A Century of Sermons
The third reason is out of St. Chrysostom's Quiver, and I cannot exceed beyond that at this time: Non simpliciter profectus, sed abductus. God did inspire the Evangelists to write in this manner; how Christ was led when he went into temptation, rather than that he went of himself simply without more addition, because no man should offer himself rashly and voluntarily to be tempted, unless God did put some constraint and impulsion upon him. It is a most cautilous note if you observe it; for take the matter right, and consider Christ in himself alone, without respect of leaving an example to the Members of his body, and it was laudable in him to wish some trial, that he might encounter the Devil, and spoil him of his Kingdom; Tentationem exoptare in eo qui succumbere nequit est laudabile; say the Schoolmen. It was an heroical magnanimity in Christ to wish temptations so might fall upon him, because he could not be vanquished. And therefore some gather an observation contrary to St. Chrysostom, that our Savior went into the Wilderness, and fasted forty days, and after was an hungry, destinating that the Devil should find him out. Obviam procedit Diabolo quem scit non pug naturum nisi lacessitum; He went out to dare the Tempter, because he knew he would not come on and fight, unless he were provoked; yet it is the sounder way to collect, that for our instruction, when we should examine this Story, Christ did not go in a bravado, or a challenge to offer himself to be tempted, but the Spirit led him; as who should say, this was not Curtius in foveam, a precipitated intrusion. Let not man expose himself to temptation, Dubia est victoria, who knows that carries the badge of Adams frailty in his body, whether he shall come off with victory or captivity.
Happy is that man and the Lord shall bless his integrity, who will not come near the suburbs of sin; for no man can keep the Commandments, unless he be careful to avoid the first invitations of evil, and to shun the farthest and remotest impediments of obedience. Have you seen little children dare one another, which should go deepest into the mire? But he is more childish that ventures further and further, even to the brim of transgression, and bids the Devil catch him if he can. I will but look and like, says the wanton, where the object pleaseth me; I keep company with some licentious persons, says an easy nature, but for no hurt, because I would not offend our friendship. I will but bend my body in the house of Rimmon, when my Master bends his, says Naaman; I will but peep in to see the fashion of the Mass, holding fast the former profession of my faith. Beloved, I do not like it when a man's conscience takes in these small leaks, it is odds you will fill faster and faster, and sink to the bottom of iniquity. I have read of a Bishop that was performing the Office of Baptism to many that were converted from Gentilism, and when a Virgin came near the Font of an extraordinary beauty, he desired a substitute to discharge the place, for he would not please his eyes, no not for a few minutes, to look upon such an object as allured his fancy. What a careful Christian this was, that kept off occasions of sin, and would not suffer them before him, as David charged his treacherous Son Absalom to keep a distance, and not to come near Jerusalem. Hannibal, that approved Soldier, placed himself in a battle where many Darts of the enemy flew round about him; and when some commended him, that he ventured his person upon the mouth of danger; you mistake, says Hannibal, I am more ashamed of myself this day than ever I was in my life; that being the General of the Field I came in peril to be wounded. This is well applied to every Soldier that fights under Christ's Banner; when we are run into temptations, it is good and blessed to come off with the least impairment to our innocence. But why did you come so near the flame, that you were in peril to be scorched? Job comforted himself, that he had kept his eyes from wandering. Jeremy was careful neither to lend upon Usury, nor to borrow upon Usury. In a word, when Tentations fall upon you by God's permission, resist them manfully; but if you mean to be led by the Spirit, do not wittingly and daringly fall upon temptations. This is the sum of the third observation, I defer the fourtn to a larger tractate. To God the Father, &c.
THE THIRD SERMON UPON Our Savior's Tentation.
MAT. iv. 1.
Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the Wilderness to be tempted of the Devil.
T His Text, you see, will not let me go, I have been parting from it twice, and still it invites me to stay: As the Levite took his farewell at Bethlehem sundry times, and could not get away, Judge. xix. And now I have good cause to tarry, being led by the leading of the Spirit: Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile with him, go with him twain, says Christ, Mat. v. 21. And if the Spirit of God compel us to go with him one Sermon, we will go with him twain; it cannot be irksome or weary to follow such contemplations. But it is fit I should satisfy you, where I stick in this verse for the present, that I do not proceed how Christ was tempted, wherefore he was tempted, by whom he was tempted, when he was tempted, I have rid my hand of these discourses. Likewise I have passed thus far, how Christ was marshalled into the field by the divine impulsion of the Holy Ghost, Here I resume my task into my hands, where I left it. That which remains for me to survey, and for you to exercise your attentions upon is this: First, Since Christ himself was led by the Spirit when he went forth to fast and pray, and to fight against the Devil, therefore I will make enquiry how the grace of God doth lead us to eschew evil, and to do good. And secondly, I will bring you along to consider the place whereon our Savior planted himself to encounter his enemy, it was the Wilderness.
How all men, whom God calls to the saving truth by the preaching of the Spirit, are led by the Spirit; that is, governed and directed by his grace, is the Doctrine with which I begin; in which intricate subject I confess myself to be in a Wilderness before I come to the last part of my Text, if ever there were a question which troubled the whole world it is this, How the will of man is guided unto Salvation by the supernatural help of God. It is run into a Proverb, that there are three things almost impossible to be traced: The one how a King doth govern his Kingdom, (the secret reasons of state make the course of his actions so obscure; Cor regis inperscrutabile, says Solomon. ) The other, how grace doth govern the soul; And the third, how God doth govern the world. We are sure divine motions move within us, and yet we know not how they move. Our Savior did admonish us it would be a hard matter to understand, when he spake of the Holy Ghost who doth regenerate us, The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou knowest not whence it comes, nor whither it goes. What impression a spiritual quality doth, or can make upon a spiritual substance, Philosophy cannot judge of it; but so far as the Scripture opens the mystery, Divinity may examine it, and faith must believe it. In these labyrinths wherein so many run upon this Point; I will give you my judgment in that method wherein I have always directed myself, a method to give God the glory of all that which is good, to make sinners humble because they have no good in themselves, as of themselves, and to make us all diligent in good works, that we may not neglect the gift which is given us in Christ through sluggishness and security. The grounds upon which I will insist are these: 1. We must be led by the Spirit before we can work anything which is good. 2. I will unfold how we are led by initiating or preventing grace, when we are first made partakers to taste of the hopes of a better life. 3. I will show how we are led by preparatory grace, which goes before the complete act of our regeneration. 4. With what great and mighty power the Spirit doth lead us in converting grace. 5. How we are led by subsequent grace, and sanctification, which co-operates, and assists us after our conversion. To these heads I will briefly and peaceably reduce a volume of litigious disputation.
1. I enter into all by this door, before the Spirit come down upon us, and lead us with his sweet motions, our heart can produce nothing which is good. The heathen are no competent witnesses in this cause, how far nature is weakened in all virtue, and how much it is prone to all evil, they know no supernatural strength above nature, and therefore could not acknowledge the efficacy of it. In a word, we must not believe man how far he is corrupted, but God, for man must not be judge in his own cause. The Pharisees likewise shall not be heard to speak in this Point, whose arrogancy made them enemies to grace. You remember with what contempt they asked Christ, are we blind? Joh. ix. 40. Alas of ourselves we are all under that woe, Vae vobis duces caeci; Woe be to you blind guides, Mat. xxiii. 16. Whither will a blind man's feet carry him but into a pit, or into a snare unless he have a leader? By nature this dark blindness is upon us, for else why have we a Leader? Omne id naturae deesse intelligitur, quod spiritus sancti operâ communicator, says St. Austin; Whatsoever is put into us by the Holy Ghost manifests how much was wanting by nature. The good Spirit may say of his direction as Job did of his charity, I was eyes unto the blind, and feet unto the lame, Job. xxix. 15. The heathen erred from the truth through ignorance, the Pharisees through arrogancy, among Christians none offended more foully than the Pelagians, partly through subtlety of wit, partly through arrogance. What shifts did they not invent rather than confess the truth? Sometimes calling the endowments of man's nature, even under this great blemish of depravation, by the name of grace. When that would not serve, yet they would allow no grace to support man's free will, but the external preaching of the Word, and dispensation of the Sacraments. 3. When this would not satisfy the Church, they went thus far, they did not hold there was grace of sanctification to prevent us from sin, but grace of mercy to remit our sins. Yet they stood under condemnation, and at last this was all that could be wrung from them, supernatural grace was necessary, not simply to strengthen us to do good, but only to do good with greater facility.
Whereas it behooved them to have accused nature in this present state of malignity so far, that now it is become that accursed ground, which of itself brings forth nothing but thorns and thistles. There is not only a possibility in our will to sin, as there was in Adam before the Fall, but a violent and a precipitious inclination to transgress the Law. The Saints, and the heaven are not clean in God's sight, says Job, How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water, Job xv. 16. The will of man is of that nature it cannot rest naked, devested of all desires, unfurnisht of an object, and since in its own rebellion it hath forsaken God, there is no relief but it will betake itself to the unlawful concupiscence of the Creature. Mark how peremptorily St. Paul concludes against man, as he is left to the will of his own flesh, Rom. viii. 7. The carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the Law of God, neither indeed can be. In the state of this miserable captivity under sin (for we are servants to that which we obey) the will of man is partaker of its own freedom which grows with it, and cannot be parted, that it is not held under necessity to commit this or that sin, naming any particular act, what you will; but under sin it is held, so that the evil which we would not, we shall do, and the good which we would, we shall not do. But Christ is our Advocate, and he will speak for us more than we could or durst say for ourselves; hear his testimony, Joh. xv. 4. The branch cannot bear fruit except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. Because these words are parabolical, he speaks roundly in the next verse, Without me ye can do nothing. It is not meant of natural or animal works, as eating, drinking, walking; indeed we can do none of these things unless his omnipresency and omnipotency support us; but here it is meant of such things as are praise worthy before God; without me, that is, without the divine assistance and help which I have merited by my obedience ye cannot bring forth the fruits of righteousness to eternal life. Yet I pray you mark one thing to qualify some men's severe opinions, Christ did not say, whatsoever ye do without me, even with the best moral rectitude and justice shall plunge you further into damnation. Every thing which comes from a mere natural man is so bad and defective that it shall do him no good toward the attaining of everlasting life, but some things have a moral honesty according to the law of nature, which do not deserve Hell fire, but rather they are such things as shall make their damnation more tolerable. The branch can bring forth no fruit unless it be in the tree, Frugiferum opus est quod ad vitam aeternam refertur; That is a frugiferous work which God rewards in his Kingdom. No such fruits can grow from nature which wants the conduction of the Spirit. St. Paul very cautiously, 1 Cor. xiii. mustering up the works of an unregenerate man, which want Charity, says he, If I do all these things, and want charity, they profit me nothing; not simply, that the continence of Socrates, the temperance of Scipio should hurt them; but they profit me nothing, a natural man brings forth nothing which can profit him to eternal life.
St. Austin doth so diligently ponder every word of the Text now cited, that I must impart his sweet labors unto you. Without me you can do nothing, so our Savior. Had he said without me you can do little, or without me you can do no excellent thing, or without me it will be hard and difficult for you, or without me you can perfect no good work, then there had been some evasion for a man to trust in his own abilities, but to say without me you can do neither much, nor little, greater things, nor inferior things, with ease or with difficulty, neither finish nor begin; this chops off all boasting in the powers and industries of the natural man, Without me ye can do nothing. The Eunuch plainly felt this impotency, and when Philip asked him, Understandest thou what thou readest? Says he, How can I unless some man should guide me? As the sick person complained at the Pool of Bethesda, he wanted some man to put him in when the water was troubled; Vere homo fuit illi necessarius, sed homo ill qui Deus est, Says St. Austin; He wanted a man indeed to cure him, but no other than he that is God and man Jesus Christ: So the Eunuch wanted no other man to guide him but he that was made the Son of man, that we might be made the Sons of God. And upon those words of the Eunuch; thus St. Jerome. We come not to walk in the paths of life, Sine praevio & monstrante semitam; Without celestial aid to prepare the way, and go before us. Let me strike these two strokes more upon this point and I have done with it; first when I say nature is so unfit to produce any good, so indisposable to attain the Kingdom of heaven; let no man say, Why should I strive then against the stream of my inbred corruptions, I will give myself over to work all filthiness with greediness. This is a devilish resolution: But rather say, I will be very instant in prayer with my God, that he will take away this heart of stone, and give me an heart of flesh. For in the like case, the Tongue can no man tame, it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison, Jam. iii. 8. So St. James. It is not his meaning, that we should suffer this unruly evil to do what it list, and permit it without any manner of reformation, but with all contention of heart to implore the divine assistance, that this member of unrighteousness may become an instrument to serve the Lord. Secondly, Those Nations whom we perceive to be led by the viciousness of their own nature, and not to be led by the spirit; we cannot say without great error and obstinacy that these are appointed to everlasting life: if the heathen had sufficient means of salvation, what privilege had we in the Church who have the Word and Sacraments, and the infusions of sanctification to make them profitable. Thou knowest, Lord, why these do sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. Bonus es in beneficio certorum, justus in supplicio ceterorum, says St. Austin; Thou art very good to those to whom thou art gracious, thou art very just to those that are punished. This is St. Paul's doctrine up and down, Eph. ii. 12. It cannot be controlled. He describes the wretched estate of the Gentiles, before salvation appeared unto them. We were aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the Covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. How can it be affirmed that they want not help to bring them out of this captivity of sin? When St. Paul says, Spem non habentes, they have no hope. This is the condition of nature which is not aided by the Spirit.
2. Now I will unfold how we are led by initiating, or preventing grace, when we are first made partakers to taste of the hope of a better life. In this Point I will annex the explication of two things: First, That there is such an initial preparatory grace in them that are not yet justified and converted. 2. That in the first entrance of it the Spirit doth produce it in us solely and entirely, the will of man conferring no strength at all. Concerning the former of these two conclusions; I say there are many good internal effects wrought by the power of the Word, and the illumination of the Holy Ghost, which enter into the hearts of them that are not yet converted, as some knowledge of the divine will, sense of sin, fear of punishment, grudgings of sorrow, some earnings to be delivered, some hope of favor. This is a middle state between natural corruption, which is altogether enmity with God, and between perfect regeneration when we are called to adoption of Sons. I marvel this should not be easily admitted for these reasons. The Philippians had fellowship in the Gospel; St. Paul calls this the beginning of a good work in them; and he trusts God would perform and finish it, Phil. i. 6. Yet more clearly, Heb. vi. 4. he shows there are antecedent portions of grace in many, before they are converted and made heirs with Christ, yea, in such as never were engrafted lively in Christ, he calls it thereby the name of illumination, tasting of the heavenly gift, tasting of the power of God, tastings of the Word of God, and in some wise being made partakers of the Holy Ghost. Yet these having but these first preparations of grace, may backslide, crucify the Lord of life, and put him to an open shame. The similitudes, which are used to show how grace doth possess the soul, do plainly show as much: 1. As in natural generation, there are many previous dispositions, which go before the introduction of the soul into the matter: So there must be many antecedent preparations of the divine blessing before our spiritual regeneration, that we be born again, and become the Sons of God. 2. Gratia se habet ad animum sicut sanitas ad corpus; Grace doth raise up the soul from sin, as health doth affect the body, and bring it out of sickness, but there is a middle state of recovery before health be perfectly regained; so there is a previous illumination, and good direction in the mind and will, which go before our conversion, that we be actually made the living members of Christ.
Some are afraid to call this grace, and yet they cannot avoid it; for they are compelled to call it auxilium Dei; a special help of God flowing from his providence. Sometimes they abhor not the name, but say it is gratia reprimens, an assistance of God, whereby such as are not converted may repress the occasions, or commissions of some heinous sins. Either they allow it to be as much as true grace, or no better than nature; for many evils may be avoided, and repress'd by nature, no good thing can be done without grace. It is therefore that internal calling wherewith God doth seriously invite those to repentance, and belief in Christ, who have the tidings of salvation brought unto their ears. I say, I speak of those only, who are called to hear the word of faith, and of none other. God might have left them in their blood, as the Prophet Ezekiel speaks, and given them over to the reprobate sense of their own mind, but because he requires a new Covenant from all those to whom Christ is preached; therefore he gives them new abilities, lest he should seem to invite them in vain; but being supplied with these internal excitations of supernatural help they are inexcusable. This is the way to give God the glory, and to make all the hearers of the Word know what talent they have received: But the force of exhortations, and expostulations were taken away, if a sinner were converted by Enthusiasms, and sudden inspirations. If God would immediately bring a man to himself without feeling of his sin, without hating it, without desiring pardon, it were superfluous to say, We beseech you that ye receive not the grace of God in vain. I marvel you are so soon removed from him that called you to the grace of Christ, Gal. i. 6. They that heard St. Peters Sermon, Acts ii. 37. at the beginning of it were unbelieving and rebellious Jews, before he had ended, they were terrified, felt the guiltiness of innocent blood upon themselves, desired freedom, submitted themselves to direction, Men brethren what shall we do? All these were good internal effects, but as yet they were not converted and regenerate, as yet unbelievers; for had they believed, they had never made that question, What shall we do? They come to that in the next verse, says Peter, Repent and be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. Well, they followed this counsel; and then, at the soonest, and not before, they were justified in Christ, for thereupon it is said, There were added unto the Church above three thousand souls. So I have made that conclusion undeniable, I think, that Christ doth produce some effects of initial grace before conversion.
The next conclusion is, that since the natural man hath no powers in the freedom of his will to do good, therefore the first effects of grace that are brought forth in us, the Holy Ghost doth produce them solely and entirely, the will of man conferring no strength at all. As the ground receives the seed which is cast into it, so a natural man takes the good seed from God which he casts into him, passive & receptive, only passively, and by way of reception. Even they that will not be beaten off from their tenet, but that the will of man hath some cooperancy with God's grace in the act of conversion, yet they give their suffrage to this doctrine, that this preventing grace, or grace of preparation is res infusa, not comparata, a thing infused from above, not gotten by our diligence or acquired, even as the air doth not dispose itself to admit the light of the Sun, but is illuminated by the presence of the Sun. They are best known by the name of Semi-pelagians who would not admit this truth; for it was taught in their School, that the beginning of faith was from man, and the increase from the power of the Holy Ghost. But why did they teach that the beginning of faith was from man? Because they imagined that the talent of grace was promised to them that used the talent of nature well; Habenti dabitur, to him that hath it shall be given. But I would have them find me any such Covenant in all the Scripture, which God made with man, that such as negotiated the talent of nature well should have an increase of grace for their reward. It is a trespass, and a foul one, to bely a man, and to father Covenants upon him which he never made; the offense is greater to allege Covenants from God, and yet no tittle leaning that way in all his Testament. The powers of nature are blindness of understanding, obdurateness of will, perverseness of affections, what reward can be due to these but eternal death? When thou wert in thy blood, Ezek. xvi. that is, when thou wert under the loathsome filthiness of sin, and under the condemnation of death, I said unto thee live, that is, I began to extend my mercy of vivification upon thee.
