Commentary on 2 Peter

REligion hath two extremes, both mortal enemies to her; Superstition, and Atheism. The former will worship God her own way; the other will acknowledge no God, to worship any way. It is hard to say, which of these is the worse; either to the owners, or to their neighbors, or to the Lord himself.

1. To the owners. Atheism leaves a man to Sense, to Philosophy, to natural Piety, to Laws, to Reputation: all which are some kind of guides to moral virtue, though Religion were not. But superstition dismounts all, and prescribes a law to it self; a form of worship, which if God will not accept, he shall have no obedience at all. So instead of a kingdom, it erecteth an absolute tyranny in the mind. From hence it comes, that no Pagans have been worse to Christians, than Papists: their superstition allowing that villainy, which irreligion would not admit. We never read among the Heathen so horrible and hideous a treason, as the Powder-plot in England, attempted by them that profess the true God, but by a false worship. There is no Epicure of old, or present Atheist, but would rather be what he is, than such a Christian. They would but break the bond of religious unity: these dissolve the combination of all human society. We pity the mad men of Munster, but we cannot but hate a religious Conspirator. It is a great deal less mischief, that the want of all religion should deface men's understanding, than that any religion should spoil them of Piety and Charity: when reason shall only be retained as an Engine or Chariot-driver of malice, and most bloody cruelty. There is no such Atheist, as a devout Hypocrite, a pious imposter: there would be never a Devil left in Hell, rather than his bosom should want guests and supply.

2. To others. Atheism is commonly confined to a man's own breast, and does intra orbem suum furere: because it knows the own weakness to prevail against the universal Tenent: but Superstition is like a ball of Snow, that greatens it self by rolling. Never any Nation was wholly given over to Atheism: some god they acknowledged, though they could not light on the True: but Superstition hath been an epidemical plague, leaving none un-infected. Atheism did never disturb States, but contracted it self with civility, and subordinate obedience. But Superstition hath always made uprores, and been the confusion of Countries. Atheism hath taught men to be wary of themselves: they that expect no life after this, will make as much of this as they can: and therefore avoid quarrels that may trouble their peace, and enormities that may shorten their lives: therefore the times inclined to Atheism, as in the days of Augustus Caesar, were civil times. But Superstition brings in a new Primum •• bile, that ravisheth all the Spheres of government into disorder. As Custom is the master of Ceremony, so the master of Superstition is the people. In both, wise men are fain to follow fools • and what the multitude authorizeth •• practice 〈◊〉 the wits 〈…〉 stomes, and those their Princes 〈…〉 Laws. 〈…〉 for Religion, were evils unknown 〈…〉 Devil, 〈◊〉 divers names and forms▪ And for the petty quarrels among their Puppet-gods; as Mulciber in Trojam, pro Troja stabat Apollo; these differences were soon taken up at a Tavern, and reconciled over a cup of wine. But Superstition is always in garboyles, and the most deadly enmities. Both are such enemies to all States, that Princes by their power, and Ch ••• but t • eir Decrees, should always join in the damning to Hell such Factions, and their supports: and in all Councils concerning Religion, the counsel of the Apostle would be prefixed; The wrath of man doth not fulfill the rightuosnesse of God.

3. To God. Atheism would have Deum nullum; Superstition, Deum ignobil • m: the one would pluck him out of his Throne, the other would share 〈◊〉 him in his Throne. The one does him treachery; the other 〈…〉 injury. The Philosopher could tell there is a God, and that he is to be worshipped: but the true nature of God, and how to be worshipped; he could never demonstrate. Yet it is wonderful that they went not thus far, as to consider, that if there be only one God, and he to be worshipped; they did not examine the Rules whereby he commands himself to be worshipped: Seeing it is folly to acknowledge the King our Sovereign, and to contemn his Laws. What is this, but to reproach the Deity, when we know his Precepts; yet refuse them, and follow our own fancies? It is, instead of subjects, to make ourselves fellows with him in his Kingdom. And God will sooner pardon revolters, (we have no portion in David) than rebels, that would take away the portion of David. Sheba flies off, and would have no King: Absalom flies on, and would be King himself. The Atheist would have no room for God: the Pope would have a room with God, yea, a room above God. And whiles he makes the world believe, he is the Servant of Christ, he endeavors to make Christ his servant: subjecting God's royal and eternal Laws, to his own forged and mangie Traditions.

Thus miserably assailed on both sides is poor (but pure) Religion: on the one side with Papists, that would scratch out her eyes: on the other side with Atheists, that in their own hearts, and Quoad se, would cut her throat. With this Monster we are now to encounter, which comes roaring with two blasphemies in his mouth: A

• Challenge; Where is the promise of his coming?
• Defiance; All things continue as they were, &c.

But before I come to examine these particular arguments, something is requisite to be spoken of Atheism in general. And here consider, the Nature, the Measure, the Kinds, the Causes, and the Conviction of it.

1. The Nature of it, is this: That it forceth a persuasion in the heart, of the nullity of Divine Power; and leaves the whole world to be governed by Fortune. In our Savior's time there were Sadducees, that denied the Resurrection. They could not but know, that they should die; they would not believe, that they should rise again; or, give any account after death, for that they had done during life. The School that is most charged with this Infidel affection, was that of Lucippus, and Epicurus: which taught, that four mutable elements, and one immutable fifth essence, duly and eternally placed, needed no God. Which opinion yet was not so unreasonable as that other, that an army of A • omes, infinite small portions or seeds unplaced should produce such another and beauty, without a Divine Marshall. Yet still some fire burst forth, like thunder, through all those conglommerated clouds: nor did Epicurus utterly deny all Deity; but that the Power which was, had not respect to the Government of the world. Nor did he, as our Atheists say, temporize in this, and dissemble for his credits sake: as if he thought in his heart, there was no God. For his words as more noble: Non Deos vulgi negare, profanum: sed vulgi opinionem Diis appli 〈◊〉 . Though he had the confidence to deny the administration, he had not the power to deny the nature.

Indians and Pagans are not without their particular gods, and they have several sins for them; though they have no name for the true God. So the Hea •• 〈◊〉 their Jupiter, Mars, Apollo; and would rather embrace many gods, then none at all: thus do the most barbarous Savages convince Atheists These are they that call all Scripture into question; and if they entertain the morality, yet will not credit the history. If Genesis say, God made the world they presently ask, who made Genesis? If the Apostles say, the world shall be dissolved they demand, who told them so? They are content, with Cornelius Tacitus acknowledge Moses a wise Naturian, well seen in the Learning of Egypt: •• that he had Divine assistance in the greatest of his Miracles, this th • y deni • The Water which he struck out of the Rock (say they) was not by any super •• all work of God; but by watching to what part of the Wilderness the 〈◊〉 Asses repaired for drink. They hold with Albumasar, that his leading Israel over the Red Sea, was no more but observing the influence of the stars, and waning of the Moon, that with-draweth the Tydes. Because some have discredited the story of Susanna, Judith, and the like Apocryphal Books; therefore they serve all the rest alike, and parallel the whole Bible with the Jewish Talmud, and tax it for a fabulous Legend. But if our Gospel hid, it is hid to them that are lost. They will not believe, that are ordained to perish.

2. The Measure of it: Above other sins, it offers violence both to God and his Image. To God; in that it would not only rob him of his glory, but the world of him, of the Maker. The Heavens declare the glory of God, and the Firmament showeth his handy-work. But these contradicters deny him that honor: as if Heaven were not his (but only natural) manufacture. He made all eyes, yet they would not leave him an eye to see withal. As if the Maker of all ears, of all tongues, of all hearts, should not have an ear to hear, or a heart to be sensible of such blasphemies. Not that he hath these members or affections, but the virtue of these in an infinite perfection. They have their being, live, move in him; yet deny him life, motion, and being: as if he that made their hands, had none himself. They establish Reason as their god, and will not be persuaded there is any other God, unless he makes them privy to all those abstracted and unsearchable secrecies. They ask when he had his beginning, that is without beginning, that gives beginning to all things. Or, how he governs: as if a King should give account to his subjects. They examine him straitly, where he was, what he did, before he created Heaven and Earth: and yet we never found a Pitcher call his Potter to a reckoning. They run through every circumstance of his providence; with, Why he did this; and, Why he did not that. Such ambitious cogitations be found in earthen bodies; even to ransack the Kings private Closet, and to peruse the Records of Heaven: which if they cannot attain, they will vellicate and deprave. That insatiate Diver into the secrets of Nature, who in the round compendiate bladder of his brain, did seek to conglobe those three great Bodies, Heaven, Earth, and the wide World of Waters; Aristotle: so puzzled his thoughts about the beginning and bounds of Nile, that in Nile he drowned himself: and because he could not comprehend it, would needs be comprehended by it. If that soul, so metaphysically subtle, could not grasp a River, who shall fetch out the concealements of the infinite Godhead? The Angels know not the day of Judgment, much less other more secret circumstances: And will God conceal that from his sanctified attendants, which he reveals to sinners? We men do not tell our secrets to enemies, or strangers. They that are never so familiar with earthly States, must not think to be familiar with the State of Heaven. Thus injurious are they to their Maker, and to themselves: striving to scrape out those engraven Principles and Divine Characters, which God at first printed in his own Image.

3. The Kinds are two: First, the inward Atheist; that like the Panther, hides his head in a Hood of Religion, when he seeks for a bootie: that devours Widows houses, under pretence of long prayers. Church-Rites he supposeth not amiss to busy the people's heads with, and keep them from minding his proceedings. He cares not what god he entertains, but himself is the only god he heartily worships. He puts on a holy look, when he means to do mischief; and hath Scripture in his mouth, even while he is cutting his neighbors throat. As the Gospel is the power of God to salvation, to everyone that believes it: so he makes the profession of it, Satan's power of deceiving, to everyone that believes him. Under the color of suppressing Popery, he will not leave the Church a jot of her own Patrimony. The door of his mouth is swept and garnished, and strewed with green Rushes; but in his heart is a whole Legion of Devils. The hypocrite certainly is a secret Atheist: for if he did believe there was a God, he durst not be so bold as to cozen him to his face.

Next, the outward Atheist; that professeth there is no God. The former are cunning, and swim with the Tide: these have learned (like Trowtes) to swim always against the stream. They tell us of Egyptians, that can prove a continued succession of their Kings for seventy thousand years: and impudently persist in it, that the late discovered Indians are able to show antiquities many thousand years older than Adam. So hellish are their falsehoods; yea they say, there is no Hell at all, but in opinion: but the Devil would give them all the world, that they could prove it so. Devils, say they? Alas, there are none: but the time shall come, they would give all the world, there were not. Julian called all Christians, Galileans: and in the hour of his death there appeared to him a grizly shagge-hair'd Devil; who (notwithstanding he cried out, Vicisti Galilae, Vicisti, Thine is the day) would never give him over, till he had stripped his soul, like pith out of her fleshy stalk, and bore it with him to endless torments.

4. The Causes follow; which are partly within them, and partly without them. Within them two:

First, Ignorance: Because they cannot grossly palpare, feel God with their bodily fingers, or see him with their eyes, they confidently renounce him. He that comes to God, must believe. They do not come to God, but come against God: nor do they believe, he is the rewarder of them that seek him: but rather, that they prosper best, who despise him. Is a Monarch no King, because he does not set his Throne among his utmost subjects, and borderers of his Kingdom? We are God's utmost subjects; the last (in a manner) that he hath brought to his obedience: shall we forget ourselves to be his subjects, because he is not as visibly conversant among us, as among his Angels? The soul governs the body; the body can neither see nor hear this soul: hath it therefore no soul? Yes: and as the body • old not stir without the soul; so neither body nor soul could move without God. It is he that lets forth, and calls in our breath, that shuts and opens our eyes, orders our hands, and guides our feet, as he pleaseth. Suppose our King should erect his Throne in a foreign Land; yet he is still our King, and his power undiminished. Indeed so did our fathers rebel, and forgot they had a King: so did the Kings own brother rebel, and forgot that he had a brother; crowning himself King, when Richard Cuer de Lyon was warring in the holy Land. He that is everywhere, must needs be among us, though we see him not: divers Princes have taken pleasure to walk disguised among their own subjects. How potent and patient is that God, who gives motion to those tongues that blaspheme him? We would not lend our enemy weapons to fight against us. A little Philosophy inclineth man's mind to Atheism: but but depth in Philosophy bringeth him about to Religion. When men look upon second causes, scattered; they are ready to rest in them: but when they behold them confederate and knit together, they fly to Providence and confess a Deity. Therefore David sets a fools cap on the head of Atheism.

Secondly, Pride. Prosperity doth so tympanize men's souls, and entrance them from themselves, that they forget they had a Maker. Who is God, saith Pharaoh: There is no God, saith Nebuchadnezzar: I am God, saith Alexander. but Nebuchadnezzar found there was a God: Pharaoh found what that God was; Alexander found himself to be none; and confessed that he knew himself mortal by two things; sleep and lust. These drunken favorites of the world run mad with a conceit of themselves; and have so far waded into the stream of blasphemies, and scorn of the Scriptures: that finding this height of provocation to escape punishment, they conclude there is no God to punish: otherwise he would not put up such indignities. First, they have made themselves profane against God, and then pump their wits for reasons to prove there is no God. So the Poet, though he brought it in with an ignoscite falso, and with some more nicety, as if it were a temptation only, and put upon him: Solicitor nullos esse putare deos. The Snake, which the kind husbandman took out of the cold, and cherished in his bosom, when she had recovered her lively heat, and grown lusty; singled out him ungratefully, to try her first sting upon. God hath redeemed poor frost-bitten Snakes, miserable sinners, from scarcity and want: and they no sooner have picked up their crumbs; but presently (as if they could now stand of themselves, and needed his help no more) they sting him with their blasphemies. And finding themselves as great as they can well be amongst men, grow to envy and extenuate their Maker. If Ziba be waxed great under Mephibosheth, he will give him a lift for all he hath: a promoted Beggar hath not seldom renounced his own parents. It is not so easy for a poor man to be an Atheist. But impetuous lust, if it must be controlled, had rather say, there is no God, than yield to a God that will not yield to them.

The Cause without them are two. First unlearned and rude Teachers, that [unspec 1] leap out of a library of Catechisms into the loftiest Pulpits; that usurp the Chair of Paul, and were never brought up at the feet of Gamaleel. These by preaching nothing but faith, quite discredit all faith, in the Atheists of our time. To plunge and blunder in the Pulpit, to bungle up a discourse of two hours, to apply Scriptures without purpose; as if like Botchers, they would mend leather-doubtlets with velvet shreds: to deliver full stomach'd tautalogy for the evidence of the Spirit: to be all utterance, no materials, and so not to edify but tedifie their hearers. This disgraceth the cause of Christ with these soul-Benummed enemies; who profess, they had rather hear jarring black •• nts, than such bald Sermons. The Kings Embassage is dishonored, that is delivered by ignorants: nor can it be credited, when not two of them agree in the tale. How do they jeer at us, when they see congregations so thronged where such heavy gated Lumberers teach? As if their mouths were reverenced •• the lips of the Sybils, who spake nothing but it was registered; and all their sentences were even Oracles. For this, the Italians call us dull-headed Ty ••• ani: for this, Atheists traduce us, that our brains are lost with the fumes of full platters, and our spirits buried in Beefe-pots. That as England hath Tinne and Leaden Mines, so it hath Tinne and Leaden Muses: that we have none left to confute Images and blocks, but blocks and Images. Though we could easily clear ourselves, and the whole Ministry of our Church, from these unjust imputations: yet let us know this, that these enemies are special men of wit: Popery hath not won to it self so great wits as Atheism: it is the superfluity of wit that makes Atheists. These will not be beaten down with fusty dorbellisme: disordered hail-shot of Scriptures will never scare them: they must be convinced and beaten at their own weapons. Caesarem appellasti? Ad Caesarem ibis. Have they appealed to reason? Let us bring reason to them, that we may bring them to reason. We need not fear the want of weapons in that armory, but our own ignorance and want of skill to use them. There is enough even in Philosophy to convince Atheism, and make them confess, Propriis configimur pennis.

[unspec 2] Next, the bad lives of the religious: when they see those hat acknowledge God, do worse deeds than they that acknowledge no God, this confirms them in Atheism. It was the calling of the Apostles, and in some degree it is the office of all Christians, to be Witnesses unto Christ. John the Baptist was more than a Prophet, because he was a Witness of Christ: that great and glorious name of Martyr, is but a Witness. Now to be Witnesses of Christ, is to be like Christ; to conform ourselves to the Doctrine and Example of Christ. John the Baptist was like him, he did as He did; he led an holy and religious life: so he was a Witness. Saint Stephen was Protomartyr, Christ's first Witness; because he was the first that did as he did, that put on his colors, that drunk of his cup, that was baptized with his Baptism, with his own blood: so he was a witness. All Christians witness for Christ with their mouths, but some witness against him with their lives. They have a form of godliness, that is lip-testimony: but deny the power of it; here is no life-testimony. Infamy is one of the highest punishments which the law of man inflicts: Death ends all temporal sufferings, but this lies upon a malefactor even after death. Infamy is the worst penalty; and intestability, (to be made intestable) is one of the deepest wounds of infamy: and then the worst degree of intestability is not to be believed, not admitted for a witness of any other. He is intestable, that cannot make a Testament or Will, that cannot give his own goods: and he is intestable, that can receive nothing by the Testament of another. He is intestable, in whose behalf no Testimony may be accepted: but he is the most miserably intestable of all, the most detestably intestable, that discredites another man by speaking well of him; and makes him the more suspicious by his commendations. A Christian in profession, that is not a Christian in life, is in this last kind intestable: he discredites Christ by bearing witness of his Name, and makes his Name so much the less regarded by his witnessing.

From hence is the quarrel of all these Atheists against Religion; because it is barraine of good works. When the Orthodox and Arian Bishops contended about the faith, Iovinian could say; Of your learning I cannot so well judge, or your subtle disputations: but I can observe which of you have the better behaviours, Lucius, reputed an Arian Bishop, cleared himself to one Moses, and made confession of his faith. Tush, saith Moses, what tellest thou me of the faith of the ears? Let me have the faith of the hands: I will not take my instalment from hands full of aspersions, of bribery, blood, and injustice. Occulat • mihi sunt manus, saith the Atheist with that Strumpet, Credunt quod vident. This gives them occasion to blaspheme God, and to doubt whether all Divinity be not mere policy, and the Scriptures a fable. This is the principal pretext of Atheism, yea the fountain. There was a woman much spoken of in some parts of this Land, that lived in professed doubt of the Deity; even after illumination and repentance hardly comforted: who often protested, that the vicious and offensive life of a great learned man in the town where she dwelt, •• d occasion these damned doubts in her mind. This opens the mouth of wickedness; this is the hint of all their scorns and scoffs of Religion. This made Linacre, reading upon the New Testament, the fifth, sixth, and seventh Chapters of Saint Matthews Gospel; and comparing those rules with Christian lives; to throw down the Book, and burst forth into this protestation: Either this is not God's Gospel or we are not Christians.

