Fifty Sermons
To oppress us, and ease themselves, now, when we are gone from them, they require Miracles at out hands; when indeed it was miracle enough, how we got from them. But, magnum charitatis argumentum, credere absque pignoribus miraculorum, He loves God but a little that will not believe him without a miracle. Miracles are for the establishing of new religions; All the miracles of, and from Christ and his Apostles, are ours, because their Religion is ours. Indeed it behooves our adversaries to provide new miracles every day, because they make new articles of Faith every day. As Esop therefore answered in the Market, when he that sold him was asked what he could do, that he could do nothing, because his fellow had said, that he could do all, so we say, we can do no miracles, because they do all; all ordinary cures of Agues, and toothach being done by miracle amongst them. We confess that we have no such tie upon the Triumphant Church, to make the Saints there do those anniversary miracles, which they do by their relics here, upon their own holy days, ten days sooner every year, then they did before the new computation. We pretend not to raise the dead, but to cure the sick; and that but by the ordinary Physique, the Word, and Sacraments, and therefore need no miracles. And we remember them of their own authors, who do not only say, that themselves do no miracles, in these latter times, but assign diligently strong reasons, why it is that they do none. If all this will not serve, we must tell them, that we have a greater miracle, then any that they produce; that is, that in so few years, they that forsook Rome, were become equal, even in number, to them that adhered to her. We say, with Saint Augustine, That if we had no other miracle, hoc unum stupendum & potentissimum miraculum esse, that this alone were the most powerful, and most a mazing miracle, ad hanc religionem, totius orbis amplitudinem, sine miraculis subjugatam, that so great a part of the Christian world, should become Protestants of Papists, without any miracles.
They pursue us still, being departed from them, and they ask us, How can ye pretend to have left Babylon confusion, Dissention, when you have such dissensions, & confusions amongst yourselves? But neither are our differences in so fundamental points, as theirs are, (for a principal author of their own, who was employed by Clement the eight, to reconcile the differences between the Jesuits and the Dominicans, about the concurrence of the grace of God, and the free will of man, confesses that the principal articles, and foundations of faith were shaken between them, between the Jesuits, and Dominicans) neither shall we find such heat, and animosity, and passion between any persons amongst us, as between the greatest amongst them; The succeeding Pope mangling the body of his predecessor, casting them into the river for burial, disannulling all their decrees, and ordinations; their Ordinations; so that no man could be sure who was a Priest, nor whether he had truly received any Sacrament, or no. Howsoever, as in the narrowest way there is most justling, the Roman Church going that broad way, to believe as the Church believes, may scape some particular differences, which we that go the narrower way, to try everything by the exact word of God, may fall into. Saint Augustine tells us of a City in Mauritania Cesarea, in which they had a custom, that in one day in the year, not only Citizens of other parishes, but even neighbors, yea brethren, yea Fathers, did fling stones dangerously, and furiously at one another in the streets, and this they so solemnized, as a custom received from their ancestors; which was a licentious kind of Carnavall. If any amongst us have fallen into that disease, to cast stones, or dirt at his friends, it is an infection from his own distemper, not from our doctrine; for, if any man list to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the Church of God. We departed not from them then, till it was come to a hot plague, in a necessity of professing old opinions to be new articles of Faith; not till we were driven by them, and drawn by the voice of God, in the learnedest men of all nations; when they could not discharge themselves by the distinction of the Court of Rome, and the Church of Rome, because, if the abuses had been but in the Court, it was the greatest abuse of all, for that Church, which is so much above that Court, not to mend it. Nor can they require Miracles at our hands, who do none themselves, and yet need them, because they induce new articles of Religion; neither can they reproach to us our Dissensions amongst ourselves; because they are neither in so fundamental points, nor pursued with so much uncharitableness, as theirs. So we justify our secession from them; but all this justifies in no part, the secession of those distempered men, who have separated themselves from us, which is our next, and our last consideration.
When the Apostle says, study to be quiet, (1 Thes. 4. 11. me thinks he intimates something towards this, that the less we study for our Sermons, the more danger is there to disquiet the auditory; extemporal, unpremeditated Sermons, that serve the popular care, vent, for the most part, doctrines that disquiet the Church. Study for them, and they will be quiet; consider ancient and fundamental doctrines, and this will quiet and settle the understanding, and the Conscience. Many of these extemporal men have gone away from us, and vainly said, that they have as good cause to separate from us, as we from Rome. But can they call our Church, a Babylon; Confusion, disorder? All that offends them, is, that we have too much order, too much regularity, too much binding to the orderly, and uniform service of God in Church. It affects all the body, when any member is cut off; Cum dolore amputatur, etiam quae putruit, pars corporis; and they cut off themselves, and feel it not; when we lose but a mystical limb, and they lose a spiritual life, we feel it and they do not. When that is pronounced sit tibi sicut ethnicus, if he hear not the Church, let him be to thee as a Heathen, gravius est quàm si gladio feriretur, flammis absumeretur, feris subigeretur, it is a heavier sentence, then to be beheaded, to be burnt, or devoured with wild beasts; and yet these men, before any such sentence pronounced by us, excommunicate themselves. Of all distempers, Calvin falls oftenest upon the reproof of that which he calls Morositatem, a certain peevish frowardness, which, as he calls in one place, deterrimam pestem, the most infectious pestilence, that can fall upon a man, so, in another, he gives the reason, why it is so, semper nimia morositas est ambitiosa, that this peevish frowardness, is always accompanied with a pride, and a singularity, and an ambition to have his opinions preferred before all other men, and to condemn all that differ from him. A civil man will depart with his opinion at a Table, at a Council table, rather then hold up an argument to the vexation of the Company; so will a peaceable man do, in the Church, in questions that are not fundamental. That reverend man whom we mentioned before, who did so much in the establishing of Geneva, professes, that it was his own opinion, that the Sacrament might be administered in prisons, and in private houses; but because he found the Church of Geneva, of another opinion, and another practice before he came, he applied himself to them and departed, ( in practice) from his own opinion, even in so important a point, as the ministration of the Sacrament. Which I present to consideration the rather, both because thereby it appears, that greater matters then are now thought fundamental, were then thought but indifferent, and arbitrary, (for, surely, if Calvin had thought this a fundamental thing, he would never have suffered any custom to have prevailed against his conscience) and also, because divers of those men, who trouble the Church now, about things of less importance, and this of private Sacraments in particular) will needs make themselves believe, that they are his Disciples, and always conclude that whatsoever is practiced at Geneva was Calvin's opinion. Saint Augustine saith excellently, and appliably, to a holy Virgin, who was ready to leave the Church, for the ill life of Church-men, Christus nobis imperavit Congregationem, sibi servavit separationem; Christ Jesus hath commanded us to gather together, and recommended to us the Congregation; as for the separation, he hath reserved it to himself, to declare at the last day, who are Sheep and who are Goats. And he wrought that separation which our Fathers made from Rome, by his express written Word, and by that which is one word of God too, Vox populi, The invitation and acclamation of Doctors, and People, and Princes; but have our Separatists any such public, and concurrent authorising of that which they do, since of all that part from us, scarce a dozen meet together in one confession? When you have heard the Prophet say, Can two walk toge • her, except they be agreed, when you have heard the Apostle say, I beseech you brethren by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same things, and that there be no divisions among you, (for, if preachers speak one one way, another another, there will be divisions among the people) And then, it is not only, that in obedience to authority, they speak the same things; But, Be perfectly joined in the same mind, and in the same judgment, you had need make haste to this union, this pacification; for when we are come thither, to agree among ourselves, we are not come to our journeys end.
Our life is a warfare; other wars, in a great part, end in marriages: Ours in a divorce, in a divorce of body and soul in death. Till then, though God have brought us, from the First Babylon, the darkness of the Gentiles, and from the Second Babylon, the superstitions of Rome, and from the third Babylon, the confusion of tongues, in bitter speaking against one another, after all this, every man shall find a fourth Babylon, enough to exercise all his forces, The civil war, the rebellious disorder, the intestine confusion of his own Concupiscencies. This is a transmigration, a transportation laid upon us all, by Adams rebellion, from Jerusalem to Babylon, from our innocent State in our Creation, to this confusion of our corrupt nature. God would have his children first brought to Babylon, before he would be glorified in their deliverance, Venies usque ad Babylonem; Ibi liberaberis; To Babylon thou shalt come; there I will deliver thee; but not till then; that is, till you come to a holy sense of the miseries you are in, and what hath brought you to them.
Though then you have suffered the calamities of all these Babylon's in some proportions, though you be not Incolae but Indigenae, not naturalized but borne Babylonians, (Original sin makes you so) yet since you are within the Covenant, hear him, that said to you in Abraham's ears, Egredere de terrâ tuâ, Get thee out of thy Country, and from thy kindred, unto the land I will show thee; Come out of Babylon to Jerusalem; since ye are within his Adoption, and may cry Abba father, hear that voice, Egredimini filiae Zion, Come forth ye daughters of Zion, come to Jerusalem. Though ye be dead, and buried, and putrefyed in this corrupted, and corrupting flesh, yet since he cries with a loud voice, (as it is said in that Text) Lazare veni for as, Lazarus come forth, come forth of your Tombs in Babylon, to this Jerusalem, come from your troubled waters, your waters of contention, of anxiety, of envy, of solicitude, and vexation for worldly encumbrances, and come Ad aquas quietudinum, to the waters of rest, the application of the merits of Christ, in a true Church: Vinum non habetis? have ye no wine to refresh your hearts; no merits of your own to take comfort in? Implete Hydrias aquâ, fill all your vessels with water, that water of life, remorsefull tears, perchance he will change your water into wine, as he did in that place; perchance he will give you abundance of temporal blessings; perchance he will change that water into blood, as in Egypt; that is, into persecutions, into afflictions, into Martyrdom, for his sake, for he will accept our water for blood, our tears of repentance and contrition for Martyrdom, ut cum desit Martyrium sanguinis, habeamus Martyrium aquae, that we may be Martyrs in his sight, and shed no blood; Martyrs of a new die, white Martyrs. That our waters of sorrow for sin may answer our Savior's tears over Lazarus and over Jerusalem; and the sweat of our brows in a lawful calling may answer our Savior's sweat of water and blood in his agony; and that our reverent and profitable receiving of the Sacrament, may answer the water and blood that issued from his side, which represented omnia Sacramenta, all the Sacraments; That, as we do, we may still feed upon grace that is not trodden, and drink water, that is not troubled, with the feet of others, or our own; that we be never shaked in the sincerity nor in the integrity of Religion with their power, nor our own distempers of fears or hopes. But that our meat may be, to do the will of him that sent us, and to finish his work, Joh. 4. 2.
SERMON XXVI.
Preached to the King, at White-Hall, the first Sunday in Lent.
ESAI. 65. 20.
P Eace is in Zion; God's whole Choir is in tune; Nay, here is the music of the Sphears; all the Sphears (all Churches) all the Stars in those Sphears (all Expositors in all Churches) agree in the sense of these words; and agree the words to be a Prophesy, of the Distillation, nay Inundation, of the largeness, nay the infiniteness of the blessings, and benefits of Almighty God, prepared and meditated before, and presented, and accomplisht now in the Christian Church. The Sun was up betimes, in the light of nature, but then the Sun moved but in the winter Tropic, short and cold, dark and cloudy days; A Diluculum and a Crepusculum, a Dawning and a Twilight, a little Traditionall knowledge for the past, and a little Conjecturall knowledge for the future, made up their day. The Sun was advanced higher to the Jews in the Law; But then the Sun was but in Libra; as much day as night: There was as much Baptism, as Circumcision in that Sacrament; and as much Lamb as Christ, in that Sacrifice; The Law was their Equinoctial, in which, they might see both the Type, and that which was figured in the Type: But in the Christian Church the Sun is in a perpetual Summer Solstice; which are high degrees, and yet there is a higher, the Sun is in a perpetual Meridian and Noon, in that Summer solstice. There is not only a Surge Sol, but a Siste Sol: God hath brought the Sun to the height, and • ixt the Sun in that height in the Christian Church • where he in his own Son by his Spirit hath promised to dwell, usque ad consummationem, till the end of the world. Here is Manna; and not in Gomers, but in Barns; and Quails; and not in Heaps, but in Hills; the waters above the Firmament, and not in drops of Dew, but in showers of former and latter Rain; and the Land of Canaan; not in Promise only, nor only in performance, and Possession, but in Extention, and Dilatation. The Graces, and blessings of God, that is, means of salvation, are so abundantly poured upon the Christian Church, as that the triumphant Church if they needed means, might fear they should want them. And of these means and blessings, long life, as it is a Model and abridgement of Eternity, and a help to Eternity, is one • and one in this Text, The Child shall die 100. years old. But shall we receive good from God, and not receive evil too? shall I shed upon you Lumen visions, the light of that vision, which God hath afforded me in this Prophecy, the light of his countenance, and his gracious blessings upon you, and not lay upon you Onus visions, as the Prophets speak often, The burden of that vision which I have seen in this Text too? It was a scorn to David, that his servants were half clothed; The Samaritan woman believed, that if she might see Christ, he would tell her all things: Christ promises of the Holy Ghost, that he should lead them into all Truth: And the Apostles discharge in his office was, that he had spoken to them all Truth: And therefore lest I should be defective in that integrity, I say with Saint Augustine, Non vos fallo, non praesumo, non vos fallo; I will not be so bold with you as flatter you, I will not presume so much upon your weakness, as to go about to deceive you, as though there were nothing but blessing in God, but show you the Commination, and judgment of this Text too, that though the child should die a hundred years old, yet the sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed. If God had not lengthened his childes life, extended my days, but taken me in the sins of my youth, where had I been, may every soul here say? And where would you be too; if no man should tell you, that though The child should die a hundred years old, yet the sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed? What can be certain in this world, if even the mercy of God admit a variation? what can be endless here, if even the mercy of God receive a determination? and sin doth vary the nature, sin doth determine even the infiniteness of the mercy of God himself, for though The child shall die a hundred years old, yet the sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed. Disconsolate soul, dejected spirit, bruised and broken, ground and trodden, attenuated, evaporated, annihilated heart come back; hear thy reprieve, and sue for thy pardon; God will not take thee away in thy sins, thou shalt have time to repent, The child shall die a hundred years old. But then lame and decrepit soul, gray and inveterate sinner, behold the full ears of corn blasted with a mildew, behold this long day shutting up in such a night, as shall never see light more, the night of death; in which, the deadliest pang of thy Death will be thine Immortality: In this especially shalt thou die, that thou canst not die, when thou art dead; but must live dead forever: for The sinner being a hundred years old, shall be accursed, he shall be so forever.
In this discovery from this Red Sea, to this dead Sea; from the mercy of God, in the blood of his Son, to the malediction of God, in the blood of the sinner, be pleased to make these the points of your Compass, and your Land-marks by the way, in those, the two parts of this exercise. First, in the first, consider the precedency, and primogeniture of Mercy; God begins at Mercy, and not at Judgment: God's method here, is not, The sinner shall be accursed, but The child shall have long life: but first, the blessing, and then the malediction. And then secondly, we shall see, in what form the particular blessing is given here; In long life; The child shall die a hundred years old. And then also, because we find it in the company of Mercies, in the region of Mercies, in this first part of the Text, which is the Sphere of Mercy; we shall look also how this very dying is a Mercy too: The mercy is especially placed in the long life: The child shall live a hundred years; but the Holy Ghost would not leave out that, that he should die; The child shall die a hundred years old. And in these three, first the precedency, and primogeniture of God's mercy, and then the specification of that mercy in long life, and lastly, the association of mercy, that death as well as life is a blessing to the Righteous; we shall determine that first part. And in the second, But the sinner being a hundred years old, shall be accursed, we shall see first, that the malediction of God hath no object but a sinner: God antidates no malediction: Till there be a sinner, there is no malediction; nay not till there be an inveterate sinner; A sinner of a hundred years, at least, such a sinner, as would be so, if God would spare him a hundred years here. And upon such a sinner, God thunders out this Prosternation, this Consternation, in this one word of our Text, which involves and inwraps all kinds of miseries, feebleness in body, infatuation in mind, evacuation of power, dishonor in • ame, eclipses in favor, ruin in fortune, dejection in spirit, He shall be accursed. Where, because in this second part we are in the Region and Sphere of maledictions, we cannot consider this future, He shall be, as a future of favor, a prorogation, a deferring of the malediction: He shall be, is not, he shall be hereafter, but not yet: but it is a future of continuation; He shall be accursed, that is, he shall be so forever. And so have you the frame, and partitions of this B • thel, this House of God in which he dwells, which is both Joshua's Beth-hagla, the house of Joy, and John's Bethania, his house of affliction too; and we pass now to the furnishing of these rooms, with such stuff as I can have laid together.
First, in our first part, we consider the precedency, and primogeniture of Mercy. It 〈1 page duplicate〉 〈1 page duplicate〉 〈1 page duplicate〉 〈1 page duplicate〉 〈1 page duplicate〉 〈1 page duplicate〉 is a good thing to be descended of the eldest Brother; To descend from God, to depend upon God, by his eldest Son, the Son of his love, the Son of his right hand, Mercy, and not to put God to his second way, his sinister way, his way of judgment. David prophesies of God's exaltation of Solomon so, Ponam in Primogenitum, I will make him my first-born: Though Solomon were not so, God would make him so. And in that Title, the Wiseman makes his prayer for Israel; Quem coaequasti Primogegenito, whom thou hast named thy first-born; for so God had in Exod. Israel is my Son, even my first-born: and in Job, the fiercest terror of death is expressed so, Primogenitus mortis, the first-born of Death shall devour his strength: Still the exaltation, the Superlative is called so; The first-born. And in such a sense; if we could think of more degrees of goodness in God, of an exaltation of God himself in God, of more God in God, of a Superlative in God, we must necessarily turn upon his mercy, for that Mercy must be the Superlative: So is it too, if we consider God's first action, or God's first thought towards Man; Mercy was the first-born by every Mother; by that Understanding, by that Will, by that Power, which we conceive in God; Mercy was the first-born, and first-mover in all. We consider a preventing Grace in God; and that preventing Grace is before all; for that prevents us so, as to Visite us when we sit in darkness. And we consider an Antecedent-Will in God, and that Antecedent Will is before all; for by that Will, God would have all men saved. And when we call God's Grace by other names then Preventing, whether Assisting Grace, that it stand by us and sustain us, or Concomitant Grace, that it work with us, and inanimate our action, when it is doing, or his Subsequent Grace, that rectifies or corrects an action, when it is done; when all is done, still it is the Preventing Power, and quality of that Grace, that did all that in me: If I stand by his Assisting Grace, if I work with his Concomitant Grace, if I rectify my error by his Subsequent Grace, that that moves upon me in all these, is still the preventing power of that Grace. For as all my Natural actions of life are done by the power of that Soul, which was in me before, so all the Supernatural actions of that Soul, are done by that power of that Grace, that prevents and preinanimates that action; and all my co-operation is but a post-operation, a working by the Power of that All-preventing Grace. I moved not at first by the Tide, by the strength of natural faculties, nor do I move after by that wind • which had formerly filled my sails: I proceed not now by the strength of that Grace which God gave me heretofore. But as God infuseth a Soul into every man, and that Soul elicites a new Act in itself, before that man produce any action; so God infuses a particular Grace into every good work of mine, and so prevents me, before I co-operate with him. For as Nature in her highest exaltation, in the best Moral man that is, cannot flow into Grace, Nature cannot become Grace; so neither doth former Grace flow into future Grace, but I need a distinct influence of God, a particular Grace, for every good work I do, for every good word I speak, for every good thought I conceive.
