Eighty Sermons

SERMON XVIII. Preached at S. Paul's, in the Evening, upon Easter-day. 1623.

T He first word of the Text, must be the last part of the Sermon, Therefore; Therefore let all know it. Here is something necessary to be known, And the Means by which we are to know it; And these will be our two parts; Scientia, & Modus, Knowledge, and the way to it; For, Qui testator de scientia, testator de modo scientiae, is a good rule, in all Laws, He that will testify anything upon his knowledge, must declare how he came by that knowledge. So then, what we must conclude, and upon what premisses, what we must resolve, and what must lead us to that resolution, are our two stages, our two resting places: And to those two, our several steps are these; In the first, Let all the house of Israel know, &c. we shall consider first, The Manner of S. Peter, (for the Text is part of a Sermon of S. Peters ) in imprinting this Knowledge in his Auditory; which is, first, in that Compellation of love and honor, Domus Israel, The house of Israel: But yet, when he hath raised them to a sense of their dignity, in that attribute, he doth not pamper them with an over-value of them, he lets them know their worst, as well as their best, Though you be the house of Israel, yet it is you that have crucified Christ Jesus, That Jesus, whom ye have crucified; And from this his Manner of preparing them, we shall pass to the Matter that he proposes to them: When he had remembered them what God had done for them (You are the house of Israel) and what they had done against God, (You have crucified that Jesus) He imparts a blessed message to them all, Let all know it: Let them know it, and know it assuredly; He exhibits it to their reason, to their natural understanding, And what? The greatest mystery, the entire mystery of our salvation, That that Jesus is both Lord, and Christ; But he is made so; Made so by God; Made both; Made Christ, that is, anointed, embalmed, preserved from corruption, even in the grave, And made Lord by his triumph, and by being made Head of the Church, in the Resurrection, and in the Ascension: And so, that which is the last step of our first stage, (That that Jesus is made Lord, as well as he is made Christ) enters us upon our second stage, The means by which we are to know, and prove all this to ourselves; Therefore, says the Text, let all know it; wherefore? why, because God hath raised him, after you had crucified him; Because God hath loosed the bands of death, because it was impossible that he should be holden by death; Because David's prophecy of a deliverance from the grave is fulfilled in him, Therefore let all know this to be thus. So that the Resurrection of Christ is argument enough to prove, that Christ is made Lord of all; And if he be Lord, he hath Subjects, that do as he does; And so his Resurrection is become an argument, and an assurance of our Resurrection too; and that is as far as we shall go in our second part, That first Christ's Resurrection is proof enough to us of his Dominion, if he be risen, he is Lord, and then his Dominion is proof enough to us of our Resurrection, if he be Lord, Lord of us, we shall rise too: And when we have paced, and passed through all these steps, we shall in some measure have solemnized this day of the Resurrection of Christ; and in some measure have made it the day of our Resurrection too.

First then, the Apostle applies himself to his Auditory, in a fair, in a gentle manner; he gives them their Titles, Domus Israel, The house of Israel. We have a word now denizened, and brought into familiar use amongst us, Complement; and for the most part, in an ill sense; so it is, when the heart of the speaker doth not answer his tongue; but God forbid but a true heart, and a fair tongue might very well consist together: As virtue itself receives an addition, by being in a fair body, so do good intentions of the heart, by being expressed in fair language. That man aggravates his condemnation, that gives me good words, and means ill; but he gives me a rich Jewell, and in a fair Cabinet, he gives me precious wine, and in a clean glass, that intends well, and expresses his good intentions well too. If I believe a fair speaker, I have comfort a little while, though he deceive me, but a froward and peremptory refuser, unsaddles me at first. I remember a vulgar Spanish Author, who writes, the Iosephina, the life of Joseph, the husband of the blessed Virgin Mary, who moving that question, why that Virgin is never called by any style of Majesty, or Honor in the Scriptures, he says, That if after the declaring of her to be the Mother of God, he had added any other Title, the Holy Ghost had not been a good Courtier, (as his very word is) nor exercised in good language, and he thinks that had been a defect in the Holy Ghost in himself. He means surely the same that Epiphanius doth, That in naming the Saints of God, and especially the blessed Virgin, we should always give them the best Titles that are appliable to them; Quis unquam ausus, (says he) proferre nomen Mariae, & non statim addidit virgo? Who ever durst utter the name of that Mary, without that addition of incomparable honor, The Virgin Mary?

That Spanish Author need not be suspicious of the Holy Ghost in that kind, that he is no good Courtier so; for in all the books of the world, you shall never read so civil language, nor so fair expressions of themselves to one another, as in the Bible: When Abraham shall call himself dust, and ashes, (and indeed if the Son of God were a worm and no man, what was Abraham? ) If God shall call this Abraham, this Dust, this Worm of the dust, The friend of God, (and all friendship implies a parity, an equality in something;) when David shall call himself a flea, and a dead dog, even in respect of Saul, and God shall call David, A man according to his own heart, when God shall call us, The Apple of his own eye, The Seal upon his own right hand, who would go farther for an Example, or farther then that example for a Rule, of fair accesses, of civil approaches, of sweet and honorable entrances into the affections of them with whom they were to deal? Especially is this manner necessary in men of our profession; Not to break a bruised reed, nor to quench smoking flax, not to avert any, from a will to hear, by any frowardness, any morosity, any defrauding them of their due praise, and due titles; but to accompany this blessed Apostle, in this way of his discreet, and religious insinuation, to call them Men of Judea, ver. 14. and Men of Israel, ver. 22. and Men and Brethren, ver. 29. and here Domus Israel, the ancientest house, the honorablest house, the lastingest house in the world, The house of Israel.

He takes from them nothing that is due, that would but exasperate; He is civil, but his civility doth not amount to a flattery, as though the cause of God needed them, or God must be beholding to them, or God must pay for it, or smart for it, if they were not pleased. And therefore, though he do give them their titles, Aperte illis imputat crucifixionem Christi, says S. Chrysostom, Plainly and without disguise he imputes and puts home to them, the crucifying of Christ; how honourably soever they were descended, he lays that murder close to their Consciences, You, you house of Israel have crucified the Lord Jesus. There is a great deal of difference between Shimei's vociferations against David; Thou man of blood, thou man of Belial, And Nathan's proceeding with David; and yet Nathan forbore not to tell him, Thou art the man, Thou hast despised the Lord, Thou hast killed Uriah, Thou hast taken his wife. It is one thing to sow pillows under the elbows of Kings, (flatterers do so) another thing to pull the chair from under the King, and popular and seditious men do so. Where Inferiors insult over their Superiors, we tell them, Christi Domini, they are the Lord's anointed, and the Lord hath said, Touch not mine anointed; And when such Superiors insult over the Lord himself, and think themselves God's without limitation, as the God of heaven is, when they do so, we must tell them they do so, Etsi Christi Domini, though you be the Lord's anointed, yet you crucify the anointed Lord: for this was S. Peters method, though his successor will not be bound by it.

When he hath carried the matter thus evenly between them, (I do not deny, but you are the House of Israel, you cannot deny but you have crucified the Lord Jesus; you are heirs of a great deal of honor, but you are guilty of a shrewd fault too) stand or fall to your Master, your Master hath dealt thus mercifully with you all, that to you all, all, he sends a message, Sciant omnes, Let all the house of Israel know this. Needs the house of Israel know anything? Needs there any learning in persons of Honor? We know, this characterizes, this distinguishes some whole Nations; In one Nation it is almost a scorn for a gentleman to be learned, in another almost every gentleman, is conveniently, and in some measure, learned. But I enlarge not myself, I pretend not to comprehend National virtues, or National vices. For this knowledge, which is proclaimed here, which is, the knowledge that the true Messias is come, and that there is no other to be expected, is such a knowledge, as that even the house of Israel itself, is without a Foundation, if it be without this knowledge. Is there any house, that needs no reparations? Is there a house of Israel, (let it be the Library, the depositary of the Oracles of God, a true Church, that hath the true word of the true God, let it be the house fed with Manna, that hath the true administration of the true Sacraments of Christ Jesus) is there any such house, that needs not a farther knowledge, that there are always thieves about that house, that would rob us of that Word, and of those Sacraments?

The Holy Ghost is a Dove, and the Dove couples, pairs, is not alone; Take heed of singular, of schismatical opinions; & what is more singular, more schismatical, then when all Religion is confined in one man's breast? The Dove is animal sociale, a sociable creature, and not singular; and the Holy Ghost is that; And Christ is a Sheep, animal gregale, they flock together: Embrace thou those truths, which the whole flock of Christ Jesus, the whole Christian Church, hath from the beginning acknowledged to be truths, and truths necessary to salvation; for, for other Traditionall, and Conditional, and Occasionall, and Collateral, and Circumstantiall points, for Almanac Divinity, that changes with the season, with the time, and Meridionall Divinity, calculated to the heighth of such a place, and Lunary Divinity, that ebbs and flows, and State Divinity, that obeys affections of persons, Domus Israel, the true Church of God, had need of a continual succession of light, a contiuall assistance of the Spirit of God, and of her own industry, to know those things that belong to her peace.

And therefore let no Church, no man, think that he hath done enough, or knows enough. If the Devil thought so too, we might the better think so: but since we see, that he is in continual practice against us, let us be in a continual diligence, and watchfulness, to countermine him. We are domus Israel, the house of Israel, and it is a great measure of knowledge, that God hath afforded us; but if every Pastor look into his Parish, and every Master into his own Family, and see what is practicing there, sciat domus Israel, let all our Israel know, that there is more knowledge, and more wisdom necessary; Be every man far from calumniating his Superiors, for that mercy which is used towards them that are fallen, but be every man as far from remitting, or slackening his diligence, for the preserving of them, that are not fallen.

The wisest must know more, though you be domus Israel, the house of Israel already; and then, Etsi Crucifixistis, though you have crucified the Lord Jesus, you may know it, sciant omnes, let all know it. S. Paul says once, If they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of life; but he never says, if they have crucified the Lord of life, they are excluded from knowledge. I mean no more, but that the mercy of God in manifesting and applying himself to us, is above all our sins. No man knows enough; what measure of temptations soever he have now, he may have temptations, through which, this knowledge, and this grace, will not carry him; and therefore he must proceed from grace to grace. So no man hath sinned so deeply, but that God offers himself to him yet; Sciant omnes, the wisest man hath ever something to learn, he must not presume; the sinfullest man hath God ever ready to teach him, he must not despair.

Now the universality of this mercy, hath God enlarged, and extended very far, in that he proposes it, even to our knowledge, Sciant, let all know it. It is not only credant, let all believe it; for the infusing of faith, is not in our power: but God hath put it in our power to satisfy their reason, and to chafe that wax, to which he himself vouchsafes to set to the great seal of faith. And that S. Jerome takes to be most properly his Commission, Tentemus animas, quae deficiunt a fide, nature alibus rationibus adjuvare; Let us endeavor to assist them, who are weak in faith, with the strength of reason. And truly it is very well worthy of a serious consideration, that whereas all the Articles of our Creed, are objects of faith, so, as that we are bound to receive them de fide, as matters of faith, yet God hath left that, out of which, all these Articles are to be deduced, and proved, (that is, the Scripture) to human arguments; It is not an Article of the Creed, to believe these, and these Books, to be, or not to be Canonical Scripture; but our arguments for the Scripture are human arguments, proportioned to the reason of a natural man. God does not seal in water, in the fluid and transitory imaginations, and opinions of men; we never set the seal of faith to them; But in Wax, in the rectified reason of man, that reason that is ductile, and flexible, and pliant, to the impressions that are naturally proportioned unto it, God sets to his seal of faith. They are not continual, but they are contiguous, they flow not from one another, but they touch one another, they are not both of a piece, but they enwrap one another, Faith and Reason. Faith itself, by the Prophet Isaiah is called knowledge; By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many, says God of Christ; that is, by that knowledge, that men shall have of him. So Zechariah expresses it at the Circumcision of John the Baptist, That he was to give knowledge of salvation, for the remission of sins.

As therefore it is not enough for us, in our profession to tell you, Qui non crediderit, damnabitur, Except you believe all this, you shall be damned, without we execute that Commission before, Ite predicate, go and preach, work upon their affections, satisfy their reason; so it is not enough for you, to rest in an imaginary faith, and easiness in believing, except you know also what, and why, and how you come to that belief. Implicite believers, ignorant believers, the adversary may swallow; but the understanding believer, he must chaw, and pick bones, before he come to assimilate him, and make him like himself. The implicit believer stands in an open field, and the enemy will ride over him easily; the understanding believer, is in a fenced town, and he hath out-works to lose, before the town be pressed; that is, reasons to be answered, before his faith be shaked, and he will sell himself dear, and lose himself by inches, if he be sold or lost at last; and therefore sciant omnes, let all men know, that is, endeavor to inform themselves, to understand.

That particular, that general particular, (if we may so say, for it includes all) which all were to know, is, that the same Jesus, whom they Crucified, was exalted above them all.

Suppose an impossibility; (S. Paul does so, when he says to the Galatians, If an Angel from heaven should preach any other Gospel; for that is impossible;) If we could have been in Paradise, and seen God take a clod of red earth, and make that wretched clod of contemptible earth, such a body as should be fit to receive his breath, an immortal soul, fit to be the house of the second person in the Trinity, for God the Son to dwell in bodily; fit to be the Temple for the third person, for the Holy Ghost, should we not have wondered more, then at the production of all other creatures? It is more, that the same Jesus, whom they had crucified, is exalted thus, to sit in that despised flesh, at the right hand of our glorious God; that all their spitting should but macerate him, and dissolve him to a better mold, a better plaster; that all their buffetings should but knead him, and press him into a better form; that all their scoffs, and contumelies should be prophesies; that that Ecce Rex, Behold your King; and that Rex Iudaeorum, This is the King of the Jews, which words, they who spoke them, thought to be lies, in their own mouths, should become truths, and he be truly the King, not of the Jews only, but of all Nations too; that their nailing him upon the Cross, should be a settling of him upon an everlasting Throne; and their lifting him up upon the Cross, a waiting upon him, so far upon his way to heaven, that this Jesus, whom they had thus evacuated, thus crucified, should be thus exalted, was a subject of infinite admiration, but mixed with infinite confusion too.

Wretched Blasphemer of the name of Jesus, that Jesus, whom thou crucifiest, and treadest under thy feet, in that oath, is thus exalted. Uncleane Adulterer, that Jesus, whom thou crucifiest, in stretching out those forbidden arms in a strange bed, thou that beheadest thyself, castest off thy Head; Christ Jesus, that thou mightest make thy body, the body of a Harlot, that Jesus, whom thou defilest there, is exalted. Let several sinners pass this through their several sins, and remember with wonder, but with confusion too, that that Jesus, whom they have crucified, is exalted above all.

How far exalted? Three steps, which carry him above S. Paul's third heaven: He is Lord, and he is Christ, and he is made so by God; God hath made him both Lord and Christ. We return up these steps, as they lie, and take the lowest first: Fecit Deus, God made him so: Nature did not make him so, no, not if we consider him in that Nature, wherein he consists of two Natures, God, and Man. We place in the School, (for the most part) the infinite Merit of Christ Jesus (that his one act of dying once, should be a sufficient satisfaction to God, in his Justice, for all the sins of all men) we place it, I say, rather in pacto, then in persona, rather that this contract was thus made between the Father, and the Son, then that, whatsoever that person, thus consisting of God and Man, should do, should, only in respect of the person, be of an infinite value, and extension, to that purpose; for then, any act of his, his Incarnation, his Circumcision, any had been sufficient for our Redemption, without his death. But fecit Deus, God made him that, that he is; The contract between the Father and him, that all that he did, should be done so, and to that purpose, that way, and to that end, this is that, that hath exalted him, and us in him.

If then, not the subtlety, and curiosity, but the wisdom of the School, and of the Church of God, have justly found it most commodious, to place all the mysteries of our Religion, in pacto, rather then in persona, in the Covenant, rather then in the person, though a person of incomprehensible value, let us also, in applying to ourselves those mysteries of our Religion, still adhaerere pactis, and not personis, still rely upon the Covenant of God, with man, revealed in his word, and not upon the person of any man: Not upon the persons of Martyrs, as if they had done more then they needed for themselves, and might relieve us, with their supererogations; for, if they may work for us, they may believe for us; and Iustus fide sua vivet, says the Prophet, The righteous shall live by his own faith. Not upon that person, who hath made himself supernumerary, and a Controller upon the three persons in the Trinity, the Bishop of Rome; not upon the consideration of accidents upon persons, when God suffers some to fall, who would have advanced his cause, and some to be advanced, who would have thrown down his cause, but let us ever dwell in pacto, and in the fecit Deus, this Covenant God hath made in his word, and in this we rest.

It is God then, not nature, not his nature that made him; And what? Christ; Christ is anointed: And then Mary Magdalene made him Christ, for she anointed him before his death; And Joseph of Arimathea made him Christ, for he anointed him, and embalmed him, after his death. But her anointing before, kept him not from death, nor his anointing after, would not have kept him from putrefaction in the grave, if God had not in a far other manner, made him Christ, anointed him praeconsortibus, above his fellows. God hath anointed him, embalmed him, enwrapped him in the leaves of the Prophets, That his flesh should not see corruption in the grave, That the flames of hell should not take hold of him, nor sindge him there; so anointed him, as that, in his Human nature, He is ascended into heaven, and set down at the right hand of God; For, de eo quod ex Maria est, Petrus loquitur, says S. Basil, That making of him Christ, that is, that anointing which S. Peter speaks of in this place, is the dignifying of his human nature, that was anointed, that was consecrated, that was glorified in heaven.

But he had a higher step then that; God made this Jesus, Christ, and he made him Lord; He brought him to heaven, in his own person, in his human nature; so he shall all us; but when we shall be all there, he only shall be Lord of all. And if there should be no other bodies in heaven, then his, yet, yet now he is Lord of all, as he is Head of the Church. Ask of me, says his Father, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the utter most parts of the Earth for thy possession. And, as it is added, ver. 6. I have set my King upon my holy hill of Zion; So he hath made him Lord, Head of the Jews, and of the Gentiles too, of Zion, and of the Nations also; He hath consecrated his person, raised his human nature, to the glorious region of blessed Spirits, to Heaven, and he hath dignified him with an office, made him Lord, Head of the Church, not only of Jews, and Gentiles upon earth, but of the Militant and Triumphant Church too.

Our two general parts were Scientia, & modus, what we must all know, and by what we must know it. Our knowledge is, this Exaltation of Jesus; and our means is implied, in the first word of the Text, Therefore, Therefore because he is raised from the Dead; for to that Resurrection, expressed in three, or four several phrases before the Text, is this Text, and this Exaltation referred; Christ was delivered for our sins, raised for our justification, and upon that depends all. Christ's descending into hell, and his Resurrection, in our Creed, make but one Article, and in our Creed we believe them both alike: Quis nisi Infidelis negaverit, apud inferos fuisse Christum? says S. Augustine; Who but an Infidel, will deny Christ's descending into hell? And if he believe that to be a limb of the article of the Resurrection, His descent into hell, must rather be an inchoation of his triumph, then a consummation of his Exinanition, The first step of his Exaltation there, rather then the last step of his Passion upon the Cross: But the Declaration, the Manifestation, that which admits no disputation, was his Resurrection. Factus, id est, declaratus per Resurrectionem, says S. Cyril, He was made Christ, and Lord, that is, declared evidently to be so, by his Resurrection; As there is the like phrase, in S. Paul, God hath made the wisdom of this world, foolishness, that is, declared it to be so. And therefore it is imputed to be a crucifying of the Lord Jesus again, Non credere eum, post mortem, immortalem, Not to believe, that now after his having overcome death in his Resurrection, he is in an immortal, and in a glorious state in heaven. For when the Apostle argues thus, If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching in vain, and your faith in vain, he implies the contrary too, If you believe the Resurrection, we have preached to good purpose: Mortuum esse Christum, pagani credunt; resurrexisse propria fides Christianorum: The Heathen confess Christ's death; To believe his Resurrection, is the proper character of a Christian: for the first stone of the Christian faith, was laid in this article of the Resurrection; In the Resurrection only was the first promise performed, Ipse conteret, He shall bruise the Serpents head; for, in this, he triumphed over Death, and Hell; And the last stone of our faith, is laid in the same article too, that is, the day of Judgment; of a day of Judgment God hath given an assurance unto all men (says S. Paul at Athens) In that he hath raised Christ Jesus from the dead. In this Christ makes up his circle; in this he is truly Alpha and Omega, His coming in Paradise in a promise, his coming to Judgment in the clouds, are tied together in the Resurrection: And therefore all the Gospel, all our preaching, is contracted to that one text, To bear witness of the Resurrection; only for that, was there need of a new Apostle, There was a necessity of one to be chosen in Judas room, to be a witness of the Resurrection; Non ait caeterorum, sed tantùm Resurrectionis, says S. Chrysostom, He does not say, to bear witness of the other articles, but only of the Resurrection; he charges him with no more instructions, he needs no more, in his Commission, but to preach the Resurrection: for in that, Trophaeum de morte excitavit, & indubitatum reddidit corruptionem deletam: Here is a retreat from the whole warfare, here is a Trophy erected upon the last enemy; The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death, and here is the death of that enemy, in the Resurrection.

And therefore, to all those who importuned him for a sign, Christ still turns upon the Resurrection. The Jews pressed him in general, Quod signum, What sign showest thou unto us? and he answers, Destroy this Temple, (this body) and in three days I will raise it. In another place, the Scribes and the Pharisees join, Master we would see a sign from thee, and he tells them, There shall be no sign, but the sign of the Prophet Jonah; who was a type of the Resurrection. And then the Pharisees, and Sadducees join; now they were bitter enemies to one another; but, as Tertullian says, Semper inter duos latrones crucifixus Christus, It was always Christ's case to be crucified between two Thieves; So these, though enemies join in this vexation, They ask a sign, as the rest, and, as to the rest, Christ gives that answer of Jonah. So that Christ himself determines all, sums up all in this one Article, the Resurrection.