5. The Conviction. Doth all the world acknowledge some God? Do some nations entertain too many gods? And wilt not thou grant one God? Revolve thy memory, turn over the Records of that Diary: didst thou never pray? Yes, and obtained: who heard thee, who granted that? Thou couldest not breath, unless God did put the breath of life into thee; as unless the bellows did respire wind, they could not blow. Is there a spark of fire in thee, a soul? How came it there? How doth the compacture of thy body hang together? Why does it not fall asunder now, and why shall it dissolve hereafter? Is any of these dispositions in thine own hand? Who leads the Son out of his chamber, or brings the Moon forth of her cloudy pavilion, but God? Why doth not the sea swallow up the earth, as well as over-peer it, but that there is a God that snaffles and curbs it? Hath the vast azur'd Canopy nothing above it, whereunto it is perpendicularly knit? Why then do not all things wheel and swerve topsie-turvy? Why break not thunderbolts through the clouds instead of drops of rain? Why is not frost and snow incessantly up in arms against the Summer? Who hears the thunder and thinks not of God? Therefore we may observe, that God never wrought miracle to convince Atheists. The Egyptians were Persecutors, and they were convinced by miracles: the Baalites were Idolaters, and they were convinced by miracles: the Jews were Apostates, and they were convinced by miracles. To satisfy all these sinners abominable enough, miracles were wrought by Moses, Elias, and Christ. But none to convince Atheists, because God's ordinary works convince them. So that as Araham answered the rich Churl, that would have one sent from the dead to his brethren. They have Moses oud the Prophets, if they will not hear them, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead: these be their books. So Paul answers Naturians, if they ask for miracles; By the things that are made, they may understand his eternal power and Godhead. These are their books; fairly printed in large Characters, that they may run and read them.

But the chief conviction is their own conscience; there stick those indelible letters never to be rased out. Howsoever in pride of mind they would be different in Paradoxisme from all the world, and fancy philosophical probabilities of the Trinities un-existence: yet in the inmost recourse of their conscience, they subscribe unto it. The fool hath said in his heart; no fool ever thought in his heart: he would fain have it so, he cannot believe it so: it is an opinion which he suggests to his heart, not which his heart suggests to him. This makes him fearful to die, and to die fearfully: there could be no such terror of the one, or affrightment in the other, if he did not believe some kind of Audit after both. If we should discourse over the ends of all Atheists, we find their deaths drunken, violent, secluded from repentance, but not quitted nor quieted from agonies and extorted confessions of the Deity which they have denied. Their guilty souls assure them of a sin hating God, even in the blackest darkness of their own contracted ignorance: like the sooty visage, and shady fancies of the night, when they have shut all the windows, and drawn the curtains, to keep out the least gimpse of such a knowledge. It is not possible to pin forth conscience: it may for a while be shut up, it can never be shut out. God will either charge it, as Jehu did concerning the brethren of Ahaziah; Take them alive, and torment them in their mortal days: make them know there is a God. Or, pursue them dead, as the Papists have dealt with divers Protestants; denying them both Coelum vivis, and Terram motuis; life and burial; the air to live in, or, the earth to be buried in. So their conscience shall deny them vitam vivis, for the pangs of it shall take all comfort of life from the living; and mortem mortuis, for this shall not die with them, but be their everlasting torture when they are dead. Only in hell there shall be no Atheists, they no sooner enter that burning territory, but they shall eternally feel there is a God. O Lord open our eyes, that we may see thy Majesty: and soften our hearts, that we may feel thy mercy: and loosen our tongues, that we may confess thy glory: and direct our ways, that we may come to thy eternal felicity.

Where is the promise of his coming?] This is their Chalenge. So light was the estimate which the Heathen made of their idle and Idol-gods, and so poor the reputation, either for their majesty or bounty; that they feared not to bestow jests upon them, as upon their fellows. So it was familiar with them, to tell of Jupiter's going a whoring, of his Rapes and Adulteries: nor was this only the matter of their stories, but the representation of their Theaters, and played on their Stages: where appeared Plura crimina, quàm Numina: so did Ioves Wenching discredit his Thundring. Tully writes the story of Timeus; that the self-same night that Alexander was borne, the Temple of Diana at Ephesus was on fire: and no marvel; for the Mistress of it was a great way from home; as a Midwife in Macedonia, attending the travail of Olympias. So they made themselves merry with their gods and goddesses, as men wont with Tales in Winter-evenings. But still there was an impression in their conscience of an infinite Power, which they durst not play withal, but rather thought on with fear and reverence. Their fear might fancy gods that were not: but the God that was, and is, did work that fear in them. They wrong the interpretation of Theos, that say, Fear first made gods: Fear did not make God, but God made fear; I mean that fear which is awe and reverence; for the other fear was made by sin. But God is Theos rather, because the fear of him is engraven in every heart. And after all the willful suppressions and desperate stifflings of it, this fear will invade the stoutest soul, and put a trembling into all his joints. A wicked man sins, and no mortal eye seeth him: Why is he afraid? Why ashamed? Certainly, there is in him a secret approbation of virtue, a condemnation of vice, and reluctance of conscience. Let him do what he can to smother it, this fire will break our. While I was m • sing, the fire burned, and I spake with my tongue. The flame of conscience will burst forth, and speak with a tongue of terror. Particulars.

[unspec 1] The coming of God is mentioned: and this is diverse; Legal, Evangelical, and Judicial: all which, Atheists deny. His Legal coming, was principally to the Jews, not excluding the Gentiles: his Evangelical coming, was principally to the Gentiles, not debarring the Jews: his Judicial coming, shall be to Jews and Gentiles, exempting none, but to judge all the world. In his first coming, he was a Commander; in his second, a Savior; in his last, a Judge. His first, was to give the Law; his next, to give the Gospel; his third, shall be to require an account of both. The first, ad mundum; the next, in mundum; the last, contra mundum. The first, imperious; the second, gracious; the last, glorious.

1. His coming to give the Law, was majestical: He would have Israel see, that they had not to do with an impotent Governor, that is fain to publish his Laws without noise, in dead Paper: which can more easily enjoin, than punish; or descry, than execute. Therefore, before he gave them the Law, he shows them, that he can command Heaven, Earth, Fire, Air, in revenge of the breach of that Law. They see all the Elements examples of that obedience, which they should yield to their Maker: and cannot but think it deadly, to displease such a Law-giver, and violate such dreadful Statutes. But these Atheists deny this coming, they acknowledge no such Laws: only they think human policy invented them, for the general safety: and that Homicides, Adulteries, Thefts, and Lies be restrained, it is only convenient for the State. The very Indians had a more reverend apprehension of the Decalogue, when it was read to them; and considering every Commandment, they professed, there could be nothing devised more just and equal. As Aeneas Sylvius said of the Christian Law; That it was worthy to be received for the honesty of it, though it had never been confirmed by miracles. Woe unto those Rebels, that will not allow the Law a power to command them; they shall find it an unanswerable Indictment, to condemn them.

2. His coming to give the Gospel, was humble. As in the Creation, God made man like himself, by stamping in him the Image of his own nature: so in the Redemption, God made himself like man, by taking on him the infirmity of our nature. And what God said by way of derision, concerning Adam; Ecce homo, Behold the man it become as one of us: the same we speak by way of thankful exultation, concerning God; Ecce Deus, Behold the Lord is become as one of us. His birth was ordinary, was mean, was meaner than ordinary: Verbam non poterat fari verbum. The Bread of Life was borne in Bethlehem; by interpretation, the House of Bread: but so poor a house of Bread, that there was scarce any Bread in the house. He was made so far lower than the Angels, that he was consorted with beasts. At this coming, do the Atheists scoff: they think, that King Herod had little reason to be troubled at it, and was more feared than hurt: and that the wise men, who presented him gifts, were men none of the wisest. Alas, shall they begin their Religion at a Babe in a Manger? And what was his wealth? When he was to pay tribute, he was fain to fish for money: he begged water to drink: a Loafe and a Fish was his best cheare: he complained the want of lodging, more than Birds and Foxes: he was weary, hungry, thirsty, sleepy, sorrowful. His own kindred went about to lay hands on him, thinking he had been out of his wits. He had no form nor comeliness, nor beauty to be desired; but even despised and rejected of men. Such was his esteem then; and it is no better now, with these Atheists. What, is he their God, that was borne of a woman? The Earth is but a Center to the Heavens, and man or woman but a Point or Center to the Earth: that a Centers Center, the Point of a Point, should contain him that contains all things; they deride, for vainly impossible. They consider not, why he was thus: even because he came to be thus. He suffers enemies to wound him: why, he came to bleed: he lets sinners kill him: why, he came to be killed for sinners. They crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. But they now disgrace that Blood, whereof hereafter they would give a thousand worlds for one drop.

3. His last coming, is to give Judgment: The two former are past, this is to come: And how should they believe the future, that will not receive the former? But they that would not now accept him as a Savior, shall not then escape him as an Avenger. Then shall they find 〈◊〉 King, that used to cry, Non habemus Regem nisi Caesarem: and they shall see another God, that flattered their own impious souls with, Non habemus Deum nisi Naturam. Their N • lumus hunc regnare, We will not have this man reign over •• , passeth now upon earth: but their Nolumus hunc judicare, We will not have this man judge us, shall do no good at the great Assizes. Now they laugh at him, but then all the kindreds of the earth shall mourn before him. They had power to condemn him, that had power to condemn them: at last he shall bring this power into act: and as they once said to him; Depart from us, thou despised: so he shall say to them; Depart from me, ye cursed. The Gadarenes, after the loss of their Hogs, besought him to depart out of their coasts. They should have argued: This man hath power over men, beasts, devils; it is good having him to our friend; his presence, is our safety and protection. But they contrariwise infer: Thus powerful is he; it is good he were further off. What miserable and pernicious misconstructions do vain men make of God, of divine attributes, and actions? God is omnipotent, able to take infinite vengeance on sin: Oh, that he were not. If he be merciful, I may sin: if he be provident, I may be careless. I do evil, and he does not punish me with evil: therefore there is no God, no such matter as his coming. How witty Sophisters natural men are, to deceive their own souls, to rob themselves of a God? Oh Christ, how worthy are they to want thee, that wish to be rid of thee? He hath just cause to be weary of us, even while we sue to hold him. But when once our wretched unthankfulness grows weary of him; who can pity us, to be punished with his departure? How righteous will it be for him one day to regest upon these scorners, Depart from me, ye wicked? I did come, and ye would not receive me: I threatened to come again, and ye would not believe me: now I am come again, and ye shall not escape me.

[unspec 2] The necessity of both the Commings of Christ, would be laid to the conscience of these despisers. For the former:

1. The conscience of every man doth testify to him, that there is a Rule: which if he follows, he does well, and is at peace: if he transgress, he finds trouble and secret reprehension, with a dread of punishment. Now there is no man but feels himself a sinner, and is condemned in his own soul. Against whom hath he sinned? for Nullius timor nullus: this must needs be against that Power which gave that Law. Say, he denies the Law written; he cannot but expunge the Law engraven. There is no Law made without a penalty upon the breach: this penalty can be no other than proportionable to the breach: the breach of the Law must be measured according to the Power of the Law-giver: the Law-giver can be no less than infinite; and no less infinite must be the punishment. Diverse of men's laws impose death temporal; what other than eternal death can satisfy God? We cannot imagine that God will forgive sin without satisfaction to his Justice: not that he cannot, propter defectum potentiae; but that he will not, propter perfectionem Iustitiae. This is a chain of so infallible dependence, that it admits of no disjunction.

What then, is there no remedy? yes, if we can get one to suffer for us, and to make full payment of our debts, we shall be acquitted. Who should that be? Men or Angels cannot answer for their own sins, but they must needs if they sin, perish. He that can suffer for them, must be man: he that can escape from those sufferings, and recover his life, must be God. Such was the necessity of Christ's first coming. The Law hath a double righteousness; for so Beza reads 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 Iuc Legis. One of obedience: this the Law doth rightly challenge, and it hath not the right if it have not obedience. The other is a right to condemn for disobedience: for it is right, they that do evil, should suffer evil. If Adam had fulfilled the Law, he should have been saved by it: the damned fulfill it in Hell, in regard of the curse, but they cannot be saved by it. We must all fulfill it, •• el in praecep •• vel in pana. The precepts must be kept, that there may be place for the promises. If the precepts be not fulfilled, the curse must be endured. The curse calls for our blood, and without blood there is no remision. We can do neither of these by ourselves: where then is our safety? We have done both these by our Surety. What then shall become of those that deny the coming of this Surety in such was the wonderful wisdom of God, to execute his Justice upon Christ, that he might exercise his mercy towards us. Without infinite satisfaction, his justice could not be appeased: without infinite mercy, we could not be saved. One Deepe calleth another: the Deepe of his justice, for the Deepe of Christ's satisfaction: the Deepe of our misery, for the Deepe of his mercy. If he had shown mercy without satisfaction, where had been his justice? If he had only laid his justice upon us, where had been his mercy? Both these must concur: Mercy and truth must meet together, that righteousness and peace might kiss each other.

This is the true way: now cunning Atheist find out a new way. To grant mercy, and deny justice; this were injurious to God: to grant justice, and deny mercy; this were injurious to thyself. There is no way then left, but for the coming of Christ to help thee: let not the benefit of that coming fall beside thee. Here let us look with thankful admiration, upon that which they load with derision. Christ suffered for us; not only causa nostrâ, but vice nostra, in our stead: we should have been beaten, buffeted, crucified, cursed; he represented our persons, was in our room. O infinite love! Many desire to represent Kings, and wear those royal honors in their Ambassages: But few desire to represent the persons, and bear the shame of base condemned wretches. There is no suing for this; yet Christ undertook it: the King of all the world represented the persons of the poorest beggars in the world. The Law requires her right, and her right she hath a Christ hath fulfilled it for us, and we have fulfilled it in Christ. It may threaten us with our continual failings; but there is a Non obstante, by the goodness of our surety. If the forfeit or mulct be paid for the breach of a penal Statute, the Law can go no further. Yea, he that hath Christ, though he have not kept the Law, hath the righteousness of the Law. Christ hath endured the sharpest of God's judgments, which he deserved not; that we might taste the sweetest of God's mercies; which we deserved not. All this happiness the Infidel loseth: for, Excludit eventum, qui non credit adventum.

But here the Atheist comes in again with a new quarrel: What need our repentance or obedience; when Christ hath sorrowed, suffered, obeyed, done all for us? When Augustine justified free will against the Manichees, the ignorant would take him for a Pelagian: when he denied free will to the Pelagians, they would take him for a Maniche: he was neither; but disputed against both the extremes; the one utterly denying it, the other too highly extolling it. So let us not be mistaken in the Diameter: when we teach that we must sorrow for our sins, this denies not Christ's suffering for those sins. When we say, Christ h • re our sorrows: this exempts not us from our just grief for our sins. Because he went the way of Thorns, must ours be strawed with Roses? Because he came to fulfill the Law for us, shall we never mind any obedience to that Law after his coming? This was the argument of the Gnoctickes: He that died, that we should not die, looks he for a requital? Our tears for his tears? Our blood for his? Non vicem repetit, saith Tertullian: Sed ideo magis d • kes, quiae non repetit. The Borrower is a Servant to the Leader; and the Receiver to the Giver. Hath he done so much for us, and shall we deny him anything that he requires, though it were our lives? But what is it he would have us to do? He hath been the punishment of our sins, he would therefore have us cease to sin. He endured baseness for us, therefore let us repent of our pride: this he would have. His mouth was buffered for us, let us hate all blasphemy and evil speeches: this he would have. He hungered and thirsted for us: Shall we surfeit upon strong drink and belly-cheare? This he would not have. His side was pla • ced for our sins: Shall we thrust the same spear into the same wound again? This he would not have, and let us never do it.

The necessity of his last coming follows upon this: for shall he give the [unspec 3] •• eld both Law and Gospel, and call us to account for neither? Shall he let his Vineyard to Husbandmen, and never require Rent? The Law and Commandments were the Acts of his Justice, and they are trangressed. The Gospel and Promises are the Acts of his Mercy, and they are abused. Shall he put up all these indignities, and suffer his Creatures to finish their licentious races with impunity? Why do men die? Because the Elements decay with age: Is this all? Nay, but why are men afraid to die? Is it only because nature abhors dissolution, and they would not cease to be? Is this all? We cannot believe it: we know they feel more than this; even a guilty fear of some succeeding recompense; whereof because their foul souls can have no good expectation, they tremble at the suspicion of evil. This is the presage and pralodium of hell approaching: that they often cry out on their death-beds, They are damned, when yet the sentence is not come: and The devil, the devil, in their frantic and distracted imaginations; before he can seise on their souls in their dissolutions. So Cardinal Crescentius, a little before his death, was troubled with a black Dog in his chambers. So Spyra -like, they depart desolate and desperate in and into hellish horrors. Thus the Epicures that denied God as the • ap-house, preach him at the gal-house: and confess that in sobriety of spirit, which they oppugned in wantonness. They that would not find out the Lord in his mercies while they live, shall be sure to be found out by him in his Judgments when they are dead. There is a pale Horse and his Riders name is Death, and hell follows him. That pale Horse, death, shall deliver them over to the black Horse, Satan; and the black Horse shall carry them to the red Horse, the flame-coloured Hell.

Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die; say the Atheists: But when they come to die, they still have stomach to meat and drink: their meat and drink, is to do their own lusts; as Christ's was, to do his Fathers will. Their daily sustenance they devour without thanks, not without sin: But shall the guest take his fare and lodging, and depart, without paying any Shot? Will the Host entertain strangers in his Inn, and suffer them to pay nothing? Eate and drink, for tomorrow we shall die? One would think, it should be Fast and pray, for tomorrow we shall die. Eate and drink, to die? Men eat and drink, to live. Eate, drink, and die? Would they be taken away with a full stomach, as we kill beasts when they have most flesh on their backs? Eate and drink today, and not die till tomorrow? Who gave them assurance for so long? Why not today? Why not presently, before they can put either meat or drink into their mouths? Multa cadunt inter. The wise man considers, he hath no morrow: therefore looks to himself, while it is called To day. Eate, drink, and die: Well, yield this the common condition of all: Yet to do and suffer all this in a supine and desperate carelessness, as it were to spite destiny; this makes up the blasphemy. Die, and there an end? As there is no need of meat and drink after death, so is there no reckoning to be made for that they have taken? O fools! Will Nature take her due, and shall not Judgment exact his tribute? Death is the way of all flesh: the way, it is not the end of all flesh. Very much flesh hath no end but damnation, and that damnation hath no end at all. As it is with a man that eats and drinks day by day in great quantity, and yet can neither digest nor egest it, get it neither up nor down: he must needs expect death for Physic, that meat and belly both perish together. So he that clogges his soul with the continual surfeits of sin; and can neither digest them in his conscience, nor egest them by repentance; cannot avoid the Judgment, which shall destroy both sin and soul together. The Statutes of righteousness they have wholly broken, the remedies of unrighteousness they have not taken; what can be their end, but destruction?