When God gives me access into his Library, leave to consider his proceedings with man, I find the first book of God's making to be the Book of Life. The Book where all their names are written that are elect to Glory. But I find no such Book of Death: All that are not written in the Book of Life, are certainly the sons of Death: To be pretermitted there, there to be left out, wraps them up, at least leaves them wrapped up, in death. But God hath not wrought so positively, nor in so primary a consideration in a book of Death, as in the Book of Life. As the aftertimes made a Book of Wisdom out of the Proverbs, of Solomon, and out of his Ecclesiastes; but yet it is not the same Book, nor of the same certainty: so there is a Book of Life • ere, but that is not the same book that is in Heaven, nor of the same certainty: For in this Book of Life, which is the Declaration and Testimony which the Church gives of our Election, by those marks of the Elect, which she seeth in the Scriptures, and believeth that she seeth in us, a man may be Blotted out of the Book of the living, as David speaketh; and as it is added there, Not written with the Righteous: Intimating that in some cases, and in some Book of Life, a man may have been written in, and blotted out, and written in again. The Book of Life in the Church, The Testimony of our Election here, admits such expunctions, and such redintegrations: but God's first Book, his Book of Mercy; (for this Book in the Church, is but his Book of Evidence) is inviolable in it self, and all the names of that Book indelible.
In God's first Book, the Book of Life, Mercy hath so much a precedency, and primogeniture, as that there is nothing in it, but Mercy. In God's other Book, his Book of Scripture, in which he is put often to denounce judgments, as well as to exhibit mercies, still the Tide sets that way, still the Biass leads on that hand, still his method directs us ad Primogenitum, to his first-born, to his Mercy. So he began in that Book: He made man to his Image, and then he blest him. Here is no malediction, no intermination mingled in God's first Act, in God's first purpose upon man: In Paradise there is, That if he eat the forbidden fruit, if he will not forbear that, that one Tree, He shall die. But God begins not there: before that, he had said, of every tree in the Garden thou mayest freely eat; neither is there more vehemency in the punishment, then in the liberty. For as in the punishment there is an ingemination, Morte morieris, Dying thou shalt die; that is, thou shalt surely die; so in the liberty, there was an ingemination too, Comedendo comedes, Eating thou shalt eat; that is, thou mayest freely eat. In Deut. we have a fearful Chapter of Maledictions; but all the former parts of that Chapter, are blessings in the same kind: And he that reads that Chapter, will begin at the beginning, and meet God's first-born, his Mercy first. And in those very many places of that Book where God divides the condition, If you obey you shall live, if you rebel you shall die, still the better Act, and the better condition, and the better reward, is placed in the first place, that God might give us possession, In jure Primogeniti, in the right of his first-born, his mercy. And where God pursues the same method, and first dilates himself, and expatiates in the way of mercy, I will beat down his foes before his face, and plague them that hate him; when after that he is brought to say, If his children forsake my Law, I will visit their transgression with the rod; where first he puts it off for one Generation from himself, to his Children, which was one Mercy: And then he puts it upon a forsaking, an Apostasy, and not upon every sin of infirmity, which was another Mercy; when it comes to a correction, it is but a mild correction, with the r • d: And in that, he promises to visit them; to manifest himself, and his purpose to them in the correction; all which are higher and higher degrees of Mercy: yet because there is a spark of anger, a tincture of judgment mingled in it, God remembers his first-born, his Mercy, and returns where he begun: Nevertheless my Covenant will I not break, nor alter the things that is gone out of my lips; once have I sworn by my Holiness, that I will not lie unto David. There are elder pictures in the world of Water, then there are any of oil; but those of oil have got above them, and shall outlive them. Water is a frequent emblem of Affliction, in the Scriptures; and so is oil of Mercy; If at any time in any place of Scripture, God seemed to begin with water, with a judgment, yet the oil will get to the top: in that very judgment, you may see that God had first a merciful purpose in inflicting that medicinal judgment; for his mercy is his first-born. His Mercy is new every morning, saith the Prophet; not only every day, but as soon as it is day.
Trace God in thyself, and thou shalt find it so. If thou beest drowsy now, and unattentive, curious or contentious, or quarrelsome now, now God leaves thee in that indisposition, and that is a judgment: But it was his Mercy that brought thee hither before. In every sin thou hast some remorse, some reluctance, before thou do that sin; and that pre-reluctance, and pre-remorse was Mercy. If thou hadst no such remorse in thy last sin, before the sin, and hast it now, this is the effect of God's former mercy, and former good purpose upon thee, to let thee see that thou needest the assistance of his Minister, and of his Ordinance, to enable thee to lay hold on Mercy when it is offered thee. Can any calamity fall upon thee, in which thou shalt not be bound to say, I have had blessings in a greater measure then this? If thou have had losses, yet thou hast more, out of which God took that. If all be lost, perchance thou art but where thou begunst at first, at nothing. If thou begunst upon a good heighth, and beest fallen from that, and fallen low, yet as God prepared a Whale to transport Jonah, before Jonah was cast into the Sea, God prepared thee a holy Patience, before he reduced thee to the exercise of that Patience. If thou couldest apprehend nothing done for thyself, yet all the mercies that God hath exhibited to others, are former mercies to thee, in the Pattern, and in the Seal, and in the Argument thereof: They have had them, therefore thou shalt. All God's Prophecies, are thy Histories: whatsoever he hath promised others, he hath done in his purpose for thee: And all God's Histories are thy Prophesies; all that he hath done for others, he owes thee. Hast thou a hardness of heart? knowest thou not that Christ hath wept before to entender that hardness? hast thou a paleness of soul, in the apparition of God in fire, and in judgment? knowest thou not, that Christ hath bled before, to give a vigor, and a vegetation, and a verdure to that paleness? is thy sin Actual sin? knowest thou not, that there is a Lamb bleeding before upon the Altar, to expiate that? Is thy terror from thy inherence, and encombrance of Original sin? knowest thou not, that the effect of Baptism hath blunted the sting of that sin before? art thou full of sores, putrid and ulcerous sores? full of wounds, through and through piercing wounds? full of diseases, nameless and complicate diseases? knowest thou not that there is a holy Charm, a blessed Incantation, by which thou art, though not invulnerable, yet invulnerable unto death, wrapped up in the eternal Decree of thine Election? that's thy pillar, the assurance of thine Election: If thou shake that, if thou cast down that Pillar, if thou distrust thine Election, with Samson, who pulled down pillars in his blindness, in thy blindness thou destroyest thyself. Begin where thou wilt at any Act in thyself, at any act in God, yet there was mercy before that, for his mercy is eternal, eternal even towards thee. I could easily think that that, that past between God and Moses in their long conversation; that that, that past between Christ and Moses in his trans-figuration; that that, that past between Saint Paul and the Court of Heaven in his ecstacy was instruction and manifestation on one part, and admiration and application on the other part of the mercy of God. Earth cannot receive, Heaven cannot give such another universal soul to all: all persons, all actions, as Mercy. And were I the child of this Text, that were to live a hundred years, I would ask no other marrow to my bones, no other wine to my heart, no other light to mine eyes, no other art to my understanding, no other eloquence to my tongue, then the power of apprehending for myself, and the power of deriving and conveying upon others by my Ministry, the Mercy, the early Mercy, the everlasting Mercy of yours, and my God. But we must pass to the consideration of this immense Light, in that one Beam, wherein it is exhibited here, that is, long life: The child shall die a hundred years old.
Long life is a blessing, as it is an image of eternity: as Kings are blessings, because they are Images of God. And as to speak properly, a King that possessed the whole earth, hath no proportion at all to God, (he is not a dram, not a grain, not an atom to God) so neither if a thousand Methusalems were put in one life, had that long life any proportion to eternity; for Finite and Infinite have no proportion to one another. But yet when we say so, That the King is nothing to God, we speak then between God and the King; and we say that; only to assist the Kings Religious humiliation of himself in the presence of God. But when we speak between the King and ourselves his Subjects, there we raise ourselves to a just reverence of him, by taking knowledge that he is the Image of God to us. So though long life be nothing to eternity, yet because we need such Glasses and such Images, as God shows us himself in the King, so he shows us his eternity in a long life. In this, that the Patriarchs complain everywhere of the shortness of life, and nearness of death; (Jacob at a hundred and thirty years tells Pharaoh, that his days were few, ) In this, that God threatens the shortness of life for a punishment to Eli, God says, There shall not be an old man in thy house forever: In this, that God brings it into Promise, and enters it, as into his Audit, and his revenue, ( With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation, ) That God would give him long life, and make that long life a Type of Eternity; In this, that God continues that promise into performance, and brings it to execution, in some of his chosen servants; at a hundred and twenty Moses his eyes were not dim, nor his natural force abated; and Caleb saith of himself, I am this day 85. years old, and as my strength was at first, for war, so is my strength now; In all these and many others, we receive so many testimonies that God brings long life out of his Treasury, as an immediate blessing of his. And therefore, as such his blessing, let us pray for it, where it is not come yet, in that apprecation and acclamation of the ancient general Councils, Multos annos Caesari, Aetern • s annos Caesari, Long life to our Caesar in this world, everlasting life to our Caesar in the world to come: and then let us reverence this blessing of long life, where it is come, in honoring those Ancient heads, by whose name, God hath been pleased to call himself, Antiquu • dierum, the ancient of days: and let us not make this blessing of long life, impossible to ourselves, by disappointing God's purpose of long life upon us, by our surfeits, our wantonness, our quarrels, which are all Goths, and Vandals, and Giants, called in by ourselves to fight with God against us. But yet, so receive we long life, as a blessing, as that we may also find a blessing in departing from this life: For so manifold, and so multiforn are his blessings, as even death itself hath a place in this Sphere of blessings, The child shall live a hundred years, but yet The child shall die.
When Paradise should have extended, as man should have multiplied, and every holy family, every religious Colony have constituted a new Paradise, that as it was said of Egypt, when it abounded with Hermitages in the Primitive persecutions, That Egypt was a continual City of Hermitages; so all the world should have been a continual Garden of Paradises, when all affections should have been subjects, and all creatures servants, and all wives helpers, then life was a sincere blessing. But, but a mixed blessing now, when all these are so much vitiated; only a possible blessing; a disputable, a conditionable, a circumstantial blessing now. If there were any other way to be saved and to get to Heaven, then by being born into this life, I would not wish to have come into this world. And now that God hath made this life a Bridge to Heaven; it is but a giddy, and a vertiginous thing, to stand long gazing upon so narrow a bridge, and over so deep and roaring waters, and desperate whirlpools, as this world abounds with: So teach us to number our days, saith David, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom: Not to number them so, as that we place our happiness, in the increase of their number. What is this wisdom? he tells us there; He asked life of thee, and thou gavest it him: But was that this life? It was Length of days forever and ever, the days of Heaven.
As houses that stand in two Shires, trouble the execution of Justice, the house of death that stands in two worlds, may trouble a good man's resolution. As death is a sordid Postern, by which I must be thrown out of this world, I would decline it: But as death is the gate, by which I must enter into Heaven, would I never come to it? certainly now, now that Sin hath made life so miserable, if God should deny us death, he multiplied our misery. We are in this Text, upon blessings appropriated to the Christian Church, and so to these times. And in theseTimes, we have not so long life, as the Patriarchs had before. They were to multiply children for replenishing the world, and to that purpose had long life. We multiply sins, and the children and offspring of sins, miseries, and therefore may be glad to get from this generation of Vipers. God gave his Children Manna and Quails, in the Wilderness, where nothing else was to be had; but when they came to the Land of Promise, that Provision ceased: God gave them long life in the times of Nature, and long, (though shorter then before) in the times of the Law; because in nature especially, but in the Law also, it was hard to discern, hard to attain the ways to Heaven. But the ways to Heaven are made so manifest to us in the Gospel, as that for that use, we need not long life; and that is all the use of our life here. He that is ready for Heaven, hath lived to a blessed age; and to such an intendment, a child newly baptized may be elder then his Grandfather. Therefore we receive long life for a blessing, when God is pleased to give it; though Christ entered it into no Petition of his Prayer, that God would give it: and so though we enter it into no Petition, nor Prayer, we receive it as a blessing too, when God will afford us a deliverance, a manumission, an emancipation from the miseries of this life. Truly I would not change that joy and consolation, which I proposed to my hopes, upon my Death-bed, at my passage out of this world, for all the joy that I have had in this world over again. And so very a part of the Joy of Heaven is a joyful transmigration from hence, as that if there were no more reward, no more recompense, but that I would put myself to all that belongs to the duty of an honest Christian in the world, only for a joyful, a cheerful passage out of it. And farther we shall not exercise your patience, or your devotion, upon these three pieces which constitute our first part: The Primogeniture of God's Mercy, which is first in all; The specification of God's Mercy, long Life, as it is a figure of, and a way to eternity; and then the association of God's Mercy; that Death, as well as Life, is a blessing to the Righteous.
So then we have brought our Sun to his Meridianall height, to a full Noon, in which all shadows are removed: for even the shadow of death, death itself is a blessing, and in the number of his Mercies. But the Afternoon shadows break out upon us, in our second part of the Text. And as afternoon shadows do, these in our Text do also; they grow greater and greater upon us, till they end in night, in everlasting night, The sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed. Now of shadows it is appliably said, Vmbrae non sunt tenebrae sed densior lux, shadows are not utter darkness, but a thicker light; shadows are thus much nearer to the nature of light then darkness is, that shadows presume light, which darkness doth not; shadows could not be, except there were light. The first shadows in this dark part of our Text, have thus much light in them, that it is but the sinner, only the sinner that is accursed. The Object of God's malediction, is not man, but sinful man. If God make a man sin, God curses the man; but if sin make God curse, God curses but the sin. Non talem Deum tuum putes, qualis nec tu debes esse, Never propose to thyself such a God, as thou wert not bound to imitate: Thou mistakest God, if thou make him to be any such thing, or make him to do any such thing, as thou in thy proportion shouldst not be, or shouldst not do. And shouldst thou curse any man that had never offended, never transgressed, never trespast thee? Can God have done so? Imagine God, as the Poet saith, Ludere in humanis, to play but a game at Chess with this world; to sport himself with making little things great, and great things nothing: Imagine God to be but at play with us, but a gamester, yet will a gamester curse, before he be in danger of losing anything? Will God curse man, before man have sinned? In the Law there are denuntiations of curses enjoined and multiplied: There is maledictus upon maledictus; but it is maledictus homo, cursed be the man; He was not cursed by God, before he was a man; nor cursed by God, because he was a man; but if that man commit Idolatry, Adultery, Incest, Beastiality, Bribery, Calumny, (as the sins are reckoned there) there he meets a particular curse, upon his particular sin. The book of Life is but names written in Heaven; all the Book of Death, that is, is but that in the Prophet, when names are written in the Earth. But whose names are written in the Earth there? They that depart from thee, shall be written in the Earth: They shall be, when they depart from thee. For saith he, They have forsaken the Lord, the Fountain of Living water; They did not that, because their names were written in the Earth, but they were written there, because they did that. Our Savior Christ came hither to do all his Fathers will; and he returned cheerfully to his Father again, as though he had done all, when he had taken away the sins of the world by dying for all sins, and all sinners. But if there were an Hospital of miserable men, that lay under the reprobation and malediction of God's decree, and not for sin; the blood of that Lamb is not sprinkled upon the Postills of that door. Forgive me O Lord, O Lord forgive me my sins, the sins of my youth, and my present sins, the sin that my Parents cast upon me, Original sin, and the sins that I cast upon my children, in an ill example; Actual sins, sins which are manifest to all the world, and sins which I have so labored to hide from the world, as that now they are hid from mine own conscience, and mine own memory; Forgive me my crying sins, and my whispering sins, sins of uncharitable hate, and sins of unchaste love, sins against Thee and Thee, against thy Power O Almighty Father, against thy Wisdom, O glorious Son, against thy Goodness, O blessed Spirit of God; and sins against Him and Him, against Superiors and Equals, and Inferiors; and sins against Me and Me, against mine own soul, and against my body, which I have loved better then my soul; Forgive me O Lord, O Lord in the merits of thy Christ and my Jesus, thine Anointed, and my Savior; Forgive me my sins, all my sins, and I will put Christ to no more cost, nor thee to more trouble, for any reprobation or malediction that lay upon me, otherwise then as a sinner. I ask but an application, not an extension of that Benediction, Blessed are they whose sins are forgiven; Let me be but so blessed, and I shall envy no man's Blessedness: say thou to my sad soul, Son be of good comfort, thy sins are forgiven thee, and I shall never trouble thee with Petitions, to take any other Bill off of the fyle, or to reverse any other Decree, by which I should be accurst, before I was created, or condemned by thee, before thou saw'st me as a sinner; For the object of malediction is but a sinner, (which was our first) and an Inveterate sinner, A sinner of a hundred years, which is our next consideration.
First, Quia centum annorum, because he is so old; so old in sin, He shall be accur sed. And then, Quamvis centum annorum, though he be so old, though God have spared him so long, he shall be accursed. God is not a Lion in his house, nor frantic amongst his servants, saith the Wiseman; God doth not roar, nor tear in pieces for everything that displeaseth him. But when God is pressed under us, as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves; the Lord will groan under that burden a while, but he will cast it off at last. That which is said by David, is, if it be well observed, spoken of God himself, Cum perverso pervertêris; from our frowardness God will learn to be froward: But he is not so, of his own nature. If you walk contrary unto me, I will walk contrary unto you, saith God. But this is not said of one, first, wry step; but it is a walking, which implies a long, and a considerate continuance. And if man come to sin so, and will not walk with God, God will walk with that man in his own pace, and overthrow him in his own ways. Nay, it is not only in that place, If you walk contrary to me, In occursu, as Calvin hath it, ex adverso, as the vulgate hath it, which implies an Actual Opposition against the ways of God: but the word is but Chevi, and Chevi is but In accident, in contingente; if you walk negligently, inconsiderately; if you leave out God, pretermit, and slight God; if you come to call God's Providence Fortune, to call God's Judgments Accidents, or to call the Mercies of a God, favors of great Persons, if you walk in this neglect of God, God shall proceed to a neglect of you; and then though God be never the worse for your leaving him out, (for if it were in your power to annihilate this whole world, God were no worse, then before there was a World) yet if God neglect you, forget, pretermit you, it is a miserable annihilation, a fearful malediction. But God begins not before sin, nor at the first sin. God did not curse Adam and Eve for their sin; it was there first, and God foresaw they would not be sinners of a hundred years. But him that was in the Serpent, that inveterate sinner, him, who had sinned in God's Court, in Heaven, before, and being banished from thence, fell into this transmarine treason, in another land, to seduce God's other Subjects there, him God accurs'd. Who amongst us can say, that he had a Fever upon his first excess, or a Consumption upon his first wantonness, or a Commission put upon him for his first Bribery? Till he be a sinner of a hundred years, till he have brought age upon himself, by his sin, before the time, and thereby be a hundred years old at forty, and so a sinner of a hundred years, till he have a desire that he might, and a hope that he shall be able to sin to a hundred years; and so be a sinner of a hundred years; Till he sin hungerly and thirstily, and ambitiously, and swiftly, and commit the sins of a hundred years in ten, and so be a sinner of a hundred years; till he infect and poison that age, and spoil that time that he lives in by his exemplary sins, till he be Pestis secularis, the plague of that age, peccator secularis, the proverbial sinner of that age, and so be a sinner of a hundred years, till in his actions he have been, or in his desires be, or in the fore-knowledge of God would be a sinner of a hundred years, an inveterate, an incorrigible, an everlasting sinner, God comes not to curse him.
