that place of durance: O this is able to break an heart even as hard as Adamant. Happy are we, that we have time to think on, and means to prevent these endless pains, for which the damned souls would give a thousand lives if they had them; & for their neglect thereof while the time served them, they now pierce their hearts, and rend their souls with these and the like lamentations:

If the consideration of these things move us not, beloved brethren, we believe them not; if we believe them not, we are not what we profess to be, that is, Christians. If there be no such torments in Hell as I have in part described, then (which to think, and much more to utter, deserveth a thousand Hells) there is no truth in the Gospel, upon the express Text whereof I have all this while enlarged myself. Nay, yet further, I shall be able to demonstrate unto you, that if ye believe there is no Hell, that ye are no men, because ye have no conscience. There is no conscience, if no religion; no religion, if no God; no God, if no providence; no providence, if no justice; no justice, if no torments to be endured after this life by them who have violated all human and divine laws, and received no condign punishment in this world. Nature hath given us an image of Hell in Aetna, and other hills that continually burn; and of the damned, in the Salamander and Pyrausts that live in the fire. The ancient Grecians and Romans, yea, the Barbarous Indians, that have no learning among them, yet acknowledge a kind of Hell; so witnesseth the Relator of the Virginia voyage: The Virginians (saith he) acknowledge the immortality of souls, and they believe that after death, according to their desert, they are either translated from hence into the seats of the gods, or are carried to a huge ditch, burning with fire, called Popogusso. An evident argument, that God hath engraven the image of Hell so deep in men's consciences, to deter them from ungodliness, that the Devil cannot raze it clean out, though he desireth nothing more.

But I speak to Christians, with whom this reason alone is sufficient to enforce their assent. If there be no Hell, Christ descended not into it, nor triumphed over it. If no second death, Christ hath not redeemed us from it: But he hath certainly redeemed all that believe, and have part in the first resurrection. Other things we believe, because they are so: this is undoubtedly so, if we believe it. O what an easy condition is this, to have our debts paid for us, if by faith we take the sum laid down for our discharge, and tender it unto God, and be careful to run into no more arrearages? He is most worthy to lie in the prison of Hell till he pay the uttermost farthing of his debts, who can have them paid for him upon so easy terms, and will not.

We have looked long enough down upon Hell and Death: let us now look up to our Savior, who triumphed over both. Let the sight of the one as much raise us up in hope, as of the other dejecteth us in fear: let the serious meditation upon the everlasting flames of Hell kindle in us an everlasting hate of sin, and love of our Savior, who by his fasting hath famished the worm of conscience, that now it shall bite no more; and by his blood hath quenched the unquenchable fire in such sort, that it hath no power upon any of the members of his mystical body: and by his temporal death hath delivered all that are his from eternal. Shall we not then eternally sing his praises, who hath saved us from everlasting weeping and mourning in the valley of Hinnom? Shall any waters of affliction quench in us the love of him, who for us quenched unquenchable fire? Shall not the benefit of our delivery from everlasting death ever live in our memory? Shall anything sever us from him, who for our sakes after a sort was severed from his Father, when he cried, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or the sword? No, I am persuaded I may go on with the Apostle, and say, Neither life, nor death, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. To whom, &c.

FERULA PATERNA. THE XLVI. SERMON.

HOw unwilling the author of life and Savior of all men, especially believers, is to pronounce and execute the sentence of death and destruction against any, if the tears which he shed over Jerusalem, and groans and lamentations which he poureth out when he poureth forth the vials of his vengeance, testify not abundantly; yet his soft pace, and orderly proceeding by degrees in the course he taketh against obstinate and impenitent sinners, is enough to silence all murmuring complaints wrongfully charging his justice, and raise up all dejected spirits dolefully imploring his mercy. For he ever first sitteth upon his throne of grace, and reacheth out his golden Scepter to all that cast themselves down before him (and if they have a hand of faith to lay hold on it, he raiseth them up) before he taketh hold of his iron rod; and he shaketh it too before he striketh with it, and he striketh lightly before he breaketh in pieces and shivers, the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction. So true is that which he speaketh of himself by the Prophet Hosea, O Israel thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thy help: and the Prophet of him, All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth; in which he walketh thus step by step.

First, when we begin to stray from him, he calleth us back, and reclaymeth us from our soul and dangerous ways, by friendly counsels and passionate persuasions, by increase of temporal and promise of eternal blessings: as we may read in the tenor of all the Prophets commissions.

2 If these kind offers be refused with contempt, and greater benefits repaid with greater unthankfulness, he changeth his note, but not his affections; he exprobrates to us our unthankfulness, that it might not prove a bar of his bounty: I taught Ephraim to go, taking them by their arms, and they knew not that I healed them, I drew them with the cords of a man, with bands of love, and I was to them as they that take off the yoke from their jaws. and, My Beloved had a vineyard in a very fruitful hill, and he fenced it, and he gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest Vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein, and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.

3 If exprobrations and sharp reproofs will not serve the turn, he falls to threatening and menacing fearful punishments, but to this end only, that he may not inflict what he threateneth, as we see in Nineveh's case, Yet forty days, saith the Prophet, and Nineveh shall be overthrown: yet Nineveh was not overthrown; because the Ninevites repented of their works, and turned from their evil ways, God repented of the evil he had said that he would do unto them, and he did it not.

4 If neither promises of mercies, nor threats of judgments; neither kind entreaties, nor sharp rebukes can work upon the hard heartedness of obstinate sinners, he useth yet another means to bring them home; he taketh away their goods that they may come to him for them; he pincheth them with famine, that he may starve their wanton lusts; he striketh their flesh with a smart rod, that it may awake their souls out of a dead sleep of security: and this for the most part is the last knock at their hearts, at which if they open not, and receive Christ by unfeigned repentance and a lively faith, the gates of mercy are forever locked up against them.

According to this method Christ here proceedeth with the Angel of Laodicea: First, he friendly saluteth him: next, he sharply reproveth him: then he fearfully threateneth him: lastly, he severely chastiseth him, and all in love, as you hear in this verse, (As many as I love I rebuke and chasten). Which hath this coherence with the former, wherein Christ taxed two vices in this Angel, luke warmness, and spiritual pride; against these he prescribeth two remedies, zeal, verse. 19. and spiritual providence: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve that thou mayest see.

But here because the Angel of Laodicea might reply, Alas, to what end is all this? what prescribe you unto memedicinal potions, who am to be spewed out of God's mouth? what can your counsel do me good? my doom is already past, and my heart within me is like melted wax: Christ opportunely in the words of my text solveth this objection, and giveth him a cordial to keep him from fainting;

Behold then in the words of this Scripture,

• 1 A rule of direction to those that are set in high places of authority.
• 2 A staff of comfort to those who are fallen into the depth of grief and misery.

To the former the Spirit speaketh in the words of my text on this wise.

But to the bruised reed, to the drooping conscience overwhelmed with sorrow and grief both for sins and the punishment thereof, the Spirit speaketh in the words of my text on this wise.

Spices pounded and beaten small smell most sweetly; and Texts of Scripture yield a most fragrant savor of life, when they are expounded and broken into parts; which are here evidently four:

• 1 The person of Christ, I.
• 2 The actions of this person, Rebuke and chasten.
• 3 The subject of these actions, As many.
• 4 The extent of the subject, As I love.

• 1 The person most gracious, I.
• 2 The actions most just, Rebuke and chasten.
• 3 The subject most remarkable, Whom I love.
• 4 The extent most large, As many.

• 1 In the person you may see the author of all afflictions.
• 2 In the actions, the nature of all afflictions.
• 3 In the extent, the community of all afflictions.
• 4 In the subject, the cause of all afflictions.

Of this extent of the subject, subject of the actions, actions of Christ, by his gracious assistance, and your Christian patience: and first of the person,

1. That in all afflictions of the servants of God, God is the principal agent, and hath the greatest stroke, needeth not so much evident demonstration, as serious consideration, and right and seasonable application in time of fearful visitations. For what passage can we light upon at all adventures, especially in the writings of the Prophets, where we find not either God threatening, or the Church bewailing afflictions, and sore chastisements? Is there any evil in the city which I have not done, saith the Lord? And, Is there any sorrow like unto my sorrow, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce wrath, saith his captive Spouse? What face of misery so ugly and gastly, wherewith he scareth not his disobedient people? To them that have hard hearts, and brazen brows that cannot blush, he threaneth to make the earth as iron, and the heaven as brass: he martials all his plagues against them, sword, famine, pestilence, stings of serpents, teeth of wild beasts, blasting, mildew, botches, blaines, and what not? And according as he threateneth in the law, he professeth that he had done to the Israelites in the days of the Prophet Amos: I have sent you cleanness of teeth, and scarcity of bread in all your coasts, and yet ye have not returned unto me: also I have withholden the rain from you, and yet ye have not returned. I have smitten you with blasting and mildew; your gardens and vineyards the valmer-worm hath devoured, and yet ye have not returned unto me. Pestilence I have sent you, after the manner of the Egyptians, and your young men I have slain with the sword, and yet ye have not returned unto me. I have overthrown you as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were as a fire-brand out of the burning, and yet ye have not returned unto me. There being a double evil as the Schools distinguish,

Malum
• 1. Culpae.
• 2. Poenae.

the evil of sin, and the evil of punishment: to make him the author of the former, and to deny him to be the author of the later, is a like impiety. For the former error impeacheth his purity & sanctity, the later his justice and providence. It is true, that in the afflicting of his children, God sometimes useth none of the best instruments, neither do they intend what God doth in laying heavy crosses upon his children: yet he keepeth their malice within such compass, that they can do nothing, but what God for just causes permits them to do. God hath Satan and all his instruments like Mastiffs tied in a chain, they cannot go beyond their tether; he letteth them loose, and calls them in at his pleasure. If God be at peace with us, not a bone shall be broken: nay, not a hair of our head shall fall. The four Angels in the Apocalypse had not power to touch the earth, or any tree, till God's servants were sealed.

If this be so, what security doth the fear of God bring to man! and what a Potentate is the feeblest Christian on earth! Qui Deum timet, omnia timent eum; qui Deum non timet, timet omnia: He which feareth not God, hath cause to fear all things; for all the creatures will take their Makers part against him: on the contrary, he that feareth God, all things fear him; for nothing dares or can do him hurt. Surely no Prince or Emperor could ever so secure his state, or guard his person, that neither outward power could annoy him, nor home-bred treachery surprise him: yet neither rebel, nor pyrate, nor rich, nor poor, nor open enemy, nor counterfeit friend, nor principality, nor power, nor man, nor devil can touch God's children, protected by his omnipotency, and guarded by his holy Angels, except they turn rebels to God, and traitors to themselves. For no evil can come near them, while God is near them; and God will be ever near them, if they depart not from him.

2. Hath God a hand in all the strokes of his children? let us not then so much fret and fume at the immediate agents, or rather instruments, as we do. It is all one, as if a Noble man sentenced by the King or his Peers to lose his head, should fall foul upon the Heads-man, or pick a quarrel with the axe: or as if a patient, to whom a wise Physician hath prescribed a bitter potion for the recovery of his health, should fall out with the Apothecary for ministering it: Nay, it is like to them that use the unguentum called Armarium, who when a party is wounded by his adversary with a sword or spear, apply nothing to the party, but anoint the instrument. I speak not this to justify or excuse the malice, or iniquity, or cruelty of those in whose hands God putteth his scourge for us, if they exceed his prescript, and rather exercise their own passions, than execute his judgments. For as God is no way accessory to their cruelty; so neither do they participate of God's righteousness in afflicting his children: and as God hath made them now instruments, so he will hereafter make them subjects of his justice: as a tender mother, after she hath beat her infant, casteth the rod in the fire; so God dealeth with these men. The Assyrians were his rod wherewith he chastened the Israelites; the Persians his rod wherewith he chastened the Assyrians; the Grecians his rod wherewith he chastened the Persians; the Roman Emperors the rod wherewith he chastened the Grecians: and now all four rods one after another are cast into the fire.

But my aim is to persuade you to look higher than the executioners and ministers of God's vengeance; and when ye see that he sitteth in heaven who ordereth and appointeth how many strokes shall be given to you; who hath not only a glass to keep every drop of blood that is drawn from you, but also a bottle to keep every tear that falls from your eyes, to struggle with the infirmity of your flesh, and endeavor to the uttermost of your power to suffer his will, because ye have not done it; & to make the best amends ye can, to supply the defect of your active obedience by your passive. Holy Job could discern God's arrows, though in the hand of Satan; and his hand, though on the arms of the Sabean robbers: and therefore when he was stripped of all his goods, even by the worst of men, he curseth not the instruments, but blesseth God, saying: Naked came I out of my mothers womb, and naked shall I return thither again; the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the Name of the Lord. What Christ spake to Pilate vaunting of the power and authority he had over him, the feeblest Christian in the world may reply to the greatest Potentate on earth: Thou couldst have no power at all against me, unless it were given thee from above. Wicked and ungodly men may have a will of themselves to vex, hurt, and persecute God's children; yet power they can have none, so much as to take a hair from their head, unless it be given them from above by God, who can and doth sometimes execute his just judgments by unjust ministers; and though they intend evil and mischief against his servants, yet he will turn it into good to them, as he did to Joseph. Solinus writeth of Hypanis, that the water thereof is very bitter as it passeth through Exampeus, yet very sweet in the spring; so the cup of trembling, which is offered to the children of God, is often very bitter at the second hand, as it is ministered unto them by profane persons, haters, and despisers of their graces: yet it is sweet at the first hand, as it is sent them down from heaven.

