Eighty Sermons

SERM. LVIII. Preached upon the Penitentiall Psalms.

T His is the Sacrament of Confession; So we may call it in a safe meaning; That is, The mystery of Confession: for true Confession is a mysterious Art. As there is a Mystery of iniquity, so there is a Mystery of the Kingdom of heaven. And the mystery of the Kingdom of heaven is this, That no man comes thither, but in a sort as he is a notorious sinner. One mystery of iniquity is, that in this world, though I multiply sins, yet the Judge cannot punish me, if I can hide them from other men, though he know them; but if I confess them, he can, he will, he must. The mystery of the Kingdom of heaven, is, That only the Declaring, the Publishing, the Notifying, and Confessing of my sins, possesses me of the Kingdom of heaven; There is a case, in which the notoriety of my sins does harm; when my open sinning, or my publishing of my sin, by way of glory in that sin, casts a scandal upon others, and leads them into temptation; for so, my sin becomes theirs, because they sin my sin by example, And their sin becomes mine, because I gave the example, and we aggravate one another's sin, and both sin both. But there is a publication of sin, that both alleviates, nay annihilates my sin, and makes him that hates sin, Almighty God, love me the better, for knowing me to be such a sinner, then if I had not told him of it. Therefore do we speak of the mystery of Confession; for it is not delivered in one Rule, nor practiced in one Act.

In this Confession of David's, ( I acknowledged my sin unto thee, &c. ) We shall see more then so; for, though our two Parts be but the two Acts, David's Act, and God's Act, Confession and Absolution, yet is there more then one single action to be considered in each of them. For first, in the first, there is a reflected Act, that David doth upon himself, before he come to his Confession to God; Something David had done, before he came to say, I will confess, As he did confess, before God forgave the iniquity of his sin. Now that which he did in himself, and which preceded his Confession to God, was the Notum feci, I acknowledged my sin; which was not his bringing it to the knowledge of God by way of Confession, for, (as you see by the Method of the Holy Ghost, in the frame of the Text) it preceded his purpose of confessing, but it was the taking knowledge of his sin in himself, It was his first quickening, and inanimation, that grace gave his soul, as the soul gives the child in the Mothers womb. And then in David's act upon himself, follows the Non operui, I have not hid mine iniquity, none of mine iniquities from mine own sight: I have displayed to myself, anatomized mine own conscience, left no corner unsearched, I am come to a perfect understanding of mine own case, Non operui, This is David's act upon himself, the recalling, and recollecting of his sins, in his own memory. And then finding the number, the weight, and so, the oppression of those sins there, he considers where he may discharge himself of them; And Dixi, says David, which is a word that implies both Deliberation, and Resolution, and Execution too; I thought what was best to do, and I resolved upon this, and I did it; Dixi Confitebor, That I would make a true, a full, a hearty Confession to God of all those sins; for such we see the Elements and the Extent of his Confession to be; He will confess Peccata, Transgressions, Sins; Neither by an over-tenderness, and diffidence, and scrupulosity, to call things sins, that are not so, nor by indulgent flattering, and sparing of himself, to forbear those things which are truly so; He will confess Peccata, Sins, and Peccata sua, His sins; First, Sua, that is, A se perpetrata, He will acknowledge them to have proceeded, and to have been committed by himself, he will not impute them to any other cause, least of all to God; And then, Sua, non aliena, he will confess sins that are his own sins, and not meddle with the sins of other men, that appertain not to him. This is the subject of his Confession, Sins, & His sins, and then, Peccata sua Domino, His sins unto the Lord, both in that consideration, That all sins are committed against the Lord, and in that also, That Confession of all sins is to be made unto the Lord; And lastly, all this, (as S. Jerome reads this text, and so also did our former Translation) Adversum se, Against himself, that is, without any hope of relief, or reparation in himself. He begins to think of his own sinful state, and he proceeds to a particular inquisition upon his conscience, There is his preparation, Then he considers, and thereupon resolves, and thereupon proceeds to confess things that are truly sins, And then all them as his own, without imputing them to others, If they be his own, without meddling with others, And these to the Lord, against whom all sin is committed, and to whom all Confession is to be directed; And all this still against himself, without any hope from himself. All this is in David's action, preparatorily in himself, and then declaratorily towards God, and do but make up our first Part.

In the other, which is God's Act towards David, the Absolution, the Remission, the Forgiveness, we shall consider first the fullness; for, it is both of the sin, and the punishment of the sin, for the word imports both, and our two Translations have expressed it between them, for that which one Translation calls the Iniquity of the sin, the other calls The punishment; And then we shall consider the seasonableness, the speed, the acceleration of God's mercy, in the Absolution, for in David it is but Actus inchoatus, and Actus consummat as in God, David did but say, I will confess, and God forgave the iniquity, and the punishment of his sin. Now as this Distribution is Paraphrase enough upon the text, so a little larger Paraphrase upon every piece of the Paraphrase, will be as much as will fall into this exercise. For, as you see, he branches are many, and full of fruit, and I can but shake them, and leave everyone to gather his own portion, to apply those notes, which may most advance his edification.

First then in this mystery of Confession, we consider David's reflected act, his preparatory act, preceding his confession to God, and transacted in himself, of which the first motion is, the Notum feci, I acknowledged in myself, I came to a feeling in myself, what my sinful condition was. This is our quickening in our regeneration, and second birth; and til this come, a sinner lies as the Chaos in the beginning of the Creation, before the Spirit of God had moved upon the face of the waters, Dark, and void, and without form; He lies, as we may conceive, out of the Authors of Natural Story, the slime and mud of the River Nile to lie, before the Sun-beams strike upon it; which after, by the heat of those beams, produces several shapes, and forms of creatures. So till this first beam of grace, which we consider here, strike upon the soul of a sinner, he lies in the mud and slime, in the dregs and lees, and tartar of his sin. He cannot so much as wish, that that Sun would shine upon him, he doth not so much as know, that there is such a Sun, that hath that influence, and impression; But if this first beam of Grace enlighten him to himself, reflect him upon himself, notum facit, (as the Text says) if it acquaint him with himself, then, as the creatures in the Creation, then, as the new creatures at Nile, his sins begin to take their forms, and their specifications, and they appear to him in their particular true shapes, and that which he hath in a general name, called Pleasure or Wantonness, now calls it self in his conscience, a direct Adultery, a direct Incest; and that which he hath called Frugality, and providence for family and posterity, tells him plainly, My name is Oppression, and I am the spirit of covetousness. Many times men fall into company, and accompany others to houses of riot and uncleanness, and do not so much as know their sinful companions names; nay they do not so much as know the names of the sins that they commit, nor those circumstances in those sins, which vary the very name and nature of the sin.

But then, Oculos, quos culpa claudit, poena aperit, Those eyes, which sin shut, this first beam of Grace opens, when it comes, and works effectually upon us; Till this season of grace, this sinner is blind to the Sun, and deaf to Thunder. A wild Ass, that is used to the wilderness, and snuffeth up wind at her pleasure, in her occasion who can turn her away? An habitual sinner, that doth not stumble, but tumble, as a mighty stone down a hill, in the ways of his sin, in his occasion, who can turn him? in his rage of sin, what law can withhold him? But says the Prophet there, of that wild Ass, All they that seek her, will not weary themselves; Friends, Magistrates, Preachers, do but weary themselves, and lose their labor, in endeavoring to reclaim that sinner; But in her Month they shall find her, says the Prophet; That is, say our Expositors, when she is great and unwieldy. Some such Moneth, God of his goodness brings upon this sinner; Some sickness, some judgment stops him, and then we find him; God by his Ordinance, executed by us, brings him to this Notum feci, into company with himself, into an acquaintance and conversation with himself, and he sees his sins look with other faces, and he hears his sins speak with other voices, and he finds then to call one another by other names: And when he is thus come to that consideration, Lord! how have I mistaken myself, Am I, that thought myself, and passed with others, for a sociable, a pleasurable man, and good company; am I a leprous Adulterer, is that my name? Am I, that thought myself a frugal man, and a good husband; I, whom fathers would recommend to their children, and say, Mark how he spares, how he grows up, how he gathers, am I an oppressing Extortioner, is that my name? Blessed be thy name, O Lord, that hast brought me to this notum feci, to know mine own name, mine own miserable condition; he will also say, may that blessing of thine enlarge it self farther, that as I am come to this notum feci, to know that I mistook myself all this while, so I may proceed to the non operui, to a perfect sifting of my conscience, in all corners: which is David's second motion in his act of preparation, and our next consideration, I acknowledged my sin, and I hid none, disguised none, non operui.

Sometimes the Magistrate is informed of an abuse, and yet proceeds to no farther search, nor inquisition. This word implies a sifting of the conscience. He doth not only take knowledge of his sins, then when they discover themselves; of his riot and voluptuousness, then when he burns in a fever occasioned by his surfeits; nor of his licentiousness, then when he is under the anguish and smart of corrosives; nor of his wastfulnesse and pride, then when he is laid in prison for debt: He doth not seek his sins in his Belly, nor in his Bones, nor in his Purse, but in his Conscience, and he unfolds that, rips up that, and enters into the privatest, and most remote corners thereof. And there is much more in this negative circumstance, non operui, I hid nothing, then in the former acknowledgement, notum feci, I took knowledge of my sins. When they sent to sift John the Baptist, whether he were The Christ, because he was willing to give them all satisfaction, he expressed himself so, He confessed, and denied not, and said, I am not the Christ. So when Joshua pressed Achan, to confess his trespass, he presses him with this negative addition, Shew me what thou hast done, and hide it not; that is, disguise nothing that belongs to it. For, the better to imprint a confidence, and to remove all suspicion, Men to to their Masters, Wives to their Husbands, will confess something, but yet operiunt, they hide more. Those words, In multitudine virtutis tuae, Through the greatness of thy power, thine enemies shall submit, S. Jerome, and the Septuagint before, and Tremellius after, and all that bind themselves to the Hebrew letter, read it thus, Mentientur tibi inimici tui, when thy power is shown upon them, when thy hand lies upon them, thine enemies will lie unto thee, They will counterfeit a confession, they will acknowledge some sins, but yet operiunt, they hide, they cover others. Saul in the defeat of the Amalekites reserved some of the fattest of the spoil, and being deprehended, and reprehended, he said he intended it for sacrifice: Many times, men in great place, abuse their own souls with that imagination, or palliation, That they do God good service in some sin, and that they should more hurt the cause of God, if they should proceed earnestly to the punishment of those that oppose it, then if they let them alone, and so leave laws unexecuted, and God's truth endangered. But David's issue was, non iniquitas, non operui, I left none iniquity unsearched, I hid none.

But anything serves us for a cover of sin, even from a Net, that every man sees thorough, to such a cloud of darkness, as none but the prince of darkness, that cast that cloud upon us, can see us in it, nor we see ourselves. That we should hide lesser sins with greater, is not so strange; That in an Adultery, we should forget the circumstances in it, and the practices to come to it. But we hide greater sins with lesser, with a manifold, and multiplied throng and cloud of lesser sins, all comes to an indifferency, and so we see not great sins. Easines of conversation in a woman, seems no great harm; Adorning themselves to please those with whom they converse, is not much more; To hear them, whom they are thus willing to please, praise them, and magnify their perfections, is little more then that; To allow them to sue, and solicit for the possession of that which they have so much praised, is not much more neither; Nor will it seem much at last, to give them possession of that they sue for; nay it will seem a kind of injustice to deny it them. We hide lesser sins with greater, greater with lesser; Nay we hide the devil with God, we hide all the weeks sins with a Sabbaths solemnity: And as in the Roman Church, they poisoned God, (when they had made their Bread-god, they poisoned the Emperor with that bread) so this is a Possessing of God, a making the devil to enter into God, when we hide our sins with an outward sanctity, and call God to witness and testify to the Congregation, that we are saints, when we are devils; for this is a suborning of God, and a drawing of God himself into a perjury. We hide our sins in his house, by hypocrisy, all our lives, and we hide them at our deaths, perchance with an Hospital. And truly we had need do so, when we have impoverished God, in his children, by our extorsions, and wounded him, and lam'd him, in them, by our oppressions, we had need provide God an Hospital. As men that rob houses thrust in a child at the window, and he opens greater doors for them, so lesser sins make way for greater. De minimis non curat Lex, The law is fain to pass over small faults; but De minimis cur at lux, That light of grace, by which a sinner disposes himself to confession, must discover every sin, and hide none, suffer none to hide it self, nor lie hidden under others. When God speaks so much of Behemoth, and Leviathan, the great land and seaoppressors, he calls us to the consideration of the insupportablenesse of great sins; but in the plains of Egypt by hail, and locusts, and lice, little and contemptible things, he calls us to the consideration of these vermin of the soul, lesser and unconsidered sins. David had not accomplished his work upon himself, his reflected, his preparatory Act, till he had made both those steps, notum feci, non operui, first I took knowledge of my sinful condition, and then I proceeded to a particular inquisition of my Conscience, I took knowledge of my sin, and mine iniquity I have not hid, and then he was fit to think of an access to God, by confession, Dixi confiteber, &c.

This word, Dixi, Amar, I said, is a word that implies first meditation, deliberation, considering, and then upon such meditation, a resolution too, and execution after all. When it is said of God, dixit, and dixit, God said this, and said that, in the first Creation, Cave ne cogites strepitum, Do not think that God uttered any sound; His speaking was inward, his speaking was thinking. So David uses this word in the person of another, Dixit insipiens, The fool hath said, that is, In cord, said in his heart, that is, thought that there is no God. There speaking is thinking; and speaking is resolving too. So David's son Solomon uses the word, Behold I purpose to build a house unto the Lord, where the word is, I say, I will do it, Speaking is determining; and speaking is executing too, Dixi custodiam, I said I will take heed to my ways, that is, I will proceed and go forward in the paths of God. And such a premeditation, such a preconsideration, do all our approaches, and accesses to God, and all our acts in his service require. God is the Rock of our salvation; God is no Occasionall God, no Accidental God; neither will God be served by Occasion, nor by Accident, but by a constant Devotion. Our communication with God must not be in Interjections; that come in by chance; nor our Devotions made up of Parentheses, that might be left out. They err equally, that make a God of Necessity, and that make a God of Contingency: They that with the Manichees, make an ill God, a God that forces men to do all the ill that they do, And they that with the Epicures, make an idle God, an indifferent God, that cares not what is done; God is not Destiny; Then there could be no reward, nor punishment: but God is not Fortune neither, for then there were no Providence. If God have given reason only to Man, it were strange that Man should exercise that reason, in all his Moral and Civil actions, and only do the acts of God's worship casually; To go to Court, to Westminster, to the Exchange, for ends, and to come to Church, by chance, or for company, or for some collateral respects, that have no relation to God, Not to think of our Confession, till the Priest have called upon us, to say after him, We have erred and straied from thy ways like lost sheep, To come for Absolution, as Nebuchadnezzar came to Daniel, for the interpretation of his Dream, who did not only not understand his Dream, but not remember it, Somnium ejus fugit ab eo, He did not only not know what his Dream meant, but he did not know what his Dream was, Not to consider the nature of Confession, and Absolution, not to consider the nature of the sins we should confess, and be absolved of, is a stupidity against David's practice here; Dixit, He said, he meditated, he considered, God's service is no extemporal thing. But then Dixit, He resolved too, for so the word signifies, Consideration, but Resolution upon it; And then, that he Resolved, he Executed.

This is not only David's dixit in cord, where speaking is thinking, nor only Solomon's dixi adificabo, I resolved how I might build, but it is also the Prodigals Dixi revertar, I said I will go to my Father, A resolving and executing of that Resolution for that, that execution crowns all. How many think to come hither, when they wake, and are not ready when the hour comes? And even this mornings omission is an abridgement, or an essay of their whole lives, They think to repent every day, and are not ready when the bell tolls. It is well said of God's speaking, in the Creation, It was Dictio practica, diffinitiva, Imperativa, It was an Actual speaking, a Definitive, an Imperative speaking; And, Dicto absolvit negotium, His saying he would do it, that is, his meaning to do it, was the very doing of it. Our Religious duties require meditations, for God is no extemporal God; Those produce determinations, for God must not be held in suspense; And they flow into executions, for God is not an illusible God, to be carried with promises, or purposes only; And all those links of this religious Chaine, Consideration, Resolution, Execution, Thought, Word, and Practice, are made out of this golden word, Amar, Dixi, I said I will do it. And then, Dixi confitebor, I considered, that my best way was to confess, and I resolved to do so, and I did it; Dixi confitebor.

It is but a homely Metaphor, but it is a wholesome, and a useful one, Confessio vomitus, Confession works as a vomit; It shakes the frame, and it breaks the bed of sin; and it is an ease to the spiritual stomach, to the conscience, to be thereby disburdened. It is an ease to the sinner, to the patient; but that that makes it absolutely necessary, is that it is a glory to God; for in all my spiritual actions, Apprecations, or Deprecations, whether I pray for benefits, or against calamities, still my Alpha, and Omega, my first and last motive, must be the glory of God. Therefore Joshua says to Achan, My Son, give I pray thee, glory unto the Lord God of Israel, and make Confession unto him. Now, the glory of God arises not out of the Confessing; but because every true Confessing is accompanied with a detestation of the sin, as it hath separated me from God, and a sense of my re-union, and redintegration with God, in the abjuration of my former sins, (for, to tell my sin by way of a good tale, or by boasting in it, though it be a revealing, a manifesting, is not a Confession) in every true confession God hath glory, because he hath a straid soul, re-united to his Kingdom. And to advance this Glory, David confesses Peccata, sins; which is our next Consideration, I said, I will confess my sins unto the Lord.

First he resents his state, All is not well; Then he examines himself, Thus and thus it stands with me; Then he considers, then he resolves, then he executes, He confesses, (so far we are gone) and now he confesses sins. For, the Pharisees, (though he pretended a Confession) was rather an exprobration, how much God had been beholden to him, for his Sabbaths, for his Alms, for his Tithes, for his Fasting. David confesses sins; first, such things as were truly sins. For, as the element of Air, that lies between the Water, and the Fire, is sometimes condensed into water, sometimes rarified into fire: So lies the conscience of man between two operations of the Devil; sometimes he rarifies it, evaporates it, that it apprehends nothing, feels nothing to be sin, sometimes he condenses it, that everything falls and sticks upon it, in the nature, and takes the weight of sin, and he mis-interprets the indifferent actions of others, and of his own, and destroys all use of Christian liberty, all conversation, all recreation, and out of a false fear, of being undutiful to God, is unjust to all the world, and to his own soul, and consequently to God himself, who, of all notions, would not be received in the notion of a Cruel, or Tyrannicall God. In an obdurate conscience that feels no sin, the Devil glories most, but in the over-tender conscience he practices most; That is his triumphant, but this is his militant Church; That is his Sabbath, but this is his six days labor; In the obdurate he hath induced a security, in the scriptures, which the Holy Ghost hath expressed in so many names, as Sin; Sin, Wickedness, Iniquity, Transgressions, Offences, Many, many more; And all this, that thereby we might reflect upon ourselves often, and see if our particular actions fell not under some of those names; But then, lest this should over-intimidate us, there are as many names given by the Holy Ghost, to the Law of God; Law, Statutes, Ordinances, Covenants, Testimony, Precept, and all the rest, of which there is someone at least, repeated in every verse of the hundred and nineteenth Psalm; that thereby we might still have a Rule to measure, and try our actions by, whether they be sins or no. For, as the Apostle says, He had not known sin, if he had not known the Law; So there had been no sin, if there had been no Law. And therefore that soul that feels it self oppressed under the burden of a Vow, must have recourse to the Law of God, and see whether that Vow fall under the Rule of that Law; For as an over-tender conscience may call things sins, that are not, and so be afraid of things that never were, so may it also of things that were, but are not now; of such sins as were truly sins, and fearful sins, but are now dead, dead by a true repentance, and buried in the Sea of the blood of Christ Jesus, and sealed up in that Monument, under the seal of Reconciliation, the blessed Sacrament, and yet rise sometimes in this tender conscience, in a suspicion and jealousy, that God hath not truly, not fully forgiven them. And as a Ghost, which we think we see, afrights us more then an army that we do see: So these apparitions of sins, of things that are not against any Law of God, and so are not sins, or sins that are dead in a true repentance, and so have no being at all, by the Devils practice work dangerously upon a distempered conscience; for, as God hath given the Soul an Imagination, and a Fancy, as well as an Understanding, So the Devil imprints in the conscience, a false Imagination, as well as a fearful sense of true sin. David confesses sins, sins that were truly sins.

