A Century of Sermons
Thirdly, This woman was come out of Sodom, come out of the Plain, hard by the Gates of Zoar, at the very last Furlong of the way, as Adrichomius describes it, and cast herself willfully away, when she was almost past all danger, as the Proverb is, In portu naufragium, she had passed the Waves of a perilous Journey, but shipwrecked and lost all when she was come home to the Haven. Quod quisque vitet nunquam homini satis cautum est in horas; None perish so soon as they that think they cannot perish now, they are past the worst, and so become less wary of their safety. When Caesar had it divin'd unto him, that the Ides of March should be fatal to him, he should never out-live that day; he was jocund and secure about afternoon, and frumpingly told his Wizards, the day was far-spent and he felt no sign of death; O but says one that Prophesied evil to him, the day is come, but it is not passed yet, and the event of the day was the slaughter of Caesar. So, many are wound up to the last minute of confidence and security, and there began their ruin where they thought to consummate their felicity. Abimelech marched against the City of Thebes, he took it, he besieged the Tower, close to the Gates of the Tower, and was about to set fire to the Gates; thus he stood in limine victoriae; as his Victory was come to the just complement, a woman cast down a piece of a Mill stone, and brake his skull that he died, Judge. ix. 22. Thus as a Gamesters whole Stake and winnings may be lost at the last cast, so many men have had a long progress in prosperity, and for want of due thankfulness of that they had received, their conclusion and shutting up of their eyes hath been bitterness. Relapsing in sickness, a thing as frequent as the water that runs by us, it is not unskilfully imputed to the heedlessness of him that was too adventurous upon recovery, and some other indisposition of natural causes: but when we see a man brought down to the Grave with infirmity, and brought back again by Art and skil, and yet in the midst of his joy to be strangely cast back into the former languishment; Let not the sound judge another's servant, but let the sick party judge himself, that either he returned to the vomit of his former sins, which he did abandon upon fear of death, or promised restitution of something got by fraud, which afterwards he would not perform; or forgave his enemies at the point of extremity, and being restored renewed his old grudge: or forgot his Vows which he had made: or flubbered over the benefit which God had done for him with careless ingratitude. Certainly some offense did intervene, that when the bitterness of death did seem to be past, the Lord should cause his very recovery to be his ruin. For there is nothing more dangerous than deliverance out of danger, if we do not use our fortune reverently, and stand in awe of God even in the midst of his mercies.
And this is more conspicuous in the soul than in the body. God's grace leads a penitent man along by the hand in the narrow way of righteousness, but if he begin to think that he can go alone without a supporter, when he thinks he hath one foot in heaven, he shall be thrown down to hell, or, as our Savior speaks, the latter end of that man shall be worse than the first. How many have revolted from the true Faith, through the deceivable wit of seducers, even upon the last bed of their sickness? How many have repulsed Satan's temptations oftentimes, and have yielded, as you would say, at the last time of asking? As Samson denied Delilah sundry times, but betrayed his life into her hands at the last onset and importunity. What a courage had Peter against the whole band of the Priests servants? And how much discouraged at the voice of a silly Damosel, and made to forswear his Master? This was in extremo actu deficere, to be far from Sodom, and almost at Zoar, and yet to fall back from God when we are within sight, and almost within touch of the Crown of life, this is that turpitude which is most ignominious to our Christian Warfare. With shame enough shall back-sliders hear that reproach from God, You did run well, who did hinder you? You were almost at the top of my holy hill, why did your feet slip? Why did you look back to Sodom? Wherefore, my Beloved, when your conscience tells you, that hitherto your heart hath been right with the Lord, you have plaid your part well to the last act, why then be most solicitous that you be not defective in the end, and lose your reward, and the fruit of all your labor that went before. But pray with David, Forsake me not, O Lord, in mine old age when I am gray-headed. Let me not forget thee, as Lots Wife did, when I am almost at Zoar, and then the Lord will say, Even to your old age, even to your hoary hairs will I carry you, Isa. xlvi. 4.
So much be spoken of the punishment of Lots Wife, as in reference to a Carkass, now I proceed to speak of it in reference to that into which she was turned, as to the Sepulcher. She became a Pillar of Salt. Exemplum sine exemplo, that is the first thing I collect out of it, it is new and singular, without anything to match it. The justice of the Lord may say upon this in the words of the Prophet Isaiah, Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old, behold I will do a new thing, Isa. xliii. 19. To kill a Transgressour with such a death as never any died before must needs be remarkable. Moses bid the Israelites mark it in Core, Dathan, and the rest of that Rebellion, that they had incurred a great displeasure, Num. xvi. 29. If these men die the common death of all men, if they be visited after the visitation of all men, then the Lord hath not sent me; but if the Lord make a new thing, &c. then ye shall understand that these men have provoked the Lord. Sceleratius commissum est quod est gravius vindicatum, says St. Austin. Great impiety went before when it was revenged with such great severity: But that is not all; for surely there is a kind of singularity in the sin, where there is such a singularity in the judgment, as to slay the Delinquent in that manner as was unheard of to all former Generations. You will say, there was nothing new and singular in this woman's sin; disobedience, unthankfulness infidelity, relapsing, these are common cases, vulgar faults committed a thousand times over. I grant it, but do you ever read, that God was so soon forgotten by any one, while the memory of so great a deliverance was fresh and warm, and while an Angel of the Lord was present, and before her eyes to awe her and instruct her? Never did any sinner so willfully cast their life away, and therefore never was any human creature so strangely congealed into a lump of Salt. Core and his band of Rebels were swallowed quick into the lowest Pit; Ne terram contaminarent sepulchro, says St. Ambrose, that the interring of such odious corpses might not defile the earth; and since that time many others have been so devoured by the open jaws of the ground in an Earthquake. But the Grave did never admit the dead body of the sinner, there it was left between heaven and earth, never the like done before or since, because she wavoured and doubted whether she should still look up to heaven, or look back to that portion of earth from whence she was escaped. It was a Statute of grace and mercy, that the body of a Malefactor put to death should be buried soon after his execution. The Gibeonites indeed when the Sons of Saul were delivered up to them, did use them after their heathenish manner, and let them remain for a public spectacle many months after they were hanged on a tree; but God was more pitiful, as it is Deut. xxi. 23. If a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and be put to death, his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, thou shalt in any wise bury him that day, that the Land be not defiled. The monument of God's curse was not to remain visibly in that place, but burial was to abolish the curse from appearing in the Lord's Land. This is the particular instance in all the Scripture, this of Lots Wife, where God did leave the Malefactor slain, to be seen above ground for many Ages after.
I think I have proved it a new and unheard of punishment. For the righteous Judge hath new kind of blessings for some holy ones that were never known before; and he hath new kind of revengeful Arrows in his Quiver for his rebellious enemies, such as were never felt before. A new kind of sustenance shall be found out for Elias in the Wilderness: a new kind of remedy to cure Hezekiah's sickness: a new way to save Jonas in the belly of a Whale: a new form of Gaol-delivery for Peter out of Herod's Prison. And as men are full of new inventions, and excogitate unheard-of Pride and Luxury, fresh ways to serve the Devil, which were never known before, so God doth fill the earth with new Plagues to correct them. Novae febrium terris incubuit cohors; strange symptoms of Fevers rage oftentimes, which put Physicians to a new study. That murrion, or Morbus vervecinus, Anno 1580. of which thousands died in Germany and Italy, was a new infliction of mortality, never wrote of by any Artist in former Ages. The Sweating sickness, called the English sweat over all the world, was first inflicted upon England, in the Reign of Henry the Seventh. Our Histories are silent if there were any such Malady among us in former Ages. And I need not to remember you, that Columbus his return out of West India brought the first contagion of deserved loathsomeness upon Fornicators, which for reverence to your ears I will not mention. It is the singularity of our sins which is justly requited with such singularities of chastisement. It is too vulgar that every little Cross will make us fall into a bitter expostulation, An quisquam hominum est aeque miser? Was there ever the like that happened to any man? None so wrongfully defeated for want of justice, none so perfidiously betrayed by false friends, none so continually afflicted with recurrent sickness. These discontents are naught and peevish, there is none but the Son of God can justly complain, Was ever any sorrow like my sorrow? But if you be truly persuaded, that your calamities are new and unheard-of, lay it to your conscience, and examine yourself upon it, that you are made an example like Lots Wife, because of some unparalleled and matchless disobedience.
Yet some kind of new punishments rise out of natural causes, so did not this, for it is miraculous and supernatural to be turned into a Pillar of Salt. The Heathen have many devices in their elaborate Fictions of Men and Women metamorphosed into Plants and Stones, indeed into all kind of Creatures Celestial and Terrestrial, and surely that which provoked their busy wits was to tell some things as strange in fiction as this story in my Text is infallible truth. Nay, this narration of Lots Wife, how she looked back to Sodom and so perished, set their inventions so much on work, that the heathen grounded a particular Fable upon it, how Orpheus had Pluto 's license to bring his Wife Eurydice out of hell, if he kept this condition, not once to look back upon her, till he had brought her safe to earth out of those shades of darkness: but he could not refrain out of fondness to cast back his eyes upon her, and so lost his longing. Blessed are they that have the spirit of understanding, for you see that the best use that the heathen made of sacred Scripture was to turn it to the worst.
And as these Poetical heads roved at random, so I would not put it upon Philosophical Inquisition, how she became a Pillar of Salt. He that wrote of the marvelous works of God that occur in Scripture, and calls himself St. Austin, bids it be observed, that there is an hidden vein of salt in every man's body, as appears by the tears in our eyes, and the rheum in our mouth; and that this salt Spring did overflow all the body in an instant, as God commanded, and turned the whole substance into its own malignity. Ibn Ezra the Rabbi says, that she felt part of the punishment of Sodom, for as it is Deut. xxix. 23. The whole Land is brimstone, and salt, and burning. So that the fire that came down from God upon those Cities had salt and sulphur in it, and she was scorched with those salt sulphurious flames, and made a Pillar of salt. Not incinerated, as the word is, as if a sudden flash of fire had wasted her into small corns of salt, as into ashes, for then the translation should have been not statua, but cumulus, not a Pillar, but an heap of salt: and so indeed it was translated before St. Jerome's time, but when he visited the Holy Land, and saw this Figure with his own eyes, he mended the errors of all former Copies, and translated it a Pillar of salt. Nor was it of the nature of that salt which we make by Art, and sometimes compact it into Pyramidal shapes, and other Figures, that, you know, fall away into dirt, if wet take it; but this lump, into which Lot's Wife was congealed, endured all injuries of Rain and Snow. Therefore it was that which we call Sal metallicum, the Metal of salt, which is a durable stubborn stone which kept the shape of an human body as the Reporters say, continually licked upon by the Herds of Cattle that grazed in those places to provoke their appetite by the saltish sapour, yet not at all diminished. Nunquam pluviis nec diruta ventis, says Tertullian; but that Poem of his hath such prodigious additions that I shame to rehearse them. Burchardus says, that this fatal Monument was to be seen in his days, not three hundred years past, between Engadi and the Red Sea. The Jerusalem Targum undertook to Prophesy almost 1600 years ago, that there it was to stand until the Resurrection: And therefore I conjecture that Luther had met with none of these reports, for he says, that the Pillar of Salt, into which she was turned, was presently destroyed with the City of Sodom, and pash'd to pieces with thunder. But all Geographers who have wrote upon it testify there was the very taste of salt in it, literally, it was a Pillar of salt.
Others, that love to find more in the Scripture than there is in the Letter, say it is not so called because it was of a saltish Element, but for another respect; 1. Because it was to stand for long continuance, and a Pillar of Salt is as much as an incorruptible Pillar; so Numb. xviii. God's eternal Covenant with his people is called a Covenant of Salt, for Salt is a preservative from Corruption. 2. As Salt makes Viands taste well upon the palate, so the sight of this dreadful Monument was to put the savor of God's judgments in the thoughts of them that called it to mind, Humilibus fidelibus quoddam praestitit condimentum ut sapiant aliquid, says St. Austin. Every notable punishment that a sinner incurs in the eyes of all the world, it is salt unto the wise to make them cautious. In me quis intuens pius esto, as it was engraven upon the Monument of an Egyptian King, who went down with much sorrow to his grave, because of his Sacrilege, so look upon this pair that came out of Sodom, upon Lot and his Wife, Hic perfect mundum deserit; illa tepide; he renounced the vain world perfectly and devoutly, and it went well with his life: She said she would renounce it, and did not persevere, and she died relapsing. Though she was foolish she may make us wise; though she were evil, yet her salt is good. Let her unsavouriness be our seasoning.
There are yet two Points to be dispatched: The one of terror, that this was a momentaneous and a sudden death: The other of some alloy, that though it were a mortal, yet we cannot say it was a final destruction. She, that is, her body was concrete into salt in an instant; the soul, you know, could admit of no such transmutation, but it was violenced out of the flesh in the twinkling of an eye. O if she had suspected her eyes should have been closed forever, at that turning herself about, she would not have looked back for all the world. If Ananias had imagined he should have breathed his last, while he was forging a lie to deceive the Holy Ghost, he would not have retained a denier of his possessions, but cast it all at the Apostles feet. No man would be an unrepentant sinner today, but that he hopes for tomorrow. No man can be so desperate to sin so fast, but that he thinks his Age runs away but slowly. The Devil knows there is no way to advance his Kingdom, but to set a false glass before us that we have long to live. Perswade yourselves that your days are numbered, and the strength of sin is evacuated. I never heard of more constancy in any man of this kind than Thuanus records to have been in a Landgrave of Hessen within these forty two years, for the space of ten years and more before he departed, he composed himself to die every night with all the solemnity of taking of leave of Children, Friends, and Family, confessing where he had offended that day, and asking pardon of his worst inferiors; and so he left very little room for any sin to enter, because he prepared himself to give place unto death, and to admit it every moment. Beloved, against death we cannot fortify ourselves, against the suddenness of death we may: and yet our labor is to put off death, and to live always, which is impossible; and nothing is less studied than to mitigate the mischief which may come by sudden death, and that is possible and necessary.
But I will not close my Text in a disconsolate key. She became a Pillar of salt, that is, her body became a hard rock, and her breath was stopped before she could cry Ah Lord God, or ah be merciful. Surely death in the very act of sin is most terrible, especially put this unto it, that it was no common Visitation. But from hence shall we leave her among those that went down into the nethermost pit? God's gentleness and mercy will not let me say so; Christ prevented such censures, when he gave us some comfort of their salvation on whom the Tower of Siloam fell suddenly. How the soul may commend itself to the compassion of God, in the very moment of egress and out passage, it is within the hope of our charity, though above the definition of our judgment. And thus I would rise up into pious credulity of their salvation, for our Church hath a pious credulity at their burial: As the longer proportion of afflictions usually falls upon them that can more patiently suffer them; and God lays his burden upon them that can best bear it; so let our charity infer, that he makes the bed of their sickness be long and tedious that had need of large repentance, and takes them away suddenly that are best prepared.
St. Austin fills up this very doctrine with the instance of Lots Wife, Magis est hoc exemplum eruditio nobis, quàm condemnatio ipsius; this Pillar of salt stood there rather for our instruction than for our condemnation. And God doth often chastise his own in the flesh, as well with sudden as with lingering correction, to save the soul from the wrath to come. Filii Aaronis castigati sunt non damnati, says Gregory; Nadab and Abihu were chastised, and suddenly slain for offering strange fire, but not damned. So the old Prophet, that was rent by the Lion for his disobedience, lived and died an holy man in all the reputation of Israel. Luther pleads thus for Lots Wife, that in the general course of her life she was faithful and holy, left Ur of the Chaldeans to come away with Abraham from that sink of Idolatry, and with Lot her Husband, Gen. xii. 5. and she stuck close to her Husband in this Exile out of Sodom. Therefore it is to be credited that her former faith did not leave her, though her soul had but a short moment to call for mercy. I wonder the Jesuits should extenuate her sin to be but venial, and yet make her a castaway. For Lorinus says he would grant she was saved, but that all their Authors were against him, Lenior placet sententia quamvis Patronum non reperiam. Nay, I think the best of her in charity, not by lessening her sin, but by extolling God's mercy. Some of the Rabbies make a toy of it, that she became a Pillar of Salt, because she would not set Salt before the Angels, whom she had received the night before in hospitality. The Hebrews will write sometimes as if they were wiser than men, sometimes scribble as if they were foolisher than children. The fault was a vast one, she cast away that which the Lord would have saved, in regard of herself desperately, of the Angel contumeliously, of her Husband and Daughters scandalously, of God and his favors unthankfully, yet her last gasp might be illuminated by the Spirit to commend her soul into the hands of her gracious Father. To which Father, and the Holy Spirit, together with Jesus Christ be all glory and honor. AMEN.
A SERMON Preached at WHITE-HALL.
NUMB. xxi. 7.
Pray unto the Lord that he take away the Serpents from us.
I Preach of a People that travelled forty years in a Wilderness, wherein there was neither pleasure nor plenty, that came in the end to the Land of rest. I preach to a People that are willing, according to the boundaries of our Church, to number forty days of Abstinence to be spent without plenty or pleasure, to keep them in breath for true repentance, that they may find rest for their Souls. The People of whom I preach, when they were in one of their last journeys at Salmonah, I am sure in the last year of their travail, were stopped by firy Serpents, before they got into the Land of Promise. And you, to whom I preach, are brought into the Land of the Living, by the conduct of Joshua, the Servant of the Lord. And though we are come out of a Wilderness, and are within the borders of our Canaan, God be praised, yet we cannot be quiet for Serpents. Which puts this word into my mouth today; to avert the malice of the ungodly, Pray, &c.
The way wherein I mean to handle the Text is in two parts, a Punishment for sin, and a Repentance for sin. The sin of the Nation must be considered in both, and before both. And that was murmuring, as you may read it in two verses before. Indeed it hath that name and another, 1 Cor. x. 9, 1 • . Let us not tempt Christ as some of them tempted, and were destroyed of Serpents; neither murmur as some of them murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer. Yet the stubbornness, and the very back-bone of their sin is murmuring. That was their guilt, and the same is ours: and the worse in us, because we offend under the grace of a better Covenant.