Now, if the Resurrection of this Jesus, have made him, not only Christ, Anointed and consecrated in Heaven, in his own person, but made him Lord, then he hath Subjects, upon whom that dominion, and that power works, and so we have assurance of a resurrection in him too. That he is made Lord of us by his Resurrection, is rooted in prophecy; It pleased the Lord to bruise him, says the Prophet Isaiah; But he shall see his seed, and he shall prolong his days; that is, he shall see those that are regenerate in him, live with him, forever. It is rooted in prophecy, and it spreads forth in the Gospel. To this end, says the Apostle, Christ died, and rose, that he might be Lord of the dead, and of the living. Now, what kind of Lord, if he had no subjects? Cum videmus caput super aquas, when the head is above water, will any imagine the body to be drowned? What a perverse consideration were it, to imagine a live head, and dead members? Or, consider our bodies in ourselves, and Our bodies are Temples of the Holy Ghost; and shall the Temples of the holy Ghost lie forever, forever, buried in their rubbidge? They shall not; for, the day of Judgment, is the day of Regeneration, as it is called in the Gospel; Quia caro nostra ita generabitur per incorruptionem, sicut anima per fidem: Because our body shall be regenerated by glory there, as our souls are by faith here. Therefore, Tertul. calls the Resurrection, Exemplum spei nostrae, The Original, out of which we copy out our hope; and Clavem sepulchrorū nostrorum, How hard soever my grave be locked, yet with that key, with the application of the Resurrection of Christ Jesus, it will open; And they are all names, which express this well, which Tertullian gives Christ, Vadem, obsidem, fidejussorem resurrectionis nostrae, That he is the pledge, the hostage, the surety of our Resurrection: So doth that also which is said in the School, Sicut Adam forma morientium, it a Christus forma resurgentium; Without Adam, there had been no such thing as death, without Christ, no such thing as a Resurrection: But ascendit ill effractor, (as the Prophet speaks) The breaker is gone up before, and they have passed through the gate, that is, assuredly, infallibly, they shall pass.

But what needs all this heat, all this animosity, all this vehemence, about the Resurrection? May not man be happy enough in heaven, though his body never come thither? upon what will ye ground the Resurrection? upon the Omnipotence of God? Asylum haereticorum est Omnipotentia Dei, (which was well said, and often repeated amongst the Ancients) The Omnipotence of God, hath always been the Sanctuary of Heretics, that is, always their refuge, in all their incredible doctrines, God is able to do it, can do it. You confess, the Resurrection is a miracle; And miracles are not to be multiplied, nor imagined without necessity; and what necessity of bodies in Heaven?

Beloved, we make the ground and foundation of the Resurrection, to be, not merely the Omnipotency of God, for God will not do all, that he can do: but the ground is, Omnipotens voluntas Dei revelata, The Almighty will of God revealed by him, to us: And therefore Christ joins both these together, Erratis, Ye err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God; that is, not considering the power of God, as it is revealed in the Scriptures: for there is our foundation of this Doctrine: we know, out of the Omnipotence of God, it may be; and we know out of the Scriptures it must be: That works upon our faith, this upon our reason; That it is man that must be saved, man that must be damned; and to constitute a man, there must be a body, as well as a soul. Nay, the Immortality of the soul, will not so well lie in proof, without a resuming of the body. For, upon those words of the Apostle, If there were no Resurrection, we were the miserablest of all men, the School reasons reasonably; Naturally the soul and body are united, when they are separated by Death, it is contrary to nature, which nature still affects this union; and consequently the soul is the less perfect, for this separation; and it is not likely, that the perfect natural state of the soul, which is, to be united to the body, should last but three or four score years, and, in most, much less, and the imperfect state, that in the separation, should last eternally, forever: so that either the body must be believed to live again, or the soul believed to die.

Never therefore dispute against thine own happiness; never say, God asks the heart, that is, the soul, and therefore rewards the soul, or punishes the soul, and hath no respect to the body; Nec auferamus cogitations a collegio carnis, says Tertullian, Never go about to separate the thoughts of the heart, from the college, from the fellowship of the body; Siquidem in carne, & cum carne, & per carnem agitur, quicquid ab anima agitur, All that the soul does, it does in, and with, and by the body. And therefore, (says he also) Caro abluitur, ut anima emaculetur, The body is washed in baptism, but it is that the soul might be made clean; Caro ungitur, ut anima consecretur, In all unctions, whether that which was then in use in Baptism, or that which was in use at our transmigration, and passage out of this world, the body was anointed, that the soul might be consecrated; Caro signatur, (says Tertullian still) ut anima muniatur; The body is signed with the Cross, that the soul might be armed against temptations; And again, Caro de Corpore Christi vescitur, ut anima de Deo saginetur; My body received the body of Christ, that my soul might partake of his merits. He extends it into many particulars, and sums up all thus, Non possunt in mercede separari, quae opera conjungunt, These two, Body, and Soul, cannot be separated forever, which, whilst they are together, concur in all that either of them do. Never think it presumption, says S. Gregory, Sperare in te, quod in se exhibuit Deus homo, To hope for that in thyself, which God admitted, when he took thy nature upon him. And God hath made it, says he, more easy then so, for thee, to believe it, because not only Christ himself, but such men, as thou art, did rise at the Resurrection of Christ. And therefore when our bodies are dissolved and liquefied in the Sea, putrefied in the earth, resolved to ashes in the fire, macerated in the air, Velut in vasa sua transfunditur caro nostra, make account that all the world is God's cabinet, and water, and earth, and fire, and air, are the proper boxes, in which God lays up our bodies, for the Resurrection. Curiously to dispute against our own Resurrection, is seditiously to dispute against the dominion of Jesus; who is not made Lord by the Resurrection, if he have no subjects to follow him in the same way. We believe him to be Lord, therefore let us believe his, and our Resurrection.

This blessed day, which we celebrate now, he rose: he rose so, as none before did, none after, ever shall rise; He rose; others are but raised: Destroy this Temple, says he, and I will raise it; I, without employing any other Architect. I lay down my life, says he: the Jews could not have killed him, when he was alive; If he were alive here now, the Jesuits could not kill him here now; except his being made Christ, and Lord, an anointed King, have made him more open to them. I have a power to lay it down, says he, and I have a power to take it up again.

This day, we celebrate his Resurrection; this day let us celebrate our own: Our own, not our one Resurrection, for we need many. Upon those words of our Savior to Nicodemus, Oportet denuo nasci, speaking of the necessity of Baptism, Non solum denuo, sed tertio nasci oportet, says S. Bernard, He must be born again, and again; again by baptism, for Original sin, and for actual sin, again by repentance; Infoelix homo ego, & miser abilis casus, says he, cui non sufficit una regeneratio! Miserable man that I am, and miserable condition that I am fallen into, whom one regeneration will not serve! So is it a miserable death that hath swallowed us, whom one Resurrection will serve. We need three, but if we have not two, we were as good be without one. There is a Resurrection from worldly calamities, a resurrection from sin, and a resurrection from the grave.

First, from calamities; for, as dangers are called death, ( Pharaoh calls the plague of Locusts, a death, Intreat the Lord your God, that he may take from me, this death only, And so S. Paul says, in his dangers, I die daily ) So is the deliverance from danger called a Resurrection: It is the hope of the wicked upon the godly, Now that he lieth, he shall rise no more; that is, Now that he is dead in misery, he shall have no resurrection in this world. Now, this resurrection God does not always give to his servants, neither is this resurrection the measure of God's love of man, whether he do raise him from worldly calamities or no.

The second is the resurrection from sin; and therefore, this S. John calls The first Resurrection, as though the other, whether we rise from worldly calamities, or no, were not to be reckoned. Anima spiritualiter cadit, & spiritualiter resurget, says S. Augustine, Since we are sure, there is a spiritual death of the soul, let us make sure a spiritual resurrection too. Audacter dicam, says S. Jerome, I say confidently, Cum omnia posset Deus, suscitare Virginem post ruinam, non potest; Howsoever God can do all things, he cannot restore a Virgin, that is fallen from it, to virginity again. He cannot do this in the body, but God is a Spirit, and hath reserved more power, upon the spirit and soul, then upon the body, and therefore Audacter dicam, I may say, with the same assurance, that S. Jerome does, No soul hath so prostituted her self, so multiplied her fornications; but that God can make her a virgin again, and give her, even the chastity of Christ himself. Fulfill therefore that which Christ says, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live: Be this that hour, be this thy first Resurrection. Bless God's present goodness, for this now; and attend God's leisure, for the other Resurrection hereafter. He that is the first fruits of them that slept, Christ Jesus is awake; he dies no more, he sleeps no more. Sacrificium pro te fuit, sed à te accepit, quod pro te obtulit: He offered a Sacrifice for thee, but he had that from thee, that he offered for thee: Primitiae fuit, sed tuae primitiae; He was the first fruits, but the first fruits of thy Corn: Spera in te futurum, quod praecess it in primitiis tuis: Doubt not of having that in the whole Croppe, which thou hast already in thy first fruits; that is, to have that in thyself, which thou hast in thy Savior. And what glory soever thou hast had in this world, Glory inherited from noble Ancestors, Glory acquired by merit and service, Glory purchased by money, and observation, what glory of beauty and proportion, what glory of health and strength soever thou hast had in this house of clay, The glory of the later house, shall be greater then of the former. To this glory, the God of this glory, by glorious or inglorious ways, such as may most advance his own glory, bring us in his time, for his Son Christ Jesus sake. Amen.

SERMON XIX. Preached at S. Paul's, upon Easter-day, in the Evening. 1624.

I N the first book of the Scriptures, that of Genesis, there is danger in departing from the letter; In this last book, this of the Revelation, there is as much danger in adhering too close to the letter. The literal sense is always to be preserved; but the literal sense is not always to be discerned: for the literal sense is not always that, which the very Letter and Grammar of the place presents, as where it is literally said, That Christ is a Vine, and literally, That his flesh is bread, and literally, That the new Jerusalem is thus situated, thus built, thus furnished: But the literal sense of every place, is the principal intention of the Holy Ghost, in that place: And his principal intention in many places, is to express things by allegories, by figures; so that in many places of Scripture, a figurative sense is the literal sense, and more in this book then in any other. As then to depart from the literal sense, that sense which the very letter presents, in the book of Genesis, is dangerous, because if we do so there, we have no history of the Creation of the world in any other place to stick to; so to bind ourselves to such a literal sense in this book, will take from us the consolation of many spiritual happiness, and bury us in the carnal things of this world.

The first error of being too allegorical in Genesis, transported divers of the ancients beyond the certain evidence of truth, and the second error of being too literal in this book, fixed many, very many, very ancient, very learned, upon an evident falsehood; which was, that because here is mention of a first Resurrection, and of reigning with Christ a thousand years after that first Resurrection, There should be to all the Saints of God, a state of happiness in this world, after Christ's coming, for a thousand years; In which happy state, though some of them have limited themselves in spiritual things, that they should enjoy a kind of conversation with Christ, and an impeccability, and a quiet serving of God without any reluctations, or cōcupiscences; or persecutions; yet others have dreamed on, and enlarged their dreams to an enjoying of all these worldly happiness, which they, being formerly persecuted, did formerly want in this world, and then should have them for a thousand years together in recompense. And even this branch of that error, of possessing the things of this world, so long, in this world, did very many, and very good, and very great men, whose names are in honor, and justly in the Church of God, in those first times stray into; and flattered themselves with an imaginary intimation of some such thing, in these words, Blessed and holy is he, that hath part in the first Resurrection.

Thus far then the text is literal, That this Resurrection in the text, is different from the general Resurrection. The first differs from the last: And thus far it is figurative, allegorical, mystical, that it is a spiritual Resurrection, that is intended. But wherein spiritual? or of what spiritual Resurrection? In the figurative exposition of those places of Scripture, which require that way oft to be figuratively expounded, that Expositor is not to be blamed, who not destroying the literal sense, proposes such a figurative sense, as may exalt our devotion, and advance our edification; And as no one of those Expositors did ill, in proposing one such sense, so neither do those Expositors ill, who with those limitations, that it destroy not the literal sense, that it violate not the analogy of faith, that it advance devotion, do propose another and another such sense. So doth that preacher well also, who to the same end, and within the same limit, makes his use of both, of all those expositions; because all may stand, and it is not evident in such figurative speeches, which is the literal, that is, the principal intention of the Holy Ghost.

Of these words of this first Resurrection (which is not the last, of the body, but a spiritual Resurrection) there are three expositions authorized by persons of good note in the Church. First, that this first Resurrection, is a Resurrection from that low estate, to which persecution had brought the Church; and so it belongs to this whole State, and Church, and Blessed are we who have our part in this first Resurrection. Secondly, that it is a Resurrection from the death of sin, of actual, and habitual sin; so it belongs to every particular penitent soul; and Blessed art thou, blessed am I, if we have part in this first Resurrection. And then thirdly, because after this Resurrection, it is said, That we shall reign with Christ a thousand years, (which is a certain for an uncertain, a limited, for a long time) it hath also been taken for the state of the soul in heaven, after it is parted from the body by death; for though the soul cannot be said properly to have a Resurrection, because properly it cannot die, yet to be thus delivered from the danger of a second death, by future sin, to be removed from the distance, and latitude, and possibility of temptations in this world, is by very good Expositors called a Resurrection; and so it belongs to all them who are departed in the Lord; Blessed and holy is he that hath part in this first Resurrection. And then the occasion of the day, which we celebrate now, being the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus, invites me to propose a fourth sense, or rather use of the words; not indeed as an exposition of the words, but as a convenient exaltation of our devotion; which is, that this first Resurrection should be the first fruits of the dead; The first Rising, is the first Riser, Christ Jesus: for as Christ says of himself, that He is the Resurrection, so he is the first Resurrection, the root of the Resurrection. He upon whom our Resurrection, all ours, all our kinds of Resurrections are founded; and so it belongs to State and Church, and particular persons, alive, and dead; Blessed and holy is he that hath part in this first Resurrection.

And these four considerations of the words; A Resurrection from persecution, by deliverance; a Resurrection from sin, by grace; a Resurrection from temptation to sin, by the way of death, to the glory of heaven; and all these, in the first Resurrection, in him that is the root of all, in Christ Jesus, These four steps, these four passages, these four transitions will be our quarter Clock, for this hours exercise.

First then, we consider this first Resurrection, to be a Resurrection from a persecution for religion, for the profession of the Gospel, to a forward glorious passage of the Gospel. And so a learned Expositor in the Roman Church carries the exposition of this whole place (though not indeed the ordinary way, yet truly not incommodiously, not improperly) upon that deliverance, which God afforded his Church, from those great persecutions, which had otherwise supplanted her, in her first planting, in the primitive times. Then says he (and in part well towards the letter of the place) The devil was chained for a thousand years, and then we began to reign with Christ for a thousand years; reckoning the time from that time, when God destroyed Idolatry more fully, and gave peace and rest, and free exercise of the Christian religion, under the Christian Emperors, till Antichrist in the height of his rage shall come, and let this thousand years prisoner Satan loose, and so interrupt our thousand years reign with Christ, with new persecutions. In that persecution was the death of the Church, in the eye of the world; In that deliverance by Christian Emperors was the Resurrection of the Church; And in God's protecting her ever since is the chaining up of the devil, and our reigning with Christ for those thousand years.

And truly, beloved, if we consider the low, the very low estate of Christians in those persecutions, tried ten times in the fire, ten several and distinct persecutions, in which ten persecutions, God may seem to have had a mind to deal eavenly with the world, and to lay as much upon his people whom he would try then, as he had laid upon others, for his people before, and so to equal the ten plagues of Egypt, in ten persecutions, in the primitive Church; if we consider that low, that very low estate, we may justly call their deliverance a Resurrection. For as God said to Jerusalem, I found thee in thy blood, and washed thee, so Christ Jesus found the Church, the Christian Church in her blood, and washed her, and wiped her; washed her in his own blood, which washes white, and wiped her with the garments of his own righteousness, that she might be acceptable in the sight of God, and then wiped all tears from her eyes, took away all occasions of complaint, and lamentation, that she might be glorious in the eyes of man, and cheerful in her own; such was her Resurrection.

We wonder, and justly, at the effusion, at the pouring out of blood, in the sacrifices of the old Law; that that little country scarce bigger then some three of our Shires, should spend more cattle in some few days sacrifice at some solemnities, and every year in the sacrifices of the whole year, then perchance this kingdom could give to any use. Seas of blood, and yet but brooks, tuns of blood, and yet but basons, compared with the sacrifices, the sacrifices of the blood of men, in the persecutions of the Primitive Church. For every Ox of the Jew, the Christian spent a man, and for every Sheep and Lamb, a Mother and her child; and for every heard of cattle, sometimes a town of Inhabitants, sometimes a Legion of Soldiers, all martyred at once; so that they did not stand to fill their Martyrologies with names, but with numbers, they had not room to say, such a day, such a Bishop, such a day, such a General, but the day of 500. the day of 5000. Martyrs, and the martyrdom of a City, or the Martyrdom of an Army; This was not a red Sea, such as the Jews passed, a Sinus, a Creek, an Arm, an Inlet, a gut of a Sea, but a red Ocean, that overflowed, and surrounded all parts; and from the depth of this Sea God raised them; and such was their Resurrection. Such, as that they which suffered, lay, and bled with more ease, then the executioner stood and sweat; and embraced the fire more fervently, then he blew it; and many times had this triumph in their death, that even the executioner himself, was in the act of execution converted to Christ, and executed with them; such was their Resurrection.

When the State of the Jews was in that depression, in that conculcation, in that consternation, in that extermination in the captivity of Babylon, as that God presents it to the Prophet in that Vision, in the field of dry bones, so, Fili hominis, Son of man, as thou art a reasonable man, dost thou think these bones can live, that these men can ever be re-collected to make up a Nation? The Prophet saith, Domine tu scis, Lord thou knowest; which is, not only thou knowest whether they can, or no, but thou knowest clearly they can; thou canst make them up of bones again, for thou madest those bones of earth before. If God had called in the Angels to the making of man at first, and as he said to the Prophet, Fili hominis, Son of man, as thou art a reasonable man, so he had said to them, Filii Dei, as you are the Sons of God, illumined by his face, do you think, that this clod of red earth can make a man, a man that shall be equal to you, in one of his parts, in his soul, and yet then shall have such another part, as that he, whom all you worship, my essential Son shall assume, and invest that part himself, can that man made of that body, and that soul, be made of this clod of earth? Those Angels would have said, Domine tu scis, Lord thou must needs know, how to make as good creatures as us of earth, who madest us of that which is infinitely less then earth, of nothing, before. To induce, to facilitate these apprehensions, there were some precedents, some such thing had been done before. But when the Church was newly conceived, and then lay like the egg of a Dove, and a Giants foot over it, like a worm, like an ant, and hill upon hill whelmed upon it, nay, like a grain of corn between the upper and lower Mill-stone, ground to dust between Tyrans and Heretics, when as she bled in her Cradle, in those children whom Herod slew, so she bled upon her crutches, in those decrepit men whom former persecutions and tortures had creepled before, when East and West joined hands to crush her, and hands, and brains, joined execution to consultation to annihilate her; in this wane of the Moon, God gave her an instant fullness; in this exinanition, instant glory; in this grave, an instant Resurrection.

But beloved, the expressing the pressing of their depressions, does but chafe the Wax; the Printing of the seal, is the reducing to your memory, your own case: and not that point in your case, as you were for a few years under a sensible persecution of fire, and prisons; that was the least part of your persecution; for it is a cheap purchase of heaven, if we may have it for dying; To sell all we have to buy that field where we know the treasure is, is not so hard, as not to know it; To part with all, for the great Pearl, not so hard a bargain, as not to know that such a Pearl there might have been had; we could not say heaven was kept from us, when we might have it for a Fagot, and when even our enemies helped us to it: but your greater affliction was, as you were long before, in an insensibleness, you thought yourselves well enough, and yet were under a worse persecution of ignorance, and of superstition, when you, in your Fathers, were so far from expecting a resurrection, as that you did not know your low estate, or that you needed a Resurrection; And yet God gave you a Resurrection from it, a reformation of it.

Now, who have their parts in this first resurrection? or upon what conditions have you it? We see in the fourth verse, They that are beheaded for the witness of Jesus; that is, that are ready to be so, when the glory of Jesus shall require that testimony. In the mean time, as it follows there, They that have not worshipped the Beast; that is, not applied the Honor, and the Allegiance due to their Sovereign, to any foreign State; nor the Honor due to God, that is, infallibility, to another Prelate; That have not worshipped the Beast, nor his Image, says the Text; that is, that have not been transported with vain imaginations of his power, and his growth upon us here, which hath been so diligently Painted, and Printed, and Preached, and set out in the promises, and practices of his Instruments, to delude slack, and easy persons: And then, as it is added there, That have not received his mark upon their foreheads; That is, not declared themselves Romanists apparently; nor in their hands, says the Text; that is, which have not under-hand sold their secret endeavors, though not their public profession, to the advancement of his cause. These men, who are ready to be beheaded for Christ, and have not worshipped the Beast, nor the Image of the Beast, nor received his mark upon their foreheads, nor in their hands, these have their parts in this first resurrection. These are blessed, and holy, says our Text; Blessed, because they have means to be holy, in this resurrection; For the Lamb hath unclasped the book; the Scriptures are open; which way to holiness, our Fathers lacked; And then, our blessedness is, that we shall reign a thousand years with Christ; Now since this first resurrection, since the reformation we have reigned so with Christ, but 100. years: But if we persist in a good use of it, our posterity shall add the Cypher, and make that 100. 1000. even to the time, when Christ Jesus shall come again, and as he hath given us the first, so shall give us the last resurrection; and to that come Lord Jesus, come quickly; and till that, continue this.

This is the first resurrection, in the first acceptation, a resurrection from persecution, and a peaceable enjoying of the Gospel: And in a second, it is a resurrection from sin; and so it hath a more particular appropriation to every person. So S. Augustine takes this place, and with him many of the Fathers, and with them, many of the sons of the Fathers, better sons of the Fathers, then the Roman Church will confess them to be, or then they are themselves, The Expositors of the Reformed Church. They, for the most part, with S. Augustine, take this first resurrection, to be a resurrection from sin. Inter abjectos abjectissimus peccator: No man falls lower, then he that falls into a course of sin; Sin is a fall; It is not only a deviation, a turning out of the way, upon the right, or the left hand, but it is a sinking, a falling: In the other case, of going out of the way, a man may stand upon the way, and inquire, and then proceed in the way, if he be right, or to the way, if he be wrong; But when he is fallen, and lies still, he proceeds no farther, inquires no farther. To be too apt to conceive scruples in matters of religion, stops, and retards a man in the way; to mistake some points in the truth of religion, puts a man for that time in a wrong way; But to fall into a course of sin, this makes him unsensible of any end, that he hath to go to, of any way that he hath to go by. God hath not removed man, not with-drawn man from this Earth; he hath not given him the Air to fly in, as to Birds, nor Spheres to move in, as to Sun and Moon; he hath left him upon the Earth; and not only to tread upon it, as in contempt, or in mere Dominion, but to walk upon it, in the discharge of the duties of his calling; and so to be conversant with the Earth, is not a falling. But as when man was nothing but earth, nothing but a body, he lay flat upon the earth, his mouth kissed the earth, his hands embraced the earth, his eyes respected the earth; And then God breathed the breath of life into him, and that raised him so far from the earth, as that only one part of his body, (the soles of his feet) touches it, And yet man, so raised by God, by sin fell lower to the earth again, then before, from the face of the earth, to the womb, to the bowels, to the grave; So God, finding the whole man, as low as he found Adams body then, fallen in Original sin, yet erects us by a new breath of life, in the Sacrament of Baptism, and yet we fall lower then before we were raised, from Original into Actual, into Habitual sins; So low, as that we think not, that we need, know not, that there is a resurrection; and that is the wonderful, that is the fearful fall.

Though those words, Quomodo cecidisti de Coelo, Lucifer, How art thou fallen from heaven O Lucifer, the Son of the morning? be ordinarily applied to the fall of the Angels, yet it is evident, that they are literally spoken of the fall of a man: It deserves wonder, more then pity, that man, whom God had raised, to so Noble a heighth in him, should fall so low from him. Man was borne to love; he was made in the love of God; but then man falls in love; when he grows in love with the creature, he falls in love: As we are bid to honor the Physician, and to use the Physician, but yet it is said in the same Chapter, He that sinneth before his Maker, let him fall into the hands of the Physician; It is a blessing to use him, it is a curse to rely upon him, so it is a blessing to glorify God, in the right use of his creatures, but to grow in love with them, is a fall: For we love nothing that is so good as ourselves; Beauty, Riches, Honor, is not so good as man; Man capable of grace here, of glory hereafter. Nay as those things, which we love, in their nature, are worse then we which love them, so in our loving them, we endeavor to make them worse then they in their own nature are; by over-loving the beauty of the body, we corrupt the soul, by overloving honor, and riches, we deflect, and detort these things, which are not in their nature ill, to ill uses, and make them serve our ill purposes: Man falls, as a fall of waters, that throws down, and corrupts all that it embraces. Nay beloved, when a man hath used those wings, which God hath given him, and raised himself to some heighth in religious knowledge, and religious practice, as Eutichus, out of a desire to hear Paul preach, was got up into a Chamber, and up into a window of that Chamber, and yet falling asleep, fell down dead; so we may fall into a security of our present state, into a pride of our knowledge, or of our purity, and so fall lower, then they, who never came to our heighth. So much need have we of a resurrection.

So sin is a fall, and every man is afraid of falling, even from his temporal station; more afraid of falling, then of not being raised. And Qui peccat, quatenus peccat, fit seipso deterior: In every sin a man falls from that degree which himself had before; In every sin, he is dishonored, he is not so good a man, as he was; impoverished, he hath not so great a portion of grace as he had; Infatuated, he hath not so much of the true wisdom of the fear of God, as he had; disarmed, he hath not that interest and confidence in the love of God, that he had: and deformed, he hath not so lively a representation of the Image of God as before. In every sin, we become prodigals, but in the habit of sin, we become bankrupts, afraid to come to an account. A fall is a fearful thing, that needs a raising, a help; but sin is a death, and that needs a resurrection; and a resurrection is as great a work, as the very Creation it self. It is death in semine, in the root, it produces, it brings forth death; It is death in arbore, in the body, in it self; death is a divorce, and so is sin; and it is death in fructu, in the fruit thereof; sin plants spiritual death, and this death produces more sin, Obduration, Impenitence, and the like.

Be pleased to return, and cast one half thought upon each of these: Sin is the root of death; Death by sin entered, and death passed upon all men, for all men have sinned. It is death because we shall die for it. But it is death in it self, We are dead already, dead in it; Thou hast a name, that thou livest, and art dead, was spoken to a whole Church. It is not evidence enough, to prove that thou art alive, to say, I saw thee at a Sermon; that spirit, that knows thy spirit, he that knows whether thou wert moved by a Sermon, melted by a Sermon, mended by a Sermon, he knows whether thou be alive or no.

That which had wont to be said, That dead men walked in Churches, is too true; Men walk out a Sermon, or walk out after a Sermon, as ill as they walked in; they have a name that they live, and are dead: But the hour is come, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: That is, at these hours they may hear, if they will, and till they do hear, they are dead. Sin is the root of death, the body of death, and then it is the fruit of death. S. Augustine confesses of himself, that he was Allisus intra parietes in celebritate solemnitatum tuarum, that in great meetings upon solemn days, in the Church, there, within the walls of God's house, Egit negotium procurandi fructus mortis, he was not buying and selling doves, but buying and selling souls, by wanton looks, cheapning and making the bargain of the fruits of death, as himself expresses it. Sin is the root, and the tree, and the fruit of death; The mother of death, death it self, and the daughter of death; and from this death, this threefold death, death past in our past sins, present death in our present in sensibleness of sin, future death in those sins, with which sins God will punish our former, and present sins, (if he proceed merely in justice) God affords us this first resurrection.

How? Thus. Death is the Divorce of body and soul; Resurrection is the Re-union of body and soul: And in this spiritual death, and resurrection, which we consider now, and which is all determined in the soul it self, Grace is the soul of the soul, and so the departing of grace, is the death, and the returning of grace is the resurrection of this sinful soul. But how? By what way, what means? Consider Adam; Adam was made to enjoy an immortality in his body; He induced death upon himself: And then, as God having made Marriage for a remedy against uncleanness, intemperate men make even Marriage it self an occasion of more uncleanness, then if they had never married; so man having induced and created death, by sin, God takes death, and makes it a means of the glorifying of his body, in heaven. God did not induce death, death was not in his purpose; but veluti medium opportunum, quo vas confractum rursus fingeretur, As a means, whereby a broken vessel might be made up again, God took death, and made it serve for that purpose, That men by the grave might be translated to heaven.

So then, to the resurrection of the body, there is an ordinary way, The grave; To the resurrection of the soul, there is an ordinary way too, The Church. In the grave, the body that must be there prepared for the last resurrection, hath worms that eat upon it: In the Church, the soul that comes to this first resurrection, must have worms, The worm, the sting, the remorse, the compunction of Conscience; In those that have no part in this first resurrection, the worm of conscience shall never die, but gnaw on, to desperation; but those that have not this worm of conscience, this remorse, this compunction, shall never live. In the grave, which is the furnace, which ripens the body for the last resurrection, there is a putrefaction of the body, and an ill savor: In the Church, the womb where my soul must be mellowed for this first resurrection, my soul, which hath the savor of death in it, as it is leavened throughout with sin, must stink in my nostrils, and I come to a detestation of all those sins, which have putrefied her. And I must not be afraid to accuse myself, to condemn myself, to humble myself, lest I become a scorn to men; Nemo me derideat ab eo medico aegrum sanari, à quo sibi praestitum est ne aegrotaret, Let no man despise me, or wonder at me, that I am so humbled under the hand of God, or that I fly to God as to my Physician when I am sick, since the same God that hath recovered me as my Physician when I was sick, hath been his Physician too, and kept him from being sick, who, but for that Physician, had been as ill as I was: At least he must be his Physician, if ever he come to be sick, and come to know that he is sick, and come to a right desire to be well. Spiritual death was before bodily; sin before the wages of sin; God hath provided a resurrection for both deaths, but first for the first; This is the first resurrection, Reconciliation to God, and the returning of the soul of our soul, Grace, in his Church, by his Word, and his seals there.

Now every repentance is not a resurrection; It is rather a waking out of a dream, then a rising to a new life: Nay it is rather a startling in our sleep, then any awaking at all, to have a sudden remorse, a sudden flash, and no constant perseverance. Awake thou that sleepest, says the Apostle, out of the Prophet: First awake, come to a sense of thy state; and then arise from the dead, says he, from the practice of dead works; and then, Christ shall give thee light: life, and strength to walk in new ways. It is a long work, and hath many steps; Awake, arise, and walk, and therefore set out betimes; At the last day, in those, which shall be found alive upon the earth, we say there shall be a sudden death, and a sudden resurrection; In raptu, in transitu, in ictu oculi, In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye; but do not thou trust to have this first Resurrection In raptu, in transitu, in ictu oculi, In thy last passage upon thy death-bed, when the twinkling of the eye, must be the closing of thine eyes: But as we assign to glorified bodies after the last Resurrection, certain Dotes, (as we call them in the School) certain Endowments, so labor thou to find those endowments, in thy soul here, if thou beest come to this first Resurrection.

Amongst those Endowments we assign Subtilitatem, Agilitatem; The glorified body is become more subtle, more nimble, not encumbered, not disable for any motion, that it would make; So hath that soul, which is come to this first Resurrection, by grace, a spiritual agility, a holy nimbleness in it, that it can slide by temptations, and pass through temptations, and never be polluted; follow a calling, without taking infection, by the ordinary temptations of that calling. So have those glorified bodies Claritatem, a brightness upon them, from the face of God; and so have these souls, which are come to this first resurrection, a sun in themselves, an inherent light, by which they can presently distinguish between action and action; what must, what may, what must not be done. But of all the endowments of the glorified body, we consider most, Impassibilitatem, That that body shall suffer nothing; and is sure that it shall suffer nothing. And that which answers that endowment of the body most in this soul, that is come to this first resurrection, is as the Apostle speaks, That neither persecution, sickness, nor death, shall separate her from Christ Jesus. In Heaven we do not say, that our bodies shall devest their mortality, so, as that naturally they could not die; for they shall have a composition still; and every compounded thing may perish: but they shall be so assured, and with such a preservation, as they shall always know they shall never die. S. Augustine says well, Assit motio, absit fatigatio, assit potestas vescendi, absit necessitas esuriendi; They have in their nature a mortality, and yet be immortal; a possibility and an impossibility of dying, with those two divers relations, one to nature, the other to preservation, will consist together. So in this soul, that hath this first Resurrection from sin, by grace, a conscience of her own infirmity, that she may relapse, and yet a testimony of the powerfulness of God's Spirit, that easily she shall not relapse, may consist well together. But the last seal of this holy confidence is reserved for that, which is the third acceptation of this first Resurrection; not from persecutions in this world, nor from sin in this world, but from all possibility of falling back into sin, in the world to come; and to this, have divers Expositors referred these words, this first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he, that hath part in this first Resurrection.

Now, a Resurrection of the soul, seems an improper, an impertinent, an improbable, an impossible form of speech; for, Resurrection implies death, and the soul does not die in her passage to Heaven. And therefore Damascene makes account, that he hath sufficiently proved the Resurrection of the body (which seems so incredible) if he could prove any Resurrection; if there be any Resurrection at all, says he, it must be of the body, for the soul cannot die, therefore not rise. Yet have not those Fathers, nor those Expositors, who have in this text, acknowledged a Resurrection of the soul, mistaken nor miscalled the matter. Take Damascens own definition of Resurrection: Resurrectio est ejus quod cecidit secunda surrectio: A Resurrection is a second rising to that state, from which anything is formerly fallen. Now though by death, the soul do not fall into any such state, as that it can complain, (for what can that lack, which God fills?) yet by death, the soul falls from that, for which it was infused, and poured into man at first; that is, to be the form of that body, the King of that Kingdom; and therefore, when in the general Resurrection, the soul returns to that state, for which it was created, and to which it hath had an affection, and a desire, even in the fullness of the Joyes of Heaven, then, when the soul returns to her office, to make up the man, because the whole man hath, therefore the soul hath a Resurrection; not from death, but from a deprivation of her former state; that state, which she was made for, and is ever inclined to.

But that is the last Resurrection; and so the soul hath part even in that last Resurrection; But we are in hand with the first Resurrection of the soul; and that is, when that soul, which was at first breathed from God, and hath long suffered a banishment, a close imprisonment in this body, returns to God again; The returning of the soul to him, from whom it proceeded at first, is a Resurrection of the soul. Here then especially, I feel the straitness of time; two considerations open themselves together, of such a largeness, as all the time from Moses his In principio, when time began, to the Angels Affidavit, in this book, That shall say and swear, that time shall be no more, were too narrow to contemplate these two Hemispheares of Man, this Evening, and Morning of Mans everlasting day; The miseries of man, in this banishment, in this emprisonment, in this grave of the soul, the body, And the glory, and exaltation of that soul in her Resurrection to Heaven. That soul, which being borne free, is made a slave to this body, by coming to it; It must act, but what this body will give it leave to act, according to the Organs, which this body affords it; and if the body be lame in any limb, the soul must be lame in her operation, in that limb too; It must do, but what the body will have it do, and then it must suffer, whatsoever that body puts it to, or whatsoever any others will put that body to: If the body oppress it self with Melancholy, the soul must be sad; and if other men oppress the body with injury, the soul must be sad too; Consider, (it is too immense a thing to consider it) reflect but one thought, but upon this one thing in the soul, here, and hereafter, In her grave, the body, and in her Resurrection in Heaven; That is the knowledge of the soul.

Here says S. Augustine, when the soul considers the things of this world, Non veritate certior, sed consuetudine securior; She rests upon such things as she is not sure are true, but such as she sees, are ordinarily received and accepted for truths: so that the end of her knowledge is not Truth, but opinion, and the way, not Inquisition, but ease: But says he, when she proceeds in this life, to search into heavenly things, Verberatur luce veritatis, The beams of that light are too strong for her, and they sink her, and cast her down, Et ad familiaritatem tenebrarum suarum, non electione sed fatigatione convertitur; and so she returns to her own darkness, because she is most familiar, and best acquainted with it; Non electione, not because she loves ignorance, but because she is weary of the trouble of seeking out the truth, and so swallows even any Religion to escape the pain of debating, and disputing; and in this laziness she sleeps out her lease, her term of life, in this death, in this grave, in this body.

But then in her Resurrection, her measure is enlarged, and filled at once; There she reads without spelling, and knows without thinking, and concludes without arguing; she is at the end of her race, without running; In her triumph, without fighting; In her Haven, without sailing: A free-man, without any prentiship; at full years, without any wardship; and a Doctor, without any proceeding: She knows truly, and easily, and immediately, and entirely, and everlastingly; Nothing left out at first, nothing worn out at last, that conduces to her happiness. What a death is this life? what a resurrection is this death? For though this world be a sea, yet (which is most strange) our Harbor is larger then the sea; Heaven infinitely larger then this world. For, though that be not true, which Origen is said to say, That at last all shall be saved, nor that evident, which Cyril of Alexandria says, That without doubt the number of them that are saved, is far greater then of them that perish, yet surely the number of them, with whom we shall have communion in Heaven, is greater then ever lived at once upon the face of the earth: And of those who lived in our time, how few did we know? and of those whom we did know, how few did we care much for? In Heaven we shall have Communion of Joy and Glory with all, always; Vbi non intrat inimicus, nec amicus exit, Where never any man shall come in that loves us not, nor go from us that does.

Beloved, I think you could be content to hear, I could be content to speak of this Resurrection, our glorious state, by the low way of the grave, till God by that gate of earth, let us in at the other of precious Stones. And blessed and holy is he, who in a rectified conscience desires that resurrection now. But we shall not depart far from this consideration, by departing into our last branch, or conclusion, That this first Resurrection may also be understood to be the first riser Christ Jesus; and Blessed and holy is he that hath part in that first Resurrection.

This first Resurrection is then without any detorting, any violence, very appliable to Christ himself, who was Primitiae dormientium, in that, that action, That he rosc again, he is become (says the Apostle) the first fruits of them that sleep: He did rise, and rise first; others rose with him, none before him: for S. Jerome taking the words as he finds them in that Evangelist, makes this note, That though the graves were opened, at the instant of Christ's death, (death was overcome, the City opened the gates) yet the bodies did not rise till after Christ's Resurrection. For, for such Resurrections as are spoken of, That women received their dead raised to life again, and such as are recorded in the old and New Testament, they were all imperfect and temporary resurrections, such, as S. Jerome says of them all, Resurgebant iterum morituri; They were but reprieved, not pardoned; They had a Resurrection to life, but yet a Resurrection to another death. Christ is the first Resurrection; others were raised; but he only rose; they by a foreign, and extrinsique, he by his own power.

But we call him not the first, in that respect only; for so he was not only the first, but the only; he alone arose by his own power; but with relation to all our future Resurrections, he is the first Resurrection. First, If Christ be not raised, your faith is in vain, says the Apostle; You have a vain faith if you believe in a dead man. He might be true Man, though he remained in death; but it concerns you to believe, that he was the Son of God too; And he was declared to be the Son of God, by the Resurrection from the dead. That was the declaration of himself, his Justification; he was justified by the Spirit, when he was proved to be God, by raising himself. But thus our Justification is also in his Resurrection. For, He was raised from the dead, for our Justification: how for ours? That we should be also in the likeness of his Resurrection. What is that? that he hath told us before; Our Resurrection in Christ is, that we should walk in newness of life.

So that then Christ is the first Resurrection, first, Efficiently, the only cause of his own Resurrection; First, Meritoriously, the only cause of our Resurrection; first, Exemplarily, the only pattern, how we should rise, and how we should walk, when we are up; and therefore, Blessed and happy are we, if we refer all our resurrections to this first Resurrection Christ Jesus. For as Job said of Comforters, so miserable Resurrections are they all without him.

If therefore thou need and seek this first Resurrection, in the first acceptation, a Resurrection from persecutions, and calamities, as they oppress thee here, have thy recourse to him, to Christ. Remember that at the death of Christ, there were earthquakes; the whole earth trembled; There were rendings of the Temple; Schisms, Convulsions, distractions in the Church will be: But then, the graves opened in the midst of those commotions; Then when thou thinkest thyself swallowed, and buried in affliction, as the Angel did his, Christ Jesus shall remove thy grave stone, and give thee a resurrection; but if thou think to remove it by thine own wit, thine own power, or the favor of potent Friends, Digitus Dei non est hic, The hand of God is not in all this, and the stone shall lie still upon thee, till thou putrefy into desperation, and thou shalt have no part in this first Resurrection.

If thou need, and seek this first resurrection, in the second acceptation, from the fearful death of heinous sin, have thy recourse to him, to Christ Jesus, & remember the weight of the sins that lay upon him: All thy sins, and all thy Fathers, and all thy children's sins, all those sins that did induce the first flood, and shall induce the last fire upon this world; All those sins, which that we might take example by them to scape them, are recorded, and which, lest we should take example by them, to imitate them, are left unrecorded; all sins, of all ages, all sexes, all places, all times, all callings, sins heavy in their substance, sins aggravated by their circumstances, all kinds of sins, and all particular sins of every kind, were upon him, upon Christ Jesus; and yet he raised his holy Head, his royal Head, though under thorns, yet crowned with those thorns, and triumphed in this first Resurrection: and his body was not left in the Grave, nor his soul in Hell. Christ's first tongue was a tongue that might be heard, He spoke to the Shepherds by Angels; His second tongue was a Star, a tongue which might be seen; He spoke to the Wisemen of the East by that. Hearken after him these two ways; As he speaks to thine ear, (and to thy soul, by it) in the preaching of his Word, as he speaks to thine eye, (and so to thy soul by that) in the exhibiting of his Sacraments: And thou shalt have thy part in this first Resurrection. But if thou think to overcome this death, this sense of sin, by diversions, by worldly delights, by mirth, and music, and society, or by good works, with a confidence of merit in them, or with a relation to God himself, but not as God hath manifested himself to thee, not in Christ Jesus, The stone shall lie still upon thee, till thou putrefy into desperation, and then hast thou no part in this first Resurrection.

If thou desire this first Resurrection in the third acceptation, as S. Paul did, To be dissolved, and to be with Christ, go Christ's way to that also. He desired that glory that thou doest; and he could have laid down his soul when he would; but he staid his hour, says the Gospel. He could have ascended immediately, immediately in time, yet he staid to descend into hell first; and he could have ascended immediately of himself, by going up, yet he staid till he was taken up. Thou hast no such power of thine own soul and life, not for the time, not for the means of coming to this first Resurrection by death; Stay therefore patiently, stay cheerfully God's leisure till he call; but not so over-cheerfully, as to be loath to go when he calls. Reliefe in persecution by power, reconciliation in sin by grace, dissolution, and transmigration to heaven by death, are all within this first Resurrection: But that which is before them all, is Christ Jesus.

And therefore, as all that the natural man promises himself without God, is impious, so all that we promise ourselves, though by God, without Christ, is frivolous. God, who hath spoken to us by his Son, works upon us by his Son too; He was our Creation, he was our Redemption, he is our Resurrection. And that man trades in the world without money, and goes out of the world without recommendation, that leaves out Christ Jesus. To be a good Moral man, and refer all to the law of Nature in our hearts, is but Diluculum, The dawning of the day; To be a godly man, and refer all to God, is but Crepusculum, A twilight; But the Meridionall brightness, the glorious noon, and heighth, is to be a Christian, to pretend to no spiritual, no temporal blessing, but for, and by, and through, and in our only Lord and Savior Christ Jesus; for he is this first Resurrection, and Blessed and holy is he, that hath part in this first Resurrection.

SERMON XX. Preached at S. Paul's, in the Evening, upon Easter-day. 1625.

A S the Sun works diversely, according to the diverse disposition of the subject, (for the Sun melts wax, and it hardens clay) so do the good actions of good men: upon good men they work a virtuous emulation, a noble and a holy desire to imitate, upon bad men they work a vicious, and impotent envy, a desire to disgrace, and calumniate. And the more the good is that is done, and the more it works upon good men, the more it disaffects the bad: for so the Pharisees express their rancor and malignity against Christ, in this Gospel, If we let him thus alone, all men will believe in him; And that they foresaw would destroy them in their reputation. And therefore they enlarged their malice, beyond Christ himself, to him, upon whom Christ had wrought a Miracle, to Lazarus, They consulted to put him to death, because by reason of him, many believed in Jesus. Our Text leads us to another example of this impotency in envious men; Christ, in this Chapter had, by his only word, cured a man that had been eight and thirty years infirm; and he had done this work upon the Sabbath. They envied the work in the substance, but they quarrel the circumstance; And they envy Christ, but they turn upon the man, who was more obnoxious to them; and they tell him, That it was not lawful for him to carry his bed that day. He discharges himself upon Christ; I dispute not with you concerning the Law; This satisfies me, He that made me whole, bad me take up my bed and walk. Thereupon they put him to find out Jesus; And when he could not find Jesus, Jesus found him, and in his behalf offers himself to the Pharisees. Then they direct themselves upon him, and (as the Gospel says) They sought to slay him, because he had done this upon the Sabbath: And, as the patient had discharged himself upon Christ, Christ discharges himself upon his Father; doth it displease you that I work upon the Sabbath? be angry with God, be angry with the Father, for the Father works when I work. And then this they take worse then his working of Miracles, or his working upon the Sabbath, That he would say, that God was his Father; And therefore in the averring of that, that so important point, That God was his Father, Christ grows into a holy vehemence, and earnestness, and he repeats his usual oath, Verily, verily, three several times: First, ver. 19. That whatsoever the Father doth, He, the Son, doth also, And then ver. 24. He that believeth on me, and him that sent me, hath life everlasting. And then again, ver. 25. The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear it shall live. At this, that the dead should live, they marvelled; But because he knew that they were men more affected with things concerning the body, then spiritual things, as in another story, when they wondered that he would pretend to forgive sins, because he knew, that they thought it a greater matter to bid that man that had the Palsy, take up his bed and walk, then to forgive him his sins, therefore he took that way which was hardest in their opinion, he did bid him take up his bed and walk; So here, when they wondered at his speaking of a spiritual Resurrection, to hear him say, that at his preaching, the dead (that is, men spiritually dead in their sins) should rise again, to them who more respected the body, and did less believe a real Resurrection of the body, then a figurative Resurrection of the soul, he proceeds to that which was, in their apprehension, the more difficult, Marvel not at this, says he, here in our Text; not at that spiritual Resurrection by preaching, for the hour is coming, in the which, all that are in the graves, &c. and so he establishes the Resurrection of the body.

That then which Christ affirms and avows, is, That he is the Son of God; and that is the first thing, that ever was done in Heaven, The eternal generation of the Son: that, by which, he proves this, to these men, is, That by him, there shall be a resurrection of the body; and that is the last thing, that shall be done in Heaven, for, after that, there is nothing, but an even continuance in equal glory. Before that, says he, that is, before the resurrection of the body, there shall be another resurrection, a spiritual resurrection of the soul from sin; but that shall be, by ordinary means, by Preaching, and Sacraments, and it shall be accomplished every day; but fix not upon that, determine not your thoughts upon that, marvel not at that, make that no cause of extraordinary wonder, but make it ordinary to you, feel it, and find the effect thereof in your souls, as often as you hear, as often as you receive, and thereby provide for another resurrection, For, the hour is coming, in which, all that are in their graves, &c.

Where we must necessarily make thus many steps, though but short ones. First, the dignity of the Resurrection, marvel at nothing so much, as at this, nothing is so marvelous, so wonderful as this; And secondly, the approach of the Resurrection, The hour is coming; And thirdly, The generality, All that are in the graves; And then the instrument of the resurrection, The voice of Christ, that shall be heard; And lastly, the diverse end of the resurrection, They shall come forth, they that have done good, &c. God hath a care of the Body of man, that is first; And he defers it not, that is next; And he extends it to all, that is a third; And a fourth is, That he does that last act, by him, by whom he did the first, The Creation, and all between, the Redemption, that is, by his Son, by Christ; And then the last is, that this is an everlasting separation and divorce of the good and the bad, The bad shall never be able to receive good from the Good, nor to do harm to the Good, after that.

First then, Christ says, Ne miremini, Marvaile not at this, not at your spiritual resurrection, not that a Sermon should work upon man, not that a Sacrament should comfort a man, make it not a miracle, nor an extraordinary thing, by hearing to come to repentance, and so to such a resurrection. For though S. Augustine say, That to convert a man from sin, is as great a miracle, as Creation, yet S. August. speaks that of a man's first conversion, in which the man himself does nothing, but God all; Then he is made of nothing; but after God hath renewed him, and proposed ordinary means in the Church still to work upon him, he must not look for miraculous working, but make God's ordinary means, ordinary to him. This is Panis quotidianus, The daily bread which God gives you, as often as you meet here, according to his Ordinances; Ne miremini, stand not to wonder, as though you were not sure, but come to enjoy God's goodness, in his ordinary way here.

But it is, Ne miremini hoc, Wonder not at this; but yet, there are things, which we may wonder at. Nil admirari, is but the Philosophers wisdom; He thinks it a weakness, to wonder at anything, That anything should be strange to him: But Christian Philosophy that is rooted in humility, tells us, in the mouth of Clement of Alexand. Principium veritatis est res admirari, The first step to faith, is to wonder, to stand, and consider with a holy admiration, the ways and proceedings of God with man: for, Admiration, wonder, stands as in the midst, between knowledge and faith, and hath an eye towards both. If I know a thing, or believe a thing, I do no longer wonder: but when I find that I have reason to stop upon the consideration of a thing, so, as that I see enough to induce admiration, to make me wonder, I come by that step, and God leads me by that hand, to a knowledge, if it be of a natural or civil thing, or to a faith, if it be of a supernatural, and spiritual thing.

And therefore be content to wonder at this, That God would have such a care to dignify, and to crown, and to associate to his own everlasting presence, the body of man. God himself is a Spirit, and heaven is his place; my soul is a spirit, and so proportioned to that place; That God, or Angels, or our Souls, which are all Spirits, should be in heaven, Ne miremini, never wonder at that. But since we wonder, and justly, that some late Philosophers have removed the whole earth from the Center, and carried it up, and placed it in one of the Spheres of heaven, That this clod of earth, this body of ours should be carried up to the highest heaven, placed in the eye of God, set down at the right hand of God, Miremini hoc, wonder at this; That God, all Spirit, served with Spirits, associated to Spirits, should have such an affection, such a love to this body, this earthly body, this deserves this wonder. The Father was pleased to breathe into this body, at first, in the Creation; The Son was pleased to assume this body himself, after, in the Redemption; The Holy Ghost is pleased to consecrate this body, and make it his Temple, by his sanctification; In that Faciamus hominem, Let us, all us, make man, that consuitation of the whole Trinity in making man, is exercised even upon this lower part of man, the dignifying of his body. So far, as that amongst the ancient Fathers, very many of them, are very various, and irresolved, which way to pronounce, and very many of them clear in the negative, in that point, That the soul of man comes not to the presence of God, but remains in some out-places till the Resurrection of the body: That observation, that consideration of the love of God, to the body of man, withdrew them into that error, That the soul itself should lack the glory of heaven, till the body were become capable of that glory too.

They therefore oppose God in his purpose of dignifying the body of man, first, who violate, and mangle this body, which is the Organ in which God breathes; And they also which pollute and defile this body, in which Christ Jesus is appareled; and they likewise who profane this body, which the Holy Ghost, as the high Priest, inhabites, and consecrates.

Trangressors in the first kind, that put God's Organ out of tune, that discompose, and tear the body of man with violence, are those inhumane persecutors, who with racks, and tortures, and prisons, and fires, and exquisite inquisitions, throw down the bodies of the true God's true servants, to the Idolatrous worship of their imaginary God's; that torture men into hell, and carry them through the inquisition into damnation. S. Augustine moves a question, and institutes a disputation, and carries it somewhat problematically, whether torture be to be admitted at all, or no. That presents a fair probability, which he says against it: we presume, says he, that an innocent man should be able to hold his tongue in torture; That is no part of our purpose in torture, says he, that he that is innocent, should accuse himself, by confession, in torture. And, if an innocent man be able to do so, why should we not think, that a guilty man, who shall save his life, by holding his tongue in torture, should be able to do so? And then, where is the use of torture? Res fragilis, & periculosa quaestio, says that Lawyer, who is esteemed the law, alone, Vlpian: It is a slippery trial, and uncertain, to convince by torture: For, many times, says S. Augustine again, Innocens luit pro incerto scelere certissimas poenas, He that is yet but questioned, whether he be guilty or no, before that be known, is, without all question, miserably tortured. And whereas, many times, the passion of the Judge, and the covetousness of the Judge, and the ambition of the Judge, are calamities heavy enough, upon a man, that is accused, in this case of torture, Ignorantia Iudicis est calamitas plerumque innocentis, says that Father, for the most part, even the ignorance of the Judge, is the greatest calamity of him that is accused: If the Judge knew that he were innocent, he should suffer nothing; If he knew he were guilty, he should not suffer torture; but because the Judge is ignorant, and knows nothing, therefore the Prisoner must be racked, and tortured, and mangled, says that Father.

There is a whole Epistle in S. Jerome, full of heavenly meditation, and of curious expressions: It is his forty ninth Epistle, Ad Innocentium: where a young man tortured for suspicion of adultery with a certain woman, ut compendio cruciatus vitaret, says he, for his ease, and to abridge his torment, and that he might thereby procure and compass a present death, confessed the adultery, though false: His confession was made evidence against the woman: and she makes that protestation, Tu testis Domine Jesus, Thou Lord Jesus be my Witness, Non ideo me negare velle, ne peream, sed ideo mentiri nolle, ne peccem: I do not deny the fact for fear of death, but I dare not belie myself, nor betray mine innocence, for fear of sinning, and offending the God of Truth; And, as it follows in that story, though no torture could draw any Confession, any accusation from her, she was condemned; and one Executioner had three blows at her with a Sword, and another four, and yet she could not be killed.

And therefore, because Story abounds with Examples of this kind, how uncertain a way of trial, and conviction, torture is, though S. Augustine would not say, that torture was unlawful, yet he says, It behooves every Judge to make that prayer, Erue me Domine à necessitatibus meis, If there be some cases, in which the Judge must necessarily proceed to torture; O Lord, deliver me, from having any such case brought before me.

But what use soever there may be for torture, for Confession, in the Inquisition they torture for a denial, for the denial of God, and for the renouncing of the truth of his Gospel: As men of great place, think it concerns their honor, to do above that which they suffer, to make their revenges, not only equal, but greater then their injuries; so the Roman Church thinks it necessary to her greatness, to inflict more tortures now, then were inflicted upon her in the Primitive Church; as though it were a just revenge, for the tortures she received then, for being Christian, to torture better Christians then her self, for being so. In which tortures, the Inquisition hath found one way, to escape the general clamour of the world against them, which is to torture to that heighth, that few survive, or come abroad after, to publish, how they have been tortured. And these, first, oppose God's purpose, in the making, and preserving, and dignifying the body of man.

Transgressors herein, in the second kind, are they, that defile the garment of Christ Jesus, the body in which he hath vouchsafed to invest and enwrap himself, and so apparel a Harlot in Christ's clothes, and make that body, which is his, hers. That Christ should take my body, though defiled with fornication, and make it his, is strange; but that I, in fornication, should take Christ's body, and make it hers, is more. Know ye not, says the Apostle, that your bodies are the members of Christ? And again, Know you not, that he that is joined to a harlot, is one body? Some of the Roman Emperors, made it treason, to carry a Ring, that had their picture engraved in it, to any place in the house, of low Office. What Name can we give to that sin, to make the body of Christ, the body of a harlot? And yet, the Apostle there, as taking knowledge, that we loved ourselves better then Christ, changes the edge of his argument, and argues thus, ver. 18. He that committeth fornication, sinneth against his own body; If ye will be bold with Christ's body, yet favor your own: No man ever hated his own body; and yet, no outward enemy is able so to macerate our body, as our own licentiousness. Christ, who took all our bodily infirmities upon him, Hunger, and Thirst, and Sweat, and Cold, took no bodily deformities upon him, he took not a lame, a blind, a crooked body; and we, by our intemperance, and licentiousness, deform that body which is his, all these ways. The licentious man, most of any, studies bodily handsomenesse, to be comely, and gracious, and acceptable, and yet, soonest of any, deforms, and destroys it, and makes that loathsome to all, which all his care was to make amiable: And so they oppose God's purpose of dignifying the body.

Transgressors in a third kind are they, that sacrilegiously profane the Temple of the Holy Ghost, by neglecting the respect and duties, belonging to the dead bodies of God's Saints, in a decent and comely accompanying them to convenient Funerals. Heirs and Executors are oftentimes defective in these offices, and pretend better employments of that, which would be, (say they) vainly spent so. But remember you, of whom (in much such a case) that is said in S. John, This he said, not because he cared for the poor, but because he was a Thief, and had the bag, and bore that which was put therein: This Executors say, not because they intend pious uses, but because they bear, and bear away the bags. Generally, thy opinion must be no rule for other men's actions; neither in these cases of Funerals, must thou call all too much, which is more then enough; That woman's Ointment poured upon Christ's feet, that hundred pound weight of perfumes to embalm his one body, was more then enough, necessarily enough; yet it was not too much, for the dignity of that person, nor for the testimony of their zeal, who did it, in so abundant manner.

Now, as in all these three ways, men may oppose the purpose of God, in dignifying the body, so in concurring with God's purpose, for the dignifying thereof, a man may exceed, and go beyond God's purpose, in all three. God would not have the body torn, and mangled with tortures, in those cases; but then, he would not have it pampered with wanton delicacies, nor varnished with foreign complexion. It is ill, when it is not our own heart, that appears in our words; it is ill too, when it is not our own blood, that appears in our cheeks; It may do some ill offices of blood, it may tempt, but it gives over, when it should do a good office of blood, it cannot blush. If when they are filling the wrinkles, and graves of their face, they would remember, that there is another grave, that calls for a filling with the whole body, so, even their pride would flow into a mortification. God would not have us put on a sad countenance, nor disfigure our face, not in our fastings, and other disciplines; God would not have us mar his work; nor God would not have us go about to do his last work, which he hath reserved to himself in heaven, here upon earth, that is, to glorify our bodies, with such additions here, as though we would need no glorification there.

So also in the second way of giving due respect to the body of man, a man may exceed God's purpose. God would not have the body corrupted and attenuated, shrunk and deformed with incontinency, and licentiousness; But God would not have that sparing of the body, to dishonor, or undervalue, or forbear marriage, nor to frustrate that, which was one of God's purposes, in the institution of marriage, procreation of children. Marriage without possibility of children, lacks one half of God's purpose in the institution of marriage; for, the third reason of marriage, after the other two, (which two were, for a Helper, and for Children) which is, that marriage should be for a Remedy, that third came in after; for at the time of the institution of marriage, man was not fallen into any inordinate concupiscencies, and so, at that time, needed no remedy. Marriage without possibility of children, lacks one of God's two reasons for children; but marriage with a contract against children, or a practice against children, is not (says S. Augustine ) a marriage, but a solemn, an avowed, a daily Adultery. To choose to be ill in the sight of God, rather then to look ill, in the sight of men, is a perverse, and a poisonous Physic. The sin of Er, and Onan, in married men; the sin of procured abortions, in married women, do, in many cases, equal, in some, exceed, the sin of Adultery; To rob a husband, or a wife, of a future child, may be in the wife, or husband, as great a sin, as to bring a supposititious, or a spurious child, into the Fathers inheritance. God would not have the comeliness, the handsomenesse of the body defaced by incontinency, and intemperance, but he would not have the care of that comeliness, and handsomenesse frustrate his purpose of children in marriage.

And as in those two, (God would not have the body tortured, nor mangled, God would not have the body deformed by licentiousness) so, in his third respect to man's body, God would not have the bodies of his dead Saints neglected, God's purpose may be exceeded too. God's purpose therein is, that all men should be Decently; and Honorable persons, Honourably buried; but his purpose herein is exceeded, when any rag of their skin, or chip of their bones, or lock of their hair, is kept for a Relique, and made an Universal balm, and Amulet, and Antidote, against all temporal, and all spiritual diseases, and calamities, not only against the rage of a Feaver, but of hell it self. What their counterfeit Relics may do, against their counterfeit hell, against their Purgatory, I know not: That powerful, and precious, and only Relique, which is given to us, against hell it self, is only the Communion of the body, and blood of Christ Jesus, left to us by him, and preserved for us, in his Church, though his body be removed out of our sight.

To end this, Miramini hoc, marvel at this, at the wonderful love of God to the body of man, and thou wilt favor it so, as not to macerate thine own body, with uncommanded and inhumane flagellations, and whippings, nor afflict their bodies, who are in thy charge, with inordinate labor; thou wilt not dishonor this body, as it is Christ's body, nor deform it, as it is thine own, with intemperance, but thou wilt behave thyself towards it so, as towards one, whom it hath pleased the King to honor, with a resurrection, (which was our first) and not to defer that resurrection long, which is our next step, Venit hora, The hour is coming.

Non talem Deum tuum putes, qualis nec tu debes esse, is excellently said by S. Augustine: Never presume upon any other disposition in God, then such as thou findest in thine own heart, that thou art bound to have in thyself; for we find in our hearts, a band of conformity, and assimilation to God, that is, to be as like God as we can. Therefore whatsoever thou findest thyself bound to do to another, thou mayest expect at God's hand. Thou art bound to help up another that is fallen, therefore thou mayest assure thyself, that God will give thee a Resurrection: so, thou findest in thy heart, that the soul of an alms, the soul of a benefit, that that gives it life, is the speedy, the present doing of it; Therefore thou mayest be sure, that God will make speed to save thee, that he will not long defer this thy resurrection, horavenit. S. Augustine comparing the former resurrection, which is the spiritual resurrection of the soul, ver. 25. with this in the Text, which is the resurrection of the body, observes, that there Christ says, hora venit, & nunc est, the hour is coming, and now is; because in every private inspiration of the Holy Ghost, in every Sermon, in every meeting of the Congregation, the dead may hear, and live; nunc est, they may do it now. But that in this resurrection in the Text, the resurrection of the body, it is not said, nunc est, that the hour is now; for, the Son of Man who says it, (as he is the Son of Man) knows not when it shall be; But he says Hora venit, It is coming, and coming apace, and coming quickly, shortly.

As soon as God had made man, he gave him his patent, Dominamini, Dominion over the Creature; As soon as Man was fallen, God gave him the promise of a Messias; And of his second coming, himself says, Ecce, venio cito, Behold, I come speedily: Venit, he comes, he is upon the way; and Ecce, venit, Behold, he comes, he is within sight, you may see him in his fore-running tokens; and Ecce cito, as little way as he hath to go, he makes haste, And there is a Jesuit that makes the haste so great, as that he says, Howsoever S. Augustine make use of that note, that it is not said in the Text, Nunc est, That the hour of the Resurrection is now, yet he does believe, that Christ did say so, though the Evangelist left it out. We need not say so; we do not; so much less liberty do we take in departing from the Fathers, then the Roman Authors do: But yet, so as S. John speaks, Hora novissima, This is the last time, (Now there are many Antichrists, whereby we know that this is the last time) And so, as S. Peter speaks, Be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day: So as this Nunc may signify Vltimum statum, The last course of times, the time not of Nature, nor of Law, but of Grace; so we admit that addition in this Resurrection too, Hora venit, & nunc est, The hour is coming, and now is, because there are no other means to be hereafter instituted for the attaining of a happy Resurrection, then those that now are established in the Church, especially at a man's death, may we very properly say, Nunc est, Now is the Resurrection come to him, not only because the last Judgment is involved in the first, (for that Judgment which passeth upon every man at his death, stands forever without Repeal, or Appeal, or Error) but because after the death of the Body, there is no more to be done with the Body, till the Resurrection; for as we say of an Arrow, that it is over shot, it is gone, it is beyond the mark, though it be not come to the mark yet, because there is no more to be done to it till it be; so we may say, that he that is come to death, is come to his Resurrection, because he hath not another step to make, another foot to go, another minute to count, till he be at the Resurrection.

The Resurrection then, being the Coronation of man, his Death, and lying down in the grave, is his enthroning, his sitting down in that chair, where he is to receive that Crown. As then the Martyrs, under the Altar, though in heaven, yet do cry out for the Resurrection; so let us, in this miserable life, submit ourselves cheerfully to the hand of God, in death, since till that death we cannot have this Resurrection, and the first thing that we shall do after this death, is to rise again. To the child that is now borne, we may say, Hora venit, The day of his Resurrection is coming; To him that is old, we may say, The hour is come; but to him that is dead, The minute is come, because to him there are no more minutes till it do come.

Miremini hoc, Marvail at this, at the descent of God's love, He loves the Body of Man, And Miremini hoc, Mervaile at his speed, He makes haste to express this love, Hora venit, And then Miremini hoc, Marvaile at the Generality, it reaches to all, all that are in the Grave; All that are in the graves shall hear his voice, &c. God hath made the Body as a House for the soul, till he call her out, and he hath made the Grave as a House for the body, till he call it up. The misery, and poor estate that Christ submitted himself unto for man, was not determined in that, That foxes had holes, but he nowhere to lay his head, while he lived; but he had no grave that he could claim, when he was dead. It is some discontinuance of the Communion of Saints, if I may not be buried with the Saints of God. Every man that hath not devested Humanity, hath a desire to have his bones lie at rest, and we cannot provide for that so well, any way, as to bury them in Consecrated places, which are, in common entendment, safest from profane violences. Even that respect, that his bones might lie at rest, seems to have moved one Prophet, to enjoin his Sons, to bury him, in the Sepulcher, where the other Prophet was buried. He knew that Josiah would burn the bones of all the other graves, upon the Altar of Bethel, as was prophesied; and he presumed that he would spare the bones of that Prophet, and so his bones should be safe, if they were mingled with the other. God expressed his love to Moses, in that particular, That he buried him; And, to deliver, and remove him, from the violence of any that loved him not, and so might dishonor his memory, and from the superstition of any that over-loved him, and so might over-honor his memory, God buried him in secret. In more then one place doth David complain, That there was none to bury God's Saints; And the Dignity that is promised here in the Text, is appropriated to them, who are in the graves, who are buried.

But then, was that general? Is it simply, plainly, literally of them, and them only, who are in graves, who are buried? Shall none enjoy a Resurrection, that have not enjoyed a Grave? Still I say, it is a comfort to a dying man, it is an honor to his memory, it is a discharge of a duty in his friends, it is a piece of the Communion of Saints, to have a consecrated grave: But the word here is, In monumentis, All that are in Monuments; that is, in Receptacles of Bodies, of what kind soever they be: wheresoever the hand of God lays up a dead Body, that place is the Receptacle, so the monument, so the grave of that Body. God keeps all the bones of the righteous, so that none of them are broken: Though they be trod to dust in our sight, they are entire in his, because he can bid them be whole again in an instant. Some Nations burnt their dead, there the fire is the grave; some drowned their dead, there the sea is the grave; and some hung them up upon trees, and there the air is their grave: Some Nations eat their dead themselves, and some maintained dogs to eat the dead; and as they called those dogs, Canes Sepulchrales, Sepulchrall dogs, so those men were sepulchrall men, those men and those dogs were graves. Death and hell shall deliver up their dead, says S. John: That is, the whole state, and mansion of the dead, shall be emptied: The state of the dead is their grave, and upon all that are in this state, shall the testimony of God's love, to the body of man, fall; And that is the Generality, All that are in the grave, &c.

Our next step is, The Instrument, the Means, by which, this, first so speedy, and then so general love of God, to man, to man in his lowest part, his body, is accomplished unto him; These, All these, All these that are in graves, in all these kinds of graves, shall hear his voice, and that is the Means. First, whose voice? That is expressed immediately before, The Son of man. In the other Resurrection, in that of the dead soul, ver. 25. there it is said, The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God. In this, which is the Resurrection to Judgment, it is The Son of man. The former Resurrection (that of a sinner to repentance by preaching) is wrought by a plain, and ordinary means here in the Church; where you do but hear a man in a Pew, read prayers, and pronounce Absolution, and a man in a Pulpit preach a Sermon, and a man at a Table consecrate, and administer a Sacrament; And because all this, though it be the power of life, and the means of your spiritual resurrection, is wrought by the Ministry of man, who might be contemptible in your eye, therefore the whole work is referred to God, and not the son of man, but the Son of God, is said to do it.

In this Resurrection of the Text, which is a Resurrection to Judgment, and to an account with God, that God whom we have displeased, exasperated, violated, wounded in the whole course of our life, lest we should be terrified, and dejected at the presence of that God, the whole work is referred to the Son of Man, which hath himself formerly felt all our infirmities, and hath had as sad a soul at the approach of death, as bitter a Cup in the form of Death, as heavy a fear of God's forsaking him in the agony of death, as we can have: And for sin itself, I would not, I do not extenuate my sin, but let me have fallen, not seven times a day, but seventy seven times a minute, yet what are my sins, to all those sins that were upon Christ? The sins of all men, and all women, and all children, the sins of all Nations, all the East and West, and all the North and South, the sins of all times and ages, of Nature, of Law, of Grace, the sins of all natures, sins of the body, and sins of the mind, the sins of all growth, and all extentions, thoughts, and words, and acts, and habits, and delight, and glory, and contempt, and the very sin of boasting, nay of our belying ourselves in sin; All these sins, past, present and future, were at once upon Christ, and in that depth of sin, mine are but a drop to his Ocean; In that treasure of sin, mine are but single money to his Talent; And therefore, that I might come with a holy reverence to his Ordinance, in this place, though it be but in the Ministry of man, that first Resurrection is attributed to the Son of God, to give a dignity to that Ministry of man, which otherwise might have been under-valued, that thereby we might have a consolation, and a cheerfulness towards it; It is He, that is, the Son of God, and the Son of man, Christ; which remembers us alfo, that all that belongs to the expressing of the Law of God to man, must be received by us, who profess ourselves Christians, in, and by, and for, and through Christ.

We use to ascribe the Creation to the Father, but the Father created by the Word, and his Word, is his Son, Christ; When he prepared the Heavens, I was there, (says Christ, of himself in the person of Wisdom) and when he appointed the foundations of the earth, then was I by him, as one brought up with him; It is not, as one brought in to him, or brought in by him, but with him; one as old, that is, as eternal, as much God as he. We use to ascribe Sanctification to the Holy Ghost; But the Holy Ghost sanctifies in the Church, And the Church was purchased by the blood of Christ, and Christ remains Head of the Church, usque in consummationem, till the end of the world. I look upon every blessing that God affords me, and I consider whether it be temporal, or spiritual; and that distinguishes the metal; the temporal is my silver, and the spiritual is my Gold; but then I look again upon the Inscription, Cujus Imago, whose Image, whose inscription it bears, and whose Name; and except I have it, in, and for, and by Christ Jesus, Temporal, and Spiritual things too, are but imaginary, but illusory shadows; for God convayes himself to us, no other way, but in Christ.

The benefit then in our Text, the Resurrection, is by him; but it is limited thus, It is by hearing him, They that are in their Graves shall hear, &c. So it is in the other Resurrection too, the spiritual resurrection. v. 25. There, they must hear him, that will live. In both resurrections, That in the Church, now, by Grace, And that in the Grave hereafter, by Power, it is said, They shall hear him. They shall, which seems to imply a necessity, though not a coaction; But that necessity, not of equal force, not equally irresistible in both: In the Grave, They shall; Though they be dead, and senseless as the dust, (for they are dust it self) though they bring no concurrence, no cooperation, They shall hear, that is, They shall not choose but hear. In the other resurrection, which is, in the Church, by Grace, in God's Ordinance, They shall hear too, that is, There shall be a voice uttered so, as that they may hear, if they will, but not whether they will or no, as in the other cafe, in the grave. Therefore when God expresses his gathering of his Church, in this world, it is Sibilabo & congregabo, I will hiss, or chirpe for them, and so gather them: He whispers in the voice of the Spirit, and he speaks a little louder, in the voice of a man; Let the man be a Boanerges, a Son of thunder, never so powerful a speaker, yet no thunder is heard over all the world. But for the voice that shall be heard at the Resurrection, He shall send his Angels, with a great sound of a Trumpet; A great sound, such as may be made by a Trumpet, such as an Angel, all his Angels can make in a Trumpet, and more then all that, The Lord himself shall descend from Heaven, and that, with a shout, and with the voice of an Archangel, that is, says S. Ambrose, of Christ himself, And in the Trumpet of God, that is also, Christ himself.

So then, you have the Person, Christ; The means, A Voice, And the powerfulness of that voice, in the Name of an Archangel, which is named but once more in all the Scriptures: And therefore, let no man, that hath an holy anhelation and panting after the Resurrection, suspect that he shall sleep in the dust, forever; for, this is a voice, that will be heard, he must rise. Let no man, who because he hath made his course of life like a beast, would therefore be content his state in death might be like a beast too, hope that he shall sleep in the dust, forever, for this is a voice, that must be heard, And all that hear shall come forth, they that have done good, &c.

He shall come forth; even he that hath done ill, and would not, shall come forth. You may have seen moral men, you may have seen impious men, go in confidently enough: not affrighted with death, not terrified with a grave; but when you shall see them come forth again, you shall see them in another complexion. That man that died so, with that confidence, thought death his end; It ends his seventy years, but it begins his seventy millions of generations of torments, even to his body, and he never thought of that: Indeed, Iudicii, nisi qui vitae aeternae praedestinatus est, non potest reminisci, says S. Ambrose, No man can, no man dares think upon the last Judgment, but he that can think upon it with comfort, he that is predestinated to eternal life. Even the best, are sometimes shaked with the consideration of the Resurrection, because it is impossible to separate the consideration of the Resurrection, from the consideration of the Judgment; and the terrors of that may abate the joy of the other: Sive comedo • sive bibo, says S. Jerome, Whether I eat, or drink, still me thinks I hear this sound, Surgite mortui, & venite ad Iudicium, Arise you dead, and come to Judgment: When it calls me up from death, I am glad, when it calls me to Judgment, that impaires my joy. Can I think that God will not take a strict account; or, can I be without fear, if I think he will? Non expavescere requisiturum est dicere, non requiret, is excellently said by S. Bernard, If I can put off all fear of that Judgment, I have put off all imagination, that any such Judgment shall be. But, when I begin this fear, in this life, here, I end this fear, in my death, and pass away cheerfully: But the wicked begin this fear, when the Trumpet sounds to the Resurrection, and then shall never end it; but, as a man condemned to be half hanged, and then quartered, hath a fearful addition in his quartering after, and yet had no ease in his hanging before; so they that have done ill, when they have had their hanging, when they have suffered in soul, the torments of Hell, from the day of their death, to the day of Judgment, shall come to that day with fear, as to an addition to that, which yet, was infinite before. And therefore the vulgat Edition hath rendered this well, Procedent, They shall proceed, they shall go farther and farther in torment.

But this is not the object of our speculation, the subject of our meditation, now: we proposed this Text, for the Contemplation of God's love to man, and therefore we rather comfort ourselves with that branch, and refresh ourselves with the shadow of that, That they who have done good, shall come forth unto the Resurrection of life. Alas, the others shall live as long as they; Lucifer is as immortal as Michael, and Judas as immortal as S. Peter: But Vita damnatorum, mors est, That which we call immortality in the damned, is but a continual dying; howsoever it must be called life, it hath all the qualities of death, saving the ease, and the end, which death hath, and damnation hath not. They must come forth; they that have done evil, must do so too: Neither can stay in their house, their grave; for, their house (though that house should be the sea) shall be burnt down; all the world dissolved with fire. But then, They who have done evil, shall pass from that fire, into a farther heat, without light, They who have done good, into a farther light, without heat.

But fix upon the Conditions, and perform them; They must have done Good; To have known Good, to have believed it, to have intended it, nay to have preached it to others, will not serve, They must have done good. They must be rooted in faith, and then bring forth fruit, and fruit in season; and then is the season of doing good, when another needs that good at thy hands. God gives the evening rain, but he gave the morning rain before; A good man gives at his death, but he gives in his life time too. To them belongs this Resurrection of the body to life; upon which, since our Text inclines us to marvel rather then to discourse, I will not venture to say with David, Narrabo omnia mirabilia tua, I will show all thy wondrous works, (an Angels tongue could not show them) but I will say with him, Mementote mirabilium, Remember the marvelous works he hath done, And by that, God will open your eyes, that you may behold the wondrous things that he will do: Remember with thankfulness the several resurrections that he hath given you; from superstition and ignorance, in which, you, in your Fathers lay dead; from sin, and a love of sin, in which, you, in the days of your youth, lay dead; from sadness, and dejection of spirit, in which, you, in your worldly crosses, or spiritual temptations, lay dead; And assure yourself, that that God that loves to perfect his own works, when you shall lie dead in your graves, will give you that Resurrection to life, which he hath promised to all them that do good, and will extend to all them, who having done evil, do yet truly repent the evil they have done.

SERMON XXI. The first Sermon upon this Text, Preached at S. Paul's, in the Evening, upon Easter-day. 1626.

O Dit Dominus qui festum Domini unum putat diem, says Origen; God hates that man that thinks any of his Holy days last but one day; That is, that never thinks of a Resurrection, but upon Easter-day. I have therefore proposed words unto you, which will not be determined this day; That so, when at any other time, we return to the handling of then, we may also return to the meditation of the Resurrection. To which we may best give a beginning this day, in which we celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus: A • d in his one Resurrection, all those several kinds of Resurrections which appertain unto us, because howsoever these words have received divers good expositions from divers good Expositors, and received one perverse exposition from our adversaries in the Roman Church, who have detorted and deflected them, to the maintenance of their Purgatory, yet all agree, that these words are an argument for the Resurrection, and therefore proper to this day. And yet this day we shall not so much inquire, wherein, and in what sense the words are an argument of the Resurrection, as enjoy the assurance that they are so; not so much distribute the Text into an explication of the particular words (which is, as the Mintage and Coyning of gold into several lesser pieces) as to lay up the whole wedge, and ingot of Gold all at once in you, that is, the precious assurance of your glorious Resurrection.

In establishing whereof, we shall this day, make but this short passage, by these two steps: Glory in the end, And Grace in the way; The Glory of our bodies, in the last Resurrection then, And the Grace upon our souls, in their present Resurrection now. For as we do not dig for gold merely and only for treasure, but to dispense and issue it also, for present provision and use, not only for the future, but for the present too; So we do not gather the doctrine of the Resurrection only for that dignity which the body shall receive in the Triumphant, but also for the consolation which thereby our souls may receive in the Militant Church. And therefore, as in our first part, which will be, By what means the knowledge and assurance of the Resurrection of the body accrues to us, we shall see, that though it be presented by Reason before, and illustrated by Reason after, yet the root and foundation thereof is in Faith; though Reason may chafe the wax, yet Faith imprints the seal, (for the Resurrection is not a conclusion out of natural Reason, but it is an article of supernatural Faith; and though you assent to me now, speaking of the Resurrection, yet that is not out of my Logic, nor out of my Rhetoric, but out of that Character, and Ordinance which God hath imprinted in me, in the power and efficacy whereof, I speak unto you, as often as I speak out of this place.) As, I say we determine our first part in this, How the assurance of this Resurrection accrues to us, so when we descend to our second part, That is the consolation which we receive whilst we are In via, here upon our way in this world, out of the contemplation of that Resurrection to glory, which we shall have In patria, at home in heaven, and how these two Resurrections are arguments and evidences of one another, we shall look upon some correspondencies, and resemblances between natural death, and spiritual death by sin, and between the glorious Resurrection of the body, and the gracious Resurrection of the soul, that so having brought bodily death and bodily Resurrection, and spiritual death and spiritual Resurrection, by their comparison into your consideration, you may anon depart somewhat the better edified in both, and so enjoy your present Resurrection of the soul, by Grace, with more certainty, and expect the future Resurrection of the body to glory, with the more alacrity and cheerfulness.

Though therefore we may hereafter take just occasion of entering into a war, in vindicating and redeeming these words, ceased and seduced by our adversaries, to testify for their Purgatory, yet this day being a day of peace and reconciliation with God and man, we begin with peace, with that wherein all agree, That these words (Else what shall they do that are baptized for dead? If the dead rise not at all, why are they baptized for dead?) must necessarily receive such an Exposition, as must be an argument for the Resurrection; This baptism pro mortuis, for dead, must be such a baptism as must prove that, the Resurrection. For, that the Apostle repeats twice in these few words; Else, (says he) that is, if there be no Resurrection, why are men thus baptized? And again, if the dead rise not, why are men thus baptized? Indeed the whole Chapter is a continual argument for the Resurrection; from the beginning thereof to the 35. ver. he handles the An sit, whether there be a Resurrection, or no; For, if that be denied, or doubted in the root, in the person of Christ, whether he be risen or no, the whole frame of our religion falls, and every man will be apt (and justly apt) to ask that question which the Indian King asked, when he had been catechized so far in the articles of our Christian religion, as to come to the suffered, and crucified, and dead, and buried, impatient of proceeding any farther, and so losing the consolation of the Resurrection, he asked only, Is your God dead, and buried? then let me return to the worship of the Sun, for I am sure the Sun will not die; If Christ be dead and buried, that is, continue in the state of death, and of the grave, without a Resurrection, where shall a Christian look for life? Therefore the Apostle handles, and establishes that first, that assurance, A Resurrection there is.

From thence he raises and pursues a second question De modo; But some man will say, says he, How are the dead raised up, and with what body come they forth? And in these questions, De modo, there is more exercise of reason and of discourse: for, many times, The matter is matter of faith, when the manner is not so, but considerable, and triable by reason; Many times, for the matter, we are all bound, and bound upon salvation, to think alike; But for the manner, we may think diversely, without forfeiture of salvation, or impeachment of discretion; For, he is not presently an indiscreet man, that differs in opinion from another man that is discreet, in things that fall under opinion. Absit superstito, hoc est superflua religio, says a moderate man of the Roman Church; This is truly superstition, to bring more under the necessity of being believed, then God hath brought in his Scriptures; superfluous religion, says he, is superstition; Remove that, and then (as he adds there) Contradictoria, quorum utrum{que} probable, credi possunt, Where two contrary opinions are both probable, they may be embraced, and believed by two men, and those two be both learned, and discreet, and pious, and zealous men. And this consideration should keep men from that precipitation, of imprinting the odious and scandalous names of Sects, or Sectaries upon other men who may differ from them, and from others with them, in some opinions. Probability leads me in my assent, and I think thus; Let me allow another man his probability too, and let him think his way, in things that are not fundamental. They that do not believe alike, in all circumstances of the manner of the Resurrection, may all, by God's goodness, meet there, and have their parts in the glory thereof, if their own uncharitableness do not hinder them: And he that may have been in the right opinion, may sooner miss heaven, then he that was in the wrong, if he come uncharitably to condemn or contemn the other: for, in such cases, humility, and love of peace, may, in the sight of God, excuse and recompense many errors, and mistakings.

And after these, of the Matter, of the Manner of the Resurrection, the Apostle proceeds to a third question, of their state and condition, whom Christ shall find alive upon Earth, at his second coming; and of them he says only this, Ecce, mysterium vobis dico, Behold, I tell you a mystery, a secret, we shall not all sleep, that is, not die so, as that we shall rest any time in the grave, but we shall all be changed, that is, receive such an immutation, as that we shall have a sudden dissolution of body and soul, which is a true death, and a sudden re-union of body and soul, which is a true resurrection, in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye. Thus careful, and thus particular is the Apostle, that the knowledge of the resurrection might be derived unto us.

Now of these three questions, which he raises and pursues; first, whether there be a Resurrection, then what manner of Resurrection, and then what kind of Resu rrection they shall have that live to the day of Judgment, our Text enters into the first; For, for the first, That a resurrection there is, the Apostle opens several Topiques, to prove it; One is, from our Head, and Pattern, and Example, Christ Jesus: For so he argues first, If the dead be not raised, then Christ is not raised; As sure as the head is, so sure the body is raised. And then another Topique, from whence he produces arguments, is, the absurd consequences, and illations, that would follow, if there were no resurrection. Of that kind one is, Nos miserrimi, If in this life only we have hops in Christ, we are of all men the most miserable; Why? because in this life we suffer persecution for this profession. And another is, Edamus & bibamus, Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die; What needs this abstinence, and this severe denying ourselves, the conveniencies of this life, if all end in this life? And lastly, in the same kind, follows this Text, Si omnino mortui non excitentur, If the dead rise not at all, why are they baptized for dead? And by all these ways doth the Apostle convey this knowledge of the Resurrection.

But would all these ways serve? would all this satisfy that Inquisition which we have brought, how this assurance of the Resurrection accrues to us? Would any of these reasons, or would all these reasons convince a man, who were not at all prepossessed, and preoccupated with a belief of the resurrection, with an assurance thereof? The resurrection was always a mystery in it self; Sacrum secretum, a holy secret, and above the search of reason. For there are secrets and mysteries of two kinds, as the School presents them; some things are so, Quia quaedam interposita, Because, though the thing be near enough unto me, yet something is interposed between me, and it, and so I cannot see it: And some things are so, Quia longe seposita, because they are at so remote a distance, as that, though nothing be interposed, yet my sight cannot extend to them. In the first sense, the Sacraments are mysteries, because though the grace therein be near me, yet there is Velamen interpositum, there is visible figure, a sensible sign, and seal, between me, and that grace, which is exhibited to me in the Sacrament: In the second sense, the resurrection is a mystery, because it is so far removed, as that it concerns our state and condition in the next world; For man sleepeth, and riseth not; he shall not wake again, nor be raised from his sleep, till the heavens be no more; that is, not till the dissolution of all.

So then, the knowledge of the resurrection in it self, is a mystery, removed out of the Sphere, and latitude of reason; And, (to consider this remoteness farther) though the knowledge of Christ Resurrection, be nearer us, then our own, (for first we know his, because from his we argue and conclude our own, as the Apostle institutes his argument, If the dead rise not, Christ is not risen ) yet even the Resurrection of Christ, was so far from being clear and obvious to the best, and the best illumined understandings, as that, though Christ himself had spoken often of his Resurrection, to his Disciples, and Apostles, yet they did not clearly, thoroughly, (scarce at all) understand his Resurrection. When Christ said to the Jews promiscuously, Solvite Templum hoc, Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it; I wonder not that they, blinded with their own malice, discerned no resurrection in that saying, but applied it to that Temple, which was forty six years in building; For, till the resurrection was really accomplished, and actually performed, the Apostles themselves understood not the Resurrection. Then, when Christ was risen from the dead, and that those two great Apostles, Peter, and John, had been at the Sepulcher, and received from thence so much evidence, as convinced them, and prevailed upon them, then, and not till then, they began to understand the resurrection; for, till then, (says the Text expressly there) they knew not the Scriptures, that he must rise from the dead.

And truly, if we take a holy liberty, (as piously we may) to consider Christ's bodily actions after his resurrection, they were not such, as without admitting any opposition, might induce a necessity of confessing a resurrection. For, though he exhibited himself to their eyes to be seen, and to their ears to be heard, and to their fingers to be felt, though he eat with them, and did many other actions of a living body, yet, as the Angels in the Old Testament, did the like actions, in those bodies which they had assumed; so might Christ have done all these, in such a body, though that which was buried in the Sepulcher, had had no resurrection.

It is true, that Christ confirmed his Resurrection, Multis argumentis, as the vulgat reads that place; with many infallible tokens, says our former Translation, with many infallible proofs, says our later; But still all these arguments, and tokens, and proofs wrought by way of confirmation, something was otherwise imprinted in them, and established by a former apprehension of faith, and these arguments, and tokens, and proofs confirmed it. For, the reasons for the resurrection, do not convince a natural man at all, neither do they so convince a Christian, but that there is more left to his faith, and he believes something beyond and above his reason.

The resurrection in itself, Christ's Resurrection, though it be clearer then ours, Christ's Resurrection, even after it was actually accomplished, was still a mystery, out of the compass of reason; And then, as it was above our reason, so, howsoever it be out proof, and our pattern for our resurrection, yet it is above our imitation. For our resurrection shall not be like his. Omnes alii suscitati, Christus solus resurrexit, says S. Bernard; All we shall be raised from the dead, only Christ arose from the dead. We shall be raised by a power working upon us, he rose by a power inherent, and resident in himself. And yet, though in this respect, our resurrection be more open to the proof of reason, then the resurrection of Christ, (for that which hath least miracle in it, is most open to reason; and therefore a natural man would easilier believe that God might raise a dead man, then that a dead man should be God, and so able to raise himself, which was Christ's case, for the God-head of Christ was as much united to his dead body in the grave, as it was to his soul in Paradise, or to his whole person consisting of body and soul, before, or after his death and resurrection) Though, in this respect, I say, our resurrection be more open to reason, because it hath less of the miracle in it, yet when we come to assign reasons, even for our resurrection, (as we see Athanagoras hath undertaken, with a great deal of wit, and learning, and confidence, in his Apology for the Christians, to the Emperor, within 155. years after Christ; and the School-men make account, that they have brought it nearer to the understanding, nay even to the very sense, by producing some such things, as even in nature, do not only resemble, but (as they apprehend) evict a resurrection) yet when all is done, and all the reasons of Athenogaras, and the School, and of S. Paul himself, are weighed, they determine all in this, that they are fair, and pregnant, and convenient illustrations of that which was believed before; and that they have force, and power to incline to an assent, and to create and beget such a probability, as a discreet, and sad, and constant man might rest in, and submit to. But yet, we shall find also, that though no man may speak a word, or conceive a thought against the resurrection, because for the matter, we are absolutely and expressly concluded by the Scriptures, yet a man may speak probably, and dangerously against any particulur argument, that is produced for the resurrection. We believe it immediately, entirely, cheafully, undisputably, because we see it expressly delivered by the Holy Ghost; And we embrace thankfully, that sweetness, and that fullness of that blessed Spirit, that as he lays an obligation upon our faith, by delivering the article positively to us, so he is also pleased to accompany that Article, with reasons and arguments proportionable to our reason and understanding: for though those reasons do not so conclude us, as that nothing might be said to the contrary, or nothing doubted after, yet the Holy Ghost having first begotten the faith of this Article, Per ea augescit fides, & pinguescit, (as Luther speaks in another case) By those reasons and arguments, and illustrations, that faith is nourished and maintained in a good habitude and constitution.

And of that kind are all the reasons brought by S. Paul here; The matter is positively delivered by him, and so apprehended by us, and his reasons (as we said before) issue out of two Topiques; Be pleased to look upon both. The first is our pattern, Christ Jesus: He is risen, therefore we shall. In which, though I have a fair illustration and consolation in that, The Head is risen, therefore the Body shall, yet this reaches not to make my Resurrection like his, for I shall not rise as he did. And then from his other Topique, his reasons rise thus: If there be no Resurrection, we that suffer thus much for the prefession of Christ, are the miserablest men in the world. Why so? have not all Philosophers had Scholars, and all Heretics Disciples, and all great Men flatterers, and every private man affections? And hath there not been as much suffered by occasion of these, as S. Paul argues upon here, and yet no imagination, no expectation of a resurrection? Leave out the consideration of Philosophers, many of which suffered more then the Turks do, and yet the Turks suffer infinitely more, in their Mortifications, then the Papists do; Leave out the Heretics, which were so hungry of suffering, that if they could not provoke others to kill them, they would kill themselves; Leave out the pressures of our own affections, and concupiscencies, and yet the covetous man is in a continual starving, and the licentious man in a continual Consumption; Take only into your consideration, the miserable vexation of the flatterer, and humourer, and dependant upon great persons, that their time is not their own, nor their words their own; their joys are not their own, nay their sorrows are not their own; they might not smile if they would, nor they may not sigh when they would, they must do all according to another's mind, and yet they must not know his mind; consider this, and you cannot say, but that there is as much suffered in the world, as this upon which S. Paul argues, by them who place not their consolation, nor their retribution in the hope of a resurrection. He argues farther, Edamus & bibamus, If there be no resurrection, let us dissolve ourselves into the pleasures of this world, and enjoy them; Why so too? Have we not stories full of exemplar men, that might be our patterns for sobriety, and continency, and denying themselves the sweetnesses of this life, and yet never placed Consolation, nor Retribution upon a Resurrection? Would not S. Paul's own Pondus gloriae, That there is an exceeding weight of eternal glory attending our afflictions, serve our turn, though that were determined in the salvation of the soul, though there were no resurrection of the body? It is strongly and wisely said by Aquinas, Derogant fidei Christianae rations non cogentes; To offer reasons for any Article of faith, which will not convince a man therein, derogates from the dignity of that Article. Therefore we must consider S. Paul's reasons as they were intended; to Christians, that had received the Article of the Resurrection into their faith before; And then, as God gave Adam a body immediately from himself, but then maintained and nourished that body by other means; so the holy Ghost by S. Paul gives the article of the Resurrection to our faith positively, and then enables us to declare to our own consciences, and to other men's understandings, that we believe no impossible thing, in believing the Resurrection: for as it is the candle that lights me, but yet I take a lantern to defend that candle from the wind; so my faith assures me of the Resurrection, but these reasons and illustrations assist that faith. And so we have done with our first part, How this assurance accrues unto us, and pass in order to the other, The consolation which we have from this resurrection of the body, not only in it self, but as it gives us a sense of the spiritual resurrection of our souls from sin, by Grace.

We are assured then of a Resurrection, and we see how that assurance grows. But of what? Of all, Body and soul too; For, Quod cadit, resurgit, says S. Jerome, All that is fallen, receives a resurrection; and that is suppositum, says the School, that is, The person, the whole man, not taken in pieces, soul alone, or body alone, but both. For as Damascene expresses the same that S. Jerome intends, Resurrectio est ejus quod cecidit iterata surrectio, The Resurrection is a new rising of that which fell; and Man fell. A man is not saved, a sinner is not redeemed, I am not received into heaven, if my body be left out; The soul and the body concurred to the making of a sinner, and body and soul must concur to the making of a Saint. So it is in the last Resurrection, so it is in the first, which we consider now, by Grace from sin; And therefore we receive into comparison, Triplicem casum, a threefold fall, and a threefold resurrection, as in the natural and bodily death, so in the spiritual death of the soul also: For first, in natural death, there is Casus in separationem, The man, the person falls into a separation, a divorce of body and soul; and the resurrection from this fall is by Re-union, the soul and body are re-united at the last day. A second fall in natural death, is Casus in dissolutionem, The dead body falls by putrifaction into a dissolution, into atoms and grains of dust; and the resurrection from this fall, is by Re-efformation: God shall re-compact and re-compile those atoms and grains of dust, into that Body, which was before: And then a third fall in natural death, is Casus in Dispersionem, This man being fallen into a divorce of body and soul, this body being fallen into a dissolution of dust, this dust falls into a dispersion, and is scattered unsensibly, undiscernibly upon the face of the earth; and the resurrection from this death, is by way of Re-collection; God shall recall and re-collect all these Atoms, and grains of dust, and re-compact that body, and re-unite that soul, and so that resurrection is accomplished: And these three falls, Into a Divorce, into a Separation, into a Dispersion; And these three Resurrections, By Re-union, by Re-efformation, by Re-collecting, we shall also find in our present state, The spiritual death of the soul by sin.

First then, the first fall in the spiritual death, is the divorce of body and soul; That whereas God hath made the body to be the Organ of the soul, and the soul to be the breath of that Organ, and bound them to a mutual relation to one another, Man sometimes withdraws the soul from the body, by neglecting the duties of this life, for imaginary speculations; and oftener withdraws the body from the soul, which should be subject to the soul, but does maintain a war; and should be a wife to the soul, and does stand out in a divorce.

Now the Resurrection, from this first fall into a Divorce, is, seriously and wisely, that is, both piously and civilly to consider, that Man is not a soul alone, but a body too; That man is not placed in this world only for speculation; He is not sent into this world to live out of it, but to live in it; Adam was not put into Paradise, only in that Paradise to contemplate the future Paradise, but to dress and to keep the present; God did not breathe a soul towards him, but into him; Not in an obsession, but a possession; Not to travail for knowledge abroad, but to direct him by counsel at home; Not for ecstasies, but for an inherence; for when it was come to that, in S. Paul, we see it is called a rapture, he was not in his proper station, nor his proper motion; He was transported into the third heaven: but as long as we are in our dwelling upon earth, though we must love God with all our soul, yet it is not with our soul alone; Our body also must testify and express our love, not only in a reverential humiliation thereof, in the dispositions, and postures, and motions, and actions of the body, when we present ourselves at God's Service, in his house, but in the discharge of our bodily duties, and the sociable offices of our callings, towards one another: Not to run away from that Service of God, by hiding ourselves in a superstitious Monastery, or in a secular Monastery, in our own house, by an unprofitable retiredness, and absenting ourselves from the necessary businesses of this world: Not to avoid a Calling, by taking none: Not to make void a Calling, by neglecting the due offices thereof. In a word, To understand, and to perform in the best measure we can, the duties of the body and of the soul, this is the resurrection from the first fall, The fall into a divorce of body and soul. And for the advancing of this knowledge, and the facilitating of this performance of these duties, be pleased a little to stop upon the consideration of both, both of Spiritual and Divine, and then of secular and sociable duties, so far as concerns this subject in hand.

First for the duties of the soul, God was never out of Christ's sight; He was always with him, always within him, always he himself; yet Christ, at sometimes, applied himself in a nearer distance, and stricter way of prayer to God then at other times. Christ's whole life was a continual abstinence, a perpetual sobriety, yet Christ proposed, and proportioned a certain time, and a certain number of days for a particular fast, upon particular occasion. This is the harmony, this is the resurrection of a Christian, in this respect, That his soul be always so fixed upon God, as that he do nothing but with relation to his glory principally, and habitually; That he think of God, at all times, but that, besides that, he sepose sometimes, to think of nothing but God: That he pray continually, so far, as to say nothing, to wish nothing, that he would not be content God should hear, but that, besides that, he sepose certain fixed times for private prayer in his chamber, and for public prayer in the Congregation. For, though it be nowhere expressly written, that Christ did pray in the Congregation, or in company, yet, all that Christ did, is not written; and it is written, that he went often into the Temples, and into the Synagogues; and it is written, that even the Pharisee, and the Publican, that went to those places, went thither to pray. But howsoever, Christ was never so alone, but that if he were not in the Church, the Church was in him; All Christians were in him, as all Men were in Adam.

This then is our first Resurrection, for the duty that belongs to the soul, That the soul do at all times think upon God, and at sometimes think upon nothing but him; And for that, which in this respect belongs to the body, That we neither enlarge, and pamper it so, nor so adorn and paint it, as though the soul required a spacious, and specious palace to dwell in. Of that excess, Porphyry, who loved not Christ nor Christians, said well, out of mere Morality, That this enormous fattening and enlarging our bodies by excessive diet, was but a shoveling of more and more fat earth upon our souls to bury them deeper: Dum corpus augemus, mortaliores efficimur, says he, The more we grow, the more mortal we make ourselves, and the greater sacrifice we provide for death, when we gather so much flesh: with that elegancy speaks he, speaking out of Nature, and with this simplicity and homeliness speaks S. Jerome, speaking out of Grace, Qui Christum desiderat, & illo pane vescitur, de quàm preciesis cibis stercus conficiat, non quaerit, He that can relish Christ, and feed upon that Bread of life, will not be so diligent to make precious dung, and curious excrements, to spend his purse, or his wit, in that, which being taken into him, must pass by so ignoble a way from him.

The flesh that God hath given us, is affliction enough; but the flesh that the devil gives us, is affliction upon affliction; and to that, there belongs a woe. Per tenuitatem assimilamur Deo, says the same Author; The attenuation, the slenderness, the deliverance of the body from the encumbrance of much flesh, gives us some assimilation, some conformity to God, and his Angels; The less flesh we carry, the liker we are to them, who have none: That is still, the less flesh of our own making: for, for that flesh, which God, and his instrument, Nature, hath given us, in what measure, or proportion soever, that does not oppress us, to this purpose, neither shall that be laid to our charge; but the flesh that we have built up by curious diet, by meats of provocation, and witty sawces, or by a slothful and drowsy negligence of the works of our calling. All flesh is sinful flesh; sinful so, as that it is the mother of sin, it occasions sin, natural flesh is so; But this artificial flesh of our own making, is sinful so, as that it is also the daughter of sin; It is, indeed, the punishment of former sins, and the occasion of future.

The soul then requires not so large, so vast a house of sinful flesh, to dwell in: But yet on the other side, we may not by inordinate abstinencies, by indiscreet fastings, by inhumane flagellations, by unnatural macerations, and such Disciplines, as God doth not command, nor authorize, so wither, and shrink, and contract the body, as though the soul were sent into it, as into a prison, or into fetters, and manacles, to wring, and pinch, and torture it. Nihil interest, says S. Jerome, It is all one whether thou kill thyself at one blow, or be long in doing it, if thou do it. All one, whether thou fall upon thine own sword, or starve thyself with such a fasting, as thou discernest to induce that effect: for, says he, Descendit a dignitate viri, & not as insaniae incurrit. He departs from that dignity, which God hath imprinted in man, in giving him the use, and the dominion over his creatures, and he gives the world just occasion to think him mad; And, as Tertullian adds; Respuit datorem, qui datum deserit, He that does not use a benefit, reproaches the Benefactor, and he is ungrateful to God, that does not accept at his hands the use of his blessings. Therefore is it accepted as a good interpretation, which is made of Christ's determining his fast in forty days, Ne sui homicida videretur, Lest if he continued it longer, he might have seemed to have killed himself, by being the author of his own death; And so do they interpret aright his Esuriit, That then he began to be hungry, that he began to languish, to faint, to find a detriment in his body; for else, a fasting when a man is not hungry, is no fasting; but then he gave over fasting, when he found the state of his body impaired by fasting.

And therefore those mad doctrines, (so S. Jerome calls them, Notas insaniae habent ) yea those devilish doctrines, (so S. Paul calls them) that forbid certain meats, and that make un-commanded macerations of the body, meritorious, that upon a supposititious story, of an Ermit that lived 22. years, without eating anything at all, And upon an impertinent example of their S. Francis, that kept three Lents in the year, which they extol, and magnify in S. Francis, and S. Jerome condemned, and detested in the Montanists, who did so too, have built up those Carthusian Rules, That though it appear that that, and nothing but that, would save the patients life, yet he may not eat flesh, that is a Carthusian, And have brought into estimation those Apocryphal and bastardly Canons which they father upon the Apostles, That a man must rather starve, then receive food from the hand of a person excommunicate, or otherwise detected of any mortal sin; And that all that can be done with the alms of such a person, is, that it be spent in wood and coals and other fuel, that so, (as the subtle philosophy of their Canon is) it may be burnt, and consumed by fire; for, to save a man's life, it must not be spent upon meat or drink, or such sustentation: These Doctrines are not the Doctrines of this Resurrection, by which, man considered in Composito, as he consists of soul and body, by a sober and temperate life, makes his body obsequious, and serviceable to his soul, but yet leaves his soul a body to work in, and an Organ to praise God upon, both in a devout humiliation of his body, in God's service, and in a bodily performance of the duties of some calling; for this is our first Resurrection A casu separationis, from having fallen into a separation of body and soul, for they must serve God jointly together, because God having joined them, man may not separate them, but as God shall re-unite them at the last Resurrection, so must we, in our Resurrections in this life; And farther we extend not this Resurrection, from this separation, this divorce.

The second fall of man in natural death, is Casus in dissolutionem, The man being fallen into a divorce of soul and body, the body falls by putrefaction into a dissolution of dust; and the Resurrection from this fall, is, a re-efformation, when God shall recompact that dust into that body. This fall, and this resurrection we have in our spiritual death too: for we fall into daily customs, and continual habits of those sins, and we become not only as that Lazarus in the parable, to have sores upon us, but as that Lazarus in the Gospel, that was dead; Domine jam faetemus, & quatriduani sumus, Lord we stink in thy nostrils, and we have been buried four days; All the four changes of our life, Infancy, Youth, Middle Age, and Old, have been spent and worn out in a continual, and uninterrupted course of sin. In which, we shall best consider our fall, and best prepare our Resurrection, by looking from whence we are fallen, and by what steps; and they are three.

First, Perdidimus nardum nostrā, We have lost the sweet savor of our own Spikenard; for so the Spouse says, Nardus mea dedit odorem suum: My Spikenard hath given forth her sweet savor. There was a time, when we had a Spikenard, and a sweet savor of our own, when our own Natural faculties, in that state as God infused them, in Adam, had a power to apprehend, and lay hold upon the graces of God. Man hath a reasonable soul capable of God's grace, so hath no creature but man; man hath natural faculties, which may be employed by God in his service, so hath no creature but man. Only man was made so, as that he might be better; whereas all other creatures were but to consist in that degree of goodness, in which they entered. Miserable fall! Only man was made to mend, and only man does grow worse; Only man was made capable of a spiritual sovereignty, and only man hath enthralled, and mancipated himself to a spiritual slavery. And Perdidimus possibilitatem boni, We have lost that good and all possibility of recovering it, by ourselves, in losing Nardum nostram, The savor of our Spikenard, the life, and vigor of our natural faculties, to supernatural uses. For though the soul be Forma hominis, it is but Materia Dei; The soul may be the form of man, for without that, Man is but a carcass; But the soul is but the matter upon which God works; for, except our soul receive another soul, and be inanimated with Grace, even the soul it self, is but a carcass. And for this, we have lost Nardum nostram, The odour, the verdure, the vigor of those powers, in possession whereof God put us into this world. But there is a step in our fall, lower then this.

We have not only lost Nardum nostram, The use of our own faculties, in original sin, But we have lost also Vnguentum Domini, The sweet savor, and the holy perfume of that ointment which the Lord hath poured out upon us. For, as the Spouse says in the same Chapter, Oleum effusum nomen ejus, His name is an ointment poured out upon us; The name of Christ hath been shed upon us all in our baptism, and that hath made us Christians; And the merits and promises of Christ have been shed upon us all, in the preaching of his word, and that hath declared us to be Christians; The ointment is super caput, super barbam, super oram vestimenti, as David speaks; It is fallen upon the Head, we have had, and have religious Princes; And upon the Beard, the Beard of Aaron, we have had, and have (no Time, no Church ever more, ever so much) a religious Clergy, vigilancy in the Superior, laboriousnesse in the Inferior Clergy; And it is fallen upon the Skirts of the garment, the love, the desire, the hunger of hearing is fallen upon the lowest, and upon all our Congregations, Oleum effusum nomen ejus, his Name, and his Ordinance is poured out upon us all; but, as the Spouse says there, Adolescentulae dilexerunt te, Only the virgins have loved thee; And where are those Virgins? which of us have preserved that virginity, that integrity? which of us hath not married himself to some particular sin? which of us hath not multiplied his fornications, and yet is not satisfied? we have all lost Nardum nostram, that which we had at first in Adam, and that which hath been offered us since in Christ. And this is our second step in this fall; But there is a lower then this.

We come to lose Odorem agri, The sweet savor of the field itself. As Isaac said of his Son, The smell of my Son is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed, So the Lord of heaven, as he smelt a savor of Rest from the Sacrifice of Noah, may have smelt from us the savor of medicinal herbs, of Remorse, and Repentance, and Contrition, and Detestation of former sins, And the savor of odoriferous, and fragrant, and aromatical herbs, works worthy of Repentance, amendment of life, edification of others, and zeal to his glory, and yet we may relapse into former sins, or fall into new, and come to savor only of the earth, in a worldly covetousness, or to savor of the flesh, in a licentious filthiness; We may have received the good seed, and dured for a while, as S. Matthew expresses Christ's words; Received it, and Beleeved it for a while, as S. Luke expresses them, and then depart from the goodness which God's grace had formerly wrought in us, and from the Grace of God it self.

Now to this lamentable state, belong those fearful words of the Apostle, That for a man that sins thus, there remaineth no more sacrifice; And those also, in another place, That for such a man it is impossible, impossible to be renewed. Some of the Fathers, out of a holy tenderness, and compassion, have mollified this impossible with a difficile; It is impossible, say they, that is, it is very hard; very hard for him that hath been in God's service, and is run away, to return to it again. For, as Tertullian says elegantly in that case, Iudicato pronunciavit, That sinner, says he, hath proceeded solemnly, and judicially, and hath heard what both sides could say, what grace could say, and what sin, what God could say, and what Satan, and now he hath decreed the cause against Grace and against God, and declared the other side to be in the right, because he hath applied himself to the other side. But there is more in this Impossible, then Difficile: It is not only hard, but truly impossible: So, as it is impossible for God to lie, (so the Apostle speaks) so as it is impossible to take away sin by the blood of Bulls and Goats, (so he speaks) so as it is impossible to please God without faith, (so he speaks) so impossible is it for this man to be renewed. Impossible est, non speres quod impossible, says Chrysostom, It is impossible, never hope for that which is impossible. For (as that Father exalts this impossibility) Non dixit, non decet, non prodest, non licet; God hath not said, it becomes not the majesty, and the constancy of my proceedings to renew such a man; he says not so, non decet; He doth not say, it conduces not to my ends, nor to my manner of government, it would not be good for the public, for the Church, for the rest of my servants, who might be scandalized if I should exact so much as I do at their hands, and renew such a man; He says not so, non prodest; He doth not say, non licet; I cannot do it in justice, it cannot consist with my Laws, and my Edicts, by which I have proclaimed, That with the froward I will grow froward, and harden their hearts that oppose themselves against me; He doth not say so, non licet; for to all these (it stands not with my ways, non decet; or it conduces not to my ends, non prodest; or it consists not with my justice, non licet ) mercy would still present dispensations; but it is expressly, directly impossible, impossible.

It is true, that the hardness of this saying, put the Fathers to hard Expositions. The greater part by much, of them who find themselves put to a necessity of admitting an impossibility, (for as I told you before, some of them mollify and souple the impossibility into a difficulty) place the impossibility in this, That it is impossible for such a man to be renewed by baptism, as he was renewed before: for in those Primitive times, though they excluded not children, yet the greatest part of them who were baptized, were such as understood their case, persons of discretion, such as had spent many months, many times many years, in studying and in practicing the Christian religion, and then were baptized; and if these men (say those Fathers) fell after this, it was impossible to be renewed that way, impossible that they should have a second baptism: And it is scarce mannerly, scarce safe to depart from so many as meet in this interpretation of this impossibility; for they all intend that which S. Chrysostom expresses most plainly, Dixit impossible, ut in desperationem induceret; The Apostle says it is impossible, that he might bring us before hand into a kind of desperation; A desperation of this kind, That there was absolutely no hope of a possibility of renewing, as they were renewed before, that is, by baptism.

But because at this time when the Apostle writ, that questiō, which troubled the Church so much after, in S. Cyprians time, of Rebaptization, was not moved at all, neither doth it appear, nor is it likely, that any that fell so, put his hopes upon renewing by a second baptism; there is something else in this Impossibility then so. And that in one word is, That the falling intended here, is not a falling à nardo nostra, from the savor of our own Spikenard, the good use of our own faculties, lost in Original sin, nor a falling Ab unguento Domini, that though the perfume an Incense of the name of Christ, and the offer of his merits be shed upon us here, that doth not restrain us from falling into some sins, But this falling is, as it is expressed, a falling away, away from Christ in all his Ordinances; an undervaluing, a despising of those means which he hath established for the renewing of a broken soul, which is the making a mock of the Son of God, and the treading the blood of the Covenant underfoot. When Christ hath ordained but one way for the renewing of a soul, The conveyance of his merits, in preaching the word, and the sealing thereof, in applying the Sacraments, to that man that is fallen so, as to refuse that, as it is impossible to live, if a man refuse to eat, Impossible to recover, if a man refuse Physic, so it is Impossible for him to be renewed, because God hath notified to us but one way, and he refuses that. So this is a true Impossibility, and yet limited too; for though it be impossible to us, by any means imparted to us, or to our dispensing, and stewardship, yet shall anything be impossible to God? God forbid; For, even from this death, and this depth there is a Resurrection.

As from the loss of our Spikenard, our natural faculties in original sin, we have a resurrection in baptisine, And from the loss of the ointment of the Lord, the offer of his Graces, in these meetings, and the falling into some actual sins, for all that assistance, we have a resurrection in the other Sacrament; So when we have lost the savor of the field, those degrees of goodness, and holiness which we had, and had declared before, when we are fall̄ from all present sense of the means of a resurrection, yet there may be a resurrection wrapped up in the good purposes of God upon that man, which, unless he will himself, shall not be frustrated, not evacuated, not disappointed. Though he have foetorem pro Odore, as the Prophet speaks, That instead of the sweet savor, which his former holy life exhaled and breathed up, he be come now to stink in the sight of the Church, (and howsoever God may have a good savor from his own work, from those holy purposes which he hath upon him, which lie in God's bosom, yet from his present sins, and from the present testimony and evidence that the Church gives against him, as a present sinner, he must necessarily stink in the nostrils of God too) yet, as in the Resurrection of the body, it shall come, when we shall not know of it, So when this poor dead, put rified soul hath no sense of it, and perchance, little or no disposition towards it, the efficacy of God's purpose shall break out, and work in him a resurrection: And this S. Chrysostom takes to be intended in that which is said in the same place to the Hebrews, That that earth which drinketh in the rain, and bringeth forth nothing but Briars, is Maledicto proxima, nearest to be accursed, That man is nearest to be a Reprobate; But yet, says he, Vides quantam habet consolationem, We apprehend a blessed consolation in this, That it is said, near a curse, near reprobation, and no worse; for, Qui prope est, procul esse potcrit, says he, That soul which is but near destruction, may weather that mischief, and grow to be far from it, and out of danger of it.

It is true, this man hath lost his paratum cor meum; he cannot say, his heart is prepared; that he hath lost in original sin; This man hath lost his Confirmatum cor meum, he cannot say, his heart is est ablished; that hath been offered him in these exercises, but it hath not prevailed upon him. He hath lost his variis odoribus delectatum cor, the delight which his heart heretofore had in the savor of the field, in those good actions, in which formerly he exercised himself, and now is fallen from: But yet there may be cor novum, a new heart, a heart which is yet in God's bosom, and shall be transplanted into his; A dupli • ate, an exemplification of God's secret purpose to be manifested, and revealed by the Spirit of God, in his good time, upon him. And this may work, In insigni & vehementi mutatione, in such an evidence, and demonstration of itself, as he shall know it to be that, because it shall not work as a Circumcision, but as an Excision, not as a lopping off, but as a rooting up, not by mending him, but by making him a new creature; He shall not grow less riotous then before, for so a sentence in the Star-Chamber, or any other Criminall Court for a riot, might be a resurrection to him; nor less voluptuous, for so, poverty in his Fortune, or insipidnesse and tastlesnesse in his palate might be a resurrection to him; Nor less licentious, for so age or sickness, nor less quarrelsome, for so blows, and oppression might be a resurrection to him. But when in a rectified understanding he can but apprehend, that such a resurrection there may be, nay there is for him; it shall grow up to a holy confidence, established by the sensible effects thereof, that he shall not only discontinue his former acts, and devest his former habits of sin, but produce acts, and build up habits, contrary to his former habits, and former acts, for this is the resurrection from this second fall, In dissolutionem, into the dissolution of particular sins.

Now, after all this, there is in natural death, a third fall, casus in dispersionem, the man is fallen in separationem, into a divorce of body and soul, the body is fallen in dissolutionem, to putrifaction, and dissolution in dust, and then this dust is fallen in dispersionem, into a dispersion, and scattering over the earth, as God threatens, Comminuam in pulverem, I will break the wicked as small as dust, and scatter them with the wind; For after such a scattering, no power, but of God only can recollect those grains of dust, and re-compact them into a body, and re-inanimate them into a man. And such a state, such a dispersion, doth the heart and soul of an habitual sinner undergo; For, as the eyes of a fool are in the corners of the earth, so is the heart and soul of a sinner. The wanton and licentious man, sighs out his soul, weeps out his soul, swears out his soul, in every place, where his lust, or his custom, or the glory of victory, in overcoming, and deluding, puts him upon such solicitations. In the corrupt taker, his soul goes out, that it may leave him unsensible of his sin, and not trouble him in his corrupt bargain; and in a corrupt giver, ambitious of preferment, his soul goes out with his money, which he loves well, but not so well as his preferment: This year his soul and his money goes out upon one office, and next year, more soul, and more money upon another; He knows how his money will come in again; for they will bring it, that have need of his corruptnesse in his offices; But where will this man find his soul, thus scattered upon every woman corruptly won, upon every office corruptly usurped, upon every quillet corruptly bought, upon every fee corruptly taken?

Thus it is, when a soul is scattered upon the daily practice of any one predominant, and habitual sin; but when it is indifferently scattered upon all, how much more is it so? In him, that swallows sins in the world, as he would do meats at a feast; passes through every dish, and never asks Physician the nature, the quality, the danger, the offense of any dish: That baits at every sin that rises, and pours himself into every sinful mold he meets: That knows not when he began to spend his soul, nor where, nor upon what sin he laid it out; no, nor whether he have, whether ever he had any soul, or no; but hath lost his soul so long ago, in rusty, and in incoherent sins, (not sins that produced one another, as in David's case (and yet that is a fearful state, that concatenation of sins, that pedigree of sins) but in sins which he embraces, merely out of an easiness to sin, and not out of a love, no, nor out of a temptation to that sin in particular) that in these incoherent sins hath so scattered his soul, as that he hath not soul enough left, to seek out the rest. And therefore David makes it the Title of the whole Psalm, Domine ne disperdas, O Lord do not scatter us: And he begins to express his sense of God's Judgments, in the next Psalm, so, O Lord thou hast cast us out, thou hast scattered us, turn again unto us; for even from this aversion, there may be conversion, and from this last and lowest fall, a resurrection. But how?

In the general resurrection upon natural death, God shall work upon this dispersion of our scattered dust, as in the first fall, which is the Divorce, by way of Re-union, and in the second, which is Putrifaction, by way of Re-efformation; so in this third, which is Dispersion, by way of Re-collection; where man's buried flesh hath brought forth grass, and that grass fed beasts, and those beasts fed men, and those men fed other men, God that knows in which Box of his Cabinet all this seed Pearl lies, in what corner of the world every atom, every grain of every man's dust sleeps, shall recollect that dust, and then recompact that body, and then re-inanimate that man, and that is the accomplishment of all.

In this resurrection, from this Dilpersion and scattering in sin, the way is by Recollection too: That this sinner recollect himself, and his own history, his own annalls, his own journalls, and call to mind where he lost his way, and with what tenderness of conscience, and holy startling he entered into some sins at first, in which he is seared up now, and whereas his triumph should have been, in a victory over the flesh, he is come to a triumph in his victory over the spirit of God, and glories in having overcome the Holy Ghost, and brought his conscience to an unsensiblenesse of sin: If he can recollect himself thus, and cast up his account so, If he can say to God, Lord, we have sold ourselves for nothing, he shall hear God say to him, as he does there in the Prophet, You have sold yourselves for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money. But how is this recollecting wrought?

God hath intimated the way, in that vision to the Prophet Ezekiel: He brings the Prophet into a field of dead bones, and dry bones, sicca vehementer, (as it is said there) as dry as this dust which we speak of: And he asks him, fili hominis, thou that art but the son of man, and must judge humanely, Putasne vivent ossa ista? Dost thou think that these bones can live? The Prophet answers, Domine tu nosti, thou Lord, who knowest whose names are written in the Book of Life, and whose are not; whose bones are wrapped up in the Decree of thy Election, and whose are not, knowest whether these bones can live, or no; for, but in the efficacy and power of that Decree, they cannot. Yes, they shall, says God Almighty; and they shall live by this means, Dices eis, Thou shalt say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord: As dry, as desperate, as irremediable as they are in themselves, God shall send his servants unto them, and they shall hear them: And, as it is added in that place, Prophetante me, factus sonitus, & commotio, As I Prophesied, there was a noise and a shaking; As whilst Peter spake, The Holy Ghost fell upon all them that heard the word; So whilst the Messengers of God speak in the presence of such sinners, there shall be a noise, and a commotion, a horror of their former sins, a wonder how they could provoke so patient, and so powerful a God, a sinking down under the weight of God's Judgments, a flying up to the apprehension of his mercies, and this noise and commotion in their souls, shall be settled with that Gospel in that Prophet, Dabo super vos nervos, I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath into you, and you shall live, and ye shall know that I am the Lord; God shall restore them to life, and more, to strength, and more, to beauty, and comeliness, acceptable to himself in Christ Jesus.

Your way is Recollecting; gather yourselves into the Congregation, and Communion of Saints in these places; gather your sins into your memory, and pour them out in humble confessions, to that God, whom they have wounded; Gather the crumbs under his Table, lay hold upon the gracious promises, which by our Ministry he lets fall upon the Congregation now; and gather the seals of those promises, whensoever, in a rectified conscience, his Spirit bears witness with your spirit, that you may be worthy receivers of him in his Sacrament; and this recollecting shall be your resurrection.

Beatus qui habet partem, says S. John, Blessed is he that hath part in the first Resurrection, for on such the second death hath no power. He that rises to this Judgment of recollecting, and of judging himself, shall rise with a cheerfulness, and stand with a confidence, when Christ Jesus shall come in the second: And, Quando exacturus est in secundo, quod dedit in primo, when Christ shall call for an account, in that second judgment, how he hath husbanded those graces, which he gave him; for the first, he shall make his possession of this first resurrection, his title, and his evidence to the second. When thy body, which hath been subject to all kinds of destruction here; to the destruction of a Flood, in Catarrhs, and Rheums, and Dropsies, and such distillations, to the destruction of a fire, in Fevers, and Frenzies, and such conflagrations, shall be removed safely and gloriously above all such distempers, and malignant impressions, and body and soul so united, as if both were one spirit in it self, and God so united to both, as that thou shalt be the same spirit with God. God began the first World, but upon two, Adam and Eve: The second world, after the Flood, he began upon a greater stock, upon eight reserved in the Ark; But when he establishes the last and everlasting world in the last Resurrection, he shall admit such a number, as that none of us who are here now, none that is, or hath, or shall be upon the face of the earth, shall be denied in that Resurrection, if he have truly felt this; for Grace accepted, is the infallible earnest of Glory.

SERMON XXII. Preached at S. Paul's, upon Easter-day. 1627.

M Ercy is God's right hand, with that God gives all; Faith is man's right hand, with that man takes all. David, Psal. 136. opens, and enlarges this right hand of God, in pouring out his blessings, plentifully, abundantly, manifoldly there. And in this Chapter, the Apostle opens, and enlarges this right hand of man, by laying hold upon those mercies of God, plentifully, abundantly, manifoldly, by faith here. There, David pours down the mercies. of God, in repeating, and re-repeating that phrase, For his mercy endureth forever; And here, S. Paul carries up man to heaven, by repeating, and re-repeating the blessings which man hath attained by faith; By faith Abel sacrificed, By faith Enoch walked with God, By faith Noah built an Ark, &c. And as in that Psalm, God's mercies are expressed two ways, First in the good that God did for his servants, He remembered them in their low estate, for his mercy endureth forever: And then again, He redeemed them from their enemies, for his mercy endureth forever: And then also, in the evil that he brought upon their enemies, He slew famous Kings, for his mercy endureth forever: And then, He gave their land for an heritage, for his mercy endureth forever. So in this Chapter, the Apostle declares the benefits of faith, two ways also: First, how faith enriches us, and accommodates us in the ways of prosperity, By faith Abraham went to a place which he received for an inheritance: And so, By faith Sarah received strength to conceive seed: And then, how faith sustains, and establishes us in the ways of adversity, By faith they stopped the mouths of Lions, by faith they quenched the violence of fire, by faith they escaped the edge of the sword, in the verse immediately before the Text. And in this verse, which is our Text, the Apostle hath collected both; The benefits which they received by faith, Women received their dead raised to life again, And then, the holy courage which was infused by Faith, in their persecutions, Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might receive a better Resurrection. And because both these have relation, evidently, pregnantly to the Resurrection, (for their benefit was, that the Women received their dead by a Resurrection, And their courage in their persecution was, That they should receive a better Resurrection ) therefore the whole meditation is proper to this day, in which we celebrate all Resurrections in the Root, in the Resurrection of the First fruits of the dead, our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus.

Our Parts are two; How plentifully God gives to the faithful, Women receive their dead raised to life again, And how patiently the faithful suffer God's corrections, Others were tortured not accepting, &c. Though they be both large considerations, (Benefits by Faith, Patience in the Faithful) yet we shall contain ourselves in those particulars which are expressed, or necessarily implied in the Text it self. And so in the first place we shall see first, The extraordinary consolation in God's extraordinary Mercies, in his miraculous Deliverances, such as this, Women received their dead raised to life again, And secondly we shall seethe examples, to which the Apostle refers here, What women had had their dead restored to life again; And then, lastly, in that part, That this affection of joy, in having their dead restored to life again, being put in the weaker sex, in women only, we may argue conveniently from thence, That the strength of a true and just joy lies not in that, but that our virility, our holy manhood, our religious strength consists in a faithful assurance, that we have already a blessed communion with these Saints of God, though they be dead, and we alive; And that we shall have hereafter a glorious Association with them in the Resurrection, though we never receive our dead raised to life again in this world. And in those three considerations, we shall determine that first part. And then, in the other, The Patience of the Faithful, Others were tortured, &c. we shall first look into the examples which the Apostle refers to; who they were that were thus tortured: And secondly, the heighth and exaltation of their patience, They would not accept a deliverance: And lastly, the ground upon which their Anchor was cast, what established their patience, That they might obtain a better Resurrection.

First then, for that Blessedness, which we need not be afraid, nor abstain from calling the Recompence, the Reward, the Retribution of the faithful, (for as we consider Death to grow out of Disobedience, and Life out of Obedience to the Law, as properly as Death is the wages of sin, Life is the wages of Righteousness) If I be asked, what it is wherein this Recompence, this Reward, this Retribution consists, if I must be put to my Special Plea, I must say it is, in that of the Apostle, Omnia cooperantur in bonum, That nothing can befall the faithful, that does not conduce to his good, and advance his happiness: For he shall not only find S. Paul's Mori lucrum, That he shall be the better for dying, if he must die; but he shall find S. Augustine's Vtile cadere, He shall be the better for sinning, if he have sinned; So the better, as that by a repentance after that sin, he shall find himself established in a nearer, and safer distance with God, then he was in that security, which he had before that sin. But the Title, and the Plea of the faithful to this Recompence, extends farther then so; It is not only, that nothing, how evil soever in the nature thereof, shall be evil to them; but that all that is Good, is theirs; properly theirs, theirs peculiarly. There is no want to them that fear the Lord, says David; The young Lions do lack, and suffer hunger, but they that seek the Lord, shall not want any good thing.

The Infidel hath no pretence upon the next world, none at all; No nor so clear a Title to anything in this world, but that we dispute in the School, whether Infidels have any true dominion, any true propriety in anything which they possess here; And whether there be not an inherent right in the Christians, to plant Christianity in any part of the Dominions of the Infidels, and consequently, to despoile them even of their possession, if they oppose such Plantations, so established, and such propagations of the Christian Religion. For though we may not begin at the dispossessing, and displanting of the native and natural Inhabitant, (for so we proceed but as men against men, and upon such equal terms, we have no right to take any men's possessions from them) yet, when pursuing that Right, which resides in the Christian, we have established such a Plantation, if they supplant that, we may supplant them, say our Schools, and our Casuists; For in that case, we proceed not as men against men; not by God's Common Law, which is equal to all men; that is, the Law of Nature; but we proceed by his higher Law, by his Prerogative, as Christians against Infidels, and then, it is God that proceeds against them, by men, and not those men, of themselves, to serve their own Ambitions, or their other secular ends. All things are yours, says the Apostle; By what Right? You are Christ's, says he, And Christ is God's; Thus is a Title conveyed to us, All things are God's, God hath put all things under Christ's feet; And he under ours, as we are Christians. And then, as the general profession of Christ, entitles us to a general Title of the world, (for the World belongs to the Faithful; and Christians, as Christians, and no more, are Fideles, Faithful in respect of Infidels) so those Christians that come to that more particular, more active, more operative faith, which the Apostle speaks of in all this Chapter, come also to a more particular reward, and recompense, and retribution at God's hands; God does not only give them the natural blessings of this World, to which they have an inherent right, as they are general Christians, but as they are thus faithful Christians, he gives them supernatural blessings, he enlarges himself even to Miracles, in their behalf; Which is a second consideration; First God opens himself in nature, and temporal blessings, to the general Christian, but to the Faithful, in Grace, exalted even to the height of Miracle.

In this, we consider first, That there is nothing dearer to God then a Miracle. There is nothing that God hath established in a constant course of nature, and which therefore is done every day, but would seem a Miracle, and exercise our admiration, if it were done but once; Nay, the ordinary things in Nature, would be greater miracles, then the extraordinary, which we admire most, if they were done but once; The standing still of the Sun, for Joshua's use, was not, in it self, so wonderful a thing, as that so vast and immense a body as the Sun, should run so many miles, in a minute; The motion of the Sun were a greater wonder then the standing still, if all were to begin again; And only the daily doing takes off the admiration. But then God having, as it were, concluded himself in a course of nature, and written down in the book of Creatures, Thus and thus all things shall be carried, though he glorify himself sometimes, in doing a miracle, yet there is in every miracle, a silent chiding of the world, and a tacit reprehension of them, who require, or who need miracles.

Therefore hath God reserved to himself the power of Miracles, as a Prerogative; For the devil does no miracles; the devil and his instruments, do but hasten Nature, or hinder nature, antedate Nature, or postdate Nature, bring things sooner to pass, or retarde them; And howsoever they pretend to oppose nature, yet still it is but upon nature, and but by natural means, that they work; only God shakes the whole frame of Nature in pieces, and in a miracle, proceeds so, as if there were no Creation yet accomplished, no course of Nature yet established. Facit mirabilia magnasolus, says David; There are Mirabilia parva, some lesser wonders, that the devil and his Instruments, Pharaohs Sorcerers, can do; But when it comes to Mirabilia magna, Great wonders, so great, as that they amount to the nature of a Miracle, Facit solus, God, and God only does them. And amongst these, and amongst the greatest of these, is the raising of the Dead, and therefore we make it a particular consideration, the extraordinary Joy in that case, when Women received their dead raised to life again.

We know the dishonor, and the infamy that lay upon barrenness, among the Jews; how wives deplored, and lamented that. When God is pleased to take away that impediment of barrenness, and to give children, we know the misery, and desolation of orbity, when Parents are deprived of those children, by death; And by the measure of that sorrow, which follows barrenness, or orbitie, we may proportion that joy, which accompanies God's miraculous blessings, when Women receive their dead naised to life again. In all the secular, and profane Writers in the world, in the whole body of Story, you shall not find such an expressing of the misery of a famine, as that of the Holy Ghost in the Lamentations; That women eat Palmares silios; We translate it, Their children of a span long; that is, that they procured abortions and untimely births of those children, which were in their bodies, that they might have so much flesh to eat. As that is proposed for the greatest misery, that ever was, women to destroy their children so, so is this for the highest accumulation of Joy, to have dead children brought to life again. When we hear S. Augustine in his Confessions, lament so passionately the death of his Son, and insist so affectionately, upon the Pregnancie, and Forwardnesse of that Son; though that Son if he had lived, must have lived a continual evidence, and monument of his sin, (for, for all his Son, S. Augustine was no married man) yet what may we think, S. Augustine would have given, though it had been to have been cut out of his own life, to have had that Son restored to life again? Measure it but by the Joy, which we have, in recovering a sick child, from the hands, and jaws, and gates of death; Measure it but by that delight which we have, when we see our Garden recovered frō the death of Winter. Men's curiosities have carried them to unlawful desires of communication with the Dead; as in Saul's case towards Samuel. But if with a good conscience, and without that horror, which is likely to accompany such a communication with the Dead, a man might have the conversation of a friend, that had been dead, and had seen the other World; As Dives thought no Preacher so powerful to work upon his Brethren, as one sent from the Dead, so certainly all the Travailers in the World, if we could hear them all, all the Libraries in the world, if we could read them all, could not tell us so much, as that friend, returned from the dead, which had seen the other World.

But wayving that consideration, because as we know not, what kind of remembrance of this world, God leaves us in the next, when he translates us thither, so neither do we know, what kind of remembrance of that world, God would leave in that man, whom he should re-translate into this, we fixe only upon the examples intended in our Text, who these joyful Women were, that received their Dead raised to life again, which is our second Branch of this first part; for with those three considerations, which constituted our first Branch, we have done, That God gives us this World, as we are general Christians; And, as we are Faithful Christians, Miracles; And, the greatest of Miracles, The raising of the Dead.

In the second Branch, we have two Considerations; first, what kind of Women these were, and then, who they were; first, their Qualities, and then, their Persons. We have occasion to stop upon the first, because Aquinas in his Exposition of this Text, tells us, there are some Expositors, who take this word, Women, in this place, to be intended, not of Mothers, but of Wives; And then, because the Apostle says here, that Women received their dead, that is, say they, Wives received their dead Husbands, raised to life again, and received them, as Husbands, that is, cohabited with them as Husbands, therefore they conclude, says Aquinas, that Death it self does not dissolve the band of Marriage; and consequently, that all other Marriages, all super-inductions, even after Death, are unlawful. Let me say but one word, of the Word, and a word or two of the Matter it self, and I shall pass to the other Consideration, The Women whom the Apostle proposes for his examples.

The word, Women, taken alone, signifies the whole sex, women in general, When it is contracted to a particular signification, in any Author, it follows the circumstances, and the coherence of that place, in that Author; and by those a man shall easily discern, of what kind of Women, that word is intended in that place. In this place, the Apostle works upon his Brethren, the Hebrews, by such examples, as were within their own knowledge, and their own stories, throughout all this Chapter. And in those stories of theirs, we have no example, of any Wife, that had her dead Husband restored to her; but of Mothers that had their Children raised to life, we have. So that this word, Women, must signify here, Mothers, and not Wives, as Aquinas Expositors mis-imagined.

And for the matter it self, that is, second or oftener-iterated Marriages, the dis-approving of them, entered very soon into some Heretics, in the Primitive Church. For the eighth Canon of that great Council of Nice, (which is one of the indubitable Canons) forbids, by name, Catharos, The Puritans of those Times, to be received by the Church, except they would be content to receive the Sacrament with persons that had been twice married; which, before they would not do. It entered soon into some Heretics, and it entered soon, and went far, in some holy and reverent Men, and some Assemblies, that had, and had justly, the name, and form of Councils. For, in the Council of Neo-Cesarea, which was before the Nicene Council, in the seventh Canon, there are somewhat shrewd aspersions laid upon second Mariages. And certainly, the Roman Church cannot be denied, to come too near this dis-approving of second Mariages. For though they will not speak plain, (they love not that, because they get more by keeping things in suspense) yet plainly they forbid the Benediction at second Mariages. Valeat quantnm valere potest; Let them do as well as they can, with their second Marriage, Let them marry De been esse, At all adventures; but they will afford no Blessing to a second, as to a first Marriage. And though they will not shut the Church doors against all such, yet they will shut up all Church functions against all such. No such Person as hath married twice, or married once, one that hath married twice, can be received to the dignity of Orders, in their Church.

And though some of the Fathers pared somewhat too near the quick in this point, yet it was not as in the Roman Church, to lay snares, and spread nets for gain, and profit, and to forbid only therefore, that they might have market for their Dispensations; neither was it to fixe, and appropriate sanctity, only in Ecclesiastical persons, who only must not marry twice, but out of a tender sense, and earnest love to Continency, and out of a holy indignation, that men tumbled and wallowed so licentiously, so promiscuously, so indifferently, so inconsiderately in all ways of incontinency, those blessed Fathers admitted in themselves a super-zealous, an over-vehement animosity in this point. But yet S. Jerome himself, though he remember with a holy scorn, that when he was at Rome in the assistance of Pope Damasus (as his word is, Cum juvarem ) he saw a man that had buried twenty wives, marry a wife, that buried twenty two husbands, yet for the matter, and in seriousness, he says plainly enough, Non damno Bigamos, imo nec Trigamos, nec si dici potest octogamos, I condemn no man for marrying two, or three, or if he have a mind to it, eight wives. And so also in his former Epistle, Abjicimus de Ecclesia Digamos? absit; God forbid we should deny any Church assistance to any, for twice marrying; but yet, says that blessed Father, Monogamos ad continentiam provocamus; Let me have leave to persuade them who have been married, and are at liberty, to continency, now at last.

Those Fathers departed not from the Apostles Nubat in Domino, Let them marry in the Lord; but they would fain bring the Lord to the making of every marriage, and not only the world, and worldly respects. For the Lord himself, who honored marriage, even with the first fruits of his miracles, yet persuades continency, He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. The fault which those Fathers did, and we may reprehend, is, that men do not try whether they be able to receive it or no; In all Treaties of marriage, in all Contracts for Portion, and Jointure, whoever ask their children, whoever ask themselves, whether they can live continently or no? Or what trial, what experiment can have been made of this, in Cradle-marriages? Marriage was given for a remedy; but not before any apparance of a danger. And given for Physic, but not before any apparance of a disease. And do any Parents lay up a medicine against the falling sickness, for their new-born children, because those children may have the falling sickness? The peace of neighbouring States, the uniting of great Families for good ends, may present just occasions of departing from severe rules. I only intend, as I take most of those Fathers to have done, to leave all persons to their Christian liberty, as the Lord hath done; and yet, as the Lord hath done too, to persuade them to consider themselves, and those who are theirs, how far they need the use of that Liberty, and not to exceed that. And thus much Aquinas Expositors, who would needs understand the Women in this Text, to be Wives, have occasioned us to say in this point. In our order proposed, we pass now to the other consideration, who these women were whom the Apostle makes his Examples, for they are but two, and may soon be considered.

The first is the Widow of Zareptha, in whose house Elias the Prophet sojourned. She was a Widow, and a poor Widow, and might need the labor, or the providence of a husband in that respect: Yet she solicits not, nor Elias endeavors not the raising of her dead husband to life again. A Widow, that is, A Widow indeed, (as the Apostle speaks) may have in that state of such a Widowhood, more assistances towards the next world, then she should have for this, by taking another husband. For, for that Widow, Quae in tumulo mariti, sepeliit voluptates, Who hath buried all her affections towards this world, in her husbands grave, the Apostle in that place, ordains honor, Honor Widows, that are Widows indeed. And when he says Honor, and speaks of poor Widows, he speaks not of such honor as such poor souls are incapable of, but of that Honor, which that word signifies ordinarily in the Scriptures, Qui non tam in salutationibus, quam in elecmosynis, says S. Chrysostom, which rather consists in Alms, and Reliefe, then in Salutations, and Reverences, or such respects. For so (as S. Jerome notes in particular) when we are commanded to honor our Parents, it is intended we should relieve and maintain our Parents, if they be decayed. And such honor the Apostle persuades to be given, and such honor God will provide, that is, Peace in the possession of their estate, if they have any estate; and relief from others, if they have none, for Widows, that are Widows indeed.

In which qualification of theirs, that they be Widows indeed, we may well take in that addition which the Apostle makes, That she have been the wise of one man. For though we make not that an only, or an essential Character of a Widow indeed, to have had but one husband, yet we note, as Calvin doth, that the Church received Widows, in years, therefore, Quia timendum er at, ne ad novas nuptias aspirarent, because the Church feared that they would marry again. And certainly, if the Church feared they would, the Church had rather they would not. It is (as Calvin adds there) Pignus continentiae, & pudoris (though Calvin were no man to be suspected, to countenance the perverseness of the Roman Church, in defaming, or undervaluing marriage. yet he says so) it is a good Pawn, and Evidence of Continency, to have rested in one husband.

This Widow of Zareptha then, importunes not the Prophet to restore her dead husband; She bears her widows estate well enough; but for her dead Son she doth importune him; in the agony and vehemence of a Passion, she says, at her first encounter with the Prophet, Quid mihi, & tibi? What have I to do with thee? She doth almost renounce the means; In irregular passion, a disconsolate soul comes to say, what have I to do with Prayers, with Sermons, with Sacraments, I see that God hath forsaken me: but yet she collects herself; What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? When she confesses him to be the man of God, she doth not renounce him; When we consider the means, to be means ordained by God, we find comfort in them. Yet she cannot contain the bitterness of her passion; Art thou come unto me, to call my sin to remembrance, and to kill my Son? She implies thus much; Shall my soul never be at peace? Shall no repentance from my heart, no absolution from thy mouth, make me sure that God hath forgiven and forgotten my sins? But when I have received all Seals of Reconciliation, will God still punish those sins which he pretends to have forgiven, and punish them with so high a hand, as the taking away of my only Child? And we may see an exaltation of this woman's passion, not only in the loss, but in the recovery of her child too. For when she had received her child alive, she comes to that passionate acclamation, Now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in thy mouth, is truth; As though, if this had not been done, she would not have believed that.

How then says our Apostle in this Text, That this woman received her dead Son by faith, when she declares this inordinateness, this dis-composedness, and fluctuation of passion? This question made S. Chrysostom refer this faith that the Apostle speaks of, to the Prophet that raised the child, and not to the mother; For she seems to him to have had none. And so the Syriac translates this place, Reddiderunt, not Acceperunt; By faith, They, that is, the Prophets restored the dead, not By faith, They, that is, the mothers received their dead.

But God forbid that natural affections, even in an exaltation, and vehement expressing thereof, should be thought to destroy faith; God forbid that I should conclude an extermination of faith, in Moses Dele me, Pardon this people, or blot my name out of thy Book; or in S. Paul's Anathema pro fratribus, That he desired to be separated from Christ, rather then his brethren should; or in Job, or in Jeremiah, or in Jonah, when they expostulate, and chide with God himself, out of a weariness of their lives; or in the Lord of Life himself, Christ Jesus, when he came to an Vt quid dereliquisti? To an apprehension that God had forsaken him upon the Cross. God that could restore her cold child, could keep his child, her faith, alive in those hot embers of Passion. So God did; But he did it thus; The child was taken from the mothers warm and soft bosom, and carried to the Prophets hard and cold bed.

Beloved, we die in our delicacies, and revive not, but in afflictions; In abundancies, the blow of death meets us, and the breath of life, in misery, and tribulation. God puts himself to the cost of one of his greatest Miracles, for her Faith; He raises her child to life; And then, he makes up his own work; he continues with that child, and makes him a good man; There are men, whom, even Miracles will not improve; but this child (we will not dispute it, but accept it from S. Jerome, who relates it) became a Prophet. It was that very Jonah, whom God employed to Nineveh; in which Service, he gave some signs whose Son he was, and how much of his mothers passion he inherited in his vehement expostulations with God. Be this then our doctrinal instruction for this first example, the Widow of Zareptha; first, that God thinks nothing too dear for his faithful Children; not his great Treasure, not his Miracles; And then God preserves this faith of theirs, in contemplation of which only, he bestows this Treasure, this Miracle, in the midst of the storms of natural affections, and the tempest of distempered passions; and then lastly, that he proceeds, and goes on in his own goodness; Here he makes a Carkasse a Man, and then that man a Prophet; Every day he makes a dead soul, a soul again, and then that soul, a Saint.

The other example in this point, is that Shunamite, whose dead son Elisha restored to life. In the beginning of that Chapter, you hear of another Widow; A certain woman, of the wives of the sons of the Prophets, cried unto Elisha, Thy servant my husband is dead; And truly a Widow of one of the sons of the Prophets, a Church-man's Widow, was like enough, to be poor enough; And yet, the Prophet doth not turn upon that way, either to restore her dead husband, or to provide her another husband; but only enquires how she was left; and finding her in poor estate, and in debt, provides her means to pay her debts, and to bring up her children, and to that purpose, procures a miracle from God, in the abundant increase of her oil; but he troubles not God for her old, or for a new husband. But our example, to which the Apostle in our Text refers himself, is not this Widow in the beginning, but that Mother, in the body of the Chapter, who having, by Elisha's prayers, obtained a Son of God, after she was past hope, and that Son being dead in her lap, in her also, (as in the former example) we may consider, how Passion and Faith may consist together: She asks her husband leave, That she might run to the Prophet; her zeal, her passionate zeal hastened her, she would run, but not without her husbands leave.

As S. Jerome forbids a Lady, to suffer her daughter, to go to what Churches she would, so may there be indiscretion at least, to suffer wives to go to what meetings (though holy Convocations) they will; she does not harbor in her house, a person dangerous to the Public State, or to her husbands private state, nor a person likely to solicit her chastity, though in a Prophets name; We may find women, that may have occasion of going to Confession, for something that their Confessors may have done to them. In this woman's case, there was no disguise; She would fain go, and run; but not without her husbands knowledge, and allowance.

Her husband asks her, Why she would go to the Prophet, then, being neither Sabbath, nor new Moon? He acknowledges, that God is likelier to confer blessings upon Sabbaths, and new Moons, upon some days, rather then other; That all days are not alike with God, then, when he, by his ordinance, hath put a difference between them. And he acknowledges too, that though the Sabbath be the principal of those days which God hath seposed for his especial working, yet there are new Moons too; there are other Holy-days, for holy Convocations, and for his Divine and Public Worship, besides the Sabbath. But this was neither Sabbath, nor new Moon, neither Sunday, nor Holy-day; Why would she go upon that day? Beloved, though for public meetings, in public places, the Sabbaths, and Holy-days be the proper days, yet for conference, and counsel, and other assistances from the Prophets, and Ministers of God, all times are seasonable, all days are Sabbaths.

She goes to the Prophet; she presses with so much passion, and so much faith too, and so good success, (for she had her dead son restored unto her) that as from the other, so from this example arises this, That in a heart absolutely surrendered to God, vehement expostulation with God, and yet full submission to God, and a quiet acquiescence in God; A storm of affections in nature, and yet a settled calm, and a fast anchorage in grace, a suspicion, and a jealousy, and yet an assurance, and a confidence in God, may well consist together: In the same instant that Christ said, Si possibile, he said Veruntamen too; though he desired that that cup might pass, yet he desired not, that his desire should be satisfied. In the same instant that the Martyrs under the Altar say, Vsque quo Domine, How long Lord before thou execute judgment? they see, that he does execute judgment every day, in their behalf. All jealousy in God, does not destroy our assurance in him; nor all diffidence, our confidence; nor all fear, our faith. These women had these natural weaknesses, that is, this strength of affections, and passions, and yet by this faith, these women received their dead, raised to life again.

But yet, (which is a last consideration, and our conclusion of this part) this being thus put only in women, in the weaker sex, that they desired, that they rejoiced in this resuscitation of the dead, may well intimate thus much unto us, that our virility, our holy manhood, our true and religious strength, consists in the assurance, that though death have divided us, and though we never receive our dead raised to life again in this world, yet we do live together already, in a holy Communion of Saints, and shall live together forever, hereafter, in a glorious Resurrection of bodies. Little know we, how little a way a soul hath to go to heaven, when it departs from the body; Whether it must pass locally, through Moon, and Sun, and Firmament, (and if all that must be done, all that may be done, in less time then I have proposed the doubt in) or whether that soul find new light in the same room, and be not carried into any other, but that the glory of heaven be diffused over all, I know not, I dispute not, I inquire not. Without disputing, or inquiring, I know, that when Christ says, That God is not the God of the dead, he says that to assure me, that those whom I call dead, are alive. And when the Apostle tells me, That God is not ashamed to be called the God of the dead, he tells me that to assure me, That God's servants lose nothing by dying.

He was but a Heathen that said, If God love a man, Iuvenis tollitur, He takes him young out of this world; And they were but Heathens, that observed that custom, To put on mourning when their sons were born, and to feast and triumph when they died. But thus much we may learn from these Heathens, That if the dead, and we, be not upon one floor, nor under one story, yet we are under one roof. We think not a friend lost, because he is gone into another room, nor because he is gone into another Land; And into another world, no man is gone; for that Heaven, which God created, and this world, is all one world. If I had fixed a Son in Court, or married a daughter into a plentiful Fortune, I were satisfied for that son and that daughter. Shall I not be so, when the King of Heaven hath taken that son to himself, and married himself to that daughter, forever? I spend none of my Faith, I exercise none of my Hope, in this, that I shall have my dead raised to life again.

This is the faith that sustains me, when I lose by the death of others, or when I suffer by living in misery myself, That the dead, and we, are now all in one Church, and at the resurrection, shall be all in one Choir. But that is the resurrection which belongs to our other part; That resurrection which we have handled, though it were a resurrection from death, yet it was to death too; for those that were raised again, died again. But the Resurrection which we are to speak of, is forever; They that rise then, shall see death no more, for it is (says our Text) A better Resurrection.

That which we did in the other part, in the last branch thereof, in this part we shall do in the first; First we shall consider the examples, from which the Apostle deduceth this encouragement, and faithful constancy, upon those Hebrews, to whom he directs this Epistle. Though, as he says in the beginning of the next Chapter, he were compassed about with a Cloud of witnesses, and so might have proposed examples from the Authenticke Scriptures, and the Histories of the Bible, yet we accept that direction, which our Translators have given us, in the Marginall Concordance of their Translation, That the Apostle, in this Text, intends, and so refers to that Story, which is 2 Maccab. 7.7. To that Story also doth Aquinas refer this place; But Aquinas may have had a mind, to do that service to the Roman Church, to make the Apostle cite an Apocryphal Story, though the Apostle meant it not. It may be so in Aquinas; He might have such a mind, such a meaning. But surely Beza had no such meaning, Calvin had no such mind; and yet both Calvin, and Beza refer this Text to that Story. Though it be said, says Calvin, that Jeremiah was stoned to death, and Isaiah sawed to death, Non dubito, quin illas persecutiones designet, quae sub Antiocho, I doubt not, says he, but that the Apostle intends those persecutions, which the Maccabees suffered under Antiochus.

So then, there may be good use made of an Apocryphal Book. It always was, and always will be impossible, for our adversaries of the Roman Church, to establish that, which they have so long endeavored, that is, to make the Apocryphal Books equal to the Canonical. It is true, that before there was any occasion of jealousy, or suspicion, that there would be new Articles of faith coined, and those new Articles authorized, and countenanced out of the Apocryphal Books, the blessed Fathers in the Primitive Church, afforded honorable names, and made fair and noble mention of those Books. So they have called them Sacred; and more then that, Divine; and more then that too, Canonical Books; and more then all that, by the general name of Scripture, and Holy Writ. But the Holy Ghost, who fore-saw the danger, though those blessed Fathers themselves did not, hath shed, and dropt, even in their writings, many evidences, to prove, in what sense they called those Books by those names, and in what distance they always held them, from those Books, which are purely, and positively, and to all purposes, and in all senses, Sacred, and Divine, and Canonical, and simply Scripture, and simply, Holy Writ.

Of this there is no doubt in the Fathers before S. Augustine: For all they proposed these Books, as Canones morum, non sidei, Canonical, that is, Regular, for applying our manners, and conversation to the Articles of Faith; but not Canonical, for the establishing those Articles; Canonical for edification, but not for foundation. And even in the later Roman Church, we have a good Author that gives us a good rule, Ne turberis Novitie, Let no young Student be troubled, when he hears these Books, by some of the Fathers, called Canonical, for, they are so, says he, in their sense, Regulares ad aedificationem, Good Canons, good Rules for matter of manners, and conversation. And this distinction, says that Author, will serve to rectify, not only what the Fathers afore S. Augustine, (for they speak clearly enough) but what S. Augustine himself, and some Councils have said of this matter. But yet, this difference gives no occasion to an elimination, to an extermination of these Books, which we call Apocryphal. And therefore, when in a late foreign Synod, that Nation, where that Synod was gathered, would needs dispute, whether the Apocryphal Books should not be utterly left out of the Bible; And, not effecting that, yet determined, that those Books should be removed from their old place, where they had ever stood, that is, after the Books of the Old Testament, Exteri se excusari petierunt, (say the Acts of that Synod) Those that came to that Synod, from other places, desire to be excused, from assenting to the displacing of those Apocryphal Books. For, in that place, (as we see by Athanasius ) they prescribe; For, though they be not Canonical, says he, yet they are Ejusdem veteris Instrumenti libri, Books that belong to the Old Testament, that is, (at least) to the elucidation, and clearing of many places in the Old Testament. And that the Ancient Fathers thought these Books worthy of their particular consideration, must necessarily be more then evident to him that reads S. Chrysostom's Homilie, or Leo