But then Quamvis centum annorum, though he have lived a hundred years, though God have multiplied upon him Evidences, and Seals, and Witnesses, and Possessions, and Continuances, and prescriptions of his favor, all this hath not so riveted God to that man, as that God must not depart from him. God was crucified for him, but will not be crucified to him; still to hang upon this Cross, this perverseness of this habitual sinner, and never save himself and come down, never deliver his own Honor, by delivering that sinner to malediction. It is true, that we can have no better Title to God's future Blessings, then his Blessings formerly exhibited to us; God former blessings are but his marks set up there, that he may know that place, and that man the better against another time, when he shall be pleased to come thither again with a supply of more Blessings: God gives not Blessings as payments, but as obligations; and becomes a debtor by giving. If I can produce that, Remember thy mercies of old, I need ask no new; for even that is a Specialty by which God hath bound himself to me for more. But yet not so, if I abuse his former Blessings, and make them occasions of sin. How often would I have gathered you as a hen gathers her chickens, saith Christ, I know not how often; surely very often; for many hundreds of years: But yet, how often soever, God left them open to the Eagle, the Roman Eagle at last. God gives thee a recovery from sickness, that doth not make thee Immortal. God gives thee a good interpretation of thine actions from a gracious Prince, this doth not make thee impeccable in thyself. God gives thee titles of Honor upon thyself, this doth not always give thee honor, and respect from others. For as it is God that Raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill, that he may set him with Princes; so it is God that Cuts off the spirit of Princes, and is terrible to the Kings of the Earth. It is God that maketh the devices of the People of none effect, and it is God that destroys the Counsels of Egypt. It is God that maketh their Nobles like Oreb, and like Zeb, and like them that perished at Endor, and became as dung for the Earth; that is, profitable only in their ruin, and conculcation. And so with the same unwillingness, that God comes to the execution, we come to the denunciation of this malediction. They, They, these inveterate, incorrigible sinners, Quamvis centum annorum, though God have spared them so long, yet Quia centum annorum, because they have employed all that time in sin, They shall be accursed.
Accursing is malediction, malediction is literally but maledicence; and that is but evil speaking. Now all kinds of evil speaking do not enwrap a man within the curse of this Text; For, though it be a shrewd degree of this curse of God, to be generally ill spoken of by sad, sober, and discreet, and dis-passioned, and dis-interested Men, yet we are fallen into times, when men will speak ill of men, in things which they do not know, nor should not know, and out of credulity and easy believing of men, whom they should not believe; men distempered and transported with passion: So men speak evil out of passion, and out of compassion; out of humor, and out of rumour. But malediction in our Text, is an Imprecation of evil, by such men as would justly inflict it if they could, and because they cannot, they pray to God that he would, and he doth: When God seconds the Imprecations of good men, that is this curse. The Person that is cursed here is Peccator centum annorum; an habitual, an incorrigible sinner. If you put me to assign, in what rank of men, Magistrates or Subjects, rich or poor, Judges or prisoners, All. If you put me to assign, for what sins, sins of complexion and constitution, sins of society and conversation, sins of our profession, and calling, sins of the particular place, or of the whole times, that we live in, sins of profit, or sins of pleasure, or sins of glory; (for we all do some sins which are sins merely of glory; sins that we make no profit by, nor take much pleasure in, but do them only out of a mis-imagined necessity, left we should go too much less, and sink in the estimation of the World, if we did them not;) if I must say which of these sins put us under this curse, All; If he be centum annorum, Inveterate, Incorrigible, He is accursed. But then who curses him? God put an extraordinary spirit, and produced extraordinary effects from curses, in the mouths of his Prophets which have been since the World began. So Elisha curses, and two Bears destroy forty two persons. These curses are deposited by God, in the Scriptures, and then inflicted by the Church, in her ordinary jurisdiction, by excommunications, and other censures. But this may be but matter of form in the Church, or matter of indignation in the Prophet. Not so, but as God saith, That the rod in Ashurs hand is his rod, and the sword in Babylon's hand his sword, so the curse deposited in the Scripture, and denounced by the Church, is his curse. For as the Prophet saith, Non est malum, all the evil (that is, all the penal ill, all plagues, all war, all famine,) that is done in the World, God doth; so all the evil that is spoken, all the curses deposited in the Scriptures, and denounced by the Church, God speaks. But be all this so; there is a curse deposited, denounced, seconded by God; yet, all this is but malediction, but a speaking, here is no execution spoken of: yes, there is, for as the sight of God is Heaven, and to be banished from the sight of God, is Hell in the World to come, so the blessing of God, is Heaven, and the curse of God is Hell and damnation, even in this Life. The Hieroglyphique of silence, is the hand upon the mouth; If the hand of God be gone from the mouth, it is gone to strike. If it be come to an Os Domini locutum, that the mouth of the Lord have spoken it, it will come presently to an Immittam manum, That God will lay his hand upon us, in which one Phrase, all the plagues of Egypt are denounced. Solomon puts both hand and tongue together; In manibus linguae, saith he, Death and Life are in the hand of the tongue: God's Tongue hath a hand; where his Sentence goeth before, the execution followeth. Nay, in the execution of the last sentence, we shall feel the Hand, before we hear the Tongue, the execution is before the sentence; It is, Ite maledicti, go ye accursed: First, you must Go, go out of the presence of God; and by that being gone, you shall know, that you are accursed; Whereas in other proceedings, the sentence denounces nounces the execution, here the execution denounces the sentence. But be all this allowed to be thus; There is a malediction deposited in the Scriptures, denounced by the Church, ratified by God, brought into execution, yet it may be born, men do bear it. How men do bear it, we know not; what passes between God and those men, upon whom the curse of God lieth, in their dark horrors at midnight, they would not have us know, because it is part of their curse, to envy God that glory. But we may consider in some part the insupportablenesse of that weight, if we proceed but so far, as to accommodate to God, that which is ordinarily said of natural things. Corruptio optimi pessima; when the best things change their nature, they become worst. When God, who is all sweetness, shall have learned frowardness from us, as David speaks; and being all rectitude, shall have learned perverseness and crookedness from us, as Moses speaks; and being all providence, shall have learned negligence from us: when God who is all Blessing, hath learned to curse of us, and being of himself spread as an universal Honey-comb over All, takes in an impression, a tincture, an infusion of gall from us, what extraction of Wormwood can be so bitter, what exaltation of fire can be so raging, what multiplying of talents can be so heavy, what stifnesse of destiny can be so inevitable, what confection of gnawing worms, of gnashing teeth, of howling cries, of scalding brimstone, of palpable darkness, can be so, so insupportable, so inexpressible, so in-imaginable, as the curse and malediction of God? And therefore let not us by our works provoke, nor by our words teach God to curse. Lest if with the same tongue that we bless God, we curse Men; that is, seem to be in Charity in our Prayers here, and carry a ranckerous heart, and venomous tongue home with us God come to say, (and God's saying is doing) As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him; as he clothed himself with cursing, as with a garment, so let it be as a girdle, wherewith he is girded continually: When a man curses out of Levity, and makes a loose habit of that sin, God shall so gird it to him, as he shall never devest it. The Devils grammar is Applicare Activa Passivis, to apply Actives to Passives; where he sees an inclination, to subminister a temptation; where he seeth a froward choler, to blow in a curse. And God's grammar is to change Actives into Passives: where a man delights in cursing, to make that man accursed. And if God do this to them who do but curse men, will he do less to them, who blaspheme himself? where man wears out Aeternum suum, (as Saint Gregory speaketh) his own eternity, his own hundred years; that is, his whole life, in cursing and blaspheming, God shall also extend his curse, In aeterno suo, in his eternity, that is, for ever. Which is that, that falls to the bottom, as the heaviest of all, and is our last consideration; that all the rest, that there is a curse deposited in the Scriptures, denounced by the Church, avowed by God, reduced to execution, and that insupportable in this life, is infinitely aggravated by this, that he shall be accursed forever.
This is the Anathema Maran-atha, accursed till the Lord come; and when the Lord cometh, he cometh not to reverse, nor to alleviate, but to ratify and aggravate that curse. As soon as Christ cursed the fig-tree, it withered, and it never recovered: for saith that Gospel, he cursed it Inaeternum, forever. In the course of our sin, the Holy Ghost hath put here a number of years, a hundred years: We sin long, as long as we can, but yet sin hath an end. But in this curse of God in the Text, there is no number; it is an indefinite future; He shall be accursed: A mile of cyphers or figures, added to the former hundred, would not make up a minute of this eternity. Men have calculated how many particular grains of sand, would fill up all the vast space butween the Earth and the Firmament: and we find, that a few lines of cyphers will design and express that number. But if every grain of sand were that number, and multiplied again by that number, yet all that, all that inexpressible, inconsiderable number, made not up one minute of this eternity; neither would this curse, be a minute the shorter for having been endured so many Generations, as there were grains of sand in that number. Our Esse, our Being, is from God's saying, Dixit & facti, God spoke, and we were made: our Bene esse, our well-being, is from God's saying too; Bene-dicit God blesses us, in speaking graciously to us. Even our ill-being, our condemnation is from God's saying also: for Malediction is Damnation. So far God hath gone with us that way, as that our Being, our well-being, our ill-being is from his saying: But God shall never come to a Non esse, God shall never say to us, Be nothing, God shall never succor us with an annihilation, nor give us the ease of resolving into nothing, for this curse flows on into an everlasting future, He shall be accurst, he shall be so for ever. In a true sense we may say, that God's fore-knowledge grows less and less every day; for his fore-knowledge is of future things, and many things which were future heretofore are past, or present now; and therefore cannot fall under his fore-knowledge: His fore-knowledge in that sense, grows less, and decayeth. But his eternity decayeth in no sense; and as long as his eternity lasts, as long as God is God, God shall never see that soul, whom he hath accurst, delivered from that curse, or eased in it.
But we are now in the work of an hour, and no more. If there be a minute of sand left, (There is not) If there be a minute of patience left, hear me say, This minute that is left, is that eternity which we speak of; upon this minute dependeth that eternity: And this minute, God is in this Congregation, and puts his ear to everyone of your hearts, and hearkens what you will bid him say to yourselves: whether he shall bless you for your acceptation, or curse you for your refusal of him this minute: for this minute makes up your Century, your hundred years, your eternity, because it may be your last minute. We need not call that a Fable, but a Parable, where we hear, That a Mother to still her froward child told him, she would cast him to the Wolf, the Wolf should have him; and the Wolf which was at the door, and within hearing, waited, and hoped he should have the child indeed: but the child being stilled, and the Mother pleased, then she saith, so shall we kill the Wolf, the Wolf shall have none of my child, and then the Wolf stole away. No metaphor, no comparison is too high, none too low, too trivial, to imprint in you a sense of God's everlasting goodness towards you. God bids your Mother the Church, and us her Servants for your Souls, to denounce his judgments upon your sins, and we do it; and the executioner Satan, believes us, before you believe us, and is ready on his part. Be you also ready on your part, to lay hold upon those conditions, which are annexed to all God's maledictions, Repentance of former, preclusion against future sins, and we shall be always ready, on our part to assist you with the Power of our Intercession, to deliver you with the Keies of our Absolution, and to establish you with the seals of Reconciliation, and so disappoint that Wolf, that roaring Lion, that seeks whom he may devour: Go in Peace, and be this your Peace, to know this, Maledictus qui pendet in Cruce, God hath laid the whole curse belonging to us upon him, that hangs upon the Cross; But Benedictus qui pendet in pendentem; To all them that hang upon him, that hangeth there, God offereth now, all those blessings, which he that hangeth there hath purchased with the inestimable price of his Incorruptible blood; And to this glorious Son of God, who hath suffered all this, and to the most Almighty Father, who hath done all this, and to the blessed Spirit of God, who offereth now to apply all this, be ascribed by us, and by the whole Church, All power, praise, might, majesty, glory, and dominion, now and for evermore Amen.
SERMON XXVII.
Preached to the King, at White-Hall, the first of April, 1627.
MARK. 4. 24.
W Hether that which is recorded by this Evangelist, in, and about this Chapter, be one entire Sermon of our Savior's, preached at once, or Notes taken and erected from several Sermons of his, we are no further curious to inquire, then may serve to ground this Note, that if it were one entire Sermon our Savior preached methodically, and eased his hearers with certain landmarks by the way, with certain divisions, certain transitions, and callings upon them, to observe the points as they arose: For as he beginneth so, Hearken, Behold, so he returneth to that refreshing of their considerations, Et dixit illis, He said unto them; and, Again, he said unto them, seven or eight times, in this Chapter; so many times he calleth upon them, to observe his passing from one point to another. If they be but Notes of several Sermons, we only note this from that, That though a man understand not a whole Sermon, or remember not a whole Sermon, yet he doth well, that layeth hold upon such Notes therein as may be appliable to his own case, and his own conscience, and conduce to his own edification. The widow of Sarepta had no Palaces to build, and therefore she went not out to survey Timber; she had only a poor cake to bake to save her own and her child's life, and she went out to gather a few sticks, two sticks as she told the Prophet Elias, to do that work. Every man that cometh to hear here, every man that cometh to speak here, cometh not to build Churches, nor to build Common-wealths; to speak only of the duties of Kings, and of Prelates, and of Magistrates; but that poor soul that gathers a stick or two, for the baking of her own cake, that layeth hold upon any Note for the rectifying of her own perverseness hath performed the commandment of this Text, Take heed what ye hear. He that is drowning, will take hold of a bulrush; and even that bulrush may stay him, till stronger means of succor come. If you would but feel, that you are drowning in the whirlepooles of sin, and God's judgments for sin, and would lay hold upon the shallowest man, (be that man dignified with God's Character, the Character of Orders, ) and lay hold upon the meanest part of his speech, (be that speech dignified with God's Ordinance, be it a Sermon ) even I, and anything that I say here, and say thus, (spoken by a Minister of God, in the house of God, by the Ordinance of God) might stop you till you heard better, and you might be the fitter for more, if you would but take heed now what you heard; Take heed what you hear.
These words were spoken by Christ, to his Apostles upon this occasion. He had told them before, That since there was a candle lighted in the world, it must not be put under a bushel, nor under a bed, verse 21. That all that is hid, should be made manifest; That all that was kept secret, should come abroad, verse 22. That if any man had ears to hear, he might hear, verse 23. That is, that the Mystery of salvation, which had been hid from the world till now, was now to be published to the world, by their Preaching, their Ministry, their Apostleship: And that therefore, since he was now giving them their Commission, and their instructions; since all that they had in charge for the salvation of the whole world, was only that, that he delivered unto them, that which they heard from him, they should take heed what they heard; Take heed what you hear. In which he layeth a double obligation upon them: First, All that you hear from me, you are to preach to the world; and therefore Take heed what you hear; forget none of that; And then, you are to preach no more then you hear from me; and therefore Take heed what you hear; add nothing to that. Be not over-timorous so to prevaricate and forbear to preach that, which you have truly heard from me; But be not over-venturous neither, to pretend a Commission when you have none, and to preach that for my word, which is your own passion, or their purpose that set you up. And when we shall have considered these words in this their first acceptation, as they were spoken literally, and personally to the Apostles, we shall see also, that by reflection they are spoken to us, the Ministers of the Gospel; and not only to us, of the Reformation, but to our Adversaries of the Roman persuasion too; and therefore, in that part, we shall institute a short comparison, whether they or we do best observe this commandment, Take heed what you hear; Preach all that, preach nothing but that, which you have received from me. And having passed through these words, in both those acceptations, literally to the Apostles, and by reflection to all the Ministers of the Gospel, the Apostles being at this time, when these words were spoken, but Hearers, they are also by a fair accommodation appliable to you that are Hearers now, Take heed what you hear: And since God hath extended upon you that glorification, that beatification, as that he hath made you regale Sacerdotium, a royal Priesthood, since you have a Regality and a Priesthood imprinted upon you, since by the prerogative which you have in the Gospel of the Kingdom of Christ Jesus, and the co-inheritance which you have in that Kingdom with Christ Jesus himself, you are Regum genus, and Sacerdotum genus, of kin to Kings, and of kin to Priests, be careful of the honor of both those, of whose honor, you have the honor to participate, and take heed what you hear of Kings, take heed what you hear of Priests, take heed of hearkening to seditious rumors, which may violate the dignity of the State, or of schismatical rumors, which may cast a cloud, or aspersion upon the government of the Church; Take heed what you hear.
First then as the words are spoken, in their first acceptation, literally to the Apostles, the first obligation that Christ lays upon them, is the publication of the whole Gospel. Take heed what you hear; for, all that, which you hear from me, the world must hear from you; for, for all my death and resurrection the world lies still surrounded under sin, and Condemnation, if this death and resurrection, be not preached by you, unto them. Therefore the last words that ever our Savior spoke unto them, were a ratification of this Commission, You shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth. God proceeds legally; Publication before Judgment. God shall condemn no man, for not believing in Christ, to whom Christ was never manifested. 'It is true, that God is said to have come to Elijah in that still small voice, and not in the strong wind, not in the Earth-quake, not in the fire. So God says, Sibilab • populum meum, I will but kiss, I will but whisper for my people, and gather them so. So Christ tells us things in darkness; And so Christ speaks to us in our Ear; And these low voices, and holy whisperings, and half-silences, denote to us, the inspirations of his Spirit, as his Spirit bears witness with our spirit; as the Holy Ghost insinuates himself into our souls, and works upon us so, by his private motions. But this is not God's ordinary way, to be whispering of secrets. The first thing that God made, was light; The last thing, that he hath reserved to do; is the manifestation of the light of his Essence in our Glorification. And for Publication of himself here, by the way, he hath constituted a Church, in a Visibility, in an eminency, as a City upon a hill; And in this Church, his Ordinance is Ordinance indeed; his Ordinance of preaching batters the soul, and by that breach, the Spirit enters; His Ministers are an Earth-quake, and shake an earthly soul; They are the sons of thunder, and scatter a cloudy conscience; They are as the fall of waters, and carry with them whole Congregations; 3000 at a Sermon, 5000 at a Sermon, a whole City, such a City as Nineveh at a Sermon; and they are as the roaring of a Lion, where the Lion of the tribe of Judah, cries down the Lion that seeks whom he may devour; that is, Orthodoxall and fundamental truths, are established against clamorous, and vociferant innovations. Therefore what Christ tells us in the dark, he bids us speak in the light; and what he says in our ear, he bids us preach on the house top. Nothing is Gospel, not Evangelium, good message, if it be not put into a Messengers mouth, and delivered by him; nothing is conducible to his end, nor available to our salvation, except it be avowable doctrine, doctrine that may be spoke allowed, though it awake them, that sleep in their sin, and make them the more froward, for being so awaked.