The beginning and introduction of all Christian virtue is to think of God. From whence comes this? From any good parts wherewith we were born? Go to the fountain of wisdom, and ask there; We are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, 2 Cor. iii. 5. The next a b c, and first rudiment of goodness is to pray to God. Is nature a sufficient Mistress to teach you that? Is it not the Spirit which the Lord sends into us crying Abba, Father? I will pour upon the house of David the Spirit of grace and supplications, and upon the Inhabitants of Jerusalem, Zach. xii. 10. Thus St. Austin proves that the very firstlings, and proems of all our Christian dispensations are from God, because St. Paul said, I obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful, 1 Cor. vii. 25. Misericordiam consecutus sum ut fidelis essem, non ut fidelior essem; That I was made faithful, or had any faith it was the benefit of God, and not only by way of increase or augmentation that I was made more faithful; otherwise we should lead the Spirit to take his aim from us, and not be led by the Spirit, a Passive Verb, and fit to express that we are merely passive in the first preparations of faith. I shall speak anon touching that efficacy of the Spirit upon the heart of man: But touching the work of preparatory grace, in the first onset it brings illumination with it, it dispels darkness from our understanding, it makes us perceive we are gone astray in our sins like sheep that are lost, it makes us know God is to be feared, it makes us discern that we are in a wretched estate; this illumination cannot be resisted; Men's nostra ipsum scire effugere non potest; Philosophy doth dictate that we cannot repel the knowledge of a thing palpably demonstrated before us though we would, it pierceth as easily into the mind as a needle through a thin clothe. Yet I do not say, this grace which first possesseth the soul, and makes it willing to good motions, which was most averse before, doth compel a man or force him; compulsion is a word of hostility rather than of favor. It comes with that sweetness and authority together, that it will not be said nay. Thus we are led by the Spirit in the first introduction of preparatory grace.
The third thing to be considered is, how the Spirit doth lead us all the while we use this preparatory grace before conversion? St. Austin comprehended all in this short rule, Primùm gratia Dei operatur bonam voluntatem, deinde per eam. First, God's grace doth effect a good will in us, and then by that will so illuminated and excited it produceth good effects. Then the will of man according to that free liberty it hath (which is helped toward good works, not taken away) doth all things with that indifferency, that it may cast away this initial grace or embrace it, work fruitfully with it, or unfruitfully. This is that qualification, and condition of grace which some wicked ones are said to resist, this is that Spirit which other sensual men are said to grieve. They will not understand, they will not be gathered together, they will not follow their Leader through the servile liberty of their own concupiscence. It is this first pittance and portion of a good life that many are said to begin in the Spirit, and to end in the flesh. In the work of conversion, though a man hath power to resist, it being founded in the natural liberty of the will, yet no man doth actually resist the grace of conversion, yet this grace of preparation many do resist out of the pravity of their will, in which respect they are said to quench the Spirit.
I cannot speak so much as I might in this subject, but because the understanding of God's favor and justice, and the provocations of our own duty depend much upon it, therefore I will give you some short rules and corollaries to bear away:
1. I do not say all men, but as many as are invited by the preaching of the [ 1] Word are made partakers of some preparatory grace, for as a Vein and Artery run together in the body natural to convey blood, wherein the life consists, so the Word preached and some measure of supernatural grace go hand in hand in the mystical. Therefore St. Paul says, We are Ministers, not of the Letter, but of the Spirit. It is told to no man in vain that Christ died for him, the possibility of apprehending the benefit of that sacrifice is offered him, if he do not hinder the work of God.
2. In this previous grace, and for the good use of it we apply unto you the exhortations, [ 2] comminations, invitations of all the Prophets and Apostles, giving you truly to wit that God hath given you the means to be saved, if you do not reject them. The last end at which we drive in all our Sermons is your conversion and regeneration, that is the Crown of all diligence in this world; but the immediate and next end that we labor is that men and women do their diligence to make good use of this preparatory grace.
3. This grace of preparation before convertion is shorter in some than in [ 3] others; God did presently hasten the conversion of Paul, of Lydia, of the Jailor. Why may he not do what he will with his own? And give a Penny to them that have labored one hour, as soon as to them that have labored ten? But usually there is large trial, and with some this preparatory grace continues alone till anon before they end their life.
4. God forsaketh no wicked man within the Church, till he hath quenched this [ 4] grace, and interrupted the chain of those means which were prepared for his conversion. Prius quam deseratur neminem deserit, & multos desertores saepe convertit, says Prosper; which is in part thus Englished, 2 Chron. xxiv. 20. Because ye have forsaken the Lord, he hath also forsaken you. Solomon was an excellent Divine as well as a Philosopher, Prov. i. 24. Because I have called, and ye refused, ye have set at naught my counsel, they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord, therefore I will mock at their calamity; but though he forsakes none until they forsake him, yet he forsakes not all that forsake him. So said Prosper, Multos desertores saepe convertit. Peter and Judas both did reject this grace of preparation, and fall from it, yet the one hath efficacious grace given to convert him, the other hath not. This inequality is from the pure pleasure of God, and no man can sound the depth.
5. Some are much more largely watered with this heavenly dew of preparatory [ 5] grace, all may drink their fill, but some have their cup brim full; some are endued with more patience, proved with fewer temptations. Yet none can justly grudge, why hath he five talents and I but three? Why doth God stand longer at the door to knock for him than he will for me? God is not bound to follow men with all manner of grace.
6. If these works of preparation be not hindered, if this grace be not quenched, [ 6] God will follow the soul with saving grace. Not that any man in the world did ever use this precedaneus help so well, but that it deserved to be taken from him. How many sins do we incur? How stubborn, how disobedient is the heart of every man? Here we might be forever forsaken according to our misdeeds, but the Lord will accept of small endeavors as great accomplishments. In a word, the good use that we can make of this gift of God is no way meritorious to salvation; the ill use of it in those that perish is demeritorious, and makes them justly undeserving to be called to salvation. This I am persuaded is the true doctrine of this Point, to stop the mouth of them that are lost, and to show the plenteous riches of God's mercy in the vessels of Election.
Fourthly, I labor for the easiest notions I can invent to make these intricate things plain, the fourth Point will require an intelligent Auditor, with what great and mighty power the Spirit doth lead the children of God in converting grace. I have spoke of the first preparation of grace, and the will prepared, so I must speak distinctly of the act of renovation, and the will renewed; and the nature of renovation or conversion is best conceived in these six heads: 1. What this converting grace adds above that preparatory help. 2. God doth work it alone, and the will doth passively receive it. 3. It doth infallibly attain its effect. 4. It is no violent compulsion upon the will. 5. It is more than a moral persuasion. 6. This is not repugnant to the Promises, to the comminations, or to the exhortations of God. First, It adds this above preventing initial grace, that it doth but dispose a man to life, but after this act, we may say justly, this man is born of God. That is common to them that are lost, who quench the first beginnings of divine assistance by their own evil will, this is only given to the elect servants of Christ. God works by several quantities and doses of Sanctification. 1. That they can resist if they will, as in Adam before his Fall. 2. In others that they will not though they can, as in those in whom he doth conserve his preparatory grace. 3. In others, that they will not, nor cannot in the introduction of that act, as in them whom he doth actually convert. 4. In others that shall never can nor will, as in the Angels and Saints of heaven. God foresaw if he should only give this grace of preparation, all men in the Church would either resist it at the first, or fall off at the last, (for if Adam did pervert that grace which gave him possibility to stand, before his will had declined to evil, how much more will we pervert that grace which gives us no more than possibility to serve God, who have a depraved disposition to evil?) therefore he decreed to give converting grace, especial grace, efficacious grace to some, out of the riches of his mercy, by which they should infallibly be brought to Salvation.
The next branch which I drew from the root of this Point was, that God alone doth work first the act of Renovation, and the will doth passively receive it; The Pelagians ascribed Free-will to man, to do that which is spiritually good, without any beam of grace, therein both we and the Pontificians decry them: But many of the Pontificians ascribe to man's will, that it doth co-operate with God's grace in the act of conversion, and hath freedom to take or refuse it: That the Holy Ghost leads the will no further than a middle state of indifferency, Hoc agite sultis; and then a man doth either mar himself, or else make himself the child of God. This is a famous controversy between many Divines, now I had rather say, there is a passive power to receive this supernatural transmutation, where God will confer it, but no natural power to produce this act either by itself, or with any other. For I did ever conceive, that which is left to man to specificate the act, and as it were by his choice to perfect it to be saving grace, should be more than God's work, to bring the will by exciting grace to an equal poise, and to say to man as it were, now turn the scale which way you will. Further, I could never like it, that God should be present at our conversion by his Spirit not principally, infallibly, predominantly, but contingently concomitantly, for so there was a possibility that Christ should come into the world, die for the sins of the world, impetrate grace for all the Members of the Church, and yet not one be saved, there being no determinate ordination, but that all might refuse it.
I had rather say with the Prophet, Turn thou me and I shall be turned, thou art the Lord my God, Jer. xxxi. 18. I had rather examine it by such terms as the Scripture useth, than by man's Philosophical constructions. When I read that the conversion of a sinner is to make a man a new creature, to raise him from death to life, it impresseth this notion in my mind. What doth the Creature confer to God's act when it is created? Nothing. What assistance doth a dead man afford when he is raised to life again? Nothing. Such a thing is the heart of man when it is regenerated, and in that moment when it is exalted to be an heir of the Promise. Put this Text into the balance of humility, and it will weigh down all that can be said against it, Joh. i. 13. We are born not of blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. From the warrant of this very Oracle St. Bernard dispersed that common saying, Quid agit liberum arbitrium? Breviter respondeo salvatur, &c. What part doth man's free-will perform in conversion? I answer briefly, it is saved. This hath reference to God that doth the deed, to man in whom it is done. God is the Author of that Salvation, free-will is receptive, and takes his benediction. Whether St. Paul also doth not decide it judge ye, Eph. ii. 10. We are his workmanship, his 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , (that is, all due to him, nothing to us) created in Jesus Christ to good works; it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves. And is it not he that hath regenerated us, and not we ourselves? The Psalm runs on, we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture: He that made us men without concurrence of our own help, will not he make us the sheep of his pasture without our active co-operancy? I am sure the Parable says, when the sheep went astray, the good shepherd did not lead it home, or direct it home, but took it home upon his shoulders. St. Austin most perspicaciously and plainly strengthens this Doctrine from the word which the Lord spake to Elias touching those Israelites, his chosen ones, who had not gone after Baal, Yet have I left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him. It is not said seven thousand are left, seven thousand have left themselves unspotted from Idolatry, God takes it wholly to himself, I have left me seven thousand knees which have not bowed to Baal.
Thirdly, I make up the sum with this Proposition, God's act in the conversion of any sinner is not frustrated, but doth infallibly attain its effect. For in those that are called according to his purpose, he doth not only bring them so far as to have a power to believe, and to have certain spiritual habilities which can choose the good and forsake the evil, but by the efficacy of a secret and ineffable operation, I confess, he doth bring forth from our will being renewed the very act of believing and conversion. It is God that worketh in you both to will, and to do of his good pleasure, Phil. ii. 13. For if he should only give us posse credere, posse converti, we should do as our first Parents did, and much sooner than they, as I showed before, start aside like a broken bow, and never bring that possibility into act, therefore this eminent special grace is not an act produced by the will, but a bonity infused into the will, called by Prosper, Prima supremi agricolae plantatio, God is the husbandman that doth ingraft that first plantation in us. That secret influence and illapse from heaven is sooner believed than demonstratively learned; but this methinks the most litigious may grant, that it is easy for the most high to draw the will after him powerfully, infallibly without any violence offered to the nature of it. Resistency is taken away only for that act, not the full and final power to resist. It hath ever a bitter root in this life, which hath an eagerness and pronity to resist the counsel of God, I only say that that resistibility is suppressed for this moment, that it should not break forth into act. What should repel this grace, says St. Austin? Nothing but the hardness of our heart. Now that malignity is curbed, for it first takes away the hardness of our heart; and how can our perverseness resist this admirable work of God, when it prevents that perverseness, and frames a right spirit within us, that we will not resist? This is the proper notion of this phrase in my Text, agi spiritu, to be led by the Spirit. As Aristotle says of beasts that follow an instinct of nature, Non agunt sed aguntur: So in the act of renovation we are not fellow-workers, but are led, and carried whither the Spirit will, And as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the Sons of God. Rom. viii. 14.
4. We know divine mysteries best by negative expressions, and therefore I go on fourthly, that this immission of efficacious grace is no violent compulsion upon the will. Compulsion, I said, was a word of hostility, and not of favor. When God doth his work in us thoroughly, energetically, that it shall not fail, by a Catachresis it is called a coaction: So it is said in the Parable to them that were sent to bring in the blind and the lame, Cogite intrare, compel them to come in. I say this is a Catachresis, so Prosper the great director of this way that I take, Hanc abundantiorem gratiam ita credimus potentem, ut negemus violentam; We believe this eminent abundant grace worketh with great power, but not with violent compulsion. For because of those previous preparations I spake of, which make us know, and have some desire of heavenly things, God saves no man against his will, therefore it is no violent attraction; for no man is ordinarily saved that hath positive repugnancy, though in the momentary act of conversion he doth add no auxiliary co-operancy. Nay, so far is this most abundant benediction of the Spirit from offering coaction, and force to the will, that the will of a regenerate man doth instantly show its complacency, and turn itself to God. This efficacious motion is infused from God, and in the same moment exercised, and put into act by man; for to that end it was inspired by God, that man should produce the act of believing and adhering to Christ. This is an Altitude for faith to look upon. Voluntas est subjectum istius volitionis, & causa suae volitionis in eodem instanti? I think verily the not marking of this hath caused much debate, that the will of man in the act of conversion is the subject upon which God works faith, and itself the cause which doth produce the act of faith in the same instant. They have my suffrage that say, how these two cannot well be divided in time one from another, God's operation converting a sinner to be his Son, and the act of believing in that man converting himself to God (no object can be for a moment in the will, but it must affect it one way or other) but in order of nature God's inspiration is first to be conceived, and then man's embracing and assent. Thus it appears the agitation of this divine motion is not by force and compulsion, but with a sweet and fatherly attraction; and the effect is no way rough, and against nature, but above it: For to limit, and determine the indifferency of the will is not the destruction of free will, but the perfection; witness the Saints and Angels who are confirmed in grace that they cannot sin. If the Son make you free, then are ye free indeed; which is thus expounded by the Apostle, Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, 2 Cor. iii. 17.
Fifthly, I annex, that the powerfulness of this converting grace is not well expressed, when it is entitled but a moral persuasion. The hearts of Kings (and surely of all other men whose power is less free) are in the hand of God, and he inclineth them which way he will; persuasions may labor upon the affections, it is the scope of an Orator, but the most flexanimous Rhetorician that ever spake cannot be said to have the hearts of his Auditors in his hands; that is a phrase out of human capacity. What moral persuasion was there in this? Christ called Peter, and Andrew, James and John, and Matthew from the receipt of custom, and they left all and followed him. Shew me any ground here for moral persuasion, that is, probable allegation of reason? Not a word more spoken than follow me, or perhaps, I will make you fishers of men, few words God knows. But a mighty efficacious impression was secretly instilled into the heart; there it was, it must needs be that celestial irradiation which made them leave all to follow Christ, whose outward appearance was most contemptible, and his society, according to the wisdom of the world, most dangerous. Perswasion can but propound an end, and as every man is affected, so he likes the end which is offered. We that disperse the Word have the Office to persuade you to the Kingdom of heaven, but God forbid he should bring us no further. The Devil can suggest and persuade likewise, and prevail above his Makers persuasions, as it appears, Gen. iii. therefore ascribe the honor due unto the Lord, that his Spirit is more efficacious to produce good than Satan to produce evil; therefore his work consists not in persuading, but in governing and inclining the heart.
Finally, To dispatch this Point, I said, this potent and infallible assistance of converting grace doth well consist with the Promises, and Threatenings, and Exhortations of holy Scripture. There are other matters objected against this, but at the last you will find all sticks at this knot. For after some wrangling in the end it is confessed God can restrain the liberty and indifferency of the will, and make it bring forth what act he please; and it must be allowed that the taking away that liberty to work either good or evil is not the destruction, but the perfection of the will. The angry question is, Whether the removing away that liberty and indifferency from the will in the act of conversion can consist with this order, that a man shall be commanded to convert himself to God upon the condition of eternal life, and upon the commination of Hell fire? Now I must tell you, this was the very thing that Pelagius quarrelled St. Austin, for saying, Da Domine quod jubes, & jube quod vis; Give me to do what thou commandest O Lord, and then command what thou pleasest. But take all my answers like grapes upon a cluster: 1. They that make this objection know we are commanded to have the first grace of illumination, and they acknowledge it is freely and merely wrought by God; Why then do they stumble at converting grace, that conversion should be commanded us, and God altogether cause it, and yet allow it in preparatory grace? 2. Doth not the Scripture frame our tongue to speak thus? Make you a new heart, and a new spirit, Ezek. xviii. 31. there is a command: I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you, Ezek. xxxvi. 26. there he doth execute in us what himself commanded. It is to be magnified and admired, not to be disputed of, when God will work that good by his Spirit within us, which he might in rigor without that extraordinary help exact of us. 3. Whither will Divinity be tost about if this be not certain? That our just and omnipotent Lord commands such excellent things, which we cannot attain to perform, that we may be excited to pray unto him for succor with a vehement and a flagrant devotion. 4. He commands, and he fulfils, and he rewards crowning his own gifts, and no works of ours, that glory may be ascribed to his name for evermore. The Synodal Epistle of all the African Bishops (St. Austin being one of the Society) encourages me that these answers are far more reasonable than the objection. Jubet Deus homini ut velit, sed Dominus in homine operatur & velle, jubet ut facias, sed operatur & facere. He hath charged us to will that which is good, but he effecteth that willingness in man, he says, Do and thou shalt live, his grace enables thee to do, and thou shalt live forever. Let this suffice to teach you how we are led by the Holy Spirit in converting grace, and I think it most comfortable to put our hope in God, and not in ourselves; Cursed is everyone that putteth his trust in man, Jer. xvii.