But the more ordinary danger is, in our not calling those things which are truly sins, by that name. For, as sometimes when the Baptism of a Child is deferred for State, the Child dies unbaptized: So the sinner defers the Baptism of his sin, in his tears, and in the blood of his Savior, offered in the blessed Sacrament, till he die nameless, nameless in the book of Life. It is a Character, that one of the ancientest Poets gives of a well-bred, and well-governed Gentleman, That he would not tell such lies as were like truths, not probable lies; nor such truths as were like lies, not wonderful, not incredible truths; It is the constancy of a rectified Christian, not to call his indifferent actions sins, for that is to slander God, as a cruel God; nor to call sins indifferent actions, for that is to undervalue God, as a negligent God. God doth not keep the Conscience of man upon the wrack, in a continual torture and stretching; But God doth not stupefy the conscience with an Opiate, in an insensibleness of any sin. The law of God is the balance, and the Criterium; By that try thine actions, and then confess. David did so; Peccata, he confessed sins; nothing, that was not so, as such; neither omitted he anything, that was so. And then they were Peccata sua, His sins, I said, I will confess my sins unto the Lord.

First, Sua, His sins, that is, à se perpetrata, sins which he confesses to have been of his voluntary committing; He might, and did not avoid them. When Adam said, by way of alienation, and transferring his fault, The woman whom thou gavest me; And the woman said, The Serpent deceived me; God took this, by way of Information to find out the Principal, but not by way of extenuation, or alleviation of their faults; Every Adam eats with as much sweat of his brows, and every Eve brings forth her Children with as much pain in her travail, as if there had been no Serpent in the case. If a man sin against God, who shall plead for him? If a man lay his sins upon the Serpent, upon the Devil, it is no plea, but if he lay them upon God, it is blasphemy. Job finds some ground of a pious Expostulation with God, in that, My flesh is not brass, nor my strength stones; And such as I am, thou hast made me; why then doest thou set me up as a mark to shoot at? But Job never hopes for ease, in any such allegation; Thou hast made my soul a Cistern, and then poured temptations into it; Thou hast enfeebled it with denying it thy Grace, and then put a giant, a necessity of sinning upon it. My sins are mine own; The Sun is no cause of the shadow my body casts, nor God of the sins I commit. David confesses his sins, that is, he confesses them to be His; And then he confesses His, He meddles not with those that are other men's.

The Magistrate and the Minister are bound to consider the sins of others; for, their sins become Qaodammodo nostra, in some sort ours, if we do not reprove, if the Magistrate do not correct those sins. All men are bound to confess, and lament the sins of the people. It was then when Daniel was in that exercise of his Devotion, Confessing his sin, and the sin of his people, that he received that comfort from the Angel Gabriel; And yet, even then, the first thing that fell under his Confession, was his own sin, My sin, And then, The sin of my people. When Joseph's brethren came to a sense of that sin, in having sold him, none of them transfers the sin from himself, neither doth any of them discharge any of the rest of that sin: They all take all; They said to one another, says that Text, we, all we, are verily guilty, and therefore is this distress come upon us, upon us all; National calamities are induced by general sins, and where they fall, we cannot so charge the Laity, as to free the Clergy, nor so charge the people, as to free the Magistrate. But as great sums are raised by little personal Contributions; so a little true sorrow from every soul, would make a great sacrifice to God, and a few tears from every eye, a deeper and a safer Sea, about this Island, then that that doth wall it. Let us therefore never say, that it is Aliena ambitio, The immoderate ambition of a pretending Monarch, that endangers us, That it is Aliena perfidia, The falsehood of perfidious neighbors that hath disappointed us, That it is Aliena fortuna, The growth of others who have shot up under our shelter, that may overtop us; They are Peccata nostra, our own pride, our own wantonness, our own drunkenness, that makes God shut and close his hand towards us, withdraw his former blessings from us, and then strike us with that shut, and closed, and heavy hand, and multiply calamities upon us. What a Parliament meets at this hour in this Kingdom? How many such Committees as this? how many such Congregations stand, as we do here, in the presence of God, at this hour? And what a Subsidy should this State receive, and what a sacrifice should God receive, if every particular man would but depart with his own beloved sin? We dispute what is our own, as though we would but know what to give. Alas, our sins are our own, let us give them. Our sins are our own; that we confess; And we confess them, according to David's Method, Domino, to the Lord; I will confess my sins to the Lord.

After he had deliberated, and resolved upon his course, what he would do, he never stayed upon the person, to whom; His way being Confession, he stayed not long in seeking his ghostly Father, his Confessor, Confitebor Domino. And first, Peccata Domino, That his sins were sins against the Lord. For, as every sin is a violation of a Law, so every violation of a Law reflects upon the Law-maker. It is the same offense to coin a penny, and a piece; The same to counterfeit the seal of a Subpoena, as of a Pardon. The second Table was writ by the hand of God, as well as the first; And the Majesty of God, as he is the Law-giver, is wounded in an adultery, and a theft, as well as in an Idolatry, or a blasphemy. It is not enough to consider the deformity and the foulness of an Action so, as that an honest man would not have done it; but so as it violates a law of God, and his Majesty in that law. The shame of men, is one bridle, that is cast upon us. It is a moral obduration, and in the suburbs, next door to a spiritual obduration, to be Voice-proof, Censure-proof, not to be afraid, nor ashamed, what the world says. He that relies upon his Plaudo domi, Though the world hiss, I give myself a Plaudite at home, I have him at my Table, and her in my bed, whom I would have, and I care not for rumor; he that rests in such a Plaudite, prepares for a Tragedy, a Tragedy in the Amphitheater, the double Theater, this world, and the next too. Even the shame of the world should be one one bridle, but the strongest is the other, Peccata Domino, To consider that every sin is a violation of the Majesty of God.

And then Confitebor Domino, says David, I will confess my sins to the Lord; sins are not confessed, if they be not confessed to him; and if they be confessed to him, in case of necessity it will suffice, though they be confessed to no other. Indeed, a confession is directed upon God, though it be made to his Minister: If God had appointed his Angels, or his Saints to absolve me, as he hath his Ministers, I would confess to them. Joshua took not the jurisdiction out of God's hands, when he said to Achan, Give glory unto the God of Israel, in making thy confession to him; And tell me now, what thou hast done, and hide it not from me. The law of the Leper, is, That he shall be brought unto the Priest; Men come not willingly to this manifestation of themselves; nor are they to be brought in chains, as they do in the Roman Church, by a necessity of an exact enumeration of all their sins: But to be led with that sweetness, with which our Church proceeds, in appointing sick persons, if they feel their consciences troubled with any weighty matter, to make a special confession, and to receive absolution at the hands of the Priest; And then to be remembered, that every coming to the Communion, is as serious a thing as our transmigration out of this world, and we should do as much here, for the settling of our Conscience, as upon our death-bed; And to be remembered also, that none of all the Reformed Churches have forbidden Confession, though some practice it less then others. If I submit a cause to the Arbitrement of any man, to end it, secundùm voluntatem, says the Law, How he will, yet still Arbitrium est arbitrium boni viri, his will must be regulated by the rules of common honesty, and general equity. So when we lead men to this holy ease of discharging their heavy spirits, by such private Confessions, yet this is still limited by the law of God, so far as God hath instituted this power by his Gospel, in his Church, and far from inducing amongst us, that torture of the Conscience, that usurpation of God's power, that spying into the counsails of Princes, & supplanting of their purposes, with which the Church of Rome hath been deeply charged.

And this useful and un-mis-interpretable Confession, which we speak of, is the more recommended to us, in that with which David shuts up his Act, (as out of S. Jerome, and out of our former translation, we intimated unto you) that he doth all this Adversum se, I will confess my sins unto the Lord, against myself; The more I find Confession, or any religious practice, to be against myself, and repugnant to mine own nature, the farther I will go in it. For, still the Adversum me, is Cum Deo; The more I say against myself, the more I vilify myself, the more I glorify my God. As S. Chry sostome says, every man is Spontaneus Satan, a Satan to himself, as Satan is a Tempter, every man can tempt himself; so I will be Spontaneus Satan, as Satan is an Accuser, an Adversary, I will accuse myself. I consider often that passionate humiliation of S. Peter, Exi à me Domine, He fell at Jesus knees, saying, Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord; And I am often ready to say so, and more; Depart from me, O Lord, for I am sinful enough to infect thee; As I may persecute thee in thy Children, so I may infect thee in thine Ordinances; Depart, in withdrawing thy word from me, for I am corrupt enough to make even thy saving Gospel, the savor of death unto death; Depart, in withholding thy Sacrament, for I am leprous enough to taint thy flesh, and to make the balm of thy blood, poison to my soul; Depart, in withdrawing the protection of thine Angels from me, for I am vicious enough to imprint corruption and rebellion into their nature. And if I be too foul for God himself to come near me, for his Ordinances to work upon me, I am no companion for myself, I must not be alone with myself; for I am as apt to take, as to give infection; I am a reciprocal plague; passively and actively contagious; I breath corruption, and breath it upon myself; and I am the Babylon that I must go out of, or I perish. I am not only under Jacob's Non dignus, Not worthy the least of all thy mercies; nor only under the Centurions Non dignus, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof, That thy Spirit should ever speak to my spirit, (which was the form of words, in which every Communicant received the Sacrament, in the Primitive Church, Lord I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my roof; ) Nor only under the Prodigals Non dignus, Not worthy to be called thy son; neither in the filliation of Adoption, for I have deserved to be dis-inherited; nor in the filliation of Creation, for I have deserved to be annihilated; But Non dignus procumbere, I am not worthy to stoop down, to fall down, to kneel before thee, in thy Minister, the Almoner of thy Mercy, the Treasurer of thine Absolutions. So far do I confess Adversum me, against myself, as that I confess, I am not worthy to confess, nor to be admitted to any access, any approach to thee, much less to an act, so near Reconciliation to thee, as an accusation of myself, or so near thy acquitting, as a self-condemning. Be this the issue in all Controversies, whensoever any new opinions distract us, Be that still thought best, that is most Adversum nos, most against ourselves, That that most lays flat the nature of man, so it take it not quite away, and blast all virtuous endeavors; That that most exalts the Grace and Glory of God, be that the Truth; And so have you the whole mystery of David's Confession, in both his Acts; preparatory, in resenting his sinful condition in general, and survaying his conscience in particular; And then his Deliberation, his Resolution, his Execution, his Confession; Confession of true sins, and of them only, and of all them, of his sins, and all this to the Lord, and all that against himself. That which was proposed for the second Part, must fall into the compass of a Conclusion, and a short one, that is God's Act, Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.

This is a wide door, and would let out Armies of Instructions to you; but we will shut up this door, with these two leaves thereof, The fullness of God's Mercy, He forgives the sin and the punishment; And the seasonableness, the acceleration of his mercy, in this expression in our text, that David's is but Actus inchoatus, He says he will confess, And God's is Actus consummatus, Thou forgavest, Thou hadst already forgiven the iniquity, and punishment of my sin. These will be the two leaves of this door; and let the hand that shuts them be this And, this Particle of Connection which we have in the text, I said, And thou didst. For though this Remission of sin be not presented here as an effect upon that cause of David's Confession, (It is not delivered in a Quia, and an Ergo, Because David did this, God did that; for man's will leads not the will of God, as a cause, who does all his acts of mercy for his mercies sake) yet though it be not an effect, as from a cause, yet it is at least as a consequent from an occasion, so assured, so infallible, as let any man confess as David did, and he shall be sure to be forgiven as David was. For though this forgiveness be a flower of mercy, yet the root grows in the Justice of God; If we acknowledge our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin; It grows out of his faithfulness, as he hath vouchsafed to bind himself by a promise, And out of his Justice, as he hath received a full satisfaction for all our sins. So that this Hand, this And, in our Text, is as a ligament, as a sinew, to connect and knit together that glorious body of God's preventing grace, and his subsequent grace; if our Confession come between and tie the knot, God, that moved us to that act, will perfect all.

Here enters the fullness of his mercy, at one leaf of this door; well expressed at our door, in that Ecce sto, & pulso, Behold, I stand at the door and knock; for, first he comes; here is no mention of our calling of him before; He comes of himself; And then he suffers not us to be ignorant of his coming, he comes so, as that he manifests himself, Ecce, Behold; And then he expects not that we should wake with that light, and look out of ourselves, but he knocks, solicits us, at least, with some noise at our doors, some calamities upon our neighbors; And again he appears not, like a lightning that passes away as soon as it is seen, that no man can read by it, nor work by it, nor light a candle, nor kindle a coal by it, but he stands at the door, and expects us; all day; not only with a patience, but with a hunger to effect his purpose upon us, he would come in, and sup with us, Accept our diet, our poor endeavors; And then, would have us sup with him, (as it is there added) would feast us with his abundant Graces, which he brings even home to our doors; But those he does not give us at the door; not till we have let him in, by the good use of his former grace; And as he offers this fullness of his mercy, by these means before, so by way of Pardon, and Remission, if we have been defective in opening the door upon his standing and knocking, this fullness is fully expressed in this word of this Text, as our two Translations, (neither departing from the natural signification of the word) have rendered it.

The word is the same here, in David's sweetness, as in Cain's bitterness, Gnavon; and we cannot tell, whether Cain speak there of a punishment too great to be borne, or of a sin too great to be pardoned; Nor which David means here; It fills up the measure of God's mercy, if we take him to mean both. God, upon Confession, forgives the punishment of the sin; So that the just terror of Hell, and the imaginary terror of Purgatory, for the next World, is taken away; and for this World, what calamities and tribulations soever fall upon us, after these Confessions, and Remissions, they have not the nature of punishments, but they are Fatherly Corrections, and Medicinal assistances, against relapses, and have their main relation and prospect upon the future.

For not only the sin it self, but the iniquity of the sin, is said to be forgiven; God keeps nothing in his mind against the last day; But whatsoever is worst in the sin, the venom, The malignity of the sin, The violation of his Law, The affrontings of his Majesty residing in that Law, though it have been a winking at his light, a resisting of his light, the ill nature, the malignity, the iniquity of the sin is forgiven. Only this remains, That God extinguishes not the right of a third Person, nor pardons a Murder so, as that he bars another from his Appeale: Not that his pardon is not full, upon a full Confession, but that the Confession is no more full, if it be not accompanied with Satisfaction, that is, Restitution of all unjustly gotten, then if the Confession lacked Contrition, and true sorrow. Otherwise the iniquity of the sin, and the punishment of the sin, are both fully pardoned. And so we have shut one leaf of this door, The fullness; The other is the speed, and acceleration of his mercy, and that leaf we will clap to, in a word.

This is expressed in this, David is but at his Dixit, and God at his Remisit; David was but Saying, nay, but Thinking, and God was Doing, nay Perfecting his work. To the Lepers that cried out for mercy, Christ said, Go, show yourselves to the Priest; So he put them into the way; and they went, says the text; and as they went, they were healed upon the way. No man comes into the way, but by the illumination, and direction of God, Christ put them into the way. The way is the Church; no man is cured out of the way; no man that separates himself from the Church; nor in the way neither, except he go; If he live negligently, and trust only upon the outward profession; nor though he go, except he go according to Christ bidding; except he conform himself to that worship of God, and to those means of sanctification, which God hath instituted in his Church, without singularities of his own, or Traditions of other men's inventing, and imposing. This, this submitting, and conforming ourselves to God, so as God hath commanded us, the purposing of this, and the endeavoring of this, is our Dixit in the Text, our saying that we will do it, and upon this Dixit, this purposing, this endeavoring, instantly, immediately, infallibly follows the Remisit, God will, God does, God hath forgiven, the iniquity, and the punishment of the sin.

Therefore to end all, Pour out thy heart like water before the face of the Lord. No liquor comes so clearly, so absolutely from the vessel, not oil, not milk, not wine, not honey, as that it leaves no taste behind; so may sweet sins; and therefore pour out, says the Prophet, not the liquor, but the heart it self, and take a new heart of God's making; for thy former heart was never so of God's making, as that Adam had not a hand in it; and his Image was in it, in Original sin, as well as God's in the Creation. As liquors poured out leave a taste and a smell behind them, unperfected Confessions (And who perfects his Confession?) leave ill gottten goods sticking upon thine heir, and they leave a taste, and a delight to think, and speak of former sins, sticking upon thyself; But pour out thy heart like water; All ill impressions in the very root. And for the accomplishment of this great Mystery of Godliness by Confession, fixe thy Meditations upon those words, and in the strength of them, come now, (or when thou shalt be better strengthened by the Meditation of them) to the Table of the Lord, The Lord looketh upon men, And, if any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not, he will deliver his soul from going down into the pit, and his life shall see light; and it is added, Loe all these things worketh God twice and thrice. Here is a fullness of consolation, first plenary, and here is a present forgiveness; If man, if any man say, I have sinned, God doth, God forgives; and here is more then that, an iteration, if thou fall upon infirmity again, God will on penitence more carefully performed, forgive again. This he will do twice, or thrice says the Hebrew, our Translation might boldly say, as it doth, This God will do often. But yet if God find dolum in spiritu, an over-confidence in this, God cannot be mocked; And therefore take heed of trusting upon it too often, but especially of trusting upon it too late. And whatsoever the Holy Ghost may mean by the twice or thrice, be sure to do it once, do it now, and receive thy Savior there, and so as he offers himself unto thee in these his Ordinances this day, once, and twice, and thrice, that is, in prayer, in preaching, in the Sacrament. For this is thy trinity upon earth, that must bring thee to the Trinity in heaven: To which Trinity, &c.

SERM. LIX. Preached upon the Penitentiall Psalms.

