Eighty Sermons

SERMON XIII. Preached in Lent, To the KING. April 20. 1630.

I Obs friends (as, in civility we are fain to call them, because they came upon a civil pretence, to visit him, and to comfort him) had now done speaking. It was long before they would have done. Andivi frequenter talia, says Job to them, I have often heard such things as you say, they are not new to me; and therefore, Onerosi consolatores, Miserable comforters, troublesome comforters are ye all, old and new. But, Numquid finem habebunt verba ventosa, says he, Shall your windy words, your empty, your aery, your frothy words have any end? Now they have an end. Eliphas ends his charge in the last, and in this Chapter Job begins to answer for himself. But how? By a middle way. Job does not justify himself; but yet he does not prevaricate, he does not betray his Innocence neither. For there may be a pusillanimity even towards God; A man may over-clog his own conscience, and belie himself in his confessions, out of a distempered jealousy, and suspicion of God's purposes upon him; Job does not so. Many men have troubled themselves more, how the soul comes into man, then how it goes out; They wrangle, whether it comes in by Infusion from God, or by Propagation from parents, and never consider, whether it shall return to Him that made it, or to him that mar'd it, to Him that gave it, or to him that corrupted it. So, many of our Expositors upon this Book of Job, have spent themselves upon the Person, and the Place, and the Time, who Job was, when Job was, where Job was, and whether there were ever any such person as Job, or no; and have passed over too slightly the senses, and doctrines of the Book. S. Gregory hath, (to good use) given us many Morals, (as he calls them) upon this Book, but, truly, not many Literals, for, for the most part, he bends all the sufferings of Job figuratively, mystically upon Christ. Origen, who (except S. Gregory ) hath written most of this Book; and yet gone but a little way into the book neither, doth never pretend much literalnesse in his expositions, so that we are not to look for that at Origen's hands. We must not therefore refuse the assistance of later men, in the exposition of this Text, Not for any Injustice in my hands, &c.

In this Chapter, and before this text, we have Job's Anatomy, Job's Sceleton, the ruins to which he was reduced. In the eighth verse he takes knowledge, That God had filled him with leanness and wrinkles, and that those wrinkles, and that leanness were witnesses against him, and, That they that hated him, had torn him in pieces, in the ninth verse. In the eleventh verse, That God had delivered him over to the ungodly, and, That God himself had shaked him in pieces, and set him up as a mark to shoot at, in the twelfe verse, That God had cleft his reins, and poured out his gall upon the ground, in the thirteenth verse, and in the fourteenth, That he broke him, breach after breach, and run over him as a Giant, and at last, in the sixteenth verse, That foulness was upon his face, and the shadow of death upon his eyelids. Now, let me ask in Job's behalf God's question to Ezekiel, Putasne vivent ossaista? Doest thou belceve that these bones can live? Can this Anatomy, this Sceleton, these ruins, this rubbidge of Job speak? It can, it does in this Text, Not for any Injustice in my hands, &c.

And, in these words, it delivers us, first, The confidence of a godly man; Do God what he will, say ye what ye will, That because I am more afflicted then other men, therefore I am guilty of more heinous sins then other men, yet I know, that whatsoever God's end be in this proceeding, It is not for any Injustice in my hands, Also my prayer is pure. Secondly, it delivers us that kind of infirm anguish, and indignation, that halfedistemper, that expostulation with God, which sometimes comes to an excess even in good and godly men, O earth cover not thou my blood, and let my cry have no place; I desire not that anything should be concealed or disguised, let all that ever I have done be written in my forehead, and read by all men. And then thirdly and lastly, it delivers us the foundation of his confidence, and the recovery from this his infirmity, and from his excess in the manner of expressing it, if he have been over-bold therein, My Witness is in heaven, and my Record is on high; God is his Witness, that that which they charge him with, is false, That that which he says in his own discharge (in that sense that he says it) is true; And in these three, Job's Protestation, Not guilty, Job's Manifest, I would all the world knew all, Job's Establishment, and consolidation, My Witness is in Heaven; in these three branches, and in some fruits, which, in passing, we shall gather from them, we shall determine all that appertains to these words.

I remember S. Gregory, in handling one text, professes, that he will endeavor to handle it so, Vt ejus altitudo non sic fieret nescientibus cognita, ut esset scientibus onerosa; So, as that the weakest understanding might comprehend the highest points, and the highest understanding not be weary to hear ordinary doctrines so delivered. Indeed it is a good art, to deliver deep points in a holy plainness, and plain points in a holy delightfulnesse: for, many times, one part of our auditory understands us not, when we have done, and so they are weary; and another part understands us before we begun, and so they are weary. To day, my humble petition must be, That you will be content to hear plain things plainly delivered. Of which, be this the first, That Job found himself under the oppression, and calumny of that mis-interpretation, that Kings themselves, and States, and Churches have not escaped.

The tower of Siloam fell and slew them, therefore they were the greater sinners in Jerusalem; this man prospers not in the world, Therefore he proceeds not in the fear of God; the heir wastes the estate, therefore the estate was ill gotten, are hasty conclusions in private affairs. Treasures are empty, therefore there are unnecessary wastes; Discontented persons murmur, therefore things are ill carried; our neighbors prosper by Action, therefore we perish by not appearing, are hasty conclusions in State affairs. This man is affected when he hears a blasphemous oath; and when he looks upon the general liberty of sinning; therefore he is a Puritan; That man loves the ancient forms, and Doctrines, and Disciplines of the Church, and retains, and delights in the reverend names of Priest, and Altar, and Sacrifice, therefore he is a Papist, are hasty conclusions in Church affairs. When we do fall under these mis-interpretations, and ill applications of God's proceedings, we may say with Job, I also could speak, as you do; if your soul were in my souls stead, I could heap up words against you, and shake my head at you, conclude desperately, speak scornfully of you. But I will not; yet I will not betray myself, I will make my protestation, what end soever God propose to himself in this his proceeding, It is not for any injustice in my hands, Also my prayer is pure.

In these two, cleanness of hands, pureness of Prayer, are all religious duties comprehended: for clean hands denote justice and righteousness towards men, and pure prayer Devotion, and the service and worship of God. Job protests for both. Therefore does Origen say of Job, Certe puto, quod & audeo dicere, I do verily believe, and therefore may be bold to say, that for constancy and fidelity towards God, Job did exceed, Non solum homines, sed & ipsos Angelos, Not only men, but Angels themselves; for, says Origen, Job did not only suffer Abs{que} culpa, without being guilty of those things to which his afflictions were imputed, but he suffered Cum gratiarum actionibus, he said grace when he had no meat, when God gave him Stones for Bread, and Scorpions for Fish; he praised God as much for the affliction itself, as for his former, or his subsequent benefits and blessings. Not that Job was merely innocent, but that he was guilty of no such things, as might confer those conclusions, which, from his afflictions, his enemies raised. If I justify myself, says Job, Mine own mouth shall condemn me; Every self-justification is a self-condemnation; when I give judgment for myself, I am therein a witness against myself. If I say I am perfect, says he in the same place, even that proves me perverse; If I say I never go out of the way, I am out then, and therefore because I say so: I have sinned, says he, What shall I do unto thee O thou preserver of men? Job felt the hand of destruction upon him, and he felt the hand of preservation too; and it was all one hand; This is God's Method, and his alone, to preserve by destroying. Men of this world do sometimes repair, and recompense those men whom they have oppressed before, but this is an after recompense; God's first intention even when he destroys is to preserve, as a Physicians first intention, in the most distasteful physic, is health; even God's demolitions are super-edifications, his Anatomies, his dissections are so many re-compactings, so many resurrections; God winds us off the Skein, that he may weave us up into the whole piece, and he cuts us out of the whole piece into pieces, that he may make us up into a whole garment.

But for all these humiliations, and confessions, Job doth not wave his protestation; My rightcousnesse I hold fast, and my heart shall not reproach me as long as I live. Not that I shall never sin, but never leave any sin unrepented; And then, my heart cannot reproach me of a repented sin, without reproaching God himself. The Sun must not set upon my anger; much less will I let the Sun set upon the anger of God towards me, or sleep in an unrepeted sin. Every nights sleep is a Nunc dimittis; then the Lord lets his servant depart in peace. Thy lying down is a valediction, a parting, a taking leave, (shall I say so?) a shaking hands with God; and, when thou shakest hands with God, let those hands be clean. Enter into thy grave, thy metaphorical, thy quotidian grave, thy bed, as thou entredstinto the Church at first, by Water, by Baptism; Re-baptize thyself every night, in Job's Snow water, in holy tears that may cool the inordinate lusts of thy heart, and with-hold unclean abuses of those hands even in that thy grave, thy Bed; And evermore remember Job's fear and jealouste in that place, That when he had washed himself in Snow water, Abominabuntur me vestimenta mea, Mine own clothes will make me foul again. Thy flesh is thy clothes; and to this mischievous purpose of fouling thy hands with thine own clothes, thou hast most clothes on when thou art naked; Then, in that nakedness, thou art in most danger of fouling thy hands with thine own clothes. Miserable man! that couldest have no use of hands, nor any other organ of sense, if there were no other creature but thyself, & yet, if there were no other creature but thyself, couldest sin upon thyself, and foul thy hands with thine own hands. How much more then, if thou strike with those hands, by oppression in thy office, or shut up those hands, and that which is due to another, in them? Sleep with clean hands, either kept clean all day, by integrity; or washed clean, at night, by repentance; and whensoever thou wakest, though all Job's messengers thunder about thee, and all Job's friends multiply mis-interpretations against thee, yet Job's protestation shall be thy protestation, what end soever God have in this proceeding, It is not for any injustice in my hands, and the other part of his protestation too, Also my prayer is pure.

As clean hands denote all righteousness towards man, so do pure prayers all devotion, and worship, and service of God. For, we are of the household of the faithful, and the service which we are to do, as his household servants, is prayer; for, his house is the house of prayer. And therein only is it possible to us, to fulfill that Commandment, pray continually, that continually, in all our familiar actions, we may serve God, glorify God, (whether we eat or drink, we may do it to his glory) and every glorifying, every thanksgiving, is prayer; there cannot be a more effectual prayer for future, then a thankful acknowledgement of former benefits. Petitc, & dabitur; How often is that repeated in the Gospel, and in the Epistles? Ask, and it shall be given ye; no grant without prayer, no denial upon prayer.

It must be prayer, and my prayer; Also my prayer is pure. I must not rely upon the prayers of others; not of Angels; Though they be Ministerial spirits, and not only to God himself, but between God and Man, and so, as they present our prayers, no doubt pour out their own for us too, yet we must not rely upon the prayers of Angels. Nor of Saints; Though they have a more personal, and experimental sense of our miseries then Angels have, we must not rely upon the prayers of Saints. No, nor upon the prayers of the Congregation, though we see, and hear them pray, except we make ourselves parts of the Congregation, by true devotion, as well as by personal presence.

It must be mine own prayer, and no prayer is so truly, or so properly mine, as that that the Church hath delivered and recommended to me. In sudden and unpremeditate prayer, I am not always I; and when I am not myself, my prayer is not my prayer. Passions and affections sometimes, sometimes bodily infirmities, and sometimes a vain desire of being eloquent in prayer, aliens me, withdraws me from myself, and then that prayer is not my prayer. Though that prayer which Luther is said to have said upon his death-bed, Oremus pro Domine Deo nostro Jesus Christo, Let us pray for our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus, may admit a good sense, because Christ being (as S. Augustine says often) Caput & Corpus, both the Head and the Body, as he is the Body, the Church, subject to so many pressures, he had need to be prayed for; yet, his state being considered at that time, almost at the last gasp, he being scarce he, that prayer can scarce be called his prayer.

In that African Council, in which S. Augustine was present, to remedy the abuse of various forms of Prayers, which divers Churches assumed, it was decreed that no prayers should be received in the Church, but such as were composed, or approved by the Council. We have proceeded so too; No prayers received for public use, but those that are delivered by public authority; and so, they become My prayers. As the Law of the Land is my Law, and I have an inheritance in it, so the prayers of the Church are my prayers, and I have an interest in them, because I am a Son of that family. My Baptism is mine, and my Absolution is mine, because the Church hath given them to me, and so are her prayers mine. You would scarce thank a man for an extemporal Elegy, or Epigram, or Panegyrique in your praise, if it cost the Poet, or the Orator no pains. God will scarce hearken to sudden, inconsidered, irreverent prayers. Men will study even for Complements; and Princes and Ambassadors will not speak to one another, without thinking what they will say. Let not us put God to speak to us so, (Preaching is God's speaking to us) Let not us speak to God so, (Praying is our speaking to God) not extemporally, unadvisedly, inconsiderately. Prayer must be my prayer; and Quid habeo quod non accepi? Even in this kind, what have I that I have not received? I have received my prayer altogether, as a bundle of Myrrh, in that prayer which I have received from my Savior, and then I have received it appropriated to me, and apportioned to my particular necessities, and sacrifices, by the piety and wisdom of the Church; so it is my prayer, and, as Job's prayer was, pure prayer, Also my prayer is pure.

The Holy Ghost hath so marshalled and disposed the qualifications of Prayer in this place, as that there is no pure prayer without clean hands. The lifting up of hands was the gesture of prayer, even among the heathen, Manibus supplex or are supinis. Amongst the Jews, Prayer, and the lifting up of hands, was one and the same thing, Let the lifting up of my hands be an evening Sacrifice; And, longer then Moses hands were lifted up, his prayer had no effect. All this, perchance therefore especially, that this lifting up of my hands, brings them into my sight; then I can see them, and see whether they be clean, or no, and consider, that if I see impurity in my hands, God sees impurity in my Prayer. Can I think to receive ease from God with that hand that oppresses another? Mercy from God with that hand that exercises cruelty upon another? Or Bounty from God with that hand that with-holds right from another? Prayer is our hand, but it must be a clean hand, pure prayer.

That Emperor whom no religion would lose, Constantine, (for, the heathen deified him, and the Christians canonized him, They made him a god, and we came as near as we could, we made him a Saint) that Emperor was coined Praying. Other Emperors were coined Triumphing, in Chariots, or preparing for Triumphs, in Battailes, and Victories, but he, Constantine, in that posture, Kneeling, Praying. He knew his coin would pass through every family; and to every family he desired to be an example of piety; Every piece of single money was a Catechism, and testified to every Subject all this, surely he will graciously receive my Petition, and look graciously upon me, when I kneel, for, behold he kneels to, and he exhibits petitions to that God, from whom he acknowledges, that he needs as much as I can from him. And yet this Symbolical, and Catechisticall coin of Constantine's, was not so convincing, nor so irrefragable a testimony of his piety, (for Constantine might be coined praying, and yet never pray) as when we see as great a Prince as he, actually, really, personally, daily, duly at prayer with us.

To end this branch, let not thy prayer be lucrative, nor vindicative, pray not for temporal superfluities, pray not for the confusion of them that differ from thee in opinion, or in manners, but condition thy prayer, inanimate thy prayer with the glory of God, and thine own everlasting happiness, and the edification of others, and this prayer is Job's prayer, pure prayer. And farther we enlarge not his Protestation, My hands are clean, I do no man wrong; my prayer is pure, I mock not God. But because continuing under so great afflictions, men would not believe this, he proceeds, perchance to some excess, and inconsiderateness, in desiring a manifestation of all his actions, O Earth, cover not thou my blood, and let my cry have no place.

Difference of Expositions makes us stop here, upon this inquisition, in what affection Job spake this. Whether this were merely an adjuration of the earth, not to cover his blood, but that his miseries, and the cry thereof might pass, and be transferred over all the world; or whether it had the nature of an imprecation upon himself, That he wished, or admitted against himself, that which is against the nature of every man to admit, that is, to have all that ever he had done, published, declared, manifested to all the world. S. Gregory, according to his manner, through all this book, which is, to apply all Job's sufferings to Christ, and to make Job some kind of type of Christ, makes no more of this, but that it is an adjuration of the earth, in the person and behalf of Christ, not to suck in, or smoother his blood, but that it might be notified, and communicated to all the world. And truly, this is a good use, but it cannot be said to be a good sense of the place, because it cannot consist with the rest of the words.

Amongst our later men, Cajetan, (and he, from a Rabbi of the Jews, Ibn Ezra ) takes this to be an adjuration of the Earth, as Gregory does, but not, as Gregory does, in the person of Christ, but of Job himself; That Job adjures the earth, not to cover his blood, that is, not to cover the shedding of his blood, not to conspire with the malice of his enemies so much, as to deny him burial when he was dead, that they which trod him down alive, might not triumph over him after his death, or conclude that God did certainly forsake him alive, since he continued these declarations against him, when he was dead. And this also may have good use, but yet it is too narrow, and too shallow, to be the sense of this phrase, this elegancy, this vehemency of the Holy Ghost, in the mouth of Job.

S. Chrysostom, I think, was the first that gave light to the sense of this place. He says, that such men, as are (as they think) over-punished, have naturally a desire, that the world knew their faults; that so, by comparing their faults with their punishments, there might arise some pity and commiseration of their state. And, surely, this, that Chrysostom says, is true, and natural; for, if two men were to be executed together, by one kind of death, the one for stealing a Sheep, (perchance in hunger) the other for killing his Father, certainly, he that had but stolen the Sheep, would be sorry the world should think their cases alike, or that he had killed a Father too. And in such an affection Job says, I am so far from being guilty of those things that are imputed to me, that I would be content, that all that ever I have done, were known to all the world.

This light, which S. Chrysost. gave to this place, shined not out, (I think) till the Reformation; for, I have not observed any Author, between Chrysostom and the Reformation, that hath taken knowledge of this interpretation; nor any of the Reformation, as from him, from Chrysostom. But, since our Authors of the Reformation, have somewhat generally pursued that sense, ( Calvin hath done so, and so Tremellius, and so Piscator, and many, many more) now, one Author of the Roman Church, (one as curious and diligent in interpreting obscure places of Scripture, as any amongst them, and then more bold and confident in departing from their vulgar, and frivolous, and impertinent interpretations of Scriptures, then any amongst them) the Capuchin Bolduc, hath also pursued that sense. That sense is, that in this adjuration, or imprecation, O Earth cover not thou my blood; Blood is not literally bodily blood, but spiritual blood, the blood of the soul, exhausted by many, and heinous sins, such as they insimulated Job of. For, in this signification, is that word, Blood, often taken in the Scriptures. When God says, when you stretch forth your hands, they are full of blood, there blood is all manner of rapine, of oppression, of concussion, of violence. When David prays to be delivered from bloodguiltinesse, it is not intended only, of an actual shedding of blood, for, it is in the Original, à sanguinibus, in the plural; other crimes then the actual shedding of blood, are bloody crimes. Therefore, says one Prophet, the land is full of bloody crimes; And, another, blood toucheth blood, whom the Chaldee Paraprase expresses aright, Aggregant peccata peccatis, blood toucheth blood, when sin induces sin. Which place of Hosea, S. Gregory interprets too, then blood touches blood, cum ante oculos Dei, adjunctis peccatis cruentatur anima; Then God sees a soul in her blood, when she wounds and wounds her self again, with variation of divers, or iteration of the same sins.

This then being thus established, that blood in this Text, is the blood of the soul, exhausted by sin, (for every sin is an incision of the soul, a Lancination, a Phlebotomy, a letting of the soul blood, and then, a delight in sin, is a going with open veins into a warm bath, and bleeding to death) This will be the force of Job's Admiration, or Imprecation, O Earth cover not thou my blood, I am content to stand as naked now, as I shall do at the day of Judgment, when all men shall see all men's actions, I desire no disguise, I deny, I excuse, I extenuate nothing that ever I did, I would mine enemies knew my worst, that they might study some other reason of God's thus proceeding with me, then those heinous sins, which, from these afflictions, they will necessarily conclude against me.

But had Job been able to have stood out this trial? Was Job so innocent, as that he need not care, though all the world knew all? Perchance there may have been some excess, some inordinateness in his manner of his expressing it; we cannot excuse the vehemence of some holy men, in such expressions. We cannot say, that there was no excess in Moses his Dele me, Pardon this people, or blot my name out of thy book; or that there was no excess in S. Paul's Anathema pro fratribus, That he wished to be accursed, to be separated from Christ for his brethren. But for Job, we shall not need this excuse; for, either we may restrain his words to those sins, which they imputed to him, and then they have but the nature of that protestation, which David made so often to God, Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness, according to mine innocence, according to the cleanness of my hands; which was not spoken by David simply, but respectively, not of all his sins, but of those which Saul pursued him for: Or, if we enlarge Job's words generally to all his sins, we must consider them to be spoken after his repentance, and reconciliation to God thereupon; If they knew, (may Job have said) how it stood between God and my soul, how earnestly I have repented, how fully he hath forgiven, they would never say, these afflictions proceeded from those sins.