5. To dispach all I will be brief in the fifth Point, how we are led by subsequent grace and sanctification, which co-operates and assists us after our conversion; this is that truth wherein all dissensious parts conjoin and accord: That Voluntas liberata concurrit ad bonum opus eliciendum cum gratiâ divinâ; the will of man having conquered the dominion of sin by converting grace is made free, and then it freely conjoyns itself with God's grace to produce a good effect. Then it lies upon our own diligence, never wanting the directing virtue of the Spirit, to increase the good gifts of Sanctification by acts of often doing well; then we do further and promote those holy inspirations to a plentiful or unplentiful increase. This is not passively to be led by the Spirit, but to walk in the Spirit; as it is Gal. v. 16. Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. In a word, this distinction reacheth over all which can be said upon this matter. There are some actions which principally concern the well being of a justified man, without which regeneration cannot consist; these are they, the turning of the heart to God, a true belief, a faithful conclusion of our life in the fear of God and the peace of a good conscience; justifying grace doth so attend the production of these actions, that the Lord in his own good time makes us able for these things, willing to do, and actually to perfect those necessary parts of salvation. Other works of obedience, as to do this or that good, to shun this or that evil, all these especilly and particularly considered, do not concur to our saving health, as to the very making or marring of it. In the practice of all these particular good instances the motions and conduct of the Spirit are never wanting to them that are regenerate more or less, but sufficient to have kept them blameless in every particular; but in many of these we sin often, and are wanting to the co-operation of grace through our own stubbornness in the will, and sensuality in the affections.
I will conclude. You see how diversely we are led by the Spirit, how many sundry ways we are assoiled from Sin and Satan by the direction and efficacy of grace. The natural man is able of himself to bring forth no spiritual good work. The Lord doth totally, and with no assistance of vitiated nature, bring forth the first good preparatory grace in the will. From thenceforth unto conversion this previous preparatory grace is made effectual or ineffectual by man's free-will. In the act of conversion and renovation (wherein all the controversy about free-will is moved) the Lord doth turn our heart unto himself, the will for the act being the passive subject, and at the same instant it is the cause of a good action in turning itself to God in subsequent grace unto the end of our life, the will being made free from the dominion of sin works together with the motions of celestial inspiration. This is the sum of all: If anything be delivered too briefly, impute it to the compass of the time: If anything be hard to be conceived, impute it to the deep discourse of the matter; If anything be defective in the discourse, give God's grace the glory of all, and impute it to my infirmity.
THE FOURTH SERMON UPON Our Savior's Tentation.
MAT. iv. 1, 2.
Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the Wilderness to be tempted of the Devil.
And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterwards an hungry.
M Any things were rightly applied by him, that compared the success of the Children of Israel, upon their entrance into the Land of Canaan, with the circumstances of this combat between Christ and Satan. 1. the Israelites were miraculously brought through the Red Sea; so the first glorious Apparition of our Savior, which went immediately before this business, was the Baptism which he received of John in Jordan. 2. The Israelites pass from the Red Sea into a great and solitary Wilderness: So our Savior was led after his Baptism into the greatest Wilderness of Judea, a place uninhabited by man, for he was with the wild beasts, Mar. i. 13. Then the Israelites were in great distress for foot, hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them: And Christ had nothing to eat in that place, he fasted forty days, and forty nights, and was afterward an hungry. 4. As the Israelites were pined with hunger, so they had bloody Wars with all the Nations of Canaan, many a time have they fought against me might Israel then say: So many a time did the Legions of Hell attempt me, might our Lord and Savior say, yea, many times did the powers of darkness compass me about, but they have not prevailed against me. On the one side here was first the Red Sea, then a journey into the Wilderness, then scarcity of Food, then War and fighting: So on the other side, here was first a Baptism, then a sequestering into the Wilderness, then a long Fast, and then a long conflict with the Prince of Devils.
Moreover, the men of Israel did appear in that forlorn and despicable fashion before the Canaanites, that they were much scorned and vilified (so God provided) we seemed in their sight but as Grashoppers said, Caleb and Joshua; this drew the Kings of Canaan forth to beat them back, and so were overwhelmed in their own pride and cruelty. Thus in all points did our Savior deal with Satan, the Eternal wisdom against the wisdom of the Serpent. He flies into the Wilderness as one abandoned of the World, there he continues in great necessity, as one whom none would succor; not a morsel of food supplied him by God or man; Adversarium non virtutis jactatione, sed infirmitatis ostentione provocat; thus he provokes, and draws Satan out against himself, not by a boasting challenge, but by the appearance of much infirmity. No man's counsel at hand to comfort him, for he was in the Wilderness; nothing to strengthen his feebless, for he was fasting and hungry, much abated in the vigor of his body. Christus non solùm provocat, sed velut arma ministrat hosti, says St. Austin, this might seem as if he did lend his enemy weapons to overcome him. But what the Apostle said of himself through the grace of Christ, Christ might more truly say of himself by his own power, When I am weak I am strong, as will appear in the sequel. This is premised, to let you know, that the present matter which I have in hand consists herein, to unfold with what outward infirmity Christ addressed himself to this terrible bickering with the Devil; and that in four Points: 1. From the place, it was the Wilderness; the greater solitude, the more dangerous the temptation. 2. He was fasting; the more feeble the body, the more flat and dull are the operations of the Spirits. 3. The continuance of the fasting was as great as ever was read, Forty days and forty nights; a large while to get nothing for bodily sustenance. 4. The consequent is, he was afterwards an hungry: Though the divine power had underpropt nature a long time, yet nature was now left to itself, still the more advantage for the enemy.
This Wilderness, whatsoever it was for a barren desolate place, it deserves my labor to survey it, because it received this guest for forty days, our Lord and Savior. A worthless, and therefore a nameless piece of ground, unprofitable to bring store into the Barn, but profitable to yield some pious meditations. Some devout Christians who loved to visit those Countries and Regions, which Christ frequented, have given it a name, which it holds in Cosmographical descriptions to this day, Quarantena, quaranta implying no more than Christ's continuance there for forty days. There are other small Desarts in Palestine, the Desert of Maon, the Desert of Ziph, the Desert of Judea, this was distinguished from all these by being called the great Desert, where there was no habitation. They that retired thither, unless they brought their provision, must resolve to keep a fast. At this day our faithful relators say, nothing grows upon the ground but a few Dates, and Christ was there at such a time when the trees did bear nothing. His Baptism at Jordan is calculated to fall out at Twelfth-tide, and his departure into the Wilderness being next after his Baptism, those forty days were in the Months of January and February, when, above all other seasons, the Trees of the field, a few excepted, have not so much as Leaves to hang upon them. The Devil could not have offered the first temptation in the Cities, or Villages, or in the fruitful grounds neighbouring to any habitation, a bare Heath, that yielded nothing but Flints, did occasion this Proposition, Command that these stones be made bread.
The first emergent observation from hence is noted in the interlineal gloss, Tunc maxim instat Diabolus ad tentandum, cum viderit solitarios; The Adversary doth especially take hold of a man to tempt him upon a melancholy solitariness; beware of those sad oppressing thoughts, which a man loves to keep to himself alone; take advise of them, whose judgment can direct you, and whose charity can comfort you. When you feel instigations of iniquity grow upon you, the chief thing which Satan desires is▪ that you would smother them, and not reveal them, that you would break off conversation from all your friends, and avoid Society. He knows his advantages, when he gets a man into a wilderness, I mean, a melancholy retirement. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , says Euripides; one hand can fight but weakly. As a Dear that is struck knows by instinct what a danger it is to be single, and therefore will heard himself if he can; so do not separate yourself from the face of men upon temptation, that is the way to betray your soul, but unite your force against the Tempter by mixing yourself with good men, and praise the Lord, as David said, in the great Congregation. Quae facilitas? Quae securitas? Quae jucunditas est habere cum quo aeque audeas loqui ut tibi? As I read it in a certain work that carries St. Austin's name; What felicity? What security? What hearts ease it is to talk to another with as good confidence as thou wouldst unto thyself? Two are better than one, as Solomon shows it in a threefold similitude: 1. If one fall dangerously into a pit, a good companion will lend him his hand to raise him; he that is alone hath not another to help him up. 2. If two lie together they have heat, St. Jerome makes an Allegory of it between David and Abisag, Frigidiores ferventiorum societate in virtute incalescent; They that are colder in Piety will be warmed by their Society that are more fervent in charity. 3. If one prevail against one, two shall help him; united force is a strong safeguard, 2 Sam. x. 11. Joab divided the battle between him and Abishai his brother. Says Joab to Abishai, If the Syrians be too strong for me, then thou shalt help me; but if the children of Ammon be too strong for thee, then I will help thee. Thus judgment will order the battle in our spiritual warfare, I will not trust to myself alone, lest temptation press me sore, but I will have succors at need. We are not like Eagles, which never fly in a flush, but one by one, because no bird is so strong that it can prey upon it: But we are compared to sheep, that must be led to the Pastures in a flock, and take heed of straggling.
This Doctrine is no way repugnant to that which I shall deliver by and by, that it is profitable to abandon the contagion of the wicked world: neither do I disrespect those tractates of the Fathers, which extol the benefit, that some have found, by retiring for a while in to an Hermitage, or the Cell of an Anchorite. A few examples of some admirable men, that have sped well in that fortune, ought not to be a leading Card, that it should be a condition of life to which weak ones should be exhorted. What was good in a very few, in times past, says one with a good distinction, it was Secundum preeminentiam gratiae, non secundum congruentiam naturae; It sorted well with the pre-eminence of the extraordinary grace which they had, but it was not agreeable to the ordinary complexion of human nature. A man sequestered into a Desert and Solitude, as he cannot always have his affections intent upon Prayer, and divine Meditations, so his vacant idle hours, which must be very many, will proffer him innumerable imaginations of the worst condition. Grant, says Chrysologus, that for many hours he think of God, yet for almost as many he hath nothing to think of but himself, Si nihil excellens in seipso reperit, tristatur de seipso cogitando; when he finds little good in himself worth his cogitations, it will put a discomfortable sadness into his mind to offend the soul: But I could retort in this Argument as Tully did in such another case; says he to some Idolaters, who defended the Deity of Neptune, you say many sea-men came safe to Land that called upon Neptune, but let me see how many were drowned for all their calling upon Neptune. So some have made a Catalogue of those good despisers of the world, that served God excellently in the solitary Wilderness: But let me see all their names that took the Hermits Staff and Weeds upon them, and fell into a remediless melancholy, and lost their wits, and their comfort with the delusions of the Devil. It may do well with some for a while, it is not to be continued, if they fancy strange Apparitions to themselves, and have hard struggling with the Tempter. Aristotle could say, a man that is evil is not fit company for himself. Some strong working fancies, though they could retire where the Devil could not find them out, yet they carry their own Tempter about them, they carry fire within them, therefore it is not solitude that will help such, but a commerce with wise and discreet men, and such stirring negotiations as will scarce give their fancy leave to be vacant to itself, and to be idle. Bonaventure hath one distinction full of good matter: Mala est solitudo per inopiam dilectionis, misera per defectum consolationis, honesta per quietem contemplationis; To eschew Society for want of brotherly love and charity is very wicked: To eschew Society for want of comfort in Christ is very miserable; but to take up a solitary retirement sometimes for quiet contemplation is holy and delectable. But he that knows himself obnoxious to temptations, and affects solitude and privateness, is Daemon solitarius, as Aquinas calls a Monk that goes abroad without his Mate, and his infirmity is much too weak to encounter that great Adversary, who sought out Christ in the Wilderness.
And now I turn to another inquiry, why Christ abode in the Wilderness, and [ 1] at this time, so immediately before he did first preach the Gospel in Judea? The time was now expired of his subjection to his Parents, and it could be no way convenient he should return unto them again, when he was now to begin the work of him that sent him, to preach the kingdom of heaven throughout all Judea. But had he entered into any City or Village, his enemies would have said his message was devised by men, some subtle conspiracy had set him on, therefore the furthest [ 2] from all suspicion was to sequester his Person into the Wilderness. Moses was forty days in the Mount alone before he brought the Tables from God. John the Baptist had abandoned the company of men, and lived many years in uncouth places almost like a Savage before he preached the doctrine of repentance. A new form of Religion came forth with more admiration from those unknown solitudes, and [ 3] would be more steadily believed that it came from God, and not from man. And it is not a thing to be attributed to the blind chance of fortune, but to the wisest providence of God, that Christ was in solitudine, disparted from all other company, and left to himself alone, when he fought our battles against the Adversary of our Salvation. I have trodden the Wine-press alone, and of the people there was none with me, Isa. lxiii. 3. In his Transfiguration Moses and Elias did appear in glory with him, but shortly they vanished, and he was left alone. In his Agony in the Garden he went up to pray apart by himself; Peter, James, and John, that were with him were so heavy that they could not choose but sleep: And well might they sleep for anything they had to do in that business, the whole work of the Mediatorship lay only upon his shoulders; neither Angel, nor Saint could sustain the lest part to be his Coadjutor. This was a conflict in a place which none frequented, that it might [ 4] be said of some of his noble works, all shall believe, yet none did see. Singulariter inspectorem, adjutoremque Deum volunt habere haec certamina, says St. Cyprian; None but God must behold him, none but God did assist him in this Duel. There are some works of Christ, say the Schoolmen, which are not necessary to be seen of all, yet it was expedient that some witnesses should be present at them, because they were done to make the World believe in him; and himself said, The works which I do openly, they testify of me. Those Miracles which did demonstrate his power had ever some Spectators; some saw how he gave up the Ghost upon the Cross, how he was risen from the dead, how he ascended into heaven; therefore St. Luke says, he received his Gospel from them that were eye-witnesses of the Word. But there are things, which especially tend to Moral Doctrine and Instruction, as that he prayed all night alone, that he was tempted alone in the Wilderness, and fasted forty days, it concerned not such things to be seen of any, but to be barely related by the Evangelists, that we might believe them, and use them to the information of our life upon fit occasion. But I reduce all to this Head, The solitude of the Wilderness did best befit him in this work, because he began, continued, and ended the work of the Mediatorship by himself, and by no other assistance.
Where some of the Fathers have given Christ's Humility large praise, to banish himself as it were for a time into the Wilderness, I will follow them likewise in their observation. The immediate Miracle which went before was the descending [ 5] of the Holy Ghost upon him in the shape of a Dove, and the voice from heaven, This is my beloved Son; If Christ would have prosecuted the honor which the people would have given him upon these wonderful Signs, he might have rode to Jerusalem in triumph, and been received with an universal admiration; but he chose rather [ 6] to decline the Exclamations and Hosanna's of the City, and retired into the Wilderness. Adam in horto superbus, Christus in deserto humilis; Much better it is to be humble with Christ in a barren Desert, than to be proud with Adam in a delicious Paradise. This miserable solitude was not capable of the provocations of those sins that Eden was; this was a Land of penury, where Satan was overcome; that was a garden of abundance, where he got the victory. And by how much that Paradise [ 7] was too glorious a dwelling for the Sons of men, therefore they were driven out: So this desolate Wilderness was too mean a receptacle for the Son of God; for St. Mark debaseth it with this description, That the wild beasts frequented it. And perchance the tamer, and more tractable company than the Scribes and Pharisees, and the Rulers of the People; those beasts proved more innocent and harmless to him, and at last he was fain to tell the men of the Land, that they were metamorphosed into beasts, and into the worst kind of all, O ye Generations of vipers, &c. Son of man, says God to Ezekil, thou dwellest among Scorpions: But Son of God thou didst die, and wert crucified among Scorpions; he changed for the worser company when he came from the beasts in the champion fields to the Pharisees in Jerusalem. But to what a diminution of his excellency did Christ descend? To what a low fall from that glory which was due unto him? To be cast out from among the company of Angels, into a desert to be a companion of beasts. He, before whom thousand thousands are said to minister, and ten thousand thousands are said to stand before him, Dan. vii. 10. Instead of this Royal Train, none but the savage cattle compass him round about. His humility is the expiation of our pride, he consorts with beasts that we may have fellowship with Angels; He lives peaceably with Wolves and Tigers, to obtain grace for us, through the merit of his obedience, that our brutish affections may be subject to reason, and to the Law of God. So St. Jerome made me bold with this Allegory, Tunc bestiae nobiscum sunt, cum caro non concupiscit adversus spiritum; Then we and the beasts live quietly together, when the Flesh doth not covet against the Spirit.
None of these descants, which I have drawn from the best antiquity, upon [ 8] Christ's removing into the Wilderness, but were fit to be noted. I have my own share to cast in, that herein Christ was a lively exhibition of the Type of the Scape Goat, of which you shall read a strange Ceremony, Lev. xvi. 20. The High Priest was not to come at all times into the holy place within the Vail, no more than once a year. First, he was to offer a Bullock for a sin-offering for himself; then he was to present two Kids of the Goats before the Lord at the door of the Tabernacle, according as the lot fell, the one Goat was slain, and his blood sprinkled within the Vail: As for the other, this Ceremony was appointed; Aaron put both his hands upon the head of the live Goat, and did confess all the iniquities of the children of Israel over him, and did put them upon the head of the Goat; and the Goat did bear away their Iniquities into a Land not inhabited, and he was let go into the Wilderness. The Learned in their best conjectures do expound it after this sort in an Allegory: By the Goat which was slain and sacrificed they understand the Human Nature of Christ, (for Christ suffered only in his flesh:) By the Scape-goat they understand his Divine Nature, (for according to his Divinity he could not die, he could not be crucified) and yet it was the infinite value of that nature that bore away all our Iniquities: For as God could not suffer for sin, so man alone could not satisfy for sin. Thus by very good Analogy our Savior Christ is the Scape-goat, upon whose head we laid all our sins. And the better to give light to this Mystery, he was really sent into the Wilderness, in my Text, to put us in mind, that the Goat which was sent away into a Land uninhabited was a Type of him; and therefore St. Mark speaks of a violent expulsion, Expulit eum in desertum; The Spirit did drive him into the Wilderness.