[unspec 4] The soul dies not with the body: it must therefore got some whither, when it leaves the body. If the soul in particular come to Judgment, way • ices • not the general Judgment come to all? I am loath to mingle Philosophical Conceits with Divine Cordials, as Water with Wine, lest my persuasions should be flash and dilute; but that I am here to deal with Atheists. All Philosophy (the brutish School of the Epicure excepted) did acknowledge the soul of man to be no vapor. Not only the learned Grecians, and civilized Romans, but even the rudest Scythians, and unletter'd Savages, the many Languages, and sundry Dialects in the world; this hath ever been the common voice of them all, That souls die not with their bodies. If they die not, extinctively, what becomes of them? Shall the virtuous and vicious soul speed both alike? Whither go they; good and bad, all to one place? If a beast could argue, he would abhor such a Tenet. That there is difference of men, no Atheist ever denied: they never thought a murderer to be so good a man, as a preserver of life. They distinguish between a charitable reliever of the poor, and a bloody oppressor of them; betwixt him that speaks truth, and the liar; between the chaste man, and an adulterer; and say, This is a bad man, that is a good one. Yet looking upon the outward condition of these; too often the vicious flourisheth with riches and honor, whiles the good man goes away with poverty and contempt. What then? Shall the souls of both these fare thus hereafter too? Shall the noble rioter retain his honor, and the industrious laborer remain still a beggar? What sense ever concluded so? If then the soul have a being, it must needs change the condition of being: there cannot but be a reward for the just, and a retribution for the unrighteous. It is not possible for the most corrupted heart to think, that a soul shall be honored for villainy, and for honesty be contemned.

Why are good men hated? Why afflicted? Why go they mourning all the day, eating the bread of sorrow, and mingling their drink with tears? Why doth not the current of honor and opulency run by their doors? Why are they not the Treasure of Princes, the Jewels of Kingdoms, the favorites of all men? What should be denied them, whom God loves? Be it answered, Nond • m tempus: the time is not yet. Pleasure, and joy, and peace, are coming to them; but only with the coming of Christ. Shall man say to God in the midst of his distresses; Lord, Haccine Iustitia tua, Is this thy Justice? He will answer; O man, Haeccine fides tua, Is this thy faith? Thus argue these Atheists: If God be so wise and just in governing the world, and bear such love to his own, why doth he suffer them to be so triumphed over? Either he would deliver them, and cannot; or he can, and will not; or he neither will, nor can; or both. If he would, and cannot; then is he impotent, and hath not the power of a God. If he can, and will not; then he is envious, and wants the love of a God. If he neither can, nor will; then is he so far from being a God, that he comes short of a man. If he both will, and can; why is it not done? We answer, That he both can, and will, and doth deliver his chosen. He can at all times, he will at sometimes, he doth at the best and fittest times, most seasonable for his own glory, and our blessedness. And then they that have denied and desyed God in their bravery, shall be cast down to endless calamity: when those despised and distressed souls, that humbly acknowledged him on Earth, shall be acknowledged and glorified by him in Heaven.

They speak of a Promise of his coming: But when comes he? Where is this [unspec 5] Promise? He said, that he would come quickly: yet it is fifteen hundred years ago, and he is not come. He spake of Clouds, and Angels, and a Throne: we see none of all these things. The Clouds fly up and down with the wind, and are as they were at first: Angels we see none: nor any Thrones, but those wherein the Monarchs of the Earth seat themselves. He promised, that the dead shall rise: we never spake with anybody that rose from the dead, to confirm us in such an expectation. He promised, that the Heavens and Earth shall be on fire: yet the Earth is as steady; and the Heavens as fair and clear, as when he spake it. That the Sun should be darkened, and the Moon turned to blood: yet they both give their alternal light, and distinguish day and night with unfailing vicissitude. He said, that the Trumpet should sound, and waken all flesh: our sleeps are not yet broken with any such terrible summons. That the Stars should fall: yet still they keep their stations, motions, and orbs. That he will come in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God; recompensing tribulation to them that trouble his children, and rest to them that are troubled. Yet we are lusty and strong: and as we have followed our fathers, so we leave our Inheritances to our succeeding posterities. And for those that are troubled, troubled they may be still, for any help that we see drop down from the Heavens to their comfort. He hath promised to Judge quick and dead, yet neither is done: and if the living scape, what will the dead fear; that are insensible? When then is the promise of his coming? Sure all is but the vain fear of some, and the foolish ungrounded hope of others: for there is no such matter as any future life: Men die as Beasts, with as full cessation of being: there is neither Judge, nor Doome, nor Hell, nor Heaven: all are but the inventions of policy, to limit the World to a civil carriage. These be the horrible blasphemies of presumptuous spirits, and ill-flattered souls, ordained to perish in their own security.

But, why do they call it a Promise? Not in respect of themselves: alas, they cannot apprehend it without terror, and a palsy in their joints. But they reflect this Promise upon the good, who look for a deliverance and reward in that day. For if in this life only we had hope in Christ, we were of all men most miserable. To us it is a day of Promise, to them a day of commination: to us the end of sorrows, to them the beginning. Then we look that God should both wipe away all tears from our eyes, and set their eyes a running with tears forever. The object of our hope, and of their fear, is the day of universal retribution. All shall come forth: they that have done good, to the resurrection of Life: they that have done evil, to the resurrection of damnation. Woe to them when they desire the day of the Lord: to what end is it for them? The day of the Lord to them is darkness, and not light. They say, Let him hasten his work, that we may see it, &c. But they shall find it a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of dissolution and darkness. It is a day they will have small joy in. If horror, and amazedness, and pangs of conscience, and despair, and vengeance, and rejection from God, and condemning to Hell, can bring them any comfort; much good doit them with it.

[unspec 6] God's first coming to give the Law, and his last coming to require the Law, have a near similitude. There, was Lightning darted in their eyes, Thunder roaring in their ears, the Trumpet drowning the Thunder-claps, the voice of God louder than the Trumpet; clouds enwrapping, smoke ascending, fire flaming, the Mount trembling, Moses quaking, a terror in the Heavens, an uproar in the Elements, paleness and death in the face of Israel: how wonderful, how dreadful was this appearance? He delivers his Law in the light of fire, from out of the smoke; to teach them, that he could find out their closest sins. They see fire above them, to represent the fire that should be below them; that they might learn what is due to their sins. That they might know, God could waken their security, the Thunder and louder voice of God speaks through their ears to their hearts. That they might see what their hearts should do, the Earth quakes under them. To assure them that there is no shifting of their appearance, the Angel calls them together. O royal Law, O mighty Law-giver, who can offend thee without terror? Now, if his first coming were so terrible, what shall be his last? If the Law was thus given, how shall it be required? If such were the Proclamation of God's Statutes, what shall the Sessions be? What heart of Adamant doth not tremble at the resemblance? The Trumpet of the Angel called unto the one; the voice of the Archangel, the Trumpet of God, shall summon us to the other. In that, Mount Sinai only was on a flame: here, all the world shall burn with fire. In both, there are Clouds, Lightening, Thunders, Trumpets, Fire: only in this latter, the stream of Fire shall be more potent, patent, violent, dissolving the Heavens, and melting away the Elements, with a noise. Think Atheist, what pleasure thou shalt find in his coming. If God did on such a manner forbid sin, what is the vengeance he will inflict upon sinners? If he were so terrible a Law-giver, what a Judge shall he appear? If the delivery of the Law was little less than death, what death shall be the reward of the transgressors of it? It was given in a fire fearful enough, but shall be required in a fire more fearful. The fire wherein it was delivered, was but terrifying; the fire wherein it shall be required, is consuming.

To us then, if we be true believers, belongs this Promise of his coming. Christ's first coming was the Expectation of nations, this next is the Expectation of Christians. Look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh. Our eyes are still dropping in this valley of tears; but we look for the gracious beams of that Sun of mercy that shall dry them up. No woman with child did ever more exactly count her time: no Jew did ever more earnestly wish for the Jubilee: no servant so desireth the end of his years: no stranger so longs to be at home: no overladen soul so groaneth for ease: no Soldier so heartily contendeth to have his wars determined with conquest: as the Saints expect the Promise of this coming of Jesus Christ. It is the strength of their hopes, the sweet object of their faiths, in the midst of all sorrows; the comfort of their hearts, the heart of their comforts, the encouragement of their wearied spirits, the life of their encouraged souls; the common clausule, the continual period and shutting up of their prayers; Come Lord Jesus, come quickly. Amen.

For since the Fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the Creation.] This is their Sentence or Argument. We may think it strange, that the Apostle should spend any time or pains in the confuting of Atheists: whom shame, fear, and a thousand witnesses, like gnawing worms within their breasts, have ever from the beginning, and shall to the end of the world, force unto an acknowledgment of the Deity. And that it were more fit, arguments should be drawn out of the scabberds of Magistrates, that might without reply choke the breath of such execrable impiety: than for reason to dispute that which heaven, earth, Angels, men and devils, all ages, all languages of the world have confessed. And that such inglorious and infamous questions should be left to the Tribunal of the highest Judge, if there be no Throne upon earth that will determine them: for certainly, they are the children of hell by as proper right as the devil himself. And what am I, that like Uzzah, I should stretch out my hand to underprop the Ark, or, offer to uphold the high Throne of the Godhead? Princes will not let those stand in their presence, with whom they are displeased: and alas, My sins are ever before me; I am a man of polluted lips. Yet because there is a generation of men, that have commanded their tongues (for they shall never command their hearts) to speak a blasphemous Lye; men monstrously mis-shapen in the powers of the soul, and transformed from the use of reason: that labor to root up those rational Maxims and Principles, which the hand of Nature hath planted in them: and they are cursed, that help not the Lord against his enemies; that do not arm their pens and tongues against his Atheistical contradictors: I must proceed, according to my Theme, not only to retort their assaults, but to fling new darts in their faces. Yea, I could wish, that those great wits, which spend their time in bandying unnecessary questions, would let fly upon this Monster, which is the root that nourisheth all the branches of security; and dignity up that from the bottom. Let their pains at the Court, and the Cross, be employed in weeding up those Diagoriz'd opinions, and remnants; which yet stick even in such Gardens, as have borne a long time the name of Christians: and tell them, that God hath ordained long since their impious and blasphemous spirits to immortal malediction.

I confess, that the Champions of God have need of the various and universal Weapons of Learning, for the conviction of these Out-laws. You will say, the Scripture is sufficient (it is so) to build up the man of God. But what shall we do contra principia negantem? Urge Atheists with the Verdict of the Scriptures, you may as well bring them the History of Herodotus, or, the Narrations of Lucian. Tell them of Heaven, and Hell, and a Judge; they count it as a Tale of Cocytus and Phlegeton, and such fabulous inventions of licentious Poets. Therefore, skirmishing with Atheists, we must behave ourselves as if we were a converting Gentiles. The confession of Philosophers, the consent of Histories must be observed: they will not be convinced, but with their own Authors. There is no knowledge, but it is of God: and we dishonor Divinity, if we take away her handmaids; as a Queen, that is allowed no servants. Logic, Rhetoric, Philosophy, History, Poetry, are her waiting-maids; the Virgins that follow her, and as it were help to make her ready, in her choice ornaments. When Christ said, You must forsake all, and follow me; he did not mean that we should forsake all Arts, and follow him. Luke was a Physician, Paul a learned Pharisee: neither of these knowledges did them hurt, in performing their Ministry. Paul alleged Verses out of Heathen Poets: it was, but by their own Poets to convince Heathens. The Atheists with nothing but known reasons will be refuted: they admit of no reasons, but those that come within the compass of their five senses. When they hear one talking affectedly, coldly, or absurdly in the Pulpit; alleging, that he speaks from the mouth of God; they make an obloquy of mouth, matter, and all. Indeed we should not lumber up Scripture; but lay it deliberately and methodically, like Pearl and Gold-lace on a rich garment. If there be any that care not how they speak it, so they have it to speak; they dishonor it. Out it flies from them, East and West, though they lose it in the mis-application; all is nothing, for more they have of it, than they well know what to do withal. It should be used as the first ground, to build; and the last Seal, to confirm. When it is trivially, and without necessity, called unto witness, it is a kind of taking the Name of God in vain. We must gather fruit, not leaves; proofs, not phrases only out of the Bible. It is the Corner-stone; both the foundation, and closing up of the Building. In war we use the weapons and engines of all Nations: so no less do we employ all Arts against the sins of all Nations. Scripture must be reserved as the last Volley, to get the victory. It is the great Ordnance, which must play upon our enemies in the end and chief hazard of the fight. All wise Orators keep their weightiest arguments to the conclusion: otherwise like that people whom they call Hot-shots, they will give a brave on-set, but quail presently. Against these Porphyrian deriders, let us use all our Art: let Priests pronounce them, and Princes proclaim them, the uncleanest Lepers that ever Sore ran upon: not only to be excluded the Host, and to have their habitation alone; but to be exiled the Land, and extermined Nature it self, which they so unnaturally strive to annihilate: for they call earthly Princes Kingdoms in question, whiles into question they call the Kingdom of God.

For since the Fathers fell asleep, &c.] Let us now hear their argument; what they can say against him, that hath said that against them, which shall stick by them forever. There is, they pretend, the same state and course of things now, that was at the first: no alteration, no innovation. The thing that hath been, is that which shall be: and there is no new thing under the Sun. Day and Night, Winter and Summer, Seeding and Harvest, have their wonted vicissitude: therefore they have stood from all eternity, and to all eternity they shall stand • they had no beginning, they shall have no end: there is an everlasting perpetuity of all things. If we take their argument in pieces, we find three Limbes of this confused Chaine: first, Certitudinem, a constancy or continuance: secondly, Latitudinem, the largeness of this dreamed abiding, or immutablenesse; All things: thirdly, Longitudinem, the longevitie or space of duration; From the beginning. First, we will examine the strength, or rather weakness of these circumstances asunder, and then dissolve them all together.

1. For the Continuance: Constancy is indeed the glory of all goodness, the crown of virtues. It is the incommunicable honor and peculiar of God; Ego Iebovah non mutor: in that Father of Lights there is no variableness, nor shadow of turning. Angels and Saints in Heaven have an unchangeable estate; but they are in their own nature mutable, and are only preserved by Him that changeth not. He hath shown to the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel. The not changing of the Heirs depends upon the immutability of their Father; whose Decrees, Promises, Acts, are all immutable. But now, hath God given such a privilege to the world? Whoever found it so constant a friend? Who ever trusted it, and was not deceived by it? But they say, Suppose that an eternal Power made the world; if the cause be eternal, eternal also must be the effect. How senseless is this reason? For if we say, The world had no beginning, because the Maker had none; we may as well say, The house must needs be as ancient as the Carpenter. And to allege, That the world shall have no ending, because God hath none; we may as well say, The Bread shall last as long as the Baker. So senseless is the reason, That because God is everlasting, therefore he made an everlasting world. If they suppose the world without a Maker, as a house without a builder, that foundation less opinion shall anon be refuted.

2. The Latitude, or extent: All things continue statu quo prius. This is manifestly false: for there is a sensible decay, even a visible declination of all things. The alacrity and vigor of the Creature is wonderfully abated; the Earth is dull and barren, in requiting the husbandmans labor; our Springs and Summers are like the children of women after fifty. The world took a fall in his Cradle, as Mephibosheth from his Nurse; and hath pined away ever since. The stature of man is exceedingly lessened, and yet more shortened is his life: we have neither an equal portion of days, nor proportion of bodies with our forefathers. Now that Whole cannot be perpetual, whose parts be alterable: if a hand or leg be taken from a body, it remains not integral, much less immortal.

3. For the Longitude: There be three words that come out of their mouths, and give the Lye to themselves; the Creation, and Beginning, and Sleep of the Fathers. First, they confess a Creation: and well are they convinced so to do. For can there be a world without an Author, or efficient cause? How absurd were these imaginations; that either the world should make it self, as if a house could build it self: or, that something in the world made the world; that is, someone part of it made the whole: as if the finger of a body, and that before it was a finger, did make the whole body. Something therefore more excellent and noble than the world, did make the world, and this could be nothing but God himself. Secondly, they confess a Beginning; why then should they deny an end? Is not that Power able to dissolve the world, that gave it being? Shall it be harder for the Architect to pull down the house, than it was to build it? Could not fire destroy that Temple in a day, that was six and • i •• tie years in setting up? But say others; If there was a beginning, and that in time; what business had God before the beginning? Perfectissima causa non est otiosa. This is a gross conception of God: The Father hath not left me alone, saith our Savior. Shall Christ not be alone, in respect of his divine conjunction with the Father; and shall it not be alike with the Father, in regard of the Son; with the holy Ghost, in respect of both; with each of them, in respect of other? That inseparable unity of the Trinity denieth to every Person a possibility of being alone; and that unsearchable mystery of the fruition of his own glory, is far above the society of creatures, Saints, or Angels. Thirdly, they confess the Sleep of the Fathers; therefore they cannot deny their waking. They say not, They are dead; as if that were a full cessation: but, They sleep; to show their hope of Resurrection. Thus are they convinced with their own words, that would deny (and shall never be able to do it heartily) the mortality of the worlds condition. They see no change: what change would they see? Before the Deluge, stones did not dance, nor trees fly about the air; houses did not stand with their foundations upwards, nor the Sun drop from Heaven: and yet a • loud of water drowned the world.

Thus much in particular: now let us generally clear the argument. Natural fancies are like Glass; bright, but brittle? Christian Religion is like Gold; rub it, beat it, melt it; it will endure the Test, the Touch, the Hammer, and still shine more orient.

[unspec 1] In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth. This is affirmed by Moses, and denied by Machiavel: the first, the Secretary of God; the other, a Secretary to the State of Florence: the one taught God to the world, the other filled the world with the Devil: this not of two hundred years standing, the other of above three thousand. To which of these should we in reason give the most credit? Moses hath ever been famous, Machiavel ever infamous. All ages have reverenced Moses: Machiavel hath only been affectedly read by a few self-condemned reprobates. Juvenal sung of the honor of Moses: Romanas soliti contemnere leges, Iudaicum ediscunt, ac servant, ac metuunt jus, Tradidit arcano quodcunque volumine Moses. Eight Heathens, two renowned Jews bear witness to him, in their Volumes. From his exemplar, the Pagans patterned out their services to their Idol-gods. His Books have been preserved through so many generations, and brought to us, not by our friends, but by our very enemies; the Jews, that detest us. How can we with equity, with any equality, compare these together? Alas for our times; that there should be any such as Cyprian writes of: Hominibus contra Deum credunt, qui Deo contra homines non credunt. They will not believe God against men, that believe men against God.

[unspec 2] We have a cloud of witnesses to second Moses. Thou hast made Heaven, &c. By the word of the Lord were they made, &c. Neh. 9.6. Psal. 33.6. Be it wet or dry, be it passable or be it navigable, be it above or below; this Maker did create it, this Creator doth preserve it, and this Preserver will change it. Look into their Philosophers and Poets, Hesiod, Ovid; how did they borrow their Chaos from the writings of Moses? Si nulla fuit generalis origo Terrarum & Coeli, semper que aeterus fuere; Cur supra bellum Thebanum & funera Troiae, Non alias alii quoque res cecimere Poetae? So Macrobius confesseth, that beyond Ninus he reads of no notable thing written: and therefore concludes, that both the world had a beginning, and was of small antiquity. No less have they spoken of the worlds ending. Ovid says it shall be burned; and that this is the dissolution of it, appointed by destiny; though he fondly applies it to a Phaeton -fire. So Lucan, of the bodies left unrited at the battle of Pharsalia; Hos Caesar populos si nunc non usserit ignis, uret cum terris. Communis mundo superest rogus. An end presupposeth a beginning, a marring implies a making. We cannot deny the known beginning of many things. Polydor Virgil hath written a whole Tract de Inventoribus rerum. To Zeno, Socrates, Aristotle, we are beholding for the use of Logic: we know when they lived. Aristotle was Schoolmaster to Alexander, Plato to Aristotle, Socrates to Plato, some four hundred years before Christ: Zeno was a little beyond them. The Eclipses of the Moon were prodigiously fearful to the Grecians and Romans: the knowledge of them was made familiar since. The year was reduced to the orderly course of the Sun by Julius Caesar. Of what antiquity are kingdoms; when Nimrod mentioned by Moses, and Ninus by the Heathen (both which are thought to be one) is held to be the first King? Josephus observes that the word 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 was never used by Homer: Laws were not known; men only were ruled by the commandment of Princes. Bacchus, say the Ethnics, we know Noah was the man, first found out the use of wine. Ceres was canonized for a goddess, for teaching them the use of corn. As we now have these things in some perfection; so not long since they were rude, and not long before that nothing. Therefore it is false, that all things are the same from the beginning. Yea, if they were not upheld by the Makers providence, they would soon of themselves come to an ending.