And truly, so may I, so may every soul say, that is rectified, refreshed, restored, reestablished by the seals of God's pardon, and his mercy, so the world would take knowledge of the consequences of my sins, as well as of the sins themselves, and read my leafes on both sides, and hear the second part of my story, as well as the first; so the world would look upon my temporal calamities, the bodily sicknesses, and the penuriousnesse of my fortune contracted by my sins, and upon my spiritual calamities, dejections of spirit, sadness of heart, declinations towards a diffidence and distrust in the mercy of God, and then, when the world sees me in this agony and bloody sweat, in this agony and bloody sweat would also see the Angels of heaven ministering comforts unto me; so they would consider me in my Peccavi, and God in his Transtulit, Me in my earnest Confessions, God in his powerful Absolutions, Me drawn out of one Sea of blood, the blood of mine own soul, and cast into another Sea, the bottomeless Sea of the blood of Christ Jesus; so they would know as well what God hath done for my soul, as what my soul and body have done against my God; so they would read me throughout, and look upon me altogether, I would join with Job, in his confident adjuration, O Earth cover not thou my blood; Let all the world know all the sins of my youth, and of mine age too, and I would not doubt, but God should receive more glory, and the world more benefit, then if I had never sinned. This is that that exalts Job's confidence, he was guilty of nothing, that is, no such thing as they concluded upon, of nothing absolutely, because he had repented all. And from this, his confidence rises to a higher pitch then this, Nec clamor, O Earth cover not thou my blood, and let my cry have no place.

What means Job in this? Doubtfull Expositors make us doubt too. Some have said, that Job desires his cry might have no place, that is, no termination, no resting place, but that his just complaint might be heard over all the world; Stunnica the Augustinian interprets it so. Some have said, that he intends by his cry, his crying sins, that they might have no place, that is, no hiding place, but that his greatest sins, and secret sins might be brought to light; Bolduc the Capuchin interprets it so; according to that use of the word Clamor, God looked for righteousness, & ecce clamorem, behold a cry; that is, sins crying in the ears of God. But there is more then so, in this phrase, in this elegancy, in this vehemency of the Holy Ghost in Job's mouth, Let my cry have no place.

In the former part, ( Job's Protestation) he considered God and man; righteousness towards man in clean hands, and, in pure prayers, devotion towards God. In this part, (his Manifest) he pursues the same method, he considers man, and God; Though men knew all my sins, that should not trouble me, says he, (and that we have considered) yea, though my cry find no place, no place with God, that should not trouble me; I should be content that God should seem not to hear my prayers, but that he laid me open to that ill interpretation of wicked men, Tush, he prays, but the Lord hears him not, he cries, but God relieves him not. And yet, when wilt thou relieve me, O thou reliever of men, if not upon my cries, upon my prayers? Yet, S. Augustine hath repeated that, more then once, more then twice, Non est magnum exaudiri ad voluntatem, non est magnum; Be not over-joyed when God grants thee thy prayer. Exauditi ad voluntatem Daemones, says that Father, The Devil had his prayer granted, when he had leave to enter into the Heard of Swine; And so he had (says he, exemplifying in our present example) when he obtained power from God against Job. But all this aggravated the Devils punishment; so may it do thine, to have some prayers granted. And, as that must not over-joy thee, if it be, so if thy prayer be not granted, it must not deject thee. God suffered S. Paul to pray, and pray and pray, yet, after his thrice praying, granted him not that he prayed for. God suffered that si possibile, if it be possiblle, and that Transeat calix, Let this Cup pass, to pass from Christ himself, yet he granted it not.

But, in many of these cases, a man does easilier satisfy his own mind, then other men. If God grant me not my prayer, I recover quickly, and I lay hold upon the horns of that Altar, and ride safely at that Anchor, God saw that that which I prayed for, was not so good for him, nor so good for me. But when the world shall come to say, Where is now your Religion, where is your Reformation? do not all other Rivers, as well as the Tiber, or the Poe, does not the Seine, and the Rhene, and the Maene too, begin to ebb back, and to empty it self in the Sea of Rome? why should not your Thames do so, as well as these other Rivers? Where is now your Religion, your Reformation? Were not you as good run in the same channel as others do? This is a shrewd temptation, and induces opprobrious conclusions from malicious enemies, when our cries have no place, our religious service no present acceptation, our prayers no speedy return from God. But yet because even in this, God may propose farther glory to himself, more benefit to me, and more edification even to them, at last, who, at first, made ill constructions of his proceedings, I admit, as Job admits, O Earth cover not thou my blood, (let all the world see all my faults) and let my cry have no place, (let them imagine that God hath forsaken me, and does not hear my prayers;) my satisfaction, my acquiescence arises not out of their opinion, and interpretation, that must not be my trial, but testis in coelis, My witness is in heaven, and my record is on high, which is our third, and last Consideration.

We must do in this last, as we have done in our former two parts, crack a shell, to taste the kernel, clear the words, to gain the Doctrine. I am ever willing to assist that observation, That the books of Scripture are the eloquentest books in the world, that every word in them hath his weight and value, his taste and verdure. And therefore must not blame those Translators, nor those Expositors, who have, with a particular elegancy, varied the words in this last clause of the Text, my witness, and my record. The oldest Latin Translation received this variation, and the last Latin, even Tremellius himself, (as close as he sticks to the Hebrew) retains this variation, Testis, and Conscius. And that collection, which hath been made upon this variation, is not without use, that conscius may be spoken de interno, that God will bear witness to my inward conscience; and testis, de externo, that God will, in his time, testify to the world in my behalf. But other places of Scripture will more advance that observation of the elegancy thereof, then this; for in this, the two words signify but one and the same thing, it is but witness, and witness, and no more. Not that it is easy to find in Hebrew (nor, perchance, in any language) two words so absolutely Synonymous, as to signify the same thing, without any difference, but that the two words in our Text are not both of one language, not both Hebrew. For, the first word, Gned, is an Hebrew word, but the other, Sahad, is Syriaque; and both signify alike, and equally, testem, a witness. He that hears the voice of swearing, and is a witness, says Moses, in the first word of our Text; and then the Chaldee Paraphrase, intending the same thing, expresses it in the other word, Sahad. So in the contract between Laban and Jacob, Laban calls that heap of stones, which he had erected, Iegar-Sehadutha, by an extraction from the last word of our Text, Sahad; Jacob calls it, by the first word: And the reason is given in the body of the Text it self, in the vulgat Edition, (though how it got thither, we know not, for, in the Original it is not) Vter{que} juxta proprietatem lingua suae; Laban spake in his language, Syriaque, Jacob spake in his, Hebrew, and both called that heap of stones, a witness.

Now, our bestowing this little time upon the clearing of the words, hath saved us much more time; for, by this means we have shortened this clause of our Text, and all that we are to consider, is but this, My witness is in heaven. And truly, that is enough; I care not though all the world knew all my faults, I care not what they conclude of God's not granting my prayers, my witness is in heaven. To be condemned unjustly amongst men, to be ill interpreted in the acts of my Religion, is a heavy case; but yet, I have a relief in all this, my witness is in heaven.

The first comfort is, Quia in Coelis, because he, whom I rely upon, is in heaven. For, that is the foundation and Basis upon which our Savior erects that prayer, which he hath recommended unto us, Qui es in coelis, Our Father, which art in heaven; when I lay hold upon him there, in heaven, I pursue cheerfully and confidently all the other petitions, for daily bread, for forgiveness of sins, for deliverance from temptations; from, and for all. Est in coelis, he is in heaven, and then Sedet in coelis, be sits in heaven; That as I see him in that posture that Stephen saw him, standing at the right hand of the Father, and so, in procinctu, in a readiness, in a willingness to come to my succor, so I might contemplate him in a judiciary posture, in a potestative, a sovereign posture, sitting, and consider him as able, as willing to relieve me. He is in heaven, and he sits in heaven, and then habitat in coelis, he dwells in heaven, he is, and he is always there. Baals Priests could not always find him at home; Job's God, and our God is never abroad. He dwells in the heavens, and, (as it is expressed there) In excelsis, he dwells on high; so high, that, (as it is there added) God humbles himself, to behold the things that are in heaven. With what amazedness must we consider the humiliation of God, in descending to the earth, lower then so, to hell, when even his descending unto heaven, is a humiliation? God humbles himself, when he beholds anything lower then himself, though Cherubims, though Seraphim, though the human nature, the body of his own, and only eternal Son; and yet he beholds, considers, studies us, worms of the earth, and no men.

This then is Job's, and our first comfort, Quia in coelis, because he is in heaven, and sits in heaven, and dwells in heaven, in the highest heaven, and so, sees all things. But then, if God see, and say nothing, David apprehends that for a most dangerous condition; and therefore he says, Be not silent, O Lord, lest if thou be silent, I perish. And again, Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise, for the mouth of the wicked is opened against me: And, Lord, let thy mercy be as forward as their malice. And therefore, as God, from that heighth, sees all, (and the strictest examination that we put upon any Witness, is, that if he pretend to testify anything upon his knowledge, we ask, how he came by that knowledge, and if he be oculatus testis, a Witness that saw it, this is good evidence) as God is to this purpose, all eye, and sees all, so for our farther comfort, he descends to the office of being a Witness, There is a Witness in heaven.

But then, God may be a Witness, and yet not my Witness, and in that, there is small comfort, if God be a Witness on my adversaries side, a Witness against me. Even I know, and am a Witness, saith the Lord; that is, a Witness of the sins, which I know by thee. And that is that which Job, with so much tenderness apprehended, Thou renewest thy witnesses against me; Thou sent'st a witness against me, in the Sabaeans, upon my servants; and then, thou renewedst that witness in the Caldaeans upon my cattle; and then, thou renewedst that, in thy storms and tempests, upon my children. All this while God was a Witness, but not his witness, but a witness on his adversaries side. Now, if our own heart, our own conscience condemn us, this is shrewd evidence, says S. John; for mine own conscience, single, is a thousand witnesses against me. But then, (says the Apostle there) God is greater then the heart; for, (says he) he knows all things; He knows circumstances of sin, as well as substance; and, that, we seldom know, seldom take knowledge of. If then mine own heart be a thousand, God, that is greater, is ten thousand witnesses, if he witness against me. But if he be my Witness, a Witness for me, as he always multiplies in his ways of mercy, he is thousands of thousands, millions of millions of witnesses in my behalf, for there is no condemation, no possible condemnation, to them that are in him; not, if every grain of dust upon the earth were an Achitophel, and gave counsel against me, not if every sand upon the shore were a Rabshakeh, and railed against me, not if every atom in the air were a Satan, an Adversary, an Accuser, not if every drop in the Sea, were an Abaddon, an Apollyon, a Destroyer, there could be no condemuation, if he be my Witness. If he be my Witness, he proceeds thus in my behalf, his Spirit bears witness with my spirit, for mine inward assurance, that I stand established in his favor, and, either by an actual deliverance, or by some such declaration, as shall preserve me from fainting, if I be not actually delivered, he gives a farther testimony in my behalf. For, he is in Heaven, and he sits in Heaven, and he dwells in Heaven, in the highest Heaven, and sees all, and is a Witness, and my Witness; there is the largeness of our comfort.

But will all this come home to Job's end and purpose; That he need not care though all men knew all his faults, he need not care though God passed over his prayers, because God is his Witness; what declarations soever he had in himself, would the world believe, that God testified in his behalf, when they saw his calamities multiplied upon him, and his prayers neglected? If they will not, herein lies his, and our final comfort, That he that is my Witness, is in the highest Heaven, there is no person above him, and therefore He that is my Witness, is my Judge too. I shall not be tried by an arbitrary Court, where it may be wisdom enough, to follow a wise leader, and think as he thinks. I shall not be tried by a Jury, that had rather I suffered, then they fasted, rather I lost my life, then they lost a meal. Nor tried by Peers, where Honor shall be the Bible. But I shall be tried by the King himself, then which no man can propose a Nobler trial, and that King shall be the King of Kings too; for, He, who in the first of the Revelation, is called The faithful Witness, is, in the same place, called The Prince of the Kings of the earth; and, as he is there produced as a Witness, so, He is ordained to be the Judge of the quick and the dedd, and so, All Judgment is committed to him. He that is my Witness, is my Judge, and the same person is my Jesus, my Savior, my Redeemer; He that hath taken my nature, He that hath given me his blood. So that he is my Witness, in his own cause, and my Judge, but of his own Title, and will, in me, preserve himself; He will not let that nature, that he hath invested, perish, nor that treasure, which he hath poured out for me, his blood, be ineffectual. My Witness is in Heaven, my Judge is in Heaven; my Redeemer is in Heaven, and in them, who are but One, I have not only a constant hope, that I shall be there too, but an evident assurance, that I am there already, in his Person.

Go then in this peace, That you always study to preserve this testification of the Spirit of God, by outward evidences of Sanctification. You are naturally composed of four Elements, and three of those four are evident, and unquestioned; The fourth Element, the element of Fire, is a more litigious element, more problematicall, more disputable. Every good man, every true Christian, in his Metaphysics,(for, in a regenerate man, all is Metaphysical, supernatural) hath four Elements also; and three of those four are declared in this text. First, a good Name, the good opinion of good men, for honest dealing in the world, and religious discharge of duties towards God, That there be no injustice in our hands, Also that our prayer be pure. A second Element is a good conscience in myself, That either a holy wariness before, or a holy repentance after, settle me so in God, as that I care not though all the world knew all my faults. And a third element is, my Hope in God, that my Witness which is in Heaven, will testify for me, as a witness in my behalf, here, or acquit me, as a merciful Judge, hereafter. Now, there may be a fourth Element, an Infallibility of final perseverance, grounded upon the eternal knowledge of God; but this is, as the Element of fire, which may be, but is not, at least, is not so discernible, so demonstrable as the rest. And therefore, as men argue of the Element of fire, that whereas the other elements produce creatures in such abundance, The Earth such herds of Cattle, the Waters such shoales of Fish, the Air such flocks of Birds, it is no unreasonable thing, to stop upon this consideration, whether there should be an element of fire, more spacious, and comprehensive then all the rest, and yet produce no Creatures; so, if thy pretended Element of Infallibility produce no creatures, no good works, no holy actions, thou mayest justly doubt there is no such element in thee. In all doubts that arise in thee, still it will be a good rule, to choose that now, which thou wouldst choose upon thy death-bed. If a temptation to Beauty, to Riches, to Honor, be proposed to thee, upon such, and such conditions, consider whether thou wouldst accept that, upon those conditions, upon thy death-bed, when thou must part with them, in a few minutes. So, when thou doubtest, in what thou shouldst place thy assurance in God, think seriously, whether thou shalt not have more comfort then, upon thy death-bed, in being able to say, I have finished my course, I have fought a good fight, I have fulfilled the sufferings of Christ in my flesh, I have clothed him when he was naked, and fed him when he was poor, then in any other thing, that thou mayest conceive God to have done for thee; And do all the way, as thou wouldst do then; prove thy element of fire, by the creatures it produces, prove thine election by thy sanctification; for that is the right method, and shall deliver thee over, infallibly, to everlasting glory at last, Amen.

SERMON XIV. Preached at White-hall, March 3. 1619.

F Or the presenting of the woes and judgments of God, denounced by the Prophets against Judah and Israel, and the extending and applying them to others, involved in the same sins as Judah and Israel were, Solomon seems to have given us somewhat a clear direction; Reprove not a scorner lest he hate thee, Rebuke a wise man and he will love thee. But how if the wiseman and this scorner be all in one man, all one person? If the wiseman of this world be come to take S. Paul so literally at his word, as to think scornfully that preaching is indeed but the foolishness of preaching, and that as the Church is within the State, so preaching is a part of State government, flexible to the present occasions of time, appliable to the present dispositions of men; This fell upon this Prophet in this prophecy, Amasias the Priest of Bethel informed the King that Amos meddled with matters of State, and that the Land was not able to bear his words, and to Amos himself he says, Eate thy bread in someother place, but prophecy here no more, for this is the Kings Chapel, and the Kings Court; Amos replies, I was no Prophet nor the son of a Prophet, but in another course, and the Lord took me and said unto me, Go and Prophecy to my People. Though we find no Amasiah no mis-interpreting Priest here, (we are far from that, because we are far from having a Jeroboam to our King as he had, easy to give ear, easy to give credit to false informations) yet every man that comes with God's Message hither, brings a little Amasiah of his own, in his own bosom, a little wisperer in his own heart, that tells him, This is the Kings Chapel, and it is the Kings Court, and these woes and judgments, and the denouncers and proclaimers of them are not so acceptable here. But we must have our own Amos, as well as our Amasias, this answer to this suggestion, I was no Prophet, and the Lord took me and bad me prophecy. What shall I do?

And besides, since the woe in this Text is not S. John's woe? his iterated, his multiplied woe, Vae, vae, vae habitantibus terram, a woe of desolation upon the whole world (for God loves this world, as the work of his own hands, as the subject of his providence, as the Scene of his glory, as the Garden-plot that is watered by the Blood of his Son:) Since the Woe in this Text is not Esaies woe, Vae genti peccatrici, an increpation and commination upon our whole Nation (for God hath not come so near to any Nation, and dealt so well with any Nation as with ours:) Since the Woe in this Text is not Ezekiel's Woe, Vae Civitati sanguinum, an imputation of injustice or oppression, and consequently of a malediction laid upon the whole City (for God hath carried his woes upon other Cities, Vae Chorasin, vae Bethsaida; God hath laid his heavy hand of war and other calamities upon other Cities, that this City might see her self and her calamities long before in that glass, and so avoid them:) Since the Woe in this Text, is not the Prophets other woe, Vae domui, not a woe upon any family (for when any man in his family comes to Joshua's protestation, Ego & domus mea, As for me and my house we will serve the Lord, the Lord comes to his protestation, In mille generationes, I will show mercy to thee and thy house for a thousand generations: ) Since the Woe in this Text, is not Esaies woe again, Vae Coronae, (for, the same Prophet tells us of what affection they are, that they are Idolaters, persons inclined to an idolatrous and superstitious Religion, and fret themselves, and curse the King and their God; we know that the Prophets Vae Coronae in that place is Vae Coronae superbiae, and the crown and heighth of Pride is in him, who hath set himself above all that is called God. Christian Princes know that if their Crowns were but so as they seem (all gold) they should be but so much the heavier for being all gold; but they are but Crowns of thorns gilded, specious cares, glorious troubles, and therefore no subject of pride:) To contract this, since the Woe in this Text, is no State woe, nor Church woe, for it is not Ezekiel's Vae Pastoribus insipientibus, which cannot feed their flock, nor Jeremiah's Vae Pastoribus disperdentibus, Woe unto those lazy Shepherds, which do not feed their flock but suffer them to scatter: Snce the Woe in this Text is not a woe upon the whole World, nor upon the whole Nation, nor upon the whole City, nor upon any whole Family, nor upon any whole rank or calling of men, when I have asked with Solomon, Cui vae? to whom belongs this woe? I must answer with S. Paul, Vae mihi, woe unto me if I do not tell them to whom it belongs. And therefore since in spiritual things especially charity begins with it self, I shall transfer this Vae from myself, by laying it upon them, whom your own conscience shall find it to belong unto; Vae desiderantibus diem Domini; Woe be unto them that desire the day of the Lord, &c.

But yet if these words can be narrow in respect of persons, it is strange, for in respect of the sins that they are directed upon, they have a great compass; they reach from that high fin of Presumption, and contempt, and deriding the day of the Lord, the judgments of God, and they pass through the sin of Hypocrisy, when we make shift to make the world, and to make ourselves believe that we are in good case towards God, and would be glad that the day of the Lord, the day of judgment would come now; and then they come down to the deepest sin, the sin of Desperation, of an unnatural valuing of this life, when overwhelmed with the burden of other sins, or with God's punishment for them; men grow to a murmuring weariness of this life, and to an impatient desire, and perchance to a practice of their own ends: In the first acceptation, the day of the Lord is the day of his Judgments and afflictions in this life; In the second, the day of the Lord is the day of the general judgment; And in the third, the day of the Lord, is that Crepusculum that twilight between the two lives, or rather that Meridies noctis, as the Poet calls it, that noon of night, the hour of our death and transmigration out of this world. And if any desire any of these days of the Lord, out of any of these indispositions, out of presumption, out of hypocrisy, out of desperation, he falls within the compass of this Text, and from him we cannot take off this Vae desiderantibus.

First then the Prophet directs himself most literally upon the first sin of Presumption. They were come to say, that in truth whatsoever the Prophet declaimed in the streets, there was no such thing as Dies Domini, any purpose in God to bring such heavy judgments upon them; to the Prophets themselves they were come to say, You yourselves live parched and macerated in a starved and penurious fortune, and therefore you cry out that all we must die of famine too, you yourselves have not a foot of land a mong all the Tribes, & therefore you cry out that all the Tribes must be carried into another Land in Captivity. That which you call the Day of the Lord is come upon you, beggary, and nakedness, and hunger, contempt, and affliction, and imprisonment is come upon you, and therefore you will needs extend this day upon the whole State, but desideramus, we would fain see any such thing come to pass, we would fain see God go about to do any such thing, as that the State should not be wise enough to prevent him. To see a Prophet neglected, because he will not flatter, to see him despised below, because he is neglected above, to see him injured, insulted upon, and really damnified, because he is despised, All this is dies mundi, and not dies Domini, it is the ordinary course of the world, and no extraordinary day of the Lord, but that there should be such a stupor and consternation of mind and conscience as you talk of, and that that should be so expressed in the countenance, that they which had been purer then snow, whiter then milk, redder then Rubies, smoother then Sapphires, should not only be, as in other cases, pale with a sudden fear, but blacker in face then a coal, as the Prophet says there, that they should not be able to set a good face upon their miseries, nor disguise them with a confident countenance, that there should be such a consternation of countenance and conscience, and then such an excommunication of Church and State, as that the whole body of the children of Israel should be without King, without Sacrifice, without Ephod, without Terafim, Desideramus, We would fain see such a time, we would fain see such a God as were so much too hard for us.