Y Ou would not be weary of reading a long conveyance, in which the land were given to yourselves; nor of a long Will, in which the body of the state were bequeathed to you. Be not weary, if at any time your patience be exercised some minutes beyond the threescore, sometime beyond the hour in these exercises, for we exhibit the conveyance, in which the land, the land of Promise is made yours, and the Testament, in which even the Testator himself is bequeathed to you. But Legacies must be demanded, and oftentimes sued for; and in this text you are directed how to come by it, by prayer, (For this shall everyone, &c.) And you are encouraged in the suit by the value of that you are to recover, by the effect of prayer, Surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh to him: and these two, the way and the end, the manner and the matter, prayer and the benefit thereof, will be our two parts. And in the first of these, The duty of prayer, though we be elsewhere commanded To pray continually, yet for all that continual disposition, we have here certain limitations, or rather indeed preparations, lest that which we call Prayer should not be so, and these are four: For first, it is but omnis sanctus, every godly man shall pray, for the prayer of the wicked turns to sin; And then the object of prayer, to whom it must be directed, is limited, it is but ad te, unto thee he shall pray, beyond him we cannot go, and he that prays short of him, to any on this side of God, falls short in his prayer; And in a third consideration, the subject, the matter of his prayer is limited too, It is but propter hoc, for this shall he pray, that is, for that which hath been formerly expressed, not whatsoever our desires, or our anguish, and vexation, and impatience presents or suggests to us; And lastly, the time is limited too, In tempore opportuno, In a time when thou mayest be found. In these four, we shall determine that first part, the duty; and in the second the reward, the benefit, which is deliverance, (Surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh him) we shall see first, that the world is diluvium aquarum, a deluge of water floods that threaten all; But yet though worldly calamities be of that spreading, and diffusive, and overflowing nature, non approximabit, there are places that it cannot come to, rocks that it cannot shake, hills that it cannot overflow; God hath so erected the godly man, that he is a non ultra, a bank to this sea; It shall not come near him; and this David establishes with that seal of infallibility, Surely, Surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh him. And these be the steps by which we shall lead you to the greatest happiness, that is, deliverance from all afflictions, and that by the noblest means, and the fairest way, that is, familiar conversation with God by prayer.

Into our first part, The duty of prayer, we shall make our entry with this consideration, That our religious Duties, in their precepts, are for the most part accompanied with reasons to induce us to the performance thereof: Hoc fac & vives; Do this, says God; do it, because I command it, at least do it, because if thou do it, thou shalt live forever. And so, Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained Angels unawares; Here the reason of the precept is example; others have prospered that way, therefore walk thou in it. God illustrates his precepts, comments upon his own Text much by examples. First, to raise us to the best height, God makes himself our example, Sicut Pater, Be holy as your Father in heaven is holy: Then, because we cannot reach to that, he makes men like ourselves (at least, such as we should be) our example, Sicut Elias, Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed that it might not rain, and it rained not, and that it might, and it did. If we be not able to conform ourselves to the singularity of one particular and transcendent man, he sends as to the whole body of good men, his servants, Sicut Prophetae, Take, my brethren, the Prophets, for an example of long patience. And because he knows our inclination, to be a declination, and that we cast those looks, which he made upward towards him, downward towards the creature, he sends us to creatures of an ignobler nature, Vade ad formicam, Go to the Ant, do as she doth, be as industrious in thy business, as she is in hers. And then, as in inclining us to good, so also for avoiding of sinful courses, he leads us by example too, Non sicut quidam eorum, Be not idolaters as some of them, nor fornicators, nor tempters of Christ, nor murmurers, as some of them. And as that Apostle begins that catalogue there, so, These are examples to us, so he ends it thus also, These things came unto them for examples: God suffers the wicked to proceed in their sin, and he pours down his judgments upon them for their sins, not only for their punishment, but therefore, that they might be examples to us. Now if God raise a glory to himself in the destruction of the wicked, if he make the wicked in their ruin, even Ministers in his Church, that is, edifiers, and instructors of others, by their own ruin, if their ruin be a sensible Catechism, and a visible Sermon for the edifying of others, how much more doth it conduce to his glory, that the righteousness, and holy conversation of his Ministers, and Prophets should be a lantern to the feet of his people? This is all that David promises in thankfulness for that mercy which he asks of God, This is that that he asks; Restore me to the joy of thy salvation, Et confirma me spiritu principali, Establish me with thy free spirit, Spiritu munisico, says S. Jerome, with thy liberal, thy bountiful Spirit; This is much that David asks; and what will David do for God? This; I will teach thy ways unto the wicked, and sinners shall be converted unto thee. And this is that which S. Paul apprehended to have moved God, to use his service in the Church; For this cause was I received to mercy, that Jesus Christ should first show unto me all long suffering; but that was not all; But as it follows there, Unto the example of them, which shall in time to come believe in him unto eternal life. It is an inexpressible comfort to have been God's instrument, for the conversion of others, by the power of Preaching, or by a holy and exemplar life in any calling. And with this comfort David proceeds in the recommendation of this duty of Prayer, Day and night I have felt thy hand upon me, I have acknowledged my sin unto thee, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin; thus it stood with me, and by my example, For this shall everyone that is godly pray unto thee, in a time when thou mayest be found.

First then, the person that hath any access allowed him, any title to pray, is he that is Godly, holy. Now, Omnis Sanctus, est omnis Baptismate sanctificatus: Those are the holy ones whom God will hear, who are of the household of the faithful, of the Communion of Saints, matriculated, engraffed, enrolled in the Church, by that initiatory Sacrament of Baptism; for, the house of God, into which we enter by Baptism, is the house of Prayer; And, as out of the Ark, whosoever swam best, was not saved by his swimming, no more is any moral man, out of the Church, by his praying: He that swomme in the flood, swomme but into more and more water; he that prays out of the Church, prays but into more and more sin, because he doth not establish his prayer in that, Grant this for our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus sake. It is true then, that these holy ones, whose prayer is acceptable, are those of the Christian Church; Only they; but is it all they? are all their prayers acceptable? There is a second concoction necessary too: Not only to have been sanctified by the Church in Baptism, but a sanctification in a worthy receiving of the other Sacrament too; A life that pleads the first seal, Baptism, and claims the other seal, The body and blood of Christ Jesus: We know the Wise man's counsel, concerning propitiation, Be not without fear. Though thou have received the propitiatory Sacrament of Baptism, be afraid that thou hast not all. Will the milk that thou suckedst from a wholesome Nurse, keep thee alive now? Or canst thou dine upon last years meat today? He that hath that first holiness, The holiness of the Covenant, the holiness of Baptism, let him pray for more. For Omnis Sanctus, is Quantumcumque Sanctus, How holy soever he be, that holiness will not defray him all the way, but that holiness is a fair letter of credit, and a bill of exchange for more. When canst thou think thyself holy enough? when thou hast washed thyself in snow water? In penitent tears? (as the best purity of this life is expressed) why, even then, Abominabuntur te vestimenta tua, Thine own clothes shall make thee abominable. Is all well, when thou thinkest all well? why, All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes, but the Lord weigheth the spirit. If thine own spirit, thine own conscience accuse thee of nothing, nothing unrepented, is all well? why, I know nothing by myself, yet am I not thereby justified. It is God only that is Surveyor of thy holiness, And, Behold, he found no steadfastness in his Servants, and laid folly upon his Angels; how much more in them, that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust? Sordet in conspectu aeterni Iudieis, When that eternal Judge comes to value our transitory, or imaginary, our hollow, and rusty, and rotten holiness, Sordet quod in intention fulget operantis, Even that which had a good luster, a good speciousnesse, not only in the eyes of men that saw it, who might be deceived by my hypocrisy, but in the purpose of him that did it, becomes base, more allay then pure metal, more corruption then devotion.

Though Jacob, when he fled from his Father in law, Laban, were free enough himself, from the theft of Laban's Idols, yet it was dangerously pronounced of him, With whomsoever thou findest thy gods, let him not live: For, his own Wife, Rachel had stolen them: And Caro conjux; Thy Wife, thy flesh, thy weaker part, may insinuate much sin into thine actions, even when thy spirit is at strongest, and thou in thy best confidence. Only thus these two cases may differ; Rachel was able to cover those stolen Idols from her Fathers finding, with that excuse, The custom of Women is come upon me; But thou shalt not be able to cover thy stolen sins, with saying, The infirmity of man is come upon me, I do but as other men do; Though thou have that degree towards sanctification, that thou sin not out of presumption, but out of infirmity, though thou mayest in a modified sense fall within David's word, Omnis sanctus, A holy man, yet every holy and godly man must pray, that even those infirmities may be removed too. Qui sanctificatur, sanctificetur adhuc: He that is holy, let him be holy still; not only so holy still, but still more and more holy. For, beloved, As in the firmament, of those stars which are reduced into Constellations, and into a certainty of shapes, of figures, and images, we observe some to be of one greatness, some of another, we observe divers magnitudes in all them, but to all those other Stars, which are not reduced into those forms, and figures, we allow no magnitude at all, no proportion at all, no name, no consideration: So for those blessed souls which are collected into their eternal dwelling in Heaven, which have their immovable possession, position at the right hand of God, as one Star differs from another in glory, so do these Saints which are in Heaven; But whilst men are upon this earth, though they be stars, (Saints of God) though they be in the firmament, established in the true Church of God, yet they have no magnitude, no proportion, no certainty, no holiness in themselves, nor in anything formerly done by God in their behalf, and declared to us; but their present degrees of godliness give them but that qualification, that they may pray acceptably for more; He must be so godly before he pray, and his prayer must be for more godliness; and all directed to the right object of prayer, To God, Unto Thee shall everyone that is godly pray, which is our next, the second of our four Considerations in this first part.

Ad Te, To God, because he can hear; And then Ad te, to God, because he can give. Certainly it were a strange distemper, a strange singularity, a strange circularity, in a man that dwelt at Windsor, to fetch all his water at London Bridge: So is it in him, that lives in God's presence, (as he does, that lives religiously in his Church) to go for all his necessities, by Invocation to Saints. David was willing be our example for Prayer, but he gives no example of scattering our prayers upon any other then God. Christ Jesus was willing to give us a Rule for Prayer: but if he had intended that his Rule should have been deflected and declined to Saints, he would have taught us to say, Frater noster qui es in Coelis, and not only Pater noster; to pray to our Brethren which are there too, and not only to our Father which is in Heaven. If any man have tasted at Court, what it is to be ever welcome to the King himself, and what it is to speak to another to speak for him, he will bless that happiness, of having an immediate access to God himself in his prayers. They that come so low down the stream, as we said before, to London Bridge, they will go lower, and lower, to Gravesend too; They that come to Saints, they will come to the Images, and Relics of Saints too; They come to a brackish water, between salt and fresh, and they come at last, to be swallowed up in that sea which hath no limit, no bottom, that is, to direct all their devotions to such Saints, as have no certainty, not only not in their ability, we know not what those Saints can do, but not in their history, we know not that such as they pray to, are Saints; nay, we know not whether they ever were at all. So that this may be Idolatry, in the strictest acceptation of the word, Idol; Idolum nihil est; let that be true, which they say, and in their sense, Our Images are not Idols, for an Idol is nothing, represents nothing, but our Images are the Images of Men that once were upon the earth. But that is not throughout true; for they worship Images of those who never were; Christophers, and other symbolical, and emblematicall Saints, which never lived here, but were, and are yet nothing. But let them be true Saints, how will they make it appear to us, that those Saints can hear us? What surety can we have of it? Let us rather pray to him, who we are sure can hear, that is first, and then sure he can give that we pray for, that is next.

The prayer here, is forgiveness of sins; And can Saints give that? The Hosannaes, and the Allelujahs, and the Gloria in Excelsis, Glory in heaven, peace upon earth, good will amongst men, these are good and cheerful Notes, in which the Choir of heaven are exercised; Cherubims and Seraphims, Prophets and Apostles, Saints and Angels, bless God and benefit men by these: But the Remittuntur peccata, Thy sins are forgiven thee, is too high a note for any creature in earth or heaven, to reach to, except where it is set by God's own hand, as it is by his Commission to his Minister, in his Church, and there only, in the absolution given by his Ordinance to every penitent sinner. We see that phrase, Dimittuntur peccata, Thy sins are forgiven thee, was a suspicious word, even in the mouth of Christ himself, amongst the Scribes that would not believe his Divinity; when Christ said to him that had the Palsy, My son be of good cheare, thy sins are forgiven thee; the Scribes cried out, he blasphemed: It strikes any man, to hear of forgiveness of sins, from any but God. It was not a harder thing to say, Fiat lux, then to say, Dimittuntur peccata: Not harder to bring light out of darkness by Creation, then to bring a clean thing out of uncleanness by Conversion; for, who can do that? And therefore when the King of Aram sent Naaman to the King of Israel, to take order for the curing of his bodily Leprosy, the King of Israel rent his Clothes, and said, Am I a God, to kill and to give life? The power even of temporal life and death, is proper to God; for, as Witches think sometimes that they kill, when they do not, and are therefore as culpable, as if they did; So a tyrannous persecutor, so a passionate Judge, so a perjured witness, so a revengeful quarreller, thinks he takes away the life of his enemy, and is guilty of that murder in the eye of God, though the blow be truly from God, whose judgments are ever just, though not ever declared. Let them never say, that they ask not these things, temporal or spiritual, at the hands of those Saints; for, expressly, literally, as the words stand, and sound, they do ask even those very things; and if the Church have any other meaning in those prayers, the mischief is, that they never teach the people, by Preaching, what that their reserved meaning is, but leave them to the very letter of the prayer, to ask those things, which, if they could hear, yet the Saints could not give. And when the prayer is made aright, directed to God himself, yet here in our Text it is limited, Propter hoc, For this, this that was spoken of before, everyone that is godly shall pray unto thee. Now what is this This? for that is our third Consideration.

Si à quo petenda, sed non quae petenda petis, If thou come to the right Market, but buy unwholesome herbs there, If thou come to the Apothecaries shop, and ask for nothing but poisons, If thou come to God in thy prayer, and ask only temporal blessings, which are blessings only in their use, and may be, and are ordinarily snares and encumbrances, then is this direction of David's, Propter hoc, for this shall he pray, transgressed. For, This, as appears in the words immediately before the Text, is, The forgiveness of the punishment, and of the iniquity of our sin; which is so inexpressible a comfort, to that soul that hath wrestled with the indignation of God, and is now refreshed and released, as whosoever should go about to describe it, should diminish it; He hath it not that thinks he can utter it. It is a blessed comfort to find my soul in that state, as when I last received the Sacrament with a good conscience: If I enjoy that peace now, that is, the peace of a religious, and of a wise conscience; for there is a wisdom of the conscience, not to run into infinite scruples and doubts, but Imponere finem litibus, to levy a fine in bar of all scruples, and diffidences, and to rest in the peace and assurednesse of remission of sins, after due means for the obtaining thereof; and therefore if. I be as well now, as when I received, this is a blessed degree of blessedness. But yet there is one cloud in this case, Ab occultis, my secret sins, which even mine own narrowest inquisition extends not to. If I consider myself to be as well as I was at my Baptism, when I brought no actual sin, and had the hand of Christ to wash away the foulness of Original sin, can I pray for a better state then that? Even in that there was a cloud too, and a cloud that hath thunder and lightning in it, that Fomes peccati, that fuel and those embers of sin, that are but raked up, and not trod out, and do break forth upon every temptation that is presented, and if they be not effectually opposed, shall aggravate my condemnation, more then if I had never been baptized. But David conceives such a forgiveness here, as carries up the soul to the contemplation of that state, which it had before the fall of Adam. It is not this present sin of a cold delivering, and a drowsy hearing of the messages of God; It is not my yesterdayes sin, nor my sins since my last repentance, that are forgiven me, but my sin committed six thousand years before I was borne, my sin in Adam, before any promise, nay, before any apprehension of any need of a Messias; I am so restored, that now by the application of the merits of my Redeemer, I am as well as I should have been, though there had never been any use of a Redeemer, no occasion given by me in Adam, of the incarnation and passion of Christ Jesus. The comfort of being presented to God as innocent as Adam, then when God breathed a soul into him, yea as innocent as Christ Jesus himself, when he breathed out his soul to God; oh how blessed is that soul that enjoys it, and how bold that tongue that goes about to express it! This is the blessedness which the godly attain to by prayer, but not by every sudden Lord, Lord, or every occasional holy interjection, but by serious prayer, invested, as with the former, so with that other circumstance that remains, In tempore opportuno, In a time when thou mayest be found.

This time is not those Horae stativae, Horae canonicae, those fixed hours in the Roman Church, where men are bound to certain prayers at certain hours. Not that it is inconvenient for men to bind themselves to certain fixed times of prayer in their private Exercises; and though not by such a vow, as that it shall be an impiety, yet by so solemn a purpose, as that it shall be a levity to break it. I have known the greatest Christian Prince, (in Style and Title) even at the Audience of an Ambassador, at the sound of a Bell, kneel down in our presence and pray; and God forbid, he should be blamed for doing so; But to place a merit in observing those times, as they do, is not a right understanding of this time of finding. Nor is it those transitory and interlocutory prayers, which out of custom and fashion we make, and still proceed in our sin; when we pretend to speak to God, but like Comedians upon a stage, turn over our shoulder, and whisper to the Devil. When you stretch out your hands, I will hide mine eyes; when you make many prayers, I will not hear; for your hands are full of blood. And if they be full of blood, they can take in no more; If they be full of the blood of oppression, they can lay no hold upon the blood of propitiation. Irrisor est, non poenitens, qui adhuc agit quod poeniter, He mocks God, that repents and sins over those sins every night, that every day he repents. The Apostle says so too, He makes a mock of the Son of God, and crucifies him again. This only is true Repentance, He makes a mock of the Son of God, and crucifies him again. This only is true Repentance, Plangere & plangenda non committere, To bewail our sins, and forbear the sins we have bewailed. Neither alone will serve; which deludes many. Many think they do enough if they repent, and yet proceed in their sin; and many think they do enough, if they forbear their sin now, though they never repent that which is past; both are illusory, both deceitful distempers. Laoessit Iudicem, qui post-posita satisfaction quaerit praemiis honorari, He doth but provoke and exasperate the Judge, that solicits him for heaven, before he hath appeased his anger by repentance for former sins; for this is to call for costs before he be discharged.

These then are not the times of finding God; but what are? Generally it is Manifestatio Euangelii, The time of the Gospel is the time of finding God; now when God hath vouchsafed Induere hominem, to put on us in his Incarnation, and enabled us Induere Deum, to put on him in the Sacraments; to stay with us here upon Earth, and to carry us up with him in his Ascension to Heaven; when he is made one body with us, and hath made us one Spirit with him, how can we doubt of a fit time to find him? Christ's time was always; for even under the law, God says, I have heard thee in an accepted time, and in the day of Salvation have I succoured thee; But this doth the Holy Ghost apply to the time of the Gospel, Behold now the accepted time, behold now the day of salvation.

The time then of the Gospel is the time of finding; But now, all times are not alike. Calamities are a good time. When I found trouble, and sorrow, then I called upon the name of the Lord, saying, I beseech thee O Lord, deliver my soul. This is a good time, but it is somewhat a dark time; the withdrawing of God's countenance from us; The Egyptians when they deprehended their danger, said, We will fly from the face of Israel; But whither? The Seareturned, and the Egyptians fled against it, and perished. We may be benighted, benumbed by calamities, and they may as well deject us as raise us. Joab pursued Abner hotly, vehemently; Abner asks, What, Vsque ad internecionem, Shall the sword devour forever? Joab answered, (as the Vulgat reads those words) Vivit dominus, si locutus fuisses mane, As the Lord liveth, if thou hadst spoken in the morning, in the morning every man had departed. If we turn to the Lord in the morning, in the beginning of an affliction, the Lord turns his fierce wrath from us; but if we stand out long, and bend not under his corrections, he pursues Ad internecionem, even to destruction by obduration.