God hath made all things in a Roundnesse, from the round superficies of this earth, which we tread here, to the round convexity of those heavens, w ch (as long as they shall have any being) shall be our footstool, when we come to heaven, God hath wrapped up all things in Circles, and then a Circle hath no Angles; there are no Corners in a Circle. Corner Divinity, clandestine Divinity are incompatible terms; If it be Divinity, it is avowable. The heathens served their God's in Temples, sub dio, without roofs or coverings, in a free opennesse; and, where they could, in Temples made of Specular stone, that was transparent as glass, or crystall, so as they which walked without in the streets, might see all that was done within. And even nature itself taught the natural man, to make that one argument of a man truly religious, Aperto vivere voto, That he durst pray aloud, and let the world hear, what he asked at God's hand; which duty is best performed, when we join with the Congregation in public prayer. Saint Augustine, hath made that note upon the Donatists, That they were Clancularii, clandestine Divines, Divines in Corners. And in Photios, we have such a note almost upon all Heretics; as the Nestorian was called Coluber, a snake, because though he kept in the garden, or in the meadow, in the Church, yet he lurked and lay hid, to do mischief. And the Valentinian was called a Grasshopper, because he leaped and skipped from place to place; and that creature, the Grasshopper, you may hear as you pass, but you shall hardly find him at his singing; you may hear a Conventicle Schismatic, hear him in his Pamphlets, hear him in his Disciples, but hardly surprise him at his exercise. Publication is a fair argument of truth. That tastes of Luther's holy animosity, and zealous vehemency, when he says, Audemus gloriari Christum à nobis primo vulgatum; other men had made some attempts at a Reformation, and had felt the pulse of some persons, and some Courts, and some Churches, how they would relish a Reformation; But Luther rejoices with a holy exultation, That he first published it, that he first put the world to it. So the Apostles proceeded; when they came in their peregrination, to a new State, to a new Court, to Rome it self, they did not inquire, how stands the Emperor affected to Christ, and to the preaching of his Gospel; Is there not a Sister, or a Wife that might be wrought upon to further the preaching of Christ? Are there not some persons, great in power and place, that might be content to hold a party together, by admitting the preaching of Christ? This was not their way; They only considered who sent them; Christ Jesus: And what they brough; salvation to every soul that embraced Christ Jesus. That they preached; and still begun with a Vae si non; Never tell us of displeasure, or disgrace, or detriment, or death, for preaching of Christ. For, woe be unto us, if we preach him not: And still they ended with a Qui non crediderit, Damnabitur, Never deceive your own souls, He, to whom Christ hath been preached, and believes not, shall be damned. All Divinity that is bespoken, and not ready made, fitted to certain turns, and not to general ends; And all Divines that have their souls and consciences, so disposed, as their Libraries may be, (At that end stand Papists, and at that end Protestants, and he comes in in the middle, as near one as the other) all these have a brackish taste; as a River hath that comes near the Sea, so have they, in coming so near the Sea of Rome. In this the Prophet exalts our Consolation, Though the Lord give us the bread of Adversity, and the water of Affliction, yes shall not our Teachers be removed into corners; (They shall not be silenced by others, they shall not affect of themselves Corner Divinity. But (says he there) our eyes shall see our Teachers, and our ears shall hear a word, saying, This is the way, walk in it. For so they shall declare, that they have taken to heart this Commandment of him that sent them, Christ Jesus. All that you receive from me, you must deliver to my people; therefore, Take heed what you hear; forget none of it. But then you must deliver no more then that; and therefore in that respect also, Take heed what you hear; add nothing to that, and that is the other obligation which Christ lays here upon his Apostles.
That reading of those words of Saint John, Omnis spiritus qui solvit Iesum, Every spirit that dissolves Jesus, that takes him asunder, in pieces, and believes not all, is a very ancient reading of that place. And upon that Ancient reading, the Ancients infer well, That not only that spirit that denies that Christ being God, assumed our flesh, not only he that denies that Christ consists of two natures, God and Mam, but he also that affirms this Christ, thus consisting of two natures, to consist also of two persons, this man dissolves Jesus, takes him asunder, in pieces, and slackens the band of the Christian faith, which faith is, That Christ consisting of two natures, in one person, suffered for the salvation of man. So then, not only to take from Jesus, one of his natures, God or man, but to add to him, another person, this addition is a Diminution, a dissolution, an annihilation of Jesus. So also to add to the Gospel, to add to the Scriptures, to add to the articles of faith, this addition is a Diminution, a Dissolution, an Annihilation of those Scriptures, that Gospel, that faith, and the Author, and finisher thereof. Jesus grew in stature, says the Gospel; But he grew not to his life's end; we know to, how many feet he grew. So the Scriptures grew to; the number of the books grew; But they grow not to the worlds end, we know to how many books they grew. The body of man and the vessels thereof, have a certain, and a limited capacity, what nourishment they can receive and digest, and so a certain, measure and stature to extend to. The soul, and soul of the soul, Faith, and her faculties, hath a certain capacity too, and certain proportions of spiritual nourishments exhibited to it, in certain vessels, certain measures, so many, these Books of Scriptures. And therefore as Christ says, Which of you can add one Cubit to your stature? (how plentifully, and how delicately soever you feed, how discreetly, and how providently soever you exercise, you cannot do that) so may he say to them who pretend the greatest power in the Church, Which of you can add another book to the Scriptures, A Codicill to either of my Testaments? The curse in the Revelation falls as heavy upon them that add to the book of God, as upon them that take from it: Nay, it is easy to observe, that in all those places of Scripture which forbid the taking away, or the adding to the Book of God, still the commandment that they shall not, and still the malediction if they do, is first placed upon the adding, and after upon the taking away. So it is in that former place, Plagues upon him, that takes away: but first, Plagues upon him, that adds: so in Deut. you shall not diminish, but first, you shall not add: So again in that Book, whatsoever I command you observe to do it: Thou shalt not diminish from it; but first, Thou shalt not add to it. And when the same commandment seems to be given in the Proverbs, there is nothing at all said of taking away, but only of adding, as though the danger to God's Church consisted especially in that; Every word of God, is pure, saith Solomon there: Add thou not unto his word, lest thou be reproved and found a liar. For, though heretofore some Heretics have offered at that way, to clip God's coin in taking away some book of Scripture, yet for many blessed Ages, the Church hath enjoyed her peace in that point: None of the Books are denied by any church, there is no subtraction offered; But for addition of Apocryphal Books to Canonical, the Church of God is still in her Militant state, and cannot triumph: and though she have victory, in all the Reasons, the cannot have peace. You see Christ's way, to them that came to hear him; Audiistis, and Audiistis, This, and that you have heard others say; Eg • autem dico; your Rule is, what I say; for Christ spoke Scripture; Christ was Scripture. As we say of great and universal Scholars, that they are viventes Bibliothecae, living, walking, speaking Libraries; so Christ was l • quens Scriptura; living, speaking Scripture. Our Sermons are Text and Discourse; Christ Sermons were all Text: Christ was the Word; not only the Essentiall Word, which was always with God, but the very written word too; Christ was the Scripture, and therefore, when he refers them to himself, he refers them to the Scriptures, for though here he seem only, to call upon them, to hearken to that which he spoke, yet it is in a word, of a deeper impression; for it is Videte; See what you hear. Before you preach anything for my word, see it, see it written, see it in the body of the Scriptures. Here then lies the double obligation upon the Apostles, The salvation of the whole world lies upon your preaching of that, of All That, of only That, which you hear from me now, And therefore, take heed what you hear. And farther we carry not your consideration, upon this first acceptation of the words as they are spoken personally to the Apostles, but pass to the second, as by reflection, they are spoken to us, the Ministers of the Gospel.
In this consideration, we take in also our Adversaries; for we all pretend to be successors of the Apostles; though not we, as they, in the Apostolical, yet they as well as we in the Evangelical, and Ministerial function: for, as that which Christ said to Saint Peter, he said in him, to all the Apostles, Upon this Rock will I build my Church, so in this which he saith to all the Apostles, he saith to all us also, Take heed what you hear. Be this then the issue between them of the Roman distemper, and us; whether they or we, do best perform this commandment, Take heed what you hear, conceal nothing of that which you have heard, obtrude nothing but that which you have heard: Whether they or we do best apply our practice to this rule, Preach all the Truth, preach nothing but the Truth, be this lis contestata, the issue joined between us, and it will require no long pleading for matter of evidence; first, our Savior saith, Man liveth by every word, that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. And this Christ saith from Moses also: so that in the mouth of two unreproachable witnesses, Moses, and Christ, the Law, and the Gospel, we have this established, Mans life is the Word of God, the Word is the Scripture. And then our Savior saith further, The Holy Ghost shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance: and here is the Latitude, the Totality, the Integrality of the means of salvation; you shall have Scriptures delivered to you, by them the Holy Ghost shall teach you all things; and then you shall be remembered of all, by the explication and application of those Scriptures, at Church, where lies the principal operation of the Holy Ghost. Now, is this done in the Roman Church? Are the Scriptures delivered, and explicated to them? To much of the Scriptures as is read to them, in their Lessons and Epistles, and Gospels, is not understood when it is read, for it is in an unknown language; so that, that way, the Holy Ghost teaches them nothing. Neither are all the Scriptures distributed into these Lessons and Epistles, and Gospels which are read: so that if they did understand all they heard, yet they did not hear all they were bound to understand. And for remembering them by the way of preaching, though it be true, that the Reformation (by way of example, though not by Doctrine) have so much prevailed upon them, as that they have now twenty Sermons in that Church, for one that they had before Luther, yet if a man could hear six Sermons a day, all the days of his life, he might die without having heard all the Scriptures explicated in Sermons: But when men have a Christian liberty afforded to them to read the Scriptures at home, and then are remembered of those things at Church, and there taught to use that liberty modestly, to establish their faith upon places of Scripture that are plain, and to suspend their judgment upon obscurer places, till they may, by due means, preaching or conference, receive farther satisfaction therein, from them, who are thereunto authorized by God in his Church, there certainly is this Rule of our Savior's, Take heed what you hear, preach all that you have received from me, likelyer to be observed then there, where the body of the conveyance, the Scripture itself is locked up from us; and the soul of the conveyance, the sense, and interpretation of the Scriptures, is locked into one man's breast; and the Great Seal of that conveyance, the Sacrament of our Reconciliation, is broken, and mutilated, and given us but by half.
But they do not only stray on that hand, in not giving all that the Scripture gives; (They do not give the liberty of meats, nor the liberty of marriage, which the Scripture gives; Nay, they do not give the liberty of trying, whether the Scripture give it or no; for they do not give the liberty of reading the Scriptures) But on the other hand, they stray too, and further, That they deliver more then the Scriptures do, and make other Rules and Canons equal to Scriptures. In which excess, they do not only make the Apocryphal Books, (Books that have always had a favorable aspect, and benign countenance from the Church of God) equal to Canonical Scriptures, But they make their decretal Epistles of their Popes and of their Extravagants, (as they call them) and their occasional Bulls, nay their Bull-baitings, their Bulls fighting, and crossing and contradicting one another, equal to Canonical Scripture. So that these men have put the salvation of the world, upon another science, upon another profession; It is not the Divine, that is the Minister of salvation, but the Canonist. I must not determine my belief in the Apostles Creed, nor in Athanasius, nor in that of the Nicene Fathers; not only not the Scriptures, but not the Councils, nor Fathers must give the Materials, and Elements of my faith, but the Canon law; for so they rule it: Gratian that hath collected the sentences of Fathers and Councils, and digested them into heads of Divinity, he is no rule of our belief, because, say they, he is no part of the body of the Canon law; But they that first compiled the Decretals, and the Extravagants, and they who have since recompiled more Decretals, and more Extravagants, the Clementins, and the Sextins, and of late years the Septims, with those of John the 22. these make up the body of the Canon law, and these must be our Rule; what to believe. How long? Till they fall out with some State, with whom they are friends yet, or grown friends with some State, that they are fallen out with now; and then upon a new Decretal, a new Extravagant, I must contract a new, or enlarge, or restrain my old belief. Certainly, as in natural things, the assiduity takes off the admiration, (The rising, and the setting of the sun, would be a miracle to him, that should see it but once) and as in civil things, the profuseness, and the communication, and the indifferency takes off the Dignity, (for, as gold is gold still, the heaviest metal of all, yet if it be beat into leaf gold, I can blow it away; so Honor is honor still, the worthyest object of the worthyest spirits, and the noblest reward of the greatest Princes, yet the more have it, the less everyone hath of it) So in the Roman Church, they have not found a better way to justify their blasphemy of the insufficiency of the Scriptures, then by making contemptible writings, as sufficient as Scriptures, equal to Scripture. If they could make me believe, the Scriptures were no more sufficient then their Decretals, and Extravagants, I should easily confess there were no Scriptures sufficient for salvation. And farther we press not this evidence, how far they depart from this rule, Take heed what you hear, How much less, and how much more then Christ gave, they give, but pass to the third acceptation of these words, as, in a fair accommodation, they are spoken to you, who are now as the Apostles were then, Hearers, Take heed what you hear.
And into this part I enter with such a protestation, as perchance may not become me: That this is the first time in all my life, (I date my life from my Ministry; for I received mercy, as I received the ministry, as the Apostle speaks) this is the first time, that in the exercise of my Ministry, I wished the King away; That ever I had any kind of loathsomeness that the King should hear all that I said. Here, for a little while, it will be a little otherwise; because in this branch, I am led, to speak of some particular duties of subjects; and in my poor way, I have thought it somewhat an Eccentrique motion, and off of the natural Poles, to speak of the Duties of subjects before the King, or of the duties of Kings, in public and popular Congregations. As every man is a world in himself, so every man hath a Church in himself; and as Christ referred the Church for hearing to the Scriptures, so every man hath Scriptures in his own heart, to hearken to. Obedience to Superiors, and charity to others, are In-nate Scriptures; Obedience and Charity, are the Natural man's, the Civil man's, the Moral man's Old and New Testament. Take heed, that is, observe what you hear from them, and they will direct you well. And first, Take heed what you hear, is, take heed that you hear; That you do hearken to them, whom you should hear. Our Savior saith, He that is of God, heareth his words; ye therefore hear them not, because you are not his. Transferre this to a civil application; to obedience to Superiors. Christ makes account that he hath argued safely so; If you hear him not, you are none of his. If you hear him not in his Laws, hear him not in his Proclamations, hear him not in the Declarations of his wants and necessities, you are none of his, that is, you had rather you were none of his: There is a Nolumus hunc regnare smothered in our breasts, if we will not hear, and we had rather we might devest our Allegeance, rather we might be no subjects. By the Law, he that was willing to continue in the service of his Master, was willing to be bored in the ear, willing to testify a readiness of hearing and obedience. And when David describes the refractary man so, He is like the deaf Adder, that stoppeth her ear, which will not hearken to the voice of Charmers, charming never so wisely, that word Charmer, signifies an eloquent, a persuasive man, a powerful speaker; this Viper will not hear such. And for the sins of a Nation, when those sins come to the height, God will first inflict that punishment in the Prophet Jeremiah, I will send Serpents, Cockatrices amongst you, which will not be charmed, that is, venomous, and mutinous, and seditious spirits, upon whom, no language, no reason, no counsel, no persuasion can prevail; And then, he will second, and aggravate that punishment, with that in Isaiah, The Lord shall take from Jerusalem, the man of war, and the Judge, and the Prophet, and the honorable man, and the Counselor, and the eloquent Orator. As when they will not embrace religious duties, God shall take away their Preachers, so when they will not believe their Civil dangers, God shall take from them the spirit of persuasibility, and the power of perswasivenesse towards them, from them who should work upon them; and leave them a miserable example of that fearful rule, whom God will destroy, he will infatuate first; from that Nation from whom God will depart, as he is the Lord of hosts, and not fight their battles, he will depart first, as he is the Angel of the great counsel, and not enlighten their understandings, that they might see their dangers. The Potion of jealousy, was a bitter potion, and a putrefying potion, where it was to be ministered; and it was to be ministered to them, who gave the occasion of the jealousy. Now not to have brought Saul presents, not to have contributed to his present wars, and his present wants, this occasioned the jealousy; for so, says the text, They despised Saul, and brought him no presents; This was evidence enough of their contempt, That they brought him no presents. And where jealousies are so occasioned, much bitterness may follow; many bitter potions may be administered; many bitter pilles may be swallowed. And therefore, take heed that you hear, and hear so, as may in one act testify your obedience to Superiors, and charity towards others, who are already enwrapped in the same miseries, that may reach you; for obedience and charity are an Old, and a New Testament.
Take heed that you hear them whom God hath appointed to speak to you; But, when you come abroad, take heed what you hear; for, certainly, the Devil doth not cast in more snares at the eye of man, then at the ear. Our Savior Christ proposes it as some remedy against a mischief, That if the eye offend thee, thou mayst pull it out, and if thy hand or foot offend thee, thou mayst cut it off, and thou art safe from that offense. But he does not name nor mention the ear: for, if the ear betray thee, though thou do cut it off, yet thou art open to that way of treason still, still thou canst hear. Where one man libels with the tongue, or hand, a hundred libel with the ear; One man speaks, or writes, but a hundred applaud and countenance a calumny. Therefore sepi aures tuas spinis, as the Vulgate reads that place, hedge thine ears with thorns; that he that would whisper a calumny in thine ear, against another man, may be pricked with those thorns, that is, may discern from thee, that he is not welcome to thee, and so forbear; or if he will press upon thee, those thorns may prick thee, and warn thee that there is an uncharitable office done which thou shouldest not countenance.
Neither only may thy charity towards another, be violated by such a whisperer, but thine own safety endangered; And therefore, Take heed what you hear. There are two dangerous sorts of men, whom we call Auricularios, Earwigs transformed into men. And certainly there is no Lycanthropie so dangerous, not when men are changed into devouring wolves, as when these Earwigs are metamorphos'd into men. The first sort is of those, who take us into their ears; the other, that put themselves into ours. The first are they, that receive Auricular confessions; in which a man will propose to his Confessar, treasonable and bloody purposes; and if he allow them, then it is no longer a confession, but a consultation, and he may disclose it to any, whom he may thereby draw in; But if his Confessar disallow it, then it retains the nature of a confession still, and being delivered under that Seal, it may not be revealed, though the concealing cost Christendom, or, (as they express it) all the souls, that Christ hath died for. And of these Earwigs, of these Auricular men, we had shrewd experience in the carriage of that treason, the Emphaticall Treason, in respect of which, all other Treasons are but Trespasses, all Rebellions but Ryots, all Battayls but Frays. But then, the more frequent, and the more dangerous Earwig is he, that upon pretence of trusting thee with a secret, betrays thee, and therefore Take heed what you hear. Bartelus that great Lawyer, had delivered it for law, that whosoever hears treason, and reveals it not, is a Traitour. And though Baldus, a great Lawyer, and one between whom, and Bartolus, the scales are even, say, That Bartolus his soul, and all their souls that follow him in that opinion, burn in hell for that uncharitableness, yet, to verify that, that the most do go to hell, the most do follow Bartolus, and so thy danger, that huntest after the knowledge of great secrets, is the greater, and therefore, Take heed what you hear. Arridet tibi homo, & instar privati sermons occupat, says the little great Epictetus, or Arian upon him, a man will put himself into thy company, and speak in the confidence of a dear friend, and then, De Principe inclementer loquitur, he comes to speak boldly and irreverently of the greatest persons; and thou thinkest thou hast found Exemplum & monumentum fidei, a rare, a noble, an ingenuous, a free, and confident Spirit, Et pertexis, quod prior inceperat; Thou doest but say on that which he was saying, and make up his sentence, or doest but believe him, or doest but not say, that thou doest not believe him, and thy few words, thy no words, may cost thee thy life. Per ornamenta ferit, says the Patriarch, and Oracle of Moral men, Seneca; This whisperer wounds thee, and with a stilletta of gold, he strangles thee with scarfes of silk, he smothers thee with the down of Phoenixes, he stifles thee with a perfume of Ambar, he destroys thee by praising thee, overthrows thee by exalting thee, and undoes thee by trusting thee; By trusting thee with those secrets that bring thee into a desperate perplexity, Aut alium accusare in subsidium tui, (as the Patriarch, and Oracle of States-men, Tacitus, says) Either to betray another, that pretends to have trusted thee, or to perish thyself, for the saving of another, that plotted to betray thee. And therefore, if you can hear a good Organ at Church, and have the music of a domestic peace at home, peace in thy walls, peace in thy bosom, never hearken after the music of spheres, never hunt after the knowledge of higher secrets, then appertain to thee; But since Christ hath made you Regale Sacerdotium, Kings and Priests, in your proportion, Take heed what you hear, in derogation of either the State, or the Church.