They had seen such a God before, they had known that that God had formerly brought all the people upon the face of the earth so near to an annihilation, so near to a new creation, as to be but eight persons in the general flood, they had seen that God to have brought their own numerous, and multitudinous Nation, their 600000. men that came out of Egypt to that paucity, as that but two of them are recorded to enter into the land of promise, And could they doubt what that God could do, or would do upon them? Or as Jeremiah saith, Could they belie the Lord, and say it is not he? neither shall evil come upon us, or shall we see sword and famine? God expressed his anger thrice upon this people, in their State, in their form of government, First he expressed it in giving them a King, for though that be the best form of government in itself, yet for that people at that time, God saw it not to be the fittest, and so it was extorted from him, and he gave them their King in anger. Secondly, he expressed his anger in giving them two Kings in the desection of the ten Tribes, and division of the two Kingdoms. Thirdly, he expressed his anger in leaving them without any King after this Captivity which was prophesied here.

Now of those 6000. years, which are vulgarly esteemed to be the age and term of this world, 3000. were past before the division of the Kingdom, and presently upon the division, they argued à divisibili ad corruptibile, whatsoever may be broken and divided may come to nothing. It is the devils way to come to destruction by breaking of unions. There was a contract between God and Job, because Job loved and feared him, and there the devil attempts to draw away the head from the union, God from Job, with that suggestion, Doth Job serve thee for nothing? Doest thou get anything by this union? or doth not Job serve himself upon thee? There was a natural, an essential, an eternal union between the Father and the Son in the Trinity, and the devil sought to break that. If he could break the union in the Godhead, he saw not why he might not destroy the Godhead. The devil was Logician good enough, Omne divisibile corruptibile, whatsoever may be broken, may be annihilated. And the devil was Papist good enough, Schisma aequipollet heresy, Whosoever is a Schismatic, departed from the obedience of the Roman Church, is easily brought within compass of heresy too, because it is a matter of faith to affirm a necessity of such an obedience. And therefore the devil attempts to make that Schism in the Trinity, with that, Si filius Deies, Make these stones bread, If thou beest the Son of God, cast thyself down from this Pinnacle, that is, do something of thyself, exceed thy commission, and never attend so punctually all thy directions from thy Father. In Job's case he would draw the head from the union; In Christ's case he would alienate the Son from the Father, because division is the fore runner (and alas, but a little way the fore-runner) of destruction. And therefore as soon as that Kingdom was come to a division between ten and two Tribes, between a King of Judah, and a King of Israel, presently upon it, and in the compass of a very short time arose all those Prophets that prophesied of a destruction; as soon as they saw a division, they foresaw a destruction. And therefore when God had shown before what he could do, and declared by his Prophets then what he would do, Vae desiderantibus, Woe unto them that say, Let him make speed and hasten his work, that we may see it: That is, that are yet confident that no such thing shall fall upon us, and confident with a scorn, and fulfill that which the Apostle saith, There shall come in the latter days scoffers, saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning at the Creation. But God shall answer their scorn with scorn, as in Ezekiel, Son of man, What is that Proverb which you have in the Land of Israel, saying, The days are prolonged, and every vision fails? That is, the Prophets talk of great calamities, but we are safe enough, Tell them (says the Lord) I will make their proverb to cease, I will speak and it shall come to pass; in your days, O rebellious house, will I say the word, and per-form it.

And therefore ut quid vobis? what should you pretend to desire that day? what can ye get by that day? Because you have made a covenant with death, and are at an agreement with hell, when that Invadens flagellum, (as the Prophet with an elegant horror, if they can consist, expresses it) when that over-flowing scourge shall pass through, shall it not come to you? Why? who are you? have you thought of it before hand, considered it, digested it, and resolved, that in the worst that can fall, your vocal constancy, and your human valor shall sustain you from all dejection of spirit? what judgment of God soever shall fall upon you, whensoever this dies Domini shall break out upon you, you have light in yourselves, and by that light you shall see light, and pass through all incommodities. Be not deceived, this day of the Lord is darkness and not light, the first blast, the first breath of his indignation blows out thy candle, extinguishes all thy Wisdom, all thy Counsels, all thy Philosophical sentences, disorders thy Seneca, thy Plutarch, thy Tacitus, and all thy premeditations; for the sword of the Lord is a two-edged sword, it cuts bodily, and it cuts ghostly, it cuts temporally, and it cuts spiritually, it cuts off all worldly relief from others, and it cuts off all Christian patience, and good interpretation of God's correction in thine own heart.

Vt quid vobis? what can you get by that day? can you imagine that though you have been benighted under your own obduration and security before, yet when this day of the Lord, the day of affliction shall come, afflictio dabit intellectum, the day will bring light of it self, the affliction will give understanding, and it will be time enough to see the danger and the remedy both at once, and to turn to God by that light, which that affliction shall give? Be not deceived, dies Domini tenebrae, this day of the Lord will be darkness and not light. God hath made two great lights for man, the Sun, and the Moon; God doth manifest himself two ways to man, by prosperity, and adversity; but if there were no Sun, there would be no light in the Moon neither; If there be no sense of God in thy greatness, in thy abundance, it is a dark time to seek him in the clouds of affliction, and heaviness of heart. Experience teacheth us, that if we be reading any book in the evening, if the twilight surprise us, and it grows dark, yet we can read longer in that book which we were in before, then if we took a new book of another subject into our hands: If we have been accustomed to the contemplation of God in the Sunshine of prosperity, we shall see him better in the night of misery, then if we began but then, Vae desiderantibus. If you seem to desire that day of the Lord, because you do not believe that that day will come, or because you believe that when that day comes, it will be time enough to rectify yourselves, then, Vi quod vobis? this day shall be good for nothing to either of you, for to both you it shall be darkness, and not light.

The days which God made for man were darkness, and then light, still the evening and the morning made up the day. The day which the Lord shall bring upon secure and carnal men, is darkness without light, judgments without any beams of mercy shine through them, such judgments, as if we will consider the vehemency of them, we shall find them expressed in such an extraordinary heighth, as scarce anywhere else in Iercmy, Men shall ask one of another if they be in labor, whether they travel with child. Wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travel? Alas, because that day is great, and none is like it. This is the unexpected and unconsidered strangeness of that day, if we consider the vehemency, and if we consider the suddenness, the speed of bringing that day upon secure man. That is intimated very sufficiently in another story of the same Prophet, that when he had said to the Prophet Hananiah, That he should die within a year, when God saith, his judgments shall come shortly, if then we consider the vehemency, or the nearness of the day of the Lord, the day of his visitation, we shall be glad to say with that Prophet, As for me I have not desired that woeful day thou knowest, that is, I have neither doubted but that there shall be such a day, nor I have not put off my repentance to that day, for what can that do good to either of those dispositions, when to them it shall be darkness, and not light?

Now this Woe of this Prophet thus denounced against contemptuous scorners of the day of the Lord, as that day signifies afflictions in this life, have had no subject to work upon this congregation (as by God's grace there is none of that distemper here) it is a piece of a Sermon well lost; and God be blessed that it hath had no use, that nobody needed it. But as the Woe is denounced in the second acceptation against Hypocrites, so it is a chain-shot, and in every congregation takes whole ranks, and here Dies Domini is the last day of Judgment, and the desire in the Text is not, as before, a denying that any such day should be, but it is an hypocritical pretence, that we have so well performed our duties, as that we should be glad if that day would come, and then the darkness of the Text is everlasting condemnation.

For this day of the Lord then, the last day of judgment, consider only, or reflect only upon these three circumstances: First, there is Lex violata, a law given to thee and broken by thee. Secondly, there is Testis prolatus, Evidence produced against thee, and confessed by thee. And then there is Sententia lata, A judgment given against thee, and executed upon thee.

For the Law first, when that Law is To love God with all thy power, not to scatter thy love upon any other creature, when the Law is not to do, not to covet any ill, wilt thou say this Law doth not concern me, because it is impossible in itself, for this coveting, this first concupiscence is not in a man's own power? Why, this Law was possible to man, when it was given to man, for it was naturally imprinted in the heart of man, when man was in his state of innocence, and then it was possible, and the impossibility that is grown into it since, is by man's own fault. Man by breaking the Law, hath made the Law impossible, and himself inexcusable; wilt thou say with that man in the Gospel, Omnia haec à juventute, I have kept all this Law from my youth? From thy youth? remember thy youth well, and what Law thou keptst then, and thou wilt find it to be another Law, Lex in membris, A Law of the flesh warring against the Law of the mind, nay thou wilt find that thou didst never maintain a war against that Law of the flesh, but wast glad that thou camest to the obedience of that Law so soon, and art sorry thou canst follow that Law no longer.

This is the Law, and wilt thou put this to trial? Wilt thou say who can prove it? Who comes in to give evidence against me? All those whom thy solicitations have overcome, and who have overcome thy solicitations, good and bad, friends and enemies, Wives and Mistresses, persons most incompatible, and contrary, here shall join together, and be of the Jury. If S. Paul's case were so far thy case, as that thou wert in righteousness unblameable, no man, no woman able to testify against thee, yet when the records of all thoughts shall be laid open, and a retired and obscure man shall appear to have been as ambitious in his Cloister, as a pretending man at the Court, and a retired woman in her chamber, appear to be as licentious as a prostitute woman in the Stews, when the heart shall be laid open, and this laid open too, that some sins of the heart are the greatest sins of all (as Infidelity, the greatest sin of all, is rooted in the heart) and sin produced to action, is but a dilatation of that sin, and all dilatation is some degree of extenuation, (The body sometimes grows weary of acting some sin, but the heart never grows weary of contriving of sin.)

When this shall be that Law, and this the Evidence, what can be the Sentence, but that, Itemaledicti, Go ye accursed into ever lasting fire? where it is not as in the form of our judgment here, You shall be carried to the place of execution, but Ite, Go, our own consciences shall be our executioners, and precipitate us into that condemnation. It is not a Captivity of Babylon for 70. years, (and yet 70. years is the time of man's life, and why might not so many years punishment, expiate so many years sinful pleasure?) but it is 70. millions of millions of generations, for they shall live so long in hell, as God himself in heaven; It is not an imprisonment during the Kings pleasure, but during the Kings displeasure, whom nothing can please nor reconcile, after he shall have made up that account with his Son, and told him, These be all you died for, these be all you purchased, these be all whom I am bound to save for your sake, for the rest, their portion is everlasting destruction.

Under this law, under this evidence, under this sentence, vae desiderantibus, woe to them that pretend to desire this day of the Lord, as though by their own outward righteousness, they could stand upright in this judgment. Woe to them that say, Let God come when he will, it shall go hard, but he shall find me at Church, I hear three or four Sermons a week; he shall find me in my Discipline and Mortification, I fast twice a week; he shall find me in my Stewardship and Dispensation, I give tithes of all that I possess. When Hezekiah shown the Ambassadors of Babylon all his Treasure and his Armor, the malediction of the Prophet fell upon it, that all that Treasure and Armor which he had so gloriously shown, should be transported to them, to whom he had shown it, into Babylon. He that publishes his good works to the world, they are carried into the world, and that is his reward. Not that there is not a good use of letting our light shine before men too; for when S. Paul says, If I yet please men, I should not be the servant of Christ; and when he saith, I do please all men in all things: S. Augustine found no difficulty in reconciling those two; Navem quaero, says he, sed & patriam, When I go to the Haven to hire a Ship, it is for the love I have to my Country; When I declare my faith by my works to men, it is for the love I bear to the glory of God; but if I desire the Lord's day upon confidence in these works, vae scirpo, as Job expresses it, woe unto me poor rush, for (says he) the rush is green till the Sun come, that is, says Gregory upon that place, donec divina districtio in judicio candeat, till the fire of the judgment examine our works, they may have some verdure, some color, but vae desiderantibus, woe unto them that put themselves unto that judgment for their works sake.

For ut quid vobis? to what end is it for you? If your hypocritical security could hold out to the last, if you could delude the world at the last gasp, if those that stand about you then could be brought to say, he went away like a Lamb, alas the Lamb of God went not away so, the Lamb of God had his colluctations, disputations, expostulations, apprehensions of God's indignation upon him then: This security, call it by a worse name, stupidity, is not a lying down like a Lamb, but a lying down like Issachers Ass between two burdens, for two greater burdens cannot be, then sin, and the senselessness of sin. Vt quid vobis? what will ye do at that day, which shall be darkness and not light? God dwells in luce inaccessibili, in such light as no man by the light of nature can comprehend here, but when that light of grace which was shed upon thee here, should have brought thee at last to that inaccessible light, then thou must be cast in tenebras exteriores, into darkness, and darkness without the Kingdom of heaven. And if the darkness of this world, which was but a darkness of our making, could not comprehend the light, when Christ in his person, brought the light and offered repentance, certainly in that outward darkness of the next world, the darkness which God hath made for punishment, they shall see nothing, neither intramittendo, nor extramittendo, neither by receiving offer of grace from heaven, nor in the disposition to pray for grace in hell. For as at our inanimation in our Mothers womb, our immortal soul when it comes, swallows up the other souls of vegetation, and of sense, which were in us before; so at this our regeneration in the next world, the light of glory shall swallow up the light of grace. To as many as shall be within, there will need no grace to supply defects, nor eschew dangers, because there we shall have neither defects nor dangers. There shall be no night, no need of candle, nor of Sun, for the Lord shall give them light, and they shall reign forever and ever. There shall be no such light of grace, as shall work repentance to them that are in the light of glory; neither could they that are in outward darkness, comprehend the light of grace, if it could flow out upon them. First, you did the works of darkness, says the Apostle, and then that custom, that practice brought you to love darkness better then light; and then as the Prince of darkness delights to transform himself into an Angel of light; so by your hypocrisy you pretend a light of grace, when you are darkness it self, and therefore, at quid vobis? what will you get by that day which is darkness and not light?

Now as this Woe and commination of our Prophet had one aim, to beat down their scorn which derided the judgments of God in this world, and a second aim to beat down their confidence, that thought themselves of themselves able to stand in God's judgments in the next world; so it hath a third mark better then these two, it hath an aim upon them in whom a weariness of this life, when God's corrections are upon them, or some other mistaking of their own estate and case, works an over-hasty and impatient desire of death, and in this sense and acceptation, the day of the Lord is the day of our death and transmigration out of this world, and the darkness is still everlasting darkness. Now for this we take our lesson in Job, Vita militia, man's life is a warfare; man might have lived at peace, he himself chose a rebellious war, and now quod volens expetiit nolens portat, that war which he willingly embarked himself in at first, though it be against his will now, he must go through with. In Job we have our lesson, and in S. Paul we have our Law, Take ye the whole armor of God, that ye may be able having done all to stand; that is, that having overcome one temptation, you may stand in battle against the next, for it is not adoloscentia militia, but vita; that we should think to triumph if we had overcome the heat and intemperance of youth, but we must fight it out to our lives end. And then we have the reward of this lesson, and of this law limited, nemo coronatur, no man is crowned, except he fight according to this law that is, he persevere to the end. And as we have our lesson in Job, our rule and reward in the Apostle, who were both great Commanders in the warfare; so we have our example in our great General, Christ Jesus, Who though his soul were heavy, and heavy unto death, though he had a baptism to be baptized with, & coarctabatur, he was straightened, and in pain till it were accomplished, and though he had power to lay down his soul, and take it up again, and no man else could take it from him, yet he sought it out to the last hour, and till his hour came, he would not prevent it, nor lay down his soul. Vae desiderantibus, woe unto them that desire any other end of God's correction, but what he hath ordained and appointed, for ut quid vobis? what shall you get by choosing your own ways? Tenebrae & non lux; They shall pass out of this world, in this inward darkness of melancholy, and dejection of spirit, into the outward darkness, which is an everlasting exclusion from the Father of lights, and from the Kingdom of joy; their case is well expressed in the next verse to our Text, they shall fly from a Lyon, and a Bear shall meet them, they shall lean on a wall, and a Serpent shall bite them; they shall end this life by a miserable and hasty death, and out of that death shall grow an immortal life in torments, which no weariness, nor desire, nor practice can ever bring to an end.

And here in this acceptation of these words, this vae falls directly upon them who colouring and apparelling treason in martyrdom, expose their lives to the danger of the Law, & embrace death; these of whom one of their own society saith, that the Scevolaes, the Caves, the Porciaes, the Cleopatraes of the old time, were nothing to the Jesuits, for saith he, they could die once, but they lacked courage ad multas mortes; perchance he means, that after those men were once in danger of the Law, and forfeited their lives by one coming, they could come again and again, as often as the plentiful mercy of their King would send them away, Rapiunt mortem spontanea irruptione, says he to their glory, they are voluntary and violent pursuers of their own death, and as he expresses it, Crederes morbo adesos, you would think that the desire of death is a disease in them; A graver man then he mistakes their case and cause of death as much, you are (saith he, encouraging those of our Nation to the pursuit of death) in sacris septis ad martyrium saginati, fed up and fatned here for martyrdom, & Sacramento sanguinem spospondistis, they have taken an oath that they will be hanged, but that he in whom (as his great pattern God himself) mercy is above all his works, out of his abundant sweetness makes them perjured when they have so Tworne and vowed their own ruin. But those that send them, give not the lives of these men so freely, so cheaply as they pretend. But as in dry Pumps, men pour in a little water, that they may pump up more; so they are content to drop in a little blood of imaginary, but traitorous Martyrs, that, by that at last they may draw up at last the royal blood of Princes, and the loyal blood of Subjects; vae desiderantibus, woe to them that are made thus ambitious of their own ruin, ut quid vobis? Tenebrae & non lux, you are kept in darkness in this world, and sent into darkness from heaven into the next, and so your ambition, ad multas mortes, shall be satisfied, you die more then one death, morte moriemini, this death delivers you to another, from which you shall never be delivered.

We have now past through these three acceptations of these words, which have fallen into the contemplation, and meditation of the Ancients in their Expositions of this Text; as this dark day of the Lord, signifies his judgments upon Atheistical scorners in this world, as it signifies his last irrevocable, and irremediable judgments upon hypocritical relyers upon their own righteousness in the next world, and between both, as it signifies their uncomfortable passage out of this life, who bring their death inordinately upon themselves; and we shall shut up all with one signification more of the Lord's day, That, that is the Lord's day, of which the whole Lent is the Vigil, and the Eve. All this time of mortification; and our often meeting in this place to hear of our mortality, and our immortality, which are the two real Texts, and Subjects of all our Sermons; All this time is the Eve of the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That is the Lord's day, when all our mortification, and dejection of spirit, and humbling of our souls, shall be abundantly exalted in his resurrection, and when all our fasts and abstinence shall be abundantly recompensed in the participation of his body & his blood in the Sacrament; God's Chancery is always open, and his seal works always; at all times remission of sins may be sealed to a penitent soul in the Sacrament. That clause which the Chancellors had in their Patents under the Roman Emperors, Vt praerogativamgerat conscientiae nostrae, is in our commission too, for God hath put his conscience into his Church, & whose sins are remitted there, are remitted in heaven at all times; but yet dies Domini, the Lord's resurrection is as the full Terme, a more general application of this seal of reconciliation: But vae desiderantibus, woe unto them that desire that day, only because they would have these days of preaching, and prayer, and fasting, and trouble some preparation past and gone. Vae desiderantibus, woe unto them who desire that day, only, that by rece • • ing the Sacrament day, that they might delude the world, as though they were not of a contrary religion in their heart; vae desiderantibus, woe unto them who present themselves that day without such a preparation as becomes so fearful and mystesious an action, upon any carnal or collateral respects. Before that day of the Lord comes, comes the day of his crucifying; before you come to that day, if you come not to a crucifying of yourselves to the world, and the world to you, ut quid vobis? what shall you get by that day? you shall profane that day, and the Author of it, as to make that day of Christ's triumph, the triumph of Satan, and to make even that body and blood of Christ Jesus, Vehiculum Satanae, his Chariot to enter into you, as he did into Judas. That day of the Lord will be darkness and not light, and that darkness will be, that you shall not discern the Lord's body, you shall scatter all your thoughts upon wrangling and controversies, de modo, how the Lord's body can be there, and you shall not discern by the effects, nor in your own conscience, that the Lord's body is there at all. But you shall take it to be only an obedience to civil or Ecclesiastical constitutions, or only a testimony of outward conformity, which should be signaculum & viaticum, a seal of pardon for past sins, and a provision of grace against future. But he that is well prepared for this, strips himself of all these vae desiderantibus, of all these comminations that belong to carnal desires, and he shall be as Daniel was, vir desideriorum, a man of chaste and heavenly desires only; he shall desire that day of the Lord, as that day signifies affliction here, with David, Bonum est mihi quod humiliasti me, I am mended by my sickness, enriched by my poverty; and strengthened by my weakness; and with S. Bern. desire, Irascar is mihi Domine, O Lord be angry with me, for if thou chidest me not, thou considerest me not, if I taste no bitterness, I have no Physic; If thou correct me not, I am not thy son: And he shall desire that day of the Lord, as that day signifies, the last judgment, with the desire of the Martyrs under the Altar, Vsquequo Domine? How long, O Lord, ere thou execute judgment? And he shall desire this day of the Lord, as this day is the day of his own death, with S. Paul's desire, Cupio dissolvi, I desire to be dissolved, and to be with Christ. And when this day of the Lord, as it is the day of the Lord's resurrection shall come, his soul shall be satified as with marrow, and with fatness, in the body and blood of his Savior, and in the participation of all his merits, as entirely, as if all that Christ Jesus hath said, and done, and suffered, had been said, and done, and suffered for his soul alone. Enlarge our days, O Lord, to that blessed day, prepare us before that day, seal to us at that day, ratify to us after that day, all the days of our life, an assurance in that Kingdom, which thy Son our Savior hath purchased for us, with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood, To which glorious Son of God, &c.