The punishment of the sin of the murmuring Israelites was annoyance by true and real Serpents; strictly, and in the letter they were no other. On our part nothing toucheth us of that nature, but we are plagued with Serpents that are far worse, as will appear in their ranks and conditions hereafter to be unfolded.
The repentance for their sin is seen two ways: First that they fly to the remedy of Prayer. For the Soul which God did breath into Man cannot shake off this principle, that all succor comes from above, for which it must breath out itself to God. Secondly, that they fly to that Prayer which comes out of the mouth of Moses. That Moses with whom their whole Host was just before offended, he is so generally in their good opinion (thank the Serpents for it) that he must now be their rescue and Advocate, and none but he make their peace with God. Thou Moses pray unto the Lord, that he take away the Serpents from us.
Now you see what you are to look for out of the Text, and in what order: and that before I come to the Punishment I must look out a sin: for affliction riseth not out of the dust, neither doth trouble come out of the ground, Job. vi. 5. God's hand sends them, and Mans sin brings them. And this was brought on by repining at God's mercy, and quarreling at Moses his Minister. Their tongues run as if they had drunk deep of Viper wine: so the Lord sent Serpents among them. They that serve God for temporal things, and are too eager to get them, cannot choose but fall into the temptation of murmuring. Such was this People, not one Tribe better than another, that grumbled upon the lightest thing that crossed them, that it was not God that brought them out of Egypt, but a trick of Moses to be a King over them. But being now more impatient than ever, they insist upon two things, as ver. 4. that the soul of the People was much discouraged because of the way. And why so? they were not turned aside from the Land of Promise: the Journey had been long, but the fortieth year was even spent, the worst was past, and six months would give them possession. They could not complain of weariness; their feet never swelled, Deut. viii. 4. Only they were foundered in their patience, and would not stay a little while till the time was come which God had appointed. Which is the fountain of all discontent not to stay God's leisure, and to complain of his Providence, as if he had broke his day. Such will fall into a passion as if they wanted ease, and that the ground was not soft enough under their feet, though the way should lead them to the Kingdom of Heaven. But a true faith expects God's leisure from day today, will neither faint nor fret that his suit hangs long in the Court of Requests. Many sores will never be well healed unless they be long dressing; and many deliverances will never be thoroughly perfect, unless they be long settling; and many mercies are like seed in the ground, and will be long growing.
A second Instance of grudging is in the 5. verse. Our soul loatheth this light bread. Is that a fault in bread to be light? see how they commend it in dispraising it. I am sure they came lightly by it: It fell like a hoar frost about their Tents: they neither ploughed nor sowed, nor reaped; they did but stoop and gather it: they lived as easily as young birds in the nest, when the Dam puts meat into their mouths. They did not see how God did take away the curse of Adam from them, to eat bread in the sweat of their brows. Let them look to this and make use of it, that are of the best rank, that God do not lay this sin to their charge on this wise, you labor not at all, yet you want not: you have store enough, and ease enough into the bargain, yet never content. They that work hard for one days food depend upon God, and call upon him more than they that have before hand for a year, nay sufficient for an age. Now put both the exceptions of the Israelites together, for their bones and their belly, for their journey and their bread, and you see a little painfulness was repined at as a great deal of misery, and a great benefit slighted for but a little favor.
But was there so much evil in this sin to cause a flight of Serpents to fall upon the Camp? I believe so, and I will prove it. First there are two sins so scandalous to the Jewish Nation that Philo conceals them; nay Josephus, out of more love to his Country then fidelity in History, never remembers them; those be the worshipping of the Golden Calf, and this serpentine sin of murmuring at Salmonah. Therefore this artifice of Josephus tells you, that murmuring was one of the two sins of the first magnitude.
Secondly it is a filthy crime to obscure great benefits under a black cloud of unthankfulness. They murmured at Moses, whom no praises could sufficiently extol for his rare deservings. He brought them out of Egypt, and made them all free men that were slaves. What recompense could they make him for their liberty? They were beholding to him for one thing more, which was greater than all the rest, to uphold them in true Religion, and the right Worship of God: so that it was said of them, and of no other Nation in the Earth, Thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God, Deut. xii. 2. In all things he ruled them with a faithful hand; yet they were ever at this key, O that it were otherwise, that it were better thus and thus: which were no better than Nebuchadonosor 's Dreams, he knew not himself what he had dreamt of when he was awake. The use of it from their error is, that we should sit down, and count how many blessings we have received, and be thankful, rather than fret at a few imaginary inconveniences, which I can puff away with a little breath as easily as a downy blow-ball. O all ye works of the Lord which he hath wrought in England in less than two years, praise him and magnify him forever. We have cause to frame a ditty balsamed all over with a perfume of thanksgiving for all things that God hath done for us from the center of the Earth to the top of Heaven.
Thirdly, God hath laid a great burden upon the shoulders of the Ruler, to provide for the safety of so many millions: and what reward hath he in this World but acceptance and encouragement from his Lieges? This was the comfort of David, 2 Sam. iii. 36. Whatsoever the King did pleased the People. But if so much merit meet with frowardness, then says Moses, I cannot bear your cumbrance, burden, and strife, Deut. i. 12. And if they weary the good spirit of Moses, doubtless they shall receive the recompense of their own bitter spirit. Nay if the Ruler be not the better for your good word, let him not be the worse for your undutiful language. A reasonable thing as can be asked. If you will not honor him, do not murmur at him; that's the least that can be required, and too little in conscience. But we must get what we can from bad debtors. To be short in this point: if you speak evil of that which you are bound to praise: if you fall foul on the ways of God, because you will not wait his leisure, if you pick quarrels at good things, for which you are bound to give thanks, I appeal not, as I might, to man's judgment, to dry up the filth that runs from faction with the spunge of the Laws. I refer them to God, and to the Host of his venomous creatures, which he will send to correct their poisonous tongues. The sin is like to nothing more than an Asp or Viper: no serpent so much a serpent as a murmuring spirit; therefore such a punishment was a fit cover to clap upon such a sin. The Lord sent serpents among them.
A Judgment 1. vile; 2. painful; 3. strong; 4. incurable. First a vile one; to die serpent-bitten was inglorious to the warlike stomach of that People: their sword could not help them: and if they kept not in their Tents like Prisoners, one of these Sergeants of God would shoot through the air and clap upon them. Let no man say a woman slew me, says Abimelech, Judge ix. 54. Let not the uncircumcised thrust me through, says Saul, 1 Sam. xxxi. 4. But this was far below them both, and most opprobrious to human nature. For as the Devil could not choose a viler creature wherein to tempt us, so there is not a meaner on earth to chastise us. They might be, for ought we know, created on purpose for this office of wrath, as the Frogs and Locusts in Egypt; or gathered from all quarters to fall thick upon their Camp, as Quails were brought from all places to feed them: there might be store of them in the Wilderness before now, but never stirred up till now to do execution. I define it not; but which way soever they came they were never a whit the better. It is a reproach upon man, who had the dominion of the Creatures, and saw them all put under his feet, that every paltry worm is able to turn against him, and bring him to the dust. Marvel not that Wolves and other stout Beasts of the Forest have beaten men quite out of their Country in some Stories. A Town in Greece is well known upon record, where Bats resorted in such number, that young and old fled away, and left their Habitation desolate. God can go lower, and do as much by Flies as by Lions. The Canker-worm and the Caterpillar, my great Army, will I send among them, Joel ii. 25. This is the very threatening of Isa. xlvii. 3. Thy shame shall be seen, and I will take vengeance, and not meet thee as a man. But how then? even in the form of mean and despicable creatures to plague thee.
But the meanness of the instrument was no lessening of the pain, their sting inflamed the Israelites as if they had been in a furnace; Calidâque incendit viscera tabe, while their flesh roasted, and fell away by piece-meal from their bones. Naturalists and Poets fill it up with much more horror, which I leave to the Sons of Art to consider, and will not amplify it. One Epithet includes it all, Deut. viii. 15. God led thee through the Wilderness, wherein were firy serpents. Praejudicium ante diem judicii, a representment of the fire of Hell, wherein the worm dies not, and the fire is not quenched. I like them that observe that the brazen Serpent, that was erected for their cure in the next verse is called a firy Serpent, because there was a fire of coals burning in it continually, to strike a terror into all that saw it, before it healed them, as if the fire of Hell were annexed to the grace of healing that came from Heaven. The Sword of justice was put into the Scabbard of mercy, and they were never asunder, They had need have had bodies of brass that did endure it. Extreme diseases must have extreme remedies. Some pains were no more than as a pricking Briar to the House of Israel, and a grieving Thorn, Ezek. xxviii. 24. but the biting of the Dipsas or Causon is so violent, that it makes the ill-affected some with madness; a judgment correspondent to the sin, to make coals of vengeance scald the tongue of the murmurer. Pigeons may be applied to the languishing of a common Fever, but I have known hot Brickbats laid to the feet of a sore Calenture. So this People suffered outrageously, that they might pray more penitently, for in the way of thy Judgments have we waited for thee.
Thirdly, it was exemplum sine exemplo: no Age before or since did ever know the like, as the Prophet says Isa. xliii. 19. Remember not the former things, neither consider the things of old: behold I will do a new thing; to kill a transgressor with such a death, as never any before, Moses bad it be noted in Core and the Rebels, Numb. xvi. 19. If these men be visited with the common visitation of all men, the Lord hath not sent me; but if the Lord make a new thing, then ye shall understand that these men have provoked the Lord. So here must be a singularity of sin, because of the singularity of the judgment. The lesson upon it is, that God hath new blessings in store for some holy ones, that were never known before; and new judgments for his enemies that were never felt before. A new way of nourishment found out for Elias in the Wilderness; a new remedy to cure Hezekiah; a new way to save Daniel in the Den of Lions; a new way of Gaol-delivery to fetch Peter out of Herod's Prison. And as we are full of inventions, and hit of fresh ways to serve the Devil, such as were never heard before; so God will fill the earth with new Plagues to correct them. Nova febrium terris incubuit cohors. Strange symptoms of diseases break out, to put Physicians to a new study. That Murrion or Morbus vervecinus, of which thousands died in Germany and Italy anno 1580. was a mortality never heard of in the works of any Artist to that year. The Sweating sickness, called the English Sweat over all the World, broke out no sooner than the Reign of Henry the Seventh. Chronicles are silent of such a grief in nature before. I need not remember you that Columbus his return out of America brought the first contagion of deserved loathsomeness upon fornicators, which for reverence to this place I will not name. What say our Leeches to the rotting of horses three years together in Stables and Pastures? nothing? but observant Christians note, that it began upon the jades that were stabled in the goodly Cathedral Church of St. Paul (I hope it will be goodly again.) That barbarous profaneness, whose like was not seen before, was avenged upon no other Cattle in the field, but only on that species that was kept at rack and manger in the House of the Lord. The end is this, when a Plague is new, unheard of, like this of the Serpents, lay it to conscience, that it falls upon some new and matchless disobedience.
The fourth Plague, and the worst of all is yet behind, that it was incurable, which I do not press from Dioscorides, an old Writer upon the poison of serpents, or Aldrovandus one of the latter, that the teeth of the Prester and Causon, the venomous brood of hot Countries, make an irrecoverable wound (yet they deserve credit as skillful men.) The Constat is from holy Scripture, that the Patients saw the malady was helpless, unless help came by the Prayer of Moses. Else such a rugged natured People would not have been brought to that humility and submission, as St. Chrysostom said they were, that the People fell down on their faces before Moses, and Moses fell on his face before God. And then God referred it to nothing but a miracle, to lift up a brazen Serpent, most likely on the top of the Tabernacle, then look upon it and be healed. Which was Christ in a figure, Joh. iii. 14. The Son of man was lifted up on the Cross, and we poor sinners by faith are lifted up in that Machin, and craned up as it were in the Cross of Christ to Heaven. This is proved home, that the wound of the murmurers was incurable: not a salve for it in all the cunning of man. O Israel thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thy help, saith the Lord, Hos. xiii. 9. If God had never touched them with a Serpent, should he have got any thanks for his protection? I trow none; for affliction unfelt is unregarded. When we miss the Disease, we miss not the Physician. By the sense of the wound they came to know the benefit of a cure. Had it been but the prick of a wasp, skin deep at the most, why lightly felt had been lightly regarded. Or if Moses had dressed them by some Art and Chyrurgery, which he had learnt in Egypt, the work of nature, not the God of nature had been magnified. It was otherwise in part, and in all. A bitter misery was among them, and invincible, all the comfort of art and man were frustrate, then God riseth up in his greatness, goodness, and Majesty, expels the wonder of a vengeance by a wonder of healing, removes the punishment of the body by a blessing of salvation, and drives away the Serpents by Christ.
I have now spoken enough to the Sin of Israel, which was Murmuring; and to the Punishment of their Sin by Serpents. That was their grief, and not ours. Now by way of application, I must tell you of those Serpents, which we must pray unto the Lord to take away from ourselves. And those are three, the Serpent Satan, the Serpent Sin, and the Serpent Man, when he changeth himself from manhood into such a beast. The first that may justly be called a Serpent is Satan. For it is all one to say the Serpent beguiled Eve, and Satan beguiled her. 'It is frequent to involve the principal cause in the name of the instrument. The Devil indeed is not so much as named Gen. iii. but necessarily to be understood. Though his name lie in silence, his effects bewray him; for none else is left to father the wickedness. God can tempt none to sin: the good Angels wish us good and no harm: there were none of human generation on earth but Adam and Eve themselves; brutish creatures could not contrive it. None is left to own it but the Serpent called the Devil and Satan, who deceiveth the World, Revel. xii. 9. Therefore God did not say to the creeping worm, why hast thou done this? as he charged our first Parents, for that Creature did not do it. As the words which a man says that is possessed are not his own, but the spirits that is entered into him: so the evil that is attributed to the Snake was not his doing, but the Devil's that managed it.
Take warning therefore of the malice of that evil Fiend, who never forgave himself that injury, but seeks continually whom he may devour. Be watchful of him; for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the Rulers of the darkness of this World, Eph. vi. 11. He makes out matter of temptation by the words that often fall from our mouth, notes our usances, searcheth into all our inclinations: there is no passion, nor frailty wherein we lie open to assault, but he knows it. As David was more afraid of the counsel of Ahithophel, than of all the Host of Rebels that followed Absalom: so all that the wicked world can muster together is not so dangerous as the methods of Satan. Fast, as you are able; pray that God would bruise him under your feet. So did Paul three times, when the Messenger of Satan was sent to buffet him. Paul had much grace, grace that was sufficient for prayer. Holiness becometh the House of Prayer, and holiness becometh the mouth of Prayer. What have they to do with Prayer that have no fellowship with holy Practice? To come before God with a lapful of sins, and a mouthful of prayers is a motley Sacrifice. And in Fasting and Prayer watch your wandering heart, that the Devil steal it not away with idle fancies (when you pray against him) which will flutter in your mind, like motes in the Sun. But challenge him of Sacrilege, that he hath robbed you of your devotion: follow him with hue and cry, and he will fly away from you. Let there be anything that we are more eagerly set upon to obtain than all the rest, we will never start aside, never run out of the circle, when we come to that Petition. And this Petition is as useful as any, That the Lord would take away the old Serpent from us.
If Satan be a Serpent, so is sin. Partus sequitur ventrem; such as the Dam is, such is the Issue. Then secondly pray unto God against Serpent sin. The mortifying of it is called crushing a Cockatrice in the egg, and Solomon says of drunkenness, it bites like a Serpent, and stings like an Adder, Prov. xxiii. 32. To begin with original sin, 'tis fitly called by Tertullian, Plaga antiqui serpentis, the biting of the old Serpent. And many good Authors delight themselves for good cause, to note it on the accident that I preach of, that the people in the Wilderness did pray, that the Lord would take away the Serpents from them; yet he did not; and for all that their Prayer sped well: For God gave means to as many as were stung, to be healed by looking on a Serpent that was lifted up. So we are all wounded with a loathsome disease from our Mothers womb, and remain wounded. Baptism and Prayer make the wound less, howsoever still it is a wound: but God hath provided how to cure the guilt of it by intuition of faith, looking on Christ, who bare our sins upon his Cross. And as the living Serpents were charmed by the dead one, that they had no power to kill; so sin that lives in us is weakened that it shall not condemn, by the Son of God that died to save us. And as this sin is one by likeness in us all, so one Savior crucified for the sins of the World, is sufficient to help us all. The Israelites had not distinct Serpents erected after the number of their Tribes, much less many more according to the number of their Families; but one Serpent lifted up, and but one Mediator between God and Man. Aim by that level, and you hit the mark. The hope of remedy is founded in unity. Our God's are not plural: our Redeemers are not many: they that have divers Savior's have never a Savior. They that have tutelary Saints for every day, for every disease; Patron Martyrs for every Kingdom, almost for every Parish, have a serpentine swarm of superstition. But as our wound is one in all, so one Jesus is rich in mercy unto all.
Likewise a serpentine corruption is notorious in all our actual and willful sins. For the biting of a poisonous worm is not only perilous to that part of the flesh in which it fixeth its tooth, but every drop of blood draws in the malignity of that which was next unto it, till there be no sound part remaining. So one member of the body being tainted with the venom of sin traduceth corruption to another. If the ear be tickled with filthy talk, the loins will be unchaste; if the eye be wanton it will run into the heart. Observe it by another propagation; when you commit one sin you are at the brink of another: the second offense makes the way smooth and slippery for a third. Any transgression not presently physicked with the antidote of repentance, will fetch in so many, that they will sink you into the bottomless pit. Yet there is another serpentine dispreading in the works of the flesh. One sinner is an hundred sinners in the catching infection of his leprosy; one Absalom is an Host of Rebels; one Ringleader a shole of Schismatics; one Jeroboam a Kingdom full of Idolaters; one incestuous Corinthian a leaven that will leaven the whole lump. Therefore stand far off as you can from prophanness, it hath a multiplying mischief in it: there's an infectious exhalation transpassant from man to man, because sin is the biting of a Serpent.