3. Are the afflictions which befall God's children in their bodies, souls, good name, or estates, darts shot from heaven? how then can they avoid them? what shall they do in this case? Surely cast themselves on the ground, and hold up their buckler of faith, saying with Job: Though he slay me, yet will I put my trust in him. And with the Israelites, All this is come upon us, yet have we not forgotten thee: our heart is not turned back, neither have our steps declined from thy way; though thou hast sore broken us in the place of Dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death. Or cast up our darts to heaven, that is, our ejaculatory prayers, as David doth: O Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure: for thine arrows stick fast in me, and thine hand presseth me sore. Lord, all my desire is before thee, and my groaning is not hid from thee. When a great Philosopher was taxed for not holding out his argument with Adrian the Emperor, but presently giving up the bucklers, his apology for himself was, Is it not reason to yield to him, who hath thirty legions at his command? I am sure there is greater reason, whatsoever the cause may be in our apprehension, absolutely to yield without further disputing, to him who hath more than thirty legions of Angels at his command, and all the creatures in heaven and earth besides. There is no contesting with sovereignty, no resisting omnipotency, no striving with our Maker. The fish that is caught with the hook, the more he jerkes and flings, the faster hold the hook taketh on him: the harder a man kicks against the pricks, the deeper they enter into his heels. An earthen pitcher the more forcibly it is dashed against an iron pot, the sooner it flies in pieces: in like manner, the more we contend against God and his judgments, the more we hurt, wound, and in the end destroy ourselves. Wherefore let us not like dogs bite the stone, never looking upon him that flingeth it: but mark him who aims at us, and hitteth us, and lay our hands on our mouth with David, saying, I held my peace, because thou Lord hast done it. The Persian Nobles, as Janus Gruterus reporteth, accounted it an exceeding great grace to be scourged by their Prince; and though it were painful to them, yet they seemed much to rejoice at it, thanking him that he would take pains with them, and minister correction unto them himself: and shall we not much more praise the divine Majesty, that he vouchsafeth himself to chasten us for our good? The wounds of a friend are more welcome to us than the plasters of an enemy: and a sick patient, who will not endure a bitter potion offered him by a Physician, yet oftentimes taketh it from the hands of his most endeared spouse, or a beloved friend: and shall not all God's children, sick of too much prosperity, willingly take the bitter, yet most wholesome, potion of affliction from the hand of the Father of spirits? Saint Paul shall close up the doctrine: When we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world: and Saint Peter the use: Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God, commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.

From the person I proceed to his actions, rebuke and chasten, not condemn and punish, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ; verba virtutem non addunt, soft words make smart blows nevertheless felt: if the strokes be as many, and inflicted with equal force, whether ye call it chastening or punishing, all is one to the poor patient. Indeed were there but a verbal difference, and not a real between punishing and chastening, this note would little better the music; but if ye look more narrowly into the words, ye shall find in them many and material differences. In punishing ye shall observe a Judge, in chastening a Father: in punishment a satisfying of justice, in chastisement a testifying of love: in punishment a compensation of desert, in chastisement a mitigation of favor: in punishment a principal respect had to a former offense, in chastisement to future amendment. A Judge principally regardeth the wrong done to the law, and therefore proportioneth his punishment to the quality of the offense: but a father, whom not love of law and justice, but the law of love moveth and after a sort enforceth to do what he doth for his childes good, is contented with such correction, not as he deserveth for the fault he hath committed, but that which he hopeth will serve for his amendment: Pro magno peccato parum supplicii satis est patri. In brief, this word Castigo, I chasten, how much soever at the first it affrighteth us, yet it affordeth us this comfortable doctrine, That God as a father inflicteth with grief and compassion, moderateth with mercy, and directeth by providence all the strokes that are laid upon his children.

1. He inflicteth with grief and compassion: O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, how shall I entreat thee? my bowels erne within me, and my repentings roll together: and, For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing, and for the habitations of the wilderness a lamentation, because they are burnt up, so that none can pass through them, neither can men hear the voice of the cattle, both the fowl of the heavens, and the beast are fled, they are gone. I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked: I will make a wailing like the Dragons, and mourning as the Owls: for her wound is incurable.

2. He mitigateth with mercy his children's payment,

• 1. In respect of time,
  • 1. Indefinitely.
  • 2. Definitely.
• 2. In respect of the grievousness of their strokes.

He mitigateth in respect of time indefinitely: In a little wrath I hid my face from thee, for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer. For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercy will I gather thee: and, The God of all grace, who hath called us into his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you. Sometimes he prescribeth the definite time; as to Joseph for his imprisonment two years: to the Jews for their captivity seventy years: to Nebuchadnezzar for his humiliation seven years: to the Angel of Smyrna ten days. And as he mitigateth their sufferings in respect of the time, so also in respect of the grievousness of their punishment: The Lord hath severely chastened me, saith David, but he hath not given me over unto death. God he is faithful, and will not suffer his children to be tempted above their strength.

3. He directeth by his providence and fatherly wisdom all the crosses that are laid upon his children to special ends for their good: namely, to cure their dullness and stupidity, abate their pride, tame their wanton flesh, exercise their patience, enflame their devotion, try their love, wean their desires from this world, and breed in them a longing for the joys of heaven, and fruits of Paradise. Prosperity flattereth the soul, but trouble and affliction play the parts of true friends: they rightly inform us of the insufficiency of all worldly comforts, which leave us in our extremities, and can stand us in no stead at our greatest need. And therefore S. Bernard very well resembleth them to rotten stakes, flags, and bull-rushes, which men catch at that are in peril of drowning, hoping by them to scramble out of the water: but alas, it falleth out far otherwise; these help them not at all, nor bear them above water, but are drawn down under water with them. This most serious lesson of the vanity of earthly delights & worldly comforts, we read in many Texts of Scriptures, hear in divers Sermons, see in daily spectacles of men troubled in mind at their death: yet we never thoroughly apprehend it, till God's rod hath imprinted it in our bodies and souls: then finding by our woeful experience, that earthly felicity is nothing but misery masked in gaudy shows, and that all the wealth of the world, together with all carnal delights, cannot ease a burdened conscience, nor abate any whit of our pain, we begin to distaste them all, we grow out of love with this life, and entertain death in our most serious thoughts. Here the eye of faith, enlightened by divine revelation, seeth beyond death the celestial Paradise, & in it a crystal river of the water of life, & by it a tree of life, which bears twelve sorts of fruits: and besides these a heavenly City, shining with streets of gold, and foundations of pearl and precious stones, the sight whereof leaveth an unspeakable delight in the soul, which sweeteneth all temporal afflictions, and stirreth up in us an unspeakable desire of those solid comforts and substantial joys. Heliogabalus was wont to set before his parasites a banquet painted on cloth, or carved in wood, or cut in stone; and whatsoever he fed upon in truth, they had drawn before them in pictures and images: such are the joys and delights which the Devil & the World presenteth unto us, false, shadowie, & vain. The true are to be found nowhere but in heaven, where those joys are in substance, which we have here but in shadows: pure, which we have here polluted: full, which we have here empty: sincere, which we have here mixed: perpetually flourishing, which we have here continually fading: to these substantial, full, pure, sincere, everlasting joys, God bring us for his Son Jesus Christ his sake. Cui, &c.

THE NURTURE OF CHILDREN. THE XLVII. SERMON.

THat which Pliny writeth, and experience confirmeth concerning honey-combes, that the thinner and weaker honey runs out of them at the first, but the thickest and best is pressed & squeezed out of them at the last; we find for the most part in handling Texts of holy Scripture, compared by the Prophet David to honey-combs, the easier & more vulgar observations flow out of them upon the lightest touch, but we are to press each phrase and circumstance before we can get out the thickest honey, the choicest and most useful doctrines of inspired wisdom. The more we suck these combes, the more we may, the honey proveth the sweeter, the comb the moister; and, which is nothing less to be admired, the spiritual taste is no way cloyed therewith. Wherefore with your good liking and approbation, I will press again and again these mellifluous combes in our Savior's lips, dropping celestial doctrine sweeter than honey, to delight the most distempered taste, and sharper than it, to cleanse the most putrefied sore. I rebuke and chasten; there is the sharpness, and as it were the searching virtue of honey: As many as I love, there is the sweetness.

Parallel Texts of Scripture, like glasses set one against another, cast a mutual light: such is this Text, and that Deut. 8.5. Thou shalt also consider in thy heart, that as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee: and, Job 5.17. Despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: and, Prov. 3.11, 12. My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, neither be weary of his correction: for whom the Lord loveth, he correcteth, even as a father doth the son in whom he delighteth: and, Hebr. 12.7. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons: for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? As a Musician often toucheth upon the sweetest note in his song, Paven or Galliard; so doth the holy Spirit upon this: and therefore we ought more especially to listen to it. For,

1. It convinceth the Papists, who over-value crosses and afflictions, accounting the bearing of them satisfactions for sins. For with a like pride, whereby they cry up their actions to be meritorious, they would improve their passions to be works satisfactory (by satisfactory intending such as make amends unto the justice of God) wherein they as much over-reach, as they supererogate, or rather superarrogate in the former. Satisfactions to our brethren for wrongs done unto them, by restitution, mulct or acknowledgement of our fault, with asking forgiveness for it, we both teach and practice: but they shall never be able to satisfy us in this point, that anything they can do or suffer, can satisfy God. Neither can our actions satisfy his law, nor our penal sufferings his justice: none can satisfy for sin, but he that was without sin: nothing can recompense an infinite transgression, but an infinite submission, or to speak more properly, the submission and passion of him that was infinite. It cost more to redeem sins than the world is worth: and therefore they must let that alone for him, who trod the wine-press alone. Before, I noted the difference between chastisement and punishment, in the one a compensation of wrong done to the person or law, is intended; in the other a testifying of love, and a care of amendment of the party chastened. Who would ever be so unreasonable, as to think, that a few stripes given by a tender-hearted father to the child whom he most dearly affecteth, were a satisfaction for the loss of a Diamond of great price? yet our sufferings hold not such a proportion. For what are our finite and momentary sufferings to the offense given to an infinite Majesty? Nothing can be set in the other scale against it to weigh it down, but the manifold sufferings of an equal and infinite person, the eternal Son of God. Neither will it help our adversaries any whit to say, that Christ satisfied for the eternal, but not for the temporal punishment of our sins. For this is all one as to say, that our Redeemer laid down a talent of gold for us, yet not a brass token: or paid many millions of pounds, yet not a piece. The Apostle said, he gave himself a ransom for all: will they deny it to be a sufficient one? or was there any defect in his good intention? They have not rubbed their foreheads so hard, as to affirm any such thing. Well then, let them tell us how that man is perfectly ransomed by another, who is still kept in prison till he have discharged part of his ransom himself. This very conceit, that they merit by their actions, or satisfy by their passions, taketh away not only all merit, but all worth from them both.

2. It instructeth the penitent: for if afflictions are 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , discipline and nurture, then somewhat is to be learned by them. It is good for me, saith David, that I was in trouble, that I might learn thy statutes. Blessed is he, saith Saint Gregory, who is chastened of the Lord, Quia eruditur ad beatitudinem; because he is set in the right way to blessedness. The Greeks say in their Proverb, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , and the Latins answer them both in the rime & reason, Nocumenta documenta, that is, we gain wit by our losses, and the rod imprinteth learning into us. What we learn in particular by it, I shall God willing declare at large hereafter: this lesson shall suffice for the present, That as a loving father never beateth his child without a fault, so neither doth God chasten us without a cause: our sins are the cords which furnish his whip. It is true that sin is not the adequate or only cause for which God striketh his children, yet is it always causa sine quâ non, a cause without which he never striketh them. Although neither the blind man his sin, nor his fathers were the cause why he was borne blind more than other men, but that through the miraculous cure of his blindness all might see the divine power of Christ; yet certain it is that he and his father for their sins deserved it or a greater punishment. Likewise Jobs sins were not the cause why the arrows of the Almighty fell thicker upon him than any other, but it was to make him a rare mirror of patience, and convince Satan of his false slander, and to take occasion of crowning him with greater blessings in this life, and everlastingly rewarding him hereafter; yet Job denies not that those calamities fell justly upon him: I have sinned, saith he, O Lord, what shall I do unto thee, O thou preserver of men?

3 It comforteth all that are afflicted: there are as many arguments of comfort in it, as words of arguments. Is any man either impoverished with losses, or visited with sickness, or stricken with soars, or oppressed with heavy burdens, or pined with famine, or grieved with death of friends, or affrighted with terrors of conscience? let him lay this text of holy writ to his heart, and it will presently asswage his pain, and in the end, if not cure his malady, yet make it sufferable, yea and comfortable also to him. Let him thus question with himself: Who afflicteth me? It is answered, God, I. How proceedeth he to afflict? After warning, and upon conviction, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , rebuke. What are afflictions? chastisements, and chasten. Whom doth he thus afflict? only some stubborn and obstinate sinners, or desperate cast-a-ways? nay, but all his children, as many. Why afflicteth he? Because he loveth them. I. It is God that smiteth me, can I resist his power? must I not obey his will? Rebuke. He hath given me warning before, and I suffer but what I deserve:

Chasten. He inflicteth with grief, moderateth with love, guideth with fatherly providence what he ordereth me to suffer; shall I refuse nurture, and show myself a bastard and no son? had I rather he should leave me to myself, to follow my own courses, according to the bent of my corrupt nature, with a purpose to deprive me of his glory, and dis-inherit me of his kingdom? As many. He disciplineth all his children, am I better than all the rest? As I love. His only motive herein is his love, and shall I take that ill which is sent to me in love? shall I be afraid of, and refuse love tokens? shall I be grieved and dismayed because I have now more sensible experience of his care and love than ever before? To join all together, to make of them all a strong bulwark against impatiency in all sorts of afflictions and tribulations: Shall we either stubbornly refuse, or ungraciously despise, or take unkindly after all fair means by us sleightened, the deserved chastisement of our heavenly father, which with great moderation and greater grief, he inflicteth upon all his dearest children in love? Can we justly repine at anything offered us upon these terms? is not this salve of the spirit alone of it self able to allay the most swelling tumour of the greatest hearts grief? I rebuke and chasten as many as I love.

Rebuke and chasten. So doth the Translatour render 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , truly and answerably to the main intent of the Spirit, but not fully and agreeably to the nature of the letter: we have no one English word capable of the whole contents of the two words in the original.

〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 primarily signifieth to evict or convince, to give evidence of anything or against any person, to lay his sins open before him, in such sort that he cannot but see them, and be ashamed of them; as in these passages, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , and, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , and, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 : Faith is the evidence of things not seen; and, I will rebuke thee, and set thy sins in order before thy face; and, Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but by the light of truth discover and openly rebuke them. Likewise 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 is a word much more pregnant than chasten; and, if you will have it in one word expressed, is, I nurture, or, I discipline: for the word implieth as well instruction as correction. Now out of the nature of the phrase, which signifieth to rebuke upon conviction, or evidently convince by reproof, and the order of the words, first rebuke, and then chasten, All Judges and Ministers of justice are lessoned to be better instructed and informed in the causes they sentence, than usually they are; to sift matters to the very bran, to weigh all circumstances together before they give judgment. For to reprove without cause deserveth reproof, to censure without a fault deserveth censure, and to punish without conviction deserveth punishment. Punishing justice if it fall not upon a party legally convicted, is it self injustice, and punishable in a Magistrate. Now that they who are in authority may not exercise injustice instead of executing justice,

1 They must indifferently hear both parties. Philip kept an ear always for the defendant: Demosthenes in his famous oration for Ctesiphon, putteth the Athenian Judges in mind of this, which he calleth the first law of equity, to hear both the plaintiff and defendant with indifferency. For as Seneca saith truly, He that giveth a right judgment without hearing both parties, is no righteous Judge: and therefore Suetonius justly chargeth Claudius with injustice, for precipitating his sentence before he had given a full hearing to both parties, nay sometimes to either.