SERMON XV. Preached at White-hall, March 8. 1621.

T His is a Text of the Resurrection, and it is not Easter yet; but it is Easter Eve; All Lent, is but the Vigill, the Eve of Easter: to so long a Festival as never shall end, the Resurrection, we may well begin the Eve betimes. Forty years long was God grieved for that Generation which he loved; let us be content to humble ourselves forty days, to be fitter for that glory which we expect. In the Book of God there are many Songs; there is but one Lamentation: And that one Song of Solomon, nay someone of David's hundred and fifty Psalms, is longer then the whole book of Lamentations. Make way to an everlasting Easter by a short Lent, to an undeterminable glory, by a temporary humiliation. You must weep these tears, tears of contrition, tears of mortification, before God will wipe all tears from your eyes; You must die this death, this death of the righteous, the death to sin, before this last enemy, Death, shall be destroyed in you, and you made partakers of everlasting life in soul and body too.

Our division shall be but a short, and our whole exercise but a larger paraphrase upon the words. The words imply first, That the Kingdom of Christ, which must be perfected, must be accomplished, (because all things must be subdued unto him) is not yet perfected, not accomplished yet. Why? what lacks it? It lacks the bodies of Men, which yet lie under the dominion of another. When we shall also see by that Metaphor which the Holy Ghost chooseth to express that in, which is that there is Hostis, and so Militia, an enemy, and a war, and therefore that Kingdom is not perfected, that he places perfect happiness, and perfect glory, in perfect peace. But then how far is any State consisting of many men, how far the state, and condition of any one man in particular, from this perfect peace? How truly a warfare is this life, if the Kingdom of Heaven it self, have not this peace in perfection? And it hath it not, Quia hostis, because there is an enemy: though that enemy shall not overthrow it, yet because it plots, and works, and machinates, and would overthrow it, this is a defect in that peace.

Who then is this enemy? An enemy that may thus far think himself equal to God, that as no man ever saw God, and lived; so no man ever saw this enemy and lived, for it is Death; And in this may think himself in number superior to God, that many men live who shall never see God; But Quis homo, is David's question, which was never answered, Is there any man that lives, and shall not see death? An enemy that is so well victualled against man, as that he cannot want as long as there are men, for he feeds upon man himself. And so well armed against Man, as that he cannot want Munition, while there are men, for he fights with our weapons, our own faculties, nay our calamities, yea our own pleasures are our death. And therefore he is Novissimus hostis, saith the Text, The last enemy.

We have other Enemies; Satan about us, sin within us; but the power of both those, this enemy shall destroy; but when they are destroyed, he shall retain a hostile, and triumphant dominion over us. But Vsque quo Domine? How long O Lord? forever? No, Abolebitur: we see this Enemy all the way, and all the way we feel him; but we shall see him destroyed; Abolebitur. But how? or when? At, and by the resurrection of our bodies: for as upon my expiration, my transmigration from hence, as soon as my soul enters into Heaven, I shall be able to say to the Angels, I am of the same stuff as you, spirit, and spirit, and therefore let me stand with you, and look upon the face of your God, and my God, so at the Resurrection of this body, I shall be able to say to the Angel of the great Council, the Son of God, Christ Jesus himself, I am of the same stuff as you, Body and body, Flesh and flesh, and therefore let me sit down with you, at the right hand of the Father in an everlasting security from this last enemy, who is now destroyed, death. And in these seven steps we shall pass apace, and yet clearly through this paraphrase.

We begin with this; That the Kingdom of Heaven hath not all that it must have to a consummate perfection, till it have bodies too. In those infinite millions of millions of generations, in which the holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity enjoyed themselves one another, and no more, they thought not their glory so perfect, but that it might receive an addition from creatures; and therefore they made a world, a material world, a corporeal world, they would have bodies. In that noble part of that world which Moses calls the Firmament, that great expansion from God's chair to his footstool, from Heaven to earth, there was a defect, which God did not supply that day, nor the next, but the fourth day, he did; for that day he made those bodies, those great, and lightsome bodies, the Sun, and Moon, and Stars, and placed them in the Firmament. So also the Heaven of Heavens, the Presence Chamber of God himself, expects the presence of our bodies.

No State upon earth, can subsist without those bodies, Men of their own. For men that are supplied from others, may either in necessity, or in indignation, be withdrawn, and so that State which stood upon foreign legs, sinks. Let the head be gold, and the arms silver, and the belly brass, if the feet be clay, Men that may slip, and molder away, all is but an Image, all is but a dream of an Image: for foreign helps are rather crutches then legs. There must be bodies, Men, and able bodies, able men; Men that eat the good things of the land, their own figs and olives; Men not macerated with extortions: They are glorified bodies that make up the kingdom of Heaven; bodies that partake of the good of the State, that make up the State. Bodies, able bodies, and lastly, bodies inanimated with one soul: one vegetative soul, all must be sensible and compassionate of one another's misery; and especially the Immortal soul, one supreme soul, one Religion. For as God hath made us under good Princes, a great example of all that, Abundance of Men, Men that live like men, men united in one Religion, so we need not go far for an example of a slippery, and uncertain being, where they must stand upon others Men's men, and must over-load all men with exactions, and distortions, and convulsions, and earthquakes in the multiplicity of Religions.

The Kingdom of Heaven must have bodies; Kingdoms of the earth must have them; and if upon the earth thou beest in the way to Heaven, thou must have a body too, a body of thine own, a body in thy possession: for thy body hath thee, and not thou it, if thy body tyrannize over thee. If thou canst not withdraw thine eye from an object of temptation, or withhold thy hand from subscribing against thy conscience, nor turn thine ear from a popular, and seditious Libell, what hast thou towards a man? Thou hast no soul, nay thou hast nobody: There is a body, but thou hast it not, it is not thine, it is not in thy power. Thy body will rebel against thee even in a sin: It will not perform a sin, when, and where thou wouldst have it. Much more will it rebel against any good work, till thou have imprinted Stigmata Jesus, The Markes of the Lord Jesus, which were but exemplar in him, but are essential, and necessary to thee, abstinencies, and such discreet disciplines, and mortifications, as may subdue that body to thee, and make it thine: for till then it is but thine enemy, and maintains a war against thee; and war, and enemy is the Metaphor which the holy Ghost hath taken here to express a want, a kind of imperfectnesse even in Heaven it self. Bellum Symbolum mali. As peace is of all goodness, so war is an emblem, a Hieroglyphique, of all misery; And that is our second step in this paraphrase.

If the feet of them that preach peace, be beautiful, (And, O how beautiful are the feet of them that preach peace? The Prophet Isaiah asks the question, 52.7. And the Prophet Nahum asks it, 1.15. and the Apostle S. Paul asks it, Rom. 10.15. They all ask it, but none answers it) who shall answer us, if we ask, How beautiful is his face, who is the Author of this peace, when we shall see that in the glory of Heaven, the Center of all true peace? It was the inheritance of Christ Jesus upon the earth, he had it at his birth, he brought it with him, Glory be to God on high, peace upon earth. It was his purchase upon earth, He made peace (indeed he bought peace) through the blood of his Cross. It was his Testament, when he went from earth; Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. Divide with him in that blessed Inheritance, partake with him in that blessed Purchase, enrich thyself with that blessed Legacy, his Peace.

Let the whole world be in thy consideration as one house; and then consider in that, in the peaceful harmony of creatures, in the peaceful succession, and connection of causes, and effects, the peace of Nature. Let this Kingdom, where God hath blessed thee with a being, be the Gallery, the best room of that house, and consider in the two walls of that Gallery, the Church and the State, the peace of a royal, and a religious Wisdom; Let thine own family be a Cabinet in this Gallery, and find in all the boxes thereof, in the several duties of Wife, and Children, and servants, the peace of virtue, and of the father and mother of all virtues, active discretion, passive obedience; and then lastly, let thine own bosom be the secret box, and reserve in this Cabinet, and then the best Jewell in the best Cabinet, and that in the best Gallery of the best house that can be had, peace with the Creature, peace in the Church, peace in the State, peace in thy house, peace in thy heart, is a fair Model, and a lovely design even of the heavenly Jerusalem which is Visio pacis, where there is no object but peace.

And therefore the holy Ghost to intimate to us, that happy perfectness, which we shall have at last, and not till then, chooses the Metaphor of an enemy, and enmity, to avert us from looking for true peace from anything that presents it self in the way. Neither truly could the holy Ghost imprint more horror by any word, then that which intimates war, as the word enemy does. It is but a little way that the Poet hath got in description of war, I am seges est, that now, that place is ploughed where the great City stood: for it is not so great a depopulation to translate a City from Merchants to husbandmen, from shops to ploughes, as it is from many Husbandmen to one Shepherd, and yet that hath been often done. And all that, at most, is but a depopulation, it is not a devastation, that Troy was ploughed. But, when the Prophet Isaiah comes to the devastation, to the extermination of a war, he expresses it first thus; Where there were a thousand Vineyards at a cheap rate, all the land become briars and thorns: That is much; but there is more, The earth shall be removed out of her place; that Land, that Nation, shall no more be called that Nation, nor that Land: But, yet more then that too; Not only, not that people, but no oath shall ever inhabit it. It shall never be inhabited from generation to generation, neither shall Shepherds be there; Not only no Merchant, nor Husbandman, but no depopulator: none but Owls, and Ostriches, and Satires, Indeed God knows what, Ochim, and Ziim, words which truly we cannot translate.

In a word, the horror of War is best discerned in the company he keeps, in his associates. And when the Prophet God brought War into the presence of David, there came with him Famine, and Pestilence. And when Famine entered, we see the effects; It brought Mothers to eat their Children of a span long; that is, as some Expositors take it, to take medicines to procure abortions, to cast their Children, that they might have Children to eat. And when War's other companion, the Pestilence entered, we see the effects of that too: In less then half the time that it was threatened for, it devoured threescore and ten thousand of David's men; and yet for all the vehemence, the violence, the impetuousness of this Pestilence, David chose this Pestilence rather then a War. Militia and Malitia, are words of so near a sound, as that the vulgat Edition takes them as one. For where the Prophet speaking of the miseries that Jerusalem had suffered, says, Finita militia ejus, Let her warfare be at an end, they read, Finita malitia ejus, Let her misery be at an end; War and Misery is all one thing. But is there any of this in heaven? Even the Saints in heaven lack something of the consummation of their happiness, Quia hostis, because they have an enemy. And that is our third and next step.

Michael and his Angels fought against the devil and his Angels; though that war ended in victory, yet (taking that war, as divers Expositors do, for the fall of Angels) that Kingdom lost so many inhabitants, as that all the souls of all that shall be saved, shall but fill up the places of them that fell, and so make that Kingdom but as well as it was before that war: So ill effects accompany even the most victorious war. There is no war in heaven, yet all is not well, because there is an enemy; for that enemy would kindle a war again, but that he remembers how ill he sped last time he did so. It is not an enemy that invades neither, but only detaines: he detaines the bodies of the Saints which are in heaven, and therefore is an enemy to the Kingdom of Christ; He that detaines the souls of men in Superstition, he that detaines the hearts and allegiance of Subjects in an hesitation, a vacillation, an irresolution, where they shall fix them, whether upon their Sovereign, or a foreign power, he is in the notion, and acceptation of enemy in this Text; an enemy, though no hostile act be done. It is not a war, it is but an enemy; not an invading, but a detaining enemy; and then this enemy is but one enemy, and yet he troubles, and retards the consummation of that Kingdom.

Antichrist alone is enemy enough; but never carry this consideration beyond thyself. As long as there remains in thee one sin, or the sinful gain of that one sin, so long there is one enemy, and where there is one enemy, there is no peace. Gardners that husband their ground to the best advantage, sow all their seeds in such order, one under another, that their Garden is always full of that which is then in season. If thou sin with that providence, with that seasonableness, that all thy spring, thy youth be spent in wantonness, all thy Summer, thy middle-age in ambition, and the ways of preferment, and thy Autumn, thy Winter in indevotion and covetousness, though thou have no farther taste of licentiousness, in thy middle-age, thou hast thy satiety in that sin, nor of ambition in thy last years, thou hast accumulated titles of honor, yet all the way thou hast had one enemy, and therefore never any perfect peace. But who is this one enemy in this Text? As long as we put it off, and as loath as we are to look this enemy in the face, yet we must, though it be Death. And this is Vestigium quartum, The fourth and next step in this paraphrase.

Surge & descend in domum figuli, says the Prophet Jeremiah, that is, say the Expositors, to the consideration of thy Mortality. It is Surge, descend, Arise and go down: A descent with an ascension: Our grave is upward, and our heart is upon Jacob's Ladder, in the way, and nearer to heaven. Our daily Funerals are some Emblemes of that; for though we be laid down in the earth after, yet we are lifted up upon men's shoulders before. We rise in the descent to death, and so we do in the descent to the contemplation of it. In all the Potters house, is there one vessel made of better stuff then clay? There is his matter. And of all forms, a Circle is the perfectest, and art thou loath to make up that Circle, with returning to the earth again?

Thou must, though thou be loath. Fortasse, says S. Augustine, That word of contingency, of casualty, Perchance, In omnibus ferme rebus, praeterquam in morte locum habet: It hath room in all human actions excepting death. He makes his example thus: such a man is married; where he would, or at least where he must, where his parents, or his Guardian will have him; shall he have Children? Fortasse, says he, They are a young couple, perchance they shall: And shall those Children be sons? Fortasse, they are of a strong constitution, perchance they shall: And shall those sons live to be men? Fortasse, they are from healthy parents, perchance they shall: And when they have lived to be men, shall they be good men? Such as good men may be glad they may live? Fortasse, still; They are of virtuous parents, it may be they shall: But when they are come to that Morientur, shall those good men die? here, says that Father, the Fortasse vanishes; here it is omnino, certe, sine dubitatione; infallibly, inevitably, irrecoverably they must die. Doth not man die even in his birth? The breaking of prison is death, and what is our birth, but a breaking of prison? As soon as we were clothed by God, our very apparel was an Emblem of death. In the skins of dead beasts, he covered the skins of dying men. As soon as God set us on work, our very occupation was an Emblem of death; It was to dignity the earth; not to dignity pitfals for other men, but graves for ourselves. Hath any man here forgot today, that yesterday is dead? And the Bell tolls for today, and will ring out anon; and for as much of everyone of us, as appertains to this day. Quotidie morimur, & tamen nos esse aeternos putamus, says S. Jerome; We die every day, and we die all the day long; and because we are notabsolutely dead, we call that an eternity, an eternity of dying: And is there comfort in that state? why, that is the state of hell itself, Eternal dying, and not dead.

But for this there is enough said, by the Moral man; (that we may respite divine proofs, for divine points anon, for our several Resurrections) for this death is merely natural, and it is enough that the moral man says, Mors lex, tributum, officium mortalium. First it is lex, you were born under that law, upon that condition to die: so it is a rebellious thing not to be content to die, it opposes the Law. Then it is Tributum, an imposition which nature the Queen of this world lays upon us, and which she will take, when and where se lift; here a young man, there an old man, herea happy, there a miserable man; And so it is a seditious thing not to be content to die, it opposes the prerogative. And lastly, it is Officium, men are to have rheir turns, to take their time, and then to give way by death to successors; and so it is Incivile, inofficiosum, not to be content to die, it opposes the frame and form of government. It comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes. The eshes of an Oak in the Chimney, are no Epitaph of that Oak, to tell me how high or how large that was; It tells me not what flocks it sheltered while it stood, nor what men it hurt when it fell. The dust of great persons graves is speechless too, it says nothing, it distinguishes nothing: As soon the dust of a wretch whom thou wouldest not, as of a Prince whom thou couldest not look upon, will trouble thine eyes, if the wind blow it thither; and when a whirl-wind hath blown the dust of the Church-yard into the Church, and the man sweeps out the dust of the Church into the Church-yard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again, and to pronounce, This is the Patrician, this is the noble flower, and this the yeomanly, this the Plebeian bran. Sois the death of Jezebel (Ieabel was a Queen) expressed; They shall not say, this is Jezebel; not only not wonder that it is, not pity that it should be, but they shall not say, they shall not know, This is Jezebel. It comes to all, to all alike; but not alike welcome to all. To die too willingly, out ofimpatience to wish, or out of violence to hasten death, or to die too unwillingly, to murmur at God's purpose reveled by age, or by sickness, are equal distempers; and to harbor a disobedient loathsomeness all the way, or to entertain it at last, argues but an irreligious ignorance; An ignorance, that death is in nature but Expiratio, a breathing out, and we do that every minute; An ignorance that God himself took a day to rest in, and a good man's grave is his Sabbath; An ignorance that Abel the best of those whom we can compare with him, was the first that died. Howsoever, whensoever, all times are God's times: Vocantur obni ne diutiús vexentur á noxiis, mali ne diutiús bonos persequantur, God calls the good to take them from their dangers, and God takes the bad to take them from their trumph. And therefore neither grudge that thou goest, nor that worse stay, for God can make his profit of both; Aut ideo vivit ut corrigatur, aut utper allum bonus exerceatur; God reprieves him to mend him, or to make another better by his exercise; and not to exult in the misery of another, but to glorify God in the ways of his justice, let him know, Quantumcun{que} seró, subitó ex hac óitatollitur, qui finem praevidere nescivit: How long soever he live, how long soever he lie sick, that man dies a sudden death, who never thought of it, If we consider death in S. Paul's Statutum est, It is decreed that all men must die, there death is indifferent; If we consider it in his Mori lucrum, that is an advantage to die, there death is good; and so much the vulgat Edition seems to intimate, when ( Deut. 30. 19) whereas we read, I have set before you life and death, that reads it, Vitam & honum, Life and that which is good. If then death be at the worst indifferent, and to the good, good, how is it Hostis, an enemy to the Kingdom of Christ? for that also is Vestigium quintum, the fifth and next step in this paraphrase.

First God did not make death, says the Wiseman, And therefore S. Augustine makes a reasonable prayer to God, Ne permittas Domine quod nonfecisti, dominari Creatur ae quam fecisti; Suffer not O Lord, death, whom thou didst not make, to have dominion over me whom thou didst. Whence then came death? The same Wiseman hath shown us the father, Through envy of the devil, came death into the world; and a wiser then he, the holy Ghost himself hath shown us the Mother, By sin came death into the world. But yet if God have naturalized death, taken death into the number of his servants, and made Death his Commissioner to punish sin, and he do but that, how is Death an enemy? First, he was an enemy in invading Christ, who was not in his Commission, because he had no sin; and still he is an enemy, because still he adheres to the enemy. Death hangs upon the edge of every persecutors sword; and upon the sting of every calumniators, and accusers tongue. In the Bull of Phalaris, in the Bulls of Basan, in the Bulls of Babylon, the shrewdest Bulls of all, in temporal, in spiritual persecutions, ever since God put an enmity between Man, and the Serpent, from the time of Cain who began in a murder, to the time of Antichrist, who proceeds in Massacres, Death hath adhered to the enemy, and so is an enemy.

Death hath a Commission, Stipendium peccati mors est, The reward of sin Death, but where God gives a Supersedeas, upon that Commission, Vivo Ego, nolo mortem, As I live saith the Lord, I would have no sinner die, not die the second death, yet Death proceeds to that execution: And where as the enemy, whom he adheres to, Serpent himself, hath power but In calcaneo, upon the heel, the lower, the mortal part, the body of man, Death is come up into our windows, saith the Prophet, into our best lights, our understandings, and benights us there, either with ignorance, before sin, or with senselessness after: And a Sheriff that should burn him, who were condemned to be hanged, were a murderer, though that man must have died: To come in by the door, by the way of sickness upon the body, is, but to come in at the window by the way of sin, is not deaths Commission; God opens not that window.

So then he is an enemy, for they that adhere to the enemy are enemies: And adhering is not only a present subministration of supply to the enemy (for that death doth not) but it is also a disposition to assist the enemy, then when he shall be strong enough to make benefit of that assistance. And so death adheres; when sin and Satan have weakened body and mind, death enters upon both. And in that respect he is Vltimus hostis, the last enemy, and that is Sextum vestigium, our sixth and next step in this paraphrase.