O look up often to Christ, and pray unto him to take away these Serpents from us, our sins of daily incursion. When your spirit is heavy, and cast down with dispair, prayer will make it rebound from earth to heaven. It is the energetical expression of faith, the Ambassador which hope sends up to God, the fellowship of love, the comfort of the Holy Ghost. This may soon be done if we have a mind to it: It is as easy to say Our Father which art in heaven, as to see heaven, which is always in our sight. If your Place and Calling take up much of your time, let your Prayer be compendious, well filled with matter, an holy breathing; speak home, and be strong in sense. But beware of high looks, and high words: Lord thou dost hear the desire of the humble, and dost prepare their heart. And beware of stiff joints. Put yourself back in great distance from the Lord, that you may the better behold him in his excellent greatness. Then the Serpent sin shall be taken from us.
The last point to be dispatched is about Serpent men. There are such, for our Savior says of the Pharisees, Ye Serpents, ye generation of Vipers! how can ye escape the damnation of Hell? Matth. xxiii. 33. The Heathen are mere men; men of this World, says the Psalm. Good Christians are more than men, Saints of God: Bad Christians are not so good as men, and have no wrong done them to be compared to beasts. Of such as I shall speak of in reference to the feeling of our own condition, I will tell you of their number that they are many; of their continuance for length of time; and of their qualities, that they are crooked, hissing, subtle, and venomous vermin. Of these in as many strictures.
Take away the Serpents, a multitude, a plurality of them, so my Text imports. And so are ours: though more to be endured, yet not so many, I hope, as to be feared, since great wisdom watcheth them. I need not tell you, you know it, that they contrived themselves into seven interests. If we were as confident Revelationers as they, we should find the Beast with seven heads among them, Revel. xiii. But those heads grew all upon one neck; so do not these. For not one of them hath an interest in the same Principles of Religion with the other. The grave President of sedition, that would not be seen among the rest, can concur for mischiefs sake with those Fanatics that will never be subject to his Classical Consistories. O when shall we see a Bed of Roses grow so close together, as Briars and Brambles, black and white Thorn will twine into one Hedg? The Spawn of seven Serpents, all of different species, can coagulate into one Roe. Satan can melt his Heterogeneal Mettals, and make them all run into one Furnace. Every language that understands not the rest can help to build an internal Babel. But our help is in him, who sends us health from the seven Spirits that are before the Throne of the Lamb.
Secondly, a Serpent is slender, but long. And a long Council of Serpents held us many years in oppression. Many fetches the old Dragon had to keep it together. When it was cut in pieces, some of the pieces, according to the vulgar error, came together again, and brought the Servants of God and the King to scrape for Pearls of patience out of so great a Dunghil of misery. Perhaps I had passed by this note of the length, but that Pliny speaks of a great Serpent taken at the River Bagrada, near to Old Carthage of 120 foot long, whose body being consumed the skin was sent to Rome: and what became of it there? why, it was hung up in the Capitol, in their House of Parliament; and hung up there so long as stuff could endure. Note here a Serpent, the longest that ever was heard of; the skin remaining when the body was mortified, and hung up in the Senate-house. Any body may expound this Riddle without an application.
Thirdly, we speak of a crooked creature, Leviathan the crooked Serpent, Isa. xxvii. 1. So are they that are devilish, crooked and perverse, Phil. ii. 15. How hard is it to find their tract, when they wriggle this way and that way, in no direct line? A right line is the shortest passage from point to point: there you shall find sound Doctrine, oblique deflections, whether it be in Confession of Faith, Form of Prayers, or Discipline, have as many shapes as the Moon. One while a few Ceremonies shall be allowed, and anon none at all: sometimes they are stuck at but for inconvenient, the next news that comes they are unlawful: with the next tide we hear they are only unexpedient for the scandal sake of weak people. At one hearing, the Old Liturgy castigated will give content: shortly nothing will serve but a new lump of Prayer, which hath no congruity with any that ever was before: in a while they will brook no set Form at all. How many degrees hath the shadow run back upon their Dial? 'It is like a motion in the Ches-board, sometimes into a black chequer, sometimes into a white; but it is all one, so they may check the King, or move the Bishop. How crooked are these Serpents and untraceable in their paths? they can take any figure upon them; be as square as a tile of the Pavement, be as round as a hoop; play at all weapons after the variety of the times. As the Friar abused that of the Psalm, Thy truth most mighty God is on every side. This is able to pose the most prudent to make a clear observation upon it. It was beyond Solomon's wisdom, Prov. xxx. 19. four things are too hard for me to know: the one is, the way of a Serpent upon a rock: for it is his own rule, that which is crooked cannot be made right: or after the Proverb, a crooked Cucumer will never become strait. It is only Prayer that can bring such things to be even, and perpendicular. But Lord take away the crooked Serpents from us.
And fourthly, the hissing also; the Rattle-snakes of one of our new Plantations, their railings and invectives, under the tone of whinings and lamentations. This kind are Pulpit Serpents. O impious! for none but the Brasen Serpent should be set up in that place, the Prince of peace and healing. The Doctrine of the whole Clan is for anger and commotion. Peragunt civilia bella cerastae, as I may fitly say with Cato in the Poet; When the Civil Wars were done, the Asps and Adders begun a new Battle. The hissing and the consequence are as pernicious as that of the false Prophets, Mich. iii. 5. They make my people to err, and bite with their teeth. But it is a people bred in dark informations, else such palpably needless exceptions as they hear would hiss at themselves. But what charge can be worse? (and yet a true one) that their very Prayers not seldom are Serpents, and of the hissing Dialect, exposing those they pray for to the ill opinion of their Auditors: And when they speak to God, they traduce man. Is this to lift up holy hands without wrath? 1 Tim. ii. 8. Would not such hissing throats be silenced? Not so, will their well-willers say; for they are diligent, and profitable in their Ministry. But what is the Church the better? nay, is it not the worse, if Satan stamps his figure upon the finest metal? and to say a man hath all the Ornaments of a Preacher, but a peaceable spirit is like the praise that Tacitus gives to Poppaea Sabina, That she had all the Ornaments of a brave Lady, but an honest mind, Praeter honestum animum. Perhaps my Doctrine will not scape hissing for this point, but this is plain dealing, and the Serpent is subtle.
That's the fifth note, The Devil is a beguiler, and the Master of the School, he hath entailed a cunning craftiness to the mystery of iniquity. Then why should not mischievous plotting be as hateful to us as a Basilisk, as odious as Satan? Woe be to those who have their sharpness of wit from no better Prompter, that have no measure in their dissimulation, no trust in their word, no fidelity in their oath, no distinction of causes or persons whom they ruin. I do not altogether blame the Turks if it be true, that they repute natural fools to be Saints; I am sure they are Saints in comparison of such cunning Gipsies. But a good Christian is a compound out of the better part of two qualities, Rom. xvi. 19. Wise to that which is good, and simple concerning evil. This is right, inoffensiveness tempered with intelligence, the simplicity of the Dove mitigating the wiliness of the Serpent. To say all in a little: Foul actions are supported by forgery and stratagems, virtue by sage knowledge: the City of Satan is for malevolence, the City of God for providence: the one is a Machiavel, the other a Solomon.
Subtlety is the web and snare of the Spider, but his substance is poison, so is the Serpents. Take it either with David, Adders poison is under their lips, Psal. clx. 3. Or with St. Paul, That their word eats as doth a canker. The venom of pernicious Doctrine is the most fatal cup of death. The worst fraud is to poison the conscience with a deadly drink. For of all pestilent contagions the worst is that which infects the spirits. The greatest trust between man and man is the trust of giving counsel: then what can be more scandalous than to be unfaithful in a trust of the greatest concernment. It is not making over a cracked title in the sale of Lands, nor turning over light and adulterate money in payment, nor thrusting bad wares into the hand of a Chapman. Those are shuffling dishonest tricks. But in the other, the ignorant committed his soul unto thee, and thou didst betray it. He gave thee the custody of his strongest Fort to keep for him, and thou betrayedst it to the power of the enemy. Christ came into the World to seek and to save that which was lost, and the empoisoner hath done his part to lose that Soul which Christ would have saved. He laid a stumbling block before a Disciple, who should have been eyes to the blind. And cursed be he that maketh the blind to wander out of the way, Deut. xxvii. 18.
Now the conclusion of all is, to pray that the Serpent Man may be taken away from us; thereby the Canker-worm that spoileth flieth away, Nahum. iii. 15. We are assured that Moses prays for all his Israel. And it is the office of him or them that have great interest in God to bless others with their prayers. All must do their part, all are concerned. The greater Saints may prevail with God one by one; others had need to meet by hundreds and thousands in great Congregations; that every single man's prayer may be a drop in a shower. Keep set and appointed times for that purpose, for to pray only when you are at leisure is to give God the worst of the day, your spare and idle time. Pray with the Church, which will teach you words that will meet with all your necessities. Be not in love with your own conceits. Make not a Form for Moses, and as if without that you would leave the Communion of Saints. And let the People join together with the Priest in sweet returns and answers, to fill up the work with a Choir of voices. If any one would refer all to the lip of one single mouth, and says there is no benefit to interpose the suffrages of the Congregation, he is he, and I am I, shall he persuade me that his is best, when I feel the contrary in my own heart? Do not others know better than he what they are sensible of in the motions of their own spirit? But the season of Lent calls for Fasting to be joined with Prayer. And St. Ambrose says lib. 6. Hexam. c. 4. that if a Serpent suck up the fasting spittle of a man, it is mortal to it. Finally pray, and look up to Christ the brazen Serpent. Lift up your Prayer on high, higher than Satan the Prince of the Air. Get the upper ground of him; it is a good advantage against an Enemy. Maxim. Taurin. says of Simon Magus (let the Story be of what credit you please) that having made himself as it were sails to hover in the air, St. Peter ascended higher with his Prayers, and threw him headlong down. Ante pervenit justa petitio quàm iniqua praesumptio. So dart your Prayers out of strong zeal to enter into Heaven, and say, From all the Serpents of this evil Age, from all Sedition and privy Conspiracy, from all false Doctrine and Heresy, good Lord deliver us. AMEN.
A SERMON UPON
JOSHUAH xxii. 26.
And that man perished not alone in his iniquity.
JOSHUAH xxii. 26.
And that man perished not alone in his iniquity.
A ND that man was Achan the Son of Zera that did commit a Trespass in stealing the accursed Spoils of Jericho. I hope you make not dainty of the Story, it is famous in the seventh of Joshua. How easily we have found him out! All Israel on a time were quite to seek, and seriously inquired for such a man, Joshua. rent his clothes and lamented to know his name, and now if we read the first line of this verse he is discovered. Though his iniquity was as close as Hell, though he durst trust nothing but the dull earth with the secret of his sin, yet Babes and Children learn it now in their Paedagogy, that (iste) the man pointed at, no less unhappy in his punishment, than unjust in his crime, was Achan the Son of Zerah that perished, &c.
Let us enter into these words not without our demurest thoughts, and holy reverence; for what place of the Church is more beautiful than the Altar? And what service of the King is so honorable as an Embassy? And which attribute of God is more noble than his justice? Now an Altar, and an Embassage appertain to the occasion of this Text, and the justice of God to the Exposition.
There was an Altar set up by Gad, and Reuben, and half Manasseh, a great one to see to, in the tenth verse, a pattern of the Lord's own Altar in the 28. which was as strange in those days when all the light of the Church moved but in one Sphere, as to see a Parelius or a second Sun in the Firmament. This new devotion of theirs kindled a jealousy in the Ten Tribes that possessed the Land of Canaan beyond the River Jordan: and after some advice to reform the Church they stumble upon these two ways: First, to pluck down the Altar; was the like done nowhere? Never in our Land? First, pluck down the Churches, and then reform the Religion. Next that there might be hands enough to pluck it down, all Israel meet at Shiloh to fight it out. Another strange course (I pray observe it) to try the truth, not in Moses chair, but in the field, and He should carry the day whose Sword was sharpest; and brethren would sacrifice brethren upon their own Altar for Idolatry. Yet this hath a fair show, and seems to be like the renowned justice of Timoleon, that redeemed his Brother taken captive in his Country quarrel, whom he slew soon after with his own hands for usurping tyranny.
But to be slow to wrath is to make haste to heaven; and sometimes a soft word breaks not down Altars, but the very bones, says Solomon. St. Peter cut off but one silly servants ear with (Ecce duo gladii) but when Jesus spake, it overturned them to the ground every man and Miscreant. So this holy Nation send Phinehas the Son of Eleazar, and Ten Princes more, the flower of the Nobility, to play the Orators before it come to bloodshed, and make this the close of the Message to leave the most moving affection behind it; that the Idolatry of two Tribes and more would envenom all the children of Israel round about, since the trespass of one man was the ruin of God knows how many. Did not Achan the Son of Zerah trespass, and wrath fell on all the Congregation of Israel, and that man perished, &c.
Beloved, now we know the man that bears the burden of the Text: and that Altar which was blameless and innocent, one poor distinction broke up all the Army, it was an Altar of Witness, and not of Sacrifice. And you have seen the Embassy presenting and prevailing for Peace and true Religion. A word or two to show what is meant by (non solus) he perished not alone. There are divers stories of God's vengeance in that word built one above another, as may easily be discerned if I resolve all the Text into Achan's Funerals. First, here is a grave digged, and that is iniquity. So speaks the Kingly Prophet, effodit puteum, he digged a Pit, that is, says another Prophet, he plowed iniquity. Secondly, see the corps of Achan, first oppressed with stones, and then consumed to ashes (for he was both stoned and burnt) the one representing a Sepulcher, and the other the dismal fire of Hell, this is that man perishing. But not alone; his Children were the sad mourners that followed their Father, and died with him both root and branches. Nor these only, but thirty six Israelites slain and offered up to the vengeance of God, inferiae Achanis, as I may term them after the heathen phrase. And give me leave to go on to make a miserable pomp, his Cattle went along to be sacrificed, & bellator equus, even all he had; as if his Oxen had jogged the Ark of God, they are consumed in fire. Lastly, you are here beloved, to look on, and judge of such a spectacle, to decline the trespass, that for your part (and God grant it be so) He may perish alone in his iniquity. Lego historiam ne fiam historia.
Where could I allege Scripture so wonderful to show the mystery of God's justice, least we speak unadvisedly with our lips, why art thou so wrath with the sheep of thy Pasture? Non nostrum onus; our shoulders were not made to bear our Fathers sins. As Lipsius embraced the reproof of Scaliger, saying, Te judice placebit paene ipsum damnari; so we must not only kiss the Son lest he be angry, but even kiss the very anger of the Son. He was figured to be the Serpent that stung the Israelites, but it was a brazen Serpent; Serpens sine veneno, no poison, no rancor of malice in him. Judicia Dei occulta esse possunt, injusta esse non possunt, says St. Austin.
Strike once upon this rock of justice, and I dare promise a fountain will issue out from thence of fear and reverence not to provoke the Lord by sins and trespasses; for if He threaten, shall He seem as one that mocks? Shall the Infant put his finger upon the hole of the Cockatrice? Wherefore to make this our use and fruit of hearing at this time: First, to adore the flaming Sword of justice; Secondly, to shun the stroke, the wages of ungodliness. First, that the Tombs of sinners may be Altars of God's righteousness, and then that the zeal of God may be dreadful unto man; let these be the parts of this discourse.
First, We must put the cause foremost, the cause of all the wrath that follows, and that both general, it is iniquity, and with an instance his iniquity. Then follows the subject, not only answering to each part of the cause, man and that man, but a subject it is ex abundanti, you would think as if mischief had been kindled like piles of wild-fire, for it spreads about to strangers and home-born, to the reasonable and to the dumb, nay, to the quick and dead, that man, not alone is a troop of them which were consumed. Thirdly, here is an affection brought in by the cause you wot of before into this plentiful subject, alas let us not call it an Affection, let us use no Art, it is perishing.
The Cause, Iniquity; the Subject, Achan, but not alone; the Affection, that he perished; you see I have made a demonstration of the Text. Now let not any man make it a fallacy to deceive his own soul; doth not the cause deserve severe arraignment? Then blaspheme not as the wicked do: He seeketh an occasion to punish. Cruda est cicatrix criminum oletque ut antrum Tartari, says the Divine Prudentius in the subject; Did one hair of an innocent person fall to the ground? Then murmur not against God, turn thy wrath upon the sinners and the heathen which have not known his name. But is it too much to perish for all this? Was the chastisement beyond measure? Then let us say we are vexed and sore smitten, then indignation lieth hard upon us like Rehoboams Scorpions. Remember how the Heathen described justice in their Idol Jupiter, it was Aquila cum fulmine; an Eagles eye to discern a fault, a Thunderbolt to strike a Malefactor, and the way thereof is as the way of an Eagle in the air, when at the highest pitch we cannot see him: Wherefore address we attentions to hear the cause, how that man perished, &c.
I have seen malum sub sole, says Solomon, evil under the Sun. He might well tell it for a wonder that such a difference should light together. The Sun builds up nature like a Giant, Psal. xix. and evil pulls it down as fast like a Monster. It was the vision of Moses at Mount Horeb, Exod. iii. a flame of fire in a bramble bush; and he that will look like a Prophet, shall see there is nothing among us but Flamma splendoris divini, or spina peccati. I renounce the Manichees, I make not two main causes, good and evil: but I say, everything shows the brightness of God's glory shining in his works, or the thorns and briars of sin in the defacing thereof; such thorns were the sinful Jebusites. I would the world were as free from it as the Song of Solomon, wherein the name is not once to be read lest it should breed a discord in the tunes of love.
There must be sin, there must be heresies, but sin what art thou? Alas that every man can sooner sin than tell what it is. When we talk of it, then it grows upon us; when we forget it, it increaseth more; when we hate it, then we sin because we do not hate it as we ought; but call it in one word as St. John doth, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the breach of God's Law, and you have said enough. Me thinks Moses made the definition, when spying the trespass, the Calf they worshipped in Horeb, He cast the Tables from him, as who should say, the Law is broken.