2 They must lay all that they hear, and what is brought on both sides, in an even balance, and poise them together: Res cum re, causa cum causâ, ratio cum ration concertet; by the collision of arguments on both sides the fire of truth is struck out. Protagoras his exception was good against them, who to prove the providence of their paynim gods, brought a number painted in a Table of them that calling upon them escaped shipwreck: At picti non sunt, inquit, qui naufragio perierunt; True, saith he, but none of those who notwithstanding their prayers to them suffered shipwreck, are anywhere painted, neither is there any register kept of them.

3 They must maturely advise, and seriously consider of the matter before they pass sentence. The eye unless it be fixed upon the object, cannot perfectly discern it, nor distinguish it from things that are near and like unto it. And howsoever in a clear water we may easily perceive anything that is in the bottom, yet if it be troubled we cannot: and in every Court there are many troublers of the water, the Lawyers by their wrangling, and the witnesses by their varying, the Judges by their different opinions, (to speak nothing of Angels also troubling the clear stream of justice at certain times.)

4 The eyes of their judgment must be free from all mists of prejudice, and clouds of affection. For as that which a man looketh upon through red or green glass, seemeth to be of that color the glass is of, though it be of a far different, if not a contrary: so that which we judge out of a forestalled conceit, or prejudicate opinion, seemeth to answer to our opinion of it, how contrary soever it be. The Roman soldiers, as Lactantius noteth, thought verily that the goddess worshipped at Syracuse, being demanded whether she would be carried by them to Rome, answered, that she would: not that the image spake any such word, but because they were before strongly persuaded that the goddess would give such an answer. Unless those that sit in judgment observe these rules, they may easily take 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 for 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , a fallacy for a demonstration, and a malicious calumniation for a legal conviction. If their eyes be either dim with private affection, or blinded with rewards, or wink through carelessness, or are shut through willfulness; that will fall out which S. Cyprian so grievously complaineth of, Injustice sitteth in the place of justice, and even in the sight of the laws, hanging about the judgment, seat the laws are broken: the Judge who sitteth to revenge wrongs offered, offereth that which he should revenge, and committeth that which he should punish (and hath his conscience coloured with sins of a deeper die than the scarlet of his robes.) The Empresse wisely advised her husband, when sitting at play, and minding (as it seems) that more than the cause before him, he rashly pronounced sentence; Non est vita hominum ludus talorum, The sitting upon life and death is not like the playing a game at Tables, where a Table-man of wood is taken up by a blot, and thrown aside without any great loss; the life of man is of more worth than so. Though all men detested Seianus, and that most deservedly, yet when they heard him adjudged to a most cruel and infamous death by no legal proceedings or course of justice, the hate of all men recoyled back upon the Judges, and the people began to pity that great favourite, who before was most odious: Crepat ingens Seianus, great Seianus is drawn upon an hurdle, and he suffereth for too much abusing his Princes favor.

What crime was laid to his charge? what evidence was given in against him? what witnesses were sworn? I hear of none: only I hear of a long letter sent from the Emperor, taking his pastime at the Capreae. Hush, not a word more. Who doth not observe in our own Chronicles how God met to Hastings his own measure, who the same day that the Earl Rivers, Gray, and others, in the reign of Edward the fourth, without trial of law, were by his advice executed at Pomfret, had his head stricken off in the same manner in the Tower of London? Such as Tiberius his Judges, or Edward the fourth's, are no fit Presidents for Christian Magistrates; this 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 in my text will evidently convince them at Christ's tribunal in the clouds, for not looking better to their evidence when they sat on the bench here below: let them therefore take judicii praefidem for a president in their judgments, even God himself; who, as we read, though the sin of Sodom were exceeding great, and the cry of it went up to heaven, yet came down from heaven to see whether they had done according to that cry, before he rained down fire and brimstone, to burn their bodies with unnatural fire, whose souls burned with unnatural lust.

As the word 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , I rebuke, rebuketh the carelessness & rashness of Judges and Magistrates, in giving sentence upon the life or state of any in question before them: so the other word, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , I instruct by chastening, instructeth fathers and mothers to perform that duty which they owe to God, and must perform to their children, viz. before them continually to rehearse the law of God, To talk of it when they are in their house, and when they walk abroad, when they lie down, and when they rise up. Above all things they must take care to season their young and tender years with pure and incorrupt religion, and bring them up in the fear of God: otherwise they are but half parents, if they have not as well a care of their souls as of their bodies; if they pamper the flesh in them, but starve the spirit; if they labor not to be God's instruments for their eternal, as they have been for their temporal life. Doubtless Solomon, who injoineth children to hear their fathers instruction, and not to forsake the law of their mother, because they shall be as an ornament of grace unto their head, and chains about their neck, implieth in the duty of children to receive, the duty of parents to give them such instructions and laws. What years fitter to lay the ground color of virtue and true religion, than those which are the more capable thereof, because as yet without any tincture at all? when better forming the mould of the heart and affections than when it is softest? and who rather to do it than a father, whose workmanship next after God the child is? If it have any blemish or deformity of body, be it a scar in the face, or stammering in the tongue, or wrinesse in the neck, or disproportion in any limb, what will not a tender hearted parent do to take away such a blemish, and rectify such a distortion? All children are borne with worser deformities in their soul than these imperfections are in their body, and yet how few parents take them to heart? Scarce one of an hundred attendeth upon God's ordinance, and useth the means therein prescribed to cure the natural blindness of ignorance, or to purge the dregs of concupiscence in them, or to break them of many ill customs and habits growing upon them. If children stammer out good words, or pronounce them lispingly, their fathers and mothers are offended at it, and rebuke them for it; but if they speak plainly and distinctly their words, though they be never so rotten and unsavory, they make much of them for it: Verba ne Alexandrinis quidem permittenda deliciis, risu & osculo excipiunt. Hence it cometh to pass that they can speak ill before they can well speak, and drink-in many vices with their mothers milk, and get such ill customs and habits, which afterwards when, they would, they cannot leave; because, according to our true Proverb, That will never out of the flesh which is bread in the bone. It would touch the quickest veins in the heart of a Christian Parent, to hear what a grievous complaint divers children made against their fathers & mothers in S. Cyprian his days. Alas, what have we done that we are thus pitifully tormented? The negligence, or treachery, or misguided zeal of our parents hath brought all this misery upon us; we perish through others default; our fathers and mothers have proved our murderers; they that gave us our natural life bereaved us of a better, by depriving us of the wholesome nourishment of the Word, and giving us a scorpion instead of fish; they plunged us in the mire of all sensual pleasures, when they should have dipped us in the sacred Laver of regeneration; they kept us from God our Father, and the Church our Mother.

But I will not longer insist upon this observation, because (as I conceive) the Spirit useth this speech not so much to set an edge upon our religious care & diligence, as give a back to our patience; only I propose Monica the mother of S. Austin as a pattern to all parents: She endured, saith he, greater sorrow, and was longer in travel for my second birth than my first, and much more rejoiced at it; she continued her fervent prayers day and night, with sighs of grief and tears of love, for my conversion. Sometimes she sought to win me by sweet allurements, sometimes by sharp threats, sometimes by force of argument, sometimes by vehemency of passion; she dealt with many learned Bishops to confer with me, to convince me of my errors, whereof one sent her away with this comfort; Fieri non potest ut filius tantarum lachrymarum pereat; It is not possible that a child should miscarry, for whom the mother hath taken so much thought, and shed so many tears. This care of planting religion in the hearts of children, as ground new broken up, and watering the roots of grace in them by frequent admonitons and instructions, is assigned for the chief cause of those extraordinary blessings which God bestowed upon Abraham: for so we read, Shall I hide from Abraham the things that I do, seeing he shall be a mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? for I know him, that he will command his sons, and his household after him, that they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.

Now because such is the wantonness and stubbornness of most children, that they cannot be taught anything without fear of the rod, the word 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 is in some sort appropriated to gentle corrections, such as are used by Masters and Fathers in the nurturing and teaching their scholars and children. Wherein God taketh a clean contrary course to the custom of most earthly parents: for they commonly beat those children whom they affect not, and lay stripes upon them often without cause or mercy; but they are most indulgent unto, cocker up, and never leave embracing and kissing their darlings: God contrariwise scourgeth that child most, whom he most delighteth in. Why? taketh he any pleasure to see his dearest children's eyes swollen with weeping, their cheeks blubbered with tears, their flesh torn with rods? Surely no: for they that are in such a plight, are rather ruefull spectacles of misery, than amiable objects of love: how then doth he that in love, which he loveth not to do? Is not that elegant speech of Saint Augustine a riddle, Castigat quos amat, non tamen amat Castigare; He chasteneth whom he loves, yet he loves not to chasten? None at all: for a Surgeon launceth the flesh of his dearest friend or brother in love, yet he taketh no pleasure in lancing, nor would do it at all, but to prevent the festering of the sore.

The best answer to the former objection will be, to assign the reasons why God in justice and in love cannot oftentimes withhold his rod from his dearest children. To speak nothing of the relics of original sin in us after Baptism, which like cindars are still apt to set on fire God's wrath, and like an aguish matter left after a fit, still cause new paroxysmes of God's judgments: ease it self and rest casteth us into a dead sleep of security, which we are never thoroughly awaked of, till God smite us on the side, as the Angel did Peter. Prosperity, and a sequence of temporal blessings, like fatness in the soil, breed in the mind a kind of ranknesse, which the sorrows of afflictions eat out. Moreover, worldly pleasures distemper the taste of the soul, so that it cannot relish wholesome food; which evil is cured by drinking deep in the cup of tears. Neither seemeth it to stand with the justice of God, that they who are to triumph in heaven, should perform no worthy service in his battles upon the earth. It is too great ambition for any Christian to desire two heavens; and to attain greater happiness than our Lord and King, who took his cross in his way to his Kingdom, and was crowned with thorns before he was crowned with glory. Lactantius rightly observeth, Bonis brevibus mala aeterna, & malis brevibus bona aeterna succedunt: that we are put to our choice, either to pass from momentary pleasures to everlasting pains, or to pass from momentary pains to everlasting pleasures; either to forgo transitory delights for eternal joys, or to buy the pleasures of sin for a season at the dear rate of everlasting torments. Were there no necessity of justice, that they who are to receive a superexcellent weight of glory, should bear heavy crosses in this life; nor congruity of reason, that they who are to be satisfied with celestial dainties, should fast here, and taste of bitter sorrows, that they might better relish their future banquet: yet it were an indecorum at least, that the Captain should bear all the brunt, and endure all the hardness, and the common soldier endure nothing; that the head should be crowned with thorns, and the members softly arrayed; that the head should be spit upon, and the members have sweet ointments poured on them. Wherefore Saint Paul teacheth us, that all whom God fore-knew, he predestinated to be made conformable to the image of his Son, who was so disfigured with buffets, stripes, blows, and wounds, that the Prophet saith, he had no form in him. What himself spake of the children of Zebedee, appertains to us all, Ye shall drink of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism wherewith I am baptized withal. By baptism he meaneth not to be dipped only in the waters of Marah, but to be plunged in them over head and ears, as the ancient manner of baptism was. He who was nailed to the Cross for us, will have us take up our cross and follow him. He that endured so much to show his love to us, will have us in some sort to answer him in love: which as it is a passion, so it is tried rather by passions than by actions; in which respect we must not only do, but suffer for his sake, that our love may be complete both in parts and degrees. To you it is given, saith Saint Paul, not only to believe in him, but to suffer for his sake. For he suffered for us, giving us an example. Should he have suffered all for us, and as he took away all sin, so all suffering from us, carrying away all crosses and tribulations with him; patience should not have had her work among other divine virtues and graces, and thereby our crown of glory should have wanted one most fair and rich jewel. Wherefore God, who is all goodness, desirous to make us partakers of all the goodness which our nature is capable of, by the misery of his distressed members giveth matter for our charity and compassion, by our continual temptations matter for faith, by conflicts with heretics and persecutors matter for constancy, by the dangers of this life matter for wisdom, by our manifold infirmities and frailties matter for humility, by chastenings and afflictions matter for patience to work upon.

Whether for these, or any better reasons, best known to himself, it is that our heavenly Father holdeth a heavy hand sometimes over his dearest children, certain it is, that few or none of them escape his stroke: he chasteneth as many as he loveth; or, as we read Hebr. 12.6. he scourgeth every son whom he receiveth: therefore all that will live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer affliction. Afflictions are in our way to heaven: for we must through many afflictions enter into the Kingdom of God. Before we sing the song of Moses and the servants of God, we are to swim through a sea of burning glass: the sea is this present life, swelling with pride, wan with envy, boiling with wrath, deep with fraud and malice, foaming with luxuriousness, ebbing and flowing with inconstancy; which is here said to be of glass, to signify the brittle nature thereof; and burning, to represent the furnace of adversity, wherein the godly are still tried and purified in this world. And that we may not think, that God his rod is for those only who are habes in Christ Jesus, let us set before us David and Jeremy: the former a man after God's own heart; the latter a Prophet sanctified from his mothers womb: the former laid his heart a soaking in the brine of afflictions: Every night (saith he) wash I my bed, and water my couch with my tears: and, I have eaten ashes for bread, and tears have been my drink day and night. The other crieth out in the bitterness of his soul, I am the man that have seen affliction in the rod of his indignation. He hath bent his bow, and made me a mark for his arrows, and hath filled me with bitterness, and made me drunk with wormwood. Verily Job sipped not of the cup of trembling, but took such a deep draught, that it bereft him in a manner of all sense, and put him so far besides himself, that he curseth the very day of his birth, and would have it razed out of the calendar: Let that day be darkened, let the shadow of death obscure it, let it not be joined to the days of the year, nor let it come within the count of the months: why died I not in my birth? why died I not when I came out of the womb? Ye hear the loud cries of God's children, whereby ye perceive they feel oftentimes the smart of their Fathers rod, and are sore beat by him.