In declaring ill affections towards others, the Holy Ghost hath imprinted these steps. First, he begins at home, in Nature, He that curseth Father or Mother shall surely be put to death; and then, as families grow out into Cities, the Holy Ghost goes out of the house, into the consideration of the State, and says, Thou shalt not curse the Ruler of the people, no Magistrate. And from thence he comes to the highest upon earth, for in Samuel, it comes to a cursing of the Lord's Anointed; and from thence to the highest in heaven, Whosoever curseth his God, shall bear his sin; and as though both those grew out of one another, The cursing of the King, and the cursing of God, the Prophet Isaiah hath joined them together, They shall be hungry, says he, (indigent, poor, penurious) and they shall fret, (be transported with ungodly passion) and they shall curse their King and their God: If they do one, they will do the other. The Devil remembers from what height he is fallen, and therefore still clambers upward, and still directs all our sins, in his end, upon God: Our end, in a sin, may be pleasure, or profit, or satisfaction of affections, or passions; but the Devils end in all is, that God may be violated and dishonored in that sin: And therefore by casting in ill conceptions and distastes, first, against Parents and Masters at home, and then against subordinate Magistrates abroad, and so against the Supreme upon earth, He brings us to ill conceptions and distastes against God himself; first, to think it liberty to be under no Governor, and then, liberty to be under no God; when as, only those two services, of a gracious God, and of a good King, are perfect freedom. Therefore the wise King Solomon meets with this distemper in the root, at first ebullition, in the heart; Curse not the King, no not in thy thought; for, that Thought hath a tongue, and hath spoken, and said Amen in the ears of God; That which thy heart hath said, though the Law have not, though the Jury have not, though the Peers have not, God hath heard thee say. The word which Solomon uses there, is Iadung; and that our Translators have in the margin called Conscience; Curse not the King, no not in thy conscience; Do not thou pronounce, that whatsoever thou dislikest, cannot consist with a good conscience; never make thy private conscience the rule of public actions; for to constitute a Rectitude, or an Obliquity in any public action, there enter more circumstances, then can have fallen in thy knowledge. But the word that Selomon takes there, Iad • ng, signifies properly all ways of acquiring knowledge, and Hearing is one of them, and therefore, Take heed what you hear: Come not so near evil speaking, as to delight to hear them, that delight to speak evil of Superiors. A man may have a good breath in himself, and yet be deadly infected, if he stand in an ill air; a man may stand in a cloud, in a mist, in a fog of blasphemers, till, in the sight of God, himself shall be dissolved into a blasphemous wretch, and in that cloud, in that mist, God shall not know him, that endured the hearing, from him, that adventured the speaking of those blasphemies. The ear, in such cases, is as the clift in the wall, that receives the voice, and then the Echo is below, in the heart; for the most part, the heart affords a return, and an inclination to those things that are willingly received at the ear; The Echo returns the last syllables; The heart concludes with his conclusions, whom we have been willing to hearken unto. We make Satyrs; and we look that the world should call that wit; when God knows, that that is in a great part, self-guiltiness, and we do but reprehend those things, which we ourselves have done, we cry out upon the illness of the times, and we make the times ill: so the calumniator whispers those things, which are true, nowhere, but in himself. But thy greater danger, is that mischievous purpose, (which we spake of before) to endanger thee by hearing, and to entangle thee in that Dilemma, of which, an ingenuous man abhors one part, as much as a conscientious man does the other, That thou must be a Delinquent, or an Accuser, a Traitour or an Informour: God hath imprinted in thee characters of a better office, and of more dignity, of a Royal Priesthood; as you have sparks of Royalty in your souls, Take heed what you hear of State-government; as you have sparks of holy fire, and Priesthood in your souls, Take heed what you hear of Church-government, which is the other consideration.
The Church is the spouse of Christ: Noble husbands do not easily admit defamations of their wives. Very religious Kings may have had wives, that may have retained some tincture, some impressions of error, which they may have sucked in their infancy, from another Church, and yet would be loath, those wives should be publicly traduced to be Heretics, or passionately proclaimed to be Idolaters for all that. A Church may lack something of exact perfection, and yet that Church should not be said to be a supporter of Antichrist, or a limb of the beast, or a thirster after the cup of Babylon, for all that. From extreme to extreme, from east to west, the Angels themselves cannot come, but by passing the middle way between; from that extreme impurity, in which Antichrist had damped the Church of God, to that intemerate purity, in which Christ had constituted his Church, the most Angelical Reformers cannot come, but by touching, yea, and stepping upon some things, in the way. He that is come to any end, remembers when he was not at the middle way; he was not there as soon as he set out. It is the posture reserved for heaven, to sit down, at the right hand of God; Here our consolation is, that God reaches out his hand to the receiving of those who come towards him; And nearer to him, and to the institutions of his Christ, can no Church, no not of the Reformation, be said to have come, then ours does. It is an ill nature in any man, to be rather apt to conceive jealousies, and to suspect his Mothers honor, or his sisters chastity, then a strange woman's. It is an irreverent unthankfulness, to think worse of that Church, which hath bred us, and fed us, and led us thus far towards God, then of a foreign Church, though Reformed too, and in a good degree. How often have I heard our Church condemned abroad, for opinions, which our Church never held? And how often have I heard foreign Churches exalted and magnified at home, for some things in the observation of the Sabbath, and in the administration of the Sacrament, which, indeed, those Churches do not hold, nor practice? Take heed what you hear; And that ill, which you hear of your own Church, at home, by God's abundant goodness to it, is not true; And, I would all that good, which you hear of Churches abroad, were true; but I must but wish, that it were so, and pray that it may be so, and praise God, for those good degrees towards it, which they have attained; But no Church in the world, gives us occasion of emulation towards them, or of undervaluing God's blessings upon ours. And therefore, as to us, who pretend an ambassage from him, if we make ourselves unworthy of that employment, God shall say, What hast thou to do, to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my Covenant into thy mouth, seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee? So to them, that hearken greedily after defamations of the persons and actions of his Church, God shall say, Why takest thou mine Ordinance into thy construction, or my servants into thy consideration, since thou hatest my yoke, and proposest to thyself no other end, in defaming others, then a licentious liberty, and an uncontrolled impunity in thyself? As you are Christians, God hath given you a Royal Priesthood; be so Noble, be so Holy, as to take heed what you hear, of State and Church, and of those persons, whom God hath called God's, in both those firmaments. And, for conclusion of all, Take heed what you hear of yourselves.
Men speak to you, and God speaks to you, and the Devil does speak to you too; Take heed what you hear of all three. In all three the words look two ways; for, in them, there is both a Videte, and a Cavete, first see that you do hear them, and then take heed what you hear from them. Men will speak; and they will speak of you: Men will discourse, and you must be their subject; Men will declaim, and you must be their Theme. And truly you should desire to be so: As only man can speak, so only man can desire to be spoken of. If gold could speak, if gold could wish, gold would not be content to lie in the dark, in the mine, but would desire to come abroad, to entertain Armies, or to erect, or endow Civil, or Ecclesiastical buildings. He that desires to Print a book, should much more desire, to be a book; to do some such exemplar things, as men might read, and relate, and profit by. He that hath done nothing worth the speaking of, hath not kept the world in reparations, for his Tenement and his Terme. Videte, see that you do hear, That you do give occasion to be spoken of, that you do deserve the praise, the thanks, the testimony, the approbation of the good men of your own times, for that shall deliver you over fairly to posterity. But then, Cavete, Take heed what you hear, that you suffer not these approbations to swerve, or swell into flattery: for, it is better to hear the Rebuke of the wise, then to hear the songs of fools, says the wise King: And, when the flatterer speaks thee fair, says he, believe him not, for there are seven abominations in his heart; And, (by the way) the Holy Ghost at any time, had as lieve say seventy millions, as seven; for seven is the holy Ghosts Cyphar of infinite; There are infinite abominations, in the flatterers heart. And of these flatterers, these wasps, that swarm in all sweet, and warm places, and have a better outside • then the Be, (the Waspe hath a better shape, and a better shape, and a better appearance then the Be, but a sharper and a stronger sting, and, at last, no honey) of these, no authors of any books of the Bible, have warned us so much, and armed us so well, as those two Royal Authors, those two great Kings, David, and Solomon; In likelihood because they, as such, had been most offered at by them, and could best give a true character of them, as David does, Their words are smoother then butter, but war is in their hearts, and softer then oil, and yet they are naked swords. Videte, Cavete, see that you do hear, that you give good men occasion to speak well of you; But take heed what you hear, that you encourage not a flatterer, by your over easy acceptation of his praises.
Man speaks; and God speaks too; and first Videte, see that you do hear him; for, as he that fears God, fears nothing else, so he that hears God hears nothing else, that can terrify him. Ab Auditione mala non timebit, says David, a good man shall not be afraid of evil tidings, for his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord. A rumor shall come one year, says Jeremiah, and next year another rumor; new inventions from Satan, for new intimidations; but still he is at home, for he dwells in God. Videte, see that you hear him; But then Cavete, take heed what you hear, even from God himself, that you mistake not what God says, for as all God's pardons have an Ita quod se been gerat; He whom God pardons, for that that is past, is bound to the good behavior for the future, so all God's promises have a Si audiertis, si volueritis, if I hearken, if I obey, I shall eat the good things of the land; otherwise I shall starve, body, and soul. There is a Vives proposed to me, I may conceive justly an infallibility of eternal life, but still it is; fac hoc & vives, this I must do, and then I shall live; otherwise, moriar, and morte moriar, I shall dy both ways, body and soul. There is not much asked of Joshua, but something there is; It is but a Tantummodo hoc, only this; but a Tantummodo hoc, an only this there is, Only be thou valiant, and of a good courage; forsake not the cause of God, and God will never forsake thee. There is not much asked of Jairus, for the resuscitation of his dead daughter, but something there is, it is Tantummodo hoc, but only this; but an only this there is, Tantummodo creed, & non metuas; do not mistrust Christ, do not disable Christ, from doing a miracle, in thy behalf, by not believing; as, in one place, where he came, it is said that Christ could not do much, by reason of their unbelief. Hear God there, where God speaks to thee, and then thou shalt hear, that, that he speaks to thee. Above, in heaven, in his decrees, he speaks to himself, to the Trinity: In the Church, and in the execution of those decrees, he speaks to thee. Climbe not up, to the search of unsearchable things, to the finding out of investigable things, as Tertullian speaks; but look to that which is near thee; not so much to those Decrees which have no conditions, as to be able to plead conditions performed, or, at least, a holy sorrow, that thou hast not performed them. Videte, Cavete; see that you do hear God, else every rumor will scatter you; But take heed what you hear, else you may come to call conditional things absolute.
And lastly, since Satan will be speaking too, Videte, be sure you do hear him, be sure you discern it to be his voice, and know what leads you into temptation. For, you may hear a voice that shall say, youth must have pleasures, and greatness must have State, and charge must have support. And this voice may bring a young man to transfer all his wantonness upon his years, when it is the effect of high diet, or licentious discourse, or wanton Images admitted, and cherished in his fancy; and this voice may bring great officers, to transfer their inaccessiblenesse, upon necessary State, when it is an effect of their own laziness, or indulgence to their pleasures; and this voice may bring rich landlords to transfer all their oppression of tenants, to the necessity of supporting the charge of wives and children, when it is an effect of their profuseness and prodigality. Nay you may hear a voice, that may call you to this place, and yet be his voice; which is that, which Saint Augustine confesses and laments, that even to these places persons come to look upon one another, that can meet nowhere else. Videte; see you do hear, that you do discern the voice; for, that is never God's voice that puts upon any man, a necessity of sinning, out of his years and constitution, out of his calling and profession, out of his place, and station, out of the age, and times that he lives in, out of the pleasure of them, that he lives upon, or out of the charge of them, that live upon him. But then, Cavete, take heed what you hear from him too, especially then, when he speaks to thee upon thy death-bed, at thy last transmigration; then when thine ears shall be deaf, with the cries of a distressed, and a distracted family, and with the found, and the change of the found of thy last bell; then when thou shalt hear a hollow voice in thyself, upbraiding thee, that thou hast violated all thy Makers laws, worn out all thy Savior's merits, frustrated all the endeavors of his blessed Spirit upon thee, evacuated all thine own Repentances, with relapses; then when thou shalt see, or seem to see his hand turning the stream of thy Savior's blood into another channel, and telling thee, here's enough for Jew and Turk, but not a drop for thee; then when in that multiplying glass of Despair, which he shall present, every sinful thought shall have the proportion of an Act, and every Act, of a Habite, when every Circumstance of every sin, shall enter into the nature of the sin it self, and vary the sin, and constitute a particular sin; and every particular sin, shall be a sin against the holy Ghost; Take heed what you hear; and be but able to say to Satan then, as Christ said to Peter, in his name, Vade retro Satan, come after me Satan, come after me tomorrow; come a minute after my soul is departed from this body, come to me, where I shall be then, and when thou seest me washed in the blood of my Savior, clothed in the righteousness of my Savior, lodged in the bosom of my Savior, crowned with the merits of my Savior, confess, that upon my death-bed, thou wast a liar, and wouldest have been a murderer, and the Lord shall, and I, in him, shall rebuke thee. See that ye refuse not him, that speaketh, says the Apostle; not any that speaks in his name; but especially not him, whom he names there, that speaks better things, then the blood of Abel; for, the blood of Abel speaks but by way of example, and imitation; the blood of Christ Jesus, by way of Ransom, and satisfaction. Hear what that blood says for you, in the ears of the Father, and then no singing of the flatterer, no lisping of the tempter, no roaring of the accuser, no thunder of the destroyer shall shake thy holy constancy. Take heed what you hear, remember what you have heard; and the God of heaven, for his Son Christ Jesus sake, by the working of his blessed Spirit, prosper and improve both endeavors in you. Amen.
SERMON XXVIII.
Preached to the King, at the Court in April, 1629.
GEN. 1. 26.
N Ever such a frame, so soon set up, as this, in this Chapter. For, for the thing it self, there is no other thing to compare it with. For it is All, it is the whole world. And for the time, there was no other time to compare it with, for this was the beginning of time, In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth. That Earth, which in some thousands of years, men could not look over, nor discern what form it had: (for neither Lactantius, almost three hundred years after Christ, nor Saint Augustine, more then one hundred years after him, would believe the earth to be round) that earth, which no man, in his person, is ever said to have compassed, till our age; That earth which is too much for man yet, (for, as yet, a very great part of the earth is unpeopled) that earth, which, if we will cast it all but into a Map, costs many Months labor to grave it, nay, if we will cast but a piece of an acre of it, into a garden, costs many years labor to fashion, and furnish it: All that earth, and then, that heaven, which spreads so far, as that subtle men have, with some appearance of probability, imagined, that in that heaven, in those manifold Sphears of the Planets, and the Stars, there are many earths, many worlds, as big as this, which we inhabit; That earth and that heaven, which spent God himself, Almighty God, six days in furnishing; Moses sets up in a few syllables, in one line, In principio, in the beginning God created heaven and earth. If a Livy or a Guicciardine, or such extensive and voluminous authors, had had this story in hand; God must have made another world, to have made them a Library to hold their Books, of the making of this world. Into what Wire would they have drawn out this earth? Into what leaf-gold would they have beat out these heavens? It may assist our conjecture herein to consider, that amongst those men, who proceed with a sober modesty, and limitation in their writing, and make a conscience not to clog the world with unnecessary books; yet the volumes which are written by them, upon this beginning of Genesis, are scarce less then infinite, God did no more but say, let this and this be done; And Moses does no more but say, that upon God's saying it was done. God required not nature to help him to do it: Moses required not reason to help him to be believed. The holy Ghost hovered upon the waters, and so God wrought: The holy Ghost hovered upon Moses too, and so he wrote. And we believe these things to be so, by the same Spirit in Moses mouth, by which they were made so, in God's hand. Only, beloved, remember, that a frame may be thrown down in much less time, then it was set up. A child, an Ape can give fire to a Canon: And a vapor can shake the earth: And these fires, and these vapors can throw down cities in minutes. When Christ said, Throw down this Temple, and in three days I will raise it; they never stopped upon the consideration of throwing it down; they knew, that might be soon done; but they wondered at the speedy raising of it. Now, if all this earth were made in that minute, may not all come to the general dissolution in this minute? Or may not thy acres, thy miles, thy Shires shrink into feet, and so few feet, as shall but make up thy grave? When he who was a great Lord, must be but a Cottager; and not so well; for a Cottager must have so many acres to his Cottage; but in this case, a little piece of an acre, five foot, is become the house it self; The house, and the land; the grave is all: lower then that; the grave is the Land, and the Tenement, and the Tenant too: He that lies in it, becomes the same earth, that he lies in. They all make but one earth, and but a little of it. But then raise thyself to a higher hope again. God hath made better land, the land of promise; a stronger city, the new Jerusalem; and, inhabitants for that everlasting city, Vs; whom he made, not by saying, let there be men, but by consultation, by deliberation, God said, Let us make Man in our Image, after our likeness.
We shall pursue our great examples; God in doing, Moses in saying; and so make hast in applying the parts. But first receive them. And since we have the whole world in contemplation, consider in these words, the four quarters of the world, by application, by fair, and just accommodation of the words. First, in the first word, that God speaks here, Faciamus, Let us, us in the plural, (a denotation of divers Persons in one Godhead) we consider our East where we must begin, at the knowledge and confession of the Trinity. For, though in the way to heaven, we be travelled beyond the Gentiles, when we come to confess but one God, (The Gentiles could not do that) yet we are still among the Jews, if we think that one God to be but one Person. Christ's name is Oriens the East, if we will be named by him, (called Christians) we must look to this East, the confession of the Trinity. There's then our East, in the Faciamus; Let us, us make man: And then our West is in the next word, Faciamus Hominem. Though we be thus made, made by the counsel, made by the concurrence, made by the hand of the whole Trinity; yet we are made but men: And man, but in the appellation, in this text: and man there, is but Adam: and Adam is but earth, but red earth, earth died red in blood, in Soul-blood, the blood of our own souls. To that west we must all come, to the earth. The Sun knoweth his going down: Even the Sun for all his glory, and heighth, hath a going down, and he knows it. The highest cannot devest mortality, nor the discomfort of mortality. When you see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway you say there cometh a storm, says Christ. When out of the region of your west, that is, your later days, there comes a cloud, a sickness, you feel a storm, even the best moral constancy is shaked. But this cloud, and this storm, and this west there must be; And that's our second consideration. But then the next words design a North, a strong, and powerful North, to scatter, and dissipate these clouds: Ad imaginem, & similitudinem; That we are made according to a pattern, to an image, to a likeness, which God proposed to himself for the making of man. This consideration, that God did not rest, in that preexistent matter, out of which he made all other creatures, and produced their forms, out of their matter, for the making of man; but took a form, a pattern, a model for that work, this is the North wind, that is called upon to carry out of the perfumes of the garden, to spread the goodness of God abroad. This is that which is intended in Job; fair weather cometh out of the North. Our West, our declination is in this, that we are but earth, our North, our dissipation of that darkness, is in this, that we are not all earth; Though we be of that matter, we have another form, another image, another likeness. And then, whose image and likeness it is, is our Meridionall height, our noon, our south point, our highest elevation. In Imagine nostra, Let us make man in our Image. Though our Sun set at noon, as the Prophet Amos speaks; though we die in our youth, or fall in our height: yet even in that Sunset, we shall have a Noon. For this Image of God shall never depart from our soul; no, not when that soul departs from our body. And that's our South, our Meridionall height and glory. And when we have thus seen this East, in the faciamus, That I am the workmanship and care of the whole Trinity; And this West in the Hominem, That for all that, my matter, my substance, is but earth: But then a North, a power of overcoming that low and miserable state, In Imagine; That though in my matter, the earth, I must die; yet in my form, in that Image which I am made by, I cannot die: and after all a South, a knowledge, That this Image is not the Image of Angels, to whom we shall be like, but it is by the same life, by which those Angels themselves were made; the Image of God himself: When I am gone over this east, and west, and north, and south, here in this world; I should be as sorry as Alexander was, if there were no more worlds. But there is another world, which these considerations will discover, and lead us to, in which our joy, and our glory shall be, to see that God essentially, and face to face, after whose Image, and likeness we were made before. But as that Pilot which had harbor'd his ship so far within land, as that he must have change of Winds, in all the points of the Compass, to bring her out, cannot hope to bring her our in one day: So being to transport you, by occasion of these words, from this world to the next; and in this world, through all the Compass, all the four quarters thereof; I cannot hope to make all this voyage today. To day we shall consider only our longitude, our East, and West; and our North and South at another tide, and another gale.