A little spoken concerning these Typical shadows will quickly rise to enough. I come to that Doctrine, which is aptest to conclude the first general part of my Text, how Christ made himself often a stranger to this world, and shown it by retiring unto unfrequented places; Quasi in mundo extra mundum ageret, says one, as if he minded another world much more when he lived in this. His flesh was not ill pampered, or fatned for sin, and yet he fasted: His integrity was untaintable, ill examples could not seduce him, the viciousness of the age could not infect him, yet he drew back sometimes from those scandalous contagions, as if he had said to one of us, or to everyone of us, give thy soul such respite sometimes, that it may abandon all earthly cares for a time, and have leisure to talk with God. As Christ invites his Church from the empestring of multitudes of people, and secular businesses, Come my beloved, let us go forth into the field, let us lodge in the Villages. Cant. vii. 11. We had need of longer Vacations than Terms, more rest to serve God than stirring days to enrich ourselves; that we may ask God forgiveness at leisure for the sins which we did commit in our business. Come ye apart into a desert place, and rest awhile, says our Savior to his Disciples, Mar. vi. 31. All cannot receive this saying, you will say, all have not the way and opportunity to retire themselves bodily from the conflux of the world; but there is a way for every man that his mind may pluck itself out of the throng, and adhere to God. So St. Cyprian bears off all objections from this exhortation, Etsi omnes diversorium non excipiat loci, animi tamen omnino necessaria est solitudo; All men cannot cast the World behind their back, and go alone into remote places, but it is necessary for the heart of every man to say often, my God and I am alone together, I am solitary with him often in the midst of troubles.
God hath made man a sociable creature, if the contagion of the world doth not make him unsociable. Who can live with patience or comfort, where he sees the Creator of Heaven and Earth dishonored daily? No reverence in the lips of children, but swearing and profanation: No faithfulness in men's words, but deceit and guile: The trust of Guardians turned to supplantation; the league of Friendship turned to treachery; the bond of Wedlock so impiously, so often wronged in Adultery. Whom can the Living trust for righteous dealing? Whom can the dying trust for an upright Executor? What good man doth not feel the passions of Lot within himself at the recital of these things? His soul vext with the filthy conversation of the Sodomites, and therefore from thence he was glad to fly, and retire to Zoar. This made the Prophet Jeremy complain, O ye that dwell in Moab, leave the Cities and dwell in the Rock, Chap. xlviii. 28. Fuge seculi mare, & naufragium non timebis, says St. Ambrose; Sail away into some little streams, and leave that Ocean of ungodliness, which is in the most frequented places, and ye shall not fear Shipwrack. St. Basil extols it in the height of Gorgias the Martyr his praise, that he left his native soil, and all society, and made the desolate woods his habitation. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , he detested the buyers and sellers; the forswearers and liars. I told you before that Eremitical solitariness was much in danger of temptation, but one answers it, better fight single against Satan, one to one in the Wilderness, than fight against Satan and wicked men, who will entice you to sin as fast as Satan. Therefore let them take out my Lesson, and eschew the frequent Societies of populous places, who find the Contagion of pestilent multitudes rub some rust upon them, and infect their integrity. It is not the place, but the corruptions of the place, which the meditations of the Fathers gathered out of my Text, do lead you to abandon; therefore the words of our Savior shall stand in the last place to shut up this Point, Joh. xvii. 15. I pray not that thou shouldst take them, that is the Disciples, out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil. So much for the circumstance of the place.
My Sermon thus far hath been upon the Wilderness; against the handling of the next Point it is fit to ask, What went we forth into the Wilderness to see? Why, to behold Christ fasting before he fought with the Devil: Though that is not all he did there, (for there is much more behind) yet this is enough to make it worth our labor, Esurivit panis, sicut defecit via, sicut vulnerata est sanitas, sicut mortua est vita, says St. Austin; By the same wonderful dispensation that the way of life was weary, health itself was wounded, life itself died, by the same dispensation the bread of life fasted, and was afterwards an hungry. A sanctified fast hath two religious ends in it, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , as St. Paul says, 1. To chastise our own body, and to take revenge upon it. 2. To put it into a good temperature for the minds sake. Neither of these causes could be set before Christ in this long fast, for his Flesh had never rebelled against the Spirit; neither was there any inordinateness in his natural constitution which could be corrected by temperance. Some therefore hold an opinion that Christ went not into the Wilderness to fast, that fell out so indeed, and was a necessary accessory, because there was no food to be had. You know the people ran after Christ into these spacious fields to hear Christ preach, and not to fast with him, yet there they continued three days fasting, and had nothing to eat, until four thousands were fed miraculously with five loaves, and two fishes. In like manner Moses went not up into the Mount to fast, but to receive the Tables: and truly this opinion is not to be contemned; for St. Mark remembers that he was in the Wilderness tempted of Satan, and quite omits his fasting. This is pressed the more zealously by some, and with sufficient probability, to show upon what weak foundation they build, who fetch it from hence, that Christ observed the fast of forty days, on purpose to constitute a yearly Lent in the Church forever, or a Quadragesimal fast, for if it were by accident that Christ fasted here, that can be no constitution of his intendment. Nor indeed did he appoint any such thing, as I will show in just time. Yet I concur not in the main sentence with those Authors; for it seems to me, this was purposed by Christ to go into the Desert and spend his time in Prayer and Fasting: Now was the conflict at hand, now was the first institution and undertaking of the greatest matter in the world, the salvation of mankind, and could not begin with a better Praeludium than an extraordinary Fast. In this I will be directed by the interlineal gloss, Jejunat ut tentetur, tentatur quia jejunat; He did fast that he might provoke temptations against himself, and he did provoke temptations because he fasted.
For the better explication of the causes why he was pleased to fast, I will lay down the distinction of Christ's will, as I find it considered in the School three ways: Sicut ratio est unibilis corpori, sicut est omnino conformis Deitati, & ration membrorum. 1. The soul is united to the body, and for that union sake the will desireth the good of the whole man. 2. God and man were united in Christ into one person, therefore his will was subject in all things to the divine Law and pleasure. 3. He was the head of the body, which is the Church, and therefore his will did graciously affect the prosperity of his members. In these three respects there are so many causes of moment why Jesus fasted: 1. Because it is profitable to conserve the whole man against temptations. 2. It was the divine pleasure to provoke the Devil to give the onset, by macerating and enfeebling his body, and Satan's foil was the greater, because he was the challenger. 3. He had regard unto his members, to avenge himself on the Tempter by the victory of temperance, who brought sin into the world through our first Parents by the sin of Gluttony. Other causes I leave behind for refutation.
First, I say, it gives us a lesson to fast, and withdraw the ordinary sustenance from the body, when we perceive ourselves in likelihood to encounter some temptation. King Jehoshaphat had a great battle to fight with the Ammonites, and before the conflict he set himself to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a Fast throughout all Judah, 2 Chron. xx. 3. So did Esther when she undertook the great danger to go in to Ahasuerus against the Law, to intercede for the deliverance of the whole Nation of the Jews, she would not venture upon so great a peril unless all the Jews would fast three whole days before the Lord, and neither eat nor drink, Est. iv. 16. What should I say more out of many examples? Ezra suspecting what great opposition he should find to re-edify the Temple of the Lord, he proclaimed a Fast, that all the People might afflict themselves before God, Ezra viii. 21. And St. Basil, a great Practiser of this doctrine, as any was in the world, which is better than a Teacher, bid all his Scholars take it upon his word, that Sobriety was the best Antidote in the world to expel the venom of the Devil. This holy Father was so good a spiritual Physician, that the Church had not a better since his time, I think, to prescribe a good diet for the soul. Adam went out of Paradise with a full stomach, poor Lazarus went fasting to heaven, scarce fraught with the crumbs of the rich man's Table. Moses did fast upon Sinah for forty days when he talked with God: But the People, who in the mean time did commit Idolatry, sat down to eat, and to drink, and rose up to play. Daniel refused the meat and drink allowed him from the Kings Table, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , to honor his temperance and fasting, the very Lions, into whose Den he was cast, were taught to fast and hunger, and not to eat up Daniel, who was thrown before them to be a prey unto their teeth. Thus far he.
If you ask me wherein we honor God, in what part it may be referred to his glory, to deny all manner of sustenance to ourselves for a time. Beloved, thus it stands, that we acknowledge ourselves in fact, not in word only, to be unworthy of all those good gifts, with which he hath replenished the earth, that we deserve no longer to be fed with his liberality, and so we humble ourselves before Almighty God, confessing we deserve not, with the little Whelps, to pick up the crumbs under his Table; and desiring that they who deject themselves under his mighty power, may not be trodden down by Satan and his Ministers of perdition. Moreover, take away Oil from the Lamp, and the flame will go out by little and little; and surely hunger and thirst, and afflicting the body, joined with prayer and repentance, shall obtain this mercy, that the violence of Voluptuousness and Luxury shall be abated in our sinful flesh. Not that a Fast is acceptable to God of itself, without other good offices of Religion, but being well accompanied with Prayer and godly sorrow (for as the Apostle speaketh, Bodily exercise profiteth nothing of itself; ) it disposeth and inclineth us to mortification and chastity. In times of old, abstinence and fasting more than ordinary were held a special part of their praise that did practice them. It is the character of Anna, the religious widow, how she continued in prayers and fastings, Luk. ii. And our Savior himself teacheth how to fast, and proposeth a reward to them that did it well, and not for ostentation and hypocrisy, Mat. 6. There Christ taught it, and here he did it; this is the true demonstration of the Spirit, Cum dixit quid faciendum sit, probat faciendo. As the old bird will fly forth sometimes, not upon necessity, but to teach her young ones to fly after: So Christ fasted in the Wilderness, not to gather strength by that means in his own person against the Devil, but to teach his young ones as well as they could to fly, or flutter after him, and he tells us there is a kind of Devil which will not be cast out but by prayer and fasting, Mar. ix. 29. If any man put in a cross, saying, How can Fasting have a defensive force in it against temptation, since almost all Writers say upon weighty considerations, Christ had not been tempted but that he fasted? I answer, Our case and this are far unlike: Satan durst not assail Christ so long as he doubted him to be the eternal Son of God, but upon his fasting and hunger he took boldness to join issue with him, because he falsely collected from those signs he was but the Son of man. Neither do I deliver unto you, that he will not tempt such as fast and pray, (for I have taught already how envy drives him on, that where there is abundance of sanctity, there will be abundance of temptation) but I do deliver, that Fasting and Prayer shall have prosperous success to overcome temptations. So Aquinas, Si non profuit jejunium ut non tenteris, tamen profuit ut à tentationibus non vincaris. I do not promise you peace from temptations, though you fast often religiously before God, but I promise you victory.
The second part of Christ's will and pleasure in this Fast is ration membrorum, to do our human nature honor by temperance, for the reproach which it suffered by intemperance, and to triumph over the Devil upon the same conditions that he overcame our first Parents. There was the First Adam, here was the Second; there was a Paradise where the first man had store of all things, here was a Wilderness where Christ had nothing: that disobedient Son of God eat of that which was forbidden, this most obedient Son of God refrained from those things which were lawful. Adam did not eat for need, but for his lust, he was not an hungry: Christ was so abstinent that he would not satisfy necessity, for he was an hungry. By gluttony we lost our honor, and fell low to be compared to the beasts that perish: But here is one that continued and maintained sharp hunger against all temptations, who in the beginning of this story kept company with the beasts, but in the end was ministered unto by Angels. Uno tanto jejunio universam Johannes abstinentiam superavit, says Cajetan; This one fast, and his constant continuance in it, mauger the devises of the old Serpent, did exceed all the abstinence of John the Baptist, who for many years fed upon Locusts and wild honey. For John was abstinent to himself, Christ fasted to bring us out of the thralldom of Satan, and for the expiation of our Gluttony. Quaelibet actio Christi fuit nobis meritoria, passio ejus & meritoria & satisfactoria, it is commonly said of the School Divines. The Death and Passion of Christ did both merit for us before God's mercy, and satisfy for us before his justice; but every part of Christ's obedience, as this fasting among the rest was meritorious for his members. Such wits as delighted in holy ingenuity, have applied the several parts of Christ's merit, and sufferance, and passion unto us in the notions of Physic and Chirurgery. Curavit non per diaetam cum jejunavit; per electuarium, quando corpus & sanguinem dedit in coenâ discipulis, &c. He took upon him to cure us by the prescription of a diet when he fasted: By an Electuary, when he gave his body and blood to his Disciples in his last Supper: By a Sweat when drops of blood trickled from him in the Garden: By an Emplaster, when his face was smeared with Spittle: By a bitter potion, when he drank Vinegar upon the Cross: By cutting and lancination, when his feet and hands were pierced with nails, and his side with a Spear. There was no disease of sin whereof we were not sick, there was no kind of cure to be invented which was not practiced to restore us. And so much for this exercise of fasting, as he made use of it for the members of his body.
Thirdly, As his will was always subject to his Father, according to that Prayer in the Garden, not my will, but thy will be done, so the Divine Nature did suggest a reason to his Human Nature to fast, to put a fallacy upon Satan, that he might peremptorily conclude Christ was no more than a man, who suffered hunger, and sought for somewhat to eat in the Wilderness and was not replenished. As if a Lion should put on the skin of a silly sheep, to draw on a ravening Wolf to set upon him, and thereupon devour the Wolf who came to be the devourer: So our Savior walked about the Desert in the person of a silly man half famished, the Tempter was in great suspense, and knew not what to think of him, and stood ambiguously in this Dilemma says St. Chrysostom: He hath fasted forty days and eat nothing, I dare not meddle with him, this is no man; but after forty days ended he is hungry, and wants food, I will give him the onset, this is no God. So Jesus grazing about like a poor sheep that could find nothing but stones for fodder, the Wolf grins upon him, but he proved to be the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Impar congressus Achilli; and the wild beast of the Forest was repelled by him that led captivity captive; the more infirmity pretended on Christ's part, the more glorious the victory. Fames Domini pia fraus est, ne caveat tentare Diabolus, says Bonaventure; This fast and hunger was a pious fraud or stratagem laid by God to draw on Satan to tempt his Lord and Maker, and so prove him guilty of a most foul rebellion. St. Austin doth so receive this opinion, that he rejects all others; it may be said, says he, that fasting came after Baptism, even as a good diet is to be kept after health recovered for fear of a relapse, but that is impertinent, Illius causa jejunii non Jordanis tinctio, sed Diaboli tentatio fuit; This fast had no reference to the dipping in Jordan, but to cozen Satan, and make him rashly adventure upon the ensuing temptation. So St. Ambrose likewise, and almost all the best Authors of the best antiquity. It is a fatal requital upon some busy wits, that as they are sharp and sore deceivers, so when their own turn comes about, they are as sorrily deceived. Marcus Crassus was one of the cunningst flatterers that ever was; and yet no man so easily, and so notoriously gull'd with flattery. So Satan is the grand Impostor of mankind, and yet this grand Imposture was thrust upon him, to enter combat with Christ, who is invincible and omnipotent. And let cheaters and cunning practicers beware, that their own shot rebound not upon themselves. God hath a retorsion in store, a fallere fallentem, which will fall upon them in spite of subtlety and circumspection. They think they work closely, and no harm shall happen unto them, I am sure that David prophesies how certainly they shall be stew'd in their own sauce, they are taken in the crafty wiliness that they imagined for others, in the same net that they hid privily is their foot taken. The ways of a Serpent are slippery, and treachery shall be tript up with treachery: The Lord hath spoken it, and the Lord hath done it.
I have set these three reasons why Christ fasted in the foremost rank, because they are warrantable. Brenz, I think, mistook when he interserted this for a reason: It is a great anxiety, or a great sickness which keeps a man from his meat for a few days; so, as he thought, the temptations of Christ were so violent and horrible, that for forty days he eat nothing. I suppose, when I come to show, at what time the Devil began his work, I shall make it appear, that no temptation was offered to Christ until the fortieth day. Howsoever the Author took his aim amiss; for although we read that our Savior endured a most violent conflict in the garden, when he sweat drops of blood in his Prayer, the case is not the same in this conflict with the Devil. In the Garden he stood before his Father, representing himself not as the beloved Son in whom the Father was well pleased, but under the imputation and malediction of all our sins, and he struggled with his Fathers justice, that he might bear our iniquities in his own body upon the cross. This was a wrestling indeed to put all his strength and powers in a heat, and all his spirits in an agony. But to beat down the suggestions of the evil one it put him to no sollicitousness, or anxiety, never was victory got so easily. None of those poisoned darts could stick in him, this was the Lamb without spot that could commit no sin, but came to take away the sins of the world.
This error is easily put off, the next opinion is maintained more pertinaciously, that this fasting was part of that obedience, by which he merited exaltation of his Father, and in like manner the penance of fasting is meritorious to the obedient members of his Church. Thus they. I will examine this strictly by several pieces. First, to enter into a tedious disputation how, or what Christ did merit by his obedience, cannot consist with the time, and it doth not piece well with my Text. But take a little knowledge of it by this similitude; the Angels of heaven have a double operation, one that they stand always before the face of our Father which is in heaven, another that they are ministering Spirits, and do good offices to the Church upon earth; as they do always stand before God, so they must needs be completely blessed, having the substance of their reward, but as they assist and help us, so they have some kind of increase, or as it is called accidental addition to their reward: So Christ in the union of the two natures could not but ever behold the divine glory, so that the fruition of that eternal happiness was ever conjoined to him; but inasmuch as the dispensation of our redemption was his continual exercise upon earth, so that deserved him some additions to his glory, in the glorification of the sensible part of man's nature, the speedy resurrection of the body, his speedy ascension or exaltation into heaven, and as some do add, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow; or if so be these things were so intrinsical to the hypostatical union, that they could not be parted from it, yet thus it may be well agreed, Mereri est de debito facere majus debitum; These things accrued to Christ meritoriously, because that which was due by the hypostatical union was made more due by his humiliation. I add secondly, that the great abstinence and sweet temperance of our Savior's life was part of his humiliation, but for the forty days wherein he fasted I concur with them that maintain this was no part of his abstinence. What abstinence could there be, says one, in this miraculous act, when all that while he had no provocation in his appetite to long for meats, no more than the Angels have who taste no corruptible things? The faculties of nutrition called for no sustenance. God repressed the appetite, says Cajetan, from feeling the provocations of hunger and thirst, even as he suppressed the devouring quality of the fire, that it should not burn the three constant Saints that were cast into it.