Only here is the difference, the Tables were cracked in few pieces perhaps, but the Law hath been ground like the Idol into powder, so that a remnant is not kept whole in man. St. Paul, Rom. iii. reduceth sin into every part of us, both soul and body, as unto certain common places, or you may call it the Geography of wickedness, There is none that understandeth, thus our reason is ignorant; none that seeketh after God, our will is disobedient. If the Leaven be so bad, what hope remains in the lump? Our tongues have used deceit, and the kisses of our lips envenom like the Asp. Our feet are not lazy, but swift to shed blood. Our eyes not dim, but wanting before them the veil of reverence, There is no fear of God before our eyes. Our throat not crammed up or strangled, but wide as an open Sepulcher. Was Goliath more furnished to do evil with that tomb of brass upon his body? Was Esau more rough and hairy from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot? Or that Hermogenes, whom the Wits of Greece plaid upon, that the Rasor knew not where to begin 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , for all his body was but one lock. As we bring bloody bodies into the world, Tabe polluti, & occisis magis quàm natis similes, says Plutarch, so we bring a most wretched soul. That as Marius could show no honorable Pedigree for a Consulship to the Senate but thirty six wounds in his Breast, so we cannot show the glory of our immortal and heavenly created soul, her Pedigree from God by reason of the wounds which stick fast upon it. Aristotle said our soul was like a fair skin of Parchment wherein nothing was written. O that it had been so; they are rather like Ezekiel's book within and without, written with woes and lamentations; or as Plato speaks of Dionysius his soul, that it was scribled all over with evil Characters. What an indictment may be made of this cause then when iniquity is a blemish all over, as the whole bird was dipt in blood, Lev. xiv. which was an Emblem of our pollution. No words can sufficiently describe it, but as one speaks of the Spanish Tyranny over the Indies, the best Rhetoric was to besmear a bloody leaf to express it.
Sin in its Essence is confederate with death and punishment. It is the obedience of dumb creatures to chastise it. The Earth waxed evil in bringing forth Plants and fruits, when the choicest mold of it did fail in Adam, it would not be so fruitful for a Sinner as for an Innocent. The Prophetess Deborah knew so much Astrology that the Stars in their course fought against the Tyrant Sifera. Et navicula Petri in quâ erat Judas turbabatur (says St. Ambrose; ) the Sea stormed at Peters Ship when Judas was in it; but these are senseless scourges, and God applies them. What need I speak of Phinehas his righteous passion that killed the Princely Adulterer? If the Angels might have their will no Tares should stand in the field, they would root up everything that had not the blade of Wheat. But these are all heavenly Soldiers, and holiness provokes them. Well, let the Devil be the judge and he delights both to accuse and punish. Put it to evil men, and they think Naboth should die for cursing God and the King. The vilest persons for the most part are the Satyrs of the time, and tax all the world like Angustus. Nay, put it to the sinner himself, put it to Cain and Judas, they find no favor, no mitigation I dare say in the Court of their own conscience, Prima est haec ultio quod se Judice nemo nocens absolvitur.
Let me lead you on with this distinction betwixt in, and propter, to perish in iniquity, and for iniquity. Sin is not always the propter, the moving cause of God's chastisements, but sometimes the trial of an heroic faith, so it was in Job. Sometimes the confirmation of grace, so it was in St. Paul, the Messenger of Satan was sent to buffet him, that God's grace might be sufficient for him. But (in iniquitate) is certain truth, the wrath of God lights not but where transgressions have gone before. Thus the Disciples were at a loss, Joh. ix. Did this man sin that he was born blind? How was that possible in his Mothers Womb? But was the sin of his Father, or the guilt of his Mother imputed to him? The imperfect fruit of the Womb could do no evil, the offense of his Parents must not be thought his evil. Rabbi quis peccavit? Nec ill nec parents, says our Savior; neither for his, nor his Parents sins was he born blind, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him. That was the cause; and yet a mote had not troubled the eye of this blind man but that a beam of sin had possessed it before, in his Mothers Womb, I mean by original corruption. Alas that we should be grown big enough for punishment before we are born to nature? Sabores being but a breeding at the death of his Father Vasarenes (as Agathias reports) the Soothsayers foretold that his Mother should bring forth a Male child, and he was crowned in her Womb, his honor began the soonest I ever read of any; and his guiltiness of sin, and obligement to God's wrath began as soon as the soul did inform the body.
If ever there were a Paradox in the world, which Turks and Infidels hitherto have shamed to maintain, it is the contrary to this doctrine that some iniquity is not the cause of perishing before the wrath of God. Peribit in iniquitate, it was ever good Divinity before Mariana, and some Jesuits have persuaded desperate castaways to be saved by iniquity. Saved did they say? And for working abomination? O are not the tender mercies of the wicked cruel? St. Paul comforted our Mothers in their travel, that the woman should be saved by bearing Children into the world, they teach Reprobates to purchase a Saintship, by murdering such whom the world is not worthy of? Slaughter and bloodshed says our Philosopher, Rhet. 1. lib. are not fit to make a question for discourse, because it was never disputed by some either to be lawful or tolerable. Nay in the second Eth. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , nothing can make Murder a good action, much less Treason. But this was the pity of a Philosopher, and Alexanders Courtier, not the stomach of a Jesuit, and a grand Inquisitor. If all the Saints should appear before God with the Instruments of their Piety, Moses with the two Tables, Aaron with his Rod, David with his Psaltery, Dorcas with the Garments of her Charity, would you look for a Priest among them girded with a bloody knife? Or a Villain provided with fire and Gunpowder? Who would look for it? Except as when the Sons of God stood before the Lord, Job i and Satan also was among them. Nay, heaven and earth shall pass away before Peribit in iniquitate become Apocryphal, before the Wormwood of sin become the Palm of immortality.
Thus much for the cause in general, but what offense his iniquity did give, the sin of Achan will ask a peculiar and a larger trial. You are deceived if you think it was but Larceny, or greedy pilfering, if a Thief steal he shall restore fourfold, says the Law, or seven fold, says Solomon, when stealing grew worse and worse; that was the most of it. But God saw more pernicious faults in Achan; for his justice is not fidelis in minimo, sharpest against small offenses, like the Popes Decretals, which enjoin a Priest forty days penance if he spill one drop of the Cup of the Lord's Table, and but seven days penance for Fornication. But heinous was the fact of Achan, first in scandal, that an Israelite, preserved so long in the Wilderness, one that fought the Lord's Battels, and came always home with victory, that he should be the first that trespassed among the Canaanites, the heathen that would blaspheme the living God.
Secondly, In disobedience that Joshua his noble General made the head of all the Tribes by God's appointment, and Moses good liking, and Eleazars Unction could not command to be obeyed.
Thirdly, In faithless covetousness. That since Manna did fall no more from heaven about their Tents, the Lord did heed his people no longer, every man must catch what come to his hands, so Achan took the accursed, &c. Here is scandal to them that were without; within themselves contempt of the Lord and his servant Joshua, in his own heart an inordinate desire to grow rich and sumptuous. I do not make Achan's fault the greater, that God's vengeance may be more plausible, as St Austin spake of disgracing Cacus to honor Hercules the more, Nisi nimis accusaretur Cacus parum Hercules laudaretur; but remember my scope is all one with S. Paul's Interrogatories, With whom was he grieved? And to whom did he swear in his wrath that they should not enter into his rest?
If there be any delight in comparing sins as the Prophets use to dash the Idols of Jerusalem with the Idols of Samaria, me thinks the first transgression of the Garden of Eden, and the pleasant Land of Canaan, almost another Eden, are very semblable. Eve walking in Paradise saw the fruits, and her eye enticed her to take that which was forbidden, and then she hid herself out of God's sight. So Achan treading upon the soil of Canaan saw a Babylonish Garment, and his eye enticed him, and he took it when it was forbidden and accursed, and hid both the Garment and his sin from the sight of Joshua.
But those are impudent crimes like the forehead of an Harlot that leave their memory to the evil world to be the first examples of transgressions, cursed be that sin, for it festers into scandal, and unhappy shall be their end that fly from the Lord till they be left as a Beacon on the top of a Mountain, and as an Ensign on a Hill, says the Prophet Isaiah. Many offenses had never been committed, or else brought forth by a worse Generation long after, unless an evil Author had made the way known and easy for our corrupt nature; therefore the first that gathered sticks, and broke the Sabbath, the Shilonites Son the first that cursed, impious Gehazi, the first that took sinful wages for the gift of God; Ananias and Sapphira the first dissemblers in the Primitive Church, Achan the first Malefactor in the Land of Canaan, these had their portion suddenly, and drunk the Cup of God's fury unto the dregs thereof. I know not how fatal it is, but since the small trenches of Rome were filled with too much blood of Rhemus, anon after they were dig'd, massacres, and persecutions have never departed from that unlucky building.
As the heavens are spread above us, and seem to speak like the Statue of the King of Egypt, In me quis intuens pius esto: So the ground whereon we tread sometimes quakes and seems to be too holy to be defiled. But if ever there were an 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , or incongruity of place to say unto sin, exiforas, this is no ground for sinners, was it not the Land of Promise? A small sin in Canaan was greater than a fornication in Egypt, a trespass in Jerusalem is worse than an Idol in Samaria. Had this deed been done in the Wilderness, or in the paths of the Red Sea, it had been more tolerable, as one speaks of Pompey's obscure death in Egypt, a thousand Leagues from Rome, Procul hoc ut in orbe remoto abscondat fortuna nefas, the offense had not been so notorious. But the Angels themselves do wonder in a field of choice Wheat, Unde zizania? Lord whence come Tares? Will you resolve the Prophet Jeremy the same question? He makes very strange, fidelis civitas? How is the faithful City become an Harlot? To use the Lord's own Sacrifice, with the Sons of Eli, for Riot and Extortion; his own Supper for drunkenness, with the bad Corinthians; to employ the soil of his own blessing as the High Priests did Aceldema to bury the accursed treasure, this is scandalous to the weak consciences which are without. What will the Heathen say? Are these the peculiar Nation whom the Lord hath chosen?
And woe unto the World because of scandals. Mark how many Ages, how much ground our Savior compasseth in (vae mundo) one Age is but an hour-glass of time, these will lie in our memory forever, like the pain in the Shunamites head, caput dolet, it may be our death. Vae mundo, the pale horse wounded but the fourth part of the earth, Apoc. iv. but scandals may cover all the four Quarters like the flies of Egypt.
O you that live in Canaan upon holy ground, on Faery Land as we call it, whose vices the weakness of some would be proud to imitate; why will the Lord reckon not only with the Goats on his left hand, but with the Sheep of his right hand in one mighty day, since in particular the last minute of every man's life is the first minute of his trial? Why is there one day of judgment since there have been a thousand long ago both for glory and condemnation? Because though corruption have seized upon thee in the Grave, and so much of thy dust remain not as may offend a tender eye; yet thy sins may live, and he that looks upon them may conceive spots like the Flocks of Jacob. I do not excuse those tender ones that turn a sore eye more carefully from the Sun which would make it smart, than from an ill example that will cast a dark shadow upon the soul. The man in the Comedy that made Jupiter his leader to commit Fornication (says St. Austin, ) Nullo modo peccasset si Catonem imitari maluisset quàm Jovem. But yet it was a fault in you that removed not the stone as the Angel did, but cast it in the way against which he stumbled.
It is a good Meditation that the soul of that man (let it consult with itself) will never attain to a perfect peace that made another sin. I am reconciled unto God in Jesus Christ. Could I wish anymore? Yes, I shall ever be unresolved whether he be reconciled unto God by repentance whom I entangled by my occasion. David in his one sin polluted Bathsheba with his bed, Uriah with drunkenness, Joab with cruelty. David asked forgiveness, I find it in his Penitential Psalms, I never read that Uriah did so, or that Bathsheba did the like, I hope the best. I never find it where Joab did repent, I fear the worst. And could David be at peace if Joab perished. The Tyrants of Thrace think themselves never secure in their Thrones but by the destruction of their kindred and brethren: but unhappy are the Saints of God if they rob his Kingdom of any that should reign for company. And how is that done? Never worse than by that scandal which christens sin with a name, as the Sodomites, Simon Magus, the Nicolaitans, all Masters of Heresies; woe unto such as are the Parents of transgressions. Like Achan, that perished not alone in his iniquity.
The second part of his iniquity is disobedience, the Canker-worm that eats into the heart of Sovereignty. Thine eyes shall not spare the City, all shall be accursed, put not your hand unto the spoils lest you trouble Israel; this was a Proclamation From Joshua their Prince, but Laws could not be heard in the noise of the Battle. Should I ask these unnecessary burdens of a Commonwealth, whether the most riotous Malefactor expects not the protection of the Law to belong unto him? I know he would claim it; And why not the obedience of the Laws? The Earth and Water of our Country do no longer pertain unto us than our duty and allegiance doth deserve them. And to say truth, obedience is no less necessary for the happiness of the Subject, than for the prosperity of the Prince. It is true that Epaminondas said when the Thebans praised his Government, and said, they were happy that he ruled so well: Not so, says Epaminondas, the Commonwealth is happy because you obey so well. And as fit to this purpose is that pretty Emblem of a Graft flourishing when it was bound about to the stock (Per vincula cresco) as if the bonds of Government made the Kingdom flourish. The World was never so unruly, and therefore never more unlucky than under the Emperor Maximilian, whom his Subjects called by a nick-name (Rex Regum) a King of Kings, because the People lived Lawless, rather like Emperors than Subjects. Nazianzen says, that the two sins of Julian (did you ever hear of worse? ) were 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 and 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , Apostasy of faith against God, and a mutiny of Rebellion against Constance the Emperor. I do not wonder at it if He, that fell out first with God, then transgressed against the King, the Lieutenant of God. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , God and the King are knit together by an invisible copulation.
Plutarch called the Discipline of Sparta a most flourishing Commonwealth, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 the Exercitation of obedience. And our Savior, who was made obedient unto death, prefers (factus obediens) before (factus ad mortem;) his word was, Obedience is better than Sacrifice, that is, more honorable than death; Because (says Aquinas ) in Sacrifice we give up but the flesh of beasts, but in Obedience we offer up our own will. The love of the Centurion to his Servant was wonderful, to make such means to Christ by all the Elders of the Jews for his recovery, but he deserved it by that description of his Soldiers, I say unto one go and he goeth, to another come and he cometh, and to my Servant do this and he doth it.
Yet you know not the rebellion of Achan until we examine it by the fifth Commandment of the Law. There God blesseth the true Spartan Discipline, which stands demurely before Government like the Sacrifice bound with cords to the horns of the Altar. Honor thy Father and Mother, &c. Indeed it is a blessing most emphatical, that thy days may be long in the Land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. Why, Canaan was that Land; and cursed Cham (the worst thing that escaped the Flood) the Father of Canaan, this ungracious Son made himself sport with his Fathers nakedness which he should have covered. Would he not do the duty of a Son? He shall do the duty of a Servant, nay, of a Servants Servant, a Servant of Servants shall he be, Noah did speak it in Prophesy. And indeed Israel won him, and wearied him out of Canaan the fruitful habitation. And could Achan think to enter upon this Inheritance fulfilling the same sin (ipso facto) which dispossessed the Canaanite? Shall God and Heaven change for the worse? Shall the Lord cast out the disobedient, and plant in the rebellious? No, if Adam be turned away, an Angel must come into Paradise.
I will not say the Orator said wrong, Generosus est animus hominis magisque ducitur quam trahitur. Our mind is free and noble, and would rather go alone than be forced to duty, yet I have often wished that Canonical Obedience lay more strictly upon the Clergy above all other Professions than it is exercised; it is the sweet lenity of our Pilots, that gives us Sea-room to sail at random. Mistake me not, as if I favored blind subjection; when every man in a College of Jesuits makes his own will a beast, then he makes his Prelate a God. Solvite Asinum, unbind the Ass for the Lord hath need of him. These Fathers are hoodwinkt, that they may hear as old Tobit did of a stolen Calf, I, and worse matters too, but their eyes are put out that they cannot see it. No, I commend to our profession that 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 in Plato, rather to live by another man's will than our own. As Nicolaus the Monk of Crete did so obey Theodorus as if he had no will at all, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . Now Lord help us, says St. Austin, when our will is grown so corrupt in Adam, Nunc nihil nos aliud quam voluntates esse, that we should now be nothing but will and willfulness. Constantine the Great was so dutiful a Son to the Church that he was called Pupillus in scorn, as if he had been under age. I had rather be called anything than Pope Gregory the Seventh, that spurned against his Lord Henry the Emperor, that all were ashamed of it, (Et ipsam Cathedram crepuisse mediam) says Brenno their own and a Cardinal, the Chair flew in pieces wherein he broke his Allegeance to his Lord and Master. I conclude this part of Achan's sin with Samuel's speech, Rebellion is as foul as the sin of Witchcraft.
I am now come to the last part of his sin, the desire of filthy lucre is the visible mischief, the gross crime which may be felt like the darkness of Egypt; this is so notorious in him, as if he had no more faults, as if Aaron's Serpent had devoured the other Serpents, and been left alone. Will you hear the whole Inventary of the accursed goods which he stole? A goodly Babylonish Garment, two hundred shekels of silver wrapped up together. You would think he had his hands full, he could hold no more; (Et lingulam auream) as it is verbatim from the Original, a tongue of Gold. So that some allegorical Rabbin's expound the tongue of Gold to be the eloquence which he learnt in Jericho. And so would I have thought too, if he had studied the rich Eloquence of some Lawyers, that is a golden tongue, that can dash Law against Law, and break all as easily as a Cupboard of Glasses. But indeed it was nothing else but a massy Wedge of Bullion: Unhappy was that man that strived to grow rich by God's Battels, lest it proved he fought for his own share, not for the Lord and for Gideon.