First then we look towards our East, the fountain of light, and of life. There this world began; the Creation was in the east. And there our next world began too. There the gates of heaven opened to us; and opened to us in the gates of death; for, our heaven is the death of our Savior, and there he lived, and died there, and there he looked into our west, from the east, from his Terasse, from his Pinacle, from his exaltation (as himself calls it) the Cross. The light which arises to us, in this east, the knowledge which we receive in this first word of our text, Faciamus, Let us, (where God speaking of himself, speaks in the Plural) is the manifestation of the Trinity; the Trinity, which is the first letter in his Alphabet, that ever thinks to read his name in the book of life; The first note in his Gammut, that ever thinks to sing his part, in the Choir of the Triumphant Church. Let him him have done as much, as all the Worthies; and suffered as much as all Natures Martyrs, the penurious Philosophers; let him have known as much, as they that pretend to know, Omne scibile, all that can be known nay, and in-intelligibilia, In-investigabilia, (as Turtullian speaks) un-understandable things, unrevealed decrees of God; Let him have writ as much, as Aristotle writ, or as is written upon Aristotle, which is, multiplication enough: yet he hath not learnt to spel, that hath not learnt the Trinity; not learnt to pronounce the first word that cannot bring three Persons into one God. The subject of natural philosophy, are the four elements, which God made, the Subject of supernatural philosophy, Divinity, are the three elements, which God is; and (if we may so speak) which make God, that is, constitute God, notify God to us, Father, Son, and holy Ghost. The natural man, that hearkens to his own heart, and the law written there; may produce Actions that are good, good in the nature and matter, and substance of the work. He may relieve the poor, he may defend the oppressed. But yet, he is but as an open field; and though he be not absolutely barren, he bears but grass. The godly man; he that hath taken in the knowledge of a great, and a powerful God, and enclosed, and hedged in himself with the fear of God, may produce actions better then the mere natural man, because he refers his actions to the glory of his imagined God. But yet this man, though he be more fruitful, then the former, more then a grassy field; yet he is but a ploughed field, and he bears but corn, and corn, God knows, choked with weeds. But that man, who hath taken hold of God, by those handles, by which God hath delivered, and manifested himself in the notions of Father, Son, and holy Ghost; he is no field, but a garden, a Garden of God's planting, a Paradise in which grow all things good to eat, and good to see, (spiritual resection, and spiritual recreation too) and all things good to cure. He hath his being, and his diet, and his physique, there, in the knowledge of the Trinity; his being in the mercy of the Father; his physique in the merits of the Son; his diet, his daily bread, in the daily visitations of the holy Ghost. God is not pleased, not satisfied, with our bare knowledge, that there is a God. For, it is impossible to please God, without faith: and there is no such exercise of faith, in the knowledge of a God, but that reason, and nature will bring a man to it. When we profess God, in the Creed, by way of belief, Credo in Deum, I believe in God, in the same article we profess him to be a Father too, I believe in God the father Almighty: And that notion, the Father, necessarily implies, a second Person, a Son: And then we profess him to be maker of heaven, and earth: And in the Creation, the holy Ghost, the Spirit of God, is expressly named. So that we do but exercise reason, and nature, in directing ourselves upon God. We exercise not faith, (and without faith it is impossible to please God) till we come to that, which is above nature, till we apprehend a Trinity. We know God, we believe in the Trinity. The Gentiles multiplied God's. There were almost as many God's as men, that believed in them. And I am got out of that thrust, and out of that noise, when I am come into the knowledge of one God: But I am got above stairs, got in the Bedchamber, when I am come to see the Trinity, and to apprehend not only, that I am in the care of a great, and a powerful God, but that there is a Father, that made me, a Son that Redeemed me, a holy Ghost, that applies this good purpose of the Father, and Son, upon me, to me. The root of all is God. But it is not the way to receive fruits, to dig to the root, but to reach to the boughs. I reach for my Creation to the Father, for my Redemption to the Son, for my sanctification to the holy Ghost: and so I make the knowledge of God, a Tree of life unto me; and not otherwise. Truly it is a sad Contemplation, to see Christians scratch and wound & tear one another, with the ignominious invectives, and uncharitable names of of Heretic, and Schismatic, about Ceremonial, and Problematicall, and indeed but Criticall, verbal controversies: and in the mean time, the foundation of all, the Trinity, undermined by those numerous, those multitudinous Anthills of Socinians, that overflow some parts of the Christian world, and multiply everywhere. And therefore the Adversaries of the Reformation, were wise in their generation, when to supplant the credit of both those great assistants of the Reformation, Luther, and Calvin, they impute to Calvin fundamental error, in the Divinity of the second Person of the Trinity, the Son; And they impute to Luther, a detestation of the very word Trinity, and an expunction thereof, in all places of the Liturgy, where the Church had received that word. They knew well, if that slander could prevail against those persons, nothing that they could say, could prevail upon any good Christians. But though in our doctrine, we keep up the Trinity aright; yet, God knows, in our practice we do not. I hope it cannot be said of any of us, that he believes not the Trinity, but who amongst us thinks of the Trinity, considers the Trinity? Father, and Son do naturally imply, and induce one another; and therefore they fall oftener into our consideration. But for the holy Ghost, who feels him, when he feels him? Who takes knowledge of his working, when he works? Indeed our Fathers provided not well enough, for the worship of the whole Trinity, nor of the holy Ghost in particular, in the endowments of the Church, and Consecrations of Churches, and possessions in their names. What a spiritual dominion, in the prayers, and worship of the people, what a temporal dominion in the possessions of the world had the Virgin Mary, Queen of heaven, and Queen of earth too? She was made joint purchaser of the Church with her Son, and had as much of the worship thereof as he, though she paid her fine in milk, and he in blood. And, till a new Sect came in her Sons name; and in his name, the name of Jesus, took the regency so far out of that Queen Mothers hands, and sued out her Sons Livery so far, as that though her name be used, the Virgin Mary is but a feoffee in trust, for them; all was hers. And if God oppose not these new usurpers of the world, posterity will soon see Saint Ignatius worth all the Trinity in possessions and endowments, as that sumptuous, and splendid foundation of his first Temple at Rome, may well create a conjecture, and suspicion. Travaile no farther; Survay but this City; And of their not one hundred Churches, the Virgin Mary hath a dozen; The Trinity hath but one; Christ hath but one; The holy Ghost hath none. But not to go into the City, nor out of ourselves; which of us doth truly, and considerately ascribe the comforts, that he receives in dangers, or in distresses, to that God of all comfort, the comforter, the holy Ghost? We know who procured us, our Presentation, and our dispensation: you know who procured you, your offices, and your honors. Shall I ever forget who gave me my comfort in sickness? Who gave me my comfort, in the troubles, and perplexities, and diffidencies of my conscience? The holy Ghost brought you hither. The holy Ghost opens your ears, and your hearts here. Till in all your distresses, you can say, Veni Creator Spiritus, come holy Ghost, and that you feel a comfort in his coming: you can never say Veni Domine Jesus, come Lord Jesus, come to Judgment. Never to consider the day of Judgment, is a fearful thing. But to consider the day of Judgment, without the comfort of the holy Ghost, is a thousand times more fearful.
This Seal then, this impression, this notion of the Trinity being set upon us, in the first Creation, in this first plural word of our text, Faciamus; Let us, (for Father, Son, and holy Ghost made man) and this seal being re-imprinted upon us, in our second Creation, our Regeneration, in Baptism, (Man is Baptized In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the holy Ghost) This notion of the Trinity being our distinctive Character, from Jew and Gentile; This being our specifique form: why does not this our form, this soul of our Religion denominate us? why are we not called Trinitarians, a name that would embrace the profession of all the Persons, but only Christians, which limits, and determines us upon one? The first Christians, amongst whose manifold Persecutions, scorn, and contempt, was not the least, in contempt and scorn, were called Nazarai, Nazarites in the mouth of the Vulgar; and Galil • i, Galilaeans in the mouth of Julian; and Iudaei, Jews in the mouth of Nero, when he imputed the burning of Rome (his own act) to them; and Christiani; (as Tertullian says) that they could accuse Christians of nothing, but the name of Christians; and yet they could not call them by their right name, but Chrestians, (which was gentle, quiet, easy patient men, made to be trodden upon) They gave them divers names in scorn, yet never called them Trinitarians. Christians themselves amongst themselves were called by divers names in the Primitive Church, for distinction; Fideles, the faithful, and Fratres, the Brethren, and Discipuli, Disciples; And, after, by common custom at Antioch, Christians. And after that, (they say) by a council which the Apostles held, at the same city, at Antioch, there passed an express Canon of the Church, that they should be called so, Christians. And before they had this name at Antioch, first by common usage, after by a determinate Canon, to be called Christians, from Christ, at Alexandria, they were called (most likely from the name of Jesus) Iesseans. And so Philo Judaeus, in that book, which he writes De Iessenis, intends by his Iessenis, Christians; and in divers parts of the world, into which Christians travel now, they find some elements; some fragments, some relics of the Christian Religion, in the practice of some religious Men, whom those Countries call, Iesseans, doubtlesly derived, and continued from the name of Jesus. So that the Christians took many names to themselves for distinction, (Brethren, Disciples, faithful) And they had many names put upon them in scorn, (Nazarites, Galilaeans, Jews, Chrestians,) and yet they were never, never by Custom amongst themselves, never by commandment from the Church, never in contempt from others, called Trinitarians, the profession of the Trinity being their specifique form, and distinctive Character; why so? Beloved, the name of Christ involved all: not only, because it is a name, that hath a dignity in it, more then the rest; (for Christ is an anointed person, a King, a Messiah, and so the profession of that Name, conferrs an Unction, a regal and a holy Unction upon us) (for we are thereby a royal Priesthood) but because in the profession of Christ, the whole Trinity is professed. How often doth the Son say, that the Father sent him? And how often that the Father will, and that he will send the Holy Ghost? This is life eternal, says he, to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent; And sent, with all power, in heaven, and in earth. This must be professed, Father, and Son; And then, no man can profess this; no man can call Jesus the Lord, but by the holy Ghost. So that, as in the persecutions, in the primitive Church, the Martyrs which were hurried to tumultuary executions, and could not be heard for noise, in excusing themselves of Treason, and sedition, and crimes imputed to them, to make their cause odious, did use in the sight of the people, (who might see a gesture, though they could not hear a protestation) to sign themselves with the sign of the Cross, to let them know, for what profession they died, so that the sign of the Cross, in that use thereof, in that time, was an abridgement, and a Catechism of the whole Christian Religion, so is the professing of the name of Christ, the professing of the whole Trinity. As he that confesses one God, is got beyond the mere natural man; And he that confesses a Son of God, beyond him: So is neither got to the full truth, till he confess the holy Ghost too. The fool says in his heart, there is no God. The fool, says David, The emphatical fool, in the highest degree of folly. But though he get beyond that folly, he is a fool still, if he say there is no Christ; For Christ is the wisdom of the Father: And a fool still, if he deny the holy Ghost: for who shall apply Christ to him, but the holy Ghost? Etiam Christiani Nomen superficies est, is excellently said by Tertullian, the name, and profession of a Christian, is but a superficial outside, sprinkled upon my face in Baptism, or upon mine outward profession, in actions: if I have not in my heart, a sense of the holy Ghost, that he applies the mercies of the Father, and the merits of the Son to my soul. As Saint Paul said, Whilest you are without Christ, you are without God. It is an Atheism, with Saint Paul, to be no Christian. So whilst you are without the holy Ghost, you are without Christ. It is Antichristian, to deny, or not to confess the holy Ghost. For as Christ is the manifestation of the Father, so the holy Ghost is the application of the Son. Therein only are we Christians, that in the profession of that name of Christ, we profess all the three Persons: In Christ is the whole Trinity; because, as the Father sent him, so he sent the holy Ghost. And that's our specifique form, that's our distinctive Character, from Jew, and Gentile, the Trinity.
But then, is this specifique form, this distinctive Character, the notion of the Trinity, conveyed to us, exhibited, imprinted upon us, in our Creation, in this word, this plural word, in the mouth of our one God, Faciamus, Let us, us. It is here, and here first. This is an intimation, and the first intimation, of the Trinity, from the mouth of God, in all the Bible. It is true, that though the same faith, which is necessary to salvation now, were always necessary, and so in the Old Testament, they were bound to believe in Christ, as well, as in the new, and consequently in the whole Trinity; yet not so explicitly, nor so particularly as now. Christ calling upon God, in the name of Father, says; I have manifested thy name unto the men, thou gavest me out of the world. They were men appropriated to God, men exempt out of the world; yet they had not a clear manifestation of Father, and Son, the doctrine of the Trinity, till Christ manifested it to them. I have manifested thy name, thy name of Father. And therefore the Jewish Rabbins say that the Septuagint, the first translators of the Bible, did disguise some places of the Scriptures, in their translation, lest Ptolemy, for whom they translated it, should be scandalized w h those places, & that this textwasone of those places, which say they though it be otherwise in the Copies of the Septuagint, which we have now, they translated Faciam, and not Faciamus, that God said here, I will make, in the singular; and not, Let us make man, in the plural, lest that plural word, might have misled King Pt • lomee to think, that the Jews had a plural Religion, and worshipped divers God's. So good an evidence do they confess this text to be, for some kind of plurality in the Godhead.
Here then God notified the Trinity; and here first, for though we accept an intimation of the Trinity, in the first line of the Bible, where Moses joins a plural name, Elohim, with a singular Verbe, Bara; and so in construction, it is, Creavit Dii, God's created heaven, and earth: yet, besides that, that is rather a mysterious collection, then an evident conclusion of a plurality of Persons, though we read that in that first verse, before this in the twenty sixth, yet Moses writ that, which is in the beginning of this chapter, more then two thousand years after God spake this, that is in our text. So long was God's plural, before Moses his plural; God's Faciamus, before Moses Bara Elohim. So that in this text, begins our Catechism. Here we have, and here first the saving knowledge of the Trinity.
For, when God spake here, to whom could God speak but to God? Non cum rebus Creandis, nox cum re nihili, says, Athanasius, speaking of God's first speaking, when he said, of the first creature, Let there be light. God spake not then to future things, to things that were not. When God spake first, there was no creature at all, to speak to. When God spake of the making of man, there were creatures. But were there any creatures able to create, or able to assist him, in the creation of man? Who? Angels? Some had thought so in Saint Basils time; and to them Saint Basil says, Súntne Illi? God says, let us make man to our Image, And could he say so to Angels? Are Angels and God all one? Or is that that is like an Angel, therefore like God? It was Sua Ratio, Suum verbum, Sua sapientia, says that Father, God spake to his own word, and wisdom, to his own purpose, and goodness. And the Son is the word and wisdom of God: and the holy Ghost is the goodness, and the purpose of God; that is, the administration, the dispensation of his purposes. 'It is true, that when God speaks this over again in his Church, as he does every day, now, this minute then God speaks it to Angels; to the Angels of the Church, to his Ministers, he says Faciamus, Let us, us both together, you, and we make a man; join mine Ordinance (your preaching) with my Spirit, (says God to us) and so make man. Preach the oppressor, and preach the wanton, and preach the calumniator into another nature. Make the ravening Wolf a Man, that licentious Goat a man, that insinuating Serpent a man, by thy preaching. To day if you will hear his voice, hear us. For here he calls upon us, to join with him for the making of man. But for his first Faciamus, which is in our text; it is excellently said, Dictum in senatu, & soliloquio; It was spoken in a Senate, and yet in a solitariness; spoken in private, and yet publicly spoken; spoken where there were divers, and yet but one; one God, and three Persons.
If there were no more intended in this plural expression, us, but, (as some have conceived) that God spake here in the person of a Prince, and Sovereign Lord, and therefore spake as Princes do, in the plural, We command, and We forbid, yet Saint Gregory's caution would justly fall upon it, Reverenter pensandum est, it requires a reverend consideration, if it be but so. For, God speaks so, like a King, in the plural, but seldom, but five times, (in my account) in all the Scriptures; and in all five, in cases of important consequence. In this text first, where God creates man, whom he constitutes his Viceroy in the World: here he speaks in his royal plural. And then in the next Chapter, where he extends man's term in his Vicegerency to the end of the world, in providing man, means of succession; Faciamus, Let us, us make him a helper; There he speaks in his royal plural. And then also in the third Chapter, in declaring the heinousness of man's fault, and arraigning him, and all us, in him, God says, Sicut unus ex nobis, Man is become as one of us, not content to be our Viceroy, but ourselves; There's his royal plural too. And again in that declaration of his Justice, in the confusion of the builders of Babel, Descendamus, confundamus, Let us do it: And then lastly, in that great work of mingling mercy with justice, which (if we may so speak) is God's master-piece, when he says, Quis ex nobis, who will go for us, and publish this? In these places, and these only, (and not all these neither, if we take it exactly according to the original; for in the Second, the making of Eve, though the Vulgat have it in the plural, it is indeed but singular in the Hebrew) God speaks as a King in his royal plural still. And when it is but so, Reverenter pensandum est, says that Father; it behooves us to hearken reverently to him, for Kings are Images of God; such Images of God, as have ears, and can hear; and hands and can strike. But I would ask no more premeditation at your hands, when you come to speak to God in this place, then if you sued to speak with the King: no more fear of God here, then if you went to the King, under the conscience of a guiltiness towards him; and a knowledge that he knew it. And that's your case here; Sinners, and manifest sinners. For even midnight is noon in the sight of God, and when your candles are put out, his Sun shines still. Nec quid absconditum à calcre ejus, says David, there is nothing hid from the heat thereof: not only, no sin, hid from the light thereof, from the sight of God; but not from the heat thereof, not from the wrath & indignation of God. If God speak plurally only in the Majesty of a sovereign Prince, still Reverenter pensandum, that calls for reverence. What reverence? There are national differences in outward worships, and reverences. Some worship Princes, and Parents, and Masters, in one, some in another fashion. Children kneel to ask blessing of Parents in England, but where else? Servants attend not with the same reverence upon Masters, in other nations, as with us. Accesses to their Princes are not with the same difficulty, nor the same solemnity in France, as in Turkey. But this rule goes thorough all nations, that in that disposition, and posture, and action of the body which in that place is esteemed most humble, and reverend, God is to be worshipped. Do so then here, God is your Father: ask blessing upon your knees; pray in that posture. God is your King: worship him with that worship, which is highest in our use, and estimation. We have no Grandees that stand covered to the King; where there are such, though they stand covered in the Kings presence, they do not speak to him, for matters of Grace; they do not sue to him: so ancient Canons make differences of Persons in the presence of God; where, and how, these, and these shall dispose of themselves in the Church, dignity, and age, and infirmity will induce differences. But for prayer there is no difference, one humiliation is required of all; As when the King comes in here; howsoever, they sat diversely before, all return to one manner of expressing their acknowledgement of his presence. So at the Oremus, Let us pray, let us all fall down, and worship, and kneel before the Lord our maker.