I make it my third reply, though Christ's obedience in his humiliation was meritorious, yet there is so much disparity between his obedience and ours, that men can take no measure of it. I do not only mean in this difference, which is so well known, that he did exactly fulfil all the Law of God, and for our part in many things we sin all. There is another thing which puts as wide a difference between us, Christ obeyed his Father because he would, we because we must; He obeyed without any terror pronounced to compel him, we obey under the commination of hell fire, if we be slack in our duty. We are servants commanded to our task, he did the works of him that sent him, as a Prince receives the dignity of a province from his Father, to administer it to his honor, and if he had refused it, it could not turn to his prejudice; therefore both Angels and men owe as much obedience for their own part as they can perform; but the dispensation of Christ's humility was not imposed, but freely undertaken, and by that virtue and title meritorious. In the last place therefore, all the effects of God's will are pleasing unto him to be done, and so it is pleasing unto God to have us humble our souls sometimes before him with fasting and mourning, but a good duty is wronged when the more rigid defenders of merit of condignity say, that there is an equivalency and proportion between the studious keeping of some appointed Fasts with other voluntary afflictions, and the reward of eternal life. Is it not enough to say that our imperfect obedience pleaseth God, and shall be rewarded according to his own promise and free grace? Will it not satisfy us to go to heaven by mere mercy, and undeserved liberality? Beware to gild your works by the name of merit (why should the ungodly make such proud boasting?) Dip them in the name of free remission of sins by the blood of Jesus Christ, and God will give glory to us his adopted Sons because we give all glory to the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father. AMEN.
THE FIFTH SERMON UPON Our Savior's Tentation.
MAT. iv. 2.
And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterwards an hungry.
L ET it not trouble my Auditors, because I shall speak at this time of that Fast which our Savior kept forty days; this is not the proper season, I confess; and if any man be ready to say, as one Philosopher in Laertius quipt another, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , Why do you handle a matter that behooves us in a time that doth not behove it? My answer is, If I picked out this for a single Text at this time, my oversight were unpardonable; but you know I take the parts of this Story in order, and must follow my subject as it happeneth to be discuss'd. Indeed our Church, which doth always follow the steps of pure Antiquity, hath appointed this portion of Gospel to be read yearly upon the first day of Lent. For the memory of any great thing is better preserved, when it is remembered solemnly about the time that it happened. So God said to the Children of Israel upon their coming out of Pharaohs bondage, Remember this day continually in your generations, Exod. xiv. 3. And upon a great memorandum thus the Lord said to Ezekiel, Son of man write the name of the day, of this same day, the King of Babylon set his face against Jerusalem this same day, Ezek. xiv. 3. And many have cited Nazianzen when they commend a word spoken in season, Ex verbo illud potissimum quod est tempori convenientissimum; That which best suits the time is best spoken out of the Scripture. I subscribe to this wise direction; and I do not violate it now out of neglect or contempt, but upon apparent necessity; that I may leave no gaps in this Scripture, which I handle about our Savior's conflict with Satan, but fill up the exposition of every verse as I proceed, with such meditations as I am able to afford.
I come therefore to the remainder of this verse, which is due unto you to be explained, and it consists in two things: The continuance of our Savior's fast, and the consequent. The continuance that he fasted forty days and forty nights; the consequent, that he was afterwards an hungry, The one is a supernatural elevation, the other is a natural condition. In the first he shown his divine virtue, in the second his human infirmity. Upon the former the Devil feared he was the Son of God; upon the latter he persuaded himself he was no more than a mortal man. Whether is more strange, that having flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bone, he should make his appetite forget to ask for sustenance so long? Or being the Son of God, who filleth every living thing with food, himself should hunger and want? In the first we admire him, Be thou exalted Lord in thine own strength; In the second we love him, because he was made poor that we might be made rich; in both we magnify him. Attend to these particulars, and first that he had fasted forty days.
Forty days and forty nights, not now a day, and then a day, at several times, for that is easy and ordinary, but all at once without intermission. The Grammarians have meddled with this Point to confirm it by this rule, Jejunavit quadraginta dies non diebus, quia tempus continuum fere quarto casu ponitur. Nouns of time expressed plurally in the Accusative case do betoken such a distance of time continued, and not interrupted. Therefore Christ observed a continuation of fast from the first day to the fortieth; no man, I think would understand it otherwise; and if any were so captious St. Luke would not suffer him, for his words are, in those days he eat nothing, Luk. iv. 2. There is no efficacy in numbers said the wiser Philosophers, and very truly; but some numbers are apt to enforce a reverent esteem towards them, by considering miraculous occurrencies which fell out in holy Scripture in such and such a number. So Tolet in a sort magnifies this number of forty days, that it is numerus mysteriis significandis accommodatus, a number coincident very often to the greatest mysteries, and noblest works of God. Forty days it rained upon the earth in the days of Noah, when God cleansed the great sins of the world by water. Caleb and Joshua returned from searching of the Land of Canaan after forty days, Num. xiii. 26. Christ continued upon earth forty days among his Disciples after he was risen from the dead before he ascended into heaven. The Ninevites were forewarned that they should be consumed after forty days if they did not repent, and turn unto the Lord. Thus it came to pass, for what reason we cannot tell, but God knows why his Providence doth so exactly, and so often keep that measure of time in great signs and wonders; Non potest fortuito fieri, quod tam saepe sit, says one, whom I never find superstitious in numbers. It falls out too often to be called contingent, and the oftener it falls out, the more to be attended.
Yet it is the safest conclusion, and hath least impertinency in it to say, that Moses fasted forty days at the institution of the Law, and Elias as long at the restauration of the Law, so Christ kept even with them, and fasted just as long as they before the publication of the Gospel. As Jonas was three days and three nights in the belly of the Whale, so shall also the Son of man be in the lower parts of the earth, as if Christ had been studious, or rather would teach us to be studious to keep the pattern, as near as we can, of the good Generations that went before us. I would be sorry such ignorance should be in any here to make a question, whether Christ could have continued to fast not only for the space of so many days, but all his life, without the corruptible aliments of meats and drinks. But if he had produced his abstinence from all food longer than Moses and Elias for the space of many months, or many years, it would have been incredible to many, that he had been perfect man of the substance of his Mother, and Heresies would have had strong grounds for delusions, that he had not a fleshly, but a celestial body. How much better did his humility condescend to the likeness of his own Prophets? And because he came but in the shape of a servant, he would not exceed all example, or outgo the miraculous fast of his fellow-servants; he would have the world take knowledge of him to be a mighty Prophet, at least no ways inferior to the best that ever lived, therefore he fasted forty days and forty nights like Moses and Elias. But in this the one is as divers from the other, and as much excels the other as can be imagined; Moses and Elias were preserved by God's mighty arm, that their natural complexion might subsist without sustenance, but Christ's virtue was in himself, and of himself, absolute, independent; they were kept safe by an external power, Christ by his own Godhead, and by no derivative virtue.
Such glorious miracles are rather to be adored with admiration than to be followed with imperfect imitation. And because a large field of controversy lies before me in this Point touching the observation of our Lenten temperance for forty days, whether that ordinance were regulated by the example of Christ. I will lay down three several heads of opinions in their order, and bring you by degrees, I hope, to the truth of the controversy. 1. I will inquire whether Christ did intend to ordain a prefixed time of abstinence in the Church for forty days by his example. 2. If that be not so sound to hold, yet whether it were an Apostolical Tradition. 3. If that can neither be proved, yet whether it be a laudable Ecclesiastical Constitution. To the question of the first enquiry many of the greatest Doctors in the Church of Rome answer, that the observance of the Quadragesimal Fast, binds all Christians from our Savior's example. So Cardinal Bellarmine, Non verbis praescripsit hoc jejunium Christus, sed exemplo praecepit; we have no such ordinance in express words throughout all the Scripture to say, do thus, but it is an ordinance from Christ's example. And Maldonado the Jesuit, though Lent be not founded upon Christ's Commandment, yet it is founded upon his Example, and that is enough to say it leans upon divine Authority. Beloved, it behooves not us to lay burdens upon men's shoulders which God himself hath not imposed. Whatsoever is commended to us for decorum and order sake, we do it for conscience sake; but whatsoever is no more but indifferent in itself, and is obtruded upon us, sub opinione necessitatis, as necessary and irrefragable from divine Authority, when it is not so, we reject it. Stand fast in the liberty wherewith God hath made you free, says St. Paul, Gal. v. 1. So St. Cyprian in the like case, opposing them that invented traditions of their own, and called them God's Ordinances, Periculosum est in divinis rebus ut quis cedat jure suo; It is of a dangerous consequent to yield anything to be a divine injunction which is not.
Therefore advising upon these rules, I give a flat Negative upon the first question, the Quadragesimal Fast is not necessarily to be observed from Christ's example. The old rule of divinity is a sure one, Imitamur in moralibus, admiramur in miraculosis; in miraculous works we adore Christ with admiration, in Moral Institutions we will follow him with imitation. He anointed the eyes of the blind man with spittle and clay, contraries to the cure according to nature, and therefore we magnify him; is it not a most Heterogeneal Mimick from hence to make a mixture of spittle and oil to an Infant baptized, as if the Apostles had wanted ceremony to the Sacrament, when they baptized with nothing but water? If any man love me he will keep my sayings, says our Lord; but he never added, If any man love me he will tie himself to my example where I never prescribed him to follow me. For my part that which happened to St. Peter works exceedingly upon my understanding in this case; when he saw his Master walk upon the Sea as upon a solid Pavement, he desired he might do the like, and to let him know such miracles are to be looked upon with the veneration of faith, he sunk into the waters, and was in peril of his life. To stop every cranny of objection that can be made, I read that the examples of Christ's mighty works are sometimes pressed upon us to be drawn into an Analogical imitation, 1 Pet. ii. 21. Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example that ye should follow his steps. How is that? Being reviled he reviled not again, when he suffered he threatened not; and as he died for us, so we should offer ourselves up to him as spiritual Sacrifices; and as he died and rose again the third day, so we should die unto sin, and rise again unto newness of life. From hence, says Maldonado, this is right our case; for we take not upon us to eat nothing for forty days as Christ did, but we keep a canonical temperance for forty days. Imitamur quia sequimur, quamvis non assequimur; This is no more than the Analogical imitation. Those other imitations of some similitude have a precept in the Book of God, and this hath none: Therefore let them teach, that their imitation, being not Scripture proof, is but a voluntary, and a diaphorous Constitution of the Church, and the Church of England will never be their adversary. For so it is frequent in the Writings of good Antiquity, to allege Christ's example for their observance of the forty days fast, not according to the Roman Tenet at this day, that Christ established it necessarily in all places from that time forth unto the end of the world, but they alleged Christ's example to countenance their voluntary and Ecclesiastical Sanctions.
What can be more direct on my side than St. Chrysostom, Homil. 47. in Mat. Christ did not say, as I fasted forty days, so do ye follow me in fasting, but learn of me because I am meek and lowly, and ye shall find rest for your souls. Surely, if he had given any particular order for fasting in the New Testament, the most proper time to have settled it had been when the people told him, the Disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast often, but thine do not: But then he utters no more but this in general, When the Bridegroom is taken from them they shall fast; Here is no direction for time or manner, all that is left free to the sound discretion and occasions of the Church. They do but dally with Scripture that collect from the forenamed words when the Bridegroom is taken from them they shall fast, therefore the sixth day of the week in every week must be a day of fasting and abstinence, because on the sixth day of the week the Bridegroom was taken from them, and died upon the Cross. What more insolid than this? For by collections from Irenaeus, and others, it is evident, that even the Roman Churches did ceremoniously keep the fast of Satterday long before they observed a portional abstinence upon the sixth day of the week. But let me not make you lose the head of my argument by this Parenthesis, that Christ being demanded why his Disciples did not fast, he leaves an indefinite answer with them, The days will come, when the Bridegroom is taken from them that they shall fast, but for allotting any particular time not a tittle of Commandment. Let this be added, that when the ancient Fathers call their quadragesimal Constitution an imitation of our Lord's fast (there is no hurt in the Word, if it mean not that his example was a necessary pattern to be followed) I say, they allege also for the convenient observing of that institution, how Moses and Elias fasted forty days in the old Law; and indeed, they might lay hold upon one as well as upon another, for Christ made his Fast even with theirs, to show that the Gospel which he brought did not dissent from the Law and Prophets. But the illation is good in this wise, as the Jews were held to no necessary imitation of Moses and Elias, no more is there any necessary obligation to hold the Christians that they should punctually observe a portional abstinence, according to the time of forty days, that our Savior fasted.
So I have put off the first conclusion with good confirmation, I think, on our part. Now I have to do with another sort, that hold our Lenten temperance to be an Apostolical tradition; hereby they burden the consciences of men that a partial fast of forty days is not merely derived unto us by Human Laws, but by Apostolical Authority, a Sanction which came from men immediately inspired from God, and therefore to be strictly held as any other Dictate of the holy Gospel. And they that break Lent are condemned as Prevaricators of the divine Law. But these opinionists are of two sorts, the one Sect far more severe and unreasonable than the other, who not only defend that a convenient abstinence is to be kept for forty days by Apostolical Authority, but that even the abstinence from the flesh of beasts for that time, and changing our diet into Fish and other Viands is by Apostolic command. But their reasons are far worse than their opinion, making a distinction as if one meat were more sanctified than another, whereas all things are alike unpolluted to him that eats God's Creatures with thanksgiving, and a resolved conscience, and with temperance: But thus the Friers flash out, that the Seas were never cursed for the sin of man, the earth was cursed for his sin, therefore the food of the Sea is better allotted for times of sorrow and repentance, than what? Than the flesh of the Cattle, yea, by this reason than the herbs of the Garden, yet the feeding upon herbs and roots was ever accounted the clearer abstinence. Such another imagination is this, that Christ fed upon Fish after his Resurrection, so he did upon an honey Comb, and yet the Bees gather the fruits of their labors from the flowers of the field, and not from the weeds of the water. Such another rotten Argument is this, that all Flesh was destroyed in God's anger in the Deluge, but Fishes were saved alive in the water. You need require from me no better confutation of this cause than the naming of these reasons, for who will not resolutely say that such frippery as this never came from Apostolical judgment. The Decretals of the Pope, (a work wherein I am sure the Church of Rome can have no wrong done it) but those Decretals attribute unto Telesphorus, that he was the first that commanded the Clergy for seven weeks before Easter to refrain from the food of flesh, this is but barely said, and not proved; but if it were proved, all the Apostles were dead before Telesphorus was born, therefore no way probable to be an Apostolic direction. And indeed I find certain glances in the Fathers, that the Clergy did admit of this institution before the rest of the people did, which makes it more firm, that it was Abstinentia cibi secundum Ecclesiae regulam, an abstinence from some kind of food by a mere Ecclesiastical imposition to try their obedience. Surely they may name ten places out of antiquity before they allege one to the purpose, that is for the commutation of their ordinary diet from flesh into fish. Some quote Serapion in Socrates, that entertained a Guest hard before Easter, and being destituted of all provision except a piece of dried salted flesh, he set that before the stranger, who scrupulously refused it, and said he would not break Lent because he was a Christian; Serapion answers, To the clean all things are clean, eat it because you are a Christian. From hence I collect, 1. That Lent was kept by a Canonical Ordinance two hundred years after Christ in Serapions days. 2. That to abstain from flesh was the Civil Law of the time as it is with us, but so easily dispensable, that you may conclude, it was no Apostolical Ordinance. I will adjoin one place of St. Austin most falsely quoted by Salmeron the Jesuit, 1 Tim. iv. St. Paul says it was the Doctrine of Devils to forbid meats; Faustus the Manichean infers, then Moses in the Old Law wrote the Doctrine of Devils: No says St. Austin, Quadragesima â vobis sine vino & carnibus, non superstitious sed divinâ lege servatur. 1. You Manichaeans abstain both from wine and flesh in Lent. 2. You observe it as from a Divine Law, that was the error of the Manicheans, to receive it as from divine Law, it was not the Tenet of the Orthodox Christians; the Church of Rome itself will stand for me in this quotation, because no man is restrained from drinking of wine during that fast, no not by their Injunctions. So I have enough discovered their groundless opinion who take upon them to defend that abstinence from flesh in Lent is an Apostolical Constitution.
Therefore some state the matter in these words, that although the prohibition of some meats for forty days be corroberated by Ecclesiastical Law and Custom, yet a strict and severe abstinence for so long was delivered from the Apostles to the Church to be kept forever. So Cardinal Bellarmine quotes St. Ambrose, but in those Writings whereof he is not certainly the Author. But St. Jerome is truly alleged I confess in saying it was the Apostles tradition; but the testimony of any Author, though a very reverend one, is little available, since no man said so before him from the Apostles age to his own, which is a long distance of four hundred years. A late Writer delivers his mind very roundly, that the Fathers took many things out of adulterated books, as Pastors Visions, Clemens Constitutions, the Gospel of Nicodemus, and such like, and called these Apostolical traditions. Indeed, nothing lets but the Fathers might be deceived by the Writings of Impostors. This answer I am sure deserves not to displease, that many things were called Apostolical Traditions which came not from any of the Twelve, but from the Scholars of the Apostles. So Tertullian calls Luke, not an Apostle, but an Apostolical man; and says Maldonado the Jesuit, those were called Apostolical men, Qui quamvis Christum non audivissent, audivissent Apostolos; Who, though they had not heard Christ, had heard his Apostles. Now it is a main odds whether the Apostles or their Scholars transfused such Traditions to the next generations, Intererit multum Davus ne loquatur an Herus. I will balance St. Jerome with Cassianus, and St. Austin, men of the same Age. Says Cassianus; while the Apostles lived upon the earth men were obedient to refrain from surfeit and luxury, all this while no times of fast were kept, because the whole life of Christians was addicted to Parsimony and moderation: But when these good men were gone to God, and temperance began to be forgotten, then was the fast of Lent bidden, and appointed to draw men to compunction and repentance. Cardinal Bellarmine hath no answer to this Authority, but Cassian knew not what he said. But St. Austin gave a studied and meditated answer to Casulanus, Quibus diebus jejunandum sit aut non jejunandum Apostolos non constituisse; There is a contradictory to St. Jerome. The Apostles did not constitute when we should fast, and when we should not. Alas what an impertinent labor it is to heap quotations that there was a Quadragesimal observance anciently in the Church, when they do not touch the question, whether it were by Apostolical Tradition. The Nicene Council doth appoint indeed that every year in all places two Provincial Synods should be held, one before the Quadragesima, that men might serve God the better when strifes were appeased. This is all, and Cyril of Jerusalem says a great deal less. Thou that loyterest all the year long, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , wilt thou not bestow forty days time in Prayer? There is mention of Prayer, nothing of Fast, and not one word of a Fast derived from Apostolical Tradition.