So then the manifestation of the Gospel, that is, the helps which God offers us, more then Jews, or Gentiles, in the Ministry of the Gospel, and the Ordinances of his Church, is the time of finding God; And woe unto us, if we seek him not whilst he affords us these helps; And then the time of affliction, when God threatens to hide his face, but hath not yet hidden it, but awakens us by a calamity, is a time of finding God. But the best and the clearest time is in the Sun-shine, then when he appears to us in the warm and cheerful splendor of temporal blessings upon us; Then when thou hast a good estate, and good children to let it descend upon; Then when thou hast good health, and a good profession to exercise thy strength, and thy labors in; Then when the dishes upon thy table are doubled, and thy cup overflows, and the hungry and thirsty souls of the poor do not only feed upon the crumbs under thy table, and lick up the overflowings of thy cup, but divide dishes with thee, and enter into the midst of thy Bolls; Then when thou hast temporal blessings, (that is God's silver) and his grace to use those blessings well, (that is God's gold) then is the best time of finding the Lord, for then he looks upon thee in the Sun-shine, and then thy thankful acknowledgement of former blessings is the most effectual prayer thou canst make, for the continuance, and enlargement of them.

In a word, then is a fit time of finding God, whensoever thy conscience tells thee he calls to thee; for, a rectified conscience is the word of God; If that speak to thee now this minute, now is thy time of finding God. That Now, that I named then, that minute is past; but God affords thee another Now; he speaks again, he speaks still, and if thy conscience tell thee that he speaks to thee, now is that time. This word of God, thy conscience will present unto thee, but that one condition, which Moses presented to God's people, and that is, That thou seek the Lordwith all thy heart, and all thy soul. It is a kind of denying the Infiniteness of God, to serve him by pieces, and rags; God is not Infinite to me, if I think a discontinued service will serve him. It is a kind of denying the Unity of God, to join other gods, Pleasure, or Profit with him; He is not One God to me, if I join other Associates, and Assistants to him, Saints or Angels. It is a kind of diffidence in Christ, as though I were not sure that he would stand in the favor of God still, as though I were afraid that there might rise a new favorite in heaven, to whom it might concern me to apply me self, If I make the balance so even, as to serve God and Mammon; if I make a complemental visit of God at his house upon Sunday, and then plot with the other faction, the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, all the week after. The Lord promised a power of seeking, and an infallibility of finding; but still with this total condition, Ye shall seek me, and ye shall find me, because ye shall seek me with all your heart. This he promised for the future, that he would do; This he testified for the house of Judah, that he had done, Judah sought him with a whole desire, and he was found of them, and the Lord gave them rest round about: And the Lord shall give you rest round about; rest in your bodies, and rest in your estates; rest in your good name with others, and rest in your consciences in yourselves; rest in your getting, and rest in your enjoying that you have got, if you seek him with a whole heart; and to seek him with a whole heart, is not by honest industry to seek nothing else, (for God wears good clothes, silk, and soft raiment, in his religious servants in Courts, as well as Cammels hair, in John the Baptist in the Wilderness; and God manifests himself to man, as well in the splendor of Princes in Courts, as in the austerity of John the Baptist in the Wilderness) but to seek God with the whole heart, is to seek nothing with that Primary, and Radicall, and Fundamental affection, as God; To seek nothing for it self, but God: not to seek world things in excess, because I hope, if I had them, I should glorify God in them; but first to find established in myself a zealous desire to glorify God, and then a modest desire of means to be able to do it. And for this, everyone that is holy shall pray unto thee, in a time when thou mayest be found.

And so we have done with our first Part, and the four pieces that constitute that, The Person, Omnis sanctus, Every godly man; that is, Sanctificatus, and Sanctificandus, He that is godly enough to pray, and prays that he may be more godly: And the Object of prayer, Ad te, God alone, for God alone can hear, and God alone can give; And then the Subject of prayer, Hoc, This, this which David expresses, forgiveness of the punishment, and of the iniquity of fin, In which respect, (that David proposes and specificates the subject of prayer) we are fairly directed rather to accustom ourselves to those prayers, which are recommended to us by the Church, then to extemporal prayers of others, or of our own effusion; And lastly, the Time of finding God, that is, Then when we seek him with a whole heart, seek him as Principal, and then receive temporal things, as accessory, and conducible to his glory. Thus much hath fallen into the first Part, the duty of Prayer; A little remains to be said of the benefit here assured, Surely, in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him.

Taking these waters, either Distributively, to everyone that is godly, or Collectively, as S. Jerome does to the whole Church, the use will be all one. The Holy Ghost who is a direct worker upon the soul and conscience of man, but a Metaphoricall, and Figurative expresser on himself, to the reason, and understanding of man, abounds in no Metophor more, then in calling Tribulations, Waters: particularly, He would bring in waters upon Tyrus, And, He would pour out his wrath upon his enemies, like waters. Neither doth he only intimate temporal, but spiritual afflictions too, in the name of Waters. And as S. Jerome understands this whole place of the Church, collectively, so S. Augustine understands these waters, to be Varia Doctrinae, those diverse opinions, that disquiet and trouble the Church. And though the Church of God were built upon a hill, and compassed, and environed, and fenced with the blood of him that built it, and defended and guarded by the vigilancy of the Apostles; yet into this Jerusalem did these waters break, even in the Apostles time, as we see by those several, those manifold, those contradictory Heresies, that sprung up them. Christ and his Apostles had carried two Waters about his Church: The water of Baptism, that is Limen Ecclesiae, and Ianua Sacramentorum, The first Ferry, by which we pass into the Church; and by this Water came three thousand, and five thousand at once to the Church, upon particular Sermons of S. Peter. And then Christ gave another Water, by which, they came to another Ablution, to Absolution from actual fins, the water of contrite tears, and repentance, which he had promised before, I will pour clean water upon you, and you shall be clean, And by this water came Peter himself, when his faith had failed, And by this water came Mary Magdalene, when her life had been defiled. But yet for all these Waters, other Waters soaked in, and corrupted them early; for, for Baptism, the Disciples of Simon Magus annulled Christ's Baptism, and baptized in Simon's name; and his Disciple Menander annulled the Baptism of Christ, and Simon, and baptized in his own name. And then, for the other Water, Repentance, the Heretics drained up that shrewdly, when they took away all benefit of repentance for sins committed after Baptism. David denies not, nay David assures us, that collectively, the whole Church shall be beaten upon with waters.

Water multiplied; Aquae multae, Many waters; so the vulgat reads this, that we Translate here, Great waters. So multiplied Heresies. The excellency of the Christian Religion is, that it is Verbum abbreviatum, A contracted Religion; All the Credenda, all that is to be believed, reduced to twelve Articles of the Creed; All the Speranda, all that is to be hoped for, prayed for, expressed in seven Petitions, in the Lord's Prayer; All the Agenda, all that is to be done in it, comprised in ten Commandments, in the Decalogue. And then our blessed Savior, though he would take away none of the burden, (for it is an easy yoke, and a light burden ) yet he was pleased to bind it in a less room, and a more portable form, when he re-abridged that Abridgement, and recontracts this contracted Doctrine, in those two, Love God, and Love thy Neighbor. And then the Devil hath opposed this Abridgement by Multiplication, by many waters, many heresies: for, it is easy to observe, that in every Article of the Creed, there have been at least a dozen Heresies. And in those Articles, which were most credible, most evident, most sensible, most of all; Many more Heresies upon the Humanity of Christ, then about his Divinity: And then, as in matters of Faith, so for matter of Manners, there was scarce anything so foul and so obscene, which was not taught by some Heretics, to be religious and necessary; Things which cannot be excused, things which may not be named, made by the Gnostiques, essential and necessary in the Consecration of the Sacrament. And then, when these waters of death were in a good part dried up, these gross errors in Faith and Manners were reasonably well overcome, Then came in those waters of Traditional Doctrines in the Roman Church, which are so many, as that they overflow even the water of life, the Scriptures themselves, and suppress, and surround them.

Therefore does David, in this text, call these many waters, Diluvium, A flood of great waters; many and violent. For this word Shatach, Inundans, signifies Vehemence, Eagernesse, and is elegantly applied to the fierceness of a horse in Battle, Equus inundans in Bellum, A horse that overflows the Battle, that rushes into the Battle. Therefore speaks the Prophet of waters full of blood; What Seas of blood did the old Persecutions, what Seas have later times poured out, when in the Roman Church, their own Authors will boast of sixty thousand slain in a day, of them that attempted a Reformation in the times of the Waldenses!

Surely, says our Prophet, These waters shall be, Heresies there shall be. And no man may look for such a Church, as shall have no water; Evermore there will be some things raw, and unconcocted in every Church ; Evermore some waters of trouble and dissention, and a man is not to forsake a Church, in which he hath received his Baptism for that. But waiving this general, and collective application of these waters to the Church, and to take it as the letter of the Text invites us, Omnis sanctus, surely every godly man shall find these waters, many waters, floods of many waters; for affliction is our daily bread; for, we cannot live in this world a spiritual life, without some kind of affliction: for, as with long fasting we lose our stomachs, so by being long unexercised in tribulation, we come to lose our patience, and to a murmuring when it falls upon us. For that last Petition of the Lord's Prayer, Liberanos à malo, Deliver us from evil, may as some interpret it, suppose that this Evil, that is Malum poenae, Affliction, will certainly fall upon us; and then we do not so much pray to be delivered from it, as to be delivered in it, not that afflictions may not come, but that they may not overcome, when they come, that they may not be ineffectual upon us. For, it was Durus sermo, A harder and an angryer speech then it seems, when God said to his people, Why should ye be smitten anymore? Why should I keep you at School any longer? Why should I prepare Physic, or study your recovery by corrections any farther? When God was wearied with their afflictions, and they were not, this was a heavy case; He afflicted them forty years together in the Wilderness, and yet he says, Forty years long was I grieved with this generation: He never says, They were grieved, but he was with their stupidity; They murmured, but they sorrowed not to any amendment. So they perverted this word, Non approximabunt, They shall not come nigh thee, they shall not affect thee; That they must do; we must be sensible of God's corrections; but yet there is a good sense, and a plentiful comfort, in this word of our Text. To the godly man, non approximabunt, the floods of great waters, though waters, though floods, though great floods, they shall not come nigh him; and that is our last word, and final conclusion.

Consider the Church of God collectively, and the Saints of God distributively, in which Babylon you will, in the Chaldean Babylon, or in the Italian Babylon, and these waters do come nigh us, touch, and touch to the quick, to the heart. But yet as David intends here, they touch not us, they come not nigh us; for we have treasures in earth-then vessels; They may touch the vessels, but not the Treasure. And this is literally expressed in the Text it self, non approximabunt, eum; not that they shall not come near his house, or his lands, or his children, or his friends, or his body, but non eum, they shall not come nigh him. For, for the Church, the peace of the Church, the plenty of the Church, the ceremonies of the Church, they are sua, but not illa, they are hers, but they are not she. And these things, riches & ceremonies, they may be washed off with onetide, and cast on with another, discontinued in one Age, and re-assumed in another, devested in one Church, and invested in another, and yet the Churches, she in her fundamental Doctrines never touched. And so for us, a wave may wash away as much as Job lost, and yet not come nigh us; for if a Heathen could say, Vix ea nostra voco, That outward things were scarce worthy to be called Ours, shall a Christian call them not only His, but Himself, so as if they be lost, he is lost? How long will a Medall, a piece of Coine lie in the water, before the stamp be washed off? and yet how soon is the Image of God, of his patience, his longanimity defaced in us by every billow, every affliction? But for the Saints of God it shall not be so; Surely it shall not. They shall stand against the waters, And the Sea shall see it, and fly, and Jordan shall be turned back: And the world shall say, What ailed thee O Sea, that thou fleddest, O Jordan that thou turnedst back? For they that know not the power of the Almighty, though they envy, yet shall wonder, and stand amazed at the deliverance of the righteous. Sto, & pulso, says God of himself, I stand at the door and knock; God will not break open doors to give thee a blessing, as well as he loves thee, and as well as he loves it, but will have thee open to him: much more will he keep Tentations at the door; They shall not break in upon thee, except thou open. This then was that, which David elsewhere apprehended with fear, The sorrows of the grave compassed me about, and the snares of death overtook me; Here they were near him, but no worse. This is that that he prays deliverance from, Let not the water flood drown me, neither let the deep swallow me up. And this is that God assures us all that are his, When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the floods that they do not overflow thee. Maintaine therefore a holy patience in all God's visitations: Accept your waters, though they come in tears; for he that sends them, Christ Jesus, had his flood, his inundation in Blood; and whatsoever thou sufferest from him, thou sufferest for him, and glorifiest him in that constancy. Upon those words, Tres sunt, There are three that bear witness, That Spirit, and water, and blood, S. Bernard taking water there, (by way of allusion) for affliction, saith, Though the Spirit were witness enough, without water, or blood, yet Vix aut nunquam inveniri arbitror Spiritum sine aqua, & sanguine; we lack one of the seals of the Spirit, if we lack God's corrections. We consider three waters in our blessed Savior; He wept over Jerusalem; Do thou so over thy sinful soul. He sweat in the garden; Do thou so too, in eating thy bread in the sweat of thy brows, in laboring fincerely in thy Calling. And then he sent water and blood out of his side, being dead, which was, fons utriusque Sacramenti, the spring head of both Sacraments; Do thou also refresh in thy soul, the dignity which thou receivedst in the first Sacrament of Baptism, and thereby come worthily to the participation of the second, and therein the holy Ghost shall give thee, the seal of that security, which he tenders to thee in this Text, Non approximabunt, How great water floods soever come, they shall not come nigh thee, not nigh that, which is Thou, that is, thy faith, thy soul, and though it may swallow that, by which thou art a man, thy life, it shall not shake that, by which thou art a Christian, thy Religion. Amen.

SERM. LX. Preached upon the Penitentiall Psalms.

A S Rhetoric is said to be a fist extended and displayed into an open Hand, And Logic a Hand recollected, and contracted into a fist; So the Church of God may be said to be a soul dilated and diffused into many Congregations, and a soul may be said to be the Church contracted and condensed into one bosom. So not only the Canticle of Solomon is taken indifferently by the ancient and later Expositors, by some for an Epithalamion, and marriage Song between Christ and his Church, by others, for the celebration of the same union between every Christian soul and him, but also many other places of Scripture have received such an indifferent interpretation, and are left in suspense, whether they be to be understood of the Church in general, or of particular souls; And of this nature and number is this Text, Thou art my hiding place, &c. For S. Jerome takes these words (and the whole Psalm) to be spoken collectively, others distributively; He in the person of the Church, They of every, or at least of some particular souls. To examine their reasons is unnecessary, and would be tedious; It will ask less time, and afford more profit to consider the words both ways. In them therefore, considered twice over, we shall see a threefold state of the Christian Church, and a threefold mercy exhibited by God to every Christian soul. First, we shall see the Church under the clouds, in her low estate, in her obscurity, in her inglorious state of contempt and persecution, and yet then supported by an assurance that God overshadowed her, Tu absconsio, Tu latibulum, Thou art my hiding place; And in that first part we shall consider the state of a timorous soul, a soul that for fear of temptations dares scarce look into the world, or embrace a profession. Secondly, we shall see the Church emancipated, enfranchised, unfettered, unmanacled, delivered from her obscure and inglorious state, and brought to splendor, and beauty, and peace, blessing God in that acknowledgement, Thou shalt preserveme from trouble. And in that part, we shall consider the state of that soul exalted to a holy confidence and assurance, that though she come into the world, and partake of the dangers thereof, in opening herself to such temptations, as do necessarily and inseparably accompany every calling, yet the Lord will preserve her from trouble. And thirdly and lastly, we shall see a kind of Triumphant state in the Church in this world, a holy exultation, God shall compass her with songs of deliverance. In which part, we shall also see the blessed state of that soul which is come, not to a presumptuous security, but to modest certainty of continuing in the same state still. And these will be our three parts in these words, as they receive a public accommodation to the Church, and a more particular application to ourselves.

We enter into these considerations, with this observation, That as God himself is eternal and cannot be considered in the distinction of times, so hath that language in which God hath spoken in his written word, the Hebrew, the least consideration of Time of any other language. Evermore in expressing the mercies of God to man, it is an indifferent thing to the holy Ghost whether he speak in the present, or in the future, or in the time that is past: what mercies soever he hath given us, he will give us over again; And whatsoever he hath done, and will do, he is always ready to do at the present. This verse is especially an exultation for mercies past, and yet the two last clauses are delivered in the future, Thou shalt preserve me, Thou shalt compass me, And the first is delivered without any limitation at all; The present word, Thou art, is but inserted by our Translators; In the Original it is only, Tu refugium, Thou my hiding place, There is no fuisti, nor es, nor eris, That he was, or is, or will be so, but it is an expressing of a perpetual and everlasting mercy, for his mercy endureth forever.

First then, this is an acknowledgement of the Church, contemplating her self in her low estate; for the word Sether implies, Tu absconsio, Though I were in the dark, it was thou that didst overshadow me, Though I were in danger, it was thou that didst hide mo from them. This the Church hath had occasion to say more then once; Once in the Primitive plantation thereof, and again in her Reformation: At both times God shown mercy to her that way, in hiding her.

First then God hid the Primitive Church from the eye of envy, by keeping her poor; and from the eye of jealousy and suspicion, by keeping her in an humble devotion towards him. But yet even her poverty, and her humility hid her not so, but that persecution found her out, and raged so against her, as that those Emperors which raised the ten Persecutions against the Church, seem to have labored to have gone beyond God in the ten Plagues of Egypt, and to have done more at Rome then he did there. All the power of the Roman world was bent against Christians; more home-Christians slain then foreign enemies. All the criminal justice of the world bent upon them; All other men's crimes, even Nero's burning of Rome, imputed to the Christians. All the wit of the world bent against them; All their Epigrammatists, & Satyrists, having their wits exalted, with rage, with wine, with rewards, to multiply libels, and calumnies, and defamations upon the Christians. All the Mechaniques of that world bent against them; All the Enginiers employed to invent racks and tortures for the Christians. Truly, if I were to work upon Heathen men, Western Americans, or Eastern Chinese, for their conversion to Christ, I should scarce adventure to propose to them the histories of the Martyrs of the Primitive Church, because to men that had no taste of Religion before, they would rather seem fables then truths; and I should as soon be believed, That a Virgin had a Son, or in any main Article of our Religion, as that man could inflict, or that man could bear such things, as we are sure the Martyrs in the Primitive Church did. Then God hid the Church; He hid her, in a great part in the Wilderness, in Ermitages, and such retirings, singlely one by one; and after in penurious and obscure Monasteries, many of these single Ermits gathering themselves together into one house; when those Monasteries were both Schools of learning, and shops of Manufactures; they taught and wrought in them; Nemo cuiquam onerosus, No man was a burden to any others, no man fed upon another's labors, nor drunk the sweat of another's brow: But, Operabantur manibus ea, quibus & corpus pasci possit, & à Deo men's impediri non possit, They labored in such manufactures, as might sustain their bodies, and not withdraw their minds from the service of God. So God hid the Church, not that the persecution did not find and lop off many a great, and top bough, but he hid the root, and prevented the extirpation of that Tree, which his own right hand had planted.