1. Is it so? doth God chasten every son whom he receiveth? nay in whom he delighteth, not sparing his only beloved son, with whom he was ever well pleased? why then should we look to be privileged and exempted from the orders of Christ's school? How nice and tenderly have we been brought up, that we cannot endure the sight of our heavenly Fathers rod? We stick to sip of that cup which was David's diet-drink; and Jeremy and Job took it all off: are we better than these holy men? nay are we too good to pledge our Savior in the cup of his passion? Do we breathe out some sighs in our crosses? he sighed out his last breath in torments upon the cross: Nos suspiramus in cruciatibus, ill expiravit in cruce. Do our troubles and vexations draw some watery tears from our eyes? his drew from him tears of blood, yea clotted blood from all parts of his body. Doth the burden of our sins press our souls? the burden of the sins of the whole world lay upon him. Are we pricked with cares? he was crowned with thorns. Are we cruciated? he was crucified. Tacitus reporteth, that though the amber ring among the Romans were before of no value, yet after the Emperor began to wear it, it became to be in great esteem: so (me thinks) since our Lord and Savior both bore his cross, and was borne upon it, we should make better reckoning of crosses; and it should be counted an honor for every Christian to take up his cross and follow him.

2. Again, doth God chasten as many as he loveth; and consequently, loveth them not at all whom he never chasteneth? how far then are most of us besides the matter in our judgment, and opinion of these things? If we see a man flourish in prosperity, we commonly say such a man is beloved of God; for he thriveth in the world, and all things prosper with him: but if on the sudden all the fruits of his labors are blasted with some sharp wind of adversity, if we see him never without some grief or other, some cross or other, we alter our opinion, and suppose him to be some wretch, whom God plagueth for his sins. If the Viper be upon Paul's hand, he is presently a murderer, whom vengeance would not suffer to live: whereas the verdict and sentence of the Holy Ghost, whereto our judgments should absolutely submit, is far otherwise. Loe, these are the wicked, who have their portion in this life, the rod of God is not upon them: they grow in wealth, and their seed is established in their sight. They come in no trouble like other folk, neither are they plagued like other men. Their eyes stand out with fatness, and they have more than heart can wish. Thou hast planted them, and they have taken root, and bring forth fruit.

I speak not this to detract from the bounty of our gracious God, who hath the blessings of this life and the life to come in store for his children, and he bestoweth them upon them, when he seeth it good for them; but to lessen somewhat our great opinion of them, and put us in a better conceit of afflictions, which are surer arguments of God's love than the other. Had the Apostle said, We must through many pleasures enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, it is to be thought Heaven would have been full by this time: but he saith not so, but the direct contrary; We must through many afflictions enter into it. Wherefore, as passengers that have been told that their way lieth over a steep hill, or down a craggy rock, or through a morish fen, or dirty vale, if they suddenly fall into some pleasant meddow enameled with beautiful flowers, or a goodly corn field, or a fair champian country, look about them, and, bethinking themselves where they are, say,

So in the course of our life, which is a pilgrimage upon earth, when we pass through fields of corn, or gardens of flowers, and enjoy all worldly pleasures and contentments, let us cast with ourselves: This anxiety of mind, this careful circumspection, this questioning ourselves, and suspecting our own ways, will bring us into the right way: for by thus afflicting ourselves in prosperity, we shall make it the way to Heaven. As the Passover was to be eaten with sour herbs, so let us sauce all our worldly comforts with these sharp and sour meditations, that we surfeit not of them.

What then? are we professedly to pray for afflictions? No, God requireth no such thing; but only that we patiently endure them. May we not enjoy the blessings of this life? We may, but not over-joy in them. What Christ speaketh of riches, may be said of the rest: If honors, if promotions, if all sorts of worldly comforts abound to us, let us not set our hearts on them: let us neither accept the greatest preferments with his curse, nor repine at the greatest afflictions with his love. As Fabritius told Pyrrhus, who one day tempted him with gold, and the next day sought to terrefie him with an Elephant, which before he had never seen; Yesterday I was no whit moved with your gold, nor today with your beast: So let neither abundance transport us, nor wants dismay us: neither prosperity exalt us, nor adversity deject us; but both incite us to bless God: In prosperity to praise his bounty, and in adversity his justice; and in both, his provident care over us.

THE LOT OF THE GODLY. THE XLVIII. SERMON.

I Have discovered unto you in the opening of this Text four springs of the rivers of Paradise, for the comfort and refreshing of all that are heavy laden, and wearied in their travel to the celestial Canaan, and often scorched with the heat of heart-burning sorrows and grief:

• The first arising from the author of afflictions.
• The second from the nature of afflictions.
• The third from the subject of afflictions.
• The fourth from the end of afflictions.

• 1. God sendeth afflictions, I.
• 2. Afflictions are chastenings, chasten.
• 3. Chastenings are the lot of all his children, as many.
• 4. All his children thus chastened are beloved, as I love.

1. God hath a hand in the scourging his children, I. Let us therefore

• 1. Submit under his mighty hand in patience.
• 2. Lay our hand on our mouth in silence.
• 3. Lift up our hands to him, and in prayer turn to him that smiteth us.

2. All our sufferings are chastenings of our heavenly Father for our amendment. Let us therefore

• 1. Be instructed by them.
• 2. Take comfort in them.
• 3. Be thankful for them.

3. Chastenings are the lot of all God's children: therefore let

• 1. None repine at them,
• 2. All look and prepare for them.

4. God striketh his children not in anger, but in love: therefore let us

• 1. Seek to be of the number of his children,
• 2. Embrace his love,
• 3. In like manner chasten those whom we love.

The water of the two former springs we have tasted heretofore; let us now draw out of the third, which is so great and spacious that all God's children may bathe in it together.

As many. God scourgeth every son whom he receiveth, not exempting his best beloved and only begotten Son. For the chastisement of our peace was laid upon him; he was chastened for our sins, but we for our amendment. In every part of God's floor there is some chaff, affliction is the fan to cleanse it: in all the gold of the Sanctuary there is some dross, affliction is the fire that purgeth it: in all the branches of the true Vine there are some superfluous stems, affliction is the pruning knife to cut them off: in all the members of the mystical body there are some peccant humors, affliction is the pill to purge them. We are all too greedy of the sweet milk of worldly pleasures, therefore God weaneth us from them by annointing the teat with wormwood. When the Angel in the Apocalypse had recorded all the troubles, and calamities, and miseries that should fall in the last times, he closeth up all with this epiphonema, Here is the patience of the Saints: as if the Saints were to bear them all, who certainly bear the greater part. For besides common evils, in which most men (if not all) have their part, though usually Benjamins portion is the greatest, I mean, loss of goods, decease of friends, captivity, banishment, imprisonment, sickness, and death; there are many heavy crosses laid upon the Saints of God, which the children of the world never see, and much less feel the weight of them. Many have written learnedly of the divers sorts and forms of material crosses, wherewith the bodies of God's children have been tortured by persecuting Tyrants; but none yet hath, or (as I am persuaded) can describe the spiritual crosses, wherewith many of them have been, and are daily martyred in mind. I will set five before you, and let everyone add his own particular cross unto them: they are

• 1. Derision.
• 2. Indignation.
• 3. Compassion.
• 4. Spiritual desertions.
• 5. Godly sorrow.

1. Derision: for as Ishmael derided Isaac, and as Michal scoffed at David, so they that are borne of the flesh, mock at them that are borne of the spirit; and this scorn and derision so grievously afflicted many of God's children, that it is called in Scripture persecution, and a great trial. Others had trial of cruel mockings; and as he that was borne of the flesh persecuted him that was borne of the spirit, so it is now.

2. Indignation at the prosperity of the wicked, which was a great eyesore, as we heard before, to Job, David, and Jeremy.

3 Compassion for the miseries of God's chosen, 2 Cor. 11.28, 29.

4 The state of spiritual desertion, when God seemeth for a time to withdraw the comforts of the Spirit from them, Psal. 22.1, 2.

5 Godly sorrow, when they are cast down to the ground with the weight of their sin, and have a quick sense and feeling of the displeasure of their heavenly Father. The three former scourges draw many tears from their eyes; but the two latter life-blood from their hearts: and if God stayed not his hand, and in the depth of their sorrows refreshed them with comforts, they could not but be swallowed up in the gulf of despair. For the more a man feareth God, and is sensible of his love, the more tender he is to bear his wrath; and the tenderer he is, the arrows of God pierce deeper, and stick faster in the soul, which none can pluck out but he that shot them.

The reprobate, as Calvin rightly observeth, though God lay often upon them many heavy strokes, yet because they weigh not the cause, nor are pricked in heart for their sins, by their carelessness gather hardness; and because they murmur and kick against God, and make an uproar against his proceedings, their rage transporteth them into madness, and their madness breeds in them an insensible stupidity: but the faithful being admonished by God his correction, presently descend into the consideration of their own sins, and being stricken with grief and horror, fly to him by humble prayer for pardon; and unless God in mercy should asswage these sorrows, wherewith their souls are heavy unto death, they would buckle under so great a burden, and languish in despair. The manner of the Psilli (which are a kind of people of that temper and constitution that no venom will hurt them) is, that if they suspect any child to be none of their own, they set an adder upon it to sting it; and if it cry and the flesh swell, they cast it away for spurious: but if it never quatch nor be the worse after it, they account it their own, and make very much of it. In like manner Almighty God tyres his children by enduring crosses and afflictions: he suffereth the old Serpent to sting them, and bring troubles and sorrows upon them; and if they patiently endure them and make good use of them, he offereth himself unto them as to children, and will make them heirs of his kingdom: but if they roar, and cry, and storm, and fret, and can no ways abide the pain, he accounteth them for bastards and no children. God commanded the Altar, and Table, and Candlesticks, and vessels, and instruments in the Sanctuary to be made of pure and beaten gold: and accordingly all they that hope or desire to be made vessels of honor and golden instruments of God's glory, must make account to be tried in God's furnace, and beat with his hammer. We may not look to find God in the pleasant gardens of Egypt, whom Moses found in the thorny bush. The Spouse in the Canticles met not with him whom her soul loved in the day of prosperity, but in the night of adversity.

None ought to be extraordinarily affected in ordinary accidents, nor impropriate to himself the common afflictions of all God's children. The Poet said truly,

Therefore Socrates professed that he was the more willing to drink off his fatal potion prepared by the State, because after his death he should meet with Palamedes, whose lot it was to be unjustly condemned, as he was. If there be any virtue in this drugge, any comfort in the society of sufferers, if grief be diminished by dividing it among many, we have as many partners in our afflictions as God hath children in the world: we bear not alone Christ's whole cross, as Simon Cyreneus once did; all the Saints of God bear a part with us. May we not in this respect take great comfort in affliction, that by them we are made free of Christ's school, and partakers of the nurture & discipline of all God's children, and in it every day more and more conformed to the image of our Savior? which the more it was defaced, the more fair and beautiful it maketh us; the more pitiful it was to behold, the more powerful to move compassion, and purchase to us freedom from all misery and woe. The stretching of his joints added to our stature, and the blackness and wannesse of his stripes proved the beauty of our souls: the wider his wounds were torn, the more anguish ran out of our sores; the more blood he shed out of his heart, the more he poured into our veins, and the abundance of his tears was the overflowing of our waters of comfort. Therefore the Spouse of Christ contemplating the image of her husband, by so much the more amiable, by how much the more disfigured for her sake, blusheth not to proclaim her self black; I am black, O ye daughters of Jerusalem. Because it was the color of her husband, she taketh a glory in bearing his shame; a holy pride in resembling the colors of his stripes: Nigredo est, sed sponsi similitudo est; seem it a deformity, yet it is a conformity to her husband Christ Jesus.

Yea, but Cardinal Bellarmine laboreth to wrest out of our hands the strong weapons we find in my text against impatiency, and repining at afflictions: for he maketh temporal felicity an inseparable note of true believers, and consequently temporal infelicity, and outward calamities the marks of heretics and reprobates, living and dying without the Church, as being aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel. If this were so, all the balm of Gilead would not cure the wounds and sores of Christ's afflicted members: if to losses, disgraces, banishment, imprisonment, and all outward evils which they often endure, you add the note of a reprobate, and a fearful expectation of everlasting pains to succeed these which put their patience daily to the test; how can they but condemn their eyes to everlasting tears, who have no hope of a better life hereafter, and are here made a spectacle to the world, and Angels, and men, who are killed all the day long, and therefore die daily?