And of all other Arguments this will never be satisfied. Lent was never kept uniformly in the former Ages, but after most different fashions almost in all the Churches of the world. In the beginning the term of forty days was so far from being usually kept, that it had no other name but Jejunium Paschale, the fast that went before Easter. Well, the name of Quadragesima grew on to be commonly received, but the Moon is not so variable as the several customs of that Fast, all Authors, who have wrote of this subject, toss that place of Irenaeus up and down; Some keep strictly but one days fast for the devout penance of that time, some two days, some more, some forty; and some when they fast account twelve hours unto the day, some four and twenty. Is this like to be an Apostolic Precept where there was no unity in the observation? Among those that would tie themselves to forty days observation, the greater part of old did exempt the Sundays. Dominico jejunium celebrare nefas esse ducimus, says Tertullian; It is a great crime to keep a fast upon the Lord's day. So Hilary, to name no more, Constitutum est ne diebus Dominicis jejunetur; It is appointed there should no Fasts be held upon any of the Lord's days. Now for an exact complement of the number of forty, others did borrow four days from the precedent week; and Gregory, six hundred years after Christ, was the first that settled the time how Lent should begin from Ashwednesday; they that continued their fast all that week, and all the space till Easter day called it Quinquagesima, the Monks brought it to a Sexagesima, the Friers to a Septuagesima, almost forty days doubled, is it likely, if the Apostles had set things in order the bounds at all times should be thus removed? Shall I give you full measure in two things, lest this discourse; which is laborious to me, be tedious to you? First, The Disciples of our Lord did not design out the limits or manner of this Fast, for nobody knew when to begin their Lent till the Council of Nice had settled that discord, because the exact time for the observation of Easter-day was uncertain till that Synod had concluded it. All the while the Church was unresolved of the one, without question it was unresolved of the other. Secondly, For the most part these two Constitutions are yoked together to keep a solemn abstinence in Lent, and that none should fast upon any day of the week between Easter and Pentecost: The same obedience was required to both, both accounted equally laudable, but as ceremonies of decency and no necessity: So alterable that the one is quite forgot, therefore I conclude the other can be no Apostolical Tradition.
You have heard me discover their error, that maintained the yearly observation of a Quadragesimal Fast to be necessarily grounded either upon Christ's example, or upon Apostolical Tradition, now I will proceed to show, that it is an Ecclesiastical Constitution, a lawful Constitution, and a laudable. There are many that speak very reverendly of this time of moderation in diet, and yet they will acknowledge that the Heretics, who are named from Montanus, did first begin it; and that the Orthodox Church did follow them in that, lest they should seem to be outgone in the thing of good praise, and austerity by the enemies of the Gospel. This were no discredit to a good Institution, for to imitate the Heathen in that which is just and honest cannot choose but bring forth a good effect. We may borrow a Jewel from an Egyptian, but not an Idol. Howsoever the original is not well known, but this is well known, that the custom hath been transmitted to us from generation to generation. Both by the Greek and Latin Churches without contradiction for the space of 1300 years. And St. Austin said in his time, Ecclesiae consuetudo roboravit; The practice of the Church hath confirmed at what time of the year all men should unanimously keep this Fast. And let me tell you, we do not keep the same time that our Savior did. The learnedst Calculators of time ascribe his Baptism to the sixth of January, immediately he began his fast which continued to the middle of February: For the most part we begin our Lent where he ended, but many times later; Ecclesiae consuetudo roboravit; that is the answer, the custom of the Church hath so confirmed it. So the observation hath descended to us from hand to hand, and our own Church treading in the steps of pure antiquity hath admitted it. Beloved, the days of the year, which are of especial observance, are either days of joy, or days of fasting and sorrow. The chief day of joy is that wherein Christ rose from the dead, and it appears that the Apostles appointed it for the solemnity of Christian meetings weekly, and called it the Lord's day; but God left it indifferent to the Church to appoint themselves their own days of fasting, and mourning, and repentance, for we owe all our gladness to God, but we owe all our griefs and sorrow to ourselves. And indeed Fasts are things to be dispensed with to sundry persons, and upon divers occasions, therefore Almighty God left these things to the discretion of Authority in particular places.
A great tyranny is exercised in this matter, when the Roman Church, which is but one particular of the whole, will prescribe Laws of abstinence from meats to all other Churches. The lesser Churches indeed, for uniformity sake, were wont to have a respectful regard to the Ceremonies and Adiaphorous Rites which Imperial Cities; and Patriarchal Sees did follow. Not, I say, as if the richer and mightier Church did; or could bind the smaller to the prestation of her customs, but because in things honest, and without exception it was meet that the noblest places should be rather imitated than descend to imitate others. But O the advantages that Pride will take! courtesy in a while was turned to necessity, and the Roman Bishops did dare to challenge all Churches for Heretical that do not profess uniformity with them in all Fasts and Ceremonies. But all the Inke in Italy is not enough to blot out the Canon of the Council of Chalcedon, consisting of six hundred Bishops, that the Churches of Constantinople, because the Emperors kept their chief Palace there, should have, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 equal Privileges with the Church of Rome. And it is a Story known to all Divines, when Monacha, St. Austin's Mother, came to Milan, St. Ambrose kept Institutions of Fasts divers from the Church of Rome, and was never quarrelled for it. Look among all the reasons of the Fathers, which persuaded the fast of forty days, I find not one that says itwas expedient to be kept, because so it seemed good to the Roman Pontifical Authority. The Institution depends upon a custom received from one to another in particular Churches.
A Constitution it is then propagated unto us from age to age. The next quaere is, whether it be a lawful Constitution? That is, whether the Church hath power to make Laws for appointed times and qualities of Fasting? That the Magistrate may bid a Fast according to the convenience of some seasonable occasion it finds no contradiction, unless, perhaps, some Anabaptistical fury doth oppose it. So did Ezra, so did Esther, so did the King of Nineveh, so says Joel, Proclaime a Fast, call a solemn assembly; and in all occasions of woe and calamity to forget our food for a time, and to intend nothing but spiritual exercise, I know no Christian Church in the world but doth practice it. But admit there be no extraordinary woe apparently like to fall upon us, either by Sword, Famine, or Pestilence, may not certain times and revolutions of the year challenge an abstinence and parsimony in our diet, if the Church will have it so, as Friday in every week, some Saints Eves in every Month, the Ember Fast, as we call it, every Quarter, the Lenten abstinence and prohibition of some meats every year? I have said enough before the Primitive Antiquity was very constant and regular in these observations de facto; now I will refer you to the proofs of holy Scripture, that it may be done de jure. Zach. vii. 5. There it appears that for the space of seventy years, while the Children of Israel were in Captivity, in all that space, as the year turned about, they did solemnize Fasts in the Fifth and in the Seventh Month, not by God's Law, (we find no such Precept) but by their own Ecclesiastical Ordinances. When ye fasted in the fifth and seventh month, even those seventy years, did ye at all fast unto me, even unto me? Their hypocrisy is blamed, because they did not humble themselves before the Lord as they ought, but the Ordinance was irreprovable.
The next stone that I will move is that Text, Luk. v. 33. The Disciples of John complain that they fasted, and the Pharisees fasted, but the Disciples of Christ did not fast. What Fast is this which they object unto him? For it can be no Statute of God's Laws. Who would have kept it sooner than Christ and his Disciples? For he came to fulfil the Law, and not to break it. It could be no Fast of private devotion, for it had been most injurious to cavil with Christ for pretermitting their private Fasts; it follows therefore that they were Fasts publicly kept, enacted by the Synagogue, observed not only by the Pharisees, but by godly men, Johns Disciples. Only Christ did dispense with his train, because the Children of the Bridechamber were not to mourn while the Bridegroom was with them, and to show that he was above the Synagogue. Moreover, it is very strongly probable, that all the Jews were bound by their own rules, and by no other, to fast upon every Sabbath until the sixth hour of the day Josephus, their own Historian, testifies so much; the Gentiles, among whom they lived, did deride them for it; and the Scripture gives us some light for it, Neh. viii. 3. The ears of all the people were attentive to the Law from morning until noon-day, and at the twelfth verse, they were dismissed, and went to meat. But our judicious Hooker argues very learnedly upon Mat. xii. 1. Christ walking through the fields the Disciples plucked the Ears of Corn: The Pharisees challenge them for doing that which was not lawful to be done on the Sabbath day. The bodily labor to rub the Corn was no such great trespass that it should offend them; wherefore nothing could displease them but the breaking of the Fast before the sixth hour; and our Savior's answer doth apologize not for their bodily labor, not for making bold with another man's Corn, (it was no theft, for the detriment was not valuable) but he defends them that they satisfied their hunger by the example of David, when he eat the holy bread. And thus the Scripture approves the Doctrine which I teach, that it is lawful for the Supreme Magistrate of the Church to proclaim observations, both for convenient seasons, and for ordinary times of fasting. I find indeed that one, Arius by name, cried out for Christian liberty, and pretended that Canonical Fasts were unjust thralldom; but I find that the Church remitted none of her Discipline for all his clamour, and he was counted but an Heretic for his labor.
But is it lawful not only to ordain a time of abstinence, but also during that space to turn our ordinary food into another species and quality? It is. For that you may see what power the Church hath, the first Canon that ever the Apostles made in the face of a public Council was an ordination to inhibit the Brethren from meats offered to Idols, and from blood, and from things strangled. A temporary Canon it was to last for the space, while the Jews took offense at the Gentiles converted unto the Faith, but after the scandal was taken away the force of the Canon ceased, witness one Text for all, 1 Cor. viii. 8. for in all appearance the worst of those meats forbidden was that which was offered to Idols; yet St. Paul, when he wrote that Epistle, says, it was lawful for a man to eat that meat offered to an Idol, so he did not eat it with the conscience of an Idol. Well then, the Church did frame an injunction to make all men refrain from certain meats for a time. As for this exception against some kind of diet for forty days, which is called the quality of Fasting, to say the troth, the conscionable Writers of the Church of Rome will confess it is nothing less than a Fast properly taken. Be it so that Flesh yields the most copious nourishment, yet the greater sort of men are better pleased with the delicacies of Fish, choice of Wines, suckets, and Electuaries; it can be no Fast to replenish a man's self with these, not only for necessity, but even to flatter his Palate, and to give his appetite satiety, therefore even these things, according to the intent of the Church, should be taken with greater parsimony and abstinence than we do at other times. And then I will show, it was impossible for the Church to take better care for the avoidance of gluttony than to appoint order for the quality of diet; for no proportion can be set down in a general form and direction for the special quantity what every man should take for the space of forty days; for a little pittance is a great meal to some queasy stomachs, and a great allowance again would be too little to keep others in health, who are of strong and sudden concoction. Consider this reason, and it will satisfy you for what cause your diet is moderated for forty days in the quality of our meat, and not in the quantity. Daniel fasted but half a Lent, but three weeks, and he inhibited himself for that space not to taste of Flesh or Wine: In those days I Daniel was mourning three full weeks, I eat no pleasant bread, neither came Flesh or Wine into my mouth, neither did I anoint myself at all till three whole weeks were fulfilled, Dan. x. 2. Howsoever, to close this Point, obedience single by itself is better than fasting; for fasting is reduced to the virtue of temperance, obedience to the virtue of justice, giving honor to whom honor belongeth, and of all the cardinal virtues Justice is the fairest, and the principal.
A lawful Constitution I have proved it, but because many things are lawful which are not expedient, it remains to be sifted, and nothing remains but it, whether it be a laudable appointment. Certainly, it is laudable in a very great degree, both to rectify our appetite in the concupiscible, and in the irascible part: In the concupiscible, to abate our inclination toward the pleasure of our Palate, and make us abstinent; In the irascible, to curb our lawless stubbornness, and make us obedient. Seneca, an Heathen, did perceive there was some defect in their Government, that the people were not prohibited some kind of food for a time, to make them know their subjection to the Magistrate, Nullis animalibus nisi ex fastidio pax est, says he. The Creatures can never be at rest and quiet any time of the year, when the Laws will have it so, but when we loath them; and we aim at temperance by our own palate and stomach, not by the Law of the Magistrate. Remember how directly you tread in the steps of Adam, and follow the first sin that ever he committed, if you set more by the pleasure of your Palate than by the duty of obedience. St. Austin conceived this benefit would redound by that partial abstinence, Qui ista vitamus quae aliquando licent, imprimis peccata fugimus quae omnino non licent; We that for a while deny ourselves those things which are lawful, will be the better prepared to shun iniquity, which is altogether unlawful. I omit one thing, (for in this copious subject I must make an Epitome, not a full Treatise) I omit, I say, the enumeration of all Political Emoluments, those are in every man's tongue and knowledge, to maintain Fishing, to enrich the employment of Mariners, to inure us to hardness in the times of peace, if Wars should exercise us abroad, or at home, to spare every young thing in the Spring of the year, and to preserve the multiplication of the beasts of the field, these things are commonly dictated from the bar of the Civil Governor: But will you know the spiritual advantages? Why, we appease God's wrath by humiliation, and dejecting ourselves for the sins of the whole year; which we committed before. It is a special time destined to sweep away the filth of the whole house; for as in Moses Law, Lev. xvi. 30. All the people once a year did afflict themselves for expiation of their common sins, so it is good to have a public time allotted, to deprecate the Divine 〈1 page duplicate〉 〈1 page duplicate〉 Wrath, that it may not fall upon the whole Nation. Again, all the Writers of all Ages cannot be deceived; and all confess with one mouth, that a moderation of diet, especially continued for some considerable time of temperance, must needs abate the violence of voluptuousness and luxury. And because we see it in the examples of Peter, and Daniel, and many more in Scripture, that Fasting doth elevate the mind, and make it more capable of spiritual thoughts, therefore it is well ordained, that the most notable Fast in the year should go before the great Anniversary Communion of Easter. I know some will say, divers of the Reformed Churches have disused this ceremony, to profess an abstinence in the quality of their meats for forty days. They can best answer for themselves, and do answer, that their people, if they retained that use, would be seduced with Superstition: But for our parts we have more cause to fear a pound of Gluttony than a dram of Superstition; and more reason they should conform to us than we to them, since some of their own do ingenuously confess of our Divines, that we are Purioris antiquitatis retentissimi; most retentive of purer antiquity. In a word, there is no necessity by God's Word to keep a Lent of forty days, therefore those Churches are not condemnable: But because the use hath been propagated to us in so many Ages, both in the Greek and Latin Churches, I presume to say that our custom is more justifiable, and more laudable.
One thing for the last relish, the Quadragesimal Fast is grounded upon long custom of time, upon Ecclesiastical Constitution, and Political Confirmation, therefore it is not like one of the arch Precepts of the Law fac, & vives, do this, and live; man was made for those virtues of Faith and Charity, to which God's Laws do immutably bind him, but the Lent was made for man, and not man for it. The Libertine is too scandalous that tusheth altogether at this Ordinance; but they that terrify weak consciences, that do not punctually observed it at all times, are too rigorous, that I may not say too Pharisaical, who lay such heavy burdens upon men's shoulders under pain of damnation. The Laws of the King which belong to the especial good of the Kingdom, or for advancement of piety, cannot be broken without manifest incurring of a great offense before God; but the Laws of Fasts concern not the main substance of Religion, or the necessary welfare of the Commonwealth, therefore, according to the indulgence of the Supreme Magistrate, it may well be thought, that they are not rigorously to be understood, but civilly, that is, we are to give heed unto them, that we do not break them with open contempt or scandal, or out of the humor of a Libertine, or any such neglect, for then it is sin unto thee. But where such food cannot sufficiently be supplied, or if infirmity grow upon us, or where some honest or reasonable cause shall be offered, neither contempt being in our hearts, nor scandal given by our neglect, they that do contrary are not held neglecters of their duty, or contemners of the Magistrate. As upon Feast -days we dispense with men's necessities for bodily labor, so upon Fasts respect is had to our weakness, lest we should suffer harm in doing good.
Thus much hath been spoken upon the continuance of Christ's Fast forty days and forty nights, I will be brief in the consequent, He was afterwards an hungry. The Devil is exceeding subtle, and works much upon advantage; no greater advantage for his temptations than penury and necessity: Yet Christ would hunger, when he was to be tempted, as who should say, I am in that plunge, which the Devil wisheth, and yet let him do his worst. I know not how Satan came by the knowledge that he was an hungry, unless Christ discovered himself by searching for food, and making enquiry where it might be expected, and finding none. This is manifest, his appetite was destitute, and in some distress; all the time of the forty days going before he was sustained by the divine virtue that he should not hunger, afterwards he suffered nature to have its course. This only may be thought a little strange, that after Moses and Elias had ended their fast of forty days, we do not read in Scripture that they were an hungry; why should the Holy Ghost leave it written, that there was more infirmity in Christ than there was in them? Because no more is spoken of Moses and Elias, than to show how the divine virtue did manifest itself upon them; but our Savior did exhibit a proof that the virtue of God was in him, and the infirmity of man.