Death is the last, and in that respect the worst enemy. In an enemy, that appears at first, when we are or may be provided against him, there is some of that, which we call Honor: but in the enemy that reserves himself unto the last, and attends our weak estate, there is more danger. Keep it, where I intend it, in that which is my sphere, the Conscience: If mine enemy meet me betimes in my youth, in an object of temptation, (so Joseph's enemy met him in Putifars Wife) yet if I do not adhere to this enemy, dwell upon a delightful meditation of that sin, if I do not fuel, and foment that sin, assist and encourage that sin, by high diet, wanton discourse, other provocation, I shall have reason on my side, and I shall have grace on my side, and I shall have the History of thousand that have perished by that sin, on my side; Even Spittles will give me soldiers to fight for me, by their miserable example against taht sin; nay perchance sometimes the virtue of that woman, whom I solicit, will assist me. But when I lie under the hands of that enemy, that hath reserved himself to the last, to my last bed, then when I shall be able to stir no limb in any other measure then a Feaver or a Palsy shall shake them, when everlasting darkness shall have an inchoation in the present dimness of mine eyes, and the everlasting gnashing in the present chattering of my teeth, and the everlasting worm in the present gnawing of the Agonies of my body, and anguishes of my mind, when the last enemy shall watch my remedilsse body, and my desconsolate soul there, there, where not the Physician, in his way, perchance not the Priist in hi, shall be able to give any assistance, And when he hath sported himself with my misery upon that stage, my death-bed, shall shift the Scene, and throw me from that bed, into the grave, and there triumph over me, God knows, how many generations, till the Redeemer, my Redeemer, the Redeemer of all me, body, as well as soul, come again; As death is Novissimus hostis, the enemy which watches me, at my last weakness, and shall hold me, when I shall be no more, till that Angel come, Who shall say, and swear that time shall be no more, in that consideration, in that apprehension, he is the powerfullest, the fearefulest enemy; and yet evern there this enemy Abolebitur, he shall be destroyed, which is, Septimum vestigium, our seventh and last step in this paraphrase.

This destruction, this abolition of this last enemy, is by the Resurrection; for the Text is part of an argument for the Resurrection. And truly, it is a fair intimation, and testimony of an everlasting end in that state of the Resurrection (that no time shall end it) that we have it presented to us in all the parts of time; in the past, in the present, and in the future. We had a Resurrection in prophecy; we have a Resurrection in the present working of God's Sprit; we shall have a Resurrection in the final consummation. The Prophet speaks in the furture, He will swallow up death in victory, there it is Abolebit: All the Erangelists speak historically, of matter of fact, in them it is Abolevit. And here in this Apostle, it is in the present, Aboletur, now he is destroyed. And this exhibites unto us a threefold occasion of advancing our devotion, in considering a threefold Resurrection; First, a Resurrection from dejections and calamities in this world, a Temporary Resurrection; Secondly, a Resurrection from sin, a Spiritual Resurrection; and then a Resurrection; Secondly, a Resurrection.

A calamitate; When the Prophets speak of a Resurrection in the Old Testament, for the most part their principal intention is, upon a temporal restitution from calamities that oppress them then. Neither doth Calvin carry those emphatical words, which are so often cited for a proof of the last Resurrection: That he knows his Redeemer lives, that he knows he shall stand the last man upon earth, that though his body be destroyed, yet in his flesh and with his eyes he shall see God, to any higher sense then so, that how low soeve he be brought, to what desperate state soever he be reducedin the eyes of the world, yet he assures himself of a Resurrection, a reparation, a restitution to his former bodily health, and worldly fortune which he had before, And such a Resurrection we all know Job had.

In that famous, and most considerable prophetical vision which God exhibited to Ezekiel, where God set the Prophet in a valley of very many, and very dry bones, and invites the several joints to knit again, tyes them with their old sinews, and ligaments, clothes them in their old flest, wraps them in their old skin, and calls life into them again, God's, principal intention in that vision was thereby to give them an assurance of a Resurrection from their present calamity, not but that there is also good evidence of the last Resurrection in that vision too; Thus far God argues with them áre nota; from that which they knew before, the final Resurrection, he assures them that which they knew not till then, a present Resurrection from those pressures: Remember by this vision that which you all know already, that at last I shall re-unite the dead, and dry bones of all men in a general Resurrection: And them if you remember, if you consider, if you look upon that, can you doubt, but that I who can do that, can also recollect you, from your present desperation, and give you a Resurrection to your former temporal happiness? And this truly arises pregnantly, necessarily out of the Prophets answer; God asks him there, Son of man, cna these bones live? And he answers, Domine tu nósti, O Lord God thou knowest. The Prophet answers according to God's intention in the question. If that had been for their living in the last Resurrection, Ezekiel would have answered God as Martha answered Christ, when he said, Thy brother Lazarus shall rise again; I know that he shall rise again at the Resurrection at the last day; but when the question was, whether men so macerated, so seattered in this world, could have a Resurrection to their former temprorall happiness, here, that puts the Prophet to his Domine tu nósti, It is in thy breast to proposeit, it is in thy hand to execute it, whether thou do it, or do it not, thy name be glorified; It falls not within our conjecture, which way it shall please thee to take for this Resurrection, Domine tu nósti, Thou Lord, and thou only knowest; Which is also the sense of those words, Others were tortured, and accepted not a deliverance, that they might obtain a better Resurrection: A present deliverance had been a Resurrection, but to be the more sure of a better hereafter, they less respected that; According to that of our Savior, He that finds hi life, shall lose it; He that fixeth himself too earnestly upon this Resurrection, shall lose a better.

This is then the prophetical Resurrection for the future, but a future in this world; That if Rulers take counsel against the Lord, the Lord shall have their counsel in derision; If they take arms against the Lord, the Lord shall break their Bows, and cut their Spears in sunder; If they hiss, and gnash their teeth, and say, we have swallowed him up; If we be made their by-word, their parable, their proverb, their libel, the theme and burden of their songs, as Job complains, yet whatsoever fall upon me, dmage, distress, scorn, or Hostis ultimus, death itself, that death which we consider here, death of possessions, death of estimation, death of health, death of contentment, yet Abolebitur, it sahll be destroyed in a Resurrection, in the return of the light of God's countenance upon me even in this world. And this is the first Resurrection.

But this first Resurrection, which is but from temporal calamities, doth so little concern a true and established Christian, whether it come or no, (for still Job's Basis is his Basis, and his Centre, Etiamsi occiderit, though he kill me, kill me, kill me, in all these several deaths, and give me no Resurrection in this world, yet I will trust in him) as that, as though this first resurrection were no resurrection, not to be numbered among the rersurrections, S. John calls that which we call the second, which is from sin, the first resurrection: Blessed and holy is be, who hath part in the firstresurrection: And this resurrection, Christimplies, when he says, Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the ovyce of the Son of God; and they that hear it shall live: That is, by the voice of the word of life, the Gospel of repentance, they shall have a spiritual resurrection to a new life. S. Augustine and Lactantius both were so hard in believing the roundness of the earth, that they thought that those homines pensiles, as they call them, those men that hang upon the other cheek of the face of the earth, those Antipodes, whose feet are directly against ours, must necessarily fall from the earth, if the earth be round. But whither should they fall? If they fall, they must fall upwards, for heaven is above them too as it is to us. So if the spiritual Antipodes of this world, the Sons of God, that walk with feet opposed in ways contrary to the sons of men, shall be said to fall, when they fall to repentance, to mortification, to a religious negligence, and contempt of the pleasures of this life, truly their fall is up wards, they fall towards heaven, God gives breath unto the people upon the earth, says the Prophet, Et spiritum his, qui calcant illam. Our Translation carries that no farther, but that God gives breath to people upon the earth, and spirit to them that walk thereon; But Irenaeus makes a useful difference between afflatus and spiritus, that God gives breath to all upon earth, but his spirit only to them, who tread in a religious scorn upon earthly things.

Is it not a strange phrase of the Apostle, Mortify your members; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affections? He does not say, mortify your members against those sins, but he calls those very sins, the members of our bodies, as though we were elemented and compacted of nothing but sin, till we come to this resurrection, this mortification, which is indeed our vivification; Till we bear in our body, the dying of our Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our body. God may give the other resurrection from worldly misery, and not give this. A widow may be rescued from the sorrow and solitariness of that state, by having a plentiful fortune; there she hath one resurrection; but the widow that liveth in pleasure, is dead while she lives; she hath no second resurrection; and so in that sense, even this Chapel may be a Church-yard, men may stand, and sit, and kneel, and yet be dead; and any Chamber alone may be a Golgotha, a place of dead men's bones, of men not come to this resurrection, which is the renunciation of their beloved sin.

It was inhumanely said by Vitellius, upon the death of Otho, when he walkedin the field of carcasses, where the battle was fought; O how sweet a perfume is a dead enemy! But it is a divine saying to thy soul, O what a savor of life, unto life, is the death of a beloved sin! What an Angelical comfort was that to Joseph and Mary in Egypt, after the death of Herod, Arise, for they are dead, that sought the childes life! And even that comfort is multiplied upon thy soul, when the Spirit of God says to thee, Arise come to this resurrection: for that Herod, that sin, that sought the life, the everlasting life of this child, the child of God, thy soul, is dead, dead by repentance, dead by mortification. The highest cruelty that story relates, or Poets imagine, is when a persecutor will not afford a miserable man death, not be so merciful to him, as to take his life. Thou hast made thy sin, thy soul, thy life; inanimated all thy actions, all thy purposes with that sin. Miserere animatuae, be so merciful to thyself, as to take away that life by mortification, by repentance, and thou art come to this Resurrection: and thugh a man may have the former resurrection, and not this, peace in his fortune, and yet not peace in his conscience, yet whosoever hath this second, hath an infallible seal of the third resurrection too, to a fullness of glory in body, as well as in soul. For Spiritus maturam efficit carnem & capacem incorruptelae; this resurrection by the spirit, mellowes the body of man, and makes that capable of everlasting glory, which is the last weapon, by which the last enemy death, shall be destroyed; A morte.

Upon that pious ground that all Scriptures were written for us, as we are Christians, that all Scriptures conduce to the proof of Christ, and of the Christian state, it is the ordinary manner of the Fathers to make all that David speaks historically of himself, and all that the Prophet speaks futurely of the Jews, if those place may be referred to Christ, to refer them to Christ primarily, and but by reflection, and in a second consideration upon David or upon the Jews, Thereupon do the Father (truly I think more generally more unanimely then in any other place of Scripture) take that place of Ezekile which we spake of before, to be primarily intended of the last resurrection, & but secondarily of the Jews restitution. But Gasper Sanctius a learned Jesuit, (that is not so rare, but an ingenuous Jesuit too) though he be bound by the Council Trent to interpret Scriptures according to the Fathers, yet he here ackowledges the whole truth, that God's purpose was to prove, by that which they did know, which was the general resurrection, that which they knew not, their temporal restitution. Tertullian is vehement at first, but after, more supple, Allegoricae Scripturae, says he, resurrectionem subradiant aliae, aliae determinant: Some figurative places of Scripture, do intimate a resurrection, and some manifest it; and of those manifest places he takes this vision of Ezekiel to be one. But he comes after to this, Sit & corporum, & rerum, & meánihilinterest; let it sighnifie a temporal resurrection, so it may signify the general resurrection of our bodies too, says he, and I am well satisfied; and then the truth satisfies him, for it doth signify both. It is true that Tertullian says, De vacuo similitudo non competit; If the vision be but a comparison, if there were no such thing as a resurrection, the comparison did not hold. De nullo par abola non convenit, says he, and truly; If there were no resurrection to which that Parable might have relation, it were no Parable. All that is true; but there was a resurrection always known to them, always believed by them, and that made their present resurrection from that calamity, the more easy, the more intelligible, the more credible, the more discernible to them.

Let therefore God's method, be thy method; fixe thyself firmly upon that belief of the penerall resurrection, and thou wilt never doubt of either of the particular resurrections, either from sin, by God's grace, or from worldly calamities, by God's power. For that last resurrection is the ground of all. By that Verevicta mors, says Irenaeus, this Last enemy, death, is truly destroyed, because his last spoil, the body, is taken out of his hands. The same body, eadem ovis, (as the same Father notes) Christ did not fetch another sheep to the flock, in the place of that which was lost, but the same sheep: God shall not give me another, abetter body at the resurrection, but the same body made better; for Sinon haberet caro salvari, neutiquam verbum Dei caro factum fuisset, If the flesh of man were not to be saved, the Anchor of salvation would never have taken the flesh of man upon him.

The punishment that God laid upon Adam, In dolore & in sudore, In sweat, and in sorrow sbalt thou eat thy bread, is but Donecreverteris, till man return to dust: but when Man is returned to dust, God returns to the remembrance of that promise, Awake and sing yethat dwell in the dust. A mercy already exhibited to us, in the person of our Savior Christ Jesus, in whom, Per primitias benedixit campo, (says S. Chrysostom ) as God by taking a handful for the first Fruits, gave ablessing to the wholw field; so he hath sealed the bodies of all mankind to his glory, by pre-assuming the body of Christ to that glory. For by that there is now Commercium inter Coelum & terram; there is a Trade driven, a Staple established between Heaven and earth; Ibi caronostra, hic Spiritus ejus; Thither have we sent our flest, and hither hath he sent his Spirti.

This is the last abolition of this enemy, Death; for after this, the bodies of the Saints he cannot touch, the bodes of the damned he cannot kill, and if he could, he were not therein their enemy, but their friend. This is that blessed and glorious State, of which, when all the Apostles met to make the Creed, they could say no more, but Credo Resurrectionem, I heleeve the Resurrection of the body; and when those two Reverend Fathers, to whom it belongs, shall come to speak of it, upon the day proper for it, in this place, and if all the Bishops, that ever met in Councils should meet them here, they could but second the Apostles Credo, with their Anathema, We believe, and woe be unto them that do not believe the Resurrection of the body; but in gong about to express it, the lips of an Angel would be uncircumcised lips, and the tongue of an Archangel would stammer. I offer not therefore at it: but in respect of, and with relation to that blessed State, according to the doctrine, and practice of our Church, we do pray for the dead; for the militant Church upon earth, and the trimphant Church in Heaven, and the whole Catholic Church in Heaveen, and earth; we do pray that God will be pleased to hasten that Kingdom, that we with all others departed in the true Faith of his holy Name, may have this perfect consummation, both of body and soul, in his everlasting glory, Amen.

SERMON XVI. preached at White-hall, the first Friday in Lent. 1622.

I Am now but upon the Compassion of Christ. There is much difference between his Compassion and his Passion, as much as between the men that are to handle them here. But Lacryma pass, ionis Chrisi est vicaria: A great personage may speak of his Passion, of his blood; My vicargae is to speak of his Compassion and his tears. Let me chafe the wax, and melt your souls in a bath of his Tears now, Let him set to the great Seal of his effectual passion, in his blood, then. It is a Common place I know to speak of tears: I would you knew as well, it were a common practice, to shed them. Though it be not so, yet bring S. Bernard's, patience, Libenter audiam, qui non sibi plausum, sed mihi planctum moveat; be willing to hear him, that seeks not your acclamation to himself, but your humiliation to his and your God; not to make you praise with them that praise, but to make you weep with them that weep, And Jesus wept.

The Masorites (the Masorites are the Critiques upon the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament) cnnot tell us, who divided the Chapters of the Old Testament into verses; Neither can any other tell us, who did it in the New Testament. Whoever did it seems to have stopped in an amazement in this Text, and by making an entire verse of these two words, Jesus wept, and no more, to intimate that there needs no more for the exalting of our devotion to a competent heighth, then to consider, how, and where, and when, and why Jesus wept. There is not a shorter verse in the Bible, not a larger Text. There is another as short; Semper gaudete, Rejoice evermore, and of that holy Joy, I may have leave to speak here hereafter, more seasonably, in a more Festival time, by my ordinary service. This is the season of general Compunction, of general Mortification, and no man privileged, for Jesus wept.

In that Letter which Lentulus in said to have written to the Senate of Rome, in which he gives some Characters of Christ, he says, That Christ was never seen to laugh, but to weep often. Now in what number he limits his often, or upon what testimony he grounds him number, we know not. We take knowledgethat he wept thrice. He wept here, when he mourned with them that mourned for Lazarus; He wept again, when he drew near to Jerusalem, and looked upon that City; And he wept a third time in his Passion. There is but one Evangelist, but this, S. John, that tells us of these first tears, the rest say nothing of them; There is but one Evangelist, S. Luke, that tells us of his second tears, the rest speak not of those; There is no Evangelist, but there is an Apostle that tells us of his third tears, S. Paul says, That in the days of his flesh, be offered up prayers with strong cries, and tears; And those tears, Expositors of all sides refer to his Passion, though some to his Agony in the Garden, some to his Passion on the Corsse; and these in my opinion most fitly; because those words of S. Paul belong to the declaration of the Priesthood, and of the Sacrifice of Christ; and for that function of his, the Cross was the Altar; and therefore to the Cross we fixe those third tears. The first were Human tears, the second were Prophetical, the third were Pontifical, appertaining to the Sarifice. The first were shed in a Condolency of a human and natural calamity fallen upon one family; Lazarus was dead: The second were shed in Contemplation of future calamity upon a Nation; Jerusalem was to be destroyed: The third, in Contemplation of sin, and the everlasting punishments due to sin, and to such sinners, as would make no benefit of that Sacrifice, which he offered in offering himself. His friend was dead, and then Jesus wept; He justified naturail affectins and such offices of piety: Jerusalem was tobe destroyed, and then Jesus wept; He commiserated public and national calamities, though a private person: His very giving of himself for sin, was to become to a great many ineffectual; and then Jsus wept; He declared how indelible the natural stain of sin is, that not such sweat as hi, such tears, such blood as his could absolutely wash it out of man's nature. The tears of the text are as a Spring, a Well. belonging to onehoushold the Sisters of Lazarus: The tears over Jerusalem, are as a River belonging to a whole Country: The tears upon the Cross, are as the Sea belonging to all the world; and though literally there fall no more into our text, then the Spring, yet because the Spring flows into the River, and the River into the Sea, and that wheresoever we find that Jesus wept, we find our Text, (for our Text is but that, Iisus wept ) therefore by the leave and light of his blessed Spirit, we shall look upon those lovely, those heavenly eye, through this glass of his own tears, in all these three lines, as he wept here over Lazarus, as he wept there over Jerusalem, as he wept upon the Cross over all us. For so often Jesus wept.

Fitst then, Jesus wept Hum • nitus, he took a necessary occasion to show that he was true Man. He was now in hand with the greatest Miracle that ever he did, the raising of Lazarus, so long dead. Could we but do so in our spiritual raising, what a blessed harvest were that? What a comfort to find one man here today, raised from his spiritual death, this day twelve-month? Christ did it every year, and every year he improved his Miracle, In the first year, he raised the Governors Daughter: se was newly dead, and as yetin the house. In the beginning of sin, and whilst in the house, in the house of God, in the Church, in a glad obedience to God's Ordinances and Institutions there, for the reparation and resuscitation of dead souls, the work is not so hard. In his second year, Christ raised the Widows Son; and him he found without, ready to be buried. In a man grown cold and stiff in sin, impenetrable, inflexible by denouncing the Judgments of God, almost buried in a stupidity, and insensibleness of his being dead, there is more difficulty. But in his third year, Christ raised this Lazarus; he had been long dead, and buried, and in probability, puttrified after four days.

This Miracle Christ meant to make a pregnant proof of the Resurrection, which was his principal intention therein. For, the greatest arguments against the Resurrection, being for the most part of this kind, when a Fish eats a man, and another man eats that fish, or when one man eats another, how shall both these men rise again? when a body is resolved in the grave to the first principles, or is passed into other substances, the case is somewhat near the same; and therefore Christ would work upon a body near that state, abody putrefied. And truly, in our srirituall raising of the dead, to raise a sinner putrefied in his own earth, resolved in his own dung, especially that hath passed many transformations, from shape to shape, from sin to sin, (hi hath been a Salamander and lived in the fire, in the fire successvely, in the fire of lust in his youth, and in his age in the fire of Ambition; and then he hath been a Serpent, a Fish, and lived in the waters. , in the water successively, in the troubled water of sedition in his youth, and in his age in the cold waters of indevotion) how shall we raise this Salamander and this Serpent, when this Serpent and this Salamander is all one person, and must have contrary music to charm him, contrary physic to cure him? To raise a man resolved into diverse substances, scattered into diverse forms of several sins, is the greatest work. And there. fore this Miracle (which implied that) S. Basil calls Miraculum in Miraculo, a pregnant, a double Miracle. For here is Mortuus redivivus, A dead man lives; that had been done before; but Alligatus ambulat, says Basil; he that is settered, and manacled, and tied with many difficulties, he walks.

And therefore as this Miracle raised him most estmation, so (for they ever accompany one another) it raised him most envy: Envy that extended beyond him, to Lazarus himself, who had done nothing; and yet, The chief Priests consulted how they might put Lizarus to death, because by reason of him, many believed in Jesus. A disease, a distemper, a danger which no time shall ever be free from, that whereforer there is a coldness, a disaffection to God's Cause, those who are any way occasionally instrumenta of God's glory, sahll find cold affection. If they killed Lazarus, had not Christ done enough to let them see that he could raise him again? for Caeca sevitia, sialiud videtur mertuus, aliud occisus; It was a blind malice, if they thought, that Christ could raise a man naturally dead, and could not if he were violently killed. This then being his greatest Miracle, preparing the hardest Article of the Creed, the Resurrection of the body, as the Mirracle it self declared sufficiently his Divinity, that nature, so in this declaration that he was God, he would declare that he was man too, and therefore Jesus wept.