Tu absconsio, Thou art my hiding place, says the Primitive Church, and so may the Reformed Church say too. For when the Roman Church had made this Latibulum, this hiding place, this refuge from Persecution, Ermitages and Monasteries, to be the most conspicuous, the most glorious, the most eminent, the richest and most abundant places of the World; when they had drawn these, at first remote corners in the Wilderness, first into the skirts, and suburbs, then into the body and heart of every great City; when for revenue and possession, they will confess, that someone Monastery of the Benedictan had ten thousand of our pounds of yearly rent; when they were come for their huge opulency to that height, that they were formidable to those States that harboured them, and for their numbers, (other Orders holding proportion with that one) to reckon out of one Order, fifty two Popes, two hundred Cardinals, seven thousand Archbishops and Bishops, and almost three hundred Emperors and Kings, and their children, and fifty thousand declared and approved Saints; when they were come to that over-valuation of their Religious Orders, as to say, That a Monk, a Friar merited more in his very sleep, or meals, then any secular man, (though a Church-man too) did in his best works, That to enter into any Order of Religion was a second Baptism, and wrought as much as the first; Their revenue, their number, their dignity being come to this, And then their viciousness, their sensuality, their bestiality, to as great a height and exaltation, as that; yet in the midst of all these, Tu absconsio mea, may the Reformed Church say, The Lord was their hiding place, that mourned for this, when they could not help, and at all times, and by all means that God afforded them, endeavored to advancea Reformation. And though God exposed them as a wood to be felled, to a slaughter of twenty, of forty, of sixty thousand in a day, yet Ille absconsio, He hath been our hiding place, He hath kept the root alive all the way; And though it hath been with a cloud, yet he hath covered us.

God came unto Moses, though he came In caligine Nubis, In a thick Cloud; when the glory of the Lord is said to have filled the Tabernacle, even that glory was a Cloud; And so it was in the second place of his worship too, in Solomon's Temple, that was filled with a Cloud. S. Chrysostom when he considered that Christ ascended in a Cloud, And that he shall return again in a Cloud, Paternum Currum deligere voluit, The Son would make use of his Fathers Chariot, and show mercy, nay show glory in a Cloud, as his Father had done often. The Primitive Church, the Reformed Church, must not complain of having been kept under Clouds; for Ille absconsio, God hath made those Clouds their hiding place, and wrapped up the seed, and the root safe in that Cloud. Though the Church were trodden upon like a worm of the earth, yet still she might hear God in that Cloud, Noli timere vermis Jacob, Be not afraid thou worm of Jacob, for I will keep thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer, the holy One of Israel. God hid her then, and hath manifested now, that there was never any time, when he had not some of his to oppose her tyranny and her Idolatry. They can name no time, when we cannot name some such; And it would be much harder for them, to name men in every age, that have professed all the doctrines of the present Roman Church, then for us to find men that have opposed those points that we oppose. Will they say, that these were too few, to constitute or establish, or give name to a Church? They were never so few, as Elias thought there had been in his time, when he said, I only am left; no nor so few, as God, for Elias comfort, named to him, seven thousand; they were more then so, else they could not have found so many to kill, as they did. Howsoever, since so great Schoolmen amongst them as Alexander Ales, and so great Canonists amongst them, as Cardinal Turrecremata, with many others, (as they themselves call them) Gravissimi Theologi, of the gravest Divines, asseveranter affirmant, do dogmatically affirm, that during the time that Christ lay in the Grave, there was no faith, and consequently no Church, but only in One, in the person of the Virgin Mary; in relation to which it is, that in the Ceremonies of the Church, they put out all their Candles but one, in the Church, at that time, to denote that all the Apostles lost their faith, and one She alone retained one; If the Church were then in one person, they may well afford a Church to have consisted of such numbers, as the Lord did hide under his wings, all the stormy time of their Persecutions.

Tu absconsio, may the Primitive Church, and the Reformed Church say, Thou hast been our hiding place, And so must every timorous soul too, (for you may remember, that these words are by our Expositors ascribed to particular souls in the Church, as well as to the Church in general) every such soul, that for fear of temptations in the world, is loath to come abroad from its retiredness, and venture on the public view, must rely upon that, Tu absconsio, The Lord is able to hide them, able to cover them.

Iovinian the Heretic whom S. Jerome opposed, would needs think, or at least say, That after Baptism no man was tempted of the Devil: not only not overcome, but not tempted. But our Baptism does not drown the Devil. Pauci inter Athletas in expugnabiles, Few wrastlers that never took fall; none that may not, since we are all at best, but wrastlers. Vita hominis piraterium, says S. Ambrose, what Copy soever he followed. Others read it, Mans life is a warfare; And that is labor enough, and danger enough. But to be still upon so inconstant an element as the water, and still pursued by Pirates, or consorted with Pirates, is more; and Vita Piraterium, says he, Mans life, every man's life is spent amongst Pirates, pursued by them, or consorted with them. The Devil hath not a more subtle temptation to ensnare me with, then to bring me to think myself temptation-proof; above temptation. Nemo diu fortis est, is excellently said by the same Father: No man continues strong against temptations long. For when he sees, that some temptations have done him no harm, he grows negligent and slack towards others. Infoelix ego! victonem me puto, dum capior, Miserable mistaking man that I am! I think myself able to overcome any temptation, and I am overcome even by that temptation of thinking so. I think myself conqueror, when I am captive, and am chained to the Chariot, when I think I sit in it. Tranquillitas ista tempestas est, This calm is a storm, this security is a defeat; For, it is one of David's heavy imprecations, Veniat illi laqueus quem ignorat, Let him be catchedin a snare, that he suspected not: Destruction come upon him unawares, so we read it. We are tempted, and it is well that we are so. Qui non est tentatus, quid scit? He is an ignorant soul, and knows nothing, that hath passed no temptations; Nothing at all; not himself; Nescit se homo, nisi tentatione discat se, Except he be taught in that School, The School of temptations, no man ever comes to know himself. So then, Laqueus est in securitate; If I be secure, and negligent, that is a snare; But Laqueus in timore too, says he; It is a snare cast by the Devils own hand, If I be over-timorous, If upon pretence of hiding myself from temptations, I withdraw myself from the offices of mutual society. Tu absconsio, The Lord will be my hiding place from temptations that attempt me in my calling, but not to hide me from a calling. Scito quod in medio laqueorum ingrederis, Know that thou walkest in the midst of snares, but yet thou must walk, walk in a calling. So S. Chrysostom reads that; and adds, He does not say, Vide, but Scito; He does not say, see them, for they are invisible; but know that there are snares, and be wary. And then, as S. Augustine says of the whole Church, (which was our first Consideration) Ecclesia Catholica inter tentationes vivit, inter tentationes crescit, The whole Church is in the midst of temptations, but lives and grows up in the midst of them: So, hear thy God say to thy soul, (which is the Consideration that we are now upon) Son of man, though briars and thorns be with thee, though thou dwell among Scorpions, be not afraid of their words, nor dismayed with their looks. Proceed in a lawful calling, and God shall hide thee though with his Clouds: And though he cover thee with a cloud of poverty, with sickness, with disgrace, and if he see no other cover safe, cover thee with the cloud of death, and the grave, all is to cover thee from the Tempter, and thereby to preserve thee for himself, which is our second part, Thou art my hiding place, Thou shalt preserve me from trouble.

If we content ourselves with that word which our Translators have chosen here, Trouble, (Thou shalt preserve me from Trouble) we must rest in one of these two senses; Either that God shall arm, and indue those that are his, with such a constancy, as those things that trouble others, shall not trouble them, but, As the sufferings of Christ abound in them, so their consolation also aboundeth by Christ, As unknown, and yet well known, as dying, and behold we live, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing, and yet possessing all things; For, God uses both these ways in the behalf of his servants; sometimes to suspend the working of that that should work their torment, as he suspended the rage of the Lions for Daniel, and the heat of the fire in the furnace, for the others; Sometimes by imprinting a holy stupefaction, and unsensiblenesse in the person that suffers, So S. Laurence was not only patient, but merry and facetious when he lay broiling upon the fire, and so we read of many other Martyrs, that they have been less moved, less affected with their torments, then their Executioners, or their Persecutors have been, That which troubled others never troubled them; Or else the phrase must have this sense, That though they be troubled with their troubles, though God submit them so far, to the common condition of men, that they be sensible of them, yet he shall preserve them from that trouble so, as that it shall never overthrow them, never sink them into a dejection of spirit, or diffidence in his mercy; They shall find storms, but a stout and strong ship underfoot; They shall feel Thunder and lightning, but garlands of triumphant bayes shall preserve them; They shall be trodden into the earth with scorns and contempts, but yet as seed is buried, to multiply to more. So far this word of our Translators assist our devotion, Thou shalt preserve me from trouble, Thou shalt make me unsensible of it, or thou shalt make me victorious in it.

But the Original word Tzur hath a more peculiar sense; It signifies a strait, a narrowness, a difficulty, a distress; I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan, says David, in this word, when he lamented his irremediable, his irrecoverable death. So is it also, Pangs have taken hold of me, as the pangs of a woman that travaileth. And so the word grows to signify, Aciem gladii, Thou hast turned the edge of the sword, and to signify the top and precipice of a rock; He clave the rocks in the wilderness. So that the word expresses Angustiam, narrowness, pressure, precipitation, inextricablenesse, in a word, (that will best fit us) Perplexity; and, The Lord shall preserve me from perplexity; And this may the Church, and this may every good soul comfort it self in, Thou shalt preserve me from perplexity.

Consider it first in the Church, and then in ourselves; and first in the Primitive, and then in the reformed Church. When God had brought his Church, ex abscondito, from his hiding place, from poverty, and contempt, and solitariness, and glorified it in the eyes of the world, by many royal endowments and possessions, with which Princes (then become Christians) and other great persons, piously and graciously invested her, though these were temptations to aspire to greater, yet God preserved her from perplexities of all kinds; from perplexing of Princes with her claims, that they might not marry, nor make leagues, nor levy Armies, but by her permission. The Church called nothing her own, but that which God had called His, and given her, that is, Tithes: All the rest, she acknowledged to have received from the bounty of pious benefactors. This was her plea, The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer, my strength, my buckler, and my high tower. In all this Inventory, in all this Armory, and furniture of the Church, there is never a sword; Rocks, and fortresses, and bucklers, and Towers, but no sword, no material sword in the Churches hand; Arma nostra preces & fletus; The Church fought with nothing but prayers and tears. And as God delivered her from these perplexities, from perplexing the affairs of Princes with her interest in their government; so he delivered her from any perplexities in her own government. No usurpation, no offer of any Prince that attempted to invade or violate the true right of the Church, no practice of any Heretics, how subtle, how potent soever, though they equalled, though they exceeded the Church in number, and in power, (as at sometimes the Arians did) ever brought the Church to a perplexity, or to an apprehension of any necessity, of yielding to sacrilegious Princes, or to irreligious Heretics in any point, to procure their peace, or to enjoy their rest, but still they kept the dignity of Priesthood entire, and still they kept the truth of the Christian Religion entire; no perplexity how they should subsist if they were so stiff, ever brought them to go less to any prevarications, or modifications, either in matter of Religion towards Heretics, or in the execution of their religious function towards facrilegious usurpers. So God preserved the Primitive Church from perplexity; she was ever thankful and submiss towards her benefactors; she was ever erect and constant against usurpers. And this preservation from perplexity, we consider in the reformed Church also.

When the fullness of time was come, and that Church which lay in the bowels of the putative Church, the specious Church, the Roman Church, that is, those souls which groaned and panted after a Reformation, were enabled by God to effect it; when the Iniquity of Babylon was come to that height, That whereas at first they took of Alms, afterwards Monachi emunt & Nobiles vendunt, Monks bought, and Lord's sold, nay Monasteries bought, and the Crown sold; when they went so far, as to forgea Donation of Constantine, by which they laid hold upon a great temporal state, and after that so much farther, as to renounce the Donation of Constantine, by which, for a long time, the Roman Church claimed all their temporal state, S. Peters patrimony, and so, at last came to say, That all the states of all Christian Princes are held of the Church, and really may be, and actually are forfeited to her, and may, at her pleasure, be re-assumed by her; when for the art and science of Divinity it self, they had buried it in the darkness of the School, and wrapped up that that should save our souls, in those perplexed and inextricable clouds of School-divinity, and their School-divinity subject to such changes, as that a Jesuit professes, that in the compass but of thirty years, since Gregory de Valentia writ, Vere dici possit, novam quodammodo Theologiam prognatam esse, We may truly say, that we have a new art of Divinity risen amongst us; The Divinity of these times, says he, is not in our Church the same that it was thirty years since; since all parts of the Christian Church were so incensed, both with their heresy, and their tyranny, as that the Greek Church, which generally they would make the world believe, is absolutely as they are, is by some of their own Authors confessed to be more averse from them, and more bitter against them, then Luther or Calvin; since upon all these provocations, God was pleased to bring this Church, the Reformed Church, not only to light, but to splendor, He hath preserved this Church from perplexities. If they say, we are perplexed with differences of opinions amongst ourselves, let this satisfy them, that we do agree all, in all fundamental things: And that in things much nearer the foundation, then those in which our differences lie, they differ amongst themselves, with more acrimony and bitterness, then we do. If they think to perplex us with the Fathers, we are ready to join that issue with them; where the Fathers speak unanimously, dogmatically, in matters of faith, we are content to be tried by the Fathers. If they think to perplex us with Councils, we will go as far as they in the old ones, and as far as they for meeting in new Councils, if they may be fully, that is, Royally, Imperially called, and equally proceeded in, and the Resolutions grow and gathered there upon debatements, upon the place, and not brought thither upon commandment from Rome. If there be no way but Force and Arms, if they will admit no trial but that, God be blessed that keeps us from the necessity, but God be blessed also that he preserves us from perplexity, or not being able to defend his cause, if he call us to that trial. And therefore let them never call it a Perplexity in us, let them never say that we know not what to do, when we acknowledge the Church of Rome to be truly a Church: for the Pest-house is a house, and theirs is such a Church; But the Pest-house is not the best air to live in, nor the Roman Church the best Church to die in. Thou hast preserved me from perplexities, may the Primitive Church say, and so may the Reformed too, and so also may every particular soul say, which is a Consideration, that from the beginning we proposed for every Part, and are now come to it in this.

When we were upon this consideration in our former Part, we shown you, that no over-tender or timorous soul, might hide it self in a retired life, from the offices of society, but though every particular age bring a new sin with it, every complexion a new sin, every occupation a new sin, every friend a new sin, that must be loved for his sake, yet Para te foro, Thou art bound to come abroad, and trust upon God's hiding thee there from temptations, and so assure thyself that he will preserve thee from perplexities. Now, we consider in the School, Perplexities, which are such only by mis-understanding; and Perplexities, which are such in the true nature of the thing. Those of the first kind, perplexities in a mis-understanding, should fall upon no man; perplexities of the second kind, in the nature of the thing it self, can fall upon no man. Of the first kind, this is an example, A man swears to conceal all his friends secrets, and he tells him of a treasonable purpose against the State; Either way he must offend; Against his oath if he reaveale it, or against his Allegeance, if he do not. This is no perplexity; for in a right understanding he must know, that such an Oath binds not. Of the second kind there was an example in Origen, who must, by the commandment of the Persecutor, either offer sacrifice to an Idol, or prostitute his body to an adominable abuse with another man. Which should he do? Neither. God gives a man an issue in such cases, by death; Et vitam potiùs finire debet quàm maculare, He is bound to give his life, rather then to stain his life. This timorous soul then fears where no fear is. He would hide himself, he is loath to come into the world, because he thinks he must needs sin. He needs not. Is there a necessity laid upon him, that he must die as rich as the richest of his profession, and that he cannot do without sin? That he must leave his wife such a Jointure, and his children such Portions, and all that he cannot do without sin? First, all that he may do without sin: We have seen in all Professions honest men die as rich, as dishonest. If thou do not, he that hath said, There is no man that hath left wife or children for my sake, but shall have a hundred fold here, and everlasting life, (which is a blessed Codicil to a Will that was abundant before) will also say, There is no man that hath left wife and children poor for my sake, but I will enlarge my providence upon them even in this life, and my glory in the next: And this was our second Part, considered in the Church and in ourselves, Thou shalt preserve, &c.

There remains yet a third Part, that as God hides us from temptations, that they reach us not; or preserves us from intricacies, and perplexities, so that they hurt us not; so if they do, yet he compasses us with a joyful Deliverance, (as our former) or with songs of Deliverance, as this Translation hath it, that is, imprints in us a holy certitude, a fair assurance, that he will never forsake us; And this voice we may hear from the Church first, and then from every particular soul; for, to both, (as we have told you all the way) do all the parts of this Psalm appertain.

As it is an exaltation of God's indignation, when he is said to Compass by way of siege, (so Jerusalem complains, He hath built against me, he hath compassed me with gall and travel, he hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out; So God threatens, I will camp against thee round about, and I will lay siege against thee ) for this intimates such a displeasure of God, as that he does not only leave us succorless, joyless, comfortless in ourselves, but cuts off those supplies which might relieve us; He compasses us, he besieges us, he camps round about us, that no relief can enter; so when his love and mercy is expressed in this phrase, that he compasses us, it signifies both an entire mercy, that no enemy shall break in in any part, whilst he doth compass us, and a permanent and durable mercy, that as no force of the enemy, so no weariness in himself, shall make him discontinue his watches, or his guard over us, but that he will compass us still.

Thy faithfulness is round about thee, says David to God; that is our first comfort, that God compasses himself with his own faithfulness, that is, is never unmindful of his own promises, and purposes; And then, He is round about our habitations; God compasses himself with his own faithfulness, and then, he compasses us with himself: That as Satan told God one day after another, Circuivi terram, & perambulavieam, I have compassed the earth, and walked it round, but could never say that he had broke into Job's quarter, for he found the impossibility in that, The Lord had made a hedge about him, Where note that God's first care is of the man; and the soul is the man; first a hedge about him, and then, about his house, and about all that he had, on every side; So day after day we shall find arguments to establish our hearts in hope, that the Lord hath compassed us, and nothing shall break in so, as to take us from him; but God shall say to us, as to his former people, Leva in circuitu oculos tuos, Lift up thine eyes round about, and behold, (which is one great comfort, that he enables us to see and to know our enemies, to discern a temptation to be a temptation) Omnes isti congregati sunt, All these gather themselves together, and come to thee, (which is another assistance, that when we see our enemies multiply, and that there is none that fighteth for us, but only thou O God, we make a more present recourse to him) But, Vivo ego dicit Dominus, As I live saith the Lord, Velut ornamento vestieris, thou shalt surely clothe thee with them all as with an ornament, and bind them on thee as a Bride doth; (which is the fullness of the mercy, That as in another place, he promises his children, Panis vester sunt, your enemies shall be your Bread, you shall feed upon your enemies; So here he makes our enemies, even our spiritual enemies; our Clothes, and more then that, our Jewels, our Ornaments, we shall be the stronger, the warmer, the richer, by tribulations, and temptations, having overcome them, as we shall, if the Lord compass us, if he continue his watchfulness over us) And that David says here, first in the Churches behalf.

God from the beginning carried a wall about his Church, in that assurance, Portae inferi, The gates of hell shall not prevail against it. The Gentiles, the Philosophers that were without the Church, found a party, Traitors, Conspirators within, The Heretics; and all these led and maintained by potent Princes that persecuted the Church; The gates of hell were all opened, and issued all her forces, but Non praevaluerunt, they never prevailed. The Arians were sometimes more then the true Christians in all the world: The Martyrians, a sect that affected the name of Martyrdom, could name more Martyrs then the true Church could, but Evanuerunt, yet they vanished: The Emperors of Rome persecuted the Bishops of Rome to death, yet when we look upon the reckoning, the Emperors died faster then Bishops. Thou hast compassed me, says the Primitive Church, and so says the Reformed too.

Princes that hated one another have joined in leagues against the Religion, Princes that needed their Subjects, have spent their Subjects by thousands, in Massacres, to extinguish the Religion; Personal Assasinates, Clandestine plots by poison, by fire, by water have been multiplied against Princes that favor the Religion; Inquisitions, Confiscations, Banishments, Dishonours have overflown them that profess the true Religion; and yet the Lord compassing his Church, she enjoys a holy certainty, arising out of these testimonies of his care, that she shall never be forsaken. And this may every good soul have too.