So he speaks in our text; not only as the Lord our King, intimating his providence, and administration; but as the Lord our maker, and then a maker so, as that he made us in a council, Faciamus, Let us; and that that he speaks, as in council, is another argument for reverence. For what interest, or freedom soever I have, by his favor, with any Counselor of State: yet I should surely use another manner of behavior towards him, at the Council Table, then at his own Table. So does there belong another manner of consideration to this plurality in God, to this meeting in Council, to this intimation of a Trinity, then to those other actions in which God is presented to us, singly, as one God, for so he is presented to the natural man, as well, as to us. And here enters the necessity of this knowledge, Oportet denuo nasci; without a second birth no salvation; And no second birth without Baptism; no Baptism, but in the name of Father, Son, and holy Ghost. It was the entertainment of God himself, his delight, his contemplation, for those infinite millions of generations, when he was without a world, without Creatures, to joy in one another, in the Trinity, as Gregory Nazianz: (a Poet, as well as a Father, as most of the Fathers were) expresses it: ill suae splendorem cernere formae, Gaudebat: It was the Fathers delight, to look upon himself in the Son; Numenque suum triplicique parique Luce nitens, and to see the whole Godhead, in a threefold, and an equal glory. It was God's own delight, and it must be the delight of every Christian, upon particular occasions to carry his thoughts upon the several persons of the Trinity. If I have a bar of Iron, that bar in that form will not nail a door; If a Sow of Lead, that Lead in that form will not stop a leak; If a wedge of Gold, that wedge will not buy my bread. The general notion of a mighty God, may less fit my particular purposes. But I coin my gold into currant money, when I apprehend God, in the several notions of the Trinity. That if I have been a prodigal Son, I have a Father in heaven, and can go to him, and say, Father I have sinned, and be received by him. That if I be a decayed Father, and need the sustentation of mine own children; there is a Son in heaven, that will do more for me, then mine own, of what good means or what good nature so ever they be, can or will do. If I be dejected in spirit, there is a holy Spirit in heaven, which shall bear witness to my spirit, that I am the child of God. And if the ghosts of those sinners, whom I made sinners, haunt me after their deaths, in returning to my memory, and reproaching to my conscience, the heavy judgments that I have brought upon them: If after the death of mine own sin, when my appetite is dead, to some particular sin, the memory and sinful delight of passed sins, the ghosts of those sins haunt me again; yet there is a holy Ghost in heaven, that shall exorcise these, and shall overshadow me, the God of all Comfort and Consolation. God is the God of the whole world, in the general notion, as he is so, God; but he is my God, most especially, and most applyably, as he receives me in the several notions of Father, Son, and holy Ghost.
This is our East, here we see God, God in all the persons, consulting, concurring to the making of us. But then my West presents it self, that is, an occasion to humble me in the next words. He makes but Man; A man that is but Adam, but Earth. I remember four names, by which man is often called in the Scriptures: and of those four, three do absolutely carry misery in their significations: Three to one against any man, that he is miserable. One name of Man is Ish; and that they derive à Sonitu; Man is but a voice, but a sound, but a noise, he begins the noise himself, when he comes crying into the world, and when he goes out; perchance friends celebrate, perchance enemies calumniate him, with a diverse voice, a diverse noise. A melancholique man, is but a groaning; a sportfull man, but a song; an active man, but a Trumpet; a mighty man, but a thunderclap. Every man but Ish, but a found, but a noise. Another name is Enoch. is mere Calamity, misery, depression. It is indeed most properly Oblivion. And so the word is most elegantly used by David, Quid est homo? where the name of man, is Enoch: And so, that which we translate What is man, that thou art mindful of him; is indeed, What is forgetfulness, that thou shouldest remember it; That thou shouldest think of that man, whom all the world hath forgotten? First, man is but a voice, but a sound. But because fame, and honor may come within that name of a sound, of a voice; therefore he is overtaken, with another damp: man is but oblivion: his fame, his name shall be forgotten. One name man hath, that hath some taste of greatness, and power in it, Gheber. And yet, I that am that man, says the Prophet, (for there that name of man Gheber is used) I am the man, that hath seen affliction, by the rod of God's wrath. Man, Ish, is so miserable, as that he afflicts himself, cries, and whines out his own time. And man, Enoch, so miserable, as that others afflict him, and bury him, in ignominious oblivion; And man, that is Gheber, the greatest, and powerfullest of men, is yet, but that man, that may possibly, nay that may justly see affliction by the rod of God's wrath, and from Gheber be made Adam, which is the fourth name of man, indeed the first name of man, the name in this text, and the name to which every man must refer himself, and call himself by, Earth, and red Earth.
Now God did not say of man, as of other creatures; Let the earth bring forth herbs, and fruits, and trees as upon the third day; nor let the earth bring forth cattle, and worms, as upon the sixth day, the same day that he made man; Non imperia • i verbo, sed familiari manu, says Tertullian, God calls not man out with an imperious Command, but he leads him out, with a familiar, with his own hand. And it is not Fiat homo, but Faciamus; not let there be, but let us make man. Man is but an earthen vessel. 'It is true, but when we are upon that consideration, God is the Potter. If God will be that, I am well content to be this. Let me be anything, so that that I am be from my God, I am as well content to be a sheep, as a Lion, so God will be my Shepherd: and the Lord is my shepherd: To be a Cottage, as a Castle, so God will be the builder; And the Lord builds, and watches the City, the house, this house this City, me, To be Rye, as Wheat, so God will be the husbandman; And the Lord plants me: and waters, and weeds, and gives the increase: and to be clothed in leather, as well, as in silk, so God will be the Merchant: and he clothed me in Adam, and assures me of clothing, in clothing the Lilies of the field, and is fitting the robe of Christ's righteousness to me now, this minute. Adam is as good to me as Ghebaer, a clod of earth, as a hill of earth; so God be the Potter.
God made man of earth, not of air, not of fire. Man hath many offices, that appertain to this world, and whilst he is here, must not withdraw himself, from those offices of mutual society, upon a pretence of zeal, or better serving God in a retired life. A ship will no more come to the harbor without Ballast, then without Sails; a man will no more get to heaven, without discharging his duties to other men, then without doing them to God himself. Man liveth not by bread only, says Christ; But yet he liveth by bread too. Every man must do the duties; every man must bear the incumbrances of some calling.
Pulvises: Thou art earth, he whom thou treadest upon is no less; and he that treads upon thee is no more. Positively it is a low thing, to be but earth; and yet thy low earth, is the quiet Center. There may be rest, acquiescence, content in the lowest Condition. But comparatively earth is as high as the highest. Challenge him, that magnifies himself above thee, to meet thee in Adam. There bid him, if he will have more Nobility, more Greatness, then thou, take more original sin then thou hast. If God have submitted thee, to as much sin, and penalty of sin, as him; he hath afforded thee as much, and as noble earth as him. And if he will not try it in the root, in your equality in Adam; yet, in another Test, another Furnace, in the grave he must. There all dusts are equal. Except an Epitaph tell me, who lies there, I cannot tell by the dust; nor by the Epitaph, know which is the dust it speaks of, if another have been laid before, or after in the same grave. Nor can any Epitaph be confident in saying here lies; but here was laid. For, so various, so vicissitudinary is all this world, as that even the dust of the grave hath revolutions. As the motions of an upper Sphere, imprint a motion in a lower Sphere, other then naturally it would have: So the changes of this life work after death. And, as envy supplants, and removes us alive; a shovell removes us, and throws us out of our grave, after death. No limbeque, no weights can tell you, this is dust Royal, this Plebeian dust: no Commission, no Inquisition can say, this is Catholic, this is Heretical dust. All lie alike; and all shall rise alike: alike, that is, at once, and upon one Command. The Saint cannot acclerate; The Reprobate cannot retard the Resurrection. And all that rise to the right hand, shall be equally Kings: and all at the left, equally, what? The worst name we can call them by, or affect them with, is Devil. And then they shall have bodies to be tormented in, which Devils have not. Miserable, inexpressible, unimaginable. Miserable condition, where the sufferer would be glad to be but a Devil; where it were some happiness, and some kind of life, to be able to die; and a great preferment, to be nothing.
He made us all of earth, and all of red earth. Our earth was red, even when it was in God's hands: a redness that amounts to a shamefastness, to a blushing at our own infirmities, is imprinted in us, by God's hand. For this redness, is but a Conscience, a guiltiness of needing a continual supply, and succession of more, and more grace. And we are all red, red so, even from the beginning, and in our best state. Adam had, the Angels had thus much of this infirmity, that though they had a great measure of grace, they needed more. The prodigal child grew poor enough, after he had received his portion: and he may be wicked enough, that trusts upon former, or present grace, and seeks not more. This redness, a blushing, that is, an acknowledgement, that we could not subsist, with any measure of faith, except we pray for more faith; nor of grace, except we seek more grace, we have from the hand of God: And another redness from his hand too, the blood of his Son, so that blood was effused by Christ, in the value of the ransom for All, and accepted by God, in the value thereof for All: and this redness, is, in the nature thereof, as extensive, as the redness derived from Adam is; Both reach to all. So we were red earth in the hands of God, as redness denotes our general infirmities, and as redness denotes the blood of his Son, our Savior, all have both. But that redness, which we have contracted from blood shed by ourselves, the blood of our own souls by sin, was not upon us, when we were in the hands of God. That redness is not his tincture, not his complexion. No decree of his is writ in any such red ink. Our sins are our own, and our destruction is from ourselves. We are not as accessories, and God as principal in this soul-murder. God forbid, we are not as executioners of God's sentence, and God the Malefactor, in this soul-damnation. God forbid. Cain came not red in his brothers blood, out of God's hands; nor David red with Uriah's blood; nor Achitophel with his own; nor Judas with Christ's, or his own. That that Pilate did illusorily, God can do truly; wash his hands from the blood of any of these men. It were a weak Plea to say, I killed not that man; but 'tis true, I commanded one, who was under my command to kill him. It is rather a prevarication, then a justification of God to say, God is not the author of sin in any man, but tis true, God makes that man sin, that sin. God is Innocency; and the beams that flow from him are of the same nature, and color. Christ when he appeared in heaven, was not red but white. His head and hairs were white, as white wool, and as snow; not head only, but hairs too. He, and that that grows from him; he, and we, as we come from his hands are white too. His Angels that provoke us to the Imitation of that pattern, are so; in white. Two men, two Angels stood by the Apostles in white apparel. The imitation is laid upon us by precept too: At all times let thy garments be white; Those actions in which thou appearest to the world, innocent. It is true, that Christ is both. My beloved is white and ruddy, says the Spouse. But the white was his own: his redness is from us. That which Zipporah said to her husband Moses in anger; the Church may say to Christ in thankfulness, Vere sponsus Sanguinum, thou art truly a bloody husband to me; Damim, sanguinum, of bloods, bloods in the plural; for all our bloods are upon him. This was a mercy to the Militant Church, that even the Triumphant Church wondered at it. They knew not Christ, when he came up to heaven in red. Who is this that cometh in red garments? Wherefore is thy apparel red, like him that treadeth in the winepress? They knew he went down in white, in entire innocence: and they wondered to see him return in red. But he satisfies them; Calcavi, you think I have trodden the winepress, and you mistake it not: I have trodden the winepress; and Calcavi solus, I have trodden it alone, all the redness, all the blood of the whole world is upon me. And as he adds Non vir de gentibus, of all people there was none with me, with me so, as to have any part in the Merit; So, of all people there was none without me; without me so, as to be excluded by me, without their own fault, from the benefit of my merit. This redness he carried up to heaven: for, by the blood of his Cross came peace, both to the things in earth, and the things in heaven. For that peccability, that possibility, of sinning, which is in the Nature of the Angels of heaven, would break out into sin, but for that confirmation, which those Angels have received in the blood of Christ. This redness he carried to heaven; and this redness he hath left upon earth, that all we miserable clods of earth, might be tempered with his blood; that in his blood exhibited in his holy and blessed Sacrament, our long robes might be made white in the blood of the Lamb: that though our sins be robes, habits of sin; though long robes, habits of long continuance in sin: yet through that redness, which our sins have cast upon him, we might come to participate of that whiteness, that righteousness, which is his own. We, that is, all we; for, as to take us in, who are of low condition, and obscure station, a cloud is made white by his sitting upon it, He sat upon a great white cloud, so to let the highest see, that they have no whiteness, but from him, he makes the Throne white by sitting upon it. He sat upon a great white Throne. It had not been great, if it had not been white. White is the color of dilatation; goodness only enlarges the Throne. It had not been white, if he had not sat upon it. That goodness only, which consists in glorifying God, and God in Christ, and Christ in the sincerity of his truth, is true whiteness. God hath no redness in himself, no anger towards us, till he considers us as sinners. God cast no redness upon us; inflicts no necessity, no constraint of sinning upon us. We have died ourselves in sins, as red as Scarlet: we have drowned ourselves in such a red Sea. But as a garment, that were washed in the red Sea, would come out white, (so wonderful works hath God done at the red Sea, says David ) so doth his whiteness work through our red, and makes this Adam, this red earth, Calculum candidum, that white stone, that receives a new name, not Ish, not Enoch, not Gheber, no name that tastes of misery or of vanity; but that name, renewed, and manifested, which was imprinted upon us, in our elections, the Sons of God; the irremoveable, the undisinheritable Sons of God.
Be pleased to receive this note at parting, that there is Macula Alba, a spot, and yet white, as well as a red spot: a whiteness, that is an indication of a Leprosy, as well as a redness. Whole-pelagianisme, to think nature alone sufficient; Halfe-pelagianisme, to think grace once received to be sufficient; Super-pelagianisme, to think our actions can bring God in debt to us, by merit, and supererogation, and Catarisme, imaginary purity, in Canonizing ourselves, as present Saints, and condemning all, that differ from us, as reprobates. All these are white spots, and have the color of goodness; but are indications of leprosy. So is that that God threatens, Decorticatio ficus & albi rami, that the fig tree shall be barked, and the boughs thereof left white: to be left white without bark, was an indication of a speedy withering. Ostensa candescunt, & arescunt, says Saint Gregory of that place, the bough that lies open without bark looks white, but perishes: the good works that are done openly to please men have their reward, says Christ, that is, shall never have reward. To pretend to do good, and not mean it; To do things, good in themselves, but not to good ends; to go towards good ends, but not by good ways; to make the deceiving of men, thine end; or the praise of men, thine end: all this may have a whiteness, a color of good: but all this, is a barking of the bough, and an indication of a mischievous leprosy. There is no good whiteness, but a reflection from Christ Jesus, in an humble acknowledgement that we have none of our own, and in a confident assurance, that in our worst estate we may be made partakers of his. We are all red earth. In Adam we would not, since Adam we could not, avoid sin, and the Concomitants thereof, miseries; which we have called our West, our cloud, our darkness. But then we have a North that scatters these clouds, in the next word, Ad imaginem; that we are made to another pattern, in another likeness, then our own. Faciamus hominem; so far are we gone, East, and West; which is half our Compass, and all this days voyage. For we are struck upon the sand; and must stay another Tide, and another gale for our North, and South.
SERMON XXIX.
Preached to the King, at the Court.
The second Sermon on GEN. 1. 26.
B Y fair occasion from these words, we proposed to you the whole Compass of man's voyage, from his launching forth in this world, to his Anchoring in the next; from his hoysing sail here, to his striking sail there. In which Compass we designed to you his four quarters; first, his East, where he must begin, the fundamental knowledge of the Trinity (for, that we found to be the specification, and distinctive Character of a Christian) where, though that be so, we shown you also, why we were not called Trinitarians, but Christians: and we shown you, the advantage, that man hath, in laying hold upon God, in these several notions; that the Prodigal son hath an indulgent Father; that the decayed Father hath an abundant Son; that the dejected spirit hath a Spirit of comfort, to fly to in heaven. And, as we shown you from Saint Paul, that it was an Atheism to be no Christian, (without God, says he, as long as without Christ) so we lamented the slackness of Christians, that they did not seriously, and particularly, consider the persons of the Trinity, and especially the holy Ghost, in their particular actions. And then we came to that consideration, whether this doctrine were established, or directly insinuated, in this plural word of our text, Faciamus, Let us, us make man: and we found that doctrine, to be here, and here first of any place in the Bible. And finding God to speak in the plural, we accepted (for a time) that interpretation, which some had made thereof; that God spake in the Person of a Sovereign Prince; and therefore (as they do) in the plural, We. And thereby having established reverence to Princes, we claimed in God's behalf the same reverence to him: That men would demean themselves, here, when God is spoken to in prayer, as reverently, as when they speak to the King. But after this, we found God to speak here, not only as our King; but as our maker; as God himself; and God in Counsel, Faciamus: and we applied thereunto, the difference of our respect to a Person of that honorable rank, when we came before him at the Counsel Table, and when we came to him at his own Table: and thereby advanced the seriousness of this consideration, God in the Trinity. And farther we failed not, with that our Eastern wind. Our West we considered in the next word, Hominem; that though we were made by the whole Trinity, yet the whole Trinity made us but men, and men, in this name of our text, Adam; and Adam is but earth, and that's our West, our declination, our Sunset. We passed over the four names, by which man is ordinarily expressed in the Scriptures; and we found necessary misery in three of them; and possible, nay likely misery in the fourth, in the best name. We insisted upon the name of our text, Adam, earth; and had some use of these notes; First, that if I were but earth, God was pleased to be the Potter; If I but a sheep, he a shepherd; If I but a cottage, he a builder. So he work upon me, let me be what he will. We noted that God made us earth, not air, not fire: That man hath bodily, and worldly duties to perform; and is not all Spirit in this life. Devotion, is his soul; but he hath a body of discretion, and usefulness to invest in some calling. We noted too, that in being earth, we are equal. We tried that equality, first in the root, in Adam; There if any man will be nobler earth then I, he must have more original sin then I: for that was all Adams patrimony, all that he could give. And we tried this equality in another furnace, in the grave; where there is no means to distinguish Royal from Plebeian, nor Catholic from Heretical dust. And lastly we noted, that this our earth, was red earth: and considered in what respect it was red, even in God's hands, but found that in the blood-redness of sin, God had no hand: but sin, and destruction for sin, was wholly from ourselves: which consideration, we ended with this, that there was Macula alba, a white spot of leprosy, as well, as a red; and we found the overvaluation of our own purity, and the uncharitable condemnation of all that differ from us, to be that white spot. And so far we sailed, with that Western wind. And are come to our third point in this our Compass, our North.
In this point, the North, we place our first comfort. The North is not always the comfortablest clime: nor is the North always a type of happiness in the Scriptures. Many times God threatens storms from the North. But even in those Northern storms, we consider that action, that they scatter, they dissipate those clouds, which were gathered, and so induce a serenity: And so, fair weather comes from the North. And that's the use which we have of the North in this place. The consideration of our West, our low estate; that we are but earth, but red earth, died red by ourselves: and that imaginary white, which appears so to us, is but a white of leprosy. This West enwraps us in heavy clouds of murmuring, in this life; that we cannot live so freely as beasts do; and in clouds of desperation for the next life; that we cannot die so absolutely as beasts do, we die all our lives, and yet we live after our deaths. These are our clouds; And then the North shakes these clouds. The North Wind driveth away the rain, says Solomon. There is a North in our text, that drives all those tears from our eyes. Christ calls upon the North, as well as the South, to blow upon his Garden, and to diffuse the perfumes thereof. Adversity, as well as prosperity, opens the bounty of God unto us: and oftentimes better. But that's not the benefit of the North in our present consideration. But this is it, that first our sun sets in the West. The Eastern dignity, which we received in our first Creation, as we were the work of the whole Trinity, falls under a Western cloud, that that Trinity made us but earth. And then blows our North, and scatters this cloud. That this earth hath a nobler form, then any other part or limb of the world. For, we are made by a fairer pattern, by a nobler Image, by a higher likeness. Faciamus; Though we make but a man, Let us make him, in our Image, after our likeness.
