Eighty Sermons

SERM. XXXVII. Preached upon Whitsunday.

I N a former Sermon upon these words, we have established this, That the Person whom our Savior promises here, being by himself promised, in the verse before the text, in the name and quality of The Comforter, All that this Person is to do in this text, is to be done so, as the World, upon which it is to be done, may receive comfort in it. Therefore this word, Reproof admitting a double signification, one by way of authority, as it is a rebuke, an increpation, the other as it is a convincing by argument, by way of instruction, and information, because the first way cannot be applied to all the parts of this text, and to all that the Holy Ghost is to do upon the world, (for, howsoever he may rebuke the world of sin, he cannot be said to rebuke it of righteousness, and of judgment) according to S. Augustine's later interpretation of these words, (for in one place of his works, he takes this word, Reproof, in the harder sense, for rebuke, but in another, in the milder) we have and must pursue the second signification of the word, That the Holy Ghost shall reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, of judgment, by convincing the world, by making the world confess and acknowledge all that that the Holy Ghost intends in all these. And this manifestation, and this conviction in these three, will be our parts. In the first of which, That the Holy Ghost shall Reprove, that is, convince, the world of sin, we shall first look how all the world is under sin; and then, whether the Holy Ghost, being come, have convinced all the world, made all the world see that it is so; and in these two inquisitions, we shall determine that first branch.

For the first, (for, of the other two we shall reach you the boughs anon, when you come to gather the fruit, and lay open the particulars, then when we come to handle them) That all the world is under sin, and knows it not, (for this Reproof, Elenchus, is, (says the Philosopher) Syllogismus contra contraria opinantem, An argument against him that is of a contrary opinion) we condole first the misery of this Ignorance, for, Quid miserius misero, non miser ante seipsum? What misery can be so great, as to be ignorant, insensible of our own misery? Every act done in such an ignorance as we might overcome, is a new sin; And it is not only a new practice from the Devil, but it is a new punishment from God; Iussisti Domine, & sic est, ut poena sit sibi omnis inordinatus animus, Every sinner is an Executioner upon himself; and he is so by God's appointment, who punishes former sins with future. This then is the miserable state of the world, It might know, and does not, that it is wholly under an inundation, a deluge of sin. For, sin is a transgression of some Law, which, he that sins may know himself to be bound by: For, if any man could be exempt from all Law, he were impeccable, he could not sin; And if he could not possibly have any knowledge of the Law, it were no Law to him.

Now under the transgression of what Law lies all the World? For the positive Laws of the States in which we live, a man may keep them, according to the intention of them that made those Laws; which is all that is required in any human Law; (to keep it, if not according to the letter, yet according to the intention of the Law-maker) Nay it is not only possible, but easy to do so; Angusta innocentia ad legem bonum esse, (says the moral man's holy Ghost, Seneca ) It is but a narrow and a shallow honesty, to be no honester then the Law forces him to be. Thus then, in violating the Laws of the State, all the World is not under sin.

If we pass from Laws merely human, (though, in truth, scarce any just Law is so, merely human, for God, that commands obedience to human Laws, hath a hand in the making of them) to those ceremonial, and judicial Laws, which the Jews received immediately from God, (in which respect they may be called divine Laws, though they were but local and but temporary) which were in such a number, as that, though penal Laws in some States be so many, and so heavy, as that they serve only for snares, and springes upon the people, yet they are nowhere equal to the ceremonial and judicial Laws, which lay upon the Jews; yet even for these Laws S. Paul says of himself, That touching that righteousness which is in the Law, he was blameless. Thus therefore (in violating ceremonial or judicial Laws) all the World is not under sin, both because all the World was not bound by that Law, and some in the World did keep it.

But in two other respects it is; first, That there is a Law of Nature that passes through all the World, a Law in the heart; and of the breach of this, no man can be always ignorant. As every man hath a devil in himself, Spontaneum Daemonem, A Devil of his own making, some particular sin that transports him, so every man hath a kind of God in himself, such a conscience, as sometimes reproves him. Carry we this consideration a little higher, and we may see herein, some verification, at least, some useful application of Origen's extreme error. He thought, that at last, after infinite revolutions, (as all other substances should be) even the Devil himself should be (as it were) sucked and swallowed into God, and there should remain nothing at last, (as there was nothing else at first) but only God; (not by an annihilation of the Creature, that anything should come to nothing, but by this absorption, by a transmigration of all Creatures into God, that God should be all, and all should be God) So in our case, That which is the sinners devil, becomes his God; That very sin which hath possessed him, by the excess of that sin, or, by some loss, or pain, or shame following that sin, occasions that reproof and remorse, that withdraws him from that sin. So all the world is under sin, because they have a Law in themselves, and a light in themselves.

And it is so in a second respect, That all being derived from Adam, Adams sin is derived upon all. Only that one man, that was not naturally deduced from Adam, Christ Jesus, was guilty of no sin; All others are subject to that malediction, Vae genti peccatrici, Woe to this sinful World. God made man Inexterminabilem, says the Wiseman, undisseisible, unexpellible; such, as he could not be thrust out of his Immortality, whether he would or no: for, that was man's first immortality, Posse non mori, That he needed not have died. When man killed himself, and threw upon all his posterity the morte morieris, that we must die, and that Death is Stipendium peccati, The wages of sin, and that Anima quae peccaverit, ipsa morietur, that That soul, and only that soul that sins, shall die, Since we see the punishment fall upon all, we are sure the fault cleaves to all too; all do die, therefore all do sin. And though this Original sin that over-flows us all, may in some sense be called peccatum involuntarium, a sin without any elicit act of the Will, (for so it must needs be in Children) and so properly no sin, yet as all our other faculties were, so omnium voluntates in Adam, all our wills were in Adam, and we sinned willfully, when he did so, and so Original sin is a voluntary sin: Our will is poisoned in the fountain; and, as soon as our will is able to exercise any election, we are willing to sin, as soon as we can, and sorry we can sin no sooner, and sorry no longer: we are willing before the Devil is willing, and willing after the Devil is weary, and seek occasions of temptation, when he presents none. And so, as the breach of the Law of Nature, and as the deluge of Original sin hath surrounded the whole world, the whole world is under sin.

That all the world is so, requires not much proof: But then, does the Holy Ghost, by his coming, reprove, that is, convince the whole world, that it is so? The Holy Ghost is able to do it, and he hath good cause to do it; But does he do it? Is this Cum venerit, when he comes, come? Is he come to this purpose, to make all the world know their sinful condition? God knows they know it not. Howsoever they may have some knowledge of the breach of the Law of Nature, yet they have no knowledge of any remedy after, and so lack all comfort; and therefore this is no knowledge from the Holy Ghost, from the Comforter. And for the knowledge of Original sin, which lies more heavy upon them then upon us, (who have the ease of Baptism, which slackens, and weakens Original sin in us) they are so far from knowing, that that sin is derived from Adam, as that they do not know, that they themselves are derived from Adam; not that there is such a sin, not that there was such an Adam. How then doth the Holy Ghost, who is come according to Christ's promise, according to his promise, Reprove, that is, Convince the world of sin, since this (being to be done by the Holy Ghost) implies a knowledge of Christ, and a way of comfort in the doing thereof?