God comes to us without any purpose of departing from us again; For the Spirit of life that God breated into man, that departs from man in death; but when God had assumed the nature of man, the God-head never parted from that nature; no, not in death; When Christ lay dead in the grave, the God-head remained united to that body and that soul, which were dis-united in themselves; God was so united to man, as that he was with man, when man was not man, in the state of death. So when the Spirit of God hath invested, compassed thy soul, and made it his by those testimonies, that Spirit establishes it in a kind of assurance that he will never leave it. Old Rome had (as every City amongst the Heathen had) certain gods which they called their Tutelar gods, gods that were affected to the preservation of that place; But they durst never call upon those gods, by their proper names, for fear of losing them; lest if their names should be known by their enemies, their enemies should win away their gods from them, by bestowing more cost, or more devotion towards them then they themselves used. So also is it said of them, that when they had brought to Rome a foreign god, which they had taken in a conquered place, Victory, they cut the wings of their new god Victory, lest he should fly from them again. This was a misery, that they were not sure of their gods when they had them. We are; If he once come to us, he never goes from us, out of any variableness in himself, but in us only; That promise reaches to the whole Church, and to every particular soul, Thy Teachers shall not be removed into a corner anymore, but thine eye shall see thy Teachers, which in the Original (as is appliably to our present purpose, noted by Rabbi Moses ) is, Non erunt Doctors tui alati, Thy Teachers shall have no wings, They shall never fly from thee, and so the great Translation reads it, Non avolabunt. As their great god, Victory, could not fly from Rome, so after this victory which God hath given his Church in the Reformation, none of her Teachers should fly to, or towards Rome. Every way that God comes to us, he comes with a purpose to stay, and would imprint in us an assurance that he doth so, and that Impression is this Compassing of thy soul, with songs of deliverance, in the signification and use of which word, we shall in one word conclude all.

God hath given us this certitude, this fair assurance of his perpetual residence with us, in a word of a double signification; The word is Ranan, which signifies Joy, exultation, singing; But it hath another sense too. Arise, Cry out in the night. And, Attend unto my cry, which are voices far from singing. This God means therein, That though he give us that comfort to sit and sing of our Deliverance, yet he would not have us fall asleep with that music, but as when we contemplate his everlasting goodness, we celebrate that with a constant Joy, so when we look upon our own weakness and unworthiness, we cry out, Wretched men that we are, who shall deliver us from this body of death? For though we have the Spirit of life in us, we have a body of death upon us. How loving soever my soul be, it will not stay in a diseased body; How loving soever the Spirit of life be, it will not stay in a diseased soul. My soul is loath to go from my body, but sickness and pain will drive it out; so will sin, the Spirit of life from my soul. God compasses us with Songs of Deliverance, we are sure he would not leave us; But he compasses us with Cries too, we are afraid, we are sure, that we may drive him from us. Pray we therefore our Lord of everlasting goodness, That he will be our Hiding-place, That he will protect us from temptations incident to our several Callings, That he will preserve us from troubles, preserve us from them, or preserve us in them, preserve us that they come not, or preserve us that they overcome not; And that he will compass us, so as no enemy find overture unto us, and compass us with songs, with a joyful sense of our perseverance, but yet with cries too, with a solicitous fear, that that multiplicity and heinousness of our sins may weary even the incessant and indefatigable Spirit of comfort himself, and chase him from us.

SERM. LXI. Preached upon the Penitentiall Psalms.

T His verse, more then any other in the Psalm, answers the Title of the Psalm. The title is, David's Instruction; and here in the Text it is said, I will instruct thee, and teach thee, in the way thou shalt go. There are eleven Psalms that have that Title, Psalms of Instruction; The whole book is Sepher Tehillim, The book of praises; and it is a good way of praising God, to receive Instruction, Instruction how to praise him. Therefore doth the holy Ghost return so often to this Catechisticall way, Instruction, Institution, as to propose so many Psalms, expressly under that Title purposely to that use. In one of those, The manner how Instruction should be given, is expressed also; It must be in a loving manner, for the Title is Canticum Amorum, A song of love for Instruction. For Absque prudentia, & benevolentia, non sunt perfecta consilia: True Instruction is a making love to the Congregation, and to every soul in it; but it is but to the soul. And so when S. Paul said, He was mad for their sakes, Insanivit Amatoriam insaniam, says Theophylact, S. Paul was mad for love of them, to whom he writ his holy love-letters, his Epistles. And thereupon do the Rabbins call this Psalm, Leb David, Cor Davidis, The opening and pouring out of David's heart to them, whom he instructs. We have no way into your hearts, but by sending our hearts. The Poets counsel is, Vt ameris, ama, If thou wouldst be truly loved, do thou love truly; The holy Ghosts precept upon us is, Vt credaris, creed, That if we would have you believe, we believe ourselves. It is not to our Eloquence that God promises a blessing, but to our sincerity, not to our tongue, but to our heart: All our hope of bringing you to love God, is in a loving and hearty manner to propose God's love to you. The height of the Spouses love to Christ, came but to that, I am sick of love: The love of Christ went farther, To die for love. Love is as strong as death; but nothing else is as strong as either; and both, Love and Death, met in Christ. How strong and powerful upon you then should that Instruction be, that comes to you from both these, The Love and Death of Christ Jesus? and such an Instruction doth this text exhibit, I will instruct thee, and teach thee in the way in which thou shalt go, I will guide thee with mine eye. God so loved the world, as that he sent his Son to die: The Son being dead so loved the world, as that he returned to that world again; and being ascended; sent the holy Ghost to establish a Church, and in that Church, Vsque ad consummationem, till the end of the world, shall that holy Spirit execute this Catechisticall Office, He shall instruct thee, and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go, He shall guide thee with his eye.

Though then some later Expositors have doubted of the person, who doth this Office, To Instruct, who this I in our Text is, because the Hebrew word Le David, is as well Davidis, as Davidi, An Instruction from David, as an Instruction to David, and so the Catechist may seem to be David, and no more; yet since this Criticisme upon the word, Le David, argues but a possibility that it may, and not a necessity that it must be so, we accompany S. Jerome, and indeed the whole body of the Fathers, in accepting this Instruction from God himself, it is no other then God himself that says, I will instruct thee, &c. No other then God himself can undertake so much as is promised in this text. For here is first, a rectifying of the understanding, I will instruct thee, and in the Original there is somewhat more then our Translation reaches to; It is there, Intelligere faciam te, I will moke thee understand. Man can instruct, God only can make us understand. And then it is Faciam te, I will make Thee, Thee understand; The work is the Lord's, The understanding is the man's: for God does not work in man, as the Devil did in Idols, and In Pythonissis, and In Ventriloquis, in possessed persons, who had no voluntary concurrence with the action of the Devil, but were merely Passive; God works so in man, as that he makes man work too, Faciam Te, I will make Thee understand; That that shall be done shall be done by me, but in Thee; the Power that rectifies the act is God's, the Act is man's; Faciam te, says God, I will make thee, thee, every particular person, (for that arises out of this singular and distributive word, Thee, which threatens no exception, no exclusion) I will make every person, to whom I present Instruction, capable of that Instruction, and if he receive it not, it is only his, and not my fault. And so this first part is an Instruction De credendis, of such things, as by God's rectifying of our understanding, we are bound to believe. And then in a second part, there follows a more particular Instructing, Docebo, I will teach thee, And that In via, In the way; It is not only De via, To teach thee, which is the way, that thou mayest find it, but In via, How to keep the way, when thou art in it; He will teach thee, not only Vt gradiaris, That thou mayest walk in it, and not sleep, but Quo modo gradieris, How thou mayest walk in it, and not stray; And so this second part is an Institution De agendis, of those things, which, thine understanding being formerly rectified, and deduced into a belief, thou art bound to do. And then in the last words of the text, I will guide thee with mine eye, there is a third part, an establishment, a confirmation, by an incessant watchfulness in God; He will consider, consult upon us, (for so much the Original word imports) He will not leave us to Contingencies, to Fortune, no nor to his own general Providence, by which all Creatures are universally in his protection, and administration, but he will ponder us, consider us, study us; And that with his eye, which is the sharpest, and most sensible organ and instrument, soonest feels, if anything be amiss, and so inclines him quickly to rectify us; And so this third part is an Instruction De sperandis, it hath evermore a relation to the future, to the constancy and perseverance of God's goodness towards us; to the end, and in the end, he will guide us with his eye: Except the eye of God can be put out, we cannot be put out of his sight, and his care. So that, both our freight which we are to take in, that is, what we are to believe concerning God; And the voyage which we are to make, how we are to steer and govern our course, that is, our behavior and conversation in the household of the faithful; And then the Haven to which we must go, that is, our assurance of arriving at the heavenly Jerusalem, are expressed in this Chart, in this Map, in this Instruction, in this Text, I will Instruct thee, and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go, I will guide thee with mine eye. And when you have done all this, Beleeved aright, and lived according to that belief, and died according to that life, in the last voice Surgite, you shall find a Venite, as soon as you are called from the dust of the grave, you shall Enter into your Masters joy, and be no more called servants, but friends, no more friends, but sons, no more sons but heirs, no more heirs, but coheirs with the only Son of God, no more coheirs, but Idem Spiritus, The same Spirit with the Lord.

First then, the office which God by his blessed Spirit, through us, in his Church, undertakes, is to Instruct. And this being done so by God himself, God sending his Spirit, his Spirit working in his Ministers, his Ministers laboring in his Church, it is strange that S. Paul speaking so, in the name of God, and his Spirit, and his Ministers, and his Church, should be put to entreat his hearers, To suffer a word of exhortation. Yet he is; I beseech ye, brethren, suffer a word of Exhortation. And the strangeness of the case is exalted in this, that the word there is 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , Solatii, and so the Vulgat reads it, and justly, Vt sufferatis verbum solatii, I bescech ye to suffer a word of Comfort. What will ye hear willingly, if ye do not willingly hear words of Comfort? With what shall we exercise your holy joy and cheerfulness, if even words of Comfort must exercise your patience? And yet we must beseech you to suffer, even our words of comfort; for, we can propose no true comfort unto you, but such as carries some irkesomenesse, some bitterness with it; we can create no true joy, no true acquiescence in you, without some exercise of your patience too. We cannot promise you peace with God, without a war in yourselves, nor reconciliation to him, without falling out with yourselves, nor eternal joy in the next world, without a solemn remorse for the sinful abuses of this. We cannot promise you a good tomorrow, without sending ye back to the consideration of an ill yesterday; for your hearing today, is not enough, except ye repent yesterday. But yet, though with S. Paul we be put to beseech you, Vt sufferatis, That ye would suffer Instruction, though we must sometimes exercise your patience, yet it is but verbum instructionis, a word of Instruction; and though Instruction be Increpation, (for as the word is Solatium, Comfort, (so we have told you it is) it is Increpation too, for all true comfort hath Increpation in it) yet it may easily be suffered, because it is but verbum, but a word, a word and away. We would not dwell upon increpations, and chidings, and bitternesses; we would pierce but so deep as might make you search your wounds, when you come home to your Chamber, to bring you to a tenderness there, not to a paleness or blushing here. We never stay so long upon denouncing the judgments of God, but that we would, as fain as you, be at an end of that Paragraph, of that period, of that point, that we might come into a calm, and into a Lee-shore, and tell you of the mercies of God in Christ Jesus. You may suffer Instruction, though Instruction be increpation, for it is but a word of instruction, we have soon done; and you may suffer, them, because they are but Verba, not Verbera, They are but words, and not blows. It is not Traditio Satanae, a delivering you up to Satan, it is not the confusion of face, nor consternation of spirit, nor a jealousy and suspicion of God's good purpose upon you, that we would induce by our Instruction, though it be Increpation, but only a sense of your sins, and of the Majesty of God violated by them, and so to a better capacity of this Instruction, which the Holy Ghost here presents, In credendis, in those things which you are bound to believe; of which his first degree is, Intelligere te faciam, He will make ye understand, he will work upon your understanding, for, so much (as we noted to you at first) doth that word, which we Translate here, I will Instruct thee, comprehend.

Oportet accedentem credere; The Apostle seems to make that our first step, He that comes to God, must believe. So it is our first step to God, To believe, but there is a step towards God, before it come to faith, which is, to understand; God works first upon the understanding. God proceeds in our conversion, and regeneration, as he did in our first Creation. There man was nothing; but God breathed not a soul into that nothing; but of a clod of earth he made a body, and into that body infused a soul. Man in his Conversion, is nothing, does nothing. His body is not verier dust in the grave, till a Resurrection, then his soul is dust in his body, till a resuscitation by grace. But then this grace does not work upon this nothingness that is in man, upon this mere privation; but Grace finds out man's natural faculties, and exalts them to a capacity, and a susciptiblenesse of the working thereof, and so by the understanding infuses faith. Therefore God begins his Instruction here at the understanding; and he does not say at first, Faciam te credere, I will make thee to believe, but Faciam te intelligere, I will make thee understand.

That then being God's Method, To make us understand, certainly those things which belong to our Salvation, are not In-intelligibilia, not In-intelligible, un-understandable, un-conceiveavable things, but the Articles of faith are discernible by Reason. For though Reason cannot apprehend that a Virgin should have a Son, or that God should be made Man and die, if we put our Reason primarily and immediately upon the Article single, (for so it is the object of faith only) yet if we pursue God's Method, and see what our understanding can do, we shall see, that out of ratiocination and discourse, and probabilities, and very similitudes, at last will arise evident and necessary conclusions; such as these, That as there is a God, that God must be worshiped according to his will, That therefore that will of God must be declared and manifested somewhere, That this is done in some permanent way, in some Scripture, which is the Word of God, That this book, which we call the Bible, is, by better reasons then any others can pretend, that Scripture; And when our Reason hath carried us so far, as to accept these Scriptures for the Word of God, then all the particular Articles, A Virgins Son, and a mortal God, will follow evidently enough. And then those two Propositions, Mysteria credenda ut intelligantur, Mysteries of Religion must be believed before they be understood, and Mysteria intelligenda ut credantur, Mysteries of Religion must be understood before they can be believed, will be all one; For God exalts our natural faculty of understanding by Grace to apprehend them, and then to that submission and assent, which he by grace produces out of our understanding, by a succeeding and more powerful Grace he sets to the Seal of faith. Waite thou therefore upon God, his way; present unto him an humble and a diligent understanding; conclude not too desperately against thyself, if thou have not yet attained to all degrees of faith, but admit that preparation, which God offers to thine understanding, by an assiduous and a sedulous hearing; for a narrower faith that proceeds out of a true understanding, shall carry thee farther then a faith that seems larger, but is wrapped up in an implicit ignorance; no man believes profitably, that knows not why he believes. The subject then, that this work is wrought in, is that faculty, man's understanding; There God begins in the Instruction of this text, Thou shalt understand, Thou shalt; The act shall be thine, but yet, the power is mine, faciam te, I will make thee understand, which is another Consideration in this part.

God doth not determine his promise here, in a Faciam ut intelligas, I will cast an understanding upon thee, I will cause an understanding to fall upon thee, but it is faciam te intelligere, I will make thee to understand, Thou shalt be an Agent in thine own salvation. When God made the Ass speak under Balaam, God went not so far as this first step, (not to the faciam ut intelligas ) he imprinted, infused no understanding in that Beast. When God suffers the hypocrite to praise him, he imprints no understanding; Here is a Frustra colunt, It is a worship that is no worship, when it is with the lips only, and the heart far off. So when a Papist cries Templum domini, Templum domini, Visibility of a Church, Infallibility in a Church, here is no understanding; He pretends to believe as the Church believes, but he knows not what the Church believes; no, nor he neither upon whom he relies for his Instruction, his Priest, his Confessor. They are deceived that think every Priest or Jesuit, that comes hither, knows the Tenets of that Church; it is a more reserved, a more perplexed, a more involved matter then so. To contract this Consideration, when a Preacher speaks well, and destroys as fast by his ill life, as he builds by his good doctrine, here is no understanding neither. A good understanding have all they that keep the Commandments; not all they that preach them, but that keep them: It is all they, and only they. There is no other assurance but that; Hereby we are sure that we know him, if we keep his Commandments. This is our Criterium, and only this; hereby we know it, and by nothing else. So that as he that is slothful in his work, is even the brother of him that is a great waster; So he that builds not with both hands, life and doctrine, is slothful in his work. He that preaches against sin, and doth it, Instruit dominum quomodo eum condemnet, He doth not so much teach his Auditory, how to scape condemnation, as teach God how to condemn him. In these cases there is no understanding at all; In the case of the Ass, and the hypocrite, and the blind Romanist, and the vicious Preacher. In some other cases, there is understanding given, but without any concurrence, any cooperation of man, as in those often visions, and dreams, and manifestations of God, to the Prophets, and his other servants; There was a faciam ut intelligas, God would make his pleasure known unto them, but yet not as in this Text, where God makes use of the man himself for his own salvation. But yet it is God, and God alone that does all this, that rectifies our understanding, as well as that establishes our faith. It is my soul that says to mine eye, faciam te videre, I will make thee see, and my soul that says to mine ear, faciam te audire, I will make thee hear, and without that soul, that eye and ear could no more see nor hear, then the eyes and ears of an Idol; so it is my God that says to my soul, faciam te intelligere, I will make thee understand. And therefore as thou art bound to infinite thankesgivings to God, when he hath brought thee to faith, to forget not thy tribute by the way, to bless and magnify him, if he have enlarged thy desire of understanding, and thy capacity of understanding, and thy means of understanding; for, as howsoever a man may forget the order of the letters, after he is come to read perfectly, and forget the rules of his Grammar, after he is come to speak perfectly, yet by those letters, and by that Grammar he came to that perfection; so, though faith be of an infinite exaltation above understanding, yet, as though our understanding be above our senses, yet by our senses we come to understand, so by our understanding we come to believe. And though the Holy Ghost repeat that more then once, Domine quis credidit? Lord who believes our report? And that, Shall the son of Man find faith upon earth when he comes? though he complain of want of faith, yet he multiplies infinitely that complaint for want of understanding, and there are ten Non intelligunts for one Non credunt, ten increpations, that his people did not understand, for one that they did not believe; because, though faith be a nobler operation, God takes it always worst in us, to neglect those things which are nearest us, as he doth to neglect the ordinary and necessary duties of Religion, and search curiously into the unrevealed purposes of his secret counsails. And this Instruction to the understanding, he seems in this text to extend to all, for this singular word, Te, I will make Thee, Thee to understand, includes no exclusion, but is an offer, a promise to all, which is our other and last Consideration in this first part.