But be of good comfort all ye who sigh and groan under the burden of your afflictions, or weight of your crosses: he who excludeth you out of the true Church by reason of your manifold afflictions in this life, excludeth with you the holy Prophets and men of God, before Christ's coming, and since; Who were tried with mockings, and scourgings; yea moreover with bonds and imprisonment, were stoned, were hewn asunder, were slain with the sword, wandered up and down in sheep's skins, and goats skins, destitute, afflicted, and tormented, of whom the world was not worthy. He excludeth the glorious company of the Apostles, and noble army of Martyrs, and Christ himself from the true Church. All the Jesuitical sleights which this cunning Sophister useth, cannot avoid the evident absurdity lighting upon his erroneous assertion, unless he can impeach the sacred records; where we find the Church butchered in Abel, floating in the Ark, going on pilgrimage in the days of the Patriarchs, taken captive in Egypt, after wandering in the wilderness, flying to save her life, and hiding her self in the time of idolatrous Kings: and after Christ's coming into the flesh cruelly persecuted, first by Heathen, after by Arian and heretical Emperors, and last of all by Antichrist and his adherents. Ye see by this Epitomy of her story the reason of her complaints, Regard me not because I am black, for the sun hath looked upon me, the sons of my mother were angry against me. The watchmen that went about the City found me, they smote me, and wounded me, and took away my veil from me. Stay me with flagons, and comfort me with apples, for I am sick for love. Hereby also you may give a fit motto to those emblems in holy Scripture, A lilly among thorns, A dove whose note is mourning, A vine spoiled by little foxes, and partly rooted out by the wild bore of the forest, A woman great with child, and a fiery dragon pursuing her. According to which patterns Saint Jerome frameth his, A bush burning, yet not consuming; and as fitly Saint Gregory draweth her with Christ's cross in her hand, with her challenge there unto, Ecclesia haeres crucis, The Church is an inheretrix of the cross. And it appeareth by all records hitherto that she hath possessed it; and if we examine the matter well, we shall find that Christ had nothing else to leave her at his death. For goods and lands upon earth he never had; The foxes, saith he, have holes, and the birds nests, but the son of man hath not where to lay his head. His soul he bequeathed to his father, his body was begged by Joseph of Arimathea, his garments the soldiers took for their fee, and cast lots upon his vestments: only the cross, together with the nails, and gall and vinegar bestowed upon him at his death, he left her as a Heriot. For these, withal the appurtenances, scourges, cries, sighs, groans, stripes, and wounds, he bequeathed to her by his life time, in those words, In the world ye shall have troubles, they shall persecute you in their Synagogues, and scourge you, and ye shall be hated of all men for my names sake; insomuch that they that kill you, shall think they do God good service. Ye shall weep and mourn, but the world shall rejoice. Upon which words Tertullian inferreth, God hath disposed of joys and sorrows by turns; let us mourn when worldlings rejoice, that when they mourn we may rejoice. Thou art too dainty and choice, O Christian, if besides the joys of heaven laid up for thee, thou lookest for a liberal portion of delights and pleasures in this world; nay thou art too foolish if thou countest there is any true pleasure in such things wherein they place their happiness. I need not press many texts of Scripture which yield this sharp juice: as, Many are the troubles of the righteous: All that will live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution: Judgment begins at the house of God; this verse alone which I now handle is sufficient to clear Christ's afflicted members from all note of heresy, and imputation of reprobates. For if afflictions are chastisements of God's children, and tokens of his love (I rebuke and chasten as many as I love) then are they not necessarily judgments for sin, messengers of wrath, much less proper marks of heretics and reprobates. The kingdom of heaven is not necessarily annexed to earthly crowns, nor is eternal glory any way an appendant to worldly pomp. To conclude, affluence of temporal blessings is no note of the true, because store of afflictions is no note of the false Church. Which truth is so apparent, that many Papists of note have expressly delivered it in their annotations upon holy Scripture; as Stapleton, the Rhemists, and Maldonado: God causeth his Sun to rise upon the just and upon the unjust; whence (saith the Jesuit) it is evident that the prosperity of men or nations is no certain sign or argument of the truth or purity of religion which they profess. Howbeit as Praxiteles drew Venus after the picture of Cratina his Mistress, and all the Painters of Thebes after the similitude of Phryne a beautiful strumpet: so Bellarmine being to paint and limb Christ's Spouse, took his notes from his own Mistress, the Roman Phryne, the whore of Babylon, and mother of fornications. Look upon the picture of that strumpet drawn to the life by Saint John (Apoc. 17.) and let your eyes be Judges. I saw (saith he) a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast (verse. 3.) full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns (verse. 4.) And the woman was arrayed in purple, and scarlet color, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls, (what is this but Bellarmine his note of temporal felicity?) having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations; of which it seemeth the Cardinal drank deep, when he took the pencil in his hand to pourtray the true Church, else he could not be so out in his draught, nor so utterly forget not only what others, but himself also had formerly set down in this point. For in his solution of an objection of Martin Luther, who stood in the opposite extreme, affirming afflictions to be an inseparable note of the Church, he confesseth freely that the Church in the beginning and in the end was in great straights: and for this purpose, to show that persecutions though they eclipse the glory of the Church, yet can never utterly extinguish it, he alleges such remarkable passages out of the ancient Fathers as these: Persecution is but the pruning of Christ's vine: and, the blood of Martyrs is as seed: and, the grains that fall one by one and die in the earth, rise up again in great numbers. If the Church run into superfluous stemmes without the pruning knife of afflictions: if the blood of martyrs turneth into seed to generate new Martyrs: if the Church in her nonage had many sore conflicts, and shall have greater in her old age; certainly abundance, ease, pleasure, and glory, which make up temporal felicity, are no notes of her: for Notae debem esse inseparabiles, the notes of anything cannot be severed from it, as himself affirmeth. By this I hope ye all perceive a great difference between the true lineaments of Christ his Spouse, and Bellarmine his counterfeit draught; between the Queen of Solomon all glorious within, and the whore of Babylon all pompous without; between the manicles and fetters of the one, and the bracelets and chains of the other; between the cup of affliction in her hand, and the cup of abominations in the hand of this; and ye are persuaded that of all outward marks, next to her speech, the language of Canaan, and her diet the blessed Sacrament, the surest are some scars and cuts, together with the print of stripes upon her other ways most fair and unspotted body.

Yet because the law condemneth no man before he hath been heard, though perhaps he hath nothing, or as good as nothing to say for himself, I will propose unto you his allegations, which are principally the examples of Abraham, Moses, David, Hezekiah, and Josiah; and by these he will be tried, whether temporal happiness be not a note of true professors. To which instances I answer in general, that if these men had been chosen out of God, upon whom he will show the riches of his goodness in the blessings of this life, yet their special privileges were not to come into the account of common favors, nor their particular examples to make general rules. The inward estate and life of the Church more dependeth upon the outward happiness of Princes, than the fortunes of private men; neither can we judge of a Play by one Scene, nor of the happiness of a man's life by one act, or more, but the whole current thereof. But what if these Worthies of the world, whom he singleth out for paragons of happiness, had no temporal felicity at all? or none in comparison with their troubles and adversity? or at least in comparison with the prosperity of the heathen Emperors, and persecuting Tyrants, whose dominions were far larger, estate securer, victories incomparably greater? Vouchsafe you a look to his particulars.

First, he bringeth in Abraham as an example of the temporal felicity of true professors, whom the Scripture rather proposeth as a pattern of patience, and a spectacle of manifold adversity: a pilgrim wandering from his own country, afflicted with famine in Egypt, forced to forgo his wife, and deny her to save his life, without any issue by her till his old age, and when God gave him a son commanded to slay him with his own hands. Yet may it be pleaded for Bellarmine that Abraham got a notable victory, and wan the field of Kedarlaomer and other Kings, and rescued his brother Lot. Admit this, but withal let it be noted that in the self same story Lot was taken prisoner by Kedarlaomer, and consequently that victory in war is no certain argument of the truth of religion. Howsoever, will they conclude it to be summer by the flight of one swallow? or account it a fair day wherein the sun once showeth himself?

I need not speak of Moses, in whom he secondly instanceth, the Scripture is plain, That he chose rather to suffer affliction with the children of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. Who can be ignorant, except peradventure some Lay Papist prohibited to read the sacred Scriptures, how Moses was exposed by his parents, put in an Ark of bulrushes into the river, saved from drowning by Pharaohs daughter? how he fled to save his life, & kept close forty years in the land of Madian? And after he had led the children of Israel through infinite difficulties & dangers, notwithout many murmurings and conspiracies against his person, when he came to the very borders of Canaan was forbid to enter in, and commanded by God himself to die upon Mount Nebo. What shall I speak of David and the rest? did not foreign wars, and home-bred seditions, the conspiracy of his own son Absalom against him, together with infinite other troubles, griefs and cares, contstrain him oftentimes to mingle his drink with his tears, and the songs of Zion with his sighs? Was he a mirror of temporal happiness, who complaineth in the bitterness of his soul; I am weary of my groaning, every night wash I my bed and water my couch with my tears: my beauty is gone for very trouble, and worn away because of all my enemies. I am a worm and no man, the very scorn of men, and outcast of the people. One depth of sorrow calleth upon another, all thy waves & storms have gone over me? As for Hezekiah, it cannot be denied that God richly rewarded his zeal, and crowned the calendar of his life with many festivals; yet Saint Bernard's observation was verified in him, that no man ever had such a prosperous course, but that he received a rub before his death: Fieri non potest ut in hoc seculo quisquam non gustet angustias. For in his time Sennacharib besieged Jerusalem, and put the good King in fear of his crown and life: and after his miraculous delivery from that danger, he fell into a worse. For he was smitten with a dangerous disease, thought to be the plague: the Text saith, he was sick unto death; and in the bitterness of his pain, and fear of present death, he crieth out, Behold, for felicity I had bitter grief and misery. But most of all is the Cardinal out in his last instance of Josiah, of whom after the commendation of his zeal in reformation of Religion, and taking away all abominations out of Israel and Judah, we read little, but that fighting with Pharaoh Neco he was slain at Megiddo, and all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for him, and the Prophet Jeremy, and all singing men and singing women bewailed his death in their lamentations to this day.

Ye see how unhappy this great Advocate of Rome is in his instances of temporal happiness; yet had they been all happy whom he nameth, and drunk their fill of the rivers of pleasure, and never tasted the waters of Marah, what are they to that great multitude which no man can number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, that stood before the Throne and the Lamb, arrayed with long white robes, having palms in their hands? concerning whom when one of the Elders asked, what are these, and whence came they? and Saint John answered, Lord, thou knowest: the Elder replieth, saying: These are they that came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb: therefore are they in the presence of the Throne of God, and serve him day and night in his Temple, and he that fitteth on the Throne will dwell among them.

I will conclude this point with that grave determination of S. Augustine: It pleased divine providence to prepare hereafter good things for the righteous, wherein the wicked shall not partake with them; and evils for the wicked, wherewith the righteous shall never be troubled: but as for these temporal good things and evil, he would have them in some sort common to both; that neither the blessings of this life should be too greedily desired, in which wicked men have a share, neither crosses and afflictions too fearfully avoided, which we see fall often to the lot of the righteous. In sum, neither prosperity, nor adversity, nor affluence of earthly blessings, nor afflictions, are infallible demonstrations of God's love, nor certain and inseparable notes of Christ's Church. Afflictions may be (though usually they are not in them that fear God) judgments of wrath; and temporal blessings may be (though usually in most men they are not) tokens of God's love. Therefore let us not set our heart and affections upon worldly goods, because they are often the portions of the wicked; neither yet let us set our hearts wholly against them, because they may fall to the lot of the righteous, and do, when they may further and not hinder their eternal salvation. Let us not desire the greatest preferments of this world with God's hatred, nor refuse the greatest crosses with his love. Let us not repine at the temporal felicity of the wicked, which endeth in eternal misery; nor be dismayed at the temporal infelicity of the godly, because it endeth in everlasting felicity. Let prosperity commend our charity and temperance, and adversity our courage and patience. Let us do for Christ in the one, and suffer for him in the other, and in both estates admire his provident justice, and for both sanctified unto us, praise his gracious goodness. Cui, &c.

THE OYLE OF THYME. THE XLIX. SERMON.

PLutarch in his Treatise of the tranquility of the mind, writeth, that though Thyme be a most dry and bitter herb, yet that not only the Apothecaries draw an wholesome oil out of it; but also that the Bees extract from thence sweet honey. This dry and bitter herb is affliction to the taste of most men; yet out of it we have drawn both a wholesome oil to cure a wounded conscience, and honey also to delight the spiritual taste. Oil out of the nature of afflictions, which are chastenings, and honey out of the cause, God's love: As many as I love I rebuke and chasten. In this Text the parts answer the number of the words, the arguments the parts, the comforts the arguments, as I have declared heretofore; yet they all (with much ado) draw our assent to this conclusion, That we are not to rise up at, nor to faint under God's correcting hand. For the doctrine of enduring affliction is durus sermo, quis potest ferre? a hard speech, who can endure it? Albeit we know that God hath the chief stroke therein, and all his dearest children have part with us, yet we grudge at them: though we are taught even by God himself, that they are effects of his love, and causes of our good, yet we are dismayed at them. So bladder -like is the soul of man, that being filled with earthly vanities, though but wind, it groweth great, and swelleth in pride; but if it be pricked with the least pin or smallest needle of piercing grief, it presently shriveleth to nothing. Afflictions are pillulae lucis (pills made on purpose to clear the eye-sight) prescribed by a most tender and skillful Physician, gilt over with the names of chastenings and fatherly corrections, and sugered with the love of God, yet they will not down: nay it is well if it be not so ill with many of us, that we return him bitter words for his bitter pills, and storm against him, who hereby bringeth to us the quiet fruit of righteousness, insani adversus antidotum, quo fani esse possimus, growing mad against the remedy of our madness. For are we not come to that pass, Ut nec morbos nec remedia ferre possimus, that we can neither endure our pain, nor abide the cure? Tribulation (saith the Apostle) bringeth patience: It should do so indeed, and through the power of grace it doth so in perfect Christians; but the contrary is verified in the greater part of men. Tribulation bringeth impatience, not of it self, but according to the disposition of the patient; as wholesome potions given to generate good blood, in a fowl stomach turn to choler. In this case the Physicians prescribe purges. Purges are to be given according to the nature of the humor to be purged; and therefore the cure of the malady begins at the knowledge of the cause, which in this will be found to be the relics of original corruption, nourished by the ill diet of the soul, immoderately glutting her self with sensual delights, and much increased by false opinions.

To begin with the sink of original sin, sending up noisome fumes and vapors, which distemper the inward man. Of other things, as peace of conscience, and joy in the Holy Ghost, we easlier speak than conceive them, and easlier conceive them what they may be in others, than sensibly apprehend them in ourselves; but we feel rather than understand, and understand better than we can express this hereditary disease and habitual depravation of our whole nature. It is that corrupt humor, or malignant quality drawn from the loins of our first parents, which tainteth our blood, surpriseth our vital faculties, stoppeth or much hindereth the motions of God's Spirit, and the operations of this grace in us; so that we neither can do, nor suffer the will of God without regret and reluctancy. It is the prima materia of all diseases, the tinder of natural lusts, easily set on fire with hell: it disposeth us to all evil, and breedeth in us an averseness from all good: it is not subject to the Law of God, neither can it be; it rebelleth against the law of our mind, and enthralleth us to sin and Satan, and even after we are freed from the dominion of sin, so fettereth our feet, that we cannot with any expedition run the ways of God's commandments. Though the prosperous gales of God's Spirit drive us toward the haven where we would be; yet the main tide of our corruption runneth so strong the contrary way, that we much float, and sails but flowly. Saint Peter, no doubt, after our Savior acquainted him with the kind of death whereby he was to glorify God, did his best to incline his will that way; yet he could not keep it to that bent, but that it slacked and bowed another way, as Christ's words imply: Ducent te quo nolis, They shall lead thee whither thou wouldest not. He saith not they shall draw thee, but they shall lead thee. Peter therefore was in some sort willing to go with them that led him to the cross, yet he somewhat shrinked at it: though the spirit was strong in him, yet the flesh was weak. Who ever did or suffered more for the Gospel than Saint Paul? yet he professeth that in regard of the law of sin in his members, the good which he would do he did not, and the evil which he would not do, that he did. And being thus crossed in all his godly desires and endeavors, he crieth out, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death?

Ye see now the root of bitterness set so deep in our hearts, that it cannot be plucked up till we are transplanted: there is no hope in this life to purge out this matter of continual diseases, it is so mingled with our radical moisture, the balsamum of our lives; only we may abate it by subtracting nourishment from it, and allay the force of it by strengthening nature against it by prayers, godly instructions, and continual exercises of religious duties.