He wept as man doth weep, and he wept as a man may weep; for these tears were Testes naturae, non Indices diffidentiae, They declared him to be true man, but no distrustful, no inordinate man. In Job there is a question asked of God, Hast thou eyes of flesh, and doest thou see, as man sees? Let this question be directed to God manifested in Christ, and Christ will weep out an answer to that question, I have eyes of flesh, and I do weep as man weeps. Not as sinful man, not as s man, that had het fall his bridle, by which he should trune his horse: Not as a man that were cast from the rudder, by which he should steer his Ship: Not as a man that had lost his interest and power in his affections, and passions: Christ wept not so. Christ mingt go farther that way, then any other man: Christ might ungirt himself, and give more scope and liberty to his passions, then any other man: both because he had no Original sin within, to drive him, no inordinate love without to draw him, when his affections were moved; which all other men have.

God says to the Jews, That they had wept in his ears; God had heard them weep: but for what, and how? they wept for flesh. There was a tincture, there was a deep die of murmuring in their tears. Christ goes as far in the passion, in his agony, and he comes to a passionate deprecation, in his Tristis anima, and in the Si possibile, and in the Transeat calix. But as all these passions were sanctified in the root, from which no bitter leaf, no crooked twig could spring, so they were instantly washed with his Veruntamen, a present and a full submitting of all to God's pleasure, Yet not my will O Father, but thine be done. It will not be safe for any man to come so near an excess of passions, as he may find some good men in the Scriptures to have done: That because he hears Moses say to God, Dele me, Blot my name out of the book of life, Therefore he may say, God damn me, or I renounce God. It is not safe for a man to expose himself to a temptation, because he hath seen another pass through it. Every man may know his own Byas, and to what sin that diverts him: The beauty of the person, the opportunity of the place, the importunity of the party, being his Mistress, could not shake Joseph's constancy. There is one such example, of one that resisted a strong temptation: But then there are in one place, two men together, that sinned upon their own bodies, Her and Onan, then when no temptation was offered, nay when a remedy against temptation was ministered to them.

Some man may be chaster in the Stews, then another in the Church; and some man will sin more in his dreams, then another in his discourse. Every man must know how much water his own vessel draws, and not to think to sails over, wheresoever he hath seen anothe (he knows not with how much labor) shove over: No nor to adventure so far, as he may have reason to be confident in his own strength: For thugh he may be safe in himself, yet he may sinin anogher, if by his indiscrete, and improvident example, another be scandalized. Christ was always safe; He was led of the Spirit: of what spirit? his own Spirit: Led willingly into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil. No other man might do that; but he who was able to say to the Sun, Siste sol, was able to say to Satan, Siste Lucifer. Christ in another place gave such scope to his affections, and to others interpretations of his actions, that his frineds and kinsfolds thught him mad, besides himself: But all this while, Christ had his own actions, and passions, and their interpretations in his own power: he could do what he would. Here in our Text, Jesus was troubled, and he groaned; and vehemently, and often, his affections were stirred: but as in a clan glass, if water be stirred and troubled, though it may conceive a little light froth, yet it contracts no foulness in that clean galsse, the affections of Christ were moved, but so: in that holy vessel they would contract no foulness, no declination towards inordinateness. But then every Christian is not a Christ; and therefore as he that would fast forty days, as Christ did, might starve; and he that would whip Merchants out of the Temple, as Christ did, might be knocked down in the Temple; So he knowing his own inclinations, or but the general ill inclination of all mankind, as he is infected with Original sin, should converse so much with publicans and sinners, might participate of their sins. The rule is, we must avoid inordinateness of affections; but when we come to examples of that rule, ourselves well understood by ourselves, must be our own exaples; for it is not always good to go too far, as some good men have gone before.

Now though Christ were far from both, yet he came nearer to an excess of passion, then to an Indolencie, to a senselessness, to a privation of natural affections. Inordinatenesse of affections may sometimes make some men like some beasts; but indolencie, absence, emptiness, privation of affections, makes any man at all times, like stones, like dirt. In novissimis, saith S. Peter, In the last, that is, in the worst days, in the dregs, and lees, and tartar of sin, then shall come men, lovers of themselves; and that is ill enough in man; for that is an affection peculiar to God, to love himself. Non speciale vitium, sed radix omnium vitiorum, says the School in the mouth of Aquinas: self. love cannot be called a distinct sin, but the root of all sins. It is true that Justin Martyr says, Philosophanti finis est Deo assimilari, The end of Christian Philosophy is to be wise like God; but not in this, to love ourselves; for the greatest sin that ever was, and that upon which even the blood of Christ Jesus hath not wrought, the sin of Angels was that, Similis ero Altissimo, to be like God. To love ourselves, to be satisfied in ourselves, to find an omnisufficiency in ourselves, is an intrusion, an usurpation upon God: And even God himself who had that omni-sufficiency in himself, conceived a conveniency for his glory, to draw a Circumference about that Center, Creatures about himself, and to shed forth lines of love upon all them, and not to love himself alone. Self-love in man sinks deep: but yet you see, the Apostle in his order, casts the other sin lower, that is, into a worse place, To be without natural affections.

S. Augustine extends these natural affections, to Religious affections, because they are natural to a supernatural man, to a regenerate man, who naturally loves those, that are of the household of the faithful, that profess the same truth of Religion: and not to be affected with their distresses, when Religion it self is distressed, in them, is impiety. He extends these affections to Moral affections; the love of Eminent and Heroicall virtues in any man: we ought to be affected with the fall of such men. And he extends them to civil affections, the love of friends; not to be moved in their behalf, is argument enough that we do not much love them.

For our case in the Text, These men whom Jesus found weeping, and wept with them, were none of his kindred: They were Neighbors, and Christ had had a conversation, and contracted a friendship in that Family; He loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus, says the Story: and he would let the world see that he loved them: for so the Jews argued that saw him weep, Behold how he loved them; without outward declarations, who can conclude an inward love? to assure that, Jesus wept.

To an inordinateness of affections it never came; to a natural tenderness it did; and so far as to tears; and then who needs be ashamed of weeping? Look away far from me, for I will weep bitterly, says Jerusalem in Isaiah. But look upon me, says Christ in the Lamentations, Behold and see if ever there were any sorrow, any tears like mine: Not like his in value, but in the root as they proceeded from natural affection, they were tears of imitation, and we may, we must weep tears like his tears. They scourged him, they crowned him, they nailed him, they pierced him, and then blood came; but he shed tears voluntarily, and without violence: The blood came from their ill, but the tears from his own good nature: The blood was drawn, the tears were given. We call it a childish thing to weep, and a womanish; and perchance we mean worse in that then in the childish; for therein we may mean falsehood to be mingled with weakness. Christ made it an argument of his being man, to weep, for though the lineaments of man's body, eyes and ears, hands and feet, be ascribed to God in the Scriptures, though the affections of man's mind be ascribed to him, (even sorrow, nay Repentance it self, is attributed to God) I do not remember that ever God is said to have wept: It is for man. And when God shall come to that last Act in the glorifying of Man, when he promises, to wipe all tears from his eyes, what shall God have to do with that eye that never wept?

He wept out of a nuturall tenderness in general; and he wept now out of a particular occasion. What was that? Quia mortuus, because Lazarus was dead. We stride over many steps at once; waive many such considerable circumstances as these; Lazarus his friend was dead, therefore he wept, Lazarus, the staff and sustentatio of that family was dead, he upon whom his Sisters relied, was dead, therefore he wept. But I stop only upon this one step, Quia mortuus, that he was dead. Now a good man is not the worse for dying, that is true and capable of a good sense, because he is established in a better world: but yet when he is gone out of this world he is none of us, he is no longer a man. The stronger opinion in the School, is, That Christ himself, when he lay dead in the grave, was no man. Though the God head never departed from the Carcasse, (there was no divorce of that Hypostatical union) yet because the Human soul was departed from it, he was no man. Hugo de S. Victor. who thinks otherwise, that Christ was a man then, thinks so upon a weak ground: He thinks, that because the soul is the form of man, the soul is man; and that therefore the soul remaining, the man remains. But it is not the soul, but the union of the soul, that makes the man. The Master of the Sentences, Peter Lombard, that thinks so too, that Christ was then a man, thinks so upon as weak a ground: He thinks that it is enough to constitute a man, that there be a soul and body, though that soul and body be not united; but still it is the union that makes the man: And therefore when he is disunited, dead, he is none of us, he is no man; and therefore we weep how well soever he be. Abraham was loath to let go his wife, though the King had her: A man hath a natural loathness to let go his friend, though God take him to him.

S. Augustine says, that he knew well enough, that his mother was in heaven; and S. Ambrose, that he knew well enough that his master Theodosius the emperor was in heaven, but because they saw not in what state they were, they thought that something might be asked at God's hands in their behalf; and so out of a human and pious officiousness, in a devotion perchance indigested, uncocted, and retaining yet some crudities, some irresolutions, they strayed into prayers for them after they were dead. Lazarus his sisters made no doubt of their brothers salvation; they believed his soul to be in a good estate: And for his body, they told Christ, Lord we know that he shall rise at the last day: And yet they wept.

Here, in this world, we who stay, lack those who are gone out of it: we know they shall never come to us; and when we shall go to them, whether we shall know them or no, we dispute. They who think that it conduces to the perfection of happiness in heaven, that we should know one another, think piously if they think we shall. For, as for the maintenance of public peace, States, and Churches, may think diversely in points of Religion, that are not fundamental, and yet both be true and Orthodoxall Churches; so for the exaltation of private devotion in points that are not fundamental, divers men may think diversely, and both be equally good Christians. Whether we shall know them there, or no, is problematicall and equal; that we shall not till then, is dogmatical and certain: Therefore we weep. I know there are Philosophers that will not let us weep, nor lament the death of any: And I know that in the Scriptures there are rules, and that there are instructions conveyed in that example, that David left mourning as soon as the child was dead; And I know that there are Authors of a middle nature, above the Philosophers, and below the Scriptures, the Apocryphal books, and I know it is said there, Comfort thyself, for thou-shalt do him no good that is dead, Et teipsum pessimabis (as the vulgat reads it) thou shalt make thyself worse and worse, in the worst degree. But yet all this is but of inordinate lamentation; for in the same place, the same Wise man says, My Son, let thy tears fall down over the dead; weep bitterly and make great moan, as he is worthy. When our Savior Christ had uttered his consummatum est, all was finished, and their rage could do him no more harm, when he had uttered his In manus tuas, he had delivered and God had received his soul, yet how did the whole frame of nature mourn in Eclipses, and tremble in earth-quakes, and dissolve and shed in pieces in the opening of the Temple, Quia mortuus, because he was dead.

Truly, to see the hand of a great and mighty Monarch, that hand that hath governed the civil sword, the sword of Justice at home, and drawn and sheathed the foreign sword, the sword of war abroad, to see that hand lie dead, and not be able to nip or fillip away one of his own worms (and then Quis homo, what man, though he be one of those men, of whom God hath said, Ye are gods, yet Quis homo, what man is there that lives, and shall not see death? ) To see the brain of a great and religious Counselor (and God bless all from making, all from calling any great that is not religious) to see that brain that produced means to becalme gusts at Council tables, storms in Parliaments, tempests in popular commotions, to see that brain produce nothing but swarms of worms and no Proclamation to disperse them; To see a reverend Prelate that hath resisted Heretics & Schismatics all his life, fall like one of them by death, & perchance be called one of them when he is dead. To re-collect all, to see great men made no men, to be sure that they shall never come to us, not to be sure, that we shall know them when we come to them, to see the Lieutenants and Images of God, Kings, the sinews of the State, religious Counselors, the spirit of the Church, zealous Prelates, And then to see vulgar, lgnorant, wicked, and facinorous men thrown all by one hand of death, into one Cart, into one common Tide-boat, one Hospital, one Almshouse, one Prison, the grave, in whose dust no man can say, This is the King, this is the Slave, this is the Bishop, this is the Heretic, this is the Counselor, this is the Fool, even this miserable equality of so unequal persons, by so foul a hand, is the subject of this lamentation, even Quia mortuus, because Lazarus was dead, Jesus wept.

He wept even in that respect, Quia mortuus, and he wept in this respect too, Quia non adhibita media, because those means which in appearance might have saved his life, by his default were not used, for when he came to the house, one sister, Martha says to him, Lord if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died; and then the other sister, Mary says so too, Lord if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died: They all cry out, that he who only, only by coming, might have saved his life, would not come. Our Savior knew in himself that he abstained to better purpose, and to the farther glory of God: for when he heard of his death, he said to his Disciples, I am glad for your sakes that I was not there. Christ had certain reserved purposes which conduced to a better establishing of their faith, and to a better advancing of God's Kingdom, the working of that miracle. But yet because others were able to say to him, it was in you to have saved him, and he did not, even this Quia non adhibita media, affected him; and Jesus wept.

He wept, Etsi quatriduanus, though they said unto him, He hath been four days dead, and stinks. Christ doth not say, there is no such matter, he doth not stink; but though he do, my friend shall not lack my help. Good friends, useful friends though they may commit some errors, and though for some misbehaviours they may stink in our nostrils, must not be derelicted, abandoned to themselves. Many a son, many a good heir, finds an ill air from his Father; his Fathers life stinks in the nostrils of all the world, and he hears everywhere exclamations upon his Fathers usury, and extortion, and oppression: yet it becomes him by a betterlife, and by all other means to rectify and redeem his Fathers fame. Quatriduanus est, is no plea for my negligence in my family; to say, My son, or my servant hath proceeded so far in ill courses, that now it is to no purpose to go about to reform him, because Quatriduanus est. Quatriduanus est, is no plea in my pastoral charge, to say that seducers, and practicers, and persuaders, and solicitors for superstition, enter so boldly into every family, that now it is to no purpose to preach religious wariness, religious discretion, religious constancy. Quatriduanus est, is no plea for my Usury, for my Simony; to say, I do but as all the world doth, and hath used to do a long time. To preach there where reprehension of growing sin is acceptable, is to preach in season; where it is not acceptable, it is out of season; but yet we must preach in season, and out of season too. And when men are so refractary, as that they forbear to hear, or hear and resist our preaching, we must pray; and where they despise or forbid our praying, we must lament them, we must weep: Quatriduanus erat, Lazarus was far spent, yet Jesus wept.

He wept, Though he knew that Lazarus were to be restored, and raised to life again. for as he meant to declare a great good will to him at last, so he would utter some by the way; he would do a great miracle for him, as he was a mighty God; but he would weep for him too, as he was a good natured man. Truly it is no very charitable disposition, if I give all at my death to others, if I keep all all my life to myself. For how many families have we seen shaked, ruined by this distemper, that though the Father mean to alien nothing of the inheritance from the Son at his death, yet because he affords him not a competent maintenance in his life, he submits his Son to an encumbring of his fame with ignominious shiftings, and an encumbring of the estate with irrecoverable debts. I may mean to feast a man plentifully at Christmas, and that man may starve before in Lent: Great persons may think it in their power to give life to persons and actions by their benefits, when they will, and before that will be up and ready, both may become incapable of their benefits. Jesus would not give this family, whom he pretended to love, occasion of jealousy, of suspicion, that he neglected them; and therefore though he came not presently to that great work, which he intended tended at last, yet he left them not comfortless by the way, Jesus wept.

And so (that we may reserve some minutes for the rest) we end this part, applying to every man that blessed exclamation of S. Ambrose, Ad monumentum hoc digner is accedere Domine Jesus, Lord Jesus be pleased to come to this grave, to weep over this dead Lazarus, this soul in this body: And though I come not to a present rising, a present deliverance from the power of all sin, yet if I can feel the dew of thy tears upon me, if I can discern the eye of the compassion bent towards me, I have comfort all the way, and that comfort will flow into an infallibility in the end.

And be this the end of this part, to which we are come by these steps. Jesus wept, That as he shown himself to be God, he might appear to be man too: he wept not in ordinately; but he came nearer excess then indolency: He wept because he was dead; and because all means for life had not been used; he wept, though he were far spent; and he wept, though he meant to raise him again.

We pass now from his human to his prophetical tears, from Jesus weeping in contemplation of a natural calamity fallen upon one family, Lazarus was dead, to his weeping in contemplation of a National calamity foreseen upon a whole people; Jerusalem was to be destroyed. His former tears had sOme of the spirit of prophecy in them; for therefore says Epiphanius, Christ wept there, because he foresaw how little use the Jews would make of that miracle, his human tears were prophetical, and his prophetical tears are human too, they rise from good affections to that people. And therefore the same Author says, That because they thought it an uncomely thing for Christ to weep for any temporal thing, some men have expunged and removed that verse out of S. Luke's Gospel, That Jesus when he saw that City, wept: But he is willing to be proposed, and to stand forever for an example of weeping in contemplation of public calamities; Therefore Iesuswept.

He wept first, Inter acclamationes, in the midst of the congratulations and acclamations of the people, then when the whole multitude of his Disciples cried out, Vivat Rex, Blessed be the King, that comes in the name of the Lord, Jesus wept. When Herod took to himself the name of the Lord, when he admitted that gross flattery, It is a God and not a man that speaks, It was no wonder that present occasion of lamentation fell upon him. But in the best times, and under the best Prince, (first, such is the natural mutability of all worldly things; and then (and that especially) such is the infiniteness, and enormousnesse of our rebellious sin) then is ever just occasion of fear of worse, and so of tears. Every man is but a spunge, and but a spunge filled with tears: and whether you lay your right hand or your left upon a full spunge, it will weep. Whether God lay his left hand, temporal calamities, or his right hand, temporal prosperity; even that temporal prosperity comes always accompanied with so much anxiety in ourselves, so much uncertainty in it self, and so much envy in others, as that that man who abounds most, that spunge shall weep.

Jesus wept, Inter acclamationes, when all went we enough with him; to show the slipperiness of worldly happiness, and then he wept Inter judicia; then when himself was in the act of denouncing judgments upon them, Jesus wept, To show with how ill a will he inflicted those judgments, and that themselves, and not he, had drawn those judgments upon them. How often do the Prophets repeat that phrase, Onus visions, O the burden of the judgments that I have seen upon this, and this people! It was a burden that pressed tears from the Prophet Isaiah, I will water thee with my tears, O Heshbon: when he must pronounce judgments upon her, he could not but weep over her. No Prophet so tender as Christ, nor so compassionate; and therefore he never takes rod into his hand, but with tears in his eyes. Alas, did God lack a footstool, that he should make man only to tread and trample upon? Did God lack glory, and could have it no other way, but by creating man therefore, to afflict him temporally here, and eternally hereafter? whatsoever Christ weeps for in the way of his mercy, it is likely he was displeased with it in the way of his Justice: If he weep for it, he had rather it were not so. If then those judgments upon Jerusalem were only from his own primary, and positive, and absolute Decree, without any respect to their sins, could he be displeased with his owneact, or weep and lament that which only himself had done? would God ask rael? if God lay open to that answer, We die therefore, because you have killed us; Jerusalem salem would not judge her self, therefore Christ judged her; Jerusalem would not weep for herself, and therefore Jesus wept; but in those tears of his, he shown, that he had rather her own tears had averted, and washed away those judgments.

He wept, cum appropinquavit, says the Text there, when Jesus came near the City and saw it then he wept; not till then. If we will not come near the miseries of our brethren, if we will not see them, we will never weep over them, never be affected towards them. It was cum ill, not cumilli, when Christ himself, not when his Disciples, his followers, who could do Jerusalem no good, took knowledge of it. It was not cum illi, nor it was not cum illa, not when those judgments drew near; It is not said so; neither is there any time limited in the Text, when those judgments were to fall upon Jerusalem; it is only said generally, indefinitely, these days shall come upon her. And yet Christ did not ease himself upon that, that those calamities were remote and far off, but though they were so, and not to fall till after his death, yet he lamented future calamities then, then Jesus wept. Many such little Brookes as these fall into this River, the consideration of Christ's Prophetical tears; but let it be enough to have sprinkled these drops out of the River; That Jesus, though a private person, wept in contemplation of public calamities; That he wept in the best times, fore-seeing worse; That he wept in their miseries, because he was no Author of them: That he wept not till he took their miseries into his consideration: And he did weep a good time, before those miseries fell upon them. There remain yet his third tears, his pontifical tears, which accompany his sacrifice; Those tears we called the Sea, but a Sea which must now be bounded with a very little sand.

To sails apace through this Sea; these tears, the tears of his Cross, were expressed by that inestimable weight, the sins of all the world. If all the body were eye, argues the Apostle in another place; why, here all the body was eye; every pore of his body made an eye by tears of blood, and every inch of his body made an eye by their bloody scourges. And if Christ's looking upon Peter, made Peter weep, shall not his looking upon us here, with tears in his eyes, such tears in such eyes, springs of tears, rivers of tears, seas of tears make us weep too? Peter who wept under the weight of his particular sin, wept bitterly: how bitterly wept Christ under the weight of all the sins of all the world? In the first tears. Christ human tears (those we called a spring) we fetched water at one house, we condoled a private calamity in another; Lazarus was dead. In his second tears, his Prophetical tears, we went to the condoling of a whole Nation; and those we called a River. In these third tears, his pontifical tears, tears for sin, for all sins (those we call a Sea) here is Mare liberum, a Sea free and open to all; Every man may sails home, home to himself, and lament his own sins there.