In this consideration, let us stop a little upon this question, why the Scriptures of God more then any other book, do still speak in this singular person, and in this familiar person? still Tu, and Tibi, and Te; Thou must love God, God speaks to thee, God hath care of thee. Certainly in those passages, which are from lower persons to Princes, no Author is of a more humble, and reverential, and ceremonial phrase, then the phrase of the Scripture is. Who could go lower then David to Saul, that calls himself a flea, and a dead dog? Who could go higher, then Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar, O King, thou art King of Kings; In all places, the children of men, the beasts of the field, the fouls of the air are given into thy hand; Thy greatness reacheth to heaven, and thy dominions to the ends of the earth. So is it also in persons nearer in nature, and nearer in rank; Jacob bows seven times to the ground, in the presence of his brother Esau, and My Lord, and My Lord, at every word. The Scripture phrase is as ceremonial and as observant of distances, as any, and yet still full of this familiar word too, Tu and Tuus, Thou and Thine. And we also, we who deal most with the Scriptures, are more accustomed to the same phrase then any other kind of speakers are. In a Parliament, who is ever heard to say, Thou must needs grant this, Thou mayest be bold to yield to this? Or whoever speaks so to a Judge in any Court? Nay, the King himself will not speak to the people in that phrase. And yet in the presence of the greatest, we say ordinarily, Amend thy life, and God be merciful to thee, and I absolve thee of all thy sins. Beloved, in the Scripture. God speaks either to the Church, his Spouse, and to his children, and so he may be bo • d, and would be familiar with them; Or else he speaks so, as that he would be thought 〈◊〉 thee to speak singularly to thy soul in particular. Know then, that Christ Jesus ha • done enough for the salvation of all; but know too, that if there had been no other name written in the book of life but thine, he would have died for Thee. Of those which were given him, he lost none; but if there had been none given him, but Thou, rather then have lost Thee, he would have given the same price for Thee, that he gave for the whole world. And therefore when thou hearest his mercies distributed in that particular, and that familiar phrase, Faciam Te, I will make Thee understand, thou knowest not whether he speak to any other in the Congregation or no; Be sure that he speak to Thee; which he does, if thou hearken to him, and answer him. If thou canst not find that he means Thee yet, that he speaks to thee now, if thou think he speak rather to some other, whose faith and good life thou preferrest before thine own, do but begin to think now of the blessedness of that man, to whom thou thinkest he speaks, and say to God, with thy Savior, Eli, Eli, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou gone to the other side, or why to the next on my right, or on my left hand, and left out me? Why speakest thou not comfortably to my soul? and he will leave the ninety nine for thee, and thou shalt find Onus amoris, such a weight, and burden, and load of his love upon thee, as thou shalt be fain almost to say with S. Peter, Exi à me Domine, O Lord go farther from me, that is, thou shalt see such an obligation of mercy laid upon thee, as puts thee beyond all possibility of comprehension, much more of retribution, or of due and competent thanksgiving. Miserere animae tuae, Be but merciful to thine own soul, and God will be merciful to it too; If God had never meant to be merciful to thee, he would learn of thee; If thou couldest love thyself before God love thee, God would love thee for loving thyself; how much more for thy loving his love in thee? Love understanding, and, faciet te intelligere, he will make thee understand enough for thy pilgrimage, enough for thy transmigration, enough for thy eternal habitation. As we count them wisest, who are most provident, and foresee most, he will make thee see farther then all they, through all generations, beyond children, and children's children, (which is the prospect of the world) to all eternity, that hath no termination, and he will allow thee an understanding for this world too; He will bid thee Lift up thine eyes to heaven, and bid thee Look down to the earth too; He will make thy considerations of this world acceptable to him, as well as those of the next; He will remember thee, that Angels descended as well as ascended, that to a religious soul, this world is not out of the way to heaven; Faciet te intelligere, He will make thee understand enough for both. And so we have done with that first Part, De credendis, Things which we are bound to believe, That even for those, God works upon the understanding, That though God work all in all, yet it is the man that understands; and lastly, that in the Holy Ghosts choosing this word of singularity, Te, I will make thee understand, there is pregnant intimation of God's large and diffusive goodness to all, This word, Thee, excludes none. And so we pass to our second Part, Instruction, De agendis, what we are to do, I will teach thee in the way thou shalt go.

If any man lack wisdom, let him ask it of God; and Faciet intelligere, God shall make him understand: God shall; I may study, and then, you may hear me, but God only makes us all understand; for the understanding is the door of faith, and that door he opens, and he shuts: So by understanding he brings us to believe. But then, he that truly believes, finds that he hath something to do too; And he says to himself, Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his ways? And he cannot tell himself; He asks them whom God hath sent to tell him, his Ministers, Viri, fratres, Men and brethren, what shall we do to be saved? And by their leading, he goes to the Spirit of God, to God himself, and says, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And that good Master will teach him what to do, which is the promise of this part of Instruction in our Text, I will teach thee in the way thou shalt go. And Plus est docere, quàm instruere, God promises more in this, that he will Teach thee in the way, then in the former, that he would make thee understand. Not that the matter or subject in this Part, is the greater, (for the former had relation to faith, and this but to good works) but that it intimates a more frequent recourse to us, and a more studious care of us, and a more provident vigilancy over us, and a more familiar conversation with us, that God accompanies us in all our way, and directs us in all our particular actions, then that by understanding he hath brought us to believe. He that horses a man well for a journey, or he that rewards a man well for a journey, does a greater work, then he that goes along with him as a guide; but yet there is aliquid magis in the guide, there is a more continual, a more incessant courtesy in him. We see in the Roman Church, they are not in their Beads, without Credoes, they believe enough; and lest that should not be enough, they have made a new Creed of more Articles then that, in the Council of Trent, and to testify a strong faith therein, they must swear they believe it: And then they have to every Creed, more Pater nosters, they petition enough, ask enough at God's hands; They have Credoes enow, Pater nosters enow, and Ave Mary's more then enow; But when we consider them in the Commandments, what we are to do, (as great Workers as they pretend to be) though they enlarge their Credoes, and multiply their Pater nosters, they contract the Commandments, and put two into one, for fear of meeting one against Images.

This then expresses God's daily care of us, that he teaches us the way. But then, even that implies, that we are all out of our way; still all bends, all conduces to that, An humble acknowledgement of our own weakness, a present recourse to the love and power of God; The first thing I look for in the Exposition of any Scripture, and the nearest way to the literal sense thereof, is, what may most deject and vilify man, what may most exalt, and glorify God. We are all, all out of our way; but God deals not alike with all; for, for the wicked, Their way is dark and slippery, And then, The Angel of the Lord persecutes them; But for those whom he loves, He will weigh the paths of the just, (says our later Translation) And, He will make the paths of the righteous equal and even, says our former; It shall be a path often beaten by him, for it is not righteousness, to be righteous once a year, at Easter, nor once a week, upon Sunday. An Anniversary righteousness, an Hebdomadary righteousness, a Sabbatarian righteousness is no righteousness. But it is a path; and so made even, without occasions of stumbling; that is, he shall be able to walk in any profession, and to make good any station, and not be diverted by the power of any temptations incident to that calling. The Angel of the Lord, The evil Angel, distrust and diffidence, shall persecute the wicked, in his dark and slippery way; this is no teaching; but because the godly have a teaching, even their direction hath a correction too; God beats his Scholars into their way too. The difference is expressed in the Prophet, When the Lord hath given you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, (for in God's School that is Scholars fare) yet, says God, Thy Teachers shall not be removed from thee into a corner; Still in thine affliction thou shalt have a Teacher, or even the affliction it self shall be God's Usher; and thou shalt have evidence of it, Thy Teacher shall not be removed into a corner; thou shalt see it; and (as it follows there) Thine ears shall hear a voice behind thee; (that is, a voice arising even from that affliction that thou hast suffered) and that voice shall say, This is the way, walk ye in it; As dark as affliction is, it shall show thee the way, Haec est via, This is the way, as much as affliction enfeebles thee, yet it shall enable thee to walk in it, Ambulate in ea. God is a School-master; not as the Law was, to teach with a sword in his hand; but yet he teaches with a rod in his hand, though not with a sword.

Now in teaching us the way, he instructs us De via, and In via; which is the way, and what is to be done in it. He sees all our ways; All my ways are before thee, says David. And he sees them not so as though they belonged not to him, for he considers them, Does not he behold all my ways, and tell all my steps? He sees them, and sees our irremediable danger in them; Formido, & fovea, & laqueus, Fear, and a pit, and snares are upon thee; Upon whom? There we see the generality of this single word, Thee, that it is all; for so, it follows there, Upon thee, O Inhabitant of the earth. The danger then is general, and the Lord knows it; Who then can teach us a better way, but he? But how doth he teach us this way? When God had promised Moses to send an Angel to show the people their way, (I will send an Angel before thee) Moses says to God, See, thou sayest, Lead this people forth, and thou hast not shown me whom thou wilt send with me; (so those Translators thought good to render it) God had told him of an Angel, but that satisfied not Moses; He must have something shown to him, he must see his guide. If thy presence go not with me, carry me not from hence, says he to God. For, wherein shall it be known, that I, and thy people have found favor in thy sight? shall it not be when thou goest up with us? And therefore God satisfies him, My presence shall go with thee. Go? but how? says Moses; Wilt thou be pleased to show me thy glory? Shall we see anything? They did see that Pillar in which God was, and that presence, that Pillar shown the way. To us, the Church is that Pillar; in that, God shows us our way. For strength it is a Pillar, and a Pillar for firmness and fixation: But yet the Church is neither an equal Pillar, always fire, but sometimes cloud too; The Church is more and less visible, sometimes in splendor, sometimes in an eclipse; neither is it so a fixed Pillar, as that it is not in divers places. The Church is not so fixed to Rome, as that it is not communicated to other Nations, nor so limited in it self, as that it may not admit changes, in those things that appertain to Order, and Discipline. Our way, that God teaches us, is the Church; That is a Pillar; Fixed, for Fundamental things, but yet a moveable Pillar, for things indifferent, and arbitrary.

Thus he teaches, Quid via, which is the way, It is the Church, the Pillar of Truth. He teaches next, Quid in via, What is to be done in the way; for, that counsel of the Apostle, See that ye walk circumspectly, presumes a man to be in the way; else he would have cried to have stopped him, or to have turned him, and not bid him go on, how circumspectly soever. But, In my path, says David, (not making any doubt but that he was in a right path) in my path, the proud have laid a snare for me, and spread a net with cords; Ad manum orbitae, (says the Original) even at the hand of the path; That path which should (as it were) reach out a hand to lead me, hath a snare in it. And therefore, says David, with so much vehemence in the entrance of that Psalm, Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man, who purposeth to overthrow my goings; Though I go in the right way, the true Church, yet purposes to overthrow me there. This Evil man works upon us: The man of sin; in those instruments that still cast that snare in our way, in our Church, There is a minority, an invisibility, and a fallibility in your Church; you begun but yesterday in Luther, and you are fallen out already in Calvin. So also works this Evil man amongst us, in those Scismatiques, who cast that snare in our way, Your way (though it be in part mended) hath yet impressions of the steps of the Beast, and it is a circular, and giddy way, that will bring us back again to Rome. And therefore, beloved, though you be in the way, see ye walk circumspectly, for the snares that both these have cast in the way, the reproaches, and defamations that both these have cast upon our Church. But when thou hast scaped both these snares, of Papist, and Scismatique, pray still to be delivered from that Evil man, that is within thee. Non tantùm potest hominem decipere, quàm per Organum hominis, The Devil hath not so powerful an instrument, nor so subtle an engine upon thee as thyself. Quis in hoc seculo non patitur hominem malum? Who in this world (or if he go so far out of this world, as never to see man but himself) is not troubled with this evil man? When thou prayest with David, to be delivered from this evil man, if God ask thee whom thou meanest, must thou not say, thyself? Canst thou show God a worse? Qui non est malus, nihil à malo mali patitur; If a man were not evil in himself, the worst thing in the world could not hurt him; the Devil would not offer to give fire, if there were no powder in thy heart. What that evil man is, that is in another, I cannot know: I cannot always discern another's snare; for, What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of a man which is in him? Thy spirit knows what the evil man that is in thee, is. Deliver thyself of that evil man that ensnares thee in thy way; though thou come to Church; yea even when thou art there. David repeats this word A viro malo, from the evil man, twice in that Psalm. In one place, A viro malo, is in that name, Meish, which is a name of man proper only to the stronger sex, and intimates snares and temptations of stronger power, As when fear, or favor tempts a man to come to a superstitious, and idolatrous service. In the other it is but Meadam, and that is a name common to men, and women, and children, and intimates, that omissions, negligences, infirmities, may encumber us, ensnare us, though we be in the way, even in the true place of God's service; and the eye may be ensnared as dangerously, and as damnably in this place, as the ear, or the tongue in the Chamber. As S. Jerome says, Nugae in ore Sacerdotis sunt sacrilegium, An idle word in a Church-man's mouth is sacrilege; so a wanton look in the Church, is an Adultery. Now when God hath thus taught us the way, what it is, that is, brought us to the true Church, (for till then, all is diversion, all banishment) and taught us In via, what to do in that way, To resist temptations to superstition from other imaginary Churches, temptations to particular sins from the evil men of the world, and from the worst man in the world, our self, the Instruction in our Text is carried a step farther, that is, to proceed and go forward in that way, Qua gradieris, I will teach thee to walk in that way.

When S. Augustine saith upon this place, It is via qua gradieris, & non cui haerebis, A way to walk in, not to stick upon, he doth not mean, That we should ever change this way, or depart from it, (that any cross in this, should make us hearken after another religion) It is not that we should not stick to it, but that we should not stick in it, nor loiter in the way. Thou hast been in this way (in the true Church) ever since thy Baptism: and yet, if a man that hath lived morally well all his life, and no more then so, find by God's grace a door opened into the Christian Church, and a short turning into this right way, at the end of his life, he by the benefit of those good Moral actions, shall be before thee, who hast lived lazily, though in the right way, at his first step; For though those good Moral actions were not good works, when he did them, yet then, that grace which he lays hold upon at last, shall reflect a tincture upon them, and make them good in the eyes of God, ab initio. If thou have not been lazy in thy way, in thy Christian profession hitherto, yet except thou proceed still, except thou go from hence now, better then thou camest, (better in thy purpose) and come hither next day better then thou wentest, (better in thy practice) thou hast not learned this lesson in this Instruction, I will teach thee to walk in this way. A Christian hath no Solstice, no highest point, where he may stand still, and go no farther; much less hath he any Equator, where days and nights are equal, that is, a liberty to spend as much time ill, as well, as many hours in sinful pleasures, as in religious exercises. Quicquid citra Deum est, via est, nec immorandum in ea; He doth not say, praeter Deum, much less contra Deum; For whatsoever is against God, nay, whatsoever is besides God, is altogether out of the way; But citra Deum, on this side of God: Till we come to God in heaven, all our best is but our way to him. All the zeal of gathering knowledge, all the growth of faith, all the practice of sanctification, is but via, the way; and non immorandum in ea; since we have here a promise of God's assistance in it, in the way, we are sure there is an obligation upon it, as upon a duty, in this way, humbly, and patiently, and laboriously to walk towards him, without stopping upon anything in this world, either preferments on the right, or disgraces on the left hand, (for a Cart may stop us, as well as a Coach, low things as well as high, with as much trouble, and more anoyance) Which is more especially intended in the last words of the Text, Firmabo super te oculos meos, I will settle my providence, fixe mine eye upon thee, I will guide thee with mine eye.

Thus far hath our blessed Lord assured us, That he will make us understand, which is his Instruction de credendis, what to Believe; And that he will teach us to walk in his way, which is his Instruction de agendis, what to Do, how to avoid temptations; This last is, That he will guide us with his eye, which is his Instruction de sperandis, what we are to Hope for at his hand, if in this way we do stumble, or fall into some sins of infirmities. But it is but de sperandis, not de praesumendis; when by infirmity thou art fallen, thy Hope must begin then; but if the Hope begun before, so as thou fellest upon hope that God would raise thee, then it was presumption, and there the Lord's eye shuts in, and guides thee no longer. Otherwise he directs thee with his eye, (that is, with his gracious and powerful looking upon thee) to the means of thy recovery. We hear of no blows, we hear of no chiding from him towards Peter, but all that is said, is, The Lord turned back and looked upon Peter, and then he remembered his case; The eye of the Lord lightened his darkness; The eye of the Lord thawed those three crusts of Ice, which were grown over his heart, in his three denials of his Master. A Candle wakes some men, as well as a noise; The eye of the Lord works upon a good soul, as much as his hand, and he is as much affected with this consideration, The Lord sees me, as with this, The Lord strikes me.

We read in Natural story of some creatures, Qui solo oculorum aspectu fovent ova, which hatch their eggs only by looking upon them; What cannot the eye of God produce and hatch in us? Plus est quod probatur aspectu, quàm quod sermon. A man may seem to commend in words, and yet his countenance shall dispraise. His word infuses good purposes into us, but if God continue his eye upon us, it is a farther approbation, for He is a God of pure eyes, and will not look upon the wicked. This land doth the Lord thy God care for, and the eyes of the Lord are always upon it from the beginning of the year, even to the end thereof. What a cheerful spring, what a fruitful Autumn hath that soul, that hath the eye of the Lord always upon her? The eye of the Lord upon me, makes midnight noon, and S. Lucies day S. Barnabies; It makes Capricorne Cancer, and the Winters the Summers Solstice; The eye of the Lord sanctifies, nay more then sanctifies, glorifies all the Eclipses of dishonor, makes Melancholy cheerfulness, diffidence assurance, and turns the jealousy of the sad soul into infallibility. Upon his people his eye shined in the wilderness; his eye singled them in Egypt, and in Babylon they were sustained by his eye. They were, and we are; The eye of their God was upon the Elders of Israel, And, Behold, the eye of the Lord is upon all them that fear him. The Proverb is not only as old as Aristotle, Oculus domini, and Pes domini, The eye of the Master fattens the horse, and the foot of the Master marles the ground, but it is as old as the Creation, God saw all that he had made, and so, it was very good; It was visio approbationis, and his approbation was the exaltation thereof.

This guiding then with the eye, we consider to be his particular care, and his personal providence upon us, in his Church; For, a man may be in the Kings presence, and yet not in his eye; and so he may in God's. God's whole Ordinance in his Church, is God's face; For, that is the face of God, by which God is manifested to us; But then, that eye in that face, by which he promises to guide us, in this Text, is that blessed Spirit of his, by whose operation he makes that grace, which does evermore accompany his Ordinances, effectual upon us; The whole Congregation sees God face to face, in the Service, in the Sermon, in the Sacrament; but there is an eye in that face, an eye in that Service, an eye in that Sermon, an eye in that Sacrament, a piercing and an operating Spirit, that looks upon that soul, and foments and cherishes that soul, who by a good use of God's former grace, is become fitter for his present.

And this guiding us with his eye, manifests it self in these two great effects; conversion to him, and union with him. First, his eye works upon ours; His eye turns ours to look upon him. Still it is so expressed with an Ecce; Behold, the eye of the Lord is upon all them that fear him; His eye calls ours to behold that; And then our eye calls upon his, to observe our cheerful readiness, Behold, as the eye of a servant looks to the hand of his Master, so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God, till he have mercy upon us. Where the Donec, Until, is an everlasting Donec, as the blessed Virgins was; A Virgin Donec, till she brought forth her first Son, and a Virgin ever after; So our eyes wait upon God, till he have mercy, that is, while he hath it, and that he may continue his mercy; for it was his merciful eye that turned ours to him, and it is the same mercy, that we wait upon him. And then, when, as a well made Picture doth always look upon him, that looks upon it, this Image of God in our soul, is turned to him, by his turning to it, it is impossible we should do any foul, any uncomely thing in his presence. Will any man solicit a Wife or a Daughter, and call the Father or Husband to look on? Will any man break open thy house in the night, and first wake thee, and call thee up? Can any man give his body to uncleanness, his tongue to profaneness, his heart to covetousness, and at the same time consider, that his pure, and his holy, and his bountiful God hath his eye upon him? Can he look upon God in that line, in that Angle, (upon God looking upon him) and dishonor him? Upon those words of David, Mine eyes are ever towards the Lord, Quasi diceretur, quid agitur depedibus? as though it were objected, Is all thy care of thine eyes? What becomes of thy feet? Non attends ad eos? Doest thou look to thy steps, To thy life, as well as to thy faith, To please God, as well as to know God? And he answers in the words which follow, Ipse evellet, As for my feet, God shall order, that is, assist me in ordering them; If his eye be upon me, and mine upon him, (O blessed reflection! O happy reciprocation! O powerful correspondence!) Ipse evellet, He will pluck my feet out of the net, though I be almost ensnared, almost entangled, he will snatch me out of the fire, deliver me from the temptation.