One question I will move here, and so proceed. Why might not the precious things of Jericho be taken for their own use, as well as the Gold, Earings and Ornaments of Egypt? Nay, had they not more right to that they won with the sword than that they borrowed? Or would Jericho and her riches defile their hands more than Egypt and her riches? Beloved, there was a providence beyond the reach of the Israelites (as St. Basil made it manifest) in that grace and favor which God gave them to rob the Egyptians, for without those Ornaments how could they embellish and beautify his Tabernacle? In the Wilderness there were no stones to set in the Brestplate and Ephod but such as were cut out of the Rock at Massah, no Silk or Scarlet spun in the Desert. But Pharaoh and Egypt never dreaming of such a thing, did lend the precious things of their wealth to build up the Ark of God. The material Temple indeed was made up very sumptuous by the spoils of sinners, but God foresaw that his spiritual Temples would fall to ruin by the wealth of Canaan; and hence it came to pass that Egypt was for a prey, and Jericho for an utter destruction.
So then there is no excuse for Achan to steal the Gold and Silver of Jericho and conceal it, and yet he was not so cunning as we are nowadays to put out his wealth to interest. The richest of the Land can answer nowadays as St. Peter did, if a poor man beg their Alms, Silver and Gold have I none, I have bestowed it abroad to thrive and multiply. Achan was not so frugal, but when others sowed salt in the fields of Jericho, he plowed up the earth to hide a Treasure. A strange Tillage where Salt was good seed, such as God would have, but Gold and Silver were as bad as the Devils Darnel. And it may move a question which of the two was the better husbandry, with Joshua, to sow Salt in the ground, or, with Achan, to bury Money? St. Basil is chiefly against the latter, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ▪ &c. That is an outrageous madness, while the Oar of the rich Metals was in the earth, to cross the Seas to dig it out, and when you have it, to lay it up again to the same unprofitable mold which first afforded it; as unnatural as for Zarah to draw his hand back again into his Mothers Womb. The Earth, I confess, was the fittest Altar to offer up such a Sacrifice to the Prince of darkness, but I would not, says St. Paul, that you should have fellowship with Devils.
See what it is to be covetous, what it is to be an Idolater, as St. Paul says. Or if you think St. Paul was a poor Apostle and spoke too much, the Devil is wealthy, and you may trust him, Mat. iv. All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me, the Tentation is to begin in covetousness, and end in Idolatry. But tremble at the fall of Achan. What might not he say for himself that any Parchment Usurer can say for himself. I hear what you can think. Achan stole his goods, and I think he won them as fairly as ten in the hundred. Quicquid male partum est; whosoever gets his Riches sinfully. Do you know any such? Quicquid inopi detinetur rapina est, & furtum est. Who steals now? But you have Children to provide for; it is the fairest excuse of Mammon, and so had he. And if he laid up all this booty for their inheritance, (as by the event of the judgment it is likely he did) their Legacy was their death. Hectors Sword, and Ajax Girdle, as the Proverb goes, they perished in his iniquity. But was not the Gospel (says St. Basil ) written for the Married as well as for Virgins? Give on, give all unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven. Or did you ask Children of God to neglect his Commandments? I put you too much into your Element to think of Riches, and know you love to hear the noise of it, and, which is more, to hear them taxed. And here is the difference between the Usurer and the Preacher: Every Usurer would have no more such sinners as himself, and the Preacher would have none at all. But if Riches be your blessing, O turn not your blessing to a curse.
And what greater curse than to build a house and not possess it? to plant a Vineyard and not eat of the fruit of it? To provide Cloathing for the body and never wear it? Thus Haman cast about to put the Kings Robes on his shoulders, but the Gallows prevented him. Gehazi was furnished with two change of Raiments, but his body was made unfit to wear one by Leprosy. And Achan had provided a Babylonish Garment, but it proved as fatal as his winding sheet. Faithless sinner, could not God provide for him except he stole a Rayment? Why, the Gibeonites came to him in pieced clothes rent and thread-bare from the next Villages, and his Apparel decayed not; but he came to the Gibeonites in new furniture from beyond the Red Sea, and the vast Wilderness. Why should he covet more change of Raiment if one Attire were so constant that no use could consume it, no Moth could fret it? What glory were it to be like a Peacock, says Tertullian, (Toties mutando, quoties movendo, ) as often as she moves herself her feathers cast a new beauty and apparition? The Fowls of the Air renew but certain feathers, the Trees do not cast their bark, only the accursed Serpent changeth his skin at appointed revolutions. Jam positis novus exuviis nitidâque juventâ, &c. And this holy people the Children of Israel wore their Garments forty years like their skin and bone, and Achan loathed it for continuance, which some devotion would have kept as a Relique for the strangeness.
Is there any of the Israel of God among us that hath enticed strange fashions and Babylonish Garments to be brought into our Land? What a question is that? They do not hide it in their Tent like Achan, they dare profess their names, it is their boasting to have brought comeliness into the Kingdom; the Court admires it, and yet I could adjudge, with King Artaxerxes, his Gardener to be the better Commonwealths man, that had the Art to make Pomegranates fairer. What Suetonius spake of Caligula in high disdain is become a decency in our Land, Neque civili habitu, neque patrio, neque virili, neque humano vestitus est. First, not modest apparel, that is worn out of use, nor according to his own Country fashion. Who knows what that is in England? Nor in the Attire of his own Sex, we are come to that, one Sex changes into the fashion of another. Nay, he went not like a reasonable man, but like a beast. This only remains from God's judgment that, like King Nebuchadonosor, at last we should be clothed like beasts and Eagles. Anacharses a Scythian reproved for his blunt language, despised the Elegancies of Athens with that Elogy, Anacharses speaks Solaecisms in Athens, and the Athenians speak Solaecisms in Scythia. Such a Critick as he was in the Tongues, such an esteem ought we to have of Rayment. Every Fashion is an ornament in its own soil, Achan's Babylonish Garment had been unseemly and exotic in the Land of Jury. And since clothing is but the covering of our shame, to be so curious and divers to hide our shame is silken hypocrisy. Our Savior put forth a Parable, that Solomon in all his Royalty was not clothed like a Lily of the field. The comparison will not enter into the eye of man, that the wild Flower, today sprouting, and tomorrow in the Furnace, was of such Orient colors as the Kings Robes. But do you mark it? Modest Nature had arrayed the one, and Luxury the other; it is Solomon, not on worky days, but in all his Royalty; not Elias, or John the Baptist in their rough skins; no, our very bodies are comlier than the souls of beasts, but the King of Israel sumptuous Cap-a-pe, that was not clothed like a Lily of the field.
Give me leave to step aside into one question and I will return again. Though Achan should have burnt his golden fleece in the flames of Jericho, may nothing be preserved for the use of God out of the dens of pollution? May not a comely Garment be put on at our Liturgy, yea though it were worn in Babylon? Quomodo scriptum est? Shall we put it to that, and so make a Canon? Saul disgraced himself as basely as if he had sought Asses again because he preserved Agag and the fattest of the sheep of Amalech for a sacrifice; and Achan was a common mischief that gathered up the goods of Canaan; all this is true, but it was done by an especial word, of God, and that will make no rule as the School confesseth. Again, Moses employed the Censors of Core and Dathan to make golden Plates for the Ark, the Instruments of the rebellious for the use of Sanctity. This also is too slender to make a rule, for it was done by the appointment of the Lord. But when no particular revelation, dream, or vision is sent from God, must we needs do as the Roman Army did when it won Tarentum, Infaelices Divos populo Tarentino relinquamus, touch none of the God's that kept their Enemies City? Or may not the Church be judge? May it not spare or destroy? Yes, I will prove it by the Book. In the first of Ezra Cyrus brought forth the Vessels of the Lord which Nebuchadonosor had put in the house of his God's, even those did he restore to Shezbazzar, and Shezbazzar brought them for the service of the Lord to Jerusalem. The wearing of our Surpless, and other holy Robes, is the thing I aim at, for the comeliness I call heaven to witness. Such white Robes the Saints wear, Apoc. xv. Such our Savior seemed to wear at his Transfiguration, Mat. xvii. And such alone (and not the Bells and Ephod ) the High Priest put on to go into the Sanctum Sanctorum, Lev. xvi. 4. And all this the Fathers approved in the Primitive Church, some of whom came so near our Savior, that almost they touched the hem of his Garment. None of this is gainsaid by the Learned, but the blame is that they have been polluted in a strange Land, like sweet roots steep'd in Wormwood, pleasant enough of themselves, but they have lost their relish. Well, I told you the Church of God entertained their holy Vessels again when the Heathen had quaffed in them to their Idols, and such a Church it was that depended nicely upon Ceremonies and bodily defilings. The Devil used the Scripture, is the Scripture the worse for that? Parrats and chattering birds are taught sometime to speak our Language; shall I like speaking the worse, and turn silenced Minister? What shall become of all the rich endowments which the Church received in Popery? Shall Superstition be bountiful, and Reformation Sacrilegious? It is unadvised Martinism, and nothing else, that frowns against the sumptuousness of the Church, Build up an Ark a God's name out of the spoils of Egypt; we are not warned to destroy with Achan: O let him perish alone in his iniquity.
This shall serve to be spoken for the first part of my Text, the iniquity which betrayed Achan unto the vengeance of God; which iniquity consisted of scandal against all the Host of Israel, disobedience against Joshua, covetousness against his own foul, the subject of the punishment follows. And first, if we dare look upon our own death, and are not afraid to see our own blood spilled, homo periit, I must tell you, man perished in iniquity. Do you call to mind what Mordecai said to Esther? Think not that thou shalt escape in the Kings house, there is no sanctuary in earth, but that all must die, or all men must be changed, says St. Paul. For as it was written upon Hectors Tomb, Non Hector illic, Troja sed tumulo jacet; so we may endite upon the Grave of Adam, homo periit, here lies Man and his Posterity. Surely, if the Jews, returning from Captivity, could not choose but shed tears to see the building of the Second Temple, having remembered the glory of the First: So, who can look upon mankind in the state of misery without pity and compassion that can remember him in the days of peace and innocence?
Should we consider what variety and new delights Adam and Eve had before them to meditate upon, the beauty of their own original righteousness, the Tree of the Garden wherein all the beasts of the Forest do move, Heaven and Earth spick and span new to look upon, and we may say as Epaminondas did concerning a worthy Captain that died in the Camp at Leuctra, Quomodo vacavit huic in tantis negotiis mori? How could this man spare any leisure to sin and die? A strange misfortune▪ Adam was set to dress the Garden of Eden, and proved the first weed thereof in his own person; wherefore Joseph of Arimathea built his Tomb like a birds nest in his Garden, in remembrance that a trespass committed in a Garden was the first occasion of Tombs and Epitaphs; and is it not usual to this day to cast up our Graves after the similitude of beds in Gardens? In the state of innocence our meditation should have been only concerning the immortality of the Soul and Body, but now we are constrained to study this Lesson as much as any for our healths sake, homo periit, how Man comes to die, and read learned Lectures upon our own Carkases and Anatomies. And it is not in vain that we place the heavy remembrance of an Anatomy before our Almanacs, as if we were to prefix that Memorandum for a Diary, before every day of the year, homo periit, that our flesh is come unto corruption, and that our days are consumed in vanity.
Yet the fear of common calamity is most often forgot in every man's private security. To tell you that man is come to destruction, it is but a name, and a sound, and a second notion, and seems to be nothing to us in particular. We sit in our glory among God's threatenings like King Solomon in his Throne among dead Lions which could not bite us. But point out at Achan, or Saul, or any sinner set apart for the view of the World, and it will work upon us. Mark it if it be not true: for whoever put on sackcloth, or cast ashes upon his head for St. Peters Prophecy, that all the World and the works thereof should be burnt with fire, and the Elements melt away with heat? But if Jonas denounce fire against one City, and say Nineveh shall be destroyed, then Nineveh will prevent those ashes which her Enemies would bring upon her, and fulfil Jonah's Prophesy in the ashes of repentance. O come not to view God's Judgments as vain people do to the execution of some Malefactor, that know who it is must suffer, and that they shall stand by, and fare no worse but to behold it: but look upon God's threatenings as upon some curious Picture which in thy fancy seems to look upon thee only, and have such a touch of conscience at iste periit, that man perished, as King Belshazzar had in his Feast of wine: when God's hand wrote upon the Wall, he persuaded himself that index digitus, the finger pointed at no other, but himself alone.
Now let us go one step lower, to Pilate's Ecce homo, behold the man. Behold Achan the Son of Zerah, that man perished not alone in his iniquity. Achan that had out-lived the corruption of his young years, and was grown in age able to go to warfare, to have many Children, to know how to steal from God, and dissemble with Joshua, doth his hoary head go down with peace into the Grave? King David reprieved Shimei his bitter Enemy unto the Reign of King Solomon, Solomon reprieved him till his fault was almost out of mind. Quem saepe casus transit aliquando invenit, did his head go down with peace into the Grave? Like the Web of Penelope all that hath been wrought in the year may be ravelled out in a night. Crescant says God to the Tares, Matt. xiii. nay let them grow and sprout up, and then cut them down, and cast them dry into the fire.
Secondly, He that was spared among all the dangers of the Wilderness is consumed in the City: He that could escape the Pilgrimage of forty years is doomed to die in Canaan: He that was not devoured in the fire of Taberah is burnt in the Valley of Achor. As Aristotle speaks of Homers Poetry, when he set up Walls for Troy in one Book, and plucked them down in another, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , murum Peoeta quem finxit delevit. So God can deal with us, set us up, or pluck us down; but we are less than Walls. They that walk in the night preserve the flame of their Torch or Candle from winds and Casualties abroad, which notwithstanding they put out when they return to their home. So Achan that walked over the Sea, when the Bridge was under water, and lived among Scorpions, and was not consumed in the Sedition of Dathan, nor slain in the Battels of Moab, yet in portu naufragium the Vessel is not cast away in the Ocean Sea, but in the Haven, and his light is put out at home in the long expected Canaan. Thus Judgment follows Judgment, as Antigonus said when he spoiled Asia, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . Alexander cut down the rich ears of Corn, and he plucked up the Stubble after him, so the Armies of rebellious Sinners had been mown down in the Wilderness, Achan and some few more were plucked up like Stubble, when Judgment seemed to pass them over.
Note this thirdly in Achan's person, mischief did light upon him, not in the hunger and thirst of the Wilderness, not in his poverty, but having compiled much riches together, enough to purchase a good Fee-simple in Canaan if the Lord had not given him his Portion. Men think themselves nowadays past the Law and penalties of death, when they have sinned so much that they are grown wealthy in iniquity; because, if need be, they can buy the favor of the Judge, and he that has Achan's wealth, a Wedg of gold, and two hundred Shekels of silver, legit ut Clericus, I warrant him, he is a learned Clerk, and deserves his pardon. But this man, when he began to say deliciare anima, when he was furnished to live sumptuously, then he is cut off, that as Solomon says, the remembrance of death may be bitter to that man, who thought it pleasant to live. This was St. Austin's rule when he was old, and had learnt the World. Mundus ill periculosior est cum se illicit diligi, quàm cum se cogit contemni. I fear no hurt from the World, when it goes against me, and casts a froward look upon my fortunes, but my danger is near at hand, when it smiles and flatters me, as if all were happy. When St. Basil observed how carefully Kings and Princes gathered up Pearls into their Treasury 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , which the wise God to show the contempt of them had put into Oistershells, and scattered about the Sea-shore as vile and unprofitable. You do not well, says he, to make a Treasury of that which is so mutable in the Generation, and will ebb and flow from you like the Sea which begot them. Fortune never stood long upon a Pinacle, summo stare loeo nescia. The Sponges that swell with liquors are most likely to be pressed and emptied. You do all remember how Caesar gloried in his Victory among the cowardly Asiatiques, veni, vidi, vici, he did but set his feet upon their Soil, and looked them in the face, and so dismayed and vanquished them. 'It is no more than King David tells of himself, Psal. xxxvii. Vidi, veni, non inveni; vidi, I saw the ungodly flourish like a green Bay-tree; veni, I passed by and sought him; non inveni, he was quite gone in the twinkling of an eye, I could not find him.
Now recollect these three qualities of Achan, who was more likely to prosper than a Soldier in the flower of his age, a joyful man at his journeys end in the Land of his peace; a wealthy man, in the plenty of his riches? Take it to thought all you that have the World tied unto you with a threefold Cord of health and peace and prosperity, which men dream as if it could not be broken; for it broke like Tow among the sparks, and iste periit, &c. But as Demades said when news was brought that King Philip was dead, and there was no other talk among the people; Peace says Demades, if he be dead today, he will be dead tomorrow, and the next day following; so I will end my discourse how Achan perished, it is the way of all sinners, and not much to be lamented: But for an innocent to be cast away it deserves pity: wherefore St. Jerome reads my Text thus, utinam solus periisset, it makes not much for Achan's death, but I would he had perished alone in his iniquity.
There is no word of wonder beside this in the Text: and here we must stay a while, as all the Hoste of Israel did when they found the dead Corps of Amasa bleeding, what the Spirit of God means by this vengeance, non solus, that he perished not alone in his iniquity. It is St. Austin's rule; Relevatio mali non fit per communionem cladis, sed solatium charitatis. To perish together with more than ourselves is no comfort at all, but more anxiety. So it made the Scene of Achan's Tragedy full, and very bitter, to see 36 Israelites that drew swords for the same Victory to be slain about him. On the right hand there is more misery, nati cruentâ caede confecti jacent, the Sons ask for bread, and their Father gives them stones to stone them. Two things stand before us to be observed, as the Angel did in Balaam's way, first what Companions Achan had in his punishment, and secondly how it will stand with God's justice, that every man should not perish single by himself for his own iniquity.
First his fellow Soldiers turn their backs, and are cut down at the Siege of Ai; a sort of men that I presume are prepared always to die, but seldom provided to die well; men that engender great love together, as I think David and Jonathan did at first, by entering their bodies into the same dangers. Wherefore St. Paul did express his love to Epaphroditus in that name 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , my fellow Soldier, and so to Archippus, my fellow Soldier. In the Roman Discipline it was held so honorable to save another of the same company that he carried for his reward civicam coronam, a Crown upon his head made of the grass of that earth, whereupon he saved another's life. The infamy of Achan was as notorious on the other side, that caused six and thirty to be slain of the Camp of Israel. To see that bad things are sure to do us hurt, and the best things are not sure to help us. The Ark of God was sent into the Camp at Shilob, Arca fortitudinis Domini, the Ark of God's strength, Psal. 132. and yet the Philistines prevailed and the Ark was taken; but if one Achan come down into the Battail there is plain treachery in that man's conscience, and his Wedg of gold shall fight more against Israel, than all the swords of the men of Ai. Good qualities stick close to them which have them, as Virtue and Learning, and we cannot part or bequeath them to any man: Gifts of fortune, as Honors and Riches, may be removed to others as you like it. But, it is a hard case, our vices are sure to fall down upon the head of such only as are dearest to us.