Only remember that Christ had satiety and hunger in his own power to manifest them when he pleased; Qui Dominus est totius terrae, Dominus est naturae suae, says St. Austin; He that was Lord of the whole Earth, know it, and mistrust it not, he was Lord also of his own nature; it was in his power to lay down his life when he pleased, therefore it must be in his power to hunger when he pleased. Hunger and thirst, pain and sorrow were as naturally in Christ as they are in us, but with two marks of difference: First, Christus non contraxit defectus naturae sed assumpsit; Christ took such defects upon him, he yielded to undergo them, but we do merit and contract them; to deserve infirmity, and to assume infirmity are two divers things. Secondly, Impotencies of nature do command us, we cannot command them. If we have watched and fasted any long time, sleep and meat are tribute which nature calls for, and must be paid; but our Savior had them under subjection quantum, quando, quomodo, to take them not out of necessity, but voluntarily, in no measure but when he pleased, at no time but when he thought fit, in all respects according to his own wisdom and appointment. Now to that God who was made poor that we might be made rich, that was made exceeding sorrowful that we might rejoice, that did hunger and thirst that we might be filled with good things, be Praise and Honor. AMEN.
THE SIXTH SERMON UPON Our Savior's Tentation.
MAT. iv. 3.
And when the Tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God command that these stones be made bread.
O F four things hard to be understood, one, says Solomon, is the way of a Serpent upon a stone or rock. Via colubrina super petram. Proverbs for the most part have some dark allusion in them, rather than a literal meaning, and so hath this. Satan is the Serpent, Christ is the Stone, Tentation is the way of the Serpent, and nothing more obscure than the way of that Serpents temptation upon this elect precious Stone in Zion, the chief Stone in the corner, as the Prophets call him. Concerning this Verse, which I have read, it is debated by learned Authors what fetch the Tempter had. Some say his scope was to satisfy his own distrust, and to find out whether Christ were the very Son of God; he found no sin in our Savior, he heard the voice from Heaven at his Baptism, he had learnt what John the Baptist testified of him, behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world; this was enough to convince all the Furies of Hell, and to put it out of doubt; yet Satan was extreme unwilling to be persuaded of that, which would put him to so much sorrow, and for all this he is no further than if; If thou be the Son of God. Some say the Devils drift was to draw Christ to offend God with some capital iniquity, and if this project could possibly have succeeded the redemption of mankind had been utterly marred, for no Sacrifice would serve our turn, but a Lamb without spot, that is undefiled.
Surely, some sin or other was part of the intendment in this first Tentation, because it is evident he counseled Christ to sin against heaven in the Tentations following. Therefore in this first onset the Devil was not only an Explorator to sent it out what Christ was, but an evil Counselor to allure him furthermore to disobedience. Exploravit ut tentaret, tentavit ut exploraret, says St. Ambrose. Yet I must resolve you, before I do anything, what sin it was which the wicked one did drive at. Many are so curious to suit this Tentation in every Point with the temptation of our first Parents (and what need that be so exactly sought for?) That they give sentence it was the sin of Gluttony, and nothing else to which he was prompted. Yes surely, to some other sin as well as that, and much rather than that, for if Satan had required no more than to make Christ dissolve his fast, and eat, he would have brought him bread, and not put him to it to make bread of stones. Moreover, there is small likelihood that one should sin much in Gluttony by eating bread. And especially I would have you mark, that Christ answered the Devil out of the Scripture, not by a Text which should exhort to sobriety, but to rely upon God's providence in all things; Man liveth not by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Wherefore if Gluttony be one skirt of the matter, yet certainly, according to Christ's answer, the sin mainly proposed was to make him distrust in God, and to satisfy his wants by unlawful means.
And thus I have premised for your better understanding the drift of this wicked Fiend, what mischief he would draw on by the words of my Text. If he had other secret policies, which we cannot reach, peradventure he had, then let us say with the Spirit of God, We have not known the depth of Satan, Rev. ii. 24. But now I have made you able to conceive how my Text may be broken into conspicuous parts. The Tempter came to Christ for two ends, Ut cognosceret, ut corrumperet: 1. To know Christ. 2. To Corrupt him. To corrupt him two ways; principally, by Infidelity; consequently, by Gluttony. In the first we must watch Satan as a spy, and beside the words of espial two circumstances shall be inquired into: 1. When Satan made this address. 2. How he made this address, in what shape and fashion. For the tempter came; coming is a bodily motion; And he said unto him, speaking proceeds from corporeal instruments. These little circumstances have some weight in them, but the burden of the first part comes after; where Satan plays the spy and explorator, If thou be the Son of God, &c.
And when the Tempter came to him, is it not very natural to move this question upon those words, When the tempter came to him? Whether all the days that he continued in the Wilderness Satan was at his right hand to make him stumble at some stone of offense, or whether the wicked Fiend approached not unto him till the forty days were ended, there is the scruple. And perhaps there is truth on both sides, so I would judge it, if it were left to my arbitration. What more plain than St. Luke's narration? He was led by the Spirit into the Wilderness, being forty days tempted of the Devil. So that it will agree with the Scripture, that there were certain light skirmishes of Tentations between Christ and the Adversary all the while he was in the Desert, but such faint assaults, that they deserved not the relation. Origen is of this judgment, and this is his saying, As the World could not hold the Books if all things were written which Christ did, so the World could not hold the Books if all his Tentations were recorded. Why not altogether probable, that he passed not one day in the Wilderness without some Diabolical affront, since his whole life was full of those hellish indignities? Witness that praise which he gives to his Disciples, Luk. xxii. 28. You are they that have continued with me in my temptations, his temptations were continual. This is one part of Christ's Passions and sufferings, which the World takes little notice of, the impostures of the Devil doing him molestation without ceasing. Well might the Greek Liturgy urge him in their Prayers with these words, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , By thine unknown torments sweet Jesu have mercy upon us. Gall and Vinegar were not so untastful to his mouth as the offensive objections of Satan did grate upon his ear. Nec in aurem tantûm Christi injectae sunt, sed penetrarunt cor ipsum, & perfoderunt animum ejus, says a late one. Nor were these Tentations harsh only to the ear, but their heinousness pierced his very heart. Conceive thus much, if a solacism rudely spoken is able to move the patience of a polite Grammarian, then Blasphemy continually spoken by the wicked Angel must needs be a great contristation to the Son of God. This is pleaded on the one side, that in all the forty days some petty light temptations were darted by the Devil against our Savior: And on the other side, again this is truth and reason, the red Dragon did not begin his main battle, nor did he propound those three infamous desperate Propositions upon which we entreat, till the forty days were ended. So I will allege St. Cyprian to balance the Authority of Origen; Postquam quadraginta dierum abstinentiam consummavit accessit Diabolus; After our Lord had gone through the abstinence of forty days, then the Tempter came unto him. It is as fairly seen as the light, that there was no ground for the first temptation till the long fast was absolved, and Christ's hunger did press him sore, and call for sustenance, then he provokes him to contrive for bread by any means in the world rather than want it. Away with this tedious fasting, and satiate your appetite. Signum panis petit, qui signum jejunii pertimescit, the eloquence of Chrysologus. Satan could not abide this miracle of fasting, he had rather see him juggle for bread. So the first question when the evil one came is now no more doubtful unto you. He came oftentimes before with some weak provocations, but at the end of forty days he put his Plough as deep as he could into the ground, and harrowed up all the subtleties of Hell to prevail against him that is invincible.
Now for the shape and figure in which the Tempter came to our Savior, that is another circumstance of inquiry, and very briefly upon it. In his own substance, you know Satan is a Spirit, and this was the Arch-spirit of infernal darkness, (for surely, says St. Austin, the Regiment of Hell would trust no inferior Goblin to try masteries with the mighty Son of God. ) Yet there is no likelihood that he did offer himself now unto Christ in his invisible spiritual nature. Undoubtedly he did exhibit himself in an human body like some charitable good man, that came to condole with our Savior, and was right sorry he had no sustenance. I commend his ingenuity that first observed it, how Satan did clamber higher and higher in every Tentation, and still changed his outward appearance to do the feat the better. First, as a man, he did commiserate human wants and necessities, and insinuates the sin of Infidelity. Secondly, He transformed himself into an Angel of light, and urgeth him to presumption and vain-glory. In the last bout, having now deceived himself that Christ was not the eternal Son of God, he did truly manifest the Luciferian, audaciousness and impudency, and in his own shape he provokes the most holy one of God to most horrid Idolatry. The Thief comes not but to steal, says our Gospel; and the Impostor of the world comes not but to deceive; Totus quantus est mendacium est; Every thing in him was lying, and fiction, and delusion: The promises which he made were lying promises, the pity which he pretended was lying pity, the Scripture which he quoted, as he quoted it, was lying Scripture, and the shape in which he came was a lying shape. Alas that man, who was made an excellent Creature after the Image of God, should degenerate so much in all goodness, that his shape should grow a fit coverture to cloak the cozenage of the Devil. Might not this be the art of this our capital enemy? That since God cursed the Serpent, because the Devil came in his shape to tempt our first Parents; so the Lord might be exasperated to curse mankind, because his only Son was tempted to wickedness in the shape of man. Beloved, this inference from hence may be our instruction; We know not in what form or transmutation Satan will come to seduce our souls, therefore be wise as Serpents. And since our own shape is not free from his Impostures, as it follows in the next verse, Mat. x. 17. Beware of men. Take heed that beauty tempt you not to wantonness: it is but dirt well tempered with blood. Let not pleasing words steal away your heart from the truth, that is but to dance when the Devil Pipes. Every man that speaks contrary to faith and holiness his mouth is become the instrument wherein Satan speaks his Oracles. And so much for that circumstance, how he disguised himself in the shape of man.
After this I will lay hold of one of the main parts of the Text. The Tempter had two ends in casting forth these words before our Savior, Ut cognosceret incognitum, ut corrumperet cognitum; First, to learn more perfectly that which he terribly mistrusted; whether Christ were the Son of God; and upon this do depend some remarkable observations. And to make this Point profitable I begin from hence, that Satan had not yet perfectly discovered who our Savior was, and therefore he wrought in this Mine in the first Tentation to find it out. Many of the Fathers do acknowledge that this was part of his business; and St. Hillary doth well express it, Erat Diabolo de metu suspicio, non de suspicione cognitio; The Devil being rather suspicious, than clearly resolved, took this course to find it out, whether this were the Seed of the woman that should bruise the Serpents head. And mark how his words lie to this purpose: He did not say, since you are hungry bid this stone be made bread, that were to entice him to bare gluttony; Nor thus, you are the Son of God; bid this stone be made bread, but in a doubting irony, If thou be the Son of God. It is strange that a Spirit so subtle by nature, so intellectual, so vigilant to espy Christ in all his ways, so able to understand Jacob's Prophesy, that the Scepter was departed from Judah, and therefore Shiloh should come, should hold off so long, and doubt of that which was clearly manifest. There were some Divines in St. Jerome's time that took a middle way for their opinion, how the Inferior Furies of Hell did long before believe and tremble, and had cast it up for certain that this was the Son of God; but Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils, was so much blinded with malice more than all the rest, that he continued a time after all the rest in ignorance, and Infidelity. But this is merely their own fancy without the suffrage of the holy Scripture. The darkness of unbelief was upon all the Angels of disobedience; for Satan, who is the accuser of the brethren, and no doubt complaineth to God, that many of his Elect are slow of belief, hath this malicious slander retorted upon himself, that after many evident tokens, better known to him, than to weak men, he faltred and doubted shamefully, as my Text says, If thou be the Son of God. This was like for like repaid unto him, he blinds our hearts with sundry fallacies, that we should not know good from evil; and God blinded his understanding, that he should not discern truth from falsehood. And that you may not marvel that the Tempter should be dubitative in so manifest a case, and knew not which way to incline, recollect one thing that did infatuate him, he being the Angel of pride, and judging all events according to the pitch of his own ambition, how could it come into his mind that the Son of God would debase himself with so much humility? And so it hath fared ever since those days, nothing hath so much hardened their hearts, who are slow of belief, as pride and insolency; For it is the arrogant conceit we have of our own wit which hinders sometimes that we do not subject reason to the knowledge of God.
I must be careful in this Point that one place of Scripture may not make another obscure, especially to leave no shadow of contradiction between one Text and another. In this business Jesus fasting forty days in the Wilderness the Devil seems not to understand perfectly that he was Christ the Lord. In the Synagogue of Capernaum, Luk. iv. 34. the unclean Spirit calls him by his name, and title, and Country, Jesus of Nazareth, I know thee who thou art, the holy one of God. So intelligent above any of the Jews, that he is the first that ever called him a Nazarite. Nor do I reckon upon these words so much that the evil Spirit said, I know thee who thou art, for Satan is a liar, and must not be credited when he speaks truth: But the Evangelist St. Luke says in his own person from the inspiration of God, he suffered not the Devils to speak, for they knew that he was Christ, in the same Chapter, verse 41. Beloved, distinguish the times and the matter is reconciled. Before the encounter of this Tentation the enemy knew him not, Christ's humility and extreme exinanition did shadow him that he was not discerned. After the infamous repulse that Satan suffered in these Tentations, and upon the admiration of some other subsequent miracles, he was compelled to confess, thou art he that art come to torment me, and to destroy my Kingdom, the holy one of God. So Nazianzen exprobrates to the Arians, how they resisted that truth after so much Preaching and Writing, which the very Devils believed, though unwillingly, after the manifestation of some signs and tokens, that the Son of Mary the Virgin was the Son of God coeternal and consubstantial with his Father.
All that knew Christ to be the Lord did not apprehend him after the same manner: His Disciples, and generally all that belong to the true Church, find him out per lumen fidei, by the revelation of supernatural faith, so you must understand that in St. John, No man knoweth the Father but the Son, and no man knoweth the Son but he to whom the Father will reveal him. Secondly, The Angels of heaven, who desire to peep into these mysteries, they know him per lumen gloriae, by the illumination of celestial glory. Thirdly, The Devils, who are able to collect from signs and conjectures far more than any man, these were convicted by his outward works and miracles, as the Centurion cried out when the Sun was eclipsed, and the veil of the Temple was rent in twain, surely this was the Son of God. St. Austin hath two rules of great direction to them that would be satisfied in this question: 1. Christus tantùm innotuit Daemonibus quantùm voluit; That cannot be denied, Christ was disclosed to the Devils so much at a time as he saw fit to reveal himself, and no more; therefore their reason lacks weight that object, how the very evil Angels, being at first created full of rare perfections, must needs know the mystery of the holy Trinity, and that was such a principle of divine knowledge as could never be lost, and by consequent they could never misconceive who was the Son of God. This Argument is sand without chalk, and doth not hang together: For all that rebellious Regiment being cast out of heaven, they were bereft of that excellent knowledge, and of all other supernatural endowments, and now they apprehend no more of God than God thinks it expedient for his own glory. So stands the second rule of St. Austin, Sic eis innotuit sicut eis terrendis innotescendum fuit. Christ opened himself to Satan, even as in the revenge of his justice he thought it fit to increase his terror and amazement. It was not a saving knowledge to the Devil, no, nor a knowledge so much as to make him cautious, but a knowledge that increased sorrow, and inflamed him with hatred. Concerning the most wicked of men it is said, None of the Princes of this world knew him, for had they known him they would not have crucified the Lord of life • But Satan knew him, and knew the Prophets, what a glorious triumph the ignominy of the Cross would be unto him, and as Isaiah saith by his death, My righteous servant shall justify many; he knew he should destroy his own kingdom by the death of Christ, yet Satan did prosecute against him, and put it into the heart of Judas; for since God had appointed his Son should die, the Devil could not hinder his counsel, and an outrageous malice made him run desperate upon his own ruin. This sprig of the Devils condition is planted in too many, who are maliciously carried away with that Hell within them which hunts for vengeance: Here is one drives his neighbor through all the Purgatories of the Law, and yet perceives it must eat out his own estate and beggar him: Here is another will quarrel to the death, though nothing more certain than fall under the Sword, or hang under the Gallows. How many bloody Assassins have crept out of Friers Cels and Jesuits Colleges, and have lifted up their hand against God himself, I may say, in the person of God's Anointed? This blow they are sure shall both curse the Miscreant that did it, and the Religion that taught it. These are not weakness of men, infirmities of the flesh; though men would be wicked, yet unless the Devil were in it, and his desperate malice to boot, such apparent sottishness could not be in their wickedness.
The agitation of this first Point lies but one question further; whether this argument of the Tempters were strong enough to discover the true Son of God, Command that these stones be made bread. Creation is an act proper to the Lord, and certainly incommunicable to any creature; for there is an infinite distance between something and nothing, therefore nothing but an infinite power can make something of nothing. Now to create is either simply to give a being, where there was none before, as to make the earth and the heavens of nothing, or to produce a thing out of such matter as was no way prepared for such a form, as to make a man of the slime of the earth: For it is as much to produce one substance out of another in a moment, which was no way prepared for alteration, as it is to create it out of nothing. These could not choose but be Satan's principles to be confident in this experiment, If thou be the Son, &c. You will say perhaps, did not Elisha the Prophet increase whole vessels of oil from a little Cruse? And yet this is no warrant to say he was the Son of God. Beloved, Elisha did make the Prayer for the poor Widows sake, and God did multiply the oil into that mighty quantity; therefore we must run to this answer: Either Satan hath more quickness and insight than men have, to know when a miracle is done immediately by God himself, or by his Servant; whether by the prime Independent power, or by the second and derivative power, or else there is no evasion but we must say, for all his art, the Devil required no sufficient argument to convince his Infidelity. This Christ might do as the Son of God by excellent adoption, not by eternal generation, and this will make that frequent saying of Athanasius true, that the Devil was an Arian. Cardinal Tolet, a man of no small wit, goes further in his conjectures than any man hath done before him. Thus he objects, Whither would this Serpent wind himself? Or what would he find out? The very Son of God by such a miracle as this? Did not Moses work stranger conversions before Pharaoh? And yet Pharaoh did not say, this is the Son of God, but truly this is the finger of God, or the power of God that worketh in Moses: Nay, the evil one himself is able to bring about strange prestigiations, as were seen in Pharaohs Sorcerers. You see how hard it is to ground our faith, as the Devil would do his upon miracles. Yet Satan was more cunning in this way than any man can be, for his judgment did lean upon two principles, first, if Christ turned stones into bread, the hand of God was in it, for our Savior was holy and unblameable, no way tainted with Magical Sorcery, and if any Daemoniacal Art were in the fact, the Prince of Devils must needs be aware of it. Secondly, God worketh no miracle by the hands of his Prophets or holy men to confirm delusions, but to testify to truth and innocence; therefore if he did provoke him to turn stones into bread, it would be for a true testimony, that he was the very Son of God: If he do this miracle and be not the Son of God, the eternal truth should confirm a lie, which is impossible. This was Satan's cunning Philosophy, and now you see the very nerves of his Argument.