The variety which the holy Ghost uses here, in the pen of Moses, hath given occasion to divers, to raise divers observations, upon these words, which seem divers, Image and likeness; as also in the variety of the pharse. For it is thus conceived, and laid, in our Image and then after our likeness. I know it is a good rule, that Damascene gives, Parva, parva non sunt, ex quibus magna proveniunt: Nothing is to be neglected as little, from which great things may arise. If the consequence may be great, the thing must not be thought little. No Jod in the Scripture shall perish; therefore no Jod is superfluous. If it were superfluous, it might perish. Words, and less particles then words have busied the whole Church. In the Council of Ephesus, where Bishops in a great number excommunicated Bishops in a greater, Bishop, against Bishop, and Patriarch, against Patriarch; in which case, when both parties had made strong parties in Court, and the Emperor forbare to declare himself, on either side for a time, he was told, that he refused to assent to that, which six thousand Bishops had agreed in: the strife was but for a word, whether the blessed Virgin might be called Deipara, the mother of God, for Christipara, the mother of Christ, (which Christ all agree to be God) Nestorius, and all his party agreed with Cyril, that she might be. In the Council of Chalcedon, the difference was not so great, as for a word composed of syllables. It was but for a syllable, whether Ex, or In. The Heretics condemned then, confessed Christ, to be Ex duabus naturis, to be composed of two natures, at first; but not to be in duabus naturis, not to consist of two natures after: and for that In, they were thrust out. In the council of Nice, it was not so much as a syllable made of letters. For it was but for one letter; whether Homoousion, or Homousion, was the issue. Where the question hath not been of divers words, nor syllables, nor letters, but only of the place of words; what tempestuous differences have risen? How much Sola fides and fides sola, changes the case? Nay where there hath been no quarrel for precedency, for transposing of words, or syllables, or letters; where there hath not been, so much as a letter in question; how much doth an accent vary a sense? An interrogation, or no interrogation will make it directly contrary. All Christian expositors read those words of Cain, My sin is greater then can be pardoned, positively; and so they are evident words of desperation. The Jews read them with an interrogation, Are my sins greater, then can be pardoned? And so they are words of compunction, and repentance. The Prophet Micah says, that Bethlehem is a small place; the Evangelist Saint Matthew says no small place. An interrogation in Micah's mouth reconciles it; Art thou a small place? amounts to that, thou art not. Sounds, voices, words must not be neglected. For, Christ's forerunner John the Baptist qualified himself no otherwise: He was but a voice. And Christ himself is Verbum; the Word, is the name, even of the Son of God. No doubt but Statesmen and magistrates find often the danger of having suffered small abuses to pass uncorrected. We that see State business but in the glass of story, and cannot be shut out of Chronicles, see there, upon what little objects, the eye, and the jealousy of the State is oftentimes forced to bend it self. We know in whose times in Rome a man might not weep; he might not sigh; he might not look pale; he might not be sick; but it was informed against, as a discontent, as a murmuring against the present government, and an inclination to change. And truly many times upon Damascens true ground, though not always well applied, Parva non sunt parva, nothing may be thought little, where the consequence may prove great. In our own Sphere, in the Church, we are sure it is so. Great inconveniencies grew upon small tolerations. Therefore in that business, which occasioned all that trouble, which we mentioned before, in the Council of Ephesus, when Saint Cyril writ to the Clergy of his Dioces about it; at first, he says prastiterat abstinere, it had been better, these questions had not been raised. But says he, Si his nugis nos adoriantur, if they vex us with these impertinencies these trifles; And yet these which were but trifles at first, came to occasion Councils; and then to divide Council, against Council; and then to force the Emperor to take away the power of both Councils, and govern in Council, by his Vicar general, a secular Lord, sent from Court. And therefore did some of the Ancients, (particularly Philastrius) cry down some opinions for Heresies, which were not matters of faith, but of Philosophy; and even in Philosophy truly held by them, who were condemned for heretics, and mistaken by their Judges, that condemned them. Little things were called in question, left great things should pass unquestioned. And some of these upon Damascens true ground, (still true in the rule, but not always in the application) Parva non sunt parva, nothing may be thought little, where the consequence may be great. Descend we from those great Spheres, the State, and the Church, into a lesser, that is, the Conscience of particular men, and consider the danger of exposing those vines to little Foxes; of leaving small sins unconsidered, unrepented, uncorrected. In that glistering circle in the firmament, which we call the Galaxy, the milky way, there is not one Star of any of the six great magnitudes, which Astronomers proceed upon, belonging to that circle. It is a glorious circle, and possesses a great part of heaven: and yet is all of so little stars, as have no name, no knowledge taken of them. So certainly are there many Saints in heaven, that shine as stars; and yet are not of those great magnitudes, to have been Patriarchs, or Prophets, or Apostles, or Martyrs, or Doctors, or Virgins: but good and blessed souls, that have religiously performed the duties of inferior callings, and no more. And, as certainly are there many souls tormented in hell, that never sinned sin of any of the great magnitudes, Idolatry, Adultery, Murder, or the like; but inconsiderately have slid, and insensibly continued in the practice, and habit of lesser sins. But Parva non sunt parva, nothing may be thought little, where the consequence may prove great. When our Savior said, that we shall give an account of every Idle word, in the day of Judgment; what great hills of little sands will oppress us then? And, if substances of sin were removed, yet what circumstances of sin would condemn us? If idle words have this weight, there can be no word thought idle, in the Scriptures. And therefore I blame not in any, I decline not in mine own practice, the making use of the variety, and copiousnesse of the holy Ghost, who is ever abundant, and yet never superfluous in expressing his purpose, in change of words. And so no doubt we might do now, in observing a difference between these words in our text, Image, and likeness; and between these two forms of expressing it, in our Image, and after our likeness. This might be done: but that that must be done, will possess all our time; that is, to declare, (taking the two words for this time to be but a farther illustration of one another, Image, and likeness, to our present purpose, to be all one) what this Image, and this likeness imparts; and how this North scatters our former cloud, what our advantage is, that we are made to an Image, to a pattern; and our obligation to set a pattern before us, in all our actions.
God appointed Moses to make all that he made according to a pattern. God himself made all that he made according to a pattern. God had deposited, and laid up in himself certain forms, patterns, Idea's of everything that he made. He made nothing of which he had not preconceived the form, and predetermined in himself, I will make it thus. And when he had made anything, he saw it was good; good because it answered the pattern, the Image; good, because it was like to that. And therefore, though of other creatures, God pronounced they were good, because they were presently like their pattern, that is, like that form, which was in him for them, yet of man, he forbore to say that he was good because his conformity to his pattern was to appear after in his subsequent actions. Now, as God made man after another pattern, and therefore we have a dignity above all, that we had another manner of creation, then the rest: so have we a comfort above all, that we have another manner of Administration then the rest. God exercises another manner of Providence upon man, then upon other creatures. A Sparrow falls not without God, says Christ: yet no doubt God works otherwise in the fall of eminent persons, then in the fall of Sparrows. For ye are of more value then many Sparrows, says Christ there of every man; and some men single, are of more value then many men. God does not thank the Ant for her industry, and good-husbandry in providing for her self. God does not reward the Foxes, for concurring with Sampson in his revenge. God does not fee the Lion, which was the executioner upon the Prophet, which had disobeyed his commandment: nor those two she-Bears, which slew the petulant children, who had caluminated and reproached Elisha. God does not fee them before, nor thank them after, not take knowledge of their service. But for those men, that served God's execution upon the Idolaters of the Goden Calf, it is pronounced in their behalf, that therein they consecrated themselves to God; and for that service God made that tribe, the tribe of Levi his portion, his Clergy, his consecrated Tribe. So, Quiae fecisti hoc, says God to Abraham, by myself I have sworn; because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy Son thine only son: in blessing, I will bless thee, and in multiplying, I will multiply thee. So neither is God angry with the dog that turns to his vomit, nor with the sow, that after her washing wallows in the mire. But of Man in that case he says; It is impossible for those who were once enlightened, if they fall away, to renew them again by repentance. The creatures live under his law; but a law imposed thus, This they shall do, this they must do. Man lives under another manner of law; This you shall do; that is, this you should do, this I would have you do: And fac hoc, do this, and you shall live; disobey, and you shall die. But yet, the choice is yours: Choose ye this day life, or death. So that this is God's administration in the Creature, that he hath imprinted in them an Instinct, and so he hath something to preserve in them: In man his administration is this, that he hath imprinted in him a faculty of will, and election; and so hath something to reward in him. That instinct in the creature God leaves to the natural working thereof in it self: But the free will of man God visits, and assists with his grace to do supernatural things. When the creature does an extraordinary action above the nature thereof, (as, when Balaam's Ass spake) the creature exercises no faculty, no will in it self; but God forced it to that it did. When man does anything conducing to supernatural ends; though the work be God's, the will of man is not merely passive. The will of man is but God's agent; but still an agent it is: And an agent in another manner, then the tongue of the beast. For, the will considered, as a will, (and grace never destroys nature, nor, though it make a dead will a live will, or an ill will a good will, doth it make the will, no will) might refuse or omit that that it does. So that because we are created by another pattern, we are governed by another law, and another providence.
Go thou then the same way. If God wrought by a pattern, and writ by copy, and proceeded by a precedent, do thou so too. Never say, there is no Church without error: therefore I will be bound by none; but frame a Church of mine own, or be a Church to myself. What greater injustice, then to propose no Image, no pattern to thyself to imitate; and yet propose thyself for a pattern, for an Image to be adored? Thou wilt have singular opinions, and singular ways differing from all other men; and yet all that are not of thy opinion must be heretics; and all reprobates, that go not thy ways. Propose good patterns to thyself; and thereby become a fit pattern for others. God, we see, was the first, that made Images; and he was the first, that forbad them. He made them for imitation; he forbad them in danger of adoration. For, Qualis dementiae est id colere, quod melius est? What a drowsiness, what a laziness, what a cowardliness of the soul is it, to worship that, which does but represent a better thing then it self? Worship belongs to the best, know thou thy distance, and thy period, how far to go, and where to stop. Dishonor not God by an Image in worshiping it; and yet benefit thyself by it, in following it. There is no more danger out of a picture, then out of a history, if thou intend no more in either, then example. Though thou have a West, a dark and a sad condition, that thou art but earth, a man of infirmities, and ill counseled in thyself: yet thou hast herein a North, that scatters and dispells these clouds that God proposes to thee in his Scriptures, and otherwise; Images, patterns, of good and holy men to go by. But beyond this North this assistance of good examples of men; thou hast a South, a Meridionall heighth, by which thou seest thine Image, they pattern, to be no copy; no other man, but the original it self, God himself: Faciamus ad nostram, Let us make man in our Image, after our likeness.
Here we consider first, where this Image is, and then what it does: first, in what part of man God hath imprinted this his Image; And then what this Image confers, and derives upon man; what it works in man. And, as when we seek God in his essence, we are advised to proceed by negatives, God is not mortal, not passable: so when we seek the Image of God in man, we begin with a negative; This Image is not in his body. Teriullian declined to think it was; nay Tertullian inclined others to think so. For he is the first, that is noted, to have been the author of that opinion, that God had a body. Yet Saint Augustine excuses Tertullian from heresy: because (says he) Tertullian might meance, that it was so sure, that there is a God; and that that God was a certain, though not a finite Essence; that God was so far from being nothing, as that he had rather a body. Because it was possible to give a good interpretation of Tertullian, that charitable Father Saint Augustine, would excuse him of heresy. I would Saint Augustine's charity might prevail with them, that pretend to be Augustinianissimi, and to adore him so much in the Roman Church, not to cast the name of Heresy upon every problem; nor the name of Heretic, upon every inquirer of Truth. Saint Augustine would deliver Tertullian from heresy in a point concerning God, and they will condemn us of heresy, in every point that may be drawn to concern not the Church, but the Court of Rome; not their doctrine, but their profit. Malo de Misericordia Deo rationem reddere, quàm de crudelitate, I shall better answer God for my mildness, then for my severity. And, though anger towards a brother, or a Raca, or a fool, will bear an action: yet he shall recover less against me at that bar, whom I have called weak, or mislead, (as I must necessary call many in the Roman Church ) then he whom I have passionately and peremptorily called heretic. For, I dare call an opinion heresy for the matter, a great while before I dare call the man that holds it an heretic. For that consists much in the manner. It must be matter of faith, before the matter be heresy. But there must be pertinency after convenient instruction, before that man be an heretic. But how excusable so ever Tertullian be herein in Saint Augustine's charity: there was a whole sect of heretics, one hundred years after Tertullian, the Audiani, who over literally taking those places of Scripture, where God is said to have hands, and feet, and eyes, and ears, believed God to have a body like ours; and accordingly interpreted this text; that in that Image, and that likeness, a bodily likeness, consisted this Image of God in man. And yet even these men, these Audians, Epiphanius, who first takes knowledge of them, calls but Schismatics, not Heretics: so loath is charity to say the worst of any. Yet we must remember them of the Roman persuasion, that they come too near giving God a body in their pictures of God the Father. And they bring the body of God, that body which God the Son hath assumed, the body of Christ too near, in their Transubstantiation: not too near our faith, (for so it cannot be brought too near; so, it is as really there as we are there) too near to our sense: not too near in the Vbi; for so it is there: There, that is, in that place to which the Sacrament extends it self. For the Sacrament extends as well to heaven, from whence it fetches grace, as to the table, from whence it delivers Bread and Wine: but too near in modo. For it comes not thither that way. We must necessarily complain, that they make Religion too bodily a thing. Our Savior Christ corrected Mary Magdalens zeal, where she flew to him, in a personal devotion; and he said, Touch me not: for I am not yet ascended to my Father. Fix your meditations upon Christ Jesus so, as he is now at the right hand of his Father in heaven, and entangle not yourselves so with controversies about his body, as to lose real charity, for imaginary zeal; nor enlarge yourselves so far in the pictures and Images of his body, as to worship them, more then him. As Damdscen says of God, that he is Super-principale principium, a beginning, before any beginning we can conceive; and prae-aeterna aeternitas, an eternity infinitely elder then any eternity we can imagine: so he is Super-spiritualis Spiritus, such a Super-spirit, as that the soul of man, and the substance of Angels is but a body, compared to this Spirit. God hath nobody, though Tertullian disputed it; though the Audians preached it; though the Papists paint it. And therefore this Image of God is not in the body of man, that way.
Nor that way neither, which some others have assigned, that God, who hath no body as God, yet in the creation did assume that form, which man hath now, and so made man in his Image, that is, in that form, which he had then assumed. Some of the Ancients thought so; and some other men of great estimation in the Roman Church have thought so too; In particular, Oleaster, a great officer in the Inquisition of Spain. But great inquirers into other men, are easy neglecters of themselves. The Image of God is not in man's body this way. Nor that third way, which others have imagined; that is, that when God said, Let us make man after our likeness, God had respect to that form, which in the fullness of time, his Son was to take upon him, upon earth. Let us make him now, (says God at first) like that which I intend hereafter, my Son shall be. For, though this were spoken before the fall of man, and so before any occasion of decreeing the sending of Christ: yet in the School a great part of great men adhered to that opinion, that God from all eternity had a purpose that his Son should become man in this world, though Adam had not fallen: Non ut Medicus, sed ut Dominus ad nobilitandum genus humanum, say they: though Christ had not come as a Redeemer, if man had not needed him by sin, but had kept his first state; yet as a Prince that desired to heap honor upon him whom he loves, to do man an honor, by his assuming that nature, Christ, say they, should have come, and to that Image, that form, which he was to take then was man made in this text, say these imaginers. But alas, how much better were wit, and learning bestowed to prove to the Gentiles; that a Christ must come; (that they believe not) to prove to the Jews, that the Christ is come; (that they believe not) to prove to our own Consciences, that the same Christ may come again this minute to Judgment, (we live as though we believed not that) then to have filled the world, and torn the Church, with frivolous disputations, whether Christ should have come, if Adam had not fallen? Woe unto fomentors of frivolous disputations. None of these ways, not because God hath a body; not because God assumed a body, not because it was intended, that Christ should be born, before it was intended, that man should be made, is this Image of God in the body of man. Nor hath it in any other relation, respect to the body, but as we say in the School, Arguitive, and Significative that because God hath given man a body of a nobler form, then any other creature; we infer, and argue, and conclude from thence, that God is otherwise represented in man, then in any other creature. So far is this Image of God in the body, that as you see some Pictures, to which the very tables are Jewels; some. Watches, to which the very cases are Jewels, and therefore they have outward cases too; and so the Picture, and the Watch is in that outward case, of what meaner stuff soever that be: so is this Image in this body as in an outward case; so, as that you may not injure, nor enfeeble this body, neither by sinful intemperance and licentiousness, nor by inordinate fastings or other disciplines of imaginary merits, while the body is alive; (for the Image of God is in it) nor to defraud thy body of decent burial, and due solemnities after death; for the Image of God is to return to it. But yet the body is but the out-cafe, and God looks not for the gilding, or enamelling, or painting of that: but requires the labor, and cost therein to be bestowed upon the Tablet it self, in which this Image is immediately, that is the soul. And that's truly the Vbi, the place where this Image is: And there remains only now, the operation thereof, how this Image of God in the soul of man works.
The Sphere then of this intelligence, the Gallery for this Picture, the Arch for this Statue, the Table, and frame and shrine for this Image of God, is properly immediately the soul of man. Not immediately so, as that the soul of man is a part of the Essence of God: For so effentially, Christ only is the Image of God. Saint Augustine at first thought so: Putaham te Deus, Corpus Lucidum, & me frustum de illo Corpore; I took thee, ô God, (says that Father) to be a Globe of fire, and my soul a spark of that fire; thee to be a body of light, and my soul to be a beam of that light. But Saint Augustine does not only retract that in himself, but dispute against it, in the Manichees. But this Image is in our soul, as our soul is the wax, and this Image the seal. The Comparison is Saint Cyrills, and he adds well, that no seal but that, which printed the wax at first, can fit that wax, and fill that impression after. No Image, but the Image of God can fit our soul. Every other seal is too narrow, too shallow for it. The magistrate is sealed with the Lion; The wolf will not fit that seal: the Magistrate hath a power in his hands, but not oppression. Princes are sealed with the Crown; The Miter will not fit that seal. Powerfully, and graciously they protect the Church, and are supreme heads of the Church; But they minister not the Sacraments of the Church. They give preferments; but they give not the capacity of preferment. They give order who shall have; but they give not orders, by which they are enabled to have, that have. Men of inferior and laborious callings in the world are sealed with the Cross; a Rose, or a bunch of Grapes will not answer that seal. Ease, and plenty in age, must not be looked for without Crosses and labor and industry in youth. All men, Prince, and People; Clergy, and Magistrate, are sealed with the Image of God, with the profession of a conformity to him: and worldly seals will not answer that, nor fill up that seal. We should wonder to ses a Mother in the midst of many sweet Children passing her time in making babies and puppets for her own delight. We should wonder to see a man, whose Chambers and Galleries were full of curious master-pieces, thrust in a Village Fair to look upon six-penny pictures, and three farthing prints. We have all the Image of God at home, and we all make babies, fancies of honor, in our ambitions. The master-piece is our own, in our own bosom; and we thrust in country Fairs, that is, we endure the distempers of any unseasonable weather, in night-journeys, and watchings: we endure the oppositions, and scorns, and triumphs of a rivall, and competitor, that seeks with us, and shares with us: we endure the guiltiness, and reproach of having deceived the trust, which a confident friend reposes in us, and solicit his wife, or daughter: we endure the decay of fortune, of body, of soul, of honor, to possess lower Pictures; pictures that are not originals, not made by that hand of God, nature; but Artificial beauties. And for that body, we give a soul, and for that drugge, which might have been bought, where they bought it, for a shilling, we give an estate. The Image of God is more worth then all substances; and we give it, for colors, for dreams, for shadows.