I am far ftom concluding all to be impenitent, that do not actually weep and shed tears; I know there are constitutions, complexions, that do not afford them. And yet the worst Epithet, which the best Poet could fixe upon Pluto himself, was to call him Illachrymabilis, a person that could not weep. But to weep for other things, and not to weep for sin, or if not to tears, yet not to come to that tenderness, to that melting, to that thawing, that resolving of the bowels which good souls feel; this is a spunge (I said before, every man is a spunge) this is a spunge dried up into a Pumice stone; the lightness, the hollowness of a spunge is there still, but (as the Pumice is) dried the Aetnaes of lust, of ambition, of other flames in this world.

I have but three words to say of these tears of this weeping. What it is, what it is for, what it does; the nature, the use, the benefit of these tears, is all. And in the first, I forbear to insist upon S. Basils Metaphor, Lachrymae sudor animi male sani; Sin is my sickness, the blood of Christ Jesus is my Bezar, tears is the sweat that that produceth. I forbear Greg. Nyssens metaphor too, Lachryma sanguis cordis defoecatus; Tears are out best blood, so agitated, so ventilated, so purified, so rarified into spirits, as that thereby I become Idem spiritus, one spirit with my God. That is large enough, and embraces all, which S. Gregory says, That man weeps truly, that soul sheds true tears, that considers seriously, first, ubi fuit in innocentia, the blessed state which man was in, in his integrity at first, ubifuit; and then considers, ubi est in tentationibus, the weak estate that man is in now, in the midst of temptations, where, if he had no more, himself were temptation too much, ubi est; and yet considers farther, ubi erit, in gehenna, the insupportable, and for all that, the inevitable, theirreparable, and for all that, undeterminable torments of hell, ubi erit; and lastly, ubi non erit, in coelis, the inexpressible joy and glory which he loses in heaven, ubi non erit, where he shall never be. These four to consider seriously, where man was, where he is, where he shall be, where he shall never be, are four such Rivers, as constitute a Paradise. And as a ground may be a weeping ground, though it have no running River, no constant spring, no gathering of waters in it; so a soul that can pour out itself into these religious considerations, may be a weeping soul, though it have a dry eye: This weeping then is but a true sorrow, (that was our first) and then, what this true sorrow is given us for, and that is our next Consideration.

As water is in nature a thing indifferent, in may give life, (so the first livin things that were, were in the water) and it may destroy life, (so all things living upon the earth, were destroyed in the water) but yet though water may, though it have done good and bad, yet water does now one good office, which no ill quality that is in it can equal, it washes our souls in Bap?isme; so though there be good tears and bad tears, tears that wash away sin, and tears that are sin, yet all tears have this degree of good in them, that they are all some kind of argument of good nature, of a tender heart; and the Holy Ghost loves to work in Wax, and not in Marble. I hope that is but merely Poetical which the Poet says, Discunt lachrymare decenter; that some study to weep with a good grace; Quo{que} volunt plorant empore, quo{que}mode, they make use and advantage of their tears, and weep when they will. But of those who weep not when they would, but when they would not, do half employ their tears upon thatfor which God hath given them that sacrifice upon sin. God made the Firmament, which he called Heaven, after it had divided the waters: After we have distinguished our tears, natural from spiritual, worldly from heavenly, then there is a Firmament established in us, then there is a heaven opened to us: and truly, to cast Pearls before Swine, will scarce be better resembled, then to shed tears which resemble pearls for worldly losses.

Are there examples of menopassionately enamored upon age? or if upon age, upon deformity? If there be example of that, are they not examples of scorn too? do not all others laugh at their tears? and yet such is our passionate doting upon this world. Mundi facies, says S. Augustine, (and even S. Augustine himself hath scarce said anything more pathetically) tanta rerani labe contrita, ut etiam speciem seductionis amiserit: The face of the whold world is so defaced, so wrinkled, so ruined, so deformed, as that man might be trusted with this world, and there is no jealousy, no suspicion that this world should be able to minister any occasion of temptation to man: Speciem seductionis amisit. And yet, Qui in seipso aruit, in nobis floret, says S. Gregory, as wittily as S. Augustine, (as it is easy to be witty, easy to extend an Epigram to a Satire, and a Satire to an Invective, in declaiming against this world) that world which finds it self truly in an Autumn, in it self, finds it self in a spring, in our imaginations. Labenti haeremus, says that Father; Et cum labentem sistere non possumus, cum ipso labimur; The world passes away, and yet we cleave to it; and when we cannot stay it from passing away, we pass away with it.

To mourn passionately for the love of this world, which is decrepit, and upon the deathbed, or imoderately for the death of any that is passed out of this world, is not the right use of tears. That hath good use which Chrysologus notes, that when Christ was told of Lazarus death, he said he was glad; when he came to raise him to life, then he wept: for though his Disciples gained by it, (they were confirmed by a Miracle) though the family gained by it, (they had their Lazarus again) yet Lazarus himself lost by it, by being re-imprisoned, re-committed, re-submitted to the manifold incommodities of this world. When our Savior Christ forbad the women to weep for him, it was becausethere was nothing in him, for tears to work upon; no sin: Ordinem flendi docuit, says S. Bernard, Christ did not absolutely forbid tears, but regulate and order their tears, that they might weep in the right place; first for sin. David wept for Absalom; He might imagine, that he died in sin, he wept not for the Child by Bathsheba, he could not suspect so much danger in that. Exitus aquarum, says David, Rivers of waters ran down from mine eyes, why? Quia illi, Because they, who are they? not other men, as it is ordinarily taken; but Quia illi, Because mine own eyes (so Hilary, and Ambrose, and August take it) have not kept thy Laws: As the calamities of others, so the sins of others may, but our own sins must be the object of our sorrow. Thou shalt offer to me, says God, the first of thy ripe fruits, and of thy liquors, as our Translation hath it: The word in the Original ginall is Vedingnacha, lachrymarum, and of thy tears: Thy first tears must be to God for sin: The second and third may be to nature and civility, and such secular offices. But Liquore ad lippitudinem apto quisquamne ad pedes lavandos abutetur? It is S. Chrysostom's exclamation and admiration, will and wash his feet in water for sore eyes? will any man embalm the Carcasse of the world, which he treads underfoot, with those tears which should embalm his soul? Did Joseph of Arimathea bestow any of his perfumes (though he brought a superfluous quantity, a hundred pound weight for one body) yet did he bestow any upon the body of either of the Thieves? Tears are true sorrow, that you heard before; True sorrow is for sin, that you have heard now; All that remains is how this sorrow works, what is does.

The Fathers have infinitely delighted themselves in this descant, the blessed effect of holy tears. He amongst them that reemembers us, that in the old Law all Sacrifices were washed, he means, That our best sacrifice, even prayer it self, receives an improvement, a dignity, by being washed in tears. He that remembers us, that if any room of out house be on fire, we run for water, means that in all temptations, we should have recourse to tears. He that tells us, that money being put into a bason, is seen at a farther distance, if there be water in the bason, then if it be empty, means also, that our most precious devotions receive an addition, a multiplication by holy tears. S. Bernard means all that they all mean in that, Cor lachrymas nesciens durum, impurum, A hard heart is a foul heart. Would you shut up the devil in his own channel, his channel of brimstone, and make that worse? S. hierom tells the way, Plus tua lachryma, &c. Thy tears torment him more then the fires of hell; will you needs have holy water? truly, true tears are the holiest water. And for Purgatory, it is liberally confessed by a Jesuit, Non minùs efficax, &c. One tear will do thee as much good, as all the flames of Purgatory. We have said more then once, that man is a spunge; And in Codice scripta, all our sins are written in God's Book, says S. ChrysOstome: If there I can fill my spunge with tears, and so wipe out all my sins out of that Book, it is a blessed use of the Spunge.

I might stand upon this, the manifold benefits of godly tears, long: so long, as till you wept, and wept for sin; and that might be very long. I contract all to this one, which is all: To how many blessednesses must these tears, this godly sorrow reach by the way, when as it reaches to the very extreme, to that which is opposed to it, to Joy? for godly sorrow is Joy. The words in Job are in the Vulgat, Dimitte meut plang am dolorem meum: Lord spare me a while that I may lament my lamentable estate: and so ordinarily the Expositors that follow that Translation, make their use of them. But yet it is in the Original, Lord spare me a while, that I may take comfort: That which one calls lamenting, the other calls rejoicing: To conceive true sorrow and true joy, are things not only contiguous, but continual; they do not only touch and follow one another in a certain succession, Joy assuredly after sorrow, but they consist together, they are all one, Joy and Sorrow. My tears have been my meat day and night, says David: not that he had no other meat, but that none relisht so well. It is a Grammatical note of a Jesuit, (I do not tell you it is true; I have almost tole you that it is not true, by telling you whose it is, but that it is but a Grammatical note) That when it is said Tempus cantus, The time offinging is come, it might as well be rendered out of the Hebrew, Tempus plorationis, The time of weeping is come; And when it is said, Nomini tuo cantabo, Lord I will sing unto thy Name, it might be as well rendered out of the Hebrew, Plorabo, I will weep, I will sacrifice my tears unto thy Name. So equal, so indifferent a thing is it, when we come to godly sorrow, whether we call it sorrow or joy, weeping or singing.

To end all, to weep for sin is not a damp of melancholy, to sigh for sin, is not a vapor of the spleen, but as Monicaes Confessor said still unto her, in the behalf of her Son S. Augustine, filius istarum lachrymarum, the son of these tears cnnot perish; so wash thyself in these three examplar bathes of Christ's tears, in his human tears, and be tenderly affected with human accidents, in his Prophetical tears, and avert as much as in thee lieth, the calamities imminent upon others, but especially in his pontifical tears, tears for sin, and I am thy Confessor, non ego, sed Dominus; not I, but the spirit of God himself is thy Confessor, and he absolves thee, filius istarum lachrymarum, the soul bathed in these tears cannot perish: for this is trina immer sio, that threefold dipping which was used in the Primitive Church in baptism. And in this baptism, thou takest a new Christian name, thou who wast but a Christian, art now a regenerate Christian; and as Naaman the Leper came cleaner out of Jordan, then he was before his leprosy, (for his flesh came as the flesh of a child) so there shall be better evidence in this baptism of thy repentance, then in thy first baptism; better in thyself, for then thou hadst no sense of thy own estate, in this thou hast: And thou shalt have better evidence from others too; for howsoever some others will dispute, whether all children which die after Baptism, be certainly saved or no, it never fell into doubt or disputation, whether all that die truly repentant, be saved or no. Weep these tears truly, and God shall perform to thee, first that promise which he makes in Isaiah, The Lord shall wipe all tears from thy face, all that are fallen by any occasion of calamity here, in the militant Church; and he shall perform that promise which he makes in the Revelation, The Lord shall wipe all tears from thine eyes, that is, dry up the fountain of tears; remove all occasion of tears hereafter, in the triumphant Church.

SERMON XVII. Preached at White-hall, March 4. 1624.

T Hat which God commanded by his Word, to be done at sometimes (that we should humble our souls by fasting) the same God tommands by his Church, to be done now: In the Scriptures you have Praeceptum, The thing itself, What; In the Church, you have the Nunt, The time, When. The Scriptures are God's Voice; The Church is his Echo; a redoubling, a repeating of some particular syllables, and accents of the same voice. And as we hearken with some earnestness, and some admiration at an Echo, when perchance we do not understand the voice that occasioned that Echo; so do the obedient children of God apply themselves to the Echo of his Church, when perchance otherwise, they would less understand the voice of God, in his Scriptures, if that voice were not so redoubled unto them. This fasting then, thus enjoined by God, for the general, in his Word, and thus limited to this Time, for the particular, in his Church, is indeed but a continuation of a great Feast: Where, the first course (that which we begin to serve in now) is Manna, food of Angels, plentiful, frequent preaching; but the second course, is the very body and blood of Christ Jesus, shed for us, and given to us, in that blessed Sacrament, of which himself makes us worthy receivers at that time. Now, as the end of all bodily eating, is Assimilation, that after all other concoctions, that meat may be made Idem corpus, the same body that I am; so the end of all spiritual eating, is Assimilation too, That after all Hearing, and all Receiving, I may be made Idem spiritus cum Domino, the same spirit, that my God is: for, though it be good to Hear, good to Receive, good to Meditate, yet, (if we speak effectually, and consummatively) why call we these good? there is nothing good but One, that is, Assimilation to God; In which perfect and consummative sense, Christ says to this Man, in this Text, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is God.

The words are part of a Dialogue, of a Conference, between Christ, and a man who proposed a question to him; to whom Christ makes an answer by way of another question, Why callest thou me good, &c. In the words, and by occasion of them, we consider the Text, the Context, and the Pretext: Not as three equal parts of the Building; but the Context, as the situation and Prospect of the house, The Pretext, as the Access and entrance to the house, And then the Text it self, as the House it self, as the body of the building: In a word, In the Text, the Words; In the Context, the Occasion of the words; In the Pretext, the Pretence, the purpose, the disposition of him who gave the occasion.

We begin with the Context; the situation, the prospect; how it stands, how it is butted, how it is bounded; to what it relates, with what it is connected. And in that, we are no farther curious, but only to note this, that the Text stands in that Story, where a man comes to Christ, inquires the way to Heaven, believes himself to be in that way already, and (when he hears of nothing, but keeping the Commandments) believes himself to be fargone in that way; But when he is told also, that there belongs to it a departing with his Riches, his beloved Riches, he breaks off the conference, he separates himself from Christ; for, (says the Story) This Man had great possessions. And to this purpose, (to separate us from Christ) the poorest amongst us, hath great possessions. He corners of the streets, as well as he that sits upon carpets, in the Region of perfumes, he that is ground and trod to dirt, with obloquy, and contempt, as well as he that is built up every day, a story and story higher with additions of Honor, Every man hath some such possessions as possess him, some such affections as weigh down Christ Jesus, and separate him from Him, rather then from those affections, those possessions. Scarce any sinner but comes sometimes to Christ, in the language of the man in this Text, Good Master what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And if Christ would go no farther with such men, but to say to the Adulterer, Do not thou give thy money to usury; no more to the penurious Usurer, but, Do not thou wast thyself in superfluous and expensive feasting; If Christ would proceed no farther, but to say to the needy person, that had no money, Do not thou buy preferment; or to the ambitious person that soars up after all, Do not thou forsake thyself, deject thyself, undervalue thyself, In all these cases, the Adulterer and the Usurer, The needy and the ambitious man, would all say with the man in the Text, All these things have we done from our youth. But when Christ proceeds to a Vade, & vende, to depart with their possessions, that which they possess, that which possesses them, this changes the case.

There are some sins so rooted, so riveted in men, so incorporated, so consubstantiated in the soul, by habitual custom, as that those sins have contracted the nature of Ancient possessions. As men call Manners by their names, so sins have taken names from men, and from places; Simon Magus gave the name to a sin, and so did gehazi, and Sodom did so: There are sins that run in Names, in Families, in Blood; Hereditary sins, entailed sins; and men do almost prove their Gentry by those sins, and are scarce believed to be rightly borne, if they have not those sins; These are great possessions, and men do much more easily part with Christ, then with these sins. But then there are less sins, light sins, vanities; and yet even these come to possess us, and separate us from Christ. How many men negiect this ordinary means of their Salvation, the coming to these Exercises, not because their undoing lies on it, or their discountenancing; but merely out of levity, of vanity, of nothing; they know not what to do else, and yet do not this. You hear of one man that was drowned in a vessel of Wine; but how many thousands in ordinary water? And he was no more drowned in that precious liquor, then they in that common water. A gad of steel does no more choke a man, then a feather, then a hair; Men perish with whispering sins, nay with silent sins, sins that never tell the conscience they are sins, as often as with crying sins: And in hell there shall meet as many men, that never thought what was sin, as that spent all their thoughts in the compassing of sin; as many, who in a slack in consideration, never cast a thought upon that place, as that by searing their conscience, overcame the sense and fear of the place. Great sins are great possessions; but levities and vanities possess us too; and men had rather part with Christ, then with any possessions; which is all we will note out of this first part, The Context, the situation, and prospect of the house, the coherence and connection of the Text.

The second part, is the pretext; that is the pretense, the purpose, the disposition of him that moved this question to Christ, and occasioned this answer. Upon which we make this stop, because it hath been variously apprehended by the Expositors; for some think he came in an humble disposition to learn of Christ, and others think he came in a Pharisaical confidence in himself, with which Epiphanius first, and then S. Jerome charge him. But in such doubtful cases in other men's actions, when it appears not evidently, whether it were well, or ill done, where the balance is even, always put you in your charity, and that will turn the scale the best way. Things which are in themselves, but mis-interpretable, do not you presently mis-interpret, you allow some grains to your gold, before you call it light: allow some infirmities to any man, before you call him ill. For this man in the Text, venit, says this Evangelist, he came to Christ, he came of himself. S. Peter himself came not so. S. Peter came not, till his brother Andrew brought him: none of the twelve Apostles came to Christ so, they came not, till Christ called them: Here, we hear of no calling, no inviting, no mention of any motion towards him, no intimation of any intimation to him, and yet he came. Blessed are they that come to Christ Jesus, before any collateral respects draw them, before the Laws compel them, before calamities drive them to him: He only comes hither, that comes voluntarily, and is glad he is here; He that comes so, as that he had rather he were away, is not here. Venit, says our Evangelist, of this man: And then, says S. Mark, handling the same story, Venit procurrens, He came running. nicodemus came not so, Nicodemus durst not avow his coming; and therefore he came creeping, and he came softly, and he came seldom, and he came by night.

Blessed are they who make haste to Christ, and publish their zeal to the encouragement of others: For, let no man promise himself a religious constancy in the time of his trial, that doth not his part in establishing the religious constancy of other men. Of all proofs, Demonstration is the powerfullest: when I have just reason to think my superious would have it thus, this is Musique to my soul; When I hear them say they would have it thus, this is Rhetoric to my soul; When I see their Laws enjoin it to be thus, this is Logic to my soul; but when I see them actually, really, clearly, constantly do thus, this is a Demonstration to my soul, and Demonstration is the powerfullest proof: The eloquence of inferiors is in words, the eloquence of superiors is in action.

He came to Christ; he ran to him; and when he was come, as S. Mark relates it, He fell upon his knees to Christ. He stood not then Pharisaically upon his own legs, his own merits, though he had been a diligent observer of the Commandments before. Blessed are they, who bring the testimony of a form zeal to God's service, and yet make that no excuse for their present, or future slacknesst; The benefit of our former goodness is, that that enables us to be the better still: for, as all example is powerful upon us, so our own example most of all; in this case we are most immediately bound by ourselves; still to be so good, as we ourselves have been before: There was a time when I was nothing; but there shall never be any time, when I shall be nothing; and therefore I am most to respect the future. The good services that a man hath done to God by pen, or sword, are wings, and they exalt him if he would go forward; but they are weights and depress him, and aggravate his condemnation, if his presumption upon the merit of those former services, retard him for the future. This man had done well, but he stood not upon that; he kneeled to Christ, and he said to him, Magister bone, Good master. He was no ignorant man, and yet he acknowledged that he had somewhat more to learn of Christ, then he knew yet. Blessed are they that inanimate all their knowledge, consummate all in Christ Jesus. The University is a Paradise, Rivers of knowledge are there, Arts and Sciences flow from thence. Counsel Tables are Horti conclusi, (as it is said in the Canticles) Gardens that are walled in, and they are Fontes signati, Wells that are sealed up; bottomless depths of unsearchable Counsels there. But those Aquae quietudinum, which the Prophet speaks of, The waters of rest, they flow à magistro bono, from this good master, and flow into him again; All knowledge that begins not, and ends not with his glory, is but a giddy, but a vertiginous circle, but an elaborate and exquisite ignorance. He would learn of him, and what? Quid boni faciam, What good thing shall I do? Blessed are they that bring their knowledge into practice; and blessed again, that crown their former practice with future perseverance.