Beloved, is it so? Was the hand of the Lord in the battle of Israel, and doth God direct the Sword of Simeon as well as the books of Levi? Those that spend their bodies so courageously for our peace deserve to have their souls well instructed. Nulla fides pietasque viris qui castra frequentant? I trust it is but a slander that Soldiers have small Religion, where the Angel of God did draw his Sword at the threshing flour of Araunah the Jebusite David built an Altar. So in every just quarrel it is the Lord himself and his anointed King that draws the Sword. Wherefore do not defile the Camp with oaths, and lust, and drunkenness, for the ground is fit for David's Altar, and the place is holy.
I have told you what it was to Achan to lose his fellow Soldiers, yet the loss was not Achan's so much as Joshuas, and he like a loving Prince did fall upon the ground, and shown much bitterness for the death of his people. You shall rather find Achan distracted in sorrow, between the heaviness of his sins, and the death of his children. It was much that a Mother in the Maccabees could exhort seven Sons one after another to despise King Antiochus, and to suffer death for the name of the Lord. It is much that Prudentius reports of a woman that carried her infant in her own arms to Martyrdom, Nec tantum osculum impressit unum, vale inquit, ô dulcissime. Nature can hardly stoop to part with those children unto God in a good cause: but to lose a Son in the anger of God, in the guiltiness of a trespass, O my son Absalom, &c. then we are afraid least they be lost forever. Give me Children, says Rachel, or else I die, and alas she was but a dead woman in the birth of Benjamin. Elisha strived to be thankful to his good Hostess the Shunamite, he would do any courtesy for her. O, says Gehazi, give her children before anything, and then you please her. The greatest cruelty (that moved St. Ambrose against the Emperor Theodosius ) for the Massacre committed at Thessalonica was on this wise: A Father came to redeem two Sons taken captive, and appointed to be slain. He was allowed but the life of one for his money, take which he would. His kind heart equally earning after both, could not say, this rather than him, the elder before the younger, and for want of speedy resolution both were made away before his face. This, says Sozomen, cost the poor Father his wits forever, to think he might have saved one Son and did not. No colors could paint the face of Agamemnon where his Daughter was to be offered for a Sacrifice, Par nulla figura dolori. As it was said to Tully when Antony persuaded him to burn his invective Orations, Commentus est Antonius eripere quemadmodum vixeras. Fie, said his friends unto him, die rather, for Antony would strip you of that glory which will give you life forever. So all the Pedigree of Achan being erased out; Eripuit Dominus quemadmodum viveret, God took that from him wherein he might hope to survive; this was not only to put out the right eye of the men of Jabesh Gilead, but for a Jew to die without succession, Christ being theirs after the flesh, is to go down with sorrow to the grave where all things are forgotten.
Whatsoever else is tumbled into the fire before Achan's face, it was but 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , it moved not his eyes to pity, nor his ears to the cries of lamentation. As his body was burnt wherein a soul so covetous did inhabit, so his Tent was consumed with fire the habitation of so vile a body, that Tent under which he was wont to sleep, is cast over him the last time at his death, where he must sleep forever. And as if every man were afraid to inherit, Aurum Tolosanum, his unlucky Gold, it is made away for company, Et pallium quod debuit cremari crematum est; the Babylonish Garment which was appointed to be burnt in Jericho is now fired about his ears in the Valley of Achor.
Lastly, The Cattle that should have laid down their lives honourably before the Altar, under the Priests hand for a trespass offering, even those innocent beasts are not suffered to live; how many yellings were about his ears, to resemble the very horrors of hell where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth? A good man, says Solomon, is merciful to his beast, as if the beasts fared the better for a good man's sake. And jure Dominii, the Lordship of man doth extend so far upon the Creatures, that they are consortes paenae, partakers of the punishment of evil men. The Cattle of Egypt were slain with hail stones for the Egyptians Idolatry; the beasts of Nineveh fasted for the Ninevites Luxury; nay, says the Prophet Jeremy, the Herbs of the field wither, and the Birds of the Air are consumed for the wickedness of them that dwell in the Land. Dearly beloved, the beasts are but Figures of God, fierce indignation, they are our brutish sins, our cruelties more unnatural than the rage of beasts which God aims at; it was not worth the praise to Achan that the beasts perished in his iniquity, they will and must die with us. Quicquid antea debebam nolle nunc non possum. The only Sacrifice which God requires is to have them die before us. And so I have done with everything that partaked in the punishment of Achan, I must now commit myself to a Problem of great perplexity, how it stands with the righteousness of God, that every man should not perish alone, in proprio peccato, in his own iniquity.
I am no Advocate against God's Justice, but against the ignorance of man. Phaedon speaks thus to Socrates in Plato. I pray you are you not displeased with these, unrighteous Judges that have condemned you? O not I, says Socrates, and if I were, I would refer the case until I were dead, and then meet Ajax and Palamedes, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , and would ask them how they could endure a wrongful judgment, and so put up my injury. A reverend opinion of a Heathen concerning the judgment of sinners, how contented would this man have stood before any sentence of God's Tribunal? But to the purpose, this shall be my method to follow the cause in hand. First, That it is self love to our own person which persuades us other men sin and we pay the ransom. Secondly, Heathen men and not Christians did first fill the world with that opinion. Thirdly, That the melancholy distinctions of some School Divines have abused the truth. But lastly, our Conclusion shall be, that the hair of an innocent never fell to the earth, but that every man dies propter peccatum suum, for his own iniquity.
For the first: Nature as it is good and perfect taught us to love ourselves, fond and corrupt nature taught us to love ourselves too much. Out of this vanity those excuses spring up which make us absolve ourselves, and bind others. Let us tell our own tale, and we will say our Fathers eat the sour grape, when we may be discovered with the bunches in our own hands. Rather than confess our own complection we will bely the Heavens, and say the Sun hath scorched us. Delicta majorum immeritus lues Roman. To pluck in immeritus, no desert of ours, we will lay the Child at their door that never begot it. The very Pharisees thought themselves so holy, and our Savior so bad, that for no fault of theirs, but for his blasphemies, the Romans would come and carry away their Nation. Wherefore says Socrates, it were well with some men, instead of travelling, Si a seipsis aberrarent, if they could wander from themselves. No man, says Plutarch, doth know his own blemishes, because he doth always carry himself about. A Painter brings his work to good perfection when he leaves it for a time, and comes a fresh to view and mend with a second, or third fancy, what the first did mistake. So if we could lay aside ourselves, and then resume our substance again, we might spy out faults which now we discern not, nor acknowledge. As who should say, lay down your body in the dust, take it up again in the Resurrection like a Picture cast aside, then I know we shall learn where the fault lies. But self love must not be the judge whether God doth punish one man for another's iniquity.
Secondly, The superstition of the Heathen increased this error. There was a bloody opinion among them, called Succidaneum sacrificium, if you have heard of it, wherein one may lay down his life unto the God's to redeem the danger of another. Antinous, the great Minion to Hadrian the Emperor, cut off the remaining days of his own youth to recover Adrian from a desperate fever. And Philumena, passing the love of women, spent her heart blood as a Cordial Julap to recover her husband Aristides. Now upon what presumption did they stand? A Principle they had for it, but manifestly against God and the Gospel, that every man was Lord of his own life to employ where he would, for himself, or for another. Vitam approbare aliis quisque debet, sed mortem sibi; Let us live to have the good liking of other men, but let us die as we like it ourselves. And this made them esteem what a conscionable thing God had given man when he gave him life. Hoc est unum quare de vitâ queri non possum, neminem tenet; No man need keep it longer than he would, quite contrary not only to God's Law, but the good Philosophy of Plato. It is better to die than to live, says he, but love not thy sell so well to do thyself that benefit; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , stay till some other do so good a turn for you. But O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the Prophets have spoken, ought not Christ alone to suffer for the sins of others? The just for the unjust? The plowers plowed upon my back, and made long furrows. Here is plowing, and making furrows, as if there were seeds sown in the wounds of Christ, of which we may reap thirty, sixty, and an hundred fold, according to the measure of our faith. So then the Doctrine of the heathen is both against Nature, and against the Sacrifice of Christ. Wherefore these must not be our judges, whether God doth punish one man's person for another's iniquity.
But Ventum est ad Triarios, the third rank of Adversaries are the School Divines, left-handed Benjamites, able to cast a distinction at an hairs breadth. Whose Doctrine, when it is good, is like the Moon at the Full, light and entire, but perchance spotted: But when their Doctrine is false, it is like the Moon in the Wain, full of horns and distinctions. Give me leave to make proof of it in this cause which I have in hand.
First, Say they, iniquity is visited upon those Generations which did not commit the fault. Si communitas favet unius delicto, minime vero si ignorat; If many concur to favor the sin of one man, that man shall not perish alone in his iniquity. It is true, and God hath spoken, Lev. xx. If the people do not punish the man that giveth his seed to Molech, &c. But what was this to Achan? Did he reveal h • s fault to thirty six Soldiers, or to his Children? Very unlikely that a close sin should be known to so many. Very likely that among his Children some were Infants that knew not what it was to sin, and yet he perished not alone, &c.
Durand divides the case thus: One is liable to judgment for the trespass of another in divino judicio non in humano. Man must not adjudge man to condemnation for the trespass of another, but 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 according to God's good will it may be done. Doth Durand say so? But so doth not Ezekiel. The soul of the Son is mine as the soul of the Father, that soul which sinneth shall die, Ezek. xviii. 4. Mark what the Prophet says, Before his judgment every soul shall escape that is innocent, before his judgment that made the soul, meaning God, and not the Magistrate. In Verse 25. Are not my ways equal? Nay, are not your ways unequal? My ways, you hear the Text. God is defended from this injustice and not the Magistrate.
Thirdly, Some deliver their opinion in this distinction, In temporali paenâ non in aeternâ. A modern affliction, which lasts but for a time, may chastise the Son for the Fathers iniquity, but not an eternal condemnation. For although our bodies may answer for our Parents, being the fruit of their Loins, yet my soul is not engaged to any but to God alone. Besides, the wounds of the body in this life are like the cutting of the bark of the tree to inoculate a Bud which may bring forth fruit: But In inferno nemo te Laudat Domine, there is no repentance, no remorse in Hell. So that the Christian use of God's chastisements is lost in eternal torments, but not in temporal. O take heed of this opinion, to put a draught of gall and vinegar to our Savior's mouth when his lips upon the Cross were full of mercy: My meaning is, do not impeach 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 the gentleness of Christ, to say he doth exact a momentary punishment upon a guiltless person: For this were to say, that Adam was not only the Root and public person of all mankind, but that all other Parents have the same state of prerogative. That which Pelagius did impudently deny in original sin is true in actual sins. Qui remisit Tibi peccata tua non imputabit aliena. Fear not to bear the burden of thy Fathers sin, when if thou come unto Christ, he will refresh thee of thine own.
A fourth refuge is on this wise: Affliction doth befall a man sometimes Ex antecedenti pro alieno peccato, formaliter pro suo. Take an instance to understand it by, a Minister neglects his Flock, a Father the education of his Children. Now the mischief of this neglect may redound to the hurt of God knows whom. So that though the Ministers fault went before their destruction, yet ignorance and blindness in their own neart is the proper cause of the curse which lies upon them, which is all that I labor for in this present controversy.
The last assault made by the Schoolmen deserves your observation for the Authors sake, it is Aquinas. And his opinion is like fluctus decumanus the tenth wave, and more troublesome than all the rest. Unus punitur pro altero, modo medicinali non paenali. As who should say, the Arrows of God are shot from heaven as out of a well-drawn bow against the capital sinner. Some that stand in the way are wounded with the Arrows head, yet not out of purpose to wound them, but to heal them. I have learnt a distinction in another place from the same man sufficient to refute him. It is this: Every affliction that gainsays the pleasure and content of nature is first a punishment, then it is a medicine or salve to cure you as you use it. Do you not see the error that Aquinas draws upon himself? If to punish one man for another's trespass is unjust and wrongful, except it be like the Acrimony of some preventing Physic then God doth evil that good may be gained from it. O says Abraham, God forbid that the Judge of all the world should do unjustly.
Now do you understand how these cunning Benjamites the Schoolmen have cast their distinctions at the truth; just like Mnestheus in Virgil, who shot at the Dove and mist it, but cut the string in twain by which it was tied fast before,
First, I do presume that you will consent unto me that the heart of man is only evil continually. And that we may call it as Theodorus did revile Tiberius, Lutum saenguine maceratum, mud tempered with pollution. As one said of the High Court of Judges in Athens, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , you could not miss of a righteous man among them though you picked in the dark. But I say we cannot find out a good man though we sought him carefully at noon-day. For the Lord himself hath looked down from heaven, and we are all become abominable usque ad unum, and that one is Jesus Christ.
Then it is confessed, that the wages of sin is death. Seriùs ocyùs, sometimes before we were born, but as suddenly as God shall call upon us to pay the common debt of nature. Nemo nisi suo die moritur, says Seneca; My day to die was every day since I had an hour to live. Silly soul, do you think it an injury to die a babe? To die an Ignorant of misery? Did you ever hear an Infant complain of short life? Nay, rather did not Moses weep because he was preserved in the Ark of Bulrushes, and had his misery prolonged? We have heard many old men that would cry rather than sing at Nunc Dimittis, when they put from shore forever. But come death quickly, come heaven the sooner, let all the world change in the twinkling of an eye, and then come Resurrection, come Lord Jesus. Are the shortest Livers unkindly dealt with? Non magis queri debes de repentinâ morte quam qui cito navigavit. Do, complain that wind and tide have brought you too quickly to your haven. Give me your credit but to one thing more. You are bound to answer to as painful and severe death as God's vengeance shall inflict upon you. I think I might have seen in the days of Herod, when Rachel mourned for her Children, one little Saints soul pinched out of the body as a cherry stone spirted between the fingers, a most calm deliverance; and another babe Lacerum crudeliter ora, ora manusque ambas, cut in pieces with a wound bigger than the body. How comes this to pass, for both were Infants? Not because the one smarted for his Fathers Usury and Sacrilege more than the other, but because God said no more, Gen. iii. then man shall die. But whether by fire or water, peaceable or tyrannous, it is free in the Lord's appointment from the sixth day of the Creation to the worlds end.
Now let us see if we can find anything in that which we have caught to pay Tribute unto God. You cannot deny but Death, and Diseases, and Poverty, Laethumque labosque are due to every sinner; and all these in such a time as God likes best, whether it be at Noontide, or at Evening, or in the Dawning of the day and with such measure and quantity as God hath prepared the Viols of his wrath. Then why art thou disquieted O my soul, and why should I fear to pay the price of those sins which are not mine? The poor Subjects have lost their lives in the Kings iniquity, witness David and Israel. The Children for the Fathers, witness Sodom and Gomorrah. The Family with the Master, as it was with Core and his accomplices. Lastly, some of all sorts did drink the same cup with Achan in his iniquity; ay dearly beloved at this time God called upon them all to die, who were bound to die for their own sins at any time.
Now let me raise you up from the long consideration of this Point, as the Angel did Elias under the Juniper tree, and you shall find a Cake upon the coals, some few Meditations from hence, that God makes the sin of one man an occasion to destroy a multitude. First, If the disobedience of one sinner is enough to consume many persons, Lord whither will a multitude of iniquity send one man headlong? Sufficient are our evil days wherein we have walked too much before after the vanity of our mind. Secondly, As the greatest unity of the Triumphant Church above doth consist in the glory which they enjoy together in the sight of God: So our unity of the militant Church below is 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 to suffer and die together. Poterant nec morte r • velli. It is that which must combine the souls of Christians. Thirdly, Shall not this make me as careful to prevent every man's sins as mine own? Shall I not offer myself to be my brothers keeper? Like watchmen that compass the C • ty in the night, not only for the safety of their own house, but lest any Mansion take fire about them. But especially who is a Father of Children that will not consider his sins may be as ready to destroy as his Loins have been fruitful to bring Sons into the world? Can you revile the King of Moab that sacrificed his Son? Do you detest their abominations that made their Children pass through the fire to Molech? Is it good in you to declaim against the severity of Brutus, and Torquatus, and such cruel Fathers? But spare them O child of pollution, or accuse thyself. Are not your sins murderers as well as theirs? You gave life by nature, and you destroy it by iniquity. When God gave you Sons and Daughters, you give Obsides Domino, Hostages unto God, and if you rebel, as Nathan said to David, because thou hast made the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the Child that is born unto thee shall surely die. The Fathers sins are visited unto the third and fourth Generation, while the Grandsire full of fourscore years of sin, stays awhile behind like the rotten root of evil, and sees the tender branches cut away because the root was bad and corrupted.
Thus is the brief sum of the second part of my Text, man perished in iniquity. Corporeorum & incorporeorum horison, says Synesius, the noble Image of God. Secondly, That man, Achan, a branch of the Olive tree, even Israel which God had planted. But an evil branch is evil though the stock were a Cedar of Libanus. Non debent gloriari sarmenta quia non sunt spinarum ligna sed vitis, says St. Austin. Is it any glory for the dead branches to boast they were Vine branches, and not Heythorn, since they are cut off, and cast away? Lastly, Non solus periit, he fell down like the Tower of Siloam, and brained all that were about him. I have but one short part to dispatch, Periit, his execution, how that man Perished, &c.