The concord of things in discord; the standing fast of the earth under us, [unspec 3] the running round of the heaven above us, the due function of the offices of all creatures, like so many Soldiers that make good their places; shows there is a General that governs them. A well-ordered city declares, there is a Prince that rules it; though he go not abroad to be seen. The agreement of the members, that the eyes do not wrangle with the ears, nor the hands mutine against the feet, is a clear demonstration that the body is disposed by a soul within. Animam tuam quis videt? Cùm ergo corpus tuum solum videatur, quare non sepeliris? He should be buried that is dead, he is dead that hath no soul, and he hath no soul (by their reason) if it cannot be seen. We know we have a soul by our motion: and why do we not know, the world hath a soul by his harmony and disposition? Could the heavens move round without a Mover? Will the grind-stone whirl about of it self, without a Turner.

Let me shut up all with this one unanswerable argument, against the Atheistical [unspec 4] spirits that plead the continuance of all things from the creation without change. How comes it to pass that Christ is worshipped of all nations; his Church and Religion so universally spread? Is not this a change? Was it so from the beginning? Did those famous Monarchies of the Chaldeans, Persians, Grecians, Romans, acknowledge Christ before he came into the world? He came not until the fullness of time; and before that fullness he was only believed on in Israel; though he was called the Expectation of nations. The Gentiles were ignorant of him; and when he came indeed, both Jews and Gentiles for the time refused him. Now some souls in all people, kingdoms, and languages adhere to him as their only Savior. Is not this a change? What foundation could seem weaker to flesh and blood, than that confidence should be put in a condemned and crucified man? What Doctrine could be more repugnant to corrupt nature, than that he taught? For a man to deny himself, to take up his Cross, to love his enemies, to embrace persecution for godliness? If honor, pleasure, wealth had been promised; these might have allured many followers. But when tribulation, sorrow, martyrdom be the conditions of his service; What but a divine Power could send us after him upon these terms? Nor have blocks and fools, illiterate Turks and Saracens, or gross and stupid Idolaters, been only won to him: but Philosophers and the rarest Scholers, men full of all good knowledge. Even these have put their trust in One that was shamefully crucified; and have died for him, who was before dead, and laid in a grave. Nor did this only hold for a while; but sixteen hundred years; and shall to the consummation of all things. All the subtlety of Machiavell shall never understand this, nor all the powers of the devil shall ever withstand this. Only Divinity tells us in one word. This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Advertisements.

1. Atheism is the main disease of the soul: not only pestilent to the person in whom it is harboured, but to the whole land where it is permitted. This hath ever been seen and acknowledged by the policy of all nations; that a Deity is to be worshippped. The Athenians had an Altar to the unknown God: Ignoto Deo, sed Deo. Cicero thus pleads for the State of Rome: What is it that hath made us so famous? Non numero Hispanos, nec r • bore Gallos, nec calliditate Poenos, nec artibus Graec • s, nec native sensu Italos ipsos & Latinos: What then? Sed pietate & religione omnes gentes superavimus. If these common impressions and notions sealed up in every mind of man; that remnant of integrity surviving the fall, sparkles of fire raked up under the ashes; if nature within, and the creature without; God's visible works, and our invisible consents; the inward motion of the one, and the outward motion of the other: if all these lights be extinguished in the chambers of their hearts, and they do willfully impose on their consciences a burden which they cannot bear, the denial of Deity: let such condemned spirits ripe and be rotten to perdition: let them now be distracted with insufferable horrors: and at last, let them rise from the sides of the pit, malgre their stout contradictions, at the Judgment of the great day to receive a deeper potion of vengeance. Ill shall their scoffs prosper with them: when they think they have won the greatest prize and praise to their wits in putting down God, then God shall arise in Judgment and cast them down to hell. At the day of their death with conviction, and at the last day with confusion, he shall show them his terrible frowns; and teach them both that he is, and what he is. All their virulent and miscreant positions shall perish with them in unquenchable flames; those everlasting arguments of that Justice which they have blasphemed. They have esteemed the Law of God no better than the device of man; and thought it as cheap an offense to contemn the divine Majesty, as human authority; and to deny the rights of the Godhead, (which they vainly imagine, is but imagined) as their fealty and allegiance to earthly Princes. But they that would stultesere in culpâ, shall be forced sapere in paenâ: vengeance shall make them wise, whom sin hath made and left foolish.

2. We do not forbear to waken them from their supine and careless opinions, wherewith they enchant their own souls, and infect others. We write against them, we preach against them, we proclaim threatenings, and threaten punishments, and blow the Trumpets of God's severe indignation more than seven times about the walls of this Jericho; that their ruin and downfall is at hand. We let them know that God ruleth in Jacob, and unto the ends of the earth. Let them put far away the evil day; which is never the farther off, yea so much the nearer them for their adjourning: and because the skies do not fall, nor the last fire flash in their proud faces; believe no coming at all. But it shall come soon enough to their cost; and they shall find with woe, that the Lamb they rejected, shall judge them: the God they denied, shall condemn them; and those malignant spirits whom they never feared, shall torment them, and that forever. They that would not believe a God, shall find a devil. My Lord delaieth his coming: thus cries the worst servant in the house: (yet it is something that he grants, he will come at last.) therefore he falls to beating his fellows, to eat and drink with the drunken. These follow their pleasures, dance, sing, sport, revel; and Where is the promise of his coming at all? Thus let them live in their sins, according to the leading and lusting of their own corrupted hearts: but they shall find a stop in the course of the world; and the plummets of nature being down, she shall stand like a motionlesse clock: the Sun shall stay his race, and the Moon no more repair her decaying shine: their delights shall end their parts, the stage being taken down, and all these actors turned into hell. Then shall they confess that his coming was promised, and is performed: and the things that continued so long as from the creation, are now quite altered by the dissolution, as if they had never been. But when the bottomless pit hath shut her mouth upon them, this acknowledgement shall be too late; not for God's glory, but for their own ease: the door of mercy being shut against them, despair and torture seising on them; and those blasphemous tongues that contradicted their Maker, not allowed one drop of water to cool them.

3. The punishment of Atheists should be severe and exemplary: as the highest indignity that can be done to God, is to deny his Essence. The poor Leper in Israel was forced to go with his clothes rent, his head bare, his lips covered; and to cry where he past, I am unclean. Till better remedy were sound for so opprobious and contagious a disease, I would all Atheists had a rent upon their clothes, a writing on their breasts, and a brand on their foreheads; that all beholders might say, An Atheist, an Atheist. Protagoras abderites, because he begun his Book with a do bt; De diis, neque ut sint, neque ut non sint, habet dicere; was banished out of Athens, and his books solemnly burnt to ashes. The same Athenians committed Anaxagoras to prison, and but for Pericles had put him to death, for but writing a book of the Moons Ecclypses, after that they had received her for a goddess. Do we find such jealousy over their feigned gods in very Athenians; and shall the disparagement of the honor of the One true and ever living God be tolerable among Christians? We have read how they have used Paracides in Rome: they sewed them up in a maile of leather, and threw them into the sea: yet so, that neither the water of the sea could soake through, nor other element of nature, Earth, Air, or Fire, approach unto them. Certainly every creature is too good for him that denies the Creator: nor can they be farther separated from heaven, or pitched deeper into hell, than they deserve, that would believe neither. Yea, they do mistrust both, whatsoever they pretend; and Tully spake of Metrodorus an Atheist in his time: Nec quemquam vidi, qui magis ea timeret, quae timenda esse negaret. They that make a flout of hell; Affirmant mihi, & tibi, non sibi: noctu, non interdiù: Their mouths tell us so, their hearts do not tell their mouths so. No hell? if they had as many provinces as Ahasuerus had, they would give an hundred and six and twenty of them, to be sure of it.

4. We read of Serpents that will never be charmed, whether with policy or melody. Sure, the consciences of evil men are such Serpents, (and therefore their wounds are called stings of conscience) which can be over-ruled by no arguments or temptations of Satan, to let go the sense of a Godhead. You may sooner get a conscience to believe all the fables in the Popish Legend, or Turkish Alcoran; than that this universal frame is without a Mind. Prima est haec ultio, quod se Iudice nemo nocens absolvitur. It is not a more sweet friend to the innocent, than to the guilty a terrible foe: a man had better have all the world against him, than his own conscience. What ailed Judas? His Master was safe enough in the clutches of his enemies, the Scribes and Pharisees was on his side, the King was not displeased at him, no Law threatened any proceeding against him; his bones were full of marrow, his purse full of money: What should hinder his heart from being full of jollity? Alas, Intra illum, quod contrae illum: his conscience pursues him, from chamber to chamber, from bed to board, from society to solitariness: this Dog still follows him, and never gives him over, till he casts away himself on his own galhouse. Si Arbitrum non vides, teipsum non vides? Testimonium cordis non vereris?

Indeed, custom of sin stupefies conscience: and while a man continues alike in his wickedness, he thinks the world also continues alike in her steadfastness: he dreams of no beginning or end, whether of that or of himself. His conscience sleeps like a tame beast within, and he rages like a wild beast abroad. But at last they will change conditions: he shall be the the tame beast, and his conscience the wild, that will prey upon him forever. Man shall die, but his conscience cannot: it shall appear with him, when he is summoned to appear before the Judge: and he shall cry out as Ahab, Hast thou found me, O thou mine enemy? As the seal makes an impression on the wax, discernible to the eye: so the memory of every sin is engraven, as with the point of a Diamond, on the conscience, not to be blotted out, but by the blood of Jesus Christ. Thy conscience may lose thee, thou canst never lose thy conscience. Obumbrari potest, quia non est Deus: extingui non potest, quia est a Deo. This still troubles them with the solicitous representations of God's anger: this stops their pillows with knives and Thorns; this puts Colloquintide into all their banquets; this like a scolding wife fetcheth her husband from Taverns: this so disquieteth their godless hearts, that they know not whither their body be more weary of their soul, or their soul of their body. These might dwell peaceably together, while both did reverence their Maker. But when that Jezebel, Atheism, for the safer maintenance of her whoredoms and witchcrafts, hath renounced this belief and service; Conscience comes like Jehu, driving furiously, with What peace? Nulla pax impiis. Then runs the Epicure to his pleasures, carousing cups of Bacchus, sporting with the waiting women of Venus; Pan and Apollo must cheare him with their minstralsies: and what's all this? He was none of the wisest, that being wearied, and lying down to rest by the way; when his head was somewhat too low, took the pitcher that lay by him, and put it under instead of a pillow: but feeling it too hard, he be thought himself, and stopped it with feathers; thinking then it would be wondrous easy. So vain and comfortless are all worldly joys, when they are used to mitigate the pangs of conscience: so miserable is the estate of these reprobates: they are not quiet while they live, and they shall never be quiet when they are dead. But for us that know and profess the One and only God forever to be blessed; let us fear him (without fear) as his adopted sons, and obey him (without hypocrisy) as his faithful servants. So at the great day of his coming to judge the ends of the earth, we shall receive a happy reward, even the inheritance of his own Son JESUS CHRIST.

[unspec 1] DIvers ways did the Philosophers attain to the knowledge of God. Socrates, by the contemplation of his Providence; that he had given man the light to guide him, the night for his rest, the fire to warm him, the fruits to nourish him. And when Euthydemus objected, that these were common to the beasts: Socrates replied, that man had understanding, memory, speech, knowledge, to make use of all these, yea and of the beasts themselves. Aristotle gathers it, Ex haeriditaria fama omnium mortalium. Galen from the excellency of the worlds fabric, did collect the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Maker. That he could so form and beautify all things, is a proof of his wisdom: that he brings to pass all his intendments, is the argument of his power: that he suffers us to enjoy these creatures, is the demonstration of his goodness. The Platonists observed it by way of comparison, and degrees of ascension: for they held spiritual things to be better than corporal: then they preferred things that had life before those that had none: and of things that had life, them that had sense and motion: and of these, the most perfect were endued with reason: and of rational things, they preferrerd intellectual spirits, as Angels: and among these, there was one most perfect, who is Totus actus, only in act, void of all passive quality, which is God. For other spirits do partly consist in act, and partly in possibility that they may not be: but it is impossible that God should not be. First, they were persuaded, that God was not a Body: then consequently they held him to be a Spirit: and yet they sought him not among the mutable spirits: therefore he must be an immutable and infinite Essence.

Indeed they came short of saving knowledge. Plato acknowledgeth one God [unspec 2] Creator of all things, yet he alloweth sacrifice to Idols. Socrates would swear by a Goat, in contempt of those Idols: yet in the end, he caused a Cock to be sacrificed to Aesc • lapius. Hermes Trismagistus, who was called the Egyptian Moses, and delivered many truths, yet spake absurdly and impiously, that Simulacras • nt velut corpora deorum: as Saint Augustine reports him, Seneca inveighed against their Idols, whom they worshipped in the form of beasts and fishes: Numina vocant, quae haberentur monstra: if they had life to meet us, they would scare us: yet after all this, he resolved on their worship; in his book of Superstition, which is perished. So Augustus saith of him, Colebat quod reprehendebat, agebat quod arguebat: he did fall to worship those gods which he had contemned.

But God hath made that plain to us, which they with much labor could not find; insomuch that the children of Christians know more than the Philosophers [unspec 3] of Pagans; and in the very principles of their Catechism, and Articles of their Creed, are taught to believe in one God, the Maker of heaven and earth: For by the word of God the heavens were of old, &c. We have heard the blasphemous assertion of these Atheists; the Apostles confutation of them follows: and this is the force of his argument. The world had a beginning, therefore it shall have an ending: a Genesis begun it, an Exodus shall determine it: by the word of God it was created, by the same word it shall be dissolved. It is an easier thing to pull down, than to build up: he that could do the one, must needs be able for the other. Yea, that his power and ability to do it might be manifest, he hath once already destroyed it by a deluge. Why should it be harder for him to melt it by fire, than it was to drown it with water?

The former proposition is set down in this Verse: which appears to me like unto a School; wherein we have Saint Peter the Divine Schoolmaster: and he doth two things. First, he puts away, and sets aside certain errant Dunces, that will never learn so much as the first Rudiments; They are willfully ignorant. Secondly, he repeats an old Lesson, as familiar to Christians, as the A. B. C. is to Scholers. The Lesson is the Creation, the building of this great House, the World: wherein we have, first, the main material parts of the House, Heaven, Earth, and Sea: secondly, the disposition of these parts; Heaven first, then Earth and Sea: and the near conjunction of these two latter; the Earth embraced by the water, standing in the water, and appearing out of the water: thirdly, and lastly, the Instrument, by which all these were made, and made thus, By the word of God.

This they are willingly ignorant of.] He begins with the Dunces, those stubborn and unruly Blockheads; inscious, nescious, conscious, willful Ignorants. It is one thing, velle scire quod oportuit latere; another, velle latere quod oportuit scire. The former, is a saucy ambition of forbidden knowledge; the other, a headstrong preclusion of commanded knowledge. The School doth thus distinguish of ignorance; Iuris, vel facti. Ignorantia juris is twofold; vincible, or invincible. This latter is when a man does all he can to know, and yet remains ignorant of many requisite things. The want of this knowledge, through the mercy of God, shall not cast a man away, because he did not cast away knowledge. Vincible is twofold. First, Non affectata, but withal Non profligata: when a man hath not a resolute will to be ignorant, but yet he does not fight against ignorance, nor exercise a sufficient endeavor to know: and this is sinful. Secondly, Affectata, quae Ius scire spernit, utliberius peccet. Affected ignorance is that, which refuseth to be instructed in good, that it might more untrollably prosecute evil. Ignorance of Fact is also double. First, when men could know, and cannot. Secondly, when they can know, and will not. There is an Ignorance of pure negation, and an Ignorance of evil disposition: mera, and crassa or supina. The former of these is properly a nescience of things we are not bound to know: the other a privative Ignorance of things we ought to know. There is a simple Ignorance, and a sinful Ignorance. A conceited Ignorance, which thinks it knows what it knows not: and a contracted Ignorance, which desires to unlearne the good it knows. As there be three degrees of knowledge▪ First, of nature, whereby man excels the beast. Secondly, of understanding, whereby the learned excel the unlearned, the wise the foolish. Thirdly, of grace, whereby the Christian excels the subtlest Philosophers, or Politicians. So there be three degrees of Ignorance. First, natural, which is the effect of original sin. Secondly, adventitiall, which is accompanied with actual sin. Thirdly, habitual, which is the depth of all sin. So the Beast, Naturian, and Christian, are three degrees of comparison. But to let go other distinctions, we have this in the Text. First, Iuvita cacitas, an ignorance against the will. Secondly, and Spontanea caecitas, a contracted, contented Ignorance. That, Quae est causa culpae: this, Cujus causa est culpa. The one is the cause of sin, of the other sin is the cause. Simple Ignorance may, excusare a tanto, mere nescience a tu • , but willful blindness, nec a toto, nec a tanto; but is damnable.

1. No Ignorance can excuse, but that only, quae non habet unde disceret. The Heathen had but the book of nature to read God in, yet the Apostle says plainly, They are without excuse. To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. Indeed nature is not sufficient of it self, without grace: it is like blind Samson without his guide; without whose direction he could not find the pillars of the house, the principles of faith. Or, as Baruch without Deborah: except the Prophetess went along with him, he would not venture upon Sisera. Vae soli; woe be to nature if she goes alone: for she will fall at every step, and who shall help her up? Lactantius dilivers Socrates his own report of himself, for all the worlds opinion of his wisdom; Se nihil scire, nisi unum, quod nihil sciret. So that renowned Orator Cicero: Vtinam tam facile vera possum invenire quàm falsa convincere: I would I could as easily light on the truth, as I can refute falsehood. What a catalogue of privileges accrued to Paul? First, his seal of the Covenant, Circumcised: and that not like a Proselyte, in his age; but the eighth day. Secondly, his kindred and descent: not from Esau, that lost the Inheritance; but from Israel. Thirdly, his Tribe; such as never fell to Idolatry, but continued in the service of God; of the Tribe of Benjamin. Fourthly, his antiquity in that Line; not inferior to the ancientest, but able to derive his pedigree from the first root of the Hebrews; an Hebrew of the Hebrews. Fifthly, besides those personal advantages; of Profession, a Pharisee; of emulation, zealous; of conversation, blameless. Yet till a clearer light shined on his face, on his heart; and he was at once dismounted from his horse, and his confidence in the flesh; he was far from the true knowledge: for which knowledge, he now counted all things loss and dung.