A nearer cause of our so great distemper in afflictions we owe to the delights of our prosperity, which, as the pleasures of Capua did Hannibals soldiers, so weaken our minds, and make us so choice and tender, that we cannot bear the weight of our own armor, much less the strokes of an enraged enemy. The body used to soft raiment, cannot bear the weight of an helmet, the head wrapped in silk night-caps, cannot endure an iron head-piece, the hard hilt hurteth the soft hand. It was wisely observed by the Heathen Sage, that none are broken with adversity, but such as were weakened before, and made crazy by ease and prosperity. Sound trees are not blown down with the wind, but the roots rather fastened thereby; but corrupt trees eaten with worms, engendered of superfluous moisture, are therefore thrown down by the least blast, because they had no strength to resist. Why do losses of goods so vex us, but because we trusted in uncertain riches? Why is disgrace a Courtiers hell, but because he deemed the favor of the Prince, & places of honorable employment his heaven? We are therefore astonished at our fall, because sometimes with David in the height of our worldly felicity we said, We shall never be moved. If when we had the world at will, we had used the things of this life as if we used them not: now in the change of our estate, our not using them would be all one as if we used them. The best means to asswage the pains of affliction when it shall befall us, will be in the time of our wealth to abate the pleasures of prosperity: if we sauce all our earthly joys with godly sorrow, all our worldly sorrow shall be mixed with much spiritual joy and comfort. Let us not over-greedily seek, nor highly esteem, nor immoderately take, nor intemperately joy in the delights and comforts which wealth and prosperity afford, and the rod of God's afflicting hand shall fall but lightly upon us. Let us not so fill our hearts with temporary pleasures, but that we leave some place for these and the like sad and sober thoughts:

These and the like meditations are not only good preservatives in prosperity, but also lenitives in adversity: as they help us to digest and concoct felicity, so they strengthen us to bear misery. All that we now possess, and the world so much doteth upon, what are they in their nature and condition but things indifferent? therefore we ought to be indifferently affected to them, and the contrary: they are transitory, what strange thing then is it, if they pass from us? they are far inferior to the immortal spirit that quickeneth our bodies, therefore cannot the want of them deprive it of happiness: they are not our inheritance forever, nor our donatives or legacies for life, but talents for a while committed to us, to employ them to our Masters best advantage: therefore the restoring them back is no mulct, but a surrender; no loss, but a discharge. The more of this sort we are trusted with, the more liable we are to an account: how then are we hurt or endamaged by the diminution of that which lessens our accounts? Finally, they are often effects of God's wrath, and their effects usually are sensuality, security, and stupidity, against which afflictions are a special remedy. To extract then the quintessence of the herbs and flowers of Paradise, and make of them a cordial to comfort us in worldly losses. Nothing is absolutely good but God, all other things respectively only; temporal blessings, as they proceed from his love, and may be employed to his glory, in this respect only to be desired and loved. If then we affect God in them, and enjoy them in God, and it be made apparent unto us, that afflictions and losses are sometimes more certain tokens of God's love, and that they minister unto us more matter and greater occasion of testifying our love to him, and means of setting forth his glory, we should be rather glad than sorrowful when God seeth it best for us, to exchange the former for the latter.

Yea but the forlorn Christian (out of all heart, because in his conceit out of God's favor) will reply, Shew me that the countenance of God is not changed towards me, nor his affections estranged from me, and it sufficeth: surely kissings and embracings, not blows and strokes, are love complements; how may I be persuaded that God layeth his heavy cross upon me in love? Nay, how canst thou not be persuaded, since he himself hath said it, I chasten as many as I love? which words that thou mayest take more hold of, he hath often repeated them in holy Scripture. Desirest thou greater assurance than his words, which is all that heaven and earth have to show for their continuance? yet if thou desire more, rather helps of thine infirmity, than confirmations of this truth, observe who are oftenest & longest under God's afflicting hand, who are fullest of his marks: if they are deepest in sorrow, who are highest in his favor: if they mourn in Zion, who sing Hallelujah in the heavenly Jerusalem: if they go in black and sables here, who are arrayed in long white robes there: if they lay their heart a soake in tears, who are men after God's own heart: if Benjamins portion be greatest in afflictions, assuredly manifold tribulations and God's favor may stand together. In the truth of which assertion all those Texts of Scripture may establish us, which set before us the sweet fruits that are gathered from the cross: as,

1. Knowledge: It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn thy statutes.

2. Zeal: I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offenses, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me diligently.

3. Repentance: I truly am set in the plague, and my heaviness is ever in my sight: I will confess my wickedness, and be sorry for my sins. When the people were stung with fiery serpents, they came to Moses and said, We have sinned: for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee. And again, In their trouble they turned to the Lord God of Israel, and sought him, and he was found of them. When the Prodigal was pinched with famine, he came to himself and said, How many hired servants in my fathers house have meat enough, and I perish with hunger? I will arise therefore and go to my father, &c.

4. Patience: Tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope.

5. Joy in the Holy Ghost: Receiving the Word with much affliction, with joy in the Holy Ghost.

6. Trial of our faith, which like gold is purged by the fire of afflictions. Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. Our heart is not turned back, nor our steps gone out of the way, no not when thou hast smitten us into the place of Dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death.

7. Righteousness: No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless, yet afterwards it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby.

8. Holiness: It became him, for whom were all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to consecrate the Captain of our salvation through afflictions. The fathers of our flesh for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure: but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness.

9. Estranging our affections from the world and earthly desires: Elijah requested that he might die, It is enough, Lord, take away my life, I am no better than my fathers. We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened, not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.

11. Humility: The messenger of Satan was sent to buffet me; and that I should not be exalted above measure, there was given me a thorn in my flesh.

11. Renovation and ghostly strength: Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses: for when I am weak, then am I strong, and though our outward man decay, yet our inward man is renewed day by day.

12. Freedom from everlasting torments: When we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.

13. Encrease of celestial glory: For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

The Heathen that never tasted the least part of these fruits, yet feeling by experience, that the mind cloyed with continual felicity grew a burden to it self, was deprived hereby of matter and occasion of excellent virtues; and not so only, but infatuated and wholly corrupt thereby, maintained this memorable Paradox, That none was so unhappy as be who knew no mishap nor adversity at any time. Nay they went farther in that their conceit, and thereby came nearer to my text, affirming that store of wealth, large possessions, high places, and great honors, were not always signs and tokens of the love of God. God, saith the wise Poet (and the best Philosopher taketh it out of him) sendeth many men great prosperity, not out of love and good will, but to the end that they may be capable of greater misery, and that the calamities which they are after to endure may be more eminent and signal:

Misery is always querulous, and even weak objections often ruin them who are already cast down with grief: such as are these; Doth not God threaten to pour out his plagues upon the wicked? Do we not read in Saint Paul, Tribulation and anguish upon every soul that sinneth, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile? Are not losses, infamy, captivity, banishment, tortures and torments, judgments of wrath? how then can they be arguments of love? I answer, that originally all the evils of this life came in with sin, and were punishments of it; and they retain their nature still in the wicked: but in the godly, by the mercy of God, and merits of Christ, they are changed from judgments of wrath, into chastisements of love; from stings of sin, to remedies against sin; from executions of vengeance, to exercises of excellent virtues: and the inflicting of them so little prejudiceth God's love to his chosen, that he no way more showeth it to them than by thus awaking them out of their sleep, and by this means pulling them out of hell fire. And therefore the Prophets threaten it after all other judgments, as the greatest of all, that for their obstinacy and impenitency God would punish them no more: Why should ye be stricken anymore, saith the Lord? which is as if a Physician should say concerning his desperate Patient, I will minister no more physic to him, give him what he hath a mind unto, because there is no hope of life in him. As it is a loving part in a Tutor to correct his Scholar privately for a misdemeanor, to save him from the heavier stroke of the Magistrate, or the Jaile: so it is a singular favor of God to chasten his children here, that they may not be condemned with the world hereafter. I end the solution of this doubt with the peremptory resolution of Saint Bernard: If God be not with thee, O Christian, by grace, he will be with thee by vengeance or judgment here; and woe be to thee if he be so with thee, nay woe be unto thee if he be not so with thee, or not so even with thee: for if thou art preserved from temporal chastisements, thou art reserved to eternal punishments.

The last doubt that riseth in the mind of the broken hearted Christian, to be assoiled at this time, is drawn from the words of the wise man; All things fall alike unto all men, the same net taketh clean and unclean fowls, and enwrappeth them in a like danger. In famine what difference between the Elect and Reprobate? both pine away: In pestilence what distinction of the righteous and the sinner? both are alike struck by the Angel: In captivity what privilege hath he that feareth God more than he that feareth him not? both bear the same yoke: In hostile invasion how can we discern who is the child of God, and who is not; when all are slaughtered like sheep, and their blood like water spilled upon the ground?

[Sol. 1] Here not to refer all to God's secret judgment, who only knoweth who are his intruth and sincerity; [Sol. 2] nor to rely wholly upon his extraordinary providence, whereby he miraculously saveth his servants, and preserveth them in common calamities, even above hope, as he did Noah from the deluge of water which drowned the old world; as he did Lot from the deluge of fire, which overwhelmed and burnt Sodom and Gomorrah; as he did the children of Israel in Goshen from the plagues of Egypt; as he did Moses from the massacre of the infants by Pharaoh; as he did Elias from the sword of Jezebel drunk with the blood of the Prophets; as he did all those Christians among the Romans, that fled to the Sepulchers of the Martyrs, when the city was sacked by the Goths; as he did those pious children, who carried their fathers and mothers upon their backs through the midst of the fire in the Towns near Aetna, whereof Aristotle religiously discourseth in his Book De mundo: When, saith he, from the hill Aetna there ran down a torrent of fire that consumed all the houses thereabout, in the midst of those fearful flames God's special care of the godly shined most brightly: for the river of fire parted it self on this side and that side, and made a kind of lane for those who ventured to rescue their aged parents, and pluck them out of the jaws of death. To make an evident distinction between the godly and the wicked we see here the fire divided it self, as the waters before had done in the passage of the children of Israel through the red Sea. Howbeit these exemptions and special protections in common calamities, are neither necessary nor ordinary. [Sol. 3] I answer therefore farther, that two things are to be considered in the good or evil casualties (as they are called) of this life: the nature and substance of them, which is in it self indifferent; and the accidentary quality, which maketh them good or bad. Now so it is ordered by divine providence, that the wicked possess oft times the substance of these things; I mean, houses, lands, treasure, and wealth: but they have not them with that quality which maketh them good; I mean, the right use of them, and contentation of mind in them. On the contrary, the godly often lack the substance of these things, yet not that for which they are to be desired, and which maketh them good, contentment of mind, with supply of all things needful: in which regard the indigencie of the godly is to be preferred before the plenty and abundance of the wicked; according to that of the Psalmist, A small thing that the righteous hath is better than great riches of the ungodly. And doubtless that large promise of our Savior, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or lands for my sake and the Gospels, but he shall receive an hundred fold in this time, is to be understood (according to the former distinction) thus; He shall receive an hundred fold, either in the kind, or in the value; either in the substance of the things themselves, or in the inward contentation, and the heavenly wealth I now spake of. In like manner death, and all calamities, which are as it were sundry kinds of death, or steppes unto it, have a sting and venomous quality, which putteth the soul to most unsufferable pain, and rankles, as it were, about the heart: I mean God's curse, the sense of his wrath, the worm of conscience, discontent, impatience, despair, and the like: O death (saith Saint Paul) where is thy sting? In like manner we may insult upon all other evils; O poverty, O banishment, O imprisonment, O losses, O crosses, O persecutions, Where is your sting? it is plucked out of the afflictions of the godly, but a worse left in the prosperity of the wicked: In which regard the seeming misery of the godly is happy, but the seeming prosperity of the wicked is miserable. Albeit God sometim s giveth them both a drink of deadly Wine, yet he tempereth the sharp Ingredients of judgment, with corrective Spices of mercy, and sweeteneth it with comforts in the Cup of the godly. As their sufferings for Christ abound, so their consolations also abound by Christ. And this evidently appeareth by the different working of the Cup of trembling in both: the wicked presently after their draught rave, and grow frantic, but the godly are then in their best temper; the wicked gnaw their tongues for sorrow, but the godly employ them in prayer and praises; the wicked bite God's iron rod, and thereby break their own teeth, but the godly kiss it; the wicked are most impatient in afflictions, the godly learn patience even by afflictions. In a word, the one in extremity of pain are swallowed up with desperation, the other are ravished with exceeding joy, they are more than conquerors in all these things through him that loveth them; and therefore they more than rejoice. For they glory in tribulation, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in their hearts by the holy Ghost, which is given unto them. Upon this answer, after much agitation, Saint Augustine settled his judgment, when he saw much Christian blood mingled with the heathen in divers parts of Italy, spilled by the Goths: Notwithstanding the likeness of the sufferings of both, there remains yet a great dissimilitude in the sufferers: and even in the same torments virtue and vice may be distinguished; in the same fire the gold shineth, the chaff smoaketh; under the same fla • le the corn is purged, the stubble bruised; under the same press the oil is poured into vessels, the foam spilled. By all which we see that perpetual felicity with security is a most fearful judgment of God; and that seasonable afflictions with comforts to sweeten them, grace to bear them, strength to overcome them, wisdom to make use of them, are special favors of God's chosen. Now the Lord of his infinite mercy, who scourgeth every son whom he receiveth, receive us whom he scourgeth; he who chasteneth whom he loveth, love us whom he chasteneth; he who correcteth us for our profit, teach us to profit by his corrections, sanctify all crosses and afflictions unto us, uphold us in them, carry us through them, purge us by them, and crown us after them. Cui, &c.

THE SWEET SPRING OF THE WATERS OF MARAH. THE L. SERMON.

SAint Cyprian having proposed to his auditory bonum patientiae, the good of bearing, for his theme reckoneth (if I may so speak) upon the stock, and maketh his advantage of the very duty and service they were at that time to perform to God, in affording to the Minister of his word their religious attention and Christian patience. Being to treat of patience, saith he, dearly beloved, and to recount the sundry commodities that by it accrue to the sanctified soul, whence shall I rather take my beginning than from the necessity of, this virtue to the holy exercise we are now at; which cannot be performed as it ought, without the concurrence of your patience with the divine assistance, and my labor? I cannot speak profitably to you in commendation of patience, except you hear me with patience.