The other great effect of his guiding us with his eye, is, That it unites us to himself; when he fixes his his eye upon us, and accepts the return of ours to him, then he keeps us as the Apple of his eye, Quasi pupillam filiam oculi, (as S. Jerome reads it) as the Daughter, the issue, the offspring of his own eye. For then, He that toucheth you, toucheth the Apple of his eye. And these are the two great effects of his guiding us by his eye, that first, his eye turns us to himself, and then turns us into himself; first, his eye turns ours to him, and then, that makes us all one with himself, so, as that our afflictions shall be put upon his patience, and our dishonors shall be injuries to him; we cannot be safer then by being his; but thus, we are not only His, but He; To every Persecutor, in everyone of our behalf, he shall say, Cur me? Why persecutest thou me? And as he is all Power, and can defend us, so here he makes himself all eye, which is the most tender part, and most sensible of our pressures.

So have you then this Instruction perfected unto you. First, Decredendis, facit te intelligere, God will make you understand, you, for he will work upon your natural faculties supernaturally, and by them, convey faith. And then, De agendis, docebo in via, He will teach you which is the way, and what to do when you are in it. And after that, De sperandis, firmabo oculos, he will guide you with his eye, watch, if in that way you stumble, and restore you. That you may constantly hope for; and when you have but thus much more, you have all, That there is In omni sperando, timendum; In every hope, there is something to be feared. Hope makes us not ashamed, But yet hope, (as long as it is but hope) may make us afraid; though not with a suspicious fear, reflected upon God, yet with a solicitous fear, arising from, and returning upon ourselves. There is a Hope of glory, and there is a Glory in hope; but no such Glory, as exterminates all fear: for we are bid To work out our Salvation with fear and trembling; It must be such a fear, as may still relate to my Salvation; For fear that excludes me from Salvation, is a fearful fear; but yet a fear it must be; for as there is a promise of guiding by his eye, there is also a possibility of taking his eye from thee. God is not in this, like the Sun, that makes no more haste over a dunghill, then over a Garden; over Babylon, then over Jerusalem. The eye of God is not infected with thy blear-eye; but yet he will not stay and look upon it. And when he takes his eye from thee, he sets his face against thee; The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil. And thus, Ab ejus vision, quem conspicis, abes; Thou art out of God's sight, when thou seest him only in his judgments. Nay, thou shalt not see him in them; I will hide my face from them, says God, (though it were an angry face, yet he would hide it) and I will see what their end will be. God shall look upon thy fearful end from the beginning, but thou thyself shalt not see the horror that appertains to it, till it be too late; for that is it, in which God does especially reproach that people, O that they were so wise, as to consider their latter end! To that purpose hath God continued his Instruction to us, in this text, That we might know from him, what to believe, and what to do, and how to return to God, when we have gone astray, I will instruct thee, and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go, and I will guide thee with mine eye.

SERM. LXII. Preached upon the Penitentiall Psalms.

A S God, above whom there is nothing, looks downwards to us; So except we, below whom there is nothing that belongs to us, look upward toward him, we shall never meet. And therefore God foreseeing such a descent in man, as might make him incapable, and put him out of distance of the rich promises of this Psalm, in this Text he forewarnes him, of such a Descent, such a dejection, such a diminution of himself. And first he forbids a Descent generally into a lower nature; Nolite fieri, Be not made at all, not made any other, then God hath made you. God would have man, who was his Medal at first, (when God stamped and imprinted his Image in him) And was God's Robe, and garment at last, (when Christ Jesus invested and put on our Nature) God would have this man preserve this Dignity, Nolite fieri, Be not made any new thing. Secondly, he forbids him a Descent, into certain particular depravations, and deteriorations of our Nature, in those qualities, which are intimated and specified, in the nature and disposition of those two beasts, The Horse, and the Mule, Nolite fieri siout Equus & Mulus, Be not as the Horse, or the Mule. But principally, for that which is in the third place, Quia non intellectus, Not because they have no faith, but because they have no understanding, for then, it is impossible that ever they should have faith; And so it is a reason proportioned to our Reason; Do not so, for it will vitiate, it will annihilate your understanding, your reason, and then what are you, for supernatural, or for natural knowledge? But then there is another reason proportioned to the sense, that this Declination of ours, into these inferior natures, brings God to a necessity to bit, and bridle, and curb us, that is, to inflict afflictions upon us; And then that reason is aggravated by the greatest weight that can be laid upon it, That God will inflict all these punishments upon these perverse men, metamorphosed into these Beasts, not only Ne approximent, That they may not come near God's Servants, to do them harm, (which seems indeed to be the most literal sense of the word) But, (as some of our Expositors have found reason to interpret them) Ne approximent, That they shall not come near him; not near God in the service of his Church, to do themselves any good; his Corrections shall harden them, and remove them farther from him, and from all benefit by his Ordinances.

First then God arms him with a pre-increpation upon Descent, Nolite fieri, Go no less, be not made lower. The first sin that ever was, was an ascending, a climbing too high; when the purest Understandings of all, The Angels, fell by their ascending; when Lucifer was tumbled down, by his Similis ero Altissimo, I will be like the most High, then he tried upon them, who were next to him in Dignity, upon Man, how that clambering would work upon him. He presents to man, the same ladder; He infuses into man the same Ambition, and as he fell with a Similis ero Altissimo, I will be like the most High, So he overthrew man, with an Eritis sicut Dii, Ye shall be as God's. It seems this fall hath broke the neck of Mans ambition, and now we dare not be so like God, as we should be. Ever since this fall, man is so far from affecting higher places, then his nature is capable of, that he is still groveling upon the ground, and participates, and imitates, and expresses more of the nature of the Beast then of his own. There is no creature but man that degenerates willingly from his natural Dignity; Those degrees of goodness, which God imprinted in them at first, they preserve still; As God saw they were good then, so he may see they are good still; They have kept their Talent; They have not bought nor sold; They have not gained nor lost; They are not departed from their native and natural dignity, by anything that they have done. But of Man, it seems, God was distrustful from the beginning; He did not pronounce upon Mans Creation, (as he did upon the other Creatures) that He was good; because his goodness was a contingent thing, and consisted in the future use of his free will. For that faculty and power of the will, is Virtus transformativa; by it we change ourselves into that we love most, and we are come to love those things most, which are below us. As God said to the Earth, (and it was enough to say so) Germinet terra juxta genus suum, Let the Earth bring forth according to her kind; So, Vive juxta genus tuum, says S. Ambrose to Man, Live according to thy kind; Non adulteres genus tuum, do not abase, do not allay, do not betray, do not abastardise that noble kind, that noble nature, which God hath imparted to thee, imprinted in thee.

Mundi moles liber est, This whole world is one Book; And is it not a barbarous thing, when all the whole book besides remains entire, to deface that leaf in which the Authors picture, the Image of God is expressed, as it is in man? God brought man into the world, as the King goes in state, Lord's, and Earls, and persons of other ranks before him. So God sent out light, and Firmament, and Earth, and Sea, and Sun, and Moon, to give a dignity to man's procession; and only Man himself disorders all, and that by displacing himself, by losing his place. The Heavens and Earth were finished, Et omnis exercitus eorum, says Moses, All the Host thereof; and all this whole Army preserves that Discipline, only the General that should govern them, mis-governs himself. And whereas we see that Tigers and Wolves, Beasts of annoyance, do still keep their places and natures in the world; and so do Herbs and Plants, even those which are in their nature offensive and deadly, (for Alia esui, alia usui, Some herbs are made to eat, some to adorn, some to supply in Physic) whilst we dispute in Schools, whether if it were possible for Man to do so, it were lawful for him to destroy any one species of God's Creatures, though it were but the species of Toads and Spiders, (because this were a taking away one link of God's chain, one Note of his harmony) we have taken away that which is the Jewel at the chain, that which is the burden of the Song, Man himself. Partus sequitur ventrem; We verify the Law treacherously, mischievously; we all follow our Mother, we grovell upon the earth, whose children we are, and being made like our Father, in his Image, we neglect him. What is Man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of Man, that thou visitest him? David admires not so much man's littleness in that place, as his greatness; He is a little lower then Angels; A little lower then God, says our former Translation; agreeably enough to the word, and in a good sense too; God's Lieutenant, his Vice-gerent over all Creatures; Thou hast made him to have Dominion over the works of thy hands; (and Dominion is a great, it is a supreme estate) And thou hast put all things under his feet; (as it follows there) And yet we have forfeited this Jurisdiction, this Dominion, and more, our own Essence; we are not only inferior to the Beasts, and under their annoyance, but we are ourselves become Beasts. Consider the dignity of thy soul, which only, of all other Creatures is capable, susciptible of Grace; If God would bestow grace anywhere else, no creature could receive it but thou. Thou art so necessary to God, as that God had no utterance, no exercise, no employment for his grace and mercy, but for thee. And if thou make thyself incapable of this mercy and this grace, of which nothing but thou is capable, then thou destroyest thy nature. And remember then, that as in the Kingdom of Heaven, in those orders which we conceive to be in those glorious Spirits, there is no falling from a higher to a lower order, a Cherubim or Seraphim does not fall, and so become an Archangel, or an Angel, but those of that place that fell, fell into the bottomless pit; So, if thou depart from thy nature, from that susciptiblenesse, that capacity of receiving Grace, if thou degenerate so from a Man to a Beast, thou shalt not rest there in the state and nature of a Beast, whose soul breaths out to nothing, and vanishes with the life, thou shalt not be so happy, but thy better nature will remain, in despite of thee, thine everlasting soul must suffer everlasting torment.

Now as many men when they see a greater piece of coin then ordinary, they do not presently know the value of it, though they know it to be silver, but those lesser coyns which are in currant use, and come to their hands every day, they know at first sight; so because this stamp, this impression of the image of God in Man, is not well and clearly understood by every Man, neither this descent and departing from the dignity thereof, being delivered but in general, ( Nolite fieri, Be ye made like nothing else) Therefore the Holy Ghost brings us here to the consideration of some lesser pieces, things which are always within distance and apprehension, always in our eye, ( Nolite fieri sicut, Descend not to the qualities of the Horse and the Mule. Though (as God summed up his temporal blessings to the Jews, in that total, Et profecisti in regnum, Thou didst prosper into a Kingdom ) He may also sum up his spiritual blessings to us in this, Et profecisti in Ecclesiam, & in Ecclesiam credentium, (for there is Ecclesia malignantium, Odivi Ecclesiam malignantium, says David, I have hated the Congregation of evil doers ) I have brought thee first from the Nations, from the Common, into a visible Church, And then from Babylon, from that Church of confusion, that makes the word of God and the word of Man equal, into an Orthodox and sincere Church, yet our sins have cast us Infra Gentes, and Infra Babylonem, Below all these again. For, for the Gentiles, The Gentiles which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law; we that have the help of the Law and Gospel too, do not. And for Rome, the example of our Reformation, and their own shame, contracted thereby, hath wrought upon the Church of Rome it self; They are the better for the Reformation, (in frequent Catechizing and preaching) and we are not. Compare us with the Gentiles, and we shall fall under that increpation of the Apostle, There is such fornication amongst you, as is not once named amongst the Gentiles: We commit those things which they forbear to speak of. Compare us with Rome, and I fear that will belong to us, which God says and swears in the Prophet, As I live, saith the Lord, Sodom thy sister hath not done as thou hast done.

Where, by the way, be pleased to note, that God calls eyen Samaria, and Sodom, sisters of Jerusalem; there is a fraternity grounded in charity, which nothing must devest; If Sodom and Jerusalem were Sisters, Babylon and we may be so •• ; uterin sisters of one womb, (for there is but one Baptism) though fornication it self, (and fornication, in the spiritual sense of the Scriptures, hath a heavy signification, and reaches even to Idolatry) have made that Church, as some think, scarce capable of the name of a Church, yet Sodom is a sister.

But be she as far degenerate as she can, our sin hath made a descent below them that are below us. It hath cast us below the Inhabitants of the Earth, Beasts, and below the Earth it self, even to Hell; for we make this life, which is the place of repentance, the place of obstinacy and obduration; and obduration is Hell. Yea, it hath cast us below the Devil himself; our state is, in this, worse then theirs; They sinned before God had given them any express law; and before God had made any examples, or taken any revenge upon any sinners; But we sin after a manifest law, and after they, and many others have been made our examples. They were never restored, we have been restored often; They proceed in their obstinacy, when God casts them from him, we proceed even when God calls us to him; They against God which turns from them, and is glorified in their destruction, we against him that comes to us, and emptied and humbled himself to the shame, to the scorn, to the pain, to the death of the Cross for us. These be the lamentable descents of sin: But the particular descent to which this text doth purposely bend it self, is, That as God said at beginning, in contempt, and in derision, Ecce Adam, quasi unus ex nobis, Behold, Man is become as one of us; So now, (as S. Bernard makes the note) the Horse and Mule may say, Quasi unus ex nobis, Behold, Man is become as one of us; and, Nolite fieri, says God in our text, Be not as the Horse or the Mule.

According to the several natures of these two Beasts, the Fathers, and other Expositors have made several interpretations; at least, several Allusions. They consider the Horse and the Mule, to admit any Rider, any burden, without discretion or difference, without debatement or consideration; They never ask whether their rider be noble or base, nor whether their load be gold for the treasure, or roots for the market. And those Expositors find the same indifferency in an habitual sinner, to any kind of sin: whether he sin for pleasure, or sin for profit, or sin but for company, still he sins. They consider the Mule to be engendered of two kinds, two species, and yet to beget, to produce neither, but to be always barren; And they find us to be composed of a double, a heavenly, and earthly nature, and thereby bound to duties of both kinds, towards God, and towards men, but to be defective and barren in both. They consider in the Mule, that one of his Parents being more ignoble then the other, he is likest the worst, He hath more of the Ass then of the Horse in him; And they find in us, that all our actions, and thoughts, taste more of the ignobler part of earth then of heaven. S. Jerome thinks fierceness and rashness to be presented in the Horse, and sloth in the Mule. And S. Augustine carries these two qualities far; He thinks that in this fierceness of the Horse, the Gentiles are represented, which ran far from the knowledge of Christianity; And by the laziness of the Mule, the Jews, who came nothing so fast, as they were invited by their former helps, to the embracing thereof. They have gone far in these allusions, and applications; and they might have gone as far farther as it had pleased them; They have Sea-room enough, that will compare a Beast, and a Sinner together; and they shall find many times, in the way, the Beast the better Man.

Here we may contract it best, if we understand Pride by the Horse, and Lust by the Mule; for, though both these, pride and lust, might have been represented in the horse, which is, (as the Philosopher notes) Animal, post hominem, salacissimum, The most intemperate, and lustful of all creatures, but man, (still man, for this infamous prerogative, must be excepted) and though the Scriptures present that sin, Lust, by the horse, (They rose in the morning like fed horses, and every man neighed after his neighbors wife) (and therefore S. Jerome delights himself with that curious note, That when a man brings his wife to that trial and conviction of jealousy, the offering that the man brings is Barley, Horseprovender in those parts, says S. Jerome ) though both sins, pride and lust, might be taxed in the horse, yet pride is proper to him, and lust to the mule, both because the mule is Carne virgo, but Mente impudicus, which is one high degree of lust, to have a lustful desire in an impotent body, And then, he is engendered by unnatural mixture, which is another high degree of the same sin. And these two vices we take to be presented here, as the two principal enemies, the two chief corrupters of mankind; pride to be the principal spiritual sin, and lust, the principal that works upon the body. To avoid both, consider we both in both these beasts.

It is not much controverted in the Schools, but that the first sin of the Angels was Pride. But because (as we said before) the danger of man is more in sinking down, then in climbing up, in dejecting, then in raising himself, we must therefore remember, that it is not pride, to desire to be better. Angeli quaesiverunt id, ad quod pervenissent, si stetissent. The Angels sin was pride; but their pride consisted not in aspiring to the best degrees that their nature was capable of: but in this, that they would come to that state, by other means then were ordained for it. It could not possibly fall within so pure, and clear understandings, as the Angels were, to think that they could be God; that God could be multiplied; That they who knew themselves to be but new made, could think, not only that they were not made, but that they made all things else; To think that they were God, is impossible, this could not fall into them, though they would be Similes Altissimo, Like the most High. But this was their pride, and in this they would be like the most High, That whereas God subsisted in his Essence of himself, for those degrees of perfection, which appertained to them, they would have them of themselves; They would stand in their perfection, without any turning towards God, without any farther assistance from him; by themselves, and not by means ordained for them. This is the pride that is forbidden man; not that he think well of himself, In genere suo, That he value aright the dignity of his nature, in the Creation thereof according to the Image of God, and the infinite improvement that that nature received, in being assumed by the Son of God; This is not pride, but not to acknowledge that all this dignity in nature, and all that it conduces to, that is, grace here, and glory hereafter, is not only infused by God at first, but sustained by God still, and that nothing in the beginning, or way, or end, is of ourselves, this is pride.

Man may, and must think that God hath given him the Subjicite, and Dominamini, A Majesticall Character even in his person, to subdue and govern all the creatures in the world; That he hath given him a nature, already above all other creatures, and a nature capable of a better then his own is yet; (for, By his precious promises we are made partakers of the Divine nature ) We are made Semen Dei, The seed of God, borne of God; Genus Dei, The offspring of God; Idem Spiritus cum Domino, The same Spirit with the Lord; He the same flesh with us, and we the same spirit with him. In God's servants, to have said to Nebuchadnezzar, Our God is able to deliver us, and he will deliver us; but, if he do not, yet we will not serve thy God's: In the Martyrs of the Primitive Church, to have contemned torments, and tormentors with personal scorns and affronts: In all calamities and adversities of this life, to rely upon that assurance, I have a better substance in me then any man can hurt, I have a better inheritance prepared for me, then any man can take from me, I am called to Triumph, and I go to receive a Crown of Immortality, these high contemplations of Kingdoms, and Triumphs, and Crowns, are not pride; To know a better state, and desire it, is not pride; for pride is only in taking wrong ways to it. So that, to think we can come to this by our own strength, without God's inward working a belief, or to think that we can believe out of Plato, where we may find a God, but without a Christ, or come to be good men out of Plutarch or Seneca, without a Church and Sacraments, to pursue the truth it self by any other way then he hath laid open to us, this is pride, and the pride of the Angels.

Now there is also a pride, which is the Horses pride, conversant upon earthly things; To desire Riches, and Honor, and Preferment in this world, is not pride; for they have all good uses in God's service; but to desire these by corrupt means, or to ill ends, to get them by supplantation of others, or for oppression of others, this is pride, and a Bestiall pride. And this proud man is elegantly expressed in the Horse; The horse rejoiceth in his strength, he goes forth to meet the armed man, he mocks at fear, he turns upon the sword, and he swallows the ground. The River is mine, says Pharaoh, and I have made it for my sefl: They take all, and they mistake all; That which is but lent them for use, they think theirs; (The River is mine) That which God gave them, they think of their own getting; (I made it)