To search much into Achan's punishment were not the way to be more learned, but more tormented. And he that is Ingeniosus in suppliciis, exquisite in describing the ruin of any man, his invention smells of tyranny. Briefly thus, Every man in the rank of a Subject lives under the authority of three Commanders: 1. Under the Conscience of his own heart. 2. Under the Laws of his King. 3. Under the Commandments of God. Triplici nodo triplex cuneus, every knot hath a wedge to drive into it. And if we displease either God, or the King, or our own Conscience, vengeance meets us on every side. Conscientia parit vermem, Magistratus mortem, Deus Gehennam; Conscience hath a worm in store, nay, a Cockatrice to sting us, the Magistrate bears a Sword to divide us, but especially it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. In an evil conscience we die unto all joy and comfort: In our trespass against the Laws of man we die unto men: In breaking the Statutes of God we die unto heaven, surely he deserved not to die but one death that offended three.
All sin is mortal, yet among sins some are still-born, and make no noise in the world. Some are crying sins that have a voice; and a voice like the Edomites that cried against Jerusalem, Down with it, down with it unto the ground; Like the Jews that cried, Crucify him, crucify him, and doubled the files of their iniquities. Like the men of Ephesus, that for two hours space made a noise, Great is Diana of the Ephesians. When sinners do double thus, God finds out more deaths than one to punish them, as if judgment had ransack'd the body to find two or three souls, and would not leave to destroy all the brood of the Viper. Abimelech a cruel murderer of seventy brethren was crushed under a Mill-stone, and slain with his own Servants Sword, it is pity he died not seventy times. It was Saul's destiny first to die by the Arrows of the Bow, and then to fall upon his own Sword. It was Absalom's destiny to be hanged by the head in the Oak tree, and be thrust through the heart with the Darts of Joab. It was Judas his destiny to cast himself from the Gallows, and to be broken in pieces upon the ground. And lastly, it was Achan's destiny to be stoned with stones, and then burnt with fire. Thus that man perished, &c.
It is very likely, if this notorious rich sinner had lived his Tomb should have been as costly to lie over his dead corps as his Babylonish Garment was sumptuous to cover his living body. But now there is not so much honor left him for his burial as earth to earth, all is turned to ashes that the winds may blow him back again out of Canaan into Egypt from whence he brougt his iniquity.
A fair Tomb, I confess, cannot prove that I died a good man, but that I died a wealthy. Yet some honor is to be shown to our dead corps, because a dead body is nearer to the Resurrection than a living. The Egyptians embalming the dead, and the Odours and Spices which the Jews were wont to bestow do condemn those uncivil Funerals which some report of Geneva and Amsterdam that bury their dead in ditches and dunghills. It makes Jesuits scoff at our Religion. Scis ut haeretici colant parents, sulcant coemiteria sic colunt parents. Michael the Archangel fought about the body of Moses; and Prudentius played the Poet very well touching Eulalia, a Virgin Martyrs body cast abroad in a frosty night, to the injury of the air, and before morning it was overspread with icycles like a crystal Tomb. Pallioli vice linteoli, ipsa elementa jubente Deo, exequias Tibi virgo ferunt. And certainly there was some such thing, or St. Austin would not report it, that divers Miracles, as healing the sick, and converting unbelievers have been wrought by God's providence at the Tombs of the Martyrs to honor their death and memory. But Achan was denied this happiness, and though he had two deaths, yet he had not one Tomb to be buried in. Only an heap of stones were cast upon him for an infamy, that as Varro said, Monumentum quasi monimentum, a Monument for admonition that we fear God, and rebel not like Achan that perished fearfully, &c.
The Papists will not leave Achan thus, and remove him from Joshuas hands, and the Valley of Achor, where he suffered into Purgatory. But by what proof, or warrant, or Enditement? Expect an Exposition fit for the nimble brains of the College of Jesuits. Achan was stoned with stones, and then he died. Afterward he and all he had were burnt with fire, viz. Opera ejus accensa sunt in Purgatorio; he and his works were burnt in Purgatory. A likely matter since Joshua was commanded to burn him and not the Devil. Do you think Columbus that found out the fourth part of the world could have found out this third place to receive souls in, which is neither Heaven nor Hell? The Devil is much beholding to his Advocates, that have made him not only Prince of darkness, but that which God never made him, Prince of Purgatory.
Some perchance will go a thought further, and pronounce a fearful sentence that this man was wiped forever out of the book of the living. That is periit at the height, the Lord bless us from it. But St. Chrysostom was more mild and charitable: As the digging of the earth, says the Father, and the plowing of it may seem but churlish usage, yet that is the way to make it fruitful, Ita magis erat Achani salutare supplicium quam aliis impunitas; So Achan might go sooner to heaven out of the fire than some out of their feather-bed. The soul is in the body, as the Lamps were in Gideon's Pitchers, break the Pitchers, and the Lamps will shine, and then begins the Victory. What Seneca said of the state of Rome under Caesar the Dictator. Respub. sub eo stare non potuit, sed cecidit in sinum boni principis; the same is competent to the state of man. We cannot hold out long, we shall sink under the burden of sin, Sed cecidit homo in sinum boni principis; repent and we may fall into Abraham's bosom. When Scipio led his Army against Carthage, and his Scabbard fell off from his Sword, his Soldiers were dismayed at it, as a sign of ill fortune; This is nothing, says Scipio, for I have my Sword still in my hand, and that I must fight with: So let the body fall into the dust or ashes, keep the Soul clean, make it white in the blood of the Lamb by Faith, and then all is safe. It is the soul that first must taste of glory. St. Austin asks why the Devil made so much of his darling Sylla, that in all his life he was scarce perplexed with any misfortune. The Father replies, Timuit magis Diabolus ne corrigeretur Sylla quàm ne vinceretur. The Devil cared not if he had burst his neck, but he was afraid his virtue would be greater if his felicity were less. Wherefore if Achan did give God the glory as Joshua did instruct him, all might go well with his soul though iste periit, his body were consumed. The Romans were wont to Deifie their Emperors on this sort: Their bodies were placed in a pile of wood, and at the top of the Hearse an Eagle was kept close until the flame had taken hold of the body, and then the Eagle was suffered to fly away to heaven: So leave we the body of Achan in the Pile of wood, yet in the mercies of Jesus Christ his Soul might take the wings of the Morning, as David says, and after all his tedious Pilgrimage live in rest forever.
Nothing should make me mistrustful and doubt of his salvation but his too late repentance. Is this a time to leave off sin when we must leave off life and can sin no more? Poenitentiam dare possumus, securitatem non possumus. Do you then come to play the Huxters for mercy, as if the Market were cheapest at the latter end of the day? The Son of man will come to judgment suddenly as swift as the lightning. The Resurrection shall be suddenly at one blast of the Archangels Trumpet. Corruptio fit in momento, the soul will not creep, but fly out of the body suddenly. Shall all things be sudden but man's repentance? If you love your Country, and wish it victory against all her enemies: if you tender your Children and Allies, and desire their safety: nay, if you love your Gold and Silver, and cast about to leave a good inheritance, beware to draw the anger of God, Unius ob noxam & furias, upon so many innocent souls, have peace in Jesus Christ, and let Achan perish alone in his aniquity. AMEN.
A SERMON Preached before the KING at WHITE-HALL, the 5. of April 1665. UPON THE SOLEMN FAST, To crave a Blessing of GOD for his MAJESTIES NAVAL FORCES.
NEHEM. i. 4.
And it came to pass when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days, and fasted and prayed before the God of Heaven.
W E have many Solemn days in the year to remember the noble Works of our Savior. But the Church hath set forth no proper day, to mind us how He will come to judgment in the end of the World. Is not that an oversight, will some say, that there is no red letter in the Calender, to bring the Object of that mighty Judgment before us, that it may not be forgotten? Hear the reason, and I know you will excuse it. All the beneficial Works of our Savior came to pass upon certain days of the year, whose revolution is known, or easily guessed at: and those days are exactly kept with holy diligence. But for the Day of Judgment it is kept secret, so that the Angels of Heaven are ignorant of it. Therefore to keep one solemn day recurrent every year, for an admonition that such a dreadful hour is to come, were in a sort to prescribe God to an appointed time, who must not be prescribed.
If any press it further, and say, Shall we then have no solemn opportunity to learn that capital Lesson, that Christ will come in the clouds with power and great glory to call the Earth before him? Far be that omission from us. For to what end servs a public Fast, but to prepare us all to hear that voice, Behold the Bridegroom cometh, go ye forth to meet him? This is the day wherein every tender conscience should feel the Ax laid to the root of the Tree. Now the whole Kingdom stands as it were at the Bar to be arraigned before the Majesty of God. We come to call our selves to judgment before Christ calls us, to prevent him. Here we are met, not to justify ourselves (O God forbid!) but to confess the evil we have done, that we may not suffer the evil we have deserved. They are mighty sins which we come to deplore; not only the iniquities of this place, though great and exemplary: not the sins of the great City alone, though it abound in people and wickedness, but the innumerous contagious crying sins of this Nation, of this England, for which, and whose pardon, we come to make our mournful supplication.
Now to teach you to steer your course by a Godly instance, I lay my matter among the Servants of God in the Land of Judah, of whom I could have told you, that when they were in fear of bad Neighbors round about them, kept a general Humiliation for all the People, Nehem. ix. 1. The People fasted in sackcloth, and cast ashes upon their heads. But I know where I am: and I will rather instruct you from the Pattern of Nehemiah, called the Tirshata, a mighty Prince among the People, who was so zealous for the prosperity of his Country, that you can scarce match him, with all that went before him. Moses was the Grandfather of Israel, that brought them out of the Captivity of Egypt: Nehemiah was their Co founder or Foster father, who repaired the ruins of the Captivity of Babylon. The Text shows what he did in the beginning of his zeal, to appease the anger of the Lord. In two general parts I will discover his piety, which I call the wound of his heart, and the cure of that wound: the occasion of his humiliation, and the humiliation itself. The wound of his heart was given by evil tidings, It came to pass when I heard these words; which afflicted him two ways; first for the ruins which the Land had suffered; secondly for the impediments of its reparation. The care of the Wound consists in five degrees of humiliation. 1. He sat down; 2. He wept; 3. He mourned certain days; 4. He fasted; 5. He played before the God of Heaven. That God that gives many Medicines to heal the sickness of the Body, hath provided these sacred Remedies to heal the troubles of the Soul. I rise up now from the first step, Nehemiah was sore perplexed to hear what the Land had suffered.
Upon which I begin with this Observation, that he was in great anguish, not for any evil which he saw, but with bad tidings, and grievous reports, as it is just before my Text, The Remnant of Israel were in great affliction and reproach, the Wall of Jerusalem was broken down, and the Gates burnt with fire. This is short and sour, yet far short of the total of their tribulation. Howsoever Nehemiah saw none of this; he was at Babylon when these Tragedies were acted at Jerusalem; he heard of their distress, but was not upon the place to behold it: yet the noise that came to his ears did strike his heart, that he sat down and wept.
So open your bowels, and condole like Christians, when you hear of one another's miseries, though they be far from you, else God will draw them nearer. I will name the remotest to you, the mournful condition of the Servants of Christ in Hungary, Dalmatia, Greece, and Candia under the Mohammedan cruelty, though these are a thousand leagues from you, yet join them close to you in your Prayers and Compassion. Let me come home; we are not upon the Seas today with our illustrious Duke and valiant Country-men, we are not in peril of Wracks and Storms, and roaring Canons as they are: but let our Prayers walk upon the Seas unto them, as Peter assayed to go to Christ, that as they hazard their lives for us, we offer up our Souls to God for them. To descend to lower Objects; you do not see the hard food of the Poor, his sorry Table, his dry Morsels: you do not see the comfortless Lodging and Dungeon of the Captive. These are the Blessings of Wealth and Liberty. Yea, but do you not consider it sometimes, and bewail, and extend your hand to relieve it? if not some of us may know what hunger and captivity mean, if the report of those things in others do not cause you to melt in charity. Nehemiah did not see much evil, yet the report touched him near, and he sat down and wept.
My next Observation is, that as he did not see the evil of the Land of Judah, so he could not feel it. If all Jerusalem had been burnt to ashes it had not broke him in his fortune, nor eclipsed him in his honor. He was a Courtier in the Palace of Artaxerxes, his Cup-bearer, a dignified Officer: no weeping news could diminish his greatness. Had he been a self-lover, like too many of these days, a cunning Courtier, that had no end but to provide for himself, then he would have measured all fortune by his own Last, and unless his own person had been touched, the Shoo should not have wrung him. But here was one retaining to the holy Court indeed, to the Court of Heaven: his own prosperity did disrelish with him, because God's anger was upon the Land , to which he owed his life. He did like a good man, to involve himself in the public fortune. And what joy could he take in his Honors with Artaxerxes when reproach had spread upon the Country that bred him, and upon the Church of God, in which he looked for salvation? He that makes light of common danger, with tush, they are on the Seas, I am on the Land, I shall shift for one, that man is the fairest mark, at whom God will suddenly shoot with a swift arrow, because he is in love with his own security. Nehemiah could have shifted for one, but that did not content him. When it is best with ourselves, then it is safest to fear, then to seek the Lord, and to beseech him for the welfare of ourselves and others. Health, and plenty, and ease have not yet forsaken us: yet the blasts of bad rumors and presages are about us. When you hear such words it is time to mourn, and fast, and pray before the God of Heaven.
Hitherto I have treated that Nehemiah bewailed the sufferings past, my next observation is upon another matter, that when by God's hand the repair was very hopeful, it grieved him that the mischievous attempts of envious unlucky Neighbors did all that they could to stop the remedy; which is just our case. God sent this Tirshata, this mighty man, to build up the holy City again out of the ruins under which it was covered: but it grieved their Neighbors over the next River, Chap. ii. 9. (as ours are over the next Seas,) that there came a man to seek the welfare of Israel, Ver. 10. Mark their conditions who they were: Sanballat of Samaria, and Samaria had long been the nest of Rebellion. Tobiah the servant, an Ammonite, a man servile, low born, of base extraction. Geshem the Arabian: and the Arabians were great Thieves by Land, as our Foes are Arabians upon the waters. These Samaritans, Ammonites, Arabians, (Rebels and Thieves basely descended) maligned the prosperity of Jerusalem, when it began to flourish again under Nehemiah.
And note their shifts, and half witted devices to oppose him: First, They fell to mocking and scoffing, Chap. iv. 1. Scurrility is to be expected from such as are bred up in the rudeness of a populacy. Secondly, At the eighth verse of the fourth Chapter they made ready to fight him: but hearing his preparations shown their teeth, and never proceeded. Thirdly, Chap. vi. 8. they raised scandalous reports against the Ruler, and the People: and how our Maligners would desame us with broaching lies, Europe, and all the world are witness. Fourthly, At the thirteenth verse of that Chapter they hired Prophets to Prophesy against Nehemiah, to put him in fear: and if we would be discouraged by such fictions, they have not been wanting. These were troubles which fell upon the noble heart of Nehemiah, to see that blessing, which God had begun by his industry, crossed and checked by an ignoble and servile Generation: So may our renowned Prince and General say, in disdain at this upstart bog of men, whose Noble Person is of more value than all their Provinces estimated at a racked value, Et mecum certasse ferentur? Unless England had given them being and a power to resist, they had not been able this day to have resisted the meanest of the Captains of my Lord the King. To dispatch this Point, though our Kingdom hath no resemblance to Pharaoh and the Egyptians, God be praised, yet our Plagues and those of Egypt have some parallel in their order. Their first Plague was the Plague of blood: so was ours; but God hath delivered us from the continual slaughters of a most impious and rebellious War. Pass from the end of the seventh Chapter of Exodus to the beginning of the eighth, the next immediately is the Plague of Frogs: So is ours croaking in the dirty ditches of the Netherlands, which by the Rod of Moses, and the Prayer of Aaron, will be sent away to remain only in their own River, Ver. 9. And when they are remanded to their own sinks and Marshes, God deliver us from the Plague of Locusts, in the Apocalypse, that overspread this Land.
Before I shut up the sorrows of Nehemiah, I consider what will be said by some, that we are in no distress as Jerusalem was, no foreign Foe hath brought us under, the malice of an unthankful stock of men hath not so much as shaken our welfare. Our Walls are the same, which the Oracle commended to the Athenians, Walls of wood, well-built Ships, maintained and multiplied for the honor and safeguard of the Island. The Gates of Jerusalem, before they were burnt down, were their Courts of Justice: for their Elders sat in the Gate when they did right between party and party: And such Gates we have standing inviolate in their ancient dignity and privilege, that the poor may not be oppressed by him that is too mighty for him. O happy if we knew it, and were thankful, that our Walls of defense and fortitude, and our Courts of Justice are unimpaired and flourish.
Yet for all this, as Nehemiah heard words that astonished him, so foul blasts and tempests beat sore upon our ears, which (if God help not) may drive us upon the Rocks. Where can you converse abroad and not hear such talk as may provoke a Godly man to fast, and mourn, and pray before the God of Heaven? My ears are grated with our modern Skeptics, disputants against the Creation of the world out of nothing, against the sacred authority of the Scriptures, against the immortality of the soul of man. While such dispute it sharply the Devil sits in the Chair to moderate. Such saucy, petulant, pedling wits dishonor God, and these triumphing days, wherein we live. Besides, what filthy obscene language is in the tongues of our Gallants? What customary swearing? What little reverence to that holy Name which should not be profaned in a syllable? What harmony is so sweet as to have incorrupt Religion and nothing else maintained in this Nation, so wonderfully cleansed now for the space of about one hundred and twenty years from absolute superstition? If Popery then be slickt over with cunning words: if such jet about in every corner, as will extol that Babylonish trumpery, and reproach our Reformation to our face, will it not stir us up to a public bewailment, and mourning in the sight of God? Put to these base detractions of right worthy Patriots, who deserve all honor for the present, and a glorious memory hereafter, and heap up all with malignant whisperings, ungrateful murmurings, and the whole riff-raff of vain talk, are not these fore runners of a likely woe if we do not seek our heavenly Father betimes? If we do not keep in our evil tongues, God will ring his judgments into our deaf ears. And though our enemies have not a spark of goodness in them, whereby they should deserve to be Lord's over us: yet there may be so much wickedness among us, that it may be our punishment to be kept under by them. I am not afraid of the puissance of other Kingdoms, for any store of virtue that I can hear is among them: the whole World is out of frame, and set upon mischief. But we may expect the heavy hand of the Lord among us where he hath sown so much pure Gospel, and reaped so little obedience. So I have passed over the first part of my Text, the cause of Nehemiah's humiliation applied to ourselves, And it came to pass when I heard these words, &c.