This godly fathers case hath been, & yet is mine, who am to entreat your patience to treat yet once more of patience in your hearing: & if the handling often the same argument, and pressing the like motives to patience hath seemed wearisome & tedious unto you, I may hence gather with that father an argument for patience, without which ye cannot endure the least affliction, no not of the ear. But if the repeating and inculcating the like doctrine and arguments were not burdensome unto you, I may safely presume upon your patience, to seal up my text, and perfect my meditations upon so necessary & profitable a subject. We cannot hear too much of that which we can never learn enough. Sorrowes and disturbances are very many, and work strongly upon our frail nature; but spiritual medicines of the souls maladies and comforts work but weakly: therefore it is wisdom to take as many of them as we can. If they who are subject to swouning, and generally all that are careful of their bodily health, will have cordial waters in readiness at hand, that they may not be to seek in time of need; how much more ought all Christians, who are still either in fear, or in danger of conflicts with troubles and vexations, be provided of store of spiritual comforts; the rather because they serve as well to moderate their prosperity, as to mitigate their afflictions? For the same meditations which some way sweeten the brine of affliction, that it be not too salt and quick, sauce the pleasures of prosperity, that they be not too sweet and luscious. What stronger levers to raise up a drooping soul, than these in my Text, that afflictions proceed from God in love, and fall upon all his dearest children for their good? Again, what stronger clubs to beat down pride and insolency in all such as abound in earthly comforts, and know no end of their wealth, and keep under the mind, that it be not too much lifted up with temporal blessings, than these inferences from this Scripture, that God chasteneth with afflictions, and pampers not up with pleasures, all such as he beareth a special affection unto? Therefore may they thus well reason with themselves; For all our honor and wealth we are in no better, nay perhaps we are in far worse estate than the poorest and miserablest creature upon earth, that hath run thorough or is in the midst of all calamities. God chasteneth him in love for his amendment, but he hath no care of us, he lets us run riot in sin: that poor wretch hath now his payment, ours is to come, we know not how soon: he hath his pain here with Lazarus, but we take out our pleasures with Dives: therefore may it be just with God to change his pain into pleasures, but our pleasures into everlasting pains. Better weep in Christ's school, than sport at the Devils games: better to want all things and to have God's love, than to have all things else and want it. If it had not been better, Moses would never have chosen to suffer afflictions with the servants of God, rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. These uses alone, if there were no more to be made of this sovereign parcel of Scripture, sufficiently recompense our labor, in decocting the spirits, and drawing this oil of comfort out of it: but the more we try and apply it, the more virtue we shall find in it, and use to be made of it. I have already counted many particulars in my former discourses upon these words, and the supply of the rest (together with the sum of the whole) shall be my task for the remainder of the time. I will begin with the occasion, which was a deep wound of grief which the Angel of Laodicea might seem to have received from that keen and cutting reproof, Because thou art neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of my mouth. Now that he might not take on too far by reason of so grievous and heavy a message, the Spirit verifieth his name Paracletus, and healeth and suppleth the wound with these comfortable words, As many as I love I rebuke and chasten.

Are those that are in God's place to rebuke sin, and chasten offenders, so careful not to drive them to desperate courses? will they deign as God here doth, to yield a reason of their proceedings, and mitigate their sharp censures with favorable expositions, & take away all scruples out of men's minds, which their speeches and actions might otherwise leave in them? Ye see the occasion, and by it the scope of the Spirit, and connection of the words, which carry this sense:

Here we have a special action of God's careful providence over his children. Now the actions of God may be considered in a double respect, either as they come from the Sovereign of all power above us, or as he is the pattern of all goodness to us: as they are actions of sovereignty, they require of us obedience, and an awful and a trembling regard of them; as they are examples of goodness, we are to seek to imitate them, and express them in our lives. According to the former consideration, these actions of God, and words of my Text, rebuke and chasten, strengthen those that are under the rod; but according to the latter, they direct those that are to use it: the former when they are chastened, the latter when they chasten, are to take notice of the several circumstances set down in the Text. More particularly and plainly thus,

1. We learn out of the words God's care of his, whom he reclaimes by threats and chastenings from their evil courses.

2. The condition of the Church militant, which is seldom without rebukes and chastenings.

3. The imperfection of inherent righteousness, and difficulty, or rather impossibility of performing the Law now after our fall: all God's dear children are rebuked and chastened by him; and therefore are not without blame or fault: These are the special observations.

Their use must be to inform our judgment in the true estimate of the things of this life, to stir up our love to God, who taketh such care of and pains with us (as it were) to call us home unto him by threatening of judgments, and correcting us with a fatherly and compassionate affection. Let us yet resume the words, and consider the proceedings of the Almighty, and we shall see in God his actions, the Magistrate his direction and charge, and in the Magistrate his charge of distributing these tokens of God's love, the duty of all inferiors, to receive them with the same affection wherewith they are given. The Minister is to reprove, the Judge to convince, the Father to nurture, the Magistrate to punish, the Master to discipline those that are under them without partiality, with moderation and in love: those that are under their authority they may not revile, but rebuke; not torment, but chasten; not some in a spleen, but all in love, by the example of the Spirit in my Text: God rebuketh whom he liketh, and chasteneth whom he rebuketh, and loveth whom he chasteneth. Amor ill fraternus, saith Saint Augustine, we may say paternus sive approbet me, sive improbet me diligit; O that fatherly mind, which whether it approve me, or reprove me, still loveth me, is worth all. Amor (saith the old man in the Poet) est optimum salsamentum; Love is the best sauce of all: it giveth a relish to those things that are otherwise most distasteful and loathsome. It is most true of God's love: for it maketh rebukes grateful, and even chastenings comfortable; I rebuke and chasten as many as I love. Happy are we, if we are of these many; for blessed is he whom God correcteth. Howsoever all chastening seemeth grievous unto us for the present, yet it after bringeth the quiet fruit of righteousness to those that are exercised thereby. Wherefore it is worth the observation, that David prayeth not simply, O Lord, rebuke me not, neither chasten me; for that had been as much as to say, O Lord, love me not: for God rebuketh and chasteneth everyone whom he loveth; but he addeth, Rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thine heavy displeasure: or, as Junius rendereth it out of the Hebrew, in aestu irae tuae, in the heat of thy wrath.

I rebuke. Was it enough to allay and cool the boiling rage of the young man in the comedy, Pater est, & si non pater esses; were thou not my father? shall not this word I in my Text, and this consideration, that God's hand is in all our afflictions, be more forcible to quell the surges of our passions within the shore of Christian patience, that they break not forth, and foam out our own shame? It was the speech of Laban & Bethuel, though devoid of the knowledge of the true God, This thing is proceeded of the Lord, we cannot therefore say neither good nor evil. We who are better instructed must alter the words, and say, This thing is proceeded of the Lord, this cross is sent us from him; therefore we cannot but say good of it: we must thank him for it. In this loss, sickness, disgrace, banishment, imprisonment, or whatsoever affliction is befallen us, the will of our heavenly Father is done upon us; and is it not our daily prayer, Fiat voluntas tua, Thy will be done? Look we to the author and finisher of our salvation, he bowed his will to take upon it his Fathers yoke: shall we with a stiff neck refuse it? Father (saith he) let this cup pass, let it pass, if it be possible let it pass. Ye hear he prayeth thrice against the drinking of it with all possible vehemency and earnestness; yet presently he yieldeth to forgo his will, and undergo his passion: Sed fiat voluntas tua, non mea; But thy will be done, not mine: or, Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt. Not as I will, these words imply an unwillingness; Nevertheless, be it done as thou wilt, showeth a resolute will: here is a consent of will without a will of consent, a will against a will, or a will and not a will: Non mea, sed tua. As man he expressed a natural fear of death and desire of life, yet with a submission to the will of his Father: it was not his will to take that cup for it self, and antecedently, and as he saw wrath in it; yet as he saw the salvation of man in it, and greater glory, it was his will to drink it off consequently, because such was his Fathers good pleasure, to which his will was always subordinate. Saint Cyprian speaketh home in this point to all that repine at what God sendeth them, be it never so bitter to their carnal taste: Our Lord did, and suffered the will of his Father, shall not we do and suffer the will of our Lord? he conformed his will to his Fathers, shall not we ours to his? If these inducements from the love of God and example of our Savior, which prevail most with the best dispositions, work not kindly with us, let vulgar and common discretion teach us to make a virtue of necessity. Suffer we must what God lays upon us: for who can resist his will? If we suffer with our will, we gain by our sufferings a heavenly virtue for a worldly loss or cross; we make a grace of a judgment: if we suffer against our will, we suffer nevertheless, and lose all benefit of our sufferings. We add drunkenness to thirst, and impatience to impenitence, passive disobedience to active, and what doth obstinacy and rebellion against the will of God avail us? Do the waves get by their furious beatings against the rocks, whereby they are broken? the bones in our body by resisting the lightening, whereby they are bruised and consumed (the soft and yielding flesh being no way hurt?) The strong and tallest trees by their stiff standing, and setting themselves as it were against the wind, give the wind more power over them to blow them down to the ground, and tear them up by the root, whereas the reeds and bents, by yielding to every blast, overcome the wind, and in the greatest and most blustering storm keep their place and standing. Alas, the more we struggle, and strive, and tugge to pluck our neck out of God's yoke, the more pain we put ourselves to; the oftener and stronger we kick at the pricks of God's judgments, the deeper they enter into our heels: Woe be to these cross wills (saith St. Bernard) they shall never attain what they would, and they shall ever sustain and endure what they would not. As grace in the godly is a means to procure the increase of grace: as the cymbal of Africa sweetly tinckleth, Ipsa meretur augeri, ut aucta mereatur; so punishment in the wicked, through their impatience, becometh a means to improve both their sins and punishments: for after they have suffered for not doing the will of God, they are again to suffer, and that most deservedly, for their not suffering patiently their most deserved punishments. If any be so wedded to their wills, that they will not be severed from it, no not to join it and themselves to God, let them in the last place consider, that the only means to have their will perpetually, is to resign it to God; not only because Voluntas inordinata est, quae non est subordinata; The will which is not subordinate to God, is inordinate, and therefore not to be termed will, but lust; but especially, because such is the condition proposed to us by God, either to suffer temporal chastisements for our sins with our wills, or eternal punishments against our wills. If we will have our will in all things here, we shall want it forever hereafter; but if we will be content to want our wills here in some things for a time, we shall have our will in all things, and fill also of heavenly contentments for evermore hereafter.

And chasten. If all afflictions of the godly are chastenings, and all chastenings are for instruction, then to make the right use of them, we are not only in general, but also in particular to search our selves, what those sins are in our souls, which God seeketh to kill in us by smart afflictions. If our affliction be worldly losses, let us consider with our selves, whether our sin were not covetousness: if disgrace and shame, whether our sin were not ambition: if scarcity and famine, whether the sin were not luxury: if bodily pains, torments, or aches, whether we offended not before in sinful pleasures: if a dangerous fall, whether the fault were not confidence in our own strength: if trouble of mind, and a fit of despair, whether before we provoked not God by security and presumption. This to have been the practice of God's Saints, as in other examples, so we may clearly see in the brethren of Joseph, who impute the hard measure that was met to them in Egypt, to the like hard measure they had met to their brother Joseph, saying one to another: We verily sinned against our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear: therefore is this anguish come upon us. We find it also in Saint Paul, who conceived that the messenger of Satan was sent to buffet him, that he might not be lifted up above measure with his so many graces and special revelations: And when certain virgins ravished by barbarous soldiers, in regard they found in themselves no spot of impurity before they suffered this violence, called in question the justice of God, for permitting those unclean persons to have their will of them, who had all their life preserved their honor and reputation untainted, and their bodies unspotted, Saint Augustine wisely adviseth them to search their hearts, whether those insolent indignities offered them by the worst of men, might not be a punishment of some other sin, rather than unchastity; and in particular, whether their sin were not their pride of this virtue, and too highly prizing their virginity: for pride even of virginity is as fowl a sin before God as impurity.

As many. Experience teacheth us, that what we see in water seemeth greater than it is. It is most true, if we speak of the waters of Marah, they make anything that befalleth us appear greater than it is: See if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, saith captive Judah. I am the man, saith Jeremy, that hath seen affliction (as if none but he had seen the like:) in like manner David, and after him Jonas: All thy waves and storms have gone over me. What more direct Text of Scripture to check and reprove this fancy than this, As many as I love I rebuke and chasten? All God's dearest children first or last are visited as well as we, and those perhaps more grievously by whom it is least seen: our affliction is in body, theirs may be in their mind: our losses may be of transitory goods and worldly wealth, theirs may be of spiritual graces, or the like; so that howsoever we amplify our miseries, yet all things considered, we shall have small reason to exchange them with any other.

As I love. To many other reasons before touched, two may be added why afflictions may proceed from God's love.

The first, because they make the mind soft and tenderly affected, and thereby apter to receive a deep impression from love. Excellent to this purpose is that meditation of St. Gregory upon those words of the Spouse in the Canticles, as he rendereth them, vulnerata charitate ego, I am sick of love: Our hearts are indisposed when they are not wounded with the love of God, when they feel not the trouble and misery of our pilgrimage, when they pine not away through ardent desires and longing to be with God; but they are wounded that they may be healed: God striketh our minds and affections with the darts of love, that they may have more sense and feeling of celestial objects.

The second is, because affliction estrangeth our affections from the world, and entirely fixeth them upon God, which before were divided between him and the world. Now it is most proper to love to appropriate the object beloved to it self; whom we entirely affect, we desire to have entire to ourselves, and none other to have part with us.

To draw towards an end; those many whom Christ here chasteneth distributive, or one by one, are collective the militant Church, whose members we are: her rebukes are our shame, her chastenings our discipline, her affliction our condition, either by passion of grief or compassion of love. Behold then what is her usage in her pilgrimage upon earth; her greetings are rebukes, her visits chastenings, her love-tokens crosses, her bracelets manicles, her chains fetters, her crisping-pins thorns and nails, her drink tears, her marks black and blew wounds, her true emblem Rachel mourning for her children, and refusing all comfort because they are not. A wife of pleasures had been no fit match for him, who is described by the Prophet to be a man of sorrows, with a head crowned with thorns, eyes big with tears, cheeks swollen with buffets, his heart pricked with a spear, his hands and feet pierced with nails, his joints set on the rack of the Cross, his whole body bruised with stripes, and torn with whips and scourges. Ecce homo; Behold the man, and judge whether is likelier to be his consort, the Whore of Babylon, or the mother of our faith: the one sitteth upon many waters, the other is ready to be overwhelmed with a flood cast out of the mouth of the Dragon at her: the one is arrayed with purple and scarlet, the other in mourning weeds, stained with her own blood: the one adorned with chains of gold, the other clogged with fetters of iron: the one for many ages treading on the necks of Kings and Princes, the other trodden down by them at the foot of Christ's Cross. But be of good cheare, thou afflicted and disconsolate Spouse, let not the pomp and beauty of thy corrival be an eye-sore unto thee: according to the measure of her pleasures shall her torments be. It cannot now be long, forbear a while, and she shall be stripped of all her gay attire, but thou clothed in a vesture of gold wrought about with divers colors: when she shall be carried with sorrow and heaviness to the dungeon of everlasting darkness, thou shalt with joy and gladness be brought into the Kings chamber: thy cheeks now blubbered with tears, shall be decked with rubies, and thy neck with chains; he will make thee borders of gold with studs of silver.