This one word Arguet, He shall reprove, convince, admits three acceptations. First, in the future, as it is here presented, He shall; and so the Cum venerit, When he comes, signifies Antequam abierit, Before he departs. He came at Pentecost, and presently set on foot his Commission, by the Apostles, to reprove, convince the world of sin, and hath proceeded ever since, by their successors, in reducing Nation after Nation; and, before the consummation of the world, before he retire, to rest eternally in the bosom of the Father and the Son, from whom he proceeded, he shall reprove the whole world of sin, that is, bring them to a knowledge, That in the breach of the law of nature, and in the guiltiness of original sin, they are all under a burden, which none of them all, of themselves, can discharge. This work S. Paul seems to hasten sooner: To convince the Jews of their infidelity, he argues thus, Have not they heard the Gospel? They, that is, the Gentiles; and if They, much more You; And that They had heard it, he proves by the application of those words, In omnem terram, Their voice is gone through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world, That is, the voice of the Apostles, in the preaching of the Gospel.

Hence grew that distraction, and perplexity which we find in the Fathers, Whether it could be truly said, that the Gospel had been preached over all the world in those times. If we number the Fathers, most are of that opinion, That before the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, this was fulfilled. Of those that think the contrary, some proceed upon reasons ill grounded; particularly Origen; Quid de Britannis & Germanis, qui nec adhuc audierunt verbum Euangelii? What shall we say of Britanny, and Germany, who have not heard of the Gospel yet? For, before Origen's time, (though Origen were 1400. years since) in what darkness soever he mistook us to be, we had a blessed and a glorious discovery of the Gospel of Christ Jesus in this Island. S. Jerome, who denies this universal preaching of the Gospel before the destruction of the Temple, yet doubts not but that the fulfilling of that prophecy was then in action, and in a great forwardness; I am completum, aut brevi ternimus complendum; Already we see it performed, says he; Or, at least so earnestly pursued, as that it must necessarily, very soon be performed: Nec puto aliquam remanere gentem, quae Christi nomen ignor at; I do not think, (says that Father, more then 1200. years since) that there is any nation that hath not heard of Christ; Et quanquam non habuerit praedicatorem, ex viciais, &c. If they have not had express Preachers themselves, yet from their neighbors they have had some Echoes of this voice, some reflections of this light.

The later Divines, and the School, that find not this early, and general preaching over the world, to lie in proof, proceed to a more safe way, That there was then Odor Euangelii, A sweet savor of the Gospel issued, though it were not yet arrived to all parts: As if a plentiful and diffusive perfume were set up in a house, we would say The house were perfumed, though that perfume were not yet come to every corner of the house. But not to thrust the world into so narrow a strait, as it is, when a Decree is said to have gone out from Augustus, to tax all the world, (for this was but the Roman world) Nor, That there were men dwelling at Jerusalem, devout men, of every nation under heaven, (for, this was but of nations discovered, and traded withal then) nor, when S. Paul says, That the faith of the Romans was published to the world, (for that was as far as he had gone) those words of our Savior, This Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world, for a witness to all nations, and then shall the end come, have evermore, by all, Ancient and Modern, Fathers and School, Preachers and Writers, Expositors and Controverters, been literally understood, that before the end of the world, the Gospel shall be actually, really, evidently, efectually preached to all nations; and so, Cum venerit, When the holy Ghost comes, that is, Antequam abierit, Before he go, he shall reprove, convince the whole world of sin, and this, as he is a Comforter, by accompanying their knowledge of sin, with the knowledge of the Gospel, for the remission of sins.

It agrees with the nature of goodness to be so diffusive, communicable to all. It agrees with the nature of God, who is goodness, That as all the fountains of the great Deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened, and so came the flood over all, so there should be Diluvium Spiritus, A flowing out of the holy Ghost upon all, as he promises, Effundam, I will pour it out upon all, and Diluvium gentium, That all nations should flow up unto him. For, this Spirit, Spirat ubi vult, Breathes where it pleases him; and though a natural wind cannot blow East and West, North and South together, this Spirit at once breathes upon the most contrary dispositions, upon the presuming, and upon the despairing sinner; and, in an instant can denizen and naturalize that soul that was an alien to the Covenant, Empale and inlay that soul that was bred upon the Common, amongst the Gentiles, transform that soul, which was a Goat, into a Sheep, unite that soul which was a lost sheep to the fold again, shine upon that soul that sits in darkness, and in the shadow of death, and so melt and pour out that soul that yet understands nothing of the Divine nature, nor of the Spirit of God, that it shall become partaker of the Divine nature, and be the same Spirit with the Lord. When Christ took our flesh, he had not all his Ancestors of the Covenant; he was pleased to come of Ruth, a Moabite, a poor stranger; As he came, so will the holy Ghost go to strangers also. Shall any man murmur, or draw into disputation, why this Spirit doth not breath in all nations at once? or why not sooner then it doth in some? Doth this Spirit fall and rest upon every soul in this Congregation now? May not one man find that he receives him now, and suffer him to go away again? May not another who felt no motion of him now, recollect himself at home, and remember something then, which hath been said now, to the quickening of this Spirit in him there? Since the holy Ghost visits us so, successively, not all at once, not all with an equal establishment, we may safely embrace that acceptation of this word Arguet, He shall, he will, Antequam abierit, Before the end come, Reprove, convince the whole world of sin, by this his way, the way of comfort, the preaching of the Gospel. And that is the first acceptation thereof.

The second acceptation of the word is in the present; not Arguet, He shall, but Arguit, He doth, now he doth reprove all the world. As when the Devil confessed Christ in the Gospel, as when Judas, (who was the Devils Devil, for, he had sold Christ to the Chief-Priests, Mat. 26.14. before Satan entered into him after the Sop, John 13.27.) professed this Gospel, this was not Sine omni impulsu Spiritus Sancti, Altogether without the motion of the Holy Ghost, who had his ends, and his purposes therein, to draw testimonies for Christ out of the mouths of his adversaries; so when a natural man comes to be displeased with his own actions, and to discern sin in them, though his natural faculties be the Instruments in these actions, yet the Holy Ghost sets this Instrument in tune, and makes all that is music and harmony in the faculties of this natural man. At Ephesus S. Paul found certain Disciples which were baptized, and when he asked them, Whether they had received the Holy Ghost, they said, That they had not so much as heard that there was a Holy Ghost. So certainly, infinite numbers of men, in those unconverted Nations have the Holy Ghost working in them, though they have never so much as heard that there is a Holy Ghost. When we see any man do any work well, that belongs to the hand, to write, to carve, to play, to do any mechanique office well, do we determine mine our consideration only upon the Instrument, the hand, do we only say, he hath a good, a fit, a well disposed hand for such a work, or do we not rather raise our contemplation to the soul, and her faculties, which enable that hand to do that work? So certainly when a moral man hath any reproof, any sense of sin in himself, the holy Ghost is the intelligence that moves in that sphere, and becomes the soul of his soul, and works that in him primarily, of which, natural faculties, or philosophical instructions, are but ministerial instruments and suppletory assistances after. And not only in the beginning of good actions, but in the prosecution of some evil, the holy Ghost hath an interest, though we discern him not: In the disposing of our sins, the holy Ghost hath a working thus, That when we intended some mischievous sin tomorrow, a less sin, some sin of pleasure meets us, and takes hold of us, and diverts us from our first purpose, and so the holy Ghost rescues us from one sin, by suffering us to fall into another. What action soever hath any degree of good, what action soever hath any less evil in it then otherwise it would have had, hath received a working of the holy Ghost, though that man upon whom he hath wrought, knew not his working, nor his name. As we think that we have the differences of seasons, of Winter and Summer, by the natural motion of the Sun, but yet it is not truly by that natural motion, but by a contrary motion of a higher sphere, which draws the Sun against his natural course; (for, if the Sun were left to himself, we should not have these seasons) so if the soul and conscience of a mere natural man have any of these reproofs, and remorses, though perchance fear, or shame, or sickness, or penalties of law, yea though a weariness, and excess of the sin it self, may seem to him to be the thing that reproves him, and that occasions this remorse, because it is the most immediate, and therefore most discernible; yet there is Digitus Dei, The hand of God, and spiritus Spiritus sancti, The breath of the holy Ghost, in all this, who, as a liberal alms-giver sends to persons, that never know who sends, works upon persons, who never know who works. So the holy Ghost reproves all the world of sin; that is, all the reproof, which even the natural man hath, (and every man hath some at sometimes) is from the holy Ghost; and, as in the former sense, the Cum venerit, When he eomes, was Antequam abierit, before he goes, so here the Cum venerit, is Quia adest, because he is always present, and always working.