His humiliation shall now be offered to your instruction in five passes or degrees, beginning with his posture of sorrow, that he sat down. I call it a posture of sorrow: for so it is in this place. In cases of great heaviness it doth not signify to repose the body in a seat of ease, but to sink down to the ground, and to sit upon the earth. His legs could not bear the weight of his sorrows, and he cast himself upon the ground. You shall have some Texts of Scripture to confirm it. Job overladen with misery sat down among the ashes, Chap. ii. 8. The King of Ninivey in dread of God's anger, rose up from his Throne, covered himself with Sackcloth, and sat in ashes, Jon. iii. 6. And when the evil day of Captivity was coming, the Daughter of Zion sat upon the ground, Lam. ii. 10. So that in the first place you see Nehemiah began at the right end, abasing himself to this vile Element, upon which we tread, and expounding the Lord's word in his own practice, Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
In the seasons of joy and prosperity it is hard to bring a man into a right meditation what he is. Then his imaginations are upon a Pinacle, or he is flying in the air. I hope therefore you will take out this Lesson better a great deal upon this day of common affliction. Now I trust you will perceive that this Tabernacle of flesh in all the spangles and trappings of pride is but a muckhill, or such rubbish as we stop our nose at in the dung cart: or at the best, that which the cleanly will not endure in their Chambers, dust. Therefore affliction is most natural to us, which brings us to our proper Center, and makes us sit upon the earth. As who should say, we are but Worms creeping upon the ground, enter not into judgment with thy servants, who are nothing in thy sight. O where can we find so fit a place to receive us, considering the abundance of iniquity which is in us, as the bare ground? Is there any pure metal in us? Are we not all dross? And whither should that be cast but into the high ways? Do we not dishonor the name of Christian, and turn the grace of God to wan • onness? And if the salt have lost his savor, is it good for anything but to be cast out and trodden underfoot?
But alas, we are ill prepared for this godly exercise of affliction: There is no thought in this Age of sitting down upon the ground. Our ears are deaf to our Savior's Lesson, Luk. xiv. 10. Go and sit down in the lowest room. That is a Parable, and we lust not to know the meaning. David says, Psal. xl. 2. Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, that I am not able to look up: but our iniquities do take such hold upon us, • hat we do nothing but look up. Was ever ambition so forward as in these times? What striving, what streining to come aloft? Yet if aspiring after Promotion brought no other mischief but this one to the soul, it were enough to condemn it, that it carries a man into a strange Land, quite into another Region, far distant from humility, or from godly sorrow and repentance: It knows not the way to sit down and to be dejected to the earth; and yet to none else but such will our Savior say, Friend go up higher.
Another observation on this Point is, that when sorrows came hudling upon Nehemiah, and fell as thick as hail, he sat down, which is an evidence of patience, that he submitted himself under the hand of the Lord. It is our modern phrase to express the humor of a man, who struggles to repel an injury, that he will not sit down by it. But this servant of the Lord in my Text had no quarrel against the providence of his Maker, let the cup of judgment be never so bitter, which he was to drink; he was quiet and sat down. He knew we are all as clay in the hand of the Potter, and shall the Vessel say to him that framed it, what makest thou? God's judgments are wonderful and unsearchable sometimes, they are never unjust. And what fruit can the stubborn reap by endeavoring to break their chains? What hath it ever profited them to challenge the Lord in the bitterness of their discontent? What have they got by cursing, murmuring, and repining▪ no other, than to make the furnace of tribulation seven times hotter. As it is best for the Child, and for the Mother, when the birth stays the due time before it be born: So let us not struggle and toss about to ease ourselves in a time of infelicity: our redress will be most facile, and fair, when the Lord bringeth it to pass at his good pleasure. If you think to be delivered sooner by quarrelling, violence, commotion, it will prove an abortive remedy. If you long to have things better, when they are ill, tarry for the Lord, sit down, and mourn: be humble, obedient, keep a good conscience, girt Nehemiah's patience unto you, sit down and be still.
A third instruction upon this Point is, that to sit down is to muse, and to consider sadly of that which is brought before us. So Nehemiah sat down to call his soul to counsel, he intermitted all worldly business, and composed himself to think of the Judgments of God. It is well that the Royal Piety hath called us together today upon so good an occasion. Here is a Senate of God's Servants gathered together in this holy place, and in all other houses of God throughout this Realm. Now we are set to it, to call our ways to remembrance, to revolve in our mind, both everyone a part, how far we have corrupted our ways: And likewise have taken this pause of time, and sequestered ourselves from all secular affairs to take a considerate view upon the sins of the Kingdom, how near we are in all likelihood to relapse into some great troubles, because the fear of the Lord is not much conspicuous among any sorts of men.
Are our Peers and Nobles renowned for their advancement and protection of true honor and virtue, as their great Ancestors have been? Sit down, and think upon it. The Reverend Sages of the Law, are their minds set upon righteousness? And do they judge the thing that is right with courage and integrity? Sit down and think upon it. The portion and Tribe of God, the holy Clergy, do they remember, or can they forget, how they were lately trodden down, reviled, and cast out of all they had for twenty years? And doth it stir us up to be burning and shining lights more than ever? And to double our diligence now in Prayer, in Preaching, and administering the holy Sacraments? Sit down and think upon it. For the Gentry, are they not addicted to waste and riot; Do they not crowd themselves into our enlarged Suburbs, where they have no Calling, but to emulate one another in excess of feminine Pride, and rude debauchery? Sit down and think upon it. As for what concerns the great City, not to rub it with salt and Satyrs, is it not as palpable as God's light, that it did poison the whole Land with Rebellion, and still infects it with Gaudiness, Gluttony, Whoredoms, and Falshoods? Sit down and think upon it. Do the Country Villages deserve the old commendations of simplicity and innocence? But how ignorant are they in the knowledge of Salvation? How unthankful to God in all seasons? How hath Satan bewitched them of late years into dissolute lives, and drunkenness? Sit down and think upon it. I pass over many things in silence, as not fit for publication.
Now though I have shewn you an Ocean of ungodliness breaking in upon us, who almost, unless such an extraordinary day as this doth spur them on, who doth consider it and muse upon it with a leisurable sorrow? The most will shake their heads at it, and give it a shrug, and then they are at their furthest. There is all the regard they have, when the sins of an whole Nation look as if they were white for harvest. It is too tedious for them to sit down, to cast up a solicitous account, to survey the parcels of our crimes, to cast them up into a total sum, as much as is possible. This is too long labor for them, who are very busy a doing nothing. They will sit down, as the Israelites did, to eat, and to drink, and rise up to play. Whereas the beginning of true repentance is to allot some time day by day, for considering our own works seriously, and the criminal faults of the whole Land. Grant some good hours for the serious understanding of those things, and run not away lightly from such holy thoughts, but possess Nehemiah's room, sit down, and ponder the Judgments of the Lord.
It follows in the second branch of his penitential carriage, that the sins, and desolation of Jerusalem wrought upon him so far that he wept. Perhaps some sturdy spirit will say, Mulier quid ploras? Woman, what ailest thou to weep? A manly courage thinks shame of it. Nay, Infans quid ploras? It is childish, as some conceive, to put the finger into the eye. Indeed, Quid potest infans nisi plorare? How can a Child help itself when it is offended but by crying? But when our heavenly Father is offended, it is a sweet sign of grace to demean ourselves like Children, and cry. Except you become as little children you cannot enter into the Kingdom of heaven. Mat. xviii. 3. Nay, says David, I have brought my soul low like a weaned Child, Psal. cxxxi. 2. and yet he no coward. He became as a Child, and not such a one as hath the breast, and is still, but a weaned Child, taken from the comforts (and lullabies) of the Nurse, and then you know it will burst into tears.
True repentance, you see, abhors all stubbornness, and obstinate resolutions; it abates its fortitude, it melts in the sight of God. Is not this much more religious than to have Nerves of Adamant, and an heart of brass? A stomach that is insensible of the divine wrath is a symptom of madness, and not of courage. There is one in the Gospel so strong that none could hold him, no not the Chains wherewith he was tied, but he brake them asunder. Now this unhappy person of whom I speak was possessed with a Devil, Mar. v. 4. The same evil spirit is entered into those robustious men, who esteem them dastards who quake at the threatenings of the Law, and faint at the terrors of death and judgment to come. No fetters of Religious fear will hold them. Are not these Sons of Anack mighty Giants? And we that tremble and weep at the guilt of our sins, are we not as Grashoppers in their sight?
You cannot be of that mind if you consider, that it is not strength in the wicked, but madness, to carry themselves stubbornly before an infinite and omnipotent Majesty. Gregory the Great is copious in a whole Sermon upon this subject, that there is no such weakness as the fortitude of Reprobates. Says he, out of the Prophet Isaiah, they are strong to drink Wine, and mighty to pour in strong drink: Is not that a weakness? Ad inanem gloriam cum discrimine vitae perveniunt; They will uphold their reputation in frivolous quarrels with the hazard of their lives, nay, with the hazard of their salvation, and is not that a weakness? They will endure attendants, scorns, base Offices for favor: They will travel by Sea and Land, in perils of Thieves, in perils of Wa • ers for the hope of Riches. That is more than I can do, says Gregory, for this worlds good, Profecto ego non sum tam fortis in ejus desiderio. I am not so hardy to suffer so much for these transitory things. Lastly, Says he, Contra flagella conditoris insensibiliter perdurant, God threatens them, and they do not weep; he corrects them, and they do not feel it. There is a num Palsy in their conscience. I may truly say they are dust, Nullus pulvis est tam pulvis: There is no moisture in them, no living sap in their root; if there were anything of the life of grace in them they could not be so stupid. Gregory concludes this Doctrine with a good distinction, Reprobi sunt debiliter fortes, boni sunt valenter infirmi; Reprobates have great infirmity in their fortitude, the Children of God have great fortitude in their infirmity. Therefore it is more than manly, it is Saint-like, Apostolical, Prophetical to weep, because we have grieved the holy Spirit of God with our iniquities.
It is Apostolical by the instance of St. Paul, Phil. iii. 18. There are many that walk, of whom I have told you before, and now I tell you weeping, they are enemies to the Cross of Christ. Even those superstitious ones that fall down before the sign of the Cross, they are enemies to the Cross. Many of them walk among us, too many God help it: their Idols and Images, I fear, will bring a curse upon the Land. If St. Paul were alive, he would tell us weeping, that they are enemies to the Redemption obtained by Christ. And weeping for sin is Prophetical. Jeremy was never satisfied with weeping for the deplorable state of the Jews: O that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, Chap. ix. 1. Et quid nisi vota supersunt? The most that we can do is to wish for such a tender and compassionate soul. It is to be wished, I say, but few there be that can overcome themselves to perform it. As Leo said of his days, men are little touched with anything that God doth to us in his Justice or his Mercy. Nec de correctione compungimur, nec de remission laetamur. We have neither spiritual joy, when God forgives us our sins: nor penitent compunction, when he corrects us for our sins.
Whence comes this hardness of heart? Hath Mary Magdalene left none of her generation behind her? Says the Son of Sirach, What is created more wicked than the eye? Therefore it weeps upon every occasion. Upon every occasion it is ready to shed moisture, but not upon the best occasion: for when will it weep for its own transgressions, because it hath been wanton and full of lust? As a Widow that did not love her Husband will follow his Coarse with dry eyes to his burial: So Christ is the Husband of every soul, which he hath espoused to him in Baptism: If your sins grieve him, and provoke him to depart from you, either lament it with many tears, or the case is plain that you never loved him. But the Devil hath turned the River of our tears the wrong way. A vain Interlude, a Fable upon the Stage represented in due action will make the soft Spectator to wet his handkercher. So the River is diverted from its natural channel: for when we are put in mind of the damnableness of our sins, our cheeks are as sear as the Mountains of Gilboa, upon which no drop of dew did fall.
Do you wonder at yourselves, and ask the reason of this? Philosophy will tell you, that love is stronger than hatred, and hath more command of our passions. We have tears in readiness to bewail the death of our dear friends, love hath such power over our tender affections: but when we are upon mortification to deplore and hate our sins, the drops of our eyes are not so easily commanded. And this is marvelous in Nature, that you shall sooner see fire spark out of our eyes in hot desire of revenge, than tears which are most proper to the eye for our grievous sins.
But will Philosophy assist us with no better reason? Then hear Divinity, which will tell you the truth. It is presumption, rank presumption, that will not let our shallow repentance go on unto tears. We are not altogether persuaded that God is in earnest, when he threatens what manifold woes he will bring upon us for our rebellions. That desperate courage which we assume to ourselves upon great likelihood of impunity is that which mitigates our sorrow, and suffers it not to break forth into any great measure of lamentation: We dream that the blood of Christ is medicinal even for impenitent sinners. Thus Satan kills us with that Balm which is distilled out of his wounds to cure us. But keep your faith from these impostures, and fawnings of the evil one: who would make you laugh yourselves to death, lik those that are bitten with the Tarantula. The Stag, when he is at the bay, and knows there is no way but death for him, falls a weeping. And are we not surer that no tittle of God's minacies shall fail, than if we were at bay, with the Stag, and ready to be plucked down? Believe that God is a severe Judge, and that all his threatenings are true, that there is a day to come, when there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And when you fear this indeed, then you will practice my Doctrine without teaching. If any great sickness hold you, that you think death is at hand, then your eyes will pay the tribute of sorrow to the Lord; then Hezekiah chatters like a Swallow: the day of trial begins to be nearly discerned. But how much better is it to do this in your health, and before your strength faileth? There is nothing more sorrowful to the Devil than the godly sorrow of the Saints: When his temptations come upon you, open the flood-gates, let in the sluices, and drown them. The Ark was made to float upon the Waters when the wicked world was drowned: So the true Church of Christ shall be carried in safety upon the streams of devout tears. Weep and lament the evil days that are past, and be comforted that there is an Age, an Eternity to come, when God will wipe away all tears from our eyes.
Onward now to the next Point, the third part of that remedy which Nehemiah used to cure the wound of a troubled soul; says he, I mourned certain days. The heavenly water which fell from his eyes brought forth no weeds, but sad and serious Repentance which ejected all light joy. The Israelites in their days of distress had some outward badges of mourning, as covering the head and lip, not washing the face, not combing the hair, putting on Sackcloth, or other sad raiment, or such like. Which whether they were to be seen in Nehemiah, as I cannot affirm, so I will not deny: for I incline to persuade myself, that he wanted not those outward marks and habilements of sorrow, that the habit, and grizly uncomposedness of his body might utter the affections of his mind.
But that which pleased God was the sorrow of the Heart, and not of the Garment: It is the distress of the soul with inward anguish, that knocks at heaven for mercy: and comfort will sooner shine upon them that cover themselves with darkn •• s, and will not be comforted. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted, Mat. v. 4. It is not a punishment, but a gift of God, to be endued with godly sorrow. And all his gifts put together make a treasure of felicity. Cum te video in conspectu Domini suspirantem, spiritum sanctum non dubito aspirantem, Cyprian de caenâ Domini. When I see thee breath out sighs upon earth, I discern that God hath breathed into thee his holy Spirit from heaven. Now the same Spirit took on him the shape of a Dove, when he came down from heaven to sit upon our Saeviour at his Baptism. It is impossible to teach a Dove to sing a cheerful note: for Nature hath engraffed in her a solemn mourning, Gemitum pro cantu: it doth not sing like other birds, but groan; and it is the Spirit that puts afflictive thoughts into our Spirit with groans unutterable.
O hang up the Harps of mirth for a while, and let them remain untuned: Lament the days wherein we have provoked the Lord to give us nothing but lamentation. You never read that God will honor your joy to keep it in his everlasting remembrance, but you are sure he will not forget your mourning, says David, Psal. lvi. 8. Thou tellest my flitting, put my tears into thy Bottel, are not these things noted in thy Book? Nor doth he merely bear them in mind, and keep them in his Register, but Figuratively, as some interpret it, he wears them upon his head, for says Christ, Cant. v. 2. My head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night: as if he wore the tears of our mourning like drops of Pearl upon his head. Dry eyes, and unrelenting hearts are the curse of God, as it is Ezek. xxiv. 23. You shall not mourn, nor weep, but ye shall pine away for your iniquities. Do you love to be heightened in your pleasures? To be always conversant in joy and voluptuousness? Would you never be wrinced with any sorrow for your sins? O what a mischief is this which you long for? If you do not mourn at some seasons, if you do not fall into pious contristation, you shall pine away in your iniquities.
I may not forget the continuance of Nehemiah's mourning, it lasted certain days. As a watery Moon breeds foul weather for an whole month after: So when he began to be a mourner for the sins and scourges of his people, he persevered till it came to some magnitude of afflictive compunction. Nothing will come to any large increase in an hour, therefore he produced his sorrow longer and longer, and mourned certain days. Not first a sigh, and suddenly a flux of laughter upon it; not humbled in fasting today, and pampering the body in all excess and riot tomorrow. Are there none here that will be so fickle and change so soon? God grant it. For a short acquaintance with godliness is soon forgotten. He that catcheth at Repentance by sudden fits will never lay hold of it. Insist upon good motions, protract them today, and tomorrow, and continue many such days together, that Piety may have its perfect course. When you will scarce hold out the length of an hour, nay, hardly the length of the Lord's Prayer, but your mind is drawn off from the survey of Repentance, you have done as good as nothing. They that first did distribute apt times and seasons in the Church for the Service of God, contrived forty days together in Lent for religious sorrow and humiliation; a long time of perseverance indeed, that we might be perfect in the Lesson. As Moses continued forty days together in the Mount, that he might be perfect in the Law of the Lord. All that I bend towards in my instruction is this: That forasmuch as we have but this one day allotted for our exercise of extraordinary Prayer and Mortification, the benefit may dispread unto tomorrow, and the morrow after, and so spin it out, that we may keep time with