Here I might make an end: for what out of the words of the Spirit in my Text hath been spoken to cheare up the Spouse of Christ, bewailing her deplorate estate, belongeth to every faithful soul that hath her part in her mothers griefs. Howbeit, more distinctly to propose the instructions and comforts laid out in this Scripture to your most serious consideration, and apply them to those in particular whom they most concern, may it please you to sort with me all the members of the militant Church into

• 1. Those that are comforted, but in fear of affliction.
• 2. Those that are afflicted, but in hope of comfort.

All that will live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer affliction; and therefore all necessarily fall under the members of this division: for the former the Spirit in my Text pointeth to this exhortation.

How then may we know, that they are undoubtedly blessings of God unto us, that we may rejoice and take comfort in them? By this: If we over-joy not in them, if they diminish not, but contrariwise increase our love of God: if they serve as instruments and encouragements of virtue, not nourishments of vices: if our expense on the poor be some way answerable to our receipts from God: if we love them only for his sake that gave them, and for his sake are willing to part with them. Aristotle writeth of a parcel of ground in Sicily, that sendeth such a strong smell of fragrant flowers to all the fields and leazes there-about, that no Hound can hunt there, the sent is so confounded with the sweet smell of those flowers: Consider (I beseech you) this seriously with yourselves, whether the sweet pleasures of the world have not produced a like effect in your souls; whether they have not taken away all sent and sense too of heavenly joys; whether they hinder you not in your spiritual chase: if not, ye may take the greater joy and comfort in them, because it is an argument of rare happiness not to be overcome of earthly delights, not to be corrupted with temporal happiness. But if ye find that these transitory delights and sensual pleasures have distempered your taste, in such sort that ye cannot relish heavenly comforts: if they have made your hearts fat, as the Prophet speaketh, so that the spirits of your devotion are dull and gross, and ye are altogether insensible of God's judgments, then re-call your minds from those pleasant objects, and represent to your conceits the loathsome deformity of your sins, the fearful ends of those that are rich, and not in God, the vanity of earthly comforts, and the heavy judgments which ye have deserved by being not made better but worse by God's benefits. These very thoughts will be as rebukes and inward chastenings, which if they work in you godly sorrow and unfeigned humiliation, God will spare further to afflict you who are already wounded at the heart, or humble you whom he finds already humbled. Now for those that are under God's hand, afflicting them outwardly with any scourge, the Spirit layeth forth this exhortation: If your afflictions be many and very grievous, know that God maketh not choice of a weak champion, be assured that he will lay no more upon you than he will enable you to bear. Soldiers glory in their wounds which they receive in war for their King and Country: have not we much more cause to glory in them which we endure for the love of God? What joy will it be at that day, when the Son of man cometh with the clouds, and layeth open his scars before all the world, to have in our bodies store of his sufferings, and to be able to show like stripes and wounds to his? Possess your souls therefore in patience for a while, and on the sudden all prisons shall be opened, all chains loosened, all stripes healed, all wrongs revenged, all your sufferings acknowledged, all your miseries ended, and your endless happiness consummated. I end in the phrase of the Psalmist: Though in the great heat of affliction and persecution ye look as if ye had lien among the pots, yet ye shall be as a dove, whose feathers are silver, and wings of pure gold, wherewith your souls shall fly into heaven, and there abide and nest with Cherubims and Seraphim forever. Deo P ••• , Filio, & Spiritui sancto sit laus, &c.

THE PATTERN OF OBEDIENCE. THE LI. SERMON.

OPposita juxta se posita magis elucescunt, contraries are illustrated by their contraries; the dark shadow maketh the picture show more lightsome, the black veil the face more beautiful, a gloomy cloud the beams of the sun breaking out of it more bright and conspicuous, sickness health more grateful, pain pleasure more delightful, affliction and misery prosperity and happiness more desirable: in like manner the obscurity and infamy of Christ's passion setteth off the glory of his resurrection. Neither doth it illustrate it only, but demonstrateth it also à priori; for his humiliation was the meritorious cause of his exaltation, his obedience of his rule, his cross of his crown: so saith the Apostle in the next verse, therefore hath God highly exalted him. As we cannot certainly know how high the surface of the sea is above the earth, but by sounding the depth with a plummet, or diving to the bottom thereof; so neither can we take the height of our Lord's exaltation, but by measuring from the ground of his humiliation. The cross is the Jacob's staff whereby to take the elevation of this morning star; and as Hezekiah was assured that fifteen years were added forward to his life, by the going back of the sun ten degrees in the Diall of Ahaz, so we know that 1500. years, nay eternity of life and glory is added to our Savior, by the going back so many degrees in the Dial of his passion, in the which the finger pointeth to these four:

• 1 Humility.
• 2 Obedience.
• 3 Death.
• 4 Cross.

These self same steps and stairs by which he descended in his passion, he ascended in his exaltation; upon these therefore my discourse shall run, humility and the manner of his humility, obedience: his death and the manner of his death, his cross. How low must the descent needs be, where humility and lowliness it self is the uppermost greece? Beneath it lieth obedience: for a man may be humble in himself, and yet not voluntarily bow his neck to another man's yoke; He humbled himself, and became obedient. Obedient a man may be, and yet not ready to lay down his life at his Masters pleasure; he became obedient unto death. Obedient to death a man may be, and yet not willing to be put to an infamous, cruel, and accursed death; he became obedient to death, even the death of the cross. The repeating the word death seemeth to argue an ingemination of the punishment, a suffering death upon death. It was wonderful that he which was highest in glory should humble himself; yet it is more to be obedient than to humble himself; more to suffer death willingly, or upon the command of another, than to be obedient; more to be crucified than simply to die. He was so humble that he became obedient, so obedient that he yielded to die, so yielded to die as to be crucified: his love wonderfully shown it self in humbling himself to exalt us; his humility in his obedience; his obedience in his patience; his patience in the death of the cross. His humility was a kind of excess of his love, his obedience of his humility, his death of his obedience, his cross of his death.

He humbled himself. According to which nature? divine or human? In some sort according to both: according to his divine, by assuming our nature; according to his human, by taking upon him our miseries.

And became obedient. It is not said he made himself obedient, because obedience presupposeth another's command; we may indeed of ourselves offer service to another, but we cannot perform obedience where there is no command of a Superior; parere and imperare are relatives. To whom then became he obedient? To God, saith Calvin; to Herod and Pilate, saith Zanchius; the truth is, to both: to God as supreme Judge, according to whose eternal decree; to Pilate, by whose immediate sentence he was to suffer such things, of sinners, for sinners.

To death. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , whether inclusive or exclusive? whether is the meaning, he was obedient all his life, even to his last gasp; or he was so far obedient, that he yielded himself to the wrath of God, to the scorn of men, the power of darkness, the infamy of all punishments, the shame of all disgraces, the cruelty of all torments, the death of the cross? The difference between these is in this, that the former maketh death the limit and bound, the latter an act of his obedience: to which interpretation I rather subscribe, because it is certain that Christ was not only obedient unto the hour of his death, but in his death also, and after his death, lying three days and three nights in the grave. Here then we have the sum of the whole Gospel, the life and death of our Lord and Savior: his birth and life in the former words, He humbled himself: his death & passion in the latter, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. He humbled, that is, took on him our nature & infirmities; & became obedient, that is, fulfilled the law for us by his active, & satisfied God for our transgressions by his passive obedience. Obedience most shows it self in doing or suffering such things as are most cross & repugnant to our will & natural desires; as to part with that w ^ch is most dear & precious to us, and to entertain a liking of that which we otherwise most abhor. Now the strongest bent of all men's desires is to life & honor; nothing men fear more than death, especially a lingering painful death: they are confounded at nothing more than open shame: whereby our Savior's obedience appears a non pareil, who passed not for his life, nor refused the torments of a cruel, nor the shame of an ignominious death, that he might fulfill his fathers will, in laying down a sufficient ransom for all mankind.

Even the death of the cross. As the sphere (of the Sun or Saturn, &c. ) is named from the Planet which is the most eminent part of it; so is the passion of Christ from his cross: the cross was as the center, in which all the bloody lines met. He sweat in his agony, bled in his scourging, was pricked in his crowning with thorns, scorned and derided in the judgment hall; but all this, and much more he endured on the cross. Whence we may observe more particularly,

• 1 The root.
• 2 Branches.
• 3 Fruit.

Or,

• 1 The cause.
• 2 The parts.
• 3 The end of all his sufferings on it.

1 Of the cause. S. Austin demonstrateth that the Eclipse of the sun at the death of our Savior was miraculous, because then the Moon was at the full. Had it been a regular Eclipse the Moon should have lost her light, and not the Sun: so in the regular course of justice, the Church, which is compared to the Moon in Scripture, should have been eclipsed of the light of God's countenance, and not Christ, who is by the Prophet Malachi styled Sol justitiae, the Sun of righteousness. But as then the Sun was eclipsed instead of the Moon, so was Christ obscured in his passion for the Church; he became a surety for us, & therefore God laid all our debts upon him, to the uttermost farthing. The Prophet Isaiah assureth us hereof, He bare our infirmities, & carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions and broken for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, & by his stripes we are all healed. O the wonderful wisdom & justice of God! the just is reputed unjust, that the unjust might be reputed just: the innocent is condemned, that the condemned might be found innocent: the Conquerer is in bonds to loose the captive: the Creditor in prison to satisfy for the debtor: the Physician taketh the bitter potion to cure the patient: the Judge is executed to acquit the prisoner. What did the well-beloved of his Father deserve, that he should drink the dregs of the vials of wrath? why should the immaculate Lamb be put to such torture, & in the end be slain, but for a sacrifice? why should the bread of life hunger, but for our gluttony? the fountain of grace thirst, but for our intemperancy? the word of God be speechless, but for our crying sin? truth itself be accused, but for our errors? innocence condemned, but for our transgressions? why should the King of glory endure such ignominy & shame, but for our shameful lives? why should the Lord of life be put to death, but for our heinous and most deadly sins? what spots had he to be washed? what lust to be crucified? what ulcers to be pricked? what sores to be lanced? Doubtless none at all: our corrupt blood was drawn out of his wounds, our swellings pricked with his thorns, our sores lanced with his spear, our lusts crucified on his cross, our stains washed away with his blood. It was the weight of our sins that made his soul heavy unto death, it was the unsupportable burden of our punishment that put him into a bloody sweat: all our blood was corrupt, all our flesh as it were in a scurfe, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot there was no soundness in us, nothing but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores. For a remedy hereof our Lord and Savior was let blood in all parts of his body; in his head when he was crowned with thorns, in his hands and feet when he was pricked with nails, in all the parts of his body when his flesh was torn with whips. After so much blood drawn from him, there could be little left, except a few drops at the heart: behold these also are drawn out by the Soldiers spear. The Adamant, which nothing relenteth at the stroke of the hammer, yet is broken in pieces by the warm blood of a goat. Beloved, if such abundance of the blood of the immaculate Lamb Christ Jesus, trickling from his temples, dropping from his stripes, running from his hands and feet, gushing from the hole in his side, melt not our hearts, and resolve them into penitent tears, they are harder than Adamant: not a compassionate tear can we wring out of our eyes for him, who shed so much blood for us. We pray ordinarily, Remove, O Lord, from us our stony hearts, & give us hearts of flesh: but O Lord, saith Bonaventure, give me rather a stony heart, & remove from me my fleshly; for the stones clave at Christ's passion, but the fleshly hearts of men clave not; the veil rent it self at the hearing of the blasphemies against the Son of God, yet we hear not of any of the standers by that they tare their garments; the sun drew in his beams, the heavens mourned in sables, the earth trembled for fear, the rocks were cleft as it were with indignation, the graves opened to receive his dead corps, & hide it from further indignity: solus homo non compatitur, pro quo solo Christus patitur, only man suffers not with him, for whom only he suffered; only man shows no compassion, to whom alone Christ intended all the benefit of his passion. We are affected at the hearing of a profane story, nay at the representation of some tragical fiction we have tears at commands; yet (O Savior let the merits of thy passion satisfy even for this our want of compassion for thee) when we read or hear out of the sacred story of the Evangelists, the most honorable personage that ever was, suffer the most shameful indignities that ever were; the innocentest person that ever was, laden with the most grievous & slanderous accusations that ever were; the justest that ever was put to the cruellest torments that ever were, and all this for our sake: do we take it to heart? do his stripes make any impression in us? do the nails and spear that pierced him prick us with compunction? do we compassionate his sorrow, admire his patience, magnify his love, detest our sins the causes of his sufferings? The custom in many places is, that if the son of a King commit a fault deserving punishment, his Page or some other servant is whipped for him: and those Princes that are of tender natures, more grieve at the sight than their servant for their suffering of a few stripes. Deare Christians, in Christ's passion it was clean other ways; for the Kings son, the heir apparent of heaven was scourged for his servants: what, said I, scourged? nay flayed with whips, nay buffeted with fists, smote with reeds, pricked with thorns, bored with nails, pierced with a launce.

We have viewed the root, let us now behold the branches; which some will have to be six, some five, some four, some three. They which divide Christ's sufferings into six parts, term them so many voyages or poastings: first, from his supper to the garden; secondly, from the garden to Annas; thirdly, from Annas to Caiaphas; fourthly, from Caiaphas to Herod; fifthly, from Herod to Pilate; sixthly, from Pilate to Golgotha. They who divide them into five, thus reckon them: first, his agony: secondly, his taking: thirdly, his arraignment: fourthly, his sentence: fifthly, the execution. They who into four, account upon, first, his afflictions before he was taken: secondly, the proceedings against him after he was taken by the Ecclesiastical Judges: thirdly, before the secular: fourthly, the consummation of all, his death upon the Cross. For brevity sake I reduce them to three: first, dolours and terrors: secondly, abuses and indignities: thirdly, tortures and torments. The first in the Garden, the second in the Palace, the third on the Cross.

First, in the garden we find him in an agony. What an agony is, sentitur priusquam dicitur, none can say but he that hath felt, and none ever felt such an agony but our Savior. Conceive we at the same time all the veins of our body streigned, all the sinews stretched, all the bones racked, what pain must this needs be in the body? and how far greater a like to this in the soul? This somewhat expresseth his