And then there is a third acceptation, where the Arguet is not in the future, That he shall do it, nor in the present, Arguit, That he doth it now in every natural man, but it is in the time past, Arguit. He hath done it, done it already. And here in this sense, it is not that the holy Ghost shall bring the Gospel before the end, to all Nations, that is, Antequam abierit, Nor that the holy Ghost doth exalt the natural faculties of every man in all his good actions, that is, Quia semper adest, but it is, that he hath infused and imprinted in all their hearts, whom he hath called effectually to the participation of the means of salvation in the true Church, a constant and infallible assurance, that all the world, that is, all the rest of the world which hath not embraced those helps, lies unrecoverably (by any other means then these which we have embraced) under sin, under the weight, the condemnation of sin. So that the comfort of this reproof (as all the reproofs of the holy Ghost in this Text, are given by him in that quality, as he is The Comforter ) is not directly, and simply, and presently upon all the world indeed, but upon those whom the holy Ghost hath taken out of this world, to his world in this world, that is, to the Christian Church, them he Reproves, that is Convinces them, establishes, delivers them from all scruples, that they have taken the right way, that they, and only they, are delivered, and all the world beside are still under sin.

When the Holy Ghost hath brought us into the Ark from whence we may see all the world without, sprawling and gasping in the flood, (the flood of sinful courses in the world, and of the anger of God) when we can see this violent flood, (the anger of God) break in at windows, and there devour the licentious man in his sinful embracements, and make his bed of wantonness his death-bed; when we can see this flood (the anger of God) swell as fast as the ambitious man swells, and pursue him through all his titles, and and at last suddenly, and violently wash him away in his own blood, not always in a vulgar, but sometimes in an ignominious death; when we shall see this flood (the flood of the anger of God) over-flow the valley of the voluptuous man's gardens, and orchards, and follow him into his Arbours, and Mounts, and Terasses, and carry him from thence into a bottomless Sea, which no Plummet can sound, (no heavy sadness relieve him) no anchor take hold of, (no repentance stay his tempested and weather-beaten conscience) when we find ourselves in this Ark, where we have first taken in the fresh water of Baptism, and then the Bread, and Wine, and Flesh, of the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus, Then are we reproved, forbidden all scruple, then are we convinced, That as the twelve Apostles shall sit upon twelve seats, and judge the twelve Tribes at the last day; So doth the Holy Ghost make us Judges of all the world now, and enables us to pronounce that sentence, That all but they, who have sincerely accepted the Christian Religion, are still sub peccato, under sin, and without remedy. For we must not weigh God with leaden, or iron, or stone weights, how much land, or metal, or riches he gives one man more then another, but how much grace in the use of these, or how much patience in the want, or in the loss of these, we have above others. When we come to say, Hi in curribus, Hi in equis, nos autem in nomine Domini Dei nostri invocabimus, Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God; Ipsi obligati sunt, & ceciderunt, nos autem surreximus, & erecti sumus, They are brought down and fallen, but we are risen, and stand upright. Obligati sunt, & ceciderunt, They are pinion'd and fall • , fettered, and manacled, and so fallen; fallen and there must lie: Nos autem erecti, We are risen, and enabled to stand, now we are up. When we need not fear the mighty, nor envy the rich, Quia signatum super nos lumen vultus tui Domine, Because the light of thy countenance O Lord, is (not only shed, but) lifted up upon us, Quia dedisti laetitiam in cord nostro, Because thou hast put gladness in our heart, more then in the time that their corn and their wine increased; when we can thus compare the Christian Church with other States, and spiritual blessings with temporal, then hath the Holy Ghost thoroughly reproved us, that is, absolutely convinced us, that there is no other foundation but Christ, no other name for salvation but Jesus, and that all the world but the true professors of that name, are still under sin, under the guiltiness of sin. And these be the three acceptations of this word, Arguet, He shall carry the Gospel to all before the end, Arguit, He does work upon the faculties of the natural man every minute, and Arguit again, He hath manifested to us, that that they who go not the same way, perish. And so we pass to the second Reproof and Conviction, He shall reprove the world, De Iustitia, Of Rightcousnesse.

This word, Iustificare, To justify, may be well considered three ways; First as it is verbum vulgare, as it hath an ordinary and common use; And then as it is verbum forense, as it hath a civil and a legal use; And lastly, as it is verbum Ecclesiasticum, as it hath a Church use, as it hath been used amongst Divines. The first way, To justify, is to aver, and maintain anything to be true, as we ordinarily say to that purpose, I will justify it; and in that sense the Psalmist says, Iustificata judicia Domini in semetipso, The judgments of the Lord justify themselves, prove themselves to be just: And in this sense men are said to justify God, The Pharisees and Lawyers rejected the counsel of God, but all the people, and the Publicans justified God, that is, testified for him. In the second way, as it is a judicial word, To justify is only a verdict of Not guilty, and a Judgment entered upon that, That there is not evidence enough against him, and therefore he is justified, that is, aquitted. In this sense is the word in the Proverbs, He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are an abomination to the Lord. Now neither of these two ways are we justified; we cannot be averred to be just; God himself cannot say so of us; of us, as we are we: Non justificabo impium, I will not justify the wicked. God will not say it, God cannot do it; A wicked man cannot be, he cannot, by God, be said to be just; they are incompatible, contradictory things. Nor the second way neither; consider us standing in judgment before God, no man can be aquitted for want of evidence; Enter not into Judgment with thy servant, for, in thy sight shall none that liveth be justified. For, if we had another soul to give the Devil, to bribe him, to give no evidence against this, if we had another iron to sear up our consciences against giving of evidence against ourselves then, yet who can take out of God's hands those examinations, and those evidences, which he hath registered exactly, as often as we have thought, or said, or done anything offensive to him?

It is therefore only in the third sense of this word, as it is Verbum Ecclesiasticum, A word which S. Paul, and the other Scriptures, and the Church, and Ecclesiastical Writers have used to express our Righteousness, our Justification by: And that is only by the way of pardon, and remission of sins, sealed to us in the blood of Christ Jesus; that what kind of sinners soever we were before, yet that is applied to us, Such and such you were before, But ye are justified by the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. Now the reproof of the World, the convincing of the World, the bringing of the World to the knowledge, that as they are all sub peccato, under sin, by the sin of another, so there is a righteousness of another, that must prevail for all their Pardons, this reproof, this convincing, this instruction of the World is thus wrought: That the whole World consisting of Jews and Gentiles, when the Holy Ghost had done enough for the convincing of both these, enough for the overthrowing of all arguments, which could either be brought by the Jew for the righteousness of the Law, or by the Gentile for the righteousness of Works, (all which is abundantly done by the Holy Ghost, in the Epistles of S. Paul, and other Scriptures) when the Holy Ghost had possessed the Church of God, of these all-sufficient Scriptures, Then the promise of Christ was performed, and then, though all the world were not presently converted, yet it was presently convinced by the Holy Ghost, because the Holy Ghost had provided in those Scriptures, of which he is the Author, that nothing could be said in the Worlds behalf, for any other Righteousness, then by way of pardon in the blood of Christ.