Of Joseph, it was the testimony of a King; The Spirit of God is in him. Of Daniel, it was the testimony of a Queen; The Spirit and wisdom of the gods is found in him. Concerning all natural knowledge, this is the triumph of the Christian: God hath made foolish the wisdom of this world. This was the thankful acknowledgement of Christ himself; Father, thou hast hid these things from the wise, and revealed them to babes. Wise, and yet foolish, men of understanding, that understand nothing. There are many and mighty Nations at this day, their Soil happy, their Air sweetly disposed, most provident to fore-cast, most ingenious to invent, most able and active to perform; that have not received the God of Christians: whom till they do receive, they remain ignorant wretches. The Empire of Turkey, that Hammer of the world, and Rod of Christendom; able to say as the Psalmist speaks: Gilead is mine, Manasseh 〈◊〉 mine; Moab is my washp •• , over Edom will I cast out my shoe: Asia is mine, Africa is mine, over Europe have I cast my shoe: a warlike, political, magnificent Nation: yet they rather credit the Inchantments of a Sorcerer, than the glorious Gospel of our Savior, who shed his blood for the worlds redemption. They are cut from the same Rock, tempered of the same mould, have their heads upwards toward Heaven; reasonable, capable, judicious souls, as well as we: what want they then? The sweet and saving knowledge of the crucified Jesus, that happy Star in the East, that should lead them to God: This, Herod and his Princes, the Turk and his Bassawes, never saw. But, blessed are our eyes, for they see; and our ears, for they hear: I will not say, what Prophets and righteous men, but what Empires and Kingdoms, not small Cantons and corners, but whole quarters of the world never attained unto; and shall one day wish to redeem with both their eyes, the sight of our inestimable riches.

2. Ignorance is the foundation of evil: nor would men so desperately venture upon sin, if they truly saw and knew the dismal consequence. It is some imaginary or apparent good the transgressor seeks: punishment is a thing which against his will he finds; or, by which he is found, and overtaken. For, good is the object of all desire; evil, is the object of fear. But because men know not the wages of evil, therefore they do it: and because they would securely do it, therefore they refuse to know it. Ignorance is unbecoming any man, intolerable in a Clergy-man. We shall seldom find, that crafty Politicians will either be confuted, or converted by Dolts. Knowledge comes not at a jump: he that will ascend, must from the low valleys creep up higher and higher; and by the stairs of Philosophy, climb up into the mountain of Theology. God does not now miraculously inspire fishermen: as it is true, without his blessing, no means is prevalent; so without means, no blessing is warranted. The early blossoms are often frost-bitten, and die abortive and fruitless. The Poet could censure it for old men's dotage, that would have their young men Ilico à pueris fieri senes. When the Devil would have Christ, of Stones to make Bread; he would in no wise consent: and will he consent now, of Blocks and Stones to make distributers of Bread, of the Bread of Life? A wise and good father will not give his children Stones, instead of Bread: what shall we say of those spiritual fathers, brainless heretics, that will give to men's souls Bread made of Stones? If a man have enough to do, to get his own Bread with the sweat of his brows: what pains will it cost him, to provide Bread for himself and his whole family; a great Congregation? In the Ark were the Tables of the Law, Aaron's Rod, and the Pot of Manna: the endowments of a good Minister are, Instruction in his mouth, correction in his hand, and in his heart compassion.

The Levite had no temporal maintenance of his own, but what he had from the people: the people had no spiritual maintenance of their own, but what they received by the Priest and Levite. If their lips do not preserve knowledge, it were better to damme up their Ovens of utterance. Nor should their knowledge only be limited to the Scriptures; but fetch in all those helps that may serve for illustration of the Scriptures: as Christ himself drew comparisons from natural things; and taught men from Vines and Fig-trees, from Sp • rrowes and Lilies. Religion through us may receive infamy, and the Gospel discredit; whiles we make a scruple of sweetening our tunes, to catch souls. Men are men; and with those things must be moved, where with men are wont to be moved. The hooks must be pleasantly baited, that they bite at. They that hang forth naked hooks, without a bait, may entangle them in the weeds, enwrap themselves in contentions; but catch no fish, win never a soul. You will say, Paul desired to know nothing but Christ; and the Scripture can make us wise enough, to salvation. This is true; but then it must be wisely applied: all Arts are used to this purpose: and the scope and center whither we reduce them, is but this; Christ is all in all. No Orator was ever more pleasingly persuasive, than humble Saint Augustine; none more learned: yet he taught nothing but Christ. Why should not we listen to Saint Augustine, as well as Augustine himself did to Saint Ambrose? Why, not reverence Cyprian, as he did Tertullian; of whom he said every day, Cedo mihi Magistrum, he must teach me a Lesson? How shall we shake off ignorance, but by Learning? How can we learn, without reading? Books have their necessary use: He was a famous Prince, that stuck not to call himself in this sense, Necromancer; because he did ask counsel of the dead; meaning Books. Shall we appeal from the living to the dead? From ourselves, as living children, to Saint Augustine, Jerome, and those dead Fathers? Yea, let me say, from the dead to the living: from choleric emulation, and contention of wit, the dead works of the living; to Divine Books, the living Labors of the dead: from the present fancies of unmortified men, to the Libraries of those holy Writers, whose passions are buried with their bodies?

God delighteth to be magnified in all his creatures, especially in the excellentest of his creatures: Arts are among those excellencies; not one of them, but descended from his Throne. Our Apostle speaks here of the Heavens, Earth, Waters: and the Prophet chargeth us to praise God in all these; and that materially, metaphysically. Into the majesty of Sun and Moon we see; the bright Stars, their motion and influence we know; the Heaven of Heavens, and Waters above the Heavens, in part, though not at large, we comprehend: in all these, let us praise their Maker. Let not the knowledge of Scripture become men's Champion, to scold against all other knowledge: for such cannot escape Saint Peters censure, of being willfully ignorant. If we refuse to know anything but Scripture, we shall not know the Scripture it self as we ought. It is indeed the chief power of God to salvation; and cursed is all Learning, that does not tend to, and attend upon that. But Generals in a pitched field will not thrust forth their chief power first: by little and little they will train their enemy out of order with light assaults. Stars have their stations, and motions, and honors allotted them in the firmament, though they come short of the Sun and Moon. Human Writers may reprove vices, and condemn these Atheists, though their main Sentence be given by the Word of God. It is an easy matter to praise God in that, wherein he hath placed the especial State-house of his praises. He that out of the barest and b • rrennest parts of his Lord's dominion, shall accumulate and levy to his Treasury a great Tribute, though short of that he hath out of his richest Provinces; shall he not do him remouerable service? They are malevolent spirits, that exclude any Art or Author, Roman or Athenian, any creeping Worm, or contemptible creature, from bearing witness to God. It is fit, other men should know many things; but a Preacher should be ignorant of nothing, that may be useful to the glory of his Maker. How should these Atheists be converted from their willful ignorance, by Teachers that are willfully ignorant? Let Light come into the house at the doors and windows: but God forbid, that the Tapers of the Sanctuary, and the Lamps, should burn dim. If they did, sure these days of ours would afford many Snuffers. We are montes moventes; our site and motion is in conspectu omnium: there is no passenger but observes the mountain. Legit ut Clericus, is not enough to make a Priest; more goes to it than so. I never wonder to see men dissolute, where their Teacher is ignorant; no more, than that men should stumble in the dark: where Prophecy fails, the people perisheth.

3. Atheism, profaneness, and all impiety issues from the root of secure and contented Ignorance. They that are willfully blind, are desperately wicked: Malus and Stultus, are but two several attributes of one and the same man. First, there is no knowledge of God in the Land; thereupon follows a privation of goodness; (no truth, no mercy,) and upon that, a position of all ungodliness, until blood toucheth blood. Lewdnesse follows blindness: when the eyes of the Jews were darkened, all mischiefs throng in upon them: Therefore we call a cruel man, a Jew. When sinners have given up themselves to darkness, God gives them up to the Prince of darkness; and he works upon their corrupt nature, to precipitate them into all wickedness: as if they setting themselves on the top of a hill, and purposing to run down, he stood at their back, to thrust them headlong. They may have some skill in the contriving of facinorous acts; as Bats and Owls see best in the night. Deale with them about the world, they have shrewd and subtle wits: but speak of Religion, and they count it a strange language: as Moales within the ground are quick, and dignity apace; but above ground can make little shift for themselves. It is just with God, that they who might understand, and would not; should be upon the point of perishing, and understand it not.

He that hath the Talent of illumination, and buries it in the dark earth of ignorance, is worthy to lose it: If he have the understanding of a man, and yet will be as ignorant as a beast, God will make a beast of him; as he did of a great Monarch, Nebuchadnezzar. Reprove a swearer, and he will swear the more, to spite you: which were not possible, if he was not willfully ignorant, and did not (what in him lies) give himself over to the Devil. Christ wept over Jerusalem: what was the cause? If thou hadst known: they were willfully blind. This cost him a deep groan: and he that never cried Oh, for all his own bitter passions, vents it with a sigh, for their blindness. Even good things become snares to such; as a blind Money-monger may stumble at his own Bags. Wisdom is good with an Inheritance: but an Inheritance without wisdom, is a Ginne, and temptation to lewdness. We pity and relieve him that is borne blind, or loseth his sight by misfortune: but he deserves no pity, that plucks out his own eyes, to move compassion to his beggary. Doubtless, that God who is so rich in mercy, hath compassion in store for those blind hearts, that would know, and cannot: But what hope is left for the willfully ignorant, that may know, and will not? Therefore I cannot but conceive, that the Papists in Rome shall find a more favorable Doome than the Recusants in England: those would know the truth, if they might be suffered; these will not know it, though they be invited: Therefore we call these, not the other, Recusants; that is, willful ignorants.

4. No less Judgment belongs to them that reject knowledge, than to them that deny obedience. He that will not cast an eye upon the Kings published Proclamation, is never the less subject to the penalty for his transgression. So far is he from cloaking his errors with ignorance, that he binds two sins together, and receives a double vengeance. Greater means require greater knowledge; greater knowledge, greater obedience; or, it will procure greater punishments. The eye is excused, for not seeing; the care, for not hearing what they ought: but if the will forbids them to do these functions, and turns them off from such necessary objects; no pretence shall excuse the will. All those dire plagues that fell upon the head of Jerusalem; the demolishing of her glorious Temple, the rasing of her foundations, the dashing of her infants against the stones, her channels streaming with blood, the ravishing of her Virgins, the slaughter of so many hundred thousands; they may all thank this one clause of a sentence, for giving them birth and breath, At noluisti. Neither destruction nor damnation had befallen her, but for this, At noluisti. Christ offered her peace and forgiveness, if she would know him; At noluit. He proffered to ease all her burden, if she would cast it on him; At noluit. She needed but ask and have; but knock, and it should be opened; At noluit. A world of evil, the evil of the world; yea, the evil of the world to come, she had escaped: the blessings of Heaven, a Heaven of blessings she had obtained; all but for this willful ignorance; At noluisti, But thou wouldest not.

Let us all be warned by her ruins: if England esteem knowledge cheap and base, which Solomon preferred to Gold and Jewels; and refuse to know the good, that she may securely do the evil; she shall soon match Jerusalem in accursedness. She shall see nothing but frowning Wrath in the Clouds, but Lightning and Thunder in the mouth of the four Winds; the Heaven (instead of Stars) shall be made an Artillery-house of Hailestones; no Planet shall revolve anything, but vastation; Earthquakes shall dissolve her joints, and all her Buildings shall but quash the owner with their falls, affording them unasked Tombes and Sepulchers; the Dampes of the Earth shall breed nothing but Plagues, the Clouds shall drop down leanness on her Fields, the Sea shall break in upon her with inundations; she shall be privileged from no Judgments, when she once willfully rejects knowledge. How just is it with God, to remove their Candlestick, that have put out their own Candle! To remove the Ark from them, that remove themselves from the Ark! But the Lord evermore forbid, that our barrenness of knowledge, in this abundance of means, should beget an Ichabod; whose name may be a Trumpet to the world of our shame; The Gospel is gone from England, The glory is departed from Israel.

5. Yet in this plenty of means, I should take it for granted, that we have plenty of knowledge. But not to hold you in admiration of your own happiness at the gaze, and to leave your understandings without reflection of themselves upon themselves; know this for a certain: Omnis excusatio tollitur, ubi praeceptum non ignoratur. Even sins of ignorance stand in need of mercy: but what Cloake is long enough, to cover sins against knowledge? It is no marvel to see the Wilderness lie waste and desert: but if a ground well husbanded and manured yield not profit, it deserveth cursing. After ye have known God, how turn ye again to beggarly elements? Yea, worse than beggarly elements, even vagrant enormities, to the incurring of a sorer bondage. If ye have learned Christ, put off the old conversation; with this new Lesson, take out a new life. The end, is the perfection of other things: but the end of a relapsed Christian, is worse than his beginning. Many shall say, Lord, Lord: Many, for it is the case of a multitude: We have done wonderful works in thy Name, we have known thee: but all their knowledge of Christ, shall not gain his knowledge of them: Scimus te, but Nescio vos. Adam had excellent knowledge, yet he must dress the Garden: the Angels have more excellent knowledge, yet they are ministering spirits. Though we know much, yet sloth may emasculate our strength; and idleness (that can make nothing else) can make us effeminate souls. Though we live in David's house, if we are known to be but wanton Concubines; vice and disorder, like long-hair'd Absalom, will not stick to break in upon us. God does not give us knowledge, as a man gives a Book to a Library, there to be chained: where sometimes more skill is required, to extract and pick Learning out of it, than the Book hath Learning in it. Aliquid intersit, inter t • & librum▪ Knowledge must have vent: Ministers vent their knowledge, by the exercise of their Ministry; Christians vent their knowledge, by the exercise of their Charity.

6. Knowledge is like meat, Memory the stomach, sins are malignant humors, the natural hear is charity. If we perceive, where knowledge abounds humors to superabound, we judge quickly; It is for want of charity to digest it. Some desire knowledge for their private satisfaction; 〈…〉 sci ••• others for ostentation▪ Scire ut sciantur, to be known famous by 〈◊〉 But we may say of them both, as Tully did of the Philosophers; Cum Philosopherum dogma •• miserabiliter▪ p • gnat vita. Even the devils know God: let curious heads, dispute whether Satan knew Christ to be God: in this we may believe himself, though in nothing else: he knew what he believed, he believed what he confessed; Jesus the▪ Son of the most High God. Where be those infidels, that either hold doubtfully, or ignorantly mis-know, or blasphemously deny, what the very devils have professed? yet were even they never the better for it: so little can aba •• . speculation avail us in these cases of Divinity. Thus far hath that devil attained; to no ease, to no comfort. Knowledge alone doth but puff up, it is our love that edifies. If there be not a persuasion of our sure interest in this Jesus, a power to apply his merits and obedience, we are no whit the safer▪ no io • the better; only we are so much the wiser, to understand who shall condemn us. Scientia ad scic • dum, is as Nummus ad numerandum: Knowledge in a man of great wit, as money to a man of great wealth, may make him proud, but do him no good, without charitable humility. The swelling side, which we call the contexitie of anybody, receives nothing but blows: the receptacle of good things is the concavitie. Pride is the convexitie, and God resisteth the proud: Humility is the concavity, and he giveth grace to the humble.

7. If knowing made up happiness, England were an happy nation, these times as happy as ever any: but if Doing be required, great is the infelicity of both. There is a dropsy of knowledge, but a consumption of the vital parts of a Christian: holiness and obedience. We need not Christ to work miracles upon our heads, by casting out deaf and dumb spirits: but upon our dead hearts, dried arms, and withered hands, so stupefied to the actions of zeal and charity. Christ is said to know no sin, because he did no sin: in that sense, and in effect they know no good, that do no good: and no man rightly knows more than he practiseth. So many as profess themselves to know, and not address themselves to do, shall be censured for willful ignorants. A Carpenter is known by erecting frames, a Smith by making Iron instruments, and a Christian by good works: what is it to be cunning in problemes, and paradoxes, in niceties and criticismes? I may say, as Cato did of superfluous useles trifles▪ They are dear of a farthing, that are good for nothing.

Illumination is easy, sanctification is the laborious work: to cross our affections, to subjugate our wills, and to mortify our darling lusts; hic labo • , h • c opus est. But hoc homines sponte latet; We do not sin because we know not but because we will not know. May we not use the Apostles ordinary increpation and exprobation? know ye not, that such things are wicked? Know ye not, that for these things comes the anger of God? Is any so simple, that he knows not the ten Commandments, and sum of the Gospel? It were less unhappy for sinners if they had that plea; we knew not this. No, their eyes are open, and with open eyes they run into the gulf of destruction. The wickedness of our times proceeds not from weak, but from willful ignorance. Let us not be so ignorant, as to think that nothing shall condemn us but ignorance: as if God would come in flaming fire, only to render vengeance, upon poor Pagans, Savages, and Indians; and not meddle with clear-eyed, though foul hearted Christians. They write, that the inhabitants under the torrid Zone are more troubled with damp • than those under the frigid. It were miserable, if the bright S • nne of knowledge among us, through our inward coldness, should be answered with the damps and suffocations of all piety and justice. Let us labor for knowledge, that we may see the way of goodness: let us walk in the way of goodness, that we never repent of our knowledge: both together shall be crowned with blessedness.

By the word of God the heavens were of old, &c.] We are rid of the dunses, and now come to consider the Lesson which they easily might and would not learn. It is the creation of so noble and wonderful a Machine the World whereof the beauteous face is Heaven: the two eyes, the Sun and Moon: the burning lamps are the Stars: the Fire, a nurse or active cherisher of things the air a glass, representing the beauty: the Sea, a great fish-pond: the Plaines and champion Fields, the floors, the Hills and Mountain the pillars: Gnats and Elephants, insects and monsters, the curiosities. Whereof Augustine thus: Si quarimus, quisfecerit, Deus est; Si, per quod, Ducit, Fiat, & factasum: Si, quare; quia bonus est. Nec enimest 〈◊〉 her excelle •• ior Deo 〈◊〉 ar • efficacior verbo. In the beginning God created heaven and earth. The beginning of the world is from him that is the Beginning of all things: whereunto the Name of the Author is first set as a seal; God: and under the names of the two extremities and borders, all the rest is comprised. He did give both matter and form he is not only the deviser of shapes and features, but the Maker of Nature it self. I fear the Lord the God of heaven, saith Ion •• to his heathen Marr •• s is, who hath made the sea and the dry land. First, A God in Essence and being, your gods are but in supposition. Secondly, the God of heaven, yours are not God's of the poorest hamlets in the earth. Thirdly, which hath made the sea and the dry land, as a little monument of his infinite art and power: yours are not able to make the garments of their own backs. They that worship an embroidered puppet, me thinks should rather worship the embroiderer that made it.