This was his disposition that came; His, though he were a youn man; (for so he is said to be, in the 22. ver.) and young men are not ofter so forward in such ways. I remember one of the Panegyriques celebrates & magnifies one of the Roman Emperors for? is, that he would marry when he was young; that he would so soon confine and limit his pleasures, so soon determine his affections in one person. When a young man comes to Christ, Christ receives him with an extraordinary welcome; well intimated though he were young; and he came though he wre Vnus e principibus, (for so he is qualified in S. Luke ) A principal man, a great man; as we translate it, One of the Rulers: for so he is a real and a personal answer and instance to that scornful question of the Pharisees, Nunquid e principibus, Do any of the Rulers, any great men, believe in Christ? It is true that the Holy Ghost doth say, Non multi nobiles, few noble men come to heaven. Not out of Panigorola, the Bishop of Asti, his reason, Pauci quia pauci, There cannot come many noble men to heaven, because there are not many upon earth; for many times there are many. In calm and peaceable times, the large favors of indulgent Princes, in active and stirring times, the merit and the fortune of forward men, do often enlarge the number. But such is often the corrupt inordinateness of greatness, that it only carries them so much beyond other men, but not so much nearer to God; It only sets men at a farther, not God at a nearer distance to them; but because they are come to be called gods, they think they have no farther to go to God, but to themselves. But God is the God of the Mountains, as well as of the Valleyes: Great and small are equal, and equally nothing in his sight: for, when all the world is In pugillo, in God's fist, (as the Prophet speaks) who can say then, This is the Ant, this is the Elephant? Our conversation should be in heaven; and if we look upon the men of this world, as from heaven, as if we looked upon this world itself, from thence, the hills would be no hills, but all one flat and equal plain; so are all men, one kind of dust. Records of nobility are only from the book of Life, and your preferment is your interest in a place at the right hand of God. But yet, when those men whom God hath raised in this world, take him in their arms, and raise him too, though God cannot be exalted above himself, yet he is content to call this a raising, and to thank them for it. Therefore when this man, a man of this rank came to him, Jesus beheld him, says the Gospel, and he loved him, and he said, one thing thou lackest; God knows, he lacked many things; but because he had that one, zeal to him, Christ doth not reproach to him his other defects: God pardons great men many errors, for that one good affection, a general zeal to his glory, and his cause.

His disposition then, (though it have seemed suspicious, and questionable to some) was so good, as that it hath afforded us these good considerations. If it were not so good as these circumstances promise, yet it affords us another as good consideration, That how bad soever it were, Christ Jesus refused him not, when he came to him. When he inquired of Christ after salvation, Christ doth not say, There is no salvation for thee, thou Viper, thou Hypocrite, thou Pharisee, I have locked an iron door of predestination between salvation and thee; when he inquired of him, what he should do to be sure of heaven, Christ doth not say, There is no such art, no such way, no such assurance here; but you must look into the eternal decree of Election first, and see whether that stand for you or no: But Christ teaches him the true method of this art: for, when he says to him, Why callest thou me good? There is none good but God, he only directs him in the way to that end, which he did indeed, or pretended to seek. And this direction of his, this method is our third part; In which, (having already seen in the first, the Context) the situation and prospect of the house, that is, the coherence and occasion of the words, And in the second, (the Pretext) the access and entrance to the house, that is, the pretense and purpose of him that occasioned the words, you may now be pleased to look farther into the house itself, and to see how that is built; that is, by what method Christ builds up, and edifies this new disciple of his; which is the principal scope and intention of the Text, and that, to which all the rest did somewhat necessarily prepare the way.

Our Savior Christ thus undertaking the farther rectifying of this thus disposed disciple, by a fair method leads him to the true end; Good ends, and by good ways, consummate goodness. Now Christ's answer to this man is diversely read: We read it, (as you have heard) why callest thou me good? The vulgat Edition in the Roman Church, reads it thus, Quid me interrogas de bono? Why dost thou question me concerning goodness? Which is true? That which answers the Original; and it can admit no question, but that ours doth so. But yet, Origen, to be sure, in his eighth Tractate upon this Gospel, reads it both ways: And S. Augustine, in his 63. Chap. of the second book De consensu Evangelist arum, thinks it may very well be believed, that Christ did say both: That when this man called him good master, Christ said then, There was none good but God; and that when this man asked him, what good thing he should do, then Christ said, Why dost thou ask me, me whom thou thinkest to be but a mere man, what is goodness? There is none good but God; If thou look to understand goodness from man, thou must look out such a man as is God too. So that this was Christ's method, by these holy insinuations, by these approaches, and degrees, to bring this man to a knowledge, that he was very God, and so the Messias that was expected. Nihil est falsitas, nisi cum esse putatur, quod non est: All error consists in this, that we take things to be less or more, other then they are. Christ was pleased to redeem this man from this error, and bring him to know truly what he was, that he was God. Christ therefore doth not rebuke this man, by any denying that he himself was good; for Christ doth assume that addition to himself, I am the good Shepherd. Neither doth God forbid, that those good parts which are in men, should be celebrated with condign praise. We see that God, as soon as he saw that anything was good, he said so, he uttered it, he declared it, first of the Light, and then of other creatures: God would be no author, no example of smothering the due praise of good actions. For, surely that man hath no zeal to goodness in himself, that affords no praise to goodness in other men.

But Christ's purpose was also, that this praise, this recognition, this testimony of his goodness, might be carried higher, and referred to the only true author of it, to God. So the Priests and the Elders come to Judith, and they say to her, Thou art the exaltation of Jerusalem, thou art the great glory of Israel, thou art the rejoicing of our Nation, thou hast done all these things by thy hand; And all this was true of Judith, and due to Judith; and such recognitions, and such acclamations God requires of such people, as have received such benefits by such instruments: For as there is Treason, and petty-treason, so there is Sacrilege, and petty-sacrilege; and petty-sacrilege is to rob Princes and great persons of their just praise. But then, as we must confer this upon them, so must they, and we, and all transfer all upon God: for so Judith proceeds there, with her Priests and Elders, Begin unto my God, with Timbrels, sing unto the Lord with Cymbals, exalt him, and call upon his name. So likewise Elizabeth magnifies the blessed Virgin Mary, Blessed art thou amongst women: And this was true of her, and due to her; and she takes it to herself, when she says there, From henceforth all Generations shall call me blessed; but first, she had carried it higher, to the highest, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit doth rejoice in God my Savior. In a word, Christ forbids not this man to call him good, but he directs him to know in what capacity that attribute of goodness belonged to him, as he was God: That when this man believed before that Christ was good, and learnt from him now, that none was good but God, he might by a farther concoction, a farther rumination, a farther meditation of this, come in due time to know that Christ was God; And this was his Method.

Now this leads us into two rich and fragrant fields; this sets us upon the two Hemispheares of the world; the Western Hemispheare, the land of Gold, and Treasure, and the Eastern Hemispheare, the land of Spices and Perfumes; for this puts us upon both these considerations, first, That nothing is Essentially good, but God, (and there is the land of Gold, centricall Gold, viscerall Gold, gremiall Gold, Gold in the Matrice and womb of God, that is, Essentiall goodness in God himself) and then upon this consideration too, That this Essentiall goodness of God is so diffusive, so spreading, as that there is nothing in the world, that doth not participate of that goodness; and there is the land of Spices and Perfumes, the dilatation of God's goodness. So that now both these propositions are true, First, That there is nothing in this world good, and then this also, That there is nothing ill: As, amongst the Fathers, it is in a good sense, as truly said, Deus non est Ens, Deus non est substantia, God is no Essence, God is no substance, (for fear of imprisoning God in a predicament) as it is said by others of the Fathers, that there is no other Essence, no other Substance but God.

First then, there is nothing good but God: neither can I conceive anything in God, that concerns me so much as his goodness; for, by that I know him, and for that I love him. I know him by that, for, as Damascene says, primarium Dei nomen, Bonitas; God's first name, that is, the first way by which God notified himself to man, was Goodness; for out of his goodness he made him. His name of Jehovah we admire with a reverence; but we cannot express that name: not only not in the signification of it, but not considently, not assuredly in the sound thereof; we are not sure that we should call it Jehovah; not sure that any man did call it Jehovah a hundred years ago. But, ineffabili dulcedine teneor cum audio, Bonus Dominus; I am, not transported with astonishment, as at his name of Jehovah, but replenished with all sweetness, established with all soundness, when I hear of my God in that name, my good God. By that I know him, and for that I love him: For, the object of my understanding is truth; but the object of my love, my affection, my desire, is goodness. If my understanding be defective, in many cases, faith will supply it; if I believe it, I am as well satisfied, as if I knew it; but nothing supplies, nor fills, nor satisfies the desire of man, on this side of God; Every man hath something to love, and desire, till he determine it in God; because God only hath Imminuibi lem bonitatem, as they render Dyonisius the Areopagite, an inexhaustible goodness; a sea that no land can suck in, a land that no sea can swallow up, a forest that no fire can waste, a fire that no water can quench. He is so good, goodness so, as that he is Causa bonorum, & quae in nos, & quae in nobis, the cause of all good either received by us, or conceived in us; of all, either prepared externally for us, or produced internally in us. In a word, he is Bonum caetera bona colorans, & amabilia reddens, it is his goodness, that gilds and enamels all the good persons, or good actions in this world. There is none good but God; and quale bonum ill, says that Father, what kind of goodness God is, this doth sufficiently declare, Quod nulli ab co recedenti been sit, That no man that ever went from him, went by good way, or came to good end; There is none good but God; there is centricall, viscerall, gremiall gold, goodness in the root, in the tree of goodness, God.

Now, Arbor bona, bonos fructus, says Christ; If the tree be good, the fruit is good too. The tree is God; What are the fruits of this tree? What are the offspring of God? S. Ambr. tells us, Angeli & homines, & virtutes eorum; Angels and men, and the good parts, and good actions of Angels and men, are the fruit of this tree, they grow from God. Angels, as they fell, Adam, as he fell, the sins of Angels and men, are not fruits of this tree, they grow not radically, not primarily from God. Nihil in se habet Deus semi-plenum, says Damascene: God is no half-god, no fragmentary God; he is an entire God, and not made of remnants; not good only so, as that he hath no room for ill in himself, but good so too, as that he hath no room for any ill will towards any man; no man's damnation, no man's sin, grows radically from this tree. When God had made all, says Tertullian, he blessed all; Maledicere non norat, quia nec malefacere, says he: God could no more mean ill, then do ill; God can no more make me sin, then sin himself. It is the fool that says, There is no God, says David; And it is the other fool, says S. Basil, that says, God produces any ill; par precii scelus, quia negat Deum bonum; It is as impiously done, to deny God to be entirely good, as to deny him to be God. For, we see the Manichees, and the Marcionites, and such other Heretics in the Primitive Church, would rather admit, and constitute two God's, a good God, and a bad God, then be drawn to think, that he that was the good God indeed, could produce any ill of himself, or mean any ill to any man, that had done none.

And therefore even from Plato himself, some Christians might learn more moderation in expressing themselves in this point; Plato says, Creavit quia bonus, therefore did God create us, that he might be good to us; and then he adds, Bono nunquam inest invidia, certainly that God, that made us out of his goodness, does not now envy us that goodness which he hath communicated to us; certainly he does not wish us worse, that so he might more justly damn us, and therefore compel us, by any positive decree, to sin, to justify his desire of damning us: Much less did this good God hate us, or mean ill to us, before he made us, and made us only therefore, that he might have glory in our destruction. There is nothing good but God, there is nothing but goodness in God.

How abusively then do men call the things of this world, Goods? They may as well call them (so they do in their hearts) God's, as Goods; for there is none good but God. But how much more abusively do they force the world, that call them Bona quia beant, Goods because they make us good, blessed, happy? In which sense, Seneca uses the word shrewdly, Insolens malum beata uxor, a good wife, a blessed wife, says he, that is, a wife that brings a great estate, is an insolent mischief. If we do but cast our eye upon that title in the Law, Bonorum, and De bonis, of Goods, we shall easily see, what poor things they make shift to cal Goods. And if we consider (if it deserve a consideration) how great a difference their Lawyers make ( Baldus makes that, and others with him) between Bonorum possessio, and possessio bonorum, that one should amount to a right and propriety in the goods, and the other but to a sequestration of such goods, we may easily see, that they can scarce tell what to call, or where to place such Goods. Health, and strength, and stature, and comeliness, must be called Goods, though but of the body; The body itself is in the substance itself, but dust; these are but the accidents of that dust, and yet they must be Goods. Land, and Money, & honor must be called Goods, though but of fortune; Fortune herself, is but such an Idol, as that S. Aug. was ashamed ever to have named her in his works, and therefore repents it in his Retractations; herself is but an Idol, and an Idol is nothing these, but the accidents of that nothing, and yet they must be Goods. Are they such Goods, as make him necessarily good that hath them? Or such, as no man can be good, that is without them? How many men make themselves miserable, because they want these Goods? And how many men have been made miserable by others, because they had them? Except thou see the face of God upon all thy money, as well as the face of the King, the hand of God to all thy Patents, as well as the hand of the King, God's Amen, as well as the Kings fiat, to all thy creations, all these reach not to the title of Goods, for there is none good but God.

Nothing in this world; not if thou couldst have it all; carry it higher, to the highest, to heaven; heaven itself were not good, without God. For, in the School, very many and very great men, have thought and taught, That the human nature of Christ, though united Hypostatically to the Divine Nature, was not merely by that Union, impeccable, but might have sinned, if besides that Union, God had not infused, and super-induced other graces, of which other graces, the Beatifical vision, the present sight of the face and Essence of God, was one: Because, (say they) Christ had from his Conception, in his Human Nature, that Beatifical Vision of God, which we shall have in the state of Glory, therefore he could not sin. This Beatifical Vision, say they, which Christ had here, and which, (as they suppose, and not improbably, in the problematicall way of the School) God, of his absolute power, might have withheld, and yet the Hypostatical Union have remained perfect; (for, say they, the two Natures, Human & Divine, might have been so united, and yet the Human not have so seen the Divine) This Beatifical Vision, this sight of God, was the Cause, or Seal, or Consummation of Christ's Perfection, and impeccability in his Human Nature. Much more is this Beatifical Vision, this sight of God in Heaven, the Cause or Consummation of all the joys and glory which we shall receive in that place: for howsoever they dispute, whether that kind of Blessedness consist in seeing God, formaliter, or causaliter, that is, whether I shall see all things in God, as in a glass, in which the species of all things are, or whether I shall see all things, by God, as by the benefit of a light, which shall discover all things to me, yet they all agree, (though they differ de modo, of the manner, how) that howsoever it be, the substance of the Blessedness is in this, that I shall see God: Blessed are the pure in heart, says Christ, for they shall see God; If they should not see God, they were not blessed. And therefore they who place children that die unbaptised, in a room, where though they feel no torment, yet they shall never see God, durst never call that room a part of heaven, but of hell rather; Though there be no torment, yet, if they see not God, it is hell. There is nothing good in this life, nothing in the next, without God, that is, without sight and fruition of the face, and presence of God; which is that, which S. Augustine intends, when he says, Secutio Dei est appetitus Beatitatis, consecutio Beatitas; our looking towards God, is the way to Blessedness, but Blessedness itself is only the sight of God himself.

That therefore thou mayest begin thy heaven here, put thyself in the sight of God, put God in thy sight, in every particular action. We cannot come to the body of the Sun, but we can use the light of the Sun many ways: we cannot come to God himself here, but yet here we can see him by many manifestations: so many, as that S. Augustine, in his 20. Chapt. De moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, hath collected aright places of Scripture, where everyone of our senses is called a Seeing; there is a Gustate & videte, and audit, and palpate; tasting, and hearing, and feeling, and all, to this purpose, are called seeing; In all our senses, in our faculties, we may see God if we will: God sees us at midnight; he sees us, then, when we had rather he looked off. If we see him so, it is a blessed interview. How would he that were come abroad at mid-night, to do a mischief, sneak away, if he saw the watch? what a damp must it necessarily cast upon any sinner, in the nearest approach to his sin, if he can see God? See him before thou sinnest; then he looks lovingly: After the sin, remember how fain Adam would have hid himself from God: He that goes one step out of God's sight, is loath to come into it again: If you will sit at the right hand of God hereafter, you must walk with God here; So Abraham, so Enoch walked with God, and God took him. God knows, God takes not every man that dies: God says to the rich secure man, Fool, this night they shall fetch away thy soul; but he does not tell him who. That then you be no strangers to God then, see him now; and remember, that his last judgment is expressed in that word, Nescio vos, I know you not; not to be known by God, is damnation; and God knows no man there, with whom he was not acquainted here. There is none good but God; the fruition of that God, is in seeing him; The way to see him there, is to look towards him here. And so we have gone as far as the first of our two propositions carried us, That in this world there is nothing good.

The other that remains, is, That there is nothing ill; that this goodness of God is so spread over all, (all actions, all persons) as that there is nothing ill. Seneca, whom Tertullian calls still Senecam nostram, our Seneca, that is, that Christian Seneca, as though he had read that of S Paul, (between whom and him, it hath been thought, there passed Epistles) Quid habes, quod non accepisti? what hast thou, that thou hast not received from God? and meant to say more then that, says quid non dedit? what is there, that were good for thee, that God hath not given thee? And he, whom they call so often Platonem Hebraeorum, the Jews Plato, that is, Philo Judaeus, says well, Nihil boni sterile creavit Deus; God hath made nothing, in which he hath not imprinted, and from which he hath not produced some good: He follows it so far, (and justly) as to say, that God does good, where that good does no good: He takes his examples from God's raining in the Sea; that rain does no good in the Sea: And from God's producing fresh springs in the desert Land, where, not only no beasts come to drink, but where the very salt tide overflows the fresh spring. He might have added an example from Paradise, that God would plant such a garden, for so few hours; that God would provide man such a dwelling, when he knew he would not dwell a day in it. And he might have added an example from the Light too; That God would create light, and say it was good, then when it could be good for nothing, for there was nothing made to see it, nor to be seen by it: so forward, so early was God, in diffusing his goodness. Of every particular thing. God said it was good, and of all together, that it was very good; there was, there is nothing ill. For, when it is ordinarily inquired in the School, whether anything be essentially good, it is safely answered there, that if by essentially we mean independantly, so good as that it can subsist of itself, without dependence upon, or relation to any other thing, so there is nothing essentially good: But if by essentially good, we mean that whose essence, and being is good, so everything is essentially good. And therefore when the Manichees pressed S. August. with that, Vnde malum? If there be not an ill God, as well as a good, unde malum, from whom, or from whence proceed all that ill that is in the world? S. Aug. says, Vnde malum? Quid malum? From whence comes evil? Why, what is there, that you can call evil? I know no such thing; so that, if there be such a God, that God hath no creature. For, as poisons conduce to Physic, and discord to Music, so those two kinds of evil, into which we contract all others, are of good use, that is, malum poenae, the evil of punishment, affliction, adversity, and malum culpae, even sin it self, from which, the punishment flows.

Be pleased to stop a little, upon each of these. First, malum poenae, affliction, poverty, sickness, imprisonment, banishment, and such, are not evil. The blood of Christ Jesus only is my cordial; that restores me, repairs me; but affliction is my Physic; that purges, that cleanses me. Hostiliter se opponit medicus, says Tertullian, The Physician comes in like an enemy, with a knife to launce, with fire to cauterize, but opponit se morbo, he is but an enemy to the disease, he means the patient no harm; no more does God to me, in all his medicinal corrections. But how if these afflictions hang long upon me? If they do so, that is Aegrotantium animarum diaeta; God enters into another course of Physic, and finds it better for me to spend my disease by a diet; and long sicknesses are such diets: God will recover my soul by a consumption of the body, and establish everlasting health, by long sickness. Howsoever, let God's corrections go as high as they can go in this world, Etsi novum videtur, quod dicere volo, says Origen, dicam tamen; Though it be strange that I will say, I will say it, Etiam bonitas Dei est, qui dicitur faror ejus; That which we cal the anger of God, the wrath of God, the fury of God, is the goodness of God. Correct me not O Lord, in thy wrath, says David; but, rather then leave me uncorrected, correct me any way. We call God, Just, and we call him Merciful, according to our present taste of God, and use of God, Cum unicam habeat affectionem Deus, nempe bonitatem, when as God hath but one affection in himself, that is, goodness, nor but one purpose upon us, that is, to do us good.

So then, this which we call Malum poenae, Affliction, Adversity, is not evil; That which occasions this, Malum culpae, sin itself, is not evil; not evil so, as that it should make us incapable of this diffusive goodness of God. You know, I presume, in what sense we say in the School, Malum nihil, and Peccatum nihil, that evil is nothing, sin is nothing; that is, it hath no reality, it is no created substance, it is but a privation, as a shadow is, as sickness is; so it is nothing. It is wittily argued by Boethius, God can do all things; God cannot sin; Therefore sin is nothing. But it is strongly argued by S. Augustine, If there be anything naturally evil, it must necessarily be contrary to that which is naturally good; and that is God. Now, Contraria aequalia, says he; whatsoever things are contrary to one another, are equal to one another; so, if we make anything naturally evil, we shall slide into the Manichees error, to make an Evil God. So far doth the School follow this, as that there, one Archbishop of Canterbury, out of another, that is, Bradwardine out of Anselm, pronounces it Haereticum esse dicere, Malum esse aliquid, To say that anything is naturally evil, is an heresy.

But if I cannot find a foundation for my comfort, in this subtlety of the School, That sin is nothing, (no such thing as was created or induced by God, much less forced upon me by him, in any coactive Decree) yet I can raise a second step for my consolation in this, that be sin what it will in the nature thereof, yet my sin shall conduce and cooperate to my good. So Joseph says to his Brethren, You thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good: which is not only good to Joseph, who was no partaker in the evil, but good even to them, who meant nothing but evil. And therefore, as Origen said, Etsi novum, Though it be strangely said, yet I say it, That God's anger is good; so says S. Augustine, Audeo dicere, Though it be boldly said, yet I must say it, Vtile esse cadere in aliquod manifestum peccatum,