Thus much the Holy Ghost tells us; And if we will search after more then he is pleased to tell us, that is to rack the Holy Ghost, to over-labor him, to examine him upon such Intergatories, as belongs not to us, to minister unto him. Curious men are not content to know, That our debt is paid by Christ, but they will know farther, whether Christ have paid it with his own hands, or given us money to pay it ourselves; whether his Righteousness, before it do us any good, be not first made ours by Imputation, or by Inhesion; They must know whose money, and then what money, Gold or Silver, whether his active obedience in fulfilling the Law, or his passive obedience in shedding his blood. But all the Commission of the Holy Ghost here, is, To reprove the World of righteousness, To convince all Sects in the World, that shall constitute any other righteousness, then a free pardon by the incorruptible, and invaluable, and inexhaustible blood of Christ Jesus. By that pardon, his Righteousness is ours: How it is made so, or by what name we shall call our title, or estate, or interest in his Righteousness, let us not inquire. The terms of satisfaction in Christ, of acceptation in the Father, of imputation to us, or inhesion in us, are all pious and religious phrases, and something they express; but yet none of these, Satisfaction, Acceptation, Imputation, Inhesion, will reach home to satisfy them, that will needs inquire, Quo modo, by what means Christ's Righteousness is made ours. This is as far as we need go, Ad eundem modum justi sumus coram Deo, quo cor am eo Christus fuit peccator, So as God made Christ sin for us, we are made the righteousness of God in him: so; but how was that? He that can find no comfort in this Doctrine, till he find How Christ was made sin, and we righteousness, till he can express Quo modo, robs himself of a great deal of peaceful refreshing, which his conscience might receive, in tasting the thing it self in a holy and humble simplicity, without vexing his own, or other men's consciences, or troubling the peace of the Church with impertinent and inextricable curiosities.

Those questions are not so impertinent, but they are in a great part unnecessary, which are moved about the cause of our righteousness, our justification. Alas, let us be content that God is the cause, and seek no other. We must never slacken that protestation, That good works are no cause of our justification. But we must always keep up a right signification of that word, Cause. For, Faith it self is no cause; no such cause, as that I can merit Heaven, by faith. What do I merit of the King, by believing that he is the undoubted Heir to all his Dominions, or by believing that he governs well, if I live not in obedience to his Laws. If it were possible to believe aright, and yet live ill, my faith should do me no good. The best faith is not worth Heaven; The value of it grows Ex pacto, That God hath made that Covenant, that Contract, Crede & vives, only believe and thou shalt be safe. Faith is but one of those things, which in several senses are said to justify us. It is truly saîd of God, Deus solus justificat, God only justifies us; Efficienter, nothing can effect it, nothing can work towards it, but only the mere goodness of God. And it is truly said of Christ, Christus solus justificat, Christ only justifies us; Materialiter, nothing enters into the substance and body of the ransom for our sins, but the obedience of Christ. It is also truly said, Sola fides justificat, Only faith justifies us; Instrumentaliter, nothing apprehends, nothing applies the merit of Christ to thee, but thy faith. And lastly it is as truly said, Sola opera justificant, Only our works justify us; Declaratorie, Only thy good life can assure thy conscience, and the World, that thou art justified. As the efficient justification, the gracious purpose of God had done us no good, without the material satisfaction, the death of Christ had followed; And as that material satisfaction, the death of Christ would do me no good, without the instrumental justification, the apprehension by faith; so neither would this profit without the declaratory justification, by which all is pleaded and established. God enters not into our material justification, that is only Christ's; Christ enters not into our instrumental justification, that is only faiths; Faith enters not into our declaratory justification, (for faith is secret) and declaration belongs to works. Neither of these can be said to justify us alone, so, as that we may take the chain in pieces, and think to be justified by any one link thereof; by God without Christ, by Christ without faith, or by faith without works; And yet everyone of these justifies us alone, so, as that none of the rest enter into that way and that means, by which any of these are said to justify us.

Consider we then ourselves, as men fallen down into a dark and deep pit; and justification as a chain, consisting of these four links, to be let down to us, and let us take hold of that link that is next us, A good life, and keep a fast and inseparable hold upon that; for though in that sense of which we spoke, Fides justificat sola, Only faith do justify, yet it is not true in any sense, Fides est sola, that there is any faith, where there is nothing but faith. God comes downward to us; but we must go upward to God; not to get above him in his unrevealed Decrees, but to go up towards him, in laying hold upon that lowest link; that as the holy Ghost shall reprove, that is, convince the world, that there is no other righteousness but that of Christ, so he may enable you to pass a judgment upon yourselves, and to testify to the world that you have apprehended that righteousness; Which is that that is principally intended in the third and last part, That the holy Ghost, when he comes, shall reprove the World, as of sin, & of rightcousness, so of judgment.

After those two convictions of the World, that is, Jew, and Gentile, first, that they are all under sin, and so in a state of condemnation; And secondly, that there is no righteousness, no justification to be had to the Jew by the Law, nor to the Gentile in Nature, but that there is Righteousness, and Justification enough for all the world, Jew, and Gentile in Christ; In the third place, the Holy Ghost is to reprove, that is, still to convince the world, to acquaint the world with this mystery, That there is a means settled to convey this Righteousness of Christ upon the World, and then an account to be taken of them, who do not lay hold upon this means; for, both these are intended in this word Judgment, He shall reprove them, prove to them this double signification of judgment; first, that there is a judgment of order, of rectitude, of government, to which purpose he hath established the Church; And then a judgment of account, and of sentence, and beatification upon them, who did; and malediction upon them who did not apply themselves to the first judgment, that is, to those orderly ways and means of embracing Christ's righteousness, which were offered them in the Church. God hath ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight; Let all things be done decently and in order for, God is the God of order, and not of confusion. And this order, is this judgment; The Court, the Tribunal, the Judgment seat, in which all men's consciences and actions must be regulated and ordered, the Church. The perfectest order was Innocency; that first integrity in which God made all. All was disordered by sin: For, in sin, and the author of sin, Satan, there is no order, no conformity; nothing but disorder, and confusion. Though the School do generally acknowledge a distinction of orders in the ministering Spirits of Heaven, now, Angels and Archangels, and others, yet they dispute, and doubt, and (in a great part) deny that this distinction of orders was before the fall of those Angels; for, they confess this distribution into orders, to have been upon their submission, and recognition of God's government, which recognition was their very confirmation, and after that they could not fall. And though those fallen Angels, the Devils, concur in an unan me consent to ruin us, (for, Bellum Daemonum, summa pax hominum ) we should agree better, if devils did fall out, yet this is not such a peace, such an unity, as gives them any peace, or relaxation, or intermission of anguish, but, as they are the Authors of our confusion, so they are in a continual confusion themselves.

There is no order in the Author of sin; and therefore the God of order cannot, directly nor indirectly, positively nor consecutively, be the Author of sin. There is no order in sin it self. The nature, the definition of sin, is disorder. Dectum, factum, concupitum contra legem; God hath ordered a law, and sin is an act; if we cannot do that, it is a word; if we dare not do that, it is a desire against that law. Forma peccati, deformitas; we can assign sin no other form, but deformity. So that our affecting of anything, as our end, which God hath not proposed for our end; or our affecting of true ends, by any other ways then he hath proposed, this is a disordering of God's providence, as much as we can, and so a sin. For the School resolves conveniently, probably, that that first sin that ever was committed, (that peccatum praegnans, peccatum prolificum, That womb and matrice of all sins that have been committed since) The sin of the Angels, it was a disorder, an obliquity, a deformity, not in not going to the right end, (for, Illud quaesiverunt, ad quod pervenissent, si stetissent, says Aquinas out of S. August. They desired no more then they were made for, and should have come to, if they had stood) but their sin was in affecting a right end a wrong way, in desiring to come to their appointed perfection by themselves, to subsist of themselves, & to be independent, without any farther need of God, for that was their desire, To be like the most High, To depend upon nothing, but be all-sufficient to themselves. So they disordered God's purpose; and when they had once broke that chain, when they had once put that harmony out of tune, then came in disorder, discord, confusion, and that is sin.