This is the Apostles argument against these Infidels: He that made the heavens, can he not fold them up again like a book, and role them together like a skin of parchment? He that hath made the sea, and causeth it to boil like a pot of ointment, cannot he dry it up again from the channel? He that made the dry land, cannot he overflow it with a deluge, or rock it to and fro upon the foundations, till it reel like drundarks; or burn it with flames? Yes, he can cloth the Sun and Moon with sackcloth; put out the nocturnal candles, the stars; fill the Ocean with Mountains, and make nature besides her self, like an Image of madness. Our Apostle here keeps the order of nature, placing first the heavens, then earth and sea; as the principal parts, whereof the whole consisteth. For heaven is in nature and position above the sea, the sea above the earth: Heaven as the roof of that beautiful house wherein man was placed: earth and water as the two floors and foundations to it. The chief materials are

Heaven first; that is the head or roof of this goodly fabric: Omnipotens d • •••• , a work befitting his hand who is Omnipotens Dominus. Praise the Lord ye heavens of heavens; for he commanded, and ye were created. The Prophet adds to the mention of heavens; the word created; which he does not to the other creatures in that Psalm. And that first, to convince that impious dotage of these Atheists, dreaming of an eternity of the heavens; not so, they were created. Secondly, to confound the superstitious worship which Idolaters give unto them: no creature is to be worshipped, but they are creatures. The Poets feigned C •••• to be the ancientest of the gods; and that he begot Saturn, who disabled him of the means of generation, that he might have no rivall. They tell us that this Saturn had many children, but he devoured them as soon as they were borne: only Jupiter escaped, who deposed his own father, thrust him into Hell, and usurped his Kingdom: and with the same faulchion dismembered his father Saturn, wherewith he had dismembered his father Coelum: which being cast into the Sea, out sprung Venus. The moral of which monstrous fable might be this: that corrupt Nature brought forth such rebels under Heaven, that made war against Heaven, and ambitiously attempted a Building, to emulate the Firmament. Upon which, followed confusion, Treason, Vsurpation, and Parricide: the son betrayed the father, who was again betrayed by his son: Luxury and Ryot, filled the Earth; and waterish Lusts did spring out, instead of heavenly desires. But we know that Coelum is no god, but the work of God; the precious Vault, that walls in this our inferior world.

Our Apostle speaks of Heavens, plurally: We know there be three Heavens, one above another: the lowest, above us; and the highest, below our Head, Christ.

1. The first and next us, is the Airie Heaven; wherein the wanton Fowls disport themselves, over-looking with scorn the highest Turrets: the Larkes singing Carols to the praise of their Maker; as rejoicing, that they can mount nearer to that Heaven for the time, than the men for whom it was provided. There hang the big-bellyed Clouds, longing to be delivered of their fruitful burdens: from whose vast wombs sometimes break forth fires, and dreadful Thunders; thin vapors, like some Steele-glasses, wherein the Sun looks, and shows his face in the variety of those colors he hath not. Sometimes they fill the Lappe of the Earth with white hardened Purles, rattling among her Leaves, and like Pearls embroidering her Garment: and when they are sent by the angry hand of their Maker, they can destroy her Fruits and Flocks; yea, even kill Egyptian enemies. Other times they turn her Superficies into a Crust, and bake it with congealing Cold; as if the Earth were sick of a Flux, and the Frost came like costive Physic to bind her. The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the Deepe is frozen. Otherwhiles they send down Snow, like Wooll, to keep warm her young Fruits in their Cradles. This arrays the Earth in a Robe of Innocence, as if she would both emulate and imitate Heaven it self, and be clothed in white: or, rather doth emblematize an hypocrite, that hides all his Winter-dirt, his foul floughes and dunghills, with an upper face of purity. There are bred those portentfull Comets and exhalations, eliciente Sole, emittente Terra, excipiente Aëre; out of which, fantastical heads pick fanatical meanings: but indeed they are Characters of such Language, as no Nation of the Earth understands; neither Parthians, nor Medes, nor Elamites, nor Cretes, nor Arabians: only we know they speak Mirabilia Dei, the wonderful works of God. There range the subtle Winds, driving the Clouds as a shepherd doth his flocks, passing away like strangers: we know not whence they come, nor whither they go. This is that Heaven, which is the Lungs of the world: in which, we breathe; and without which, we could not breathe: it is (as it were) vacuus in it self, yet suffers vacuity in nothing else.

2 The next is the starry Heaven, stuck full of sublime and conspicuous lights. Whereof some be Planets, called wandering; not because they keep not their right ways, but because a course is assigned them different from that of the firmamentall stars. They have their Epicycles or little Orbes, and are carried irregularly by a wrapped motion, yet so as still they hold on their proper race: as a fly on the Axletree of a Chariot-wheel may creep on her own way yet be whirled about the contrary according to that violent motion. There be those twinkling Luminaries, as it were Virgins with Torches, waiting on their Mistress the Queen of the night. These have their secret virtues, and wonderful influences: the guides of Mariners on the Seas, that teach them to Steere their courses: the Shepherds calendar, the Astronomers wonder, but the confusion of judicial Astrologers; for God made them to distinguish times, not to calculate nativities, or tell future events. The heaven it self is unitas corporum; and therefore as one army dependeth upon one General, one State upon one Prince, all numbers upon unity, so all Sarres communicate in one virtue. As God is the Principium of all things in the world, yet no part of them: so the heavens communicate with all particular effects, not by giving forms, but by extent of virtue.

There is the Sun, that glorious eye of the world; that sees all, and gives us light to see withal. That treasury of light, into which body the former dispersed illumination was united. That unwearied Giant, which every day runs his course, and takes no time to sleep: a watchman to prevent mischiefs, a discoverer of the black deeds of darkness, an enemy to thieves and murderers, the friend of innocence, the expected comforter of sorrows, that brings joy in the morning: the Bridegroom, the husband of the earth, which provides heat and sustenance for her self and all the children that hang on her breasts. There is the Moon, a weaker light for a less necessary use. God made the night for rest, darkness is the cradle of sleep: yet because some occasions are driven to trespass upon that time of quiet, and to borrow of the night; God hath allowed that also a goodly torch to guide it. The Mistress of the Sea, the ruler of those relapses and refluxes, ebbs and tydes: a secret worker upon bodily humors; whose virtue is not greater in her light, than in her influence. This is the Syderiall heaven, a spacious and magnifique canopy, where stars are set like precious stones, almost everyone of them larger than the whole earth. If we were in that heaven with these eyes, the whole earth were equally enlightened, would seem as little to us there, as now a small Star in the firmament appears to us here.

3 The uppermost heaven excels all; and is no less glorious above the visible, than the visible is above the earth. If this be so admirable which we see that are sinners, what is that which they possess that are Saints, and Angels? If mortal eyes be so ravished with the vision of this, how are they blessed with the fruition of that? Even that Heaven was created: He that made all the Heavens, could not have one coeternal with himself. It is a gross question, and beseeming these Scoffers, to ask where He dwelt before. What Heaven can contain him that is Infinite? All things dwell in him, even the heaven of heavens: the Maker is not comprehended in the house, but the house in the Maker. He fills all things, nothing can fill him. Though he be said to dwell in heaven, yet he made not that house only for himself: but in a far more excellent measure he there reveals his glory: that is, his Throne, as the earth is his footstool. The power of an earthly King extends through all his dominions: yet there his Majesty appears more glorious where he keeps his State and Court. His common subjects do not partake this in the same measure with his ordinary servants. If the gallery of this world be so beautified, with a steady foundation, a moveable roof, a canopy so bespangled with stars, more precious than sparkling Diamonds; the walls furnished with curious hangings, wherein be such numberless numbers of (not painted, but) living creatures, which delight us (we know not whether more) with their forms and varieties: how inconceivably delectable is the Bed-chamber, the Heaven prepared for eternal rest?

If we should go round about this inferior Zion; tell her towers, and mark well her bulwarks; yet we find in every place that antique Mower riding circuit with his impartial sithe, that old Saturn the devourer of his own children; for Time produced them, and time cuts them off. We find Sin leading the dismal dance, and Death marching after with his blood-reeking sword: we find the stench of iniquity to have corrupted the air, cursed the earth, subjected the elements and heavens to a fiery mutation: we find troubles, and alterations, and dreadful conflicts; combustion in the elementary heavens, earthquakes rumbling in the bowels of the Center, the rorings and inundations of water, as it were tottering the foundations and pillars of the world: all symptoms of death, and prognostics of his dissolution. But to this third and supreme Heaven sin never reached, time was never admitted, death could never ascend: millions ascend thither by death, death it self hath nothing to do there. Sin is swallowed up in mercy, death in victory, time in eternity. There can be no sorrow, where is Fullness of joy: no room for troubles, where is the fullness of peace: no fear, where the walls are impregnable, no thief can break through and steal. Sin hath made a woeful end of man, death shall make an end of sin, time shall make an end of death, eternity shall make an end of time, but there can be no end of eternity: that is the privilege of heaven. As this Heaven is the highest of God's works in place, so it seems to have been the first in time: sure it was made before hell. For the Judge calling his Saints to heaven, calls it a Kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world. But sending away his enemies to hell, he calls it a place prepared for the devil and his Angels: as if it had not been made till the Angels fell. So it pleased God to provide a place for the exercise of his mercy, before he framed another for the execution of his Justice.

Thus we have considered these three Heavens, or three stages of heaven. The lowest is for fowls, for vapors, for meteors: the next for stars: the third for Saints and Angels. The first is God's outward Court, open for all: the second is the body of his covered Temple, wherein those lamps of heaven are continually burning: the third is that holy of holies, whither our high Priest of the New Testament is entered; yea, and hath rent the veil, to make way for all his faithful children to follow him. In this lowest is tumult and vanity: in the second is rest and immutability: in the highest is blessedness and glory. The first we feel, the second we see, the third we believe. In the two lower is no felicity, neither the fowls nor the stars are happy. Happiness only belongs to the third Heaven, where the blessed Trinity enjoyeth himself, and the glorified Spirits enjoy him. Praise the Lord ye heavens of heavens. Coeli coelorum: the Prophet seems to call them all, Heaven of heavens. The etheriall heaven is Coelum subcoelo, heaven under heaven; the Empyreall heaven is Coelum super coelum, heaven above heaven: the Syderiall heaven is Coelum inter coelos, heaven between the heavens. The lowest is heaven, in which we move: the next, under which we move: the highest, to which we move. In quo, sub quo, ad quod; In quo vivimus, sub quo movemus, ad quod tendimus: we were made in the first, made under the second, made for the highest. In the first we breathe with our mouths and nostrils; towards the second we bear up our heads: to the third we lift up our hearts. The lowest we feel with our senses, the next we look upon with our eyes, the highest is the object of our hopes. This nearest to us we use, suspire and respire it: the next we behold with wonder: but in the third we lay up our treasure. We move in this lower, the higher moves over us, the rest of our motion is expected in the Heaven of joy.

This is a heaven of mortality, the upper of immutability, the uppermost of blessed eternity. The soul is not long in making her progress through the lowest Heaven: it is very much if she be seventy years about it. But being once dissolved, she dispatcheth all her way through the next heaven in a minute: if she meet the great body of the Sun, she does not wait for her passage till he be gone by; but pierceth all Orbes and Spheeres; and is at once at, and through the firmament. But when she is got into the highest Heavens, there she stays and dwells, as in her proper home: this she hath long desired, this she then possesseth. This lowest Heaven is but our pilgrimage while we live, the starry heaven our through-fare when we die, the glorious Heaven our abiding city where we shall live forever. O the glory of that Mansion, that Mansion of glory! Blessed are they for whom, thou O Lord hast prepared it; blessed they whom thou hast prepared for it. Lord, I am not worthy thou shouldst come under my roof, that thou shouldst enter into mine house of mortality: much less am I worthy to enter into thy house of glory. Thus I have dwelt long on this fair roof of the world, the highest and best piece of the creation: who would not wish to dwell forever in heaven? It is good being here, say they, that saw but a glimpse of it. I shall make amends with brevity upon the rest: though the earth be vast, and the sea immense, and the work of many lives to survey: yet our discourse may compass the one, and sails through the other, in a short time.

The Earth, that fruitful mother, whose husband is Heaven: by whose kindly embraces, innumerable good things are brought forth for the use of man. The Poets called her Cybelen, magnam matrem, Titanis conjugem. In a word, God made it, for Fashion, round; for Situation, steadfast; for Matter, solid; rich, for use.

1. For the Form, it is a globular, a round ball hung in the midst of the world, about which the copious Orbes are continually running. This circular proportion of it is evident by the shadow it makes in the Moon, when it is interposed betwixt her and the Sun. Nor can the great mountains or deep valleys disfigure it; no more than the sticking of some small pins upon a great ball, would take away from it all respect of rotundity. In this position, it is both fittest to be enlighted by the Sun; and to all parts of it aequaliter patet aula coelestis, heaven is of the same distance.

2. The Situation is steady: for we explode those fond opinions of Copernicus; that the earth only moves, and the Heavens stand still. Democritus, without discourse or argument confuted that vain Tenet, Corpora non moveri; by walking up and down. God laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed forever. One generation passeth, and another cometh: but the Earth abideth forever. It is the Center of the world; yea, even the receptacle of all the dregs of nature: the Heavens purge themselves, by their restless motion; and the standing Earth embosomes the corruption.

3. The matter is solid and gravid; therefore apt for buildings and burdens. What mighty Pyramids, huge Colosses, Castles and Cities, have been set on her strenuous back? Yet she hath not fainted under the weight. There is no Load that makes her groan, but our intolerable sins: these make her heartsicke; and for these, she spues us out of her stomach; yet again receives us into her inner bowels. Like weak legs that are not able to bear a distempered head, our iniquities make her reel under us, with unnatural Earthquakes.

4. For Use, she is rich: Turrifera, frugifera, metallifera: delicate is the fruit of her lips, and wondrous the fruit of her entrails. Her face yields us variety of herbs, flowers, trees, leaves, seeds, fruits, beasts, worms: some growing out of her, some moving on her, all nourished by her. If we dig into her inwards, we find metals, mineries, quarries; that white and red earth, whose beauty hath bewitched so many thousand souls. She patiently suffers the share, spade, mattocke, that tear up her guts, for that which God hath buried in them. Like the Pelican, with her own blood she feeds her children: and because the fruits she bears, cannot content them; she gives them her secret riches. The Makers wisdom laid them up low, closely, basely: that he might prevent both our greediness of searching for them, and foolishness of overvaluing them. I know, the Earth is the lees and sediments of nature, the dross of the world; as all corruption sinks down to the feet; Rudis, arenosa, latulenta: yet it hath three privileges of honor.

1. It is the habitation of the militant Church of God; and bears them whom he esteems as his most precious Jewels. The wicked indeed are Telluris i •• tile pondus; but the other are her ornaments: all the Gold and rich Stones within her, are not worth one poor Saint, that daily walks upon her. This is one of her honors.

2. It is the Repositorie of the bodies of the elect, when they are dead; Placid • que receptat cuncta sinu: the great Church-yard of the Catholic Church. The Graves are their Chambers, and they make their Bed in the dust; and there take an unmolested sleep, till the testitution of all things. This is another honor for her; she keeps those bodies, which are the members of the Son of God.

3. It is the matter whereof those bodies were made: The Lord God formed 〈◊〉 of the dust of the ground. They that shall one day out-shine the Sun in Heaven, were yet made of the Earth. Let curious heads subtly dispute of the composition of elements in our bodies; which might be a second matter, that God had prepared out of the dust: but we inquire only of the Scripture, and there find expressly; not that God made this body of Air, or Fire; not of the same matter with the Moon, Sun, or Stars; much less of the nature of Heaven, or Angels; but de pulvere Terra, of the dust of the Earth. Of this, was Adam made; Eve, of Adam; Seth, of them both: and so the successive generations to Abraham, to David, to the Virgin Mary, to Jesus Christ. For God sent his Son factum ex muliere, which was facta ex pulvere. Mary was of Heli; Heli, of Matthat; Matthat, of Melchi: and so up to Adam; and then, down to the dust. Here then is the greatest honor of this poor element, the Body of the Son of God was made of it; even that Body which is set in potioribus Dei, worshipped of men and Angels: made of the Earth, laid in the Earth, raised from the Earth, to the glory of Heaven.

The Sea: a fluid element, always running, and often roaring, foaming and swelling, as if it would swallow up the whole Earth; unresistable by the power of man, yet ruled like a child by the power of God. His Gulfes have devoured, and his Rocks splitted, the mightiest and hugest Carickes that ever swam on the waters. Foolish Zerxes, the Persian King, because it had broke down a Bridge which he made over Hellespont, caused three hundred stripes to be given it for revenge, and to teach it better manners. Alas, how doth it mock all opposition; shall I say, of Fleetes and Navies? Why, a little tempest will soon make an end of them: but even of Kingdoms and large Territories, when the great Manager of the world gives it the Raines. Yet can he turn it with a twine thread, and with his least nodde check the proudest billows. He hath filled it, not with more creatures than wonders; whose hugenesse of quantity, strangeness of shapes, variety of fashions, and incomparablenesse of number, may well fill our hearts with admiration. This is a fair field for a running head, where he may run himself out of breath, and his humor out of him: he that comes home from the Sea no better Christian than he went out, though he bring home never so vendible a Commodity, and so rich a Prize, hath lost his Voyage. If all the wonders and terrors which Sea-faring men see in the Deepe, work not an awful dread of the Power that made it, and them: if they be but like Via navis, the way of their Vessels, leaving no print or track in their hearts; they are but Pirates to their own souls.

C • lum mutas, & animum non mutas? Art thou devout in a storm, and stormy in a calm? Many Mariners on Land imitate the rage of the Seas; and roar here, as fast as those do there. It is one of those elements which is said to have no mercy. Passage, and expedition, and success, may be bought on Land: no bribes can procure these at Sea. It is the desire of gain that makes men walk upon the water with wooden stilts, and venture through so frequent and mortal dangers. But it hath been a saying, Armatis divûm nullus pudor, Soldiers and Seamen scarce fear God himself. The Sea is become their proper element, the region where their art lies; and they do so ofen fight with waves and winds, living, Neque inter vivos nec inter mortuos, offering up their souls to every flaw of wind and billow of water; that they live as if death and they were at a composition. But alas, the spices, and silks, and strange commodities, we have from foreign countries, are the price of men's lives, even the blood of our children: as David called the water of Bethlehem, blood because it was brought with the hazard of men's lives from the army of Philistines. But I purpose no long voyage by sea, but rather a short cut over the main Ocean, and here I cast Anchor.

For Conclusion; wherefore did God create all these things, but for his own glory? At once therefore, to shame those Atheists that deny it, and to instruct us Christians that believe it; let me go up again by the same steps that I came down, and sing the praises of God as I pass. To begin where I left.