Let me draw out one Corollary for your Instruction. The first part of Satan's engine was ut cognosceret, to prove God a liar if he could. I heard a voice say, you are the beloved Son of God; but are you so indeed? This desire to litigate and quarrel with God's truth made him fall into a strange doting ignorance, almost incredible in so intelligent a substance. What, he that is 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 quasi 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , of a most vast capacity of understanding, because of his spirituality, and so many thousand years experience. He that thought he could open the market of knowledge, and sell what he pleased to our first Parents, Ye shall be as God's knowing good and evil, that he should stagger, and for a long time mistake the very foundation of all truth, that Jesus was the Son of God; Is not this passing wonderful? Why, this comes of it, when any will bend their wits to object against the plain truth, when it is manifest, then God requites their iniquity with this dullness. 2 Thes. ii. 1. For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie. Strong delusion, we read 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , so St. Paul; and I had rather translate it the efficacy of error. Tentation is from the enemy, the efficacy of Tentation is not from him, but in the power of God: So falsehood is from the Devil, but the efficacy of falsehood, that this error should prevail to seduce the Reprobate, that is in the hand of God; For if the efficacy and event of error were from the Tempter, nothing would help us, but that all men should be deluded. The event and prevalency of errors comes from God's permission upon them that would not obey the truth. Let me put this now into your mind; it is the fashion of the World to have men's persons in admiration, some are carried away with the opinion of their learning and good life that walk not after the wholesome Injunctions of the Ceremonies and Discipline of our Church, as Salvianus says very well, Tantùm dicta existimant quantus est ipse qui dixit, nec tam considerant quid legunt, quàm cujus legunt. They measure truth, not in itself, but by the opinion of him that defends it, nor so much consider what it is they read, as whose it is they read. Purge out this leaven, I beseech you, and remember, when men would expound all things by their own private spirit, God will turn their good gifts into vanity. Likewise if some others stand upon it, that there is no sort of Learning but abounds in the Church of Rome, and why should not the most Learned wear the Garland? Let them know this is as foolish an inference, well considered, as his in the Proverb, that the Peacock must sing best of all birds, because it had the fairest train. Julian the most learned Emperor, Galen the most learned Physician, Porphyry one of the learnedst Philosophers, all were Atheists, and without God in the World. The Novices of the Roman Colleges are sworn to particular opinions, and to a particular belief, and then study their course of Divinity to maintain it. So it comes to pass, They study to maintain a lie, as Satan did against Christ, and thereby they are catched in strong delusions. And let this suffice for the first general part of the Text: That one end of these words which Satan cast forth was ut cognosceret, to learn more perfectly that, which he mistrusted before, that Christ was the eternal Son of God.
And because he had more Hooks than one to his Angle, remember that beside his curiosity to explore him, his words likewise are full of malice to corrupt him: Command that these stones be made bread. The boldest and most flagitious attempt that ever was, to make Christ sin. Murdering of Sacred Princes, devices to blow up the Majesty of an whole State, conspiracy to root out whole Nations, endeavoring to burn up an whole Empire with Nero, betraying Christ himself to be crucified with Judas, all these ugly sins, not only single, but put all together, have less horror and impiety in them than this attempt, to lie in wait to draw sin and impurity from the most pure God. We cannot compare Satan so well as with himself, therefore I go further, the great rebellion of Lucifer, for which he was first cast out of heaven, made him not so guilty of high disobedience as this Proposition did, to tempt Christ to Gluttony and Infidelity. His first presumption is collected out of these words of Isaiah, I will be like the most High; but this presumption hath more rancor in it by far, the most High shall fall into wickedness, and be made like unto me. Ero similis altissimo, I will ascend as high as the glory of God, so the evil Angel coveted his own perfection in excess; but Altissimus erit similis mihi; I will bring down the most High to trespass as I have done, that is to covet God's imperfection. The very Angels are not pure in his sight, says Job; now this was the Devils practical gloss, neither shall he be pure in the sight of the Angels; But how foolish is the Serpent become, the subtlest of all Creatures, how foolish is he become because he will not understand the truth of God? O Lord thou art purer than the heavens, thou art Justice, and Righteousness, and Innocency itself; and therefore the Church doth sing a 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 to his honor, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts. One Scripture says, he cannot lie, another Scripture, that he cannot deny himself, and another, that he cannot be tempted; Where was Satan's prudence to make an impossible motion? How had he forgot his cunning to pump for an iniquity out of the Well of everlasting purity? Some pretension yet there was for this plot, and some hope, no question▪ as the Jews cloak'd their own malice before Pilate with this excuse, Had he not been a Sinner we had not brought him unto thee; so there was some likelihood to make him offend, as it appeared to Satan, and surely thus he collected it.
If Joseph, who was espoused to Mary, be his Father I shall prevail, whatsoever is born of flesh is flesh, whatsoever is begotten by carnal generation is conceived in sin: But if it be true that the Angel said unto Mary, the Holy Ghost should over-shadow her, yet the will of every man, if he be true man, is indifferent, and apt of itself to turn to evil, as well as good. Now perhaps it was not possible for the Devil to understand, how the union of the Godhead did determine that indifferency of the will only to good, and did exempt it from all possibility or inclination to evil; and the rage of malice dulling the sharpness of his intellectual parts, he proceeds upon the Premises, the second Person of Trinity is become flesh, and born of a woman, that in the same nature, wherein mankind sinned, they might be redeemed; but if this fleshly nature could be contaminated with sin, God would dissolve the Hypostatical Union, and cast it off: Dissolve the Union, and he cannot be the Mediator between God and man, and then the Sons of men shall be left without hope of redemption forever. And it may be the Devil had that foolish forecast in his mind, when he stirred up Judas to betray him, that by his death he might dissolve the union between his Godhead and our human nature. If any man will answer these Scholastical discourses, and say, the Devil hath nowhere revealed his own counsels; I reply again, we need not be ashamed of the modesty of St. John, Rev. ii. We have not known the depth of Satan, but this one thing is not dubitable, he would have tempted Christ to sin. We can all easily discern the Devils deformity out of this Sermon, what a grievous crime it was to solicit God to do unjustly; but what if this be our own fault many times (dearly Beloved?) Will you not diligently amend it for the time to come? When you see it is the blackest crime in the Devil. 1. He that sweareth by the name of God and lies, what doth he but implore the name of God to bear false witness to his Perjury? Would man make God sin for his sake? And is not man a Devil? Again, he that pretends he hath made a Vow unto the Lord, and that his Vow constrains him to do some wicked thing, doth he not make God the impulsive cause of his abomination? Another prays for nothing more heartily, than that the Lord will pour out his vengeance upon those whom he hates, although they be innocent. What is that else but to say? Do thou kill that man for my sake, who art a most just God, whom it becomes not me to hurt, that am a most wicked sinner. And though we have not Satan's opportunity to tempt Christ himself face to face, yet remember that Kings are God's Vicegerents upon earth, and whosoever wrongs their ear with any corrupt communication, or flattery, he comes the nearest of any man to this sin in my Text to tempt God himself to evil. Non ab acervo, sed à semente furantur, says Plutarch: They that propound evil things to the Ruler of the People, they do not steal from the Barn, or from the Stack, but from the seed-corn itself, and by the Civil Law that is double thievery.
There are under parts likewise of this Tentation, and certain insinuating ways to wriggle it in, which are fit to be discovered. First, He closeth with Christ upon a most artificial obtestation, If thou be the Son of God. It is good Oratory, you know, to importune a man to do a thing by that which he will not for shame deny. If you be an Israelite serve the Lord; if Christ be your Master, follow peace and humility. These are deep adjurements: So Satan turns this Rhetoric upon our Savior, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But Beloved, be strong to resist these adjurations, when they are turned upon you as stones of offense. It is vulgar and trivial to cog a sin into a man with these lispings, if you love me let me obtain this at your hands; if you be my friend deny me not, as you are a Gentleman refuse me not in this, or another evil association; retort such evil adjurements as these in the name of God. I know no such sweetness in love and friendship as to serve God together in the unity of the same Spirit; I know no such obligation upon the honor of a Gentleman as to keep a good conscience. Sell not your soul away for a few fair words, for which so dear a price was paid as the blood of Christ.
What other device do you mark? Why, two in one word; Command that these stones, says Satan; Mark what a great believer the Devil is turned, it is in your power you can command it. Nay, it is in the Greek Text, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , say the word. God made all things by the word of his power, and you are that Word, if you say it, it is done. As if he would profess such a faith as the Centurion was commended for, dic verbo, say the word and my servant shall be healed. Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum. I will not make a long Narration, for the honor of Religion, what mischiefs have been brought to pass by color of Religion; but I will tell you for a warning of such hypocrisy, that as the curse of Jacob stuck close unto his Sons, who made Circumcision their stratagem to kill the Shechemites, so the curse of God shall stick close to them, who cheat, and betray, and sow discords, devour Widows houses, make merchandise of holy things, upon pretence of Sanctity: For how is God abused by this fraudulency, when he may truly say, many sins are done, which had never been committed, if there had been no Religion in the World. The other insinuation is the facility of doing it, he persuades to that which is as easy as to breath, speak but half a word and these stones are made bread. Sin indeed is like suretyship; it is an easy thing to get into bands, but very troublesome to get out of them; Facilis descensus Averni. It is a wide gate, and no rub in the way, that leadeth to damnation, but these foul actions, which are so easy to wicked men, that they cannot avoid them, the Lord makes them very difficult to them that are regenerate and born again. He hath set a watch before their lips, so that they cannot speak the word, which is dishonorable to his holy name, or if they do speak it, it is with much reluctancy; and by this you shall know that heavenly grace is in your heart, when you cannot do those things at all, or at least with much unwillingness, which the children of Satan do with great facility. This touch and away for those three insinuations, upon which the Devil did slide in his temptation.
Hitherto I have spoken upon no more, but in general that the Prince of Devils attempted to make Christ a sinner. And whereas his allurement in particular partly struck upon Gluttony, partly or rather upon Infidelity, how he urged unto Infidelity shall be deferred unto a larger explication, and I will only add a few words upon his temptation to Gluttony before I conclude. A marvelous subtle beginning, he propounds nothing but that which nature necessarily calls for; the most spiritual, the most holy men in the world must have somewhat to content hunger, therefore supposing that there is most Angelical sanctity in Christ, yet since there is human infirmity likewise, it must be repaired with sobriety. Nay, if any religious purpose of fasting hinder him, yet what holy man did fast for any long space, but he would take bread and water of affliction sometimes? That, it seems, did not dissolve the religion of his Fast. Is not this a fair curtain to draw before the mischief of his temptation? Nay, many Expositors are so puzzeled with the legerdemain of this craft, that they conclude that sin of Gluttony was not so much as aimed at; or alas there is small likelihood that one should sin in gluttony by eating bread when he was an hungry: And as small likelihood that he should sin if he made bread miraculously out of stones, when he was pressed unto it by Famine. For twice he multiplied the Loaves and Fishes miraculously in the Wilderness, when he had compassion of the People, who were ready to faint for want of bread, and who did ever find fault with it? Theophylact was driven into such a straight with this objection, that he answereth, Christ was tempted to gluttony because he was tempted to superfluity. Cum panis unus sufficeret, postulavit lapides in panes converti; When one loaf would have sufficed to have asswaged his hunger, the Devil demanded no less than all the stones that were before them to be made bread; and the Relators of the holy Land say, that in that Desert where Christ fasted, called the Mountain of Quarantena, divers stones black in color, and large in quantity are shown unto travellers, as the very stones remaining to this day, at which the Devil pointed in his temptation. St. Matthew, it is true, relates that the Devil spake Plurally, Command that these stones be made bread. St. Luke tells the same story in the Singular number, Command that this stone be made bread. It is well reconciled, as if the Tempter had over-reached himself at first, and made an unreasonable motion, and then comes off, if it like you not to change all these stones, yet at least be pleased to turn this one into bread.
Since therefore the Tempter at last moved for no more than the supply of one loaf of bread, wherein lies the suspicion of gluttony that he persuaded him to that? In a word thus it was; No man could have called it intemperance in Christ, if being very hungry after a fast of forty days he had made bread, and brought it miraculously out of the hard stones: but upon occasion of hunger to obey the Devil in procuring our meat, it had been a grievous gluttony. He that cannot abstain, and should marry because the Devil bad him, to him it were incontinency. He that should use lawful recreation because the Devil bad him, to him it were voluptuousness: He that should rest his weariness, when the Devil requested him to it, to him it were idleness: So to eat bread upon his motion, whom we must fly and abhor, it would come into the rank of the deadly sins, and pass by the name of Gluttony. We deceive ourselves, if we think so well of Satan's kindness, that he is tender of our health, and would not have us fast too long, rather he desires our death, and that all human nature were dissolved into dust and ashes, what cares he to have stones turned into bread? But to have men turned into beasts, into Swine that wallow in fullness of bread and luxury. If he can get Sodom to delight in fullness of bread, he knows their end will be fire and brimstone. Signum panis petit, qui signum jejunii pertimescit, says Chrysologus; He loves to see the miracles of bread and feeding, he cannot abide to see the miracle of fasting and temperance. Your sobriety shall make the Devil drunk with wrath because he cannot overcome you. And when the Tempter is vanquished, and hath given us over, yet the judgment of God is to come, his dreadful judgment which is to be feared, if we live in riot and wantonness. But will you not fear that judgment? Mark our Savior's counsel, after a long description of the wofulness of that last day, thus he concludes; Take heed to yourselves lest at any time your hearts be over-charged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and cares of this life; and so that day come upon you unawares, Luk. xxi. 34.
Mark, I pray you, how Satan useth to speed those with his courtesy that will be obnoxious to him. Instead of some relief for hunger he brings stones. Lapides esurienti offert, humanitas talis est semper inimici, sic pascit mortis autor, sic invidus vitae; What man is there of you, whom if his Son ask bread will he give him a stone? Mat. vii. 9. It were no humanity indeed, but look for no better courtesy from the Fiend of Hell. A stone and bread are most opposite substances. Hawks may take pebbles for casting, but there is no nutrition in them; yet this is our enemies courtesy, you want bread, here is a stone for you, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , Thus the Author of death will feed you, who envies the life of men: But our God is very liberal, he openeth his hand and filleth all things living with plenteousness, he openeth and never shutteth his bowels of compassion against his children; he with-holdeth no good thing from them that lead a godly life. On the contrary, Satan's service is most bare and wretched. The Prince of Poets sets Famine and Scarcity next to the suburbs of Hell.
Judas presently gave up all that he got in the Devils service, and his life to boot in a most hideous death: But Honesty, howsoever some wicked Proverbs say it ends in beggary, I say, if it be kept constantly without halting, it is seldom a looser in this life, but I am sure it is an infinite gainer in the life to come. Serve the Lord therefore with zeal and innocence and your wages shall not be denied you. I know he will outbid all the world, all the Princes of the world, and Satan himself the Prince of riches. Did he ever put such a scoff upon the hungry, as make you bread out of stones; He opened the hard rock indeed, so that waters flowed out for his people, but he did not bid them bite upon the rock for bread, but he rained down Manna from heaven. Convert your hearts and your thoughts to the holy Sacrament. Doth God put us off there, Command that stones be made bread? No, he makes bread become the body of his dearly beloved Son by the application of faith, and he that eateth of it worthily shall be made one body with Christ, and live forever. AMEN.
THE SEVENTH SERMON UPON Our Savior's Tentation.
MAT. iv. 3.
If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
O UR present business consists herein, to refute one of the Devils Arguments. When he speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own, when we oppose him with the truth, we speak from God. And God give us understanding in all things, for it is no easy task to bolt out the mischievous imaginations of this Adversary. As it is accounted the chief Art of an Orator, that his words may seem to be but plain Narration, and no Art at all: So it is the sharpest strain of Wit, which makes it appear to be nothing less than wit, but plain simplicity. Take heed, and beware of this deceit in Satan. But as David inquired of the Lord how he should go to battle against the Philistines, and the Lord said, Thou shalt fetch a compass behind them, and so smite the Philistines: So we must not view this temptation of Satan's in the front, and seek after no more, then all the said will appear to be full of faith, and full of pity; but let us fetch a compass behind him, and you shall find strange iniquity covered under the cloak of simplicity. They that will craftily infer some falsehood will tell some truth, but this subtle Disputer hath conveyed his words with those artificial colors, that he hath spoken nothing but falsehood, and yet nothing but truth.
If you will take him in this sense, thou art the Son of God, and thou canst make bread of these stones, both parts of the speech are very true: Or if you put it into one Sentence, the Son of God can turn stones into bread, that is very certain; the Lord can bring forth effects above nature that shall astonish us. Nay, take it hypothetically, as if he would know Christ better by a sign from heaven, if thou be the Son of God command that these stones be made bread; it is the voice indeed of a weak faith to require a sign, but of a faith that fain would be strengthened. Quo teneam noo mutantem Protea formas? None of these ways can you say this is falsehood, or this is a Diabolical stratagem; therefore we must fetch a compass behind him, or look through his secret intentions to discover the worst, for their inward parts are full of wickedness, says the Psalmist. First, If thou be the Son of God includes a negation upon a false persuasive, his meaning is, you are not the Son of God, you are not his beloved, the voice which spake from heaven at your Baptism did but flout you, you want the very necessaries of life and sustenance; doth God deal thus with his Sons? No, ground your distrust upon this penury, and scarcity, you are not the Son of God. Secondly, The other part of the temptation, Command that these stones be made bread, it is not spoken to extol his excellency; as who should say, do this miracle, because you have the power of God; but thus, provide for yourself by any means lawful or unlawful rather than starve, that you may not die like man.
This is the enemies Chain-shot, two deadly bullets made fast together, discharged out of one Canon; two such impious rules, that I may well call them the two Tables of the Devils Law. This is the first, whosoever is in distress let him think himself to be none of God's children, for God doth not care for him. The second on this wise, whosoever is in want let him raise his own fortune by hook or by crook, and as it were in despite of God let him care for himself. You do not read indeed that the Tempter himself spoke so broadly; no, there were no policy in that: but this is the very fetch of his grave seeming counsel, when you have transposed all his words in their right place. Now to make all fit for your instruction by severing one part from another observe these four things: 1. That the