God's work is perfect; How appears that? For all his ways are Judgment, says Moses in his victorious song. This is Perfection, That he hath established an order, a judgment. Which is not only that order which S. Augustine defines, Ordo est, per quem omnia aguntur, quae Deus constituit, The order and the judgment by which God governs the world, according to his purpose, (which judgment is Providence) But (as the same Father says in the same book) it is Ordo, quem si tenueris in vita, perdacet ad Deum, It is an order and a judgment which he hath manifested to thee, (for the order and judgment of his providence, he doth not always manifest) by obedience to which order and judgment, thou mayest be saved. The same Father speaking of this order and judgment of providence, says, Nihil ordini contrarium, Nothing can be contrary to that order; He is in a holy rapture transported with that consideration, That even disorders are within God's order; There is in the order and judgment of his providence an admission, a permission of disorders: This unsearchable proceeding of God, carries him to that passionate exclamation, O sipossem dicere quod vellem! O that I were able to express myself! Roge, ubi ubi estis verba, suecurrite; Where, where are those words which I had wont to have at command? why do ye not serve me, help me now? Now, when I would declare this, Bona & mala sunt in ordine, That even disorders are done in order, that even our sins some way or other fall within the providence of God. But that is not the order, nor judgment which the holy Ghost is sent to manifest to the world. The holy Ghost works best upon them, which search least into God's secret judgments and proceedings. But the order and judgment we speak of, is an order, a judgment-seat established, by which, every man, howsoever oppressed with the burden of sin, may, in the application of the promises of the Gospel by the Ordinance of preaching, and in the seals thereof in the participation of the Sacraments, be assured, that he hath received his Absolution, his Remission, his Pardon, and is restored to the innocence of his Baptism, nay to the integrity which Adam had before the fall, nay to the righteousness of Christ Jesus himself. In the creation God took red earth, and then breathed a soul into it: When Christ came to a second creation, to make a Church, he took earth, men, red earth, men made partakers of his blood; (for, Ecclesiam quaesivit, & acquisivit, He desired a Church, and he purchased a Church; but by a blessed way of Simony; Add medium acquisitionis, Sanguine acquisivit, He purchased a Church with his own blood ) And when he had made this body, in calling his Apostles, then he breathed the soul into them, his Spirit, and that made up all: Quod insufflavit Dominus Apostolis, & dixit, Accipite Spiritum sanctum, Ecclesiae potestas collata est, Then when Christ breathed that Spirit into them, he constituted the Church. And this power of Remission of sins, is that order, and that judgment which Christ himself calls by the name of the most orderly frame in this, or the next world, A Kingdom, Dispono vobis regnum, I appoint unto you a Kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me.

Now, Faciunt favos & vespa, faciunt Ecclesias & Marcionitae, As Wasps make combs, but empty ones, so do Heretics Churches, but frivolous ones, ineffectual ones. And, as we told you before, That errors and disorders are as well in ways, as inends, so may we deprive ourselves of the benefit of this judgment, The Church, as well in circumstances, as in substances, as well in opposing discipline, as doctrine. The holy Ghost reprovc • thee, convinces thee, of judgment, that is, offers thee the knowledge that such a Church there is; A Jordan to wash thine original leprosy in Baptism; A City upon a mountain, to enlighten thee in the works of darkness; a continual application of all that Christ Jesus said, and did, and suffered, to thee. Let no soul say, she can have all this at God's hands immediately, and never trouble the Church; That she can pass her pardon between God and her, without all these formalities, by a secret repentance. It is true, beloved, a true repentance is never frustrate: But yet, if thou wilt think thyself a little Church, a Church to thyself, because thou hast heard it said, That thou art a little world, a world in thyself, that figurative, that metaphorical representation shall not save thee. Though thou beest a world to thyself, yet if thou have no more corn, nor oil, nor milk, then grows in thyself, or flows from thyself, thou wilt starve; Though thou be a Church in thy fancy, if thou have no more seals of grace, no more absolution of sin, then thou canst give thyself, thou wilt perish. Per solam Ecclesiam sacrificium libenter accipit Deus: Thou mayest be a Sacrifice in thy chamber, but God receives a Sacrifice more cheerfully at Church. Sola, quae pro errantibus fiducialiter intercedit, Only the Church hath the nature of a surety; Howsoever God may take thine own word at home, yet he accepts the Church in thy behalf, as better security. Joyne therefore ever with the Communion of Saints; Et cum membrum sis ejus corporis, quod loquitur omnibus linguis, creed te omnibus linguis loqui, Whilst thou art a member of that Congregation, that speaks to God with a thousand tongues, believe that thou speakest to God with all those tongues. And though thou know thine own prayers unworthy to come up to God, because thou liftest up to him an eye, which is but now withdrawn from a licentious glancing, and hands which are guilty yet of unrepented uncleannesses, a tongue that hath but lately blasphemed God, a heart which even now breaks the walls of this house of God, and steps home, or runs abroad upon the memory, or upon the new plotting of pleasurable or profitable purposes, though this make thee think thine own prayers ineffectual, yet believe that some honester man then thyself stands by thee, and that when he prays with thee, he prays for thee; and that, if there be one righteous man in the Congregation, thou art made the more acceptable to God by his prayers; and make that benefit of this reproof, this conviction of the holy Ghost, That he convinces thee De judicio, assures thee of an orderly Church established for thy relief, and that the application of thyself to this judgment, The Church, shall enable thee to stand upright in that other judgment, the last judgment, which is also enwrapped in the signification of this word of our Text, Judgment, and is the conclusion for this day.

As God begun all with judgment, (for he made all things in measure, number, and weight) as he proceeded with judgment, in erecting a judicial seat for our direction, and correction, the Church, so he shall end all with judgment, The final, and general judgment, at the Resurrection; which he that believes not, believes nothing; not God; for, He that cometh to God (that makes any step towards him) must believe, Deum remuner atorem, God, and God in that notion, as he is a Rewarder; Therefore there is judgment. But was this work left for the Holy Ghost? Did not the natural man that knew no Holy Ghost, know this? Truly, all their fabulous Divinity, all their Mythology, their Minos, and their Rhadamanthus, tasted of such a notion, as a judgment. And yet the first planters of the Christian Religion found it hardest to fixe this root of all other articles, That Christ should come again to judgment. Miserable and froward men! They would believe it in their fables, and would not believe it in the Scriptures; They would believe it in the nine Muses, and would not believe it in the twelve Apostles; They would believe it by Apollo, and they would not believe it by the Holy Ghost; They would be saved Poetically, and fantastically, and would not reasonably, and spiritually; By Copies, and not by Originals; by counterfeit things at first deduced by their Authors, out of our Scriptures, and yet not by the word of God himself. Which Tertullian apprehends and reprehends in his time, when he says, Praescribimus adulteris nostris, We prescribe above them, which counterfeit our doctrine, for we had it before them, and they have but rags, and those torn from us. Fabulae immissae, quae fidem infirmarent veritatis; They have brought part of our Scriptures into their Fables, that all the rest might seem but Fables too. Gehennam praedicantes & iudicium, ridemur, decachinnamur, They laugh at us when we preach of hell, and judgment, Et tamen Elysii campi fidem praeoccupaverunt, And yet they will needs be believed when they talk of their Elysian fields. Fideliora nostra, quorum imagines fidem inveniunt, Is it not safer trusting to our substance, then their shadows; To our doctrine of the judgment, in the Scriptures, then their allusions in their Poets?

So far Tertullian considers this; But to say the truth, and all the truth, Howsoever the Gentiles had some glimmering of a judgment, that is, an account to be made of our actions after this life, yet of this judgment which we speak of now, which is a general Judgment of all together, And that judgment to be executed by Christ, and to be accompanied with a Resurrection of the body, of this, the Gentiles had no intimation, this was left wholly for the holy Ghost to manifest. And of this, all the world hath received a full convincing from him, because he hath delivered to the world those Scriptures, which do so abundantly, so irrefragably establish it. And therefore, Memorare novissima & non peccabis; Remember the end, and thou shalt never do amiss. Non dicitur memorare primordia, aut media; If thou remember the first reproof, that all are under sin, that may give occasion of excusing, or extenuating, How could I avoid that, that all men do? If thou remember the second reproof, That there is a righteousness communicable to all that sin, that may occasion so bold a confidence, Since I may have so easy a pardon, what haste of giving over yet? But Memorare novissima, consider that there is a judgment, and that that judgment is the last thing that God hath to do with man, consider this, and thou wilt not sin, not love sin, not do the same sins tomorrow thou didst yester-day, as though this judgment were never the nearer, but that as a thousand years are as one day with God, so thy threescore years should be as one night with thee, one continual sleep in the practice of thy beloved sin. Thou wilt not think so, if thou remember this judgment.

Now, in respect of the time after this judgment, (which is Eternity) the time between this and it cannot be a minute; and therefore think thyself at that Tribunal, that judgment now: Where thou shalt not only •• are all thy sinful works, and words, and thoughts repeated, which thou thyself hadst utterly forgot, but thou shalt hear thy good works, thine alms, thy coming to Church, thy hearing of Sermons given in evidence against thee, because they had hypocrisy mingled in them; yea thou shalt find even thy repentance to condemn thee, because thou madest that but a door to a relapse. There thou shalt see, to thine inexpressible terror, some others cast down into hell, for thy sins; for those sins which they would not have done, but upon thy provocation. There thou shalt see some that occasioned thy sins, and accompanied thee in them, and sinned them in a greater measure then thou didst, taken up into heaven, because in the way, they remembered the end, and thou shalt sink under a less weight, because thou never lookedst towards him that would have eased thee of it. Quis non cogitans haec in desperationis rotetur abyssum? Who can once think of this and not be tumbled into desperation? But who can think of it twice, maturely, and by the Holy Ghost, and not find comfort in it, when the same light that shows me the judgment, shows me the Judge too? Knowing therefore the terrors of the Lord, we persuade men; but knowing the comforts too, we importune men to this consideration, That as God preceeds with judgment in this world, to give the issue with the temptation, and competent strength with the affliction, as the Wiseman expresses it, That God punishes his enemies with deliberation, and requesting, (as our former Translation had it) and then with how great circumspection will he judge his children? So he gives us a holy hope, That as he hath accepted us in this first judgment, the Church, and made us partakers of the Word and Sacraments there, So he will bring us with comfort to that place, which no tongue but the tongue of S. Paul, and that moved by the Holy Ghost, could describe, and which he does describe so gloriously, and so pathetically, You are come unto Mount Zion, and to the City of the living God, The heavenly Jerusalem, And to an innumerable company of Angels, To the general Assembly and Church of the first borne, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaks better things then the blood of Abel. And into this blessed and inseparable society, The Father of lights, and God of all comfort, give you an admission now, and an irremoveable possession hereafter, for his only Sons only sake, and by the working of his blessed Spirit, whom he sends to work in you, This reproof of Sin, of Righteousness, and of Judgment. Amen.

SERM. XXXVIII. Preached upon Trinity-Sunday.

T Here was never Army composed of so many several Nations, the Tower of Babel itself, in the confusion of tongues, gave not so many several sounds as are uttered and mustered against God, and his Religion. The Atheist denies God; for, though David call it a foolish thing to do so, (The fool hath said it in his heart) And though David speak it in the singular number, The fool, as though there were not many so very fools, as to say, and to say in their heart, There is no God, yet some such fools there are, that say it in their very heart, and have made shift to think so indeed; But for such fools as say it in their actions, that is, that live as though there were no God, Stultorum plena sunt omnia; We have seen fools in the Court, and fools in the Cloister, fools that take no calling, and fools in all callings that can be taken, fools that hear, and fools that preach, fools at general Councils, and fools at Council-tables, Stultorum plena sunt omnia, such fools as deny God, so far, as to leave him out, are not in David's singular number, but super-abound in every profession: So that David's manner of expressing it, is not so much singular, as though there were but one, or few such fools, but emphatical, because that fool, that any way denies God, is the fool, the veryest fool of all kinds of foolishness.

Now, as God himself, so his religion amongst us hath many enemies; Enemies that deny God, as Atheists; And enemies that multiply gods, that make many gods, as Idolaters; And enemies that deny those divers persons in the Godhead, which they should confess, The Trinity, as Jews and Turks: So in his Religion, and outward worship, we have enemies that deny God his House, that deny us any Church, any Sacrament, any Priesthood, any Salvation, as Papists; And enemies that deny God's house any furniture, any stuff, any beauty, any ornament, any order, as non-Conformitans; And enemies that are glad to see God's house richly furnished for a while, that they may come to the spoil thereof, as sacrilegious usurpers of God's part. But for Atheistical enemies, I call not upon them here, to answer me; Let them answer their own terrors, and horrors alone at mid-night, and tell themselves whence that proceeds, if there be no God. For Papistical enemies, I call not upon them to answer me; Let them answer our Laws as well as our Preaching, because theirs is a religion mixed as well of Treason, as of Idolatry. For our refractary, and schismatical enemies, I call not upon them to answer me neither; Let them answer the Church of God, in what nation, in what age was there ever seen a Church, of that form, that they have dreamt, and believe their own dream? And for our sacrilegious enemies, let them answer out of the body of Story, and give one example of prosperity upon sacrilege.

But leaving all these to that which hath heretofore, or may hereafter be said of them, I have bent my meditations, for those days, which this Terme will afford, upon that, which is the character and mark of all Christians in general, The Trinity, the three Persons in one God; not by way of subtle disputation, as to persons that doubted, but by way of godly declaration, as to persons disposed to make use of it; not as though I feared your faith needed it, nor as though I hoped I could make your reason comprehend it, but because I presume, that the consideration of God the Father, and his Power, and the sins directed against God, in that notion, as the Father; and the consideration of God the Son, and his Wisdom, and the sins against God, in that apprehension, the Son; and the consideration of God the Holy Ghost, and his Goodness, and the sins against God, in that acceptation, may conduce, as much, at least, to our edification, as any Doctrine, more controverted. And of the first glorious person of this blessed Trinity, the Almighty Father, is this Text, Blessed be God, &c.

In these words, the Apostle having tasted, having been fed with the sense of the power, and of the mercies of God, in his gracious deliverance, delivers a short Catechism of all our duties: So short, as that there is but one action, Benedicamus, Let us bless; Nor but one object to direct that blessing upon, Benedicamus Deum, Let us bless God. It is but one God, to exclude an Idolatrous multiplicity of God's, But it is one God notified and manifested to us, in a triplicity of persons; of which, the first is literally expressed here, That he is a Father. And him we consider In Paternitate aeterna, As he is the eternal Father, Even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, says our Text; And then In Paternitate interna, as we have the Spirit of Adoption, by which we cry, Abba, Father; As he is Pater miserationum, The Father of mercies; And as he expresses these mercies, by the seal and demonstration of comfort, as he is the God of comfort, and Totius consolationis, Of all comfort. Receive the sum of this, and all that arises from it, in this short Paraphrase; The duty required of a Christian, is Blessing, Praise, Thanksgiving; To whom? To God, to God only, to the only God. There is but one; But this one God is such • tree, as hath divers boughs to shadow and refresh thee, divers branches to shed fruit upon thee, divers arms to spread out, and reach, and embrace thee. And here he visits thee as a Father: From all eternity a Father of Christ Jesus, and now thy Father in him in that which thou needest most, A Father of mercy, when thou wast in misery; And a God of comfort, when thou foundest no comfort in this world, And a God of all comfort, even of spiritual comfort, in the anguishes, and distresses of thy conscience. Blessed be God, even the Father, &c.

First then, the duty which God, by this Apostle, requires of man, is a duty arising out of that, which God hath wrought upon him: It is not a consideration, a contemplation of God sitting in heaven, but of God working upon the earth; not in the making of his eternal Decree there, but in the execution of those Decrees here; not in saying, God knows who are his, and therefore they cannot fail, but in saying in a rectified conscience, God, by his ordinary marks, hath let me know that I am his, and therefore I look to my ways, that I do not fall. S. Paul out of a religious sense what God had done for him, comes to this duty, to bless him.

There is not a better Grammar to learn, then to learn how to bless God, and therefore it may be no levity, to use some Grammar terms herein. God blesses man Dative, He gives good to him; man blesses God Optative, He wishes well to him; and he blesses him Vocative, He speaks well of him. For, though towards God, as well as towards man, real actions are called blessings, (so Abigail called the present which she brought to David, A blessing, and so Naaman called that which he offered to Elisha, A blessing ) though real sacrifices to God, and his cause, sacrifices of Alms, sacrifices of Arms, sacrifices of Money, sacrifices of Sermons, advancing a good public cause, may come under the name of blessing, yet the word here, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , is properly a blessing in speech, in discourse, in conference, in words, in praise, in thanks. The dead do not praise thee, says David; The dead (men civilly dead, allegorically dead, dead and buried in an useless silence, in a Cloister, or College, may praise God, but not in words of edification, as it is required here, and they are but dead, and do not praise God so; and God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, of those that delight to praise and bless God, and to declare his goodness.

We represent the Angels to ourselves, and to the world with wings, they are able to fly; and yet when Jacob saw them aseending and descending, even those winged Angels had a Ladder, they went by degrees: There is an immediate blessing of God, by the heart, but God requires the tongue too, because that spreads and diffuses his glory upon others too. Calici benedictionis benedicimus, says the Apostle, The cup which we bless, is a cup of blessing; When we have blessed it, according to Christ's holy institution, then it derives holy blessings upon us; and when we bless God according to his Commandment, he blesses us according to his promise, and our desire. When God employed Moses, and when he employed Jeremiah, Moses and Jeremiah had no excuse, but the unreadinesse of their tongues; he that hath a tongue disposed to God's service, that will speak all he can, and dares speak all he should to the glory of God, is fit for all. As S. James says, The tongue is but a little member, but beasteth great things; so truly, as little as it is, it does great things towards our salvation. The Son of God, is 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , verbum, The word; God made us with his word, and with our words we make God so far, as that we make up the mystical body of Christ Jesus with our prayers, with our whole liturgy, and we make the natural body of Christ Jesus appliable to our souls, by the words of Consecration in the Sacrament, and our souls apprehensive, and capable of that body, by the word Preached. Bless him therefore in speaking to him, in your prayers: Bless him in speaking with him, in assenting, in answering that which he says to you in his word: And bless him in speaking of him, in telling one another the good things that he hath done abundantly for you. I will bless the Lord at all times, says David. Is it at all times, says S. Augustine, Cum circumfluunt omnia, at all times, when God blesses me with temporal prosperity? Cum minus nascuntur, cum nata dilabuntur, says that Father, when thy gain ceases for the present, when that that thou hadst formerly got, wastes and perishes, and threatens penury for the future, still bless thou the Lord, Quia ill dat, ill tollit, sed seipsum à benedicente se non tollit; The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away, but the Lord never takes away himself from him that delights in blessing his name. Bless, praise, speak; there is the duty, and we have done with that which was our first Part: And bless thou God, which is our second Part, and a Part derived into many Branches. Blessed be God, even, &c.

Here first we see the object of our praises, whom we must bless, Benedict us sit Deus, God. First, Solus Deus, God only, that is, God and not man, and then Deus solus, the only God, that is God, and not many God's. God only, and not man; not that we may not bless, and wish well to one another, for there is a blessing from God, belongs to that, Benedicam benedicentibus tibi, says God to Abraham, I will bless them that bless thee: Neither is it that we may not bless, that is, give due praise to one another; for as the vices and sins of great persons are not smothered in the Scriptures, so their virtues, and good deeds are published with praise. Noah's drunkenness, and Lots incest is not disguised, Job's righteousness and holy patience is not concealed neither; Do that which is good, says the Apostle, and thou shalt have praise for the same. Neither is it that we may not bless, that is, pray for one another, of what sort soever; for we are commanded to do that, for our superiors; inferiors may bless superiors too; Nor that we should not bless, that is, pray to one another, in petitioning and supplicating our superiors for those things which are committed to their dispensation; for the importunate suitor, the widow, is not blamed in the Gospel for her importunity to the Judge; It is true, the Judge is blamed, for with-holding Justice, till importunity extorted it. But to bless, by praise, or prayer, the man without relation to God, that is, the man, and not God in the man, to determine the glory in the person, without contributing thereby to the glory of God, this is a manner of blessing accursed here, because blessing is radically, fundamentally, originally, here reserved to God, to God only, Benedictus sit Deus, God be blessed.

For, properly, truly none is to be thus blessed by us, but he upon whom we may depend and rely: and can we depend and rely upon man? upon what man? upon Princes? As far as we can look for examples, round about us, in our next neighbors, and in France, and in Spain, and farther, we have seen in our age Kings discarded, and we have seen in some of them, the discarded cards taken in again, and win the game. Upon what man wilt thou rely? upon great persons in favor with Princes? Have we not seen often, that the bed-chambers of Kings have back-doors into prisons, and that the end of that greatness hath been, but to have a greater Jury to condemn them? wilt thou rely upon the Prophet, he can teach thee; or upon thy Brother, he does love thee; or upon thy Son, he should love thee; or the Wife of thy bosom, she will say she loves thee; or upon thy Friend, he is as thine own soul? yet Moses puts a case when thou must depart from all these, not consent, no not conceal, not pardon, no not reprieve, Thou shalt surely kill him, says Moses, even this Prophet, this Brother, this Son, this Wife may incline thee to the service of other God's; Thou canst not rely, and therefore do not bless, not with praise, not with prayer and dependence upon him, That Prophet, by what name or title soever he be called; that Brother, how willingly soever he divide the inheritance with thee; that Son, how dutiful soever in civil things; that Wife, how careful soever of her own honor, and thy children; that Friend, how free soever of his favors, and of his secrets, that inclines thee to other God's, or to other service of the true God, then is true. Greatness is not the object of this blessing, for Greatness is often eclipsed by the way, and at last certainly extinguished in death, and swallowed in the grave. Goodness, as it is moral, is not the object of this blessing; but bless God only; God in the root, in himself, or God exemplified, and manifested in godly men; bless God in them, in whom he appears, and in them who appear for him, and so thou doest bless solum Deum, God only.

This thou must do, Bless God only, not man, and then the only God, not other gods. For, this was the wretched and penurious narrowness to which the Gentiles were reduced, that being unable to confider God entirely, they broke God in pieces, and crumbled, and scattered God into as many several gods, as there are Powers in God, nay almost into as many several gods, as there are Creatures from God; and more then that, as many gods as they could fancy or imagine in making Chimera's of their own, for not only that which was not God, but that which was not at all, was made a God. And then, as in narrow channels that cannot contain the water, the water over-flows, and yet that water that does so over flow, flies out and spreads to such a shallowness, as will not bear a Boat to any use; so when by this narrowness in the Gentiles, God had over-flown this bank, this limitation of God in an unity, all the rest was too shallow to bear any such notion, any such consideration of God, as appertained to him: They could not think him an Omnipotent God, when if one God would not, another would, nor an Infinite God, when they had appeals from one God to another; and without Omnipotence, and without Infiniteness they could not truly conceive a God. They had cantoned a glorious Monarchy into petty States, that could not subsist of themselves, nor assist another, and so imagined a God for every state and every action, that a man must have applied himself to one God when he shipped, and when he landed to another, and if he travailed farther, change his God by the way, as often as he changed coins, or post-horses. But, Hear O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God. As though this were all that were to be heard, all that were to be learned, they are called to hear, and then there is no more said but that, The Lord thy God is one God.

There are men that will say and swear, they do not mean to make God the Author of sin; but yet when they say, That God made man therefore, that he might have something to damn, and that he made him sin therefore, that he might have something to damn him for, truly they come too near making God the Author of sin, for all their modest protestation of abstaining. So there are men that will say and swear, they do not mean to make Saints God's; but yet when they will ask the same things at Saints hands, which they do at God's, and in the same phrase and manner of expression, when they will pray the Virgin Mary to assist her Son, nay to command her Son, and make her a Chancellor to mitigate his common Law, truly they come too near making more God's then one. And so do we too, when we give particular sins dominion over us; Quot vitia, tot Deos recentes, says Jerome: As the Apostle says Covetousness is Idolatry, so, says that Father, is voluptuousness, and licentiousness, and every habitual sin. Non alienum says God, Thou shalt have no other God but me, But, Quis similis, says God too, Who is like me? He will have nothing made like him, not made so like a God as they make their Saints, nor made so like a God, as we make our sins. We think one King Sovereign enough, and one friend counselor enough, and one Wife helper enough, and he is strangely insatiable, that thinks not one God, God enough: especially, since when thou hast called this God what thou canst, he is more then thou hast said of him. Cum definitur, ipse sua definitione crescit; When thou hast defined him to be the God of justice, and tremblest, he is more then that, he is the God of mercy too, and gives thee comfort. When thou hast defined him to be all eye, He sees all thy sins, he is more then that, he is all patience, and covers all thy sins. And though he be in his nature incomprehensible, and inaccessible in his light, yet this is his infinite largeness, that being thus infinitely One, he hath manifested himself to us in three Persons, to be the more easily discerned by us, and the more closely and effectually applied to us.

Now these notions that we have of God, as a Father, as a Son, as a Holy Ghost, as a Spirit working in us, are so many handles by which we may take hold of God, and so many breasts, by which we may suck such a knowledge of God, as that by it we may grow up into him. And as we cannot take hold of a torch by the light, but by the staff we may; so though we cannot take hold of God, as God, who is incomprehensible, and inapprehensible, yet as a Father, as a Son, as a Spirit, dwelling in us, we can. There is nothing in Nature that can fully represent and bring home the notion of the Trinity to us. There is an elder book in the World then the Scriptures; It is not well said, in the World, for it is the World it self, the whole book of Creatures; And indeed the Scriptures are but a paraphrase, but a comment, but an illustration of that book of Creatures. And therefore, though the Scriptures only deliver us the doctrine of the Trinity, clearly, yet there are some impressions, some obumbrations of it, in Nature too. Take but one in ourselves, in the soul. The understanding of man (that is as the Father) begets discourse, ratiocination, and that is as the Son; and out of these two proceed conclusions, and that is as the Holy Ghost. Such as these there are many, many sprinkled in the School, many scattered in the Fathers, but, God knows, poor and faint expressions of the Trinity. But yet, Praemisit Deus naturam magistram, submissurus & prophetiam, Though God meant to give us degrees in the University, that is, increase of knowledge in his Scriptures after, yet he gave us a pedagogy, he sent us to School in Nature before; Vt faciliùs credas prophetiae discipulus naturae, That coming out of that School, thou mightest profit the better in that University, having well considered Nature, thou mightest be established in the Scriptures.

He is therefore inexcusable, that considers not God in the Creature, that coming into a fair Garden, says only, Here is a good Gardener, and not, Here is a good God; and when he sees any great change, says only, This is a strange accident, and not, a strange Judgment. Hence is it, that in the books of the Platonique Philosophers, and in others, much ancienter then they, (if the books of Hermes Trismegistus and others, be as ancient as is pretended in their behalf) we find as clear expressing of the Trinity, as in the Old Testament, at least; And hence is it, that in the Talmud of the Jews, and in the Alcoran of the Turks, though they both oppose the Trinity, yet when they handle not that point, there fall often from them, as clear confessions of the three Persons, as from any of the elder of those Philosophers, who were altogether dis-interested in that Controversy.

But because God is seen Per creaturas, ut per speculum, per verbum ut per lucem, In the creature, and in nature, but by reflection, In the Word, and in the Scriptures, directly, we rest in the knowledge which we have of the plurality of the persons, in the Scriptures; And because we are not now in a Congregation that doubts it, nor in a place to multiply testimonies, we content ourselves (being already possessed with the belief thereof) with this illustration from the Old Testament, That the name of our one God, is expressed in the plural number, in that place, which we mentioned before, where it is said, The Lord thy God is one God, that is, Elohim, unus Dii, one God's. And though as much as that seem to be said by God to Moses, Eris Aaroni in Elohim, Thou shalt be as God's to Aaron; Yet that was because Moses was to represent God, all God, all the Persons in God, and therefore it might as well be spoken plurally of Moses, so, as of God. But because it is said, God's appeared unto Jacob; And again, Dii Sancti ipse est, He is the Holy God's; And so also, Vbi Deus factores mei? Where is God my Makers? And God says of himself, Faciamus hominem, and Factus est sicut unus ex nobis, God says, Let us make man, and he says, Man is become as one of us, We embrace humbly, and thankfully, and profitably, this, shall we call it Effigiationem ansarum, This making out of handles? Or Protuberationem mammarum, This swelling out of breasts? Or Germinationem gemmarum, This putting forth of buds, and blossoms, and fruits, by which we may apprehend, and see, and taste God himself, so as his wisdom hath chosen to communicate himself to us, in the notion and manifestation of divers persons? Of which in this Text, we lay hold on him, by the first handle, by the name of Father. Blessed be God, even the Father, &c.

Now we consider in God, a twofold Paternity, a twofold Father-hood: One, as he is Father to others, another as to us. And the first is twofold too: One essentially, by which he is a Father by Creation, and so the name of Father belongs to all the three Persons in the Trinity, for, There is one God, and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all, Which is spoken of God gathered into his Essence, and not diffused into persons. In which sense, the Son of God, Christ Jesus, is called Father, Unto us a Son is given, and his name shall be The Everlasting Father: And to this Father, even to the Son of God, in this sense, are the faithful made sons, Son, be of good cheare, thy sins are forgiven thee, says Christ to the Paralytique, And Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole, says he to the woman with the bloody issue; Thus Christ is a Father; And thus Per filiationem vestigii, By