1. At the Sea; They that go down to the sea in ships, see the works of God in the deep. What follows? O that men would therefore praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men. It is not the talnesse of our ships, nor their swiftness, manning nor munition, that can secure them from that boisterous element; but our Makers Providence. We give them the names of beasts, the Lion, the Bear; of men, the Castor and Pollux; of Angels and Archangels: but still let us remember, they are wooden beasts, wooden Angels; and woe to him that shall say to a piece of wood, Thou art my Maker. They have good fortune and good speed written on their backs; they are not sure of it in their success. We read of the noblest Navy that ever furrowed the Seas; Masts of Cedar, and Hatches of Ivory, with embroidered Sails; yet the East wind broke it in the midst of the Seas. What then should we do? Let us fear the Lord, and both rocks and sands shall fear us; all winds shall blow us profit; shipwrackes shall avoid the channel where our way lies; prosperous gales shall land our vessels in the desired havens, and mercy shall take our souls into the harbor of peace. A Ship under sails is a noble and goodly sight, but it is a better sight to see her moor'd in the haven. No matter what becomes of this frail Bark of our flesh, so we may save the Passenger. God hath confined this monstrous creature by a natural miracle: to Him let us give the honor. The sea sends out springs through the veins of the earth, they by degrees gather into rivers, and then empty themselves again into the lap of their Mother. All blessings come from God as the Fountain; let them return in blessings and praises to our Father.

2. The Earth: millions of wonders doth the very face of this parent afford us: what beast, what worm, what herb, tree, flower, or pile of grass is there, wherein we may not read infiniteness of power and skill? Wherein we may not see the footsteps of a Deity? Other sinners are condemned by many things, the Atheist is condemned by all things. The Wine shall testify against the Drunkard, Images against the Idolater, the Stone of the wall and Beam out of the timber against the Oppressor, the Chamber and the Bed shall accuse the Adulterer: but every Fish in the Sea, every Beast, Herb, Stone in the earth, every Star in heaven, besides the grand Jury of his conscience, shall bear witness against the atheous Unbeleever. It is round, that we might praise the perfection; it is sound, that we might praise the wisdom;it is steadfast, that we might praise the constancy; it is rich, that we might praise the bounty, of Him that created it. All the feculency and corruption is from ourselves and our sins: all the goodness, from the fountain of all goodness, our Maker.

3. The Heavens: These are nearest his glory, as in situation, so in excellency. The higher we go, still the more perfection: each element is superior to another, not more in place, than in dignity; that our hearts might dwell in none of these degrees, but by them climb up to the top of all felicity. Praise the Lord, ye Heavens: the Heavens cannot praise God, they are insensible creatures; yet they do it in their kind: they obey his word, therein they praise him: they still accomplish their enjoined tasks, therein they praise him: there is no thankfulness, like obedience. But they are the matter and occasion of our praising him: they were made for us, that we might praise him in them, for them, for ourselves. As when we see a magnificent House, or a goodly Ship; we do not only commend them, but much more the Builders. Every thing in Heaven is a Beam of some attribute in God. The large capacity of it, is a Beam of his incomprehensible infiniteness: the clear beauty of it, a Beam of his spotless purity: the unwearied motion of it, a Beam of his eternity: the diaphanous transparencie of it, a Beam of his Invisibility: the powerful influences of it, a beam of his omnipotency: the long unchanged continuance of it, a Beam of his Immortality: the accordance and harmony of it, a Beam of his peace and tranquility: the innumerable virtues and benefits of it, a Beam of his bounty, the whole admirable fabric, a Beam of his wisdom: the Sun and light of it, a Beam of his glory: for He gives that light to it, which it gives to us. Tot ora, quot Lumina: as Augustine said of Lazarus, Tot ora, quot ulcera: as many mouths, as sores, crying for pity: so many stars, so many tongues proclaiming God's glory. As John the Baptist was not only vox clamantis, but everything in him was vox clamantis, the voice of a Cryer. His raiment of Camels hair was vox clamantis, crying for mortification: his girdle about his loins was vox clamantis, crying for continence and chastity: his meat, being locusts and wild honey, was vox clamantis, crying for temperance and sobriety: his preaching place, the wilderness, where ambition doth not use to grow, was vox clamantis, crying for zeal and humility. So there is nothing in Heaven, nothing on Earth, nothing in the Sea, nothing in all the world, but is vox clamantis, preaching the Lord's glory. This is the consent and harmony of all creatures, and in that let us join with them; Blessing, and honor, and praise, thanks and obedience be rendered from us all to our Maker forever.

By the word of God: This is the Instrument of the creation: wherein we have divers things to observe:

1. It was the wicked error of Servetus, that the Word was not from the beginning; which he would gather from this; that Heaven and Earth were made, before God is said to speak. Then God said; not before. But we have an evident Testimony, that the Word was in the beginning, and the world was made by it: and seeing the Light was made by the Word, the Word must needs be before the Light: the cause ever goes before the effect. Another heresy of Servetus was to think, that speaking was a new quality in God: whereas indeed it is no quality at all, but signifies only his will and decree: He spake, and they were made: his will is his word, and his word is his deed. Our tongue, hand, and heart, are three several things; and not seldom one differs from the other; that the hand does not what the tongue speaks; and neither tongue speaks, nor hand does, what the heart thinks. But all these are one in God, who is simply one, and infinite. It is true, that Christ is the Word of the Father, and by that Word he made the world: but this is not the Word here meant: Dixit, that word is not meant of Christ. He is verbum Aeternum, this was spoke in time: He verbum Annunciatum, this Enunciatum; yea, not so much, but only Beneplacitum. That which for us, is to say it; is in him, to will it. He needed no helps, no instruments: what could be added to the Infinite? what is not present to the Eternal? His Fiat was enough, this could do more than the Angels could make, for it did make the Angels.

His Word is not less effectual now: as his Fiat made all, so his Ruat can dissolve all. Lord, say the word only, and my servant shall be healed: the Centurion confessed his Word Almighty, as himself was the Almighty Word of his Father. I will not trouble thee with an unnecessary journey, my house is not worthy to give thee entertainment; the Heaven of Heavens is too little for that honor: thy Word can do it; send but that speedy messenger, let me have a Fiat from thy powerful lips, and my servant shall be whole. None but a Divine Power, is unlimited; neither hath faith any other bounds, than God himself. There needs no more to remove Mountains or Devils, but a word. Say but the word, O Savior, and our sins shall be remitted, our hearts shall be renewed, our souls shall be healed, our bodies shall be raised from the dust; both bodies and souls shall be glorified in Heaven. That Ruler had a good reason of his steddie confidence: though himself were under the command of another, yet he had some under his command, with whom his word was prevalent, even extending to absent performances. Well therefore might he argue, that a free and unbounded Power might give infallible commands; and that the most obstinate disease of Nature must needs yield to the beck of the God of Nature.

2. He commanded, and they were created:] They obey his Word, whether ordinary, or extraordinary. Ordinary is of two sorts: First, Naturae naturantis; when at first he made them all with his Word. So they obeyed, that they were such as he commanded them to be. Secondly, Naturae naturatae; his preserving Word: for they run still the same course that he bade them, and swerve not from it. The Sun and Moon keep their due motions, Day and Night their vicissitudes, Summer and Winter observe their seasons, the Orbes turn, the Earth fructifies, the Sea ebbs and flows; all the Wheeles of this great universal Clock move, as He did set them a going. His extraordinary Word is obeyed two ways: First, in not doing their nature, when He bids them forbear: as the Sun to stand still in Gibeon, and the Moon in the Valley of Aialon; as if they had been sent to wait upon Joshua. The nature of Fire, is to burn; yet it shall not hurt God's three servants. The Heaven becomes Brasse, and the Earth, Iron: the one, forbears to send down Showers and influence; the other, to send forth Fruits and sustenance: albeit these are their natural functions, and they are ordained to do the world such services; yet God inhibites them, and they are obedient. Rivers are made to run, and Springs to send forth streams; yet He turneth Rivers into a wilderness, and the Water-springs into dry ground: when he pleaseth to drain them, there is not a drop of water left, to make a Sparrow drink. Secondly, in doing against nature, at his command; as for Iron to swim. Whether the Metall were stripped of the natural weight, by the same Power that gave it being; or, whether retaining the wonted poise, it was raised up by some spiritual operation; we inquire not: only we find it swimming like Corke upon the stream of Jordan, and moving toward the hand that lost it. Elisha causeth the Wood, which was light, and knew not how to sink, to fetch up the Iron, which was heavy, and naturally uncapable of supernatation.

Thus willing is every creature to put off the properties of Nature, at the command of the God of Nature. It is no less easy for him, when our hard and heavy hearts are sunk down into the mud of this world, to fetch them up again by his mighty Word, and cause them to flote on the streams of life, and again to see the face of Heaven. The Red Sea and Jordan shall be divided, for the passage of Israel. For waters to stand still, were but to suspend the course of nature: but Jordan was driven back, saith the Psalmist: it fled at the Word of God, and took a course against nature. Joshua's Sun stood still; that, was not to do his natural office: Hezekia's Sun went back; that, was to do against his natural office. Thus did they at first, thus do they still obey all Words of their Maker.

3. All these were made for man, yet man comes short of them all in thankfulness and obedience to this Word. The Earth was made for his Floore; the Sea, for his Pond; Heaven, for his Canopy; the Sun and Moon, for his Torches; all Creatures, his Vassalls. Whatsoever walketh upon the Earth, swimmeth in the Water, flieth in the Air, shineth in Heaven, was either made to the use of man, or to the use of that which serveth man. If man do not eat Flies, yet he eateth the Birds that live by those Flies: if he eats not Grass, he eats the Beasts that feed on that Grass: and the Beasts that were not made ad esum, were yet made ad usum. He came naked out of the Wombe of the Earth; yet he was no sooner enlivened, but he was so rich, that all things were his. How is he bound to praise God above the rest, for whom all the rest were ordained? First, they were made with a word; there was but a Fiat to the Light, &c. he was made with many words. Secondly, they suddenly; he, with consultation of the whole Trinity, and a kind of deliberation; Faciamus hominem. Thirdly, they Verbo; he (as it were) Manufactura; God made man of the dust, and breathed into him the breath of life. Fourthly, they were made for man; man himself, for God: and God gave man the Dominion over all. Besides the excellence and preeminence of his Body, wherein appear the Lineaments of Majesty; the noble endowments of his Soul; for he was created to the Image of God, in a conformity of the creature to the Creator: so that he is (as it were) a created god, as God is an uncreated Spirit. Animata Imago Dei: Though he be but a man before God, yet he is a god in the World: The Egyptians gave man for a terrestrial god.

Yet let not this sublime conceit transport him above himself, which hath placed him above other creatures: For though he be a god on Earth, yet he is but a god of Earth, an Earthen god. That which they fancy of the Phoenix, that being bred of ashes, it doth burn to ashes, is true of man: being made of Earth, he must yield to Earth. God hath given us a Soul, to inform us; Senses, to inform our Soul; Faculties, to furnish that Soul: Understanding, the great Surveyor of the Secrets of Nature and Grace: Fantasie and Invention, the Master of the Works: Memory, the great Keeper, or Master of the Rolls, to the Soul; a Power that can make amends for the speed of Time, in causing him to leave behind him those things, which else he would so carry away, as if they had not been: Will, which is the Lord Paramount in the State of the Soul, the Commander of our Actions, the Elector of our Resolutions: Judgment, which is the great Counselor of the Will: Affections, which are the servants of them both. A Body, fit to execute the charge of the Soul; so wonderously disposed, that every part hath best opportunity to his own Functions: so qualified with Health, arising from the proportion of Humours, that like a Watch kept in good tune, it goes right; and is fit both to serve the Soul, and maintain it self.

Thus if we look inward, we find our Creators mercies: if we look upward, his mercy reacheth unto the Heavens: if downward, the Earth is full of his goodness, and so is the broad Sea. If we look about us, what is it that he hath not given us? Air, to breathe in; Fire to warm us; Water, to cool and cleanse us; Clothes, to cover us; Food, to nourish us; Fruits, to refresh us; yea, Delicates, to please us; Beasts, to serve us; Angels, to attend us; Heaven, to receive us; and, which is above all, his own Son, to redeem us. Whithersoever we turn our eyes, we cannot look besides his bounty.

4. What a world of respects be here, above all respects to the rest of the world, to tie our obedience to the Word of our God? Blasphemous Infidel; cannot that Word which established the Earth, keep thy faith from tottering in the knowledge of thy Maker? Cannot that Word, which made all those Wonders in the Sea, work this one Wonder, to persuade thy heart of his Being? Cannot that Word, which stretched out the Heavens, rack thy Conscience, to acknowledge that infinite Power? Saint Paul says, That the Heathen, by this great Book in Folio, the Heavens laid open, did read there was a God: And shall these Atheists, even because of those Heavens, deny there is a God? Shall men be perverted by that, by which they were convinced? In one word, I will tell you their end: Heaven they see, but they shall never come at it: Hell they do not see, but they shall be cast into it.

To ourselves, that are Believers, what a Prodigie is this; That Heaven, Earth, and Sea, all Elements, all Creatures, should obey this Word of God: and only Man, for whom they were all made, should rebel against it? Yet let us consider; how have we transgressed all the Words of our Maker?

1. Verbum Sacramentale, given at the Creation, in Paradise: This, man kept not a day. Eve believed the word of the Serpent; Adam, the word of Eve; both, before the Word of God. It was a willful breach in them, a woeful breach to us and them; for it hath indisposed us to keep any Word of our God ever since. Non servando unum & primum Praeceptum, infirmamur ad omnia.

2. Verbum Naturale, the Law engraven: How soon was this Law broken; when a man murdered a man; a brother, the son of his own father?

3. Verbum Legale, the Law written: Israel received it in Fire and Thunder, they quaked and fainted at the sight: stay but a month or five weeks, and they cry; Make us gods, we know not what is become of this Moses. O mad people, so soon to forget so dreadful a Law, and Law-giver! Their hearts ceased to tremble, with the Earthquake; and in the very sight of Sinai, they call for other gods. Even before they had the Law, they broke the Law: while Moses was gone up for the Tables, they foully transgressed. How incessantly do we all break this Word? All our actions, words, thoughts, are but so many rebellions.

4. Verbum Evangelicum, the Charter of the Covenant betwixt God and our souls; whereby he promiseth to save us, if we will believe on him. Yet this Word we turn into wantonness; as if a man should head his Taber with his Pardon.

5. Verbum Spirituale, the motions of the holy Ghost: How many thousands of these prove still-borne and abortive, through our negligence; or be overlayd with our vanities? We use them, as Julius Caesar did the Paper that concerned his own life: all the other Petitions he read, only that he put in his Pocket, and never looked on. We owe a Reckoning for all those holy motions, which the great Advocate of Heaven hath made at the Barre of our conscience.

6. Verbum Conservativum, the word of his providence. A word that can either sustain us without Bread, as it did Moses and Elias: or with a miraculous Bread, as it did Israel with Manna: or send ordinary means after a miraculous manner, as food to the Prophet by the Ravens: or multiply ordinary means miraculously, as the Meale and Oile to the Sareptan widow: all things are sustained by this Almighty Word. Indeed we live by food, but not by any virtue that is in it, without God. Without the concurrence of his providence, Bread would rather choke than nourish us. If he withdraw his word from his creatures, in their greatest abundance we perish. What so necessary dependence hath the blessing upon the creature, if our prayers do not hold them together? Why then do we set our eyes on the means, and not look up to the hand that gives the blessing? The Ravens and Lions trust upon this Word, and are fed: shall we distrust it? Are not ye much better than they? Better? no, we are worse: for they dare take God's word for their provision, and we dare not trust him. As we may not neglect the means, so we must not neglect the procurement of a blessing upon the means, nor be unthankful to him that gives the blessing.

5. It is time to conclude this point: if men of all creatures be most beholding to the word of God, why should men of all creatures be most resisting against that word? The Centurions servants were dutiful to him: he can but say, Do this, and it is done: and he was kind to them: these mutual respects drew on each other: cheerful and diligent service in the one, calls for a due and favorable care in the other. We are set as that Ruler was; with a Praeesse creaturae, and a Subesse creatori: do the creatures disobey our command? we have rebelled against the word of God. They that neglect to please, cannot complain to be neglected. O that we could be such servants to our heavenly Master, as we would have our servants be to us. Alas, every command of his says, Do this, and we do it not. Every of his inhibitions says, Do not that, and we do it. He says, depart from the world, and we run to it. He says, come to me, and we run from him. Woe and alas, this is not service, but enmity. How can we look for favor, whiles we return rebellion? The earth is obedient, why doth it bear us? the sea is obedient, why doeth it not swallow us? the heavens are obedient, why do they cover us? the sun is obedient, why doth he enlighten us? all creatures are obedient to the word of their Maker, why should they benefit us, that are disobedient rebels? It is a gracious Master whom we serve: there can be no duty of ours that he sees not, that he acknowledges not, that he crowns not: we could not but be happy, if we could be officious. O that the word which made heaven and earth, could lift up our hearts from earth our dirty thorough-fare to heaven our blessed home, bought for us with the dear blood of Jesus Christ.

The earth standing out of the water and in the water. This is the disposition of these two parts, earth and sea: where we have diverse observations.

1. The waters did at first cover and overwhelm the face of the earth, and were removed with a Dixit. Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. The manner of this collection of the waters hath puzzled many. First Eugubinus think, that they were dried up by the heat of the Sun, and that the Northern part of the earth appeared first: others, that it was done with a mighty wind, as after the deluge: but the Sun was not yet made, neither Sun nor wind could do this in so short a time: nothing but the Lord's Fiat. Secondly, some think that the earth was plain without Mountains, to give the waters a more speedy passage: and that this present inequality was caused by the flood. But in the deluge, the mountains were covered; therefore the mountains were before the flood. And with the creation of the earth, we find the mention of mountains: therefore from the beginning were hills and mountaites. Thirdly, to say, the waters ran to the Antipodes, is an ignorant fancy: for those parts be habitable as well as ours, and not under water. Fourthly, Paulus Burgensis hath a strange devise: that the earth makes one globe, and the sea another; and each hath the proper center. Indeed the earth is called a sphere or circle: but experience shows, that the earth without the sea does not make one round globe. We think, this might be done three ways. First, the water being at first a light and thin vapor might be coagulated and thickened; as we see, the sea-water is of a grosser substance than the fresh; and therefore contained in a less room. Secondly, the Clouds and region of the air being made the same day, a greater part of the water might be extenuated and evaporated into them as we find daily a conversion of mysts and clouds into water. Thirdly, the earth being vaster and deeper than the circumference of the water that compassed it, might receive the water into the concavities and hollow places, ordained for it as receptacles. To decide all controversy, read Psalm. 104. verse 7. and 8. God made a low foundation for the waters in the earth: they were stragglers before, he provided them a lodging.

2. The earth is founded in the waters, but not founded on the waters. Of another opinion was Thales among the philosophers, and Chrysostom among the Christians: they conceited a strange kind of building: that whereas men desire to lay their foundation upon rocks, the Lord should lay this upon the waters: Two places of scripture are urged for it: first this Text, ex aqua & in aqua consistentem: but the error lies in the mis-translation: 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , not by the water, but in the water, more properly: as Noah is said to be saved, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , not by the water, but in the water. The earth may well be said to be in the water; because the whole continent being less in compass than the Ocean, seemeth to be but as a great Island in the sea. The other words are plain: it consists, not of the water, but out of the water: not as though it was made of the water, but because it was made to appear out from the water, which before covered it. The other place is from the Psalm, He hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods. Augustine refers this to the Islands, brows of hills, and promontories, that hang over the sea. Euthimius, to the secret passages of water, that run within the earth. But the evident truth is fetchd from the Hebrew word, G • all; which signifies Super, Above: not upon the waters, but above the waters: not upon them, as on a foundation: but above them, as with a supereminence and exaltation. That the earth hath not her foundation upon the waters, it is clear. First, By experience, for we perceive it to be the heaviest element, and so to have the situation lowest. Secondly, by Scripture; He hangeth the earth upon nothing; therefore not upon the waters. Thirdly, by reason: the earth is immovable; God laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed forever. The waters are fluid and running: a thing that is moveable, cannot be the foundation of that which is immovable. It consists in the water, and out of the water; neither of the water, nor by the water.

3. The Earth and Sea are two loving companions, like husband and wife: one of them embraceth the other with his moist arms, sending forth springs into her (naturally) dry veins, and both together produce abundance of fruits. The Sun doth a kindly office; and finding the Sea surcharged with waters, and the Earth wanting in diverse places; draws up the moisture of the one into clouds, and resolves it again upon the other in welcome showers. So sweetly hath the Divine providence disposed; that by mingling humida siccis, both should be apt for generation, by a third quality of kindly heat. The Earth and Sea are like a pair of great millstones to fence the world: the Earth is the nether millstone, so fixed that it stirs not: the Sea is the upper millstone that runs round about it continually: the effect of both is bread for the use of man. By the confession of all, the natural place of the waters is above the earth: this at first they enjoyed, and a second time recovered, when the Lord loosed their bands and banks, and gave them their voluntary and primitive passage. God covered the earth with the deep, as with a garment. As a garment in the proper use of it, is above the body that wears it: such a vesture would it still be to the Earth, if the Makers Word did not restrain it: not unlike the shirt that was made for the murthering of Agamemnon, where the head had no issue out. If the Lord should set open the windows above, and the sluices below, they would every hour of our life overrunne us with a new deluge. Let any Atheist in the world, out of all his stock of reason (and reason is all the stock he hath; for faith and he are sworn enemies) give one reason, why the waters being a lighter and larger element, should not swim over the face of the earth, and drown all the Inhabitants. Let them pump their wits, drench Plato, Aristotle, and Machiavel, to the least and last drop of arguments: and what is failing in their own fancy, let them make up with the Philosophy of hell; they shall never do it. Only the child of a Christian, out of the principles of his Catechism, can make it plain: and as my Text saith, The Word of the Lord hath done it, and the Name of the Lord be ever blessed for it. Moral Uses.

1. When David looked into that little world, Himself, he confesseth, I am fearfully and wonderfully made: when we look into that great man, the World, we have good cause to acknowledge that it is fearfully and wonderfully made too: therefore it would be wonderful folly in us, not to fear the Maker of both. I have set the sand for a bound of the Sea, by a perpetual decree &c. therefore Fear ye not me, saith the Lord? Will ye not tremble at my Presence? Sand is not fit, one would think, to bind an unruly beast, they call it Irritum laborem, proverbially, a rope of sand: yet is this the cordage and ligature to shackle that roaring monster: the sand shall bind it. God raiseth up the waves, and he quiets the angry billows. Do they swell? His breath hath stirred them: His command raiseth the stormy wind. Do they flinch, and return like Cowards? His frown hath checked them: They saw Him, and fled away: Jordan was driven back.

2. Where can sinful man be secure? Where can the Atheist set his foot, but it is either on God's earth or his water? The earth is steady, but our footing on it is not steady: how many have stumbled even upon plain ground? When we walk upon it, we do but tread upon a ball hanging in the Air, and floating on the water. Cùm te pendenti videas insistere terrae, Nonne vel hinc clare conspicis esse Deum? The dangers of the sea have ever been manifold and manifest; unless to some hardened Pirates, that like desperate Sophisters have learned to dispute with tempests; and put themselves aboard a man of war, as if they were going to make merry with the devil. The report of the behavior of some Mariners on the sea, would even astonish the hearers on land; that they reckon those prodigious wonders no better than their play-fellows: that they strive to outscold the elements; and roar as fast with oaths and curses, as the other do with storms and billows: as if all their Anchor of hope were the hope of their Anchor; and they trusted to their Helme, rather than to Heaven: that their conscience should be like their Keele; till that splits, they never think of repentance: and if then, yet that repentance lasts but to the next land; and whatsoever hath past betwixt God and them, they forget the bargain. It is a curse threatened to the ungodly, that they should fear where no fear is: but not to fear, where is just cause of fear, in medio terrorum, environed with dangers; this is a curse they willfully bring on themselves.

3. Not that I approve an over-timerousnesse, the effect of unbelief; as if God could not preserve us on the waters, whither our necessary occasions have called us. Some Philosophers; if they heard of any that would make a short cut of their journey by the advantage of the water, when it would have been many miles about by land, would call them fools when they came home: but that was not the censure of wise men, by their leaves. I remember a witty saying; when a man related how that his father, grandfather, and great grandfather, all died at sea; another replied, If I were as you, I would never come at sea. The other asked him, where his father, grandfather, and progenitors died: he answered; In their beds; then saith he, If I were as you, I would never come in bed. He that keeps the sea from overrunning the earth, can keep us from miscarrying by sea. We have known some scape drowning in a shipwreck on the main Ocean; and others that have been drowned in a puddle, in the very kennel. The sea hath no power to hurt, where the Lord will preserve: and when he gives way, a very drop can do it. As the Astrologer, that would read his own destiny in his damned art, that such a day he should perish by water: to avoid which, he kept his chamber, and all that day would by no opportunity or importunity stir abroad: the evening came, and now he thought the danger past, and that he had coozened the rules of his own art, wherewith he had so often coozened the world: he feels his throat somewhat hot and dry, and forgettingly calls for a porrenger of cold water: he puts it to his mouth and gargles it; and that the devil might be true to him, by God's just permission and Judgment, it thratled him. Where should the wicked be safe? How many have scaped rocks and sands, storms and Pirates, and other hopeless perils on Sea, and yet have lost their lives on some Tree of Justice by land?

4. Suppose we come not within the danger of the outward waters; God hath water enough to drown us within our own bodies. He can command a full sea of distempered and redundant humors to take our breath from us. Why may we not, like Heraclius the Emperor, die of Dropsies? We little think how much we are beholding to the goodness of God, that we live a minute. Though those exterior elements let us alone, we have elements within us, whereof we are composed and framed; heat and cold, drought and moisture in our bodies, able enough to destroy those bodies wherein they are bred and fed. Let those brethren of one house fall out, those foundations of our nature be at variance within us; if they will destroy our corporeal city, as the seditious Captains did Jerusalem. Melancholy imaginations, like the dark grave, have buried some alive: the pestilent flames of Fevers have burnt up the inwards of others, and like an oven baked their bowels. Some that have scaped the contagious air of the plague, have yet been poisoned with the fumes and vapors arising from their own vicious stomachs. Other, after many tedious voyages by Sea, have drowned themselves in the cups of a Tavern: ingurgitating (as themselves call it) an ocean of drink: dying like Anacreon, with a grape in their throat; or choked with waters between their own skin and bones. Thus there be innundations by land, chamber-tempests, storms of the cellar: floods of drink overtake one another, Pottle after Pottle: undae superadvenit •• dae: one Deepe calls another; a Deepe insatiate stomach, for a deep measure of Wine: and then the winds rise, Stormes begin, the Waves work; and the Clients of Bacchus become either the votaries of Venus, or the assassins of Mars, swimming in blood no less than in drink: as if all the Vessels were drawn to the Lees, and they must now broach one another's Carcases. These be the wracks and miscarriages that follow excess: and as he said of old, Non plures gladio, quàm cecidere gulâ: so Neptune does not destroy more, than Bacchus in the City, and boiled Ceres in the country. He did moderately, that mingled them together: In cratere meo Thetis est conjuncta Lyao: Est dea juncta deo, sed dea major eo. But the merry companion could say, If water had been good to drink with wine, God himself would put it into the Grape: any excuse, how profane soever, serves to help intemperance. So another that was troubled with the disease which Solomon lays upon the Drunkard; sore eyes; when his Physician disuaded him from wine; he replied, that it were better for him to abstain from water; because he had often marked blear eyes, and seen water come forth, but never Wine. Such be their shifts to maintain riot, that hate always to sobriety, and mock all moderation out of countenance. Thus as if they would prevent God, and save him a labor, that he need not unbinde the raging and swallowing waters; they do it to his hand, and drown their own hearts and spirits by taking in a voluntary deluge: till a ship does not more reel and stagger upon the water, than their heads upon the wine. You have heard how an alehouse was by a drunken imagination turned into a Galley; when they thought the storm so vehement, that they unladed the ship, threw the goods out of the window, instead of overboord; and called the Constable Neptune, and the officers Tritons: some getting under the tables: as if they lay under hatches: another holding a great pot for the Mast: and all crying out, that so many brave Gentlemen should be cast away. Here was a strange tempest: a tap-house on land, thought a pinnasse o • sea: there was a sea of drink within that caused it. So great be our sins both by sea and land, that it is the only infinite mercy of our God, that in every place we perish not.

WE read in common Histories, of many great Flouds that have been in the World: none but this, did overflow the World: they were all far short of this, both in extent and continuance. That great inundation of Nile, under Prometheus, endured but a months space: That under Ogyges, in Achaia, two months: Another under Deucalion, in Thessalia, three months: They mention a fourth inundation, of the I will Pharos, therefore called Pharonica, under the Egyptian Proteus. But none came near this Flood, either for universality of place, or duration of time; covering the tops of the highest mountains, and lasting twelve months and ten days. This general Deluge, as I had just occasion, I somewhat largely surveyed in the former Chapter: Where some Critics might say, There was a Flood upon a Flood; a Flood of discourse upon the Flood of Water: my present brevity in that argument, shall make amends. Shortly, consider with me,

• 1. A malefactor; The World that then was.
• 2. An executioner; The Water overwhelmed it.
• 3. The conveniency of this execution; because the Earth consisted in the Water: it was not far fetched, but ready at hand: Whereby.
• 4. The event of all; which was, perishing.

The malefactor, the World: which is taken either localiter, for this whole visible [unspec 1] Engine; The World was made by him: or materialiter, for the things of the World; The World is crucified to me: or formaliter, for the vicious and miserable condition of it, the vanity and villainy; Positus in maligno, The World lies in wickedness: or principaliter, by a Metonimy, for the excellentest part of the World, Man. Locally, a piece of it perished; the Earth: materially, a great deal of it perished; all the riches and commodities of the Earth: principally considered, all perished, but eight persons: formally, there was nothing left. Only God's quarrel to the World, was for the men of the World; and his quarrel to the men of the World, was for the sins of those men. The World it self was in this, like the Sea; and Sins, like the Winds: the Sea would be calm and quiet, if the Winds did not trouble it: if iniquities, like storms, had not put the course of nature into an uproar, the World had not perished. First, it was foul with wickedness; therefore God saw it high time to wash it, with a Deluge. Secondly, Iniquity had so sized it self into the Center of it, and died it in grain, that it must soke under the water a whole year. Thirdly, Sin did cleave so fast to the sides of it, that a little water was not sufficient: but as a Cloth that is thoroughly polluted, must be thoroughly scoured, and pass through many larders; so it would not off from the world, till the world it self was washed to nothing. Fourthly, no part of it was free, but this contagion had universally overspred it: therefore no part must be spared, but the water must universally overflow it. Fifthly, it was grown hot with the fever of burning lusts, the inflammations of concupiscence; therefore the flood came, not as a Iulep only to qualify and cure the intemperate heat; but as a vehement shower to drench the luxuriant parts. Sixthly, it was dry, all the moisture of grace, and sap of charity, the radical humor that maintains the life of Religion, was quite scorched and exciccated with the drought of malice: it must be moistened, not with gentle dews, (they could do no good, the malady was too desperate) but with an inundation of water. Seventhly, it was grown unruly, transgressing all the limits and boundaries that the Maker had set it: therefore he also pulls up the stakes of the Sea, and lets it in like a wild beast among them. Eigthly, men were proud and haughty, and had lifted up themselves above their own pitch and measure: therefore God opens the windows of Heaven, and powers down streams upon them, to lay them low enough. Ninthly, they had trusted to the World, more than to God; therefore he now puts them to their shifts: let them try how their god can deliver them: the waters drive them from their houses up to the mountains, from thence to the highest trees, and still pursues them. Meat they had none, but only drink enough: they might swallow of that as much as they could, which was sent to swallow them. Tenthly, they had rioted upon the creatures of God, without thanks to the owner: They did eat and drink, not for necessity, or pleasure, but intemperance: therefore all is taken from them, but water, and of that they have too much; or the fish, which if they could take, they have not a spark of fire wherewith to dress. Eleaventhly, the World was secure, men had given themselves up to carelessness: they did eat and drink, it may be not to surfeit and drunkenness: They married, and gave in marriage: it may be not as some say, Propter voluptatem carnis, magis quam propagationem prolis: Christ does not mention their whoredoms, adulteries, homicides, and such actual turpitudes; but their supine neglect and slumber: not that they were free from the other crimes; but that this was enough to destroy them. If then the worlds security in lawful things made it so fit for the deluge of water: how doth now the universality of unlawful things, horrible sins, make it fully ready for the last fire.

[unspec 2] The Executioner is Water: this is an excellent servant to us, so God made it; but durus magister, an ill master, so our sins make it. I will not instance to you the manifold benefits of water, our necessary use makes them familiar: yet is this the instrument of their confusion, which to others is an advantage of much accommodation. Nothing is so sovereign, which being abused by sin, may not of a blessing, become a curse. The very Manna that came down from Heaven, may be corrupted with faithlessenesse: as that foolish Israelite proved, which would be sparing the charges of God, and in a covetous diffidence lay up that for his breakfast, which he should have spent at supper. The next morning it putrefied: the Manna was from above, the worms and stink from his distrust. Christ himself, the greatest blessing that ever was, as he is the rising of son, so the falling of others: To believers, a corner stone, whereon to build their faiths: to unbelievers a millstone, that shall grind or quash their souls. Immortality, the greatest blessedness of the Saints, is the greatest misery of the damned. The Instrument is Water.

1. God hath variety of weapons to punish rebels: he destoyreth Corah and his confederates by the earth, the Egpptians by the sea, the Canaanites by the sword, Israelites by the plague, Sodomites by the fire, here the whole world with water. God hath a whole quiver of arrows, a magasin of artillery and judgments. Three are especially named for his arrows. First, Famine, an evil and destroying arrow. Next the Pestilence, a deadly shaft; habet sub arundine plumbum; it is headed with poison: Grandis terror mortalium: deaths chief Pursuivant. First, it is Sagitta volans, flies swift as an arrow: it flew such a pace through the coasts of Israel, that it slew seventy thousand in three days. Secondly, Sagitta ambulance, a roving arrow, that can reach a mark far off; He that is a far off shall die of the pestilence: no man can outrunne it. Thirdly, Ambulance in tenebris; it flies silently, without making any noise: Pavor nocturnus, a terror by night; it steals upon men suddenly, assaults them by night, and surpriseth them in their most secret chambers. This arrow when it flew, consumed our lives here and there, before us, behind us, spared none: only to his chosen, God did dip it in the blood of his own Son, to take away the venom of it: so though it wounded their bodies, their souls it did not touch. The last arrow is inundation: the fury whereof we have lately felt; when the earth like a pregnant mother was come to the birth, and wanted strength to be delivered. Our fair Fields, that in the Spring sang and laughed, now mourn upon the ground that bare them: and the Husband man sighed to see his hopes untimely buried, like abortive fruit in the womb that bred them. Her nurse did overlay her; and those clouds which brought up her children, did again stifle them. All that foul weather in our fields abroad, proceeds from the foulness of our hearts within.

2. The deluge may well be compared to an Arrow: not only because after the flood God is said to hang up his Bow, in token of his reconciliation to the world: when he had shot his arrow, he hung up his Bow. But as Famine is his earthy arrow, making the wounded look like earth, pale and wan: and Pestilence is his airy arrow, an infectious vapor, poisoning as it goes; and War his fiery arrow; where the brandishing of swords give fiery sparkles, Ordnance sends out fiery streams, and Cities are set on a flame, So Inundation is his watery arrow; whereby at other times he destroys parts and pieces of the earth; at this time, all the world. First, an arrow slies no whither but to the place it is sent, the mark whereat it is shot. Here he pours down, not there: in this place the sea shall break forth, while it is chained up in another. To lay immoderate rain to the charge of the stars, and eruptions of the Ocean to the weakness of dams; this is but to gnaw the arrow, as the Dog bites the stone, without minding the shooter: Secondly, an arrow after the loose makes speed to the mark: as Hercules told Nessus, when he ran away with his Deianira; that though he could not come at him, he would send after him: Vulnere, non pedibus te consequar: and he made it good too; Fugientia terga sagittâ trajicit, he sped an arrow through his loins. God did no sooner open the doors and channels, but the water begins to overrun the earth. Thirdly, an arrow pierceth deeply, and wounds deadly; especially when it is shot à manu potentis, from the hand of the mighty: much more à Manu Omnipotentis, from the hand of the Almighty; The Arrows of the Almighty are within me, was the complaint of Job. No target, no corslet, nor armor of proof can repel them: no barricado's can keep out the waters, no banks, nor fortifications resist them, no towers or Cedars overtop them, An impartial arrow? The old were not superannuated, Infants not under years, it swept away all. It was Exterminum, or Demonium meridianum; as Jerome reads the Psalm: an utter rooting out. Fourthly, an Arrow, if it be levelled with a just aim, never misseth the mark: God wanted neither aim nor mark, while he had the whole world to shoot at. Thus the Bow it self was the divine Justice: the Arrow, the Waters, the instrument of that Justice: the loosing of the Arrow from the Bow, the effusion of Clouds and Seas, the execution of that instrument: the mark it flew at, was the sinful world: it was headed with their wickedness, and the feathers it went withal was their sins. It is iniquity that the Lord lets drive at: if men had not offended him, they should never have been offended by him.

3. All God's Judgments may be called his Shafts, and He hath a mighty quiver-full of them. The dexterity of some men in shooting hath been notable. Two were brought before Alexander, famous for their activity in several kinds. The one could cast Millet seed through the eye of an needle without missing: but the King, rather wondering at his vanity, than admiring any excellency, gave him for reward Modium Liguminis, a Bushel of the seed to hold him play, and to keep his hand in ure. The other was an Archer, so skillful, that he could shoot his arrow thorough a finger-ring, without failing. We read of seven hundred left-handed Benjamites, that could sling stones at a hairs breadth and not miss: which is more wondrous. It is reported of Domitian, that he could shoot an arrow between the fingers of a man's hand a far off, and do him no harm. But the hand of God is more cunning, and his Shaft flies more steadily: like Jonathan's bow, whereof David sung in his funeral Elegy, that never returned empty from the blood of the slain: Consequitur quodcunque petit. We know not with what arrow he will shoot us, therefore Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. There is no running from God; let us never prepare our heels to run from him, but our hearts to meet him. There is a way to meet with God, yea, and to overcome him: this is not by scouring of armors, raising forces, and fortifying Garrisons: but by humiliation, repentance, prayers, and tears. If we will conquer heaven, it must be by yielding: not by standing out, but by falling down. As the only way to avoid him, is to run to him: so the surest means to escape his blows, is by throwing ourselves at his footstool. We have leave to resist the divine Judgments by our prayers, with favor and success: as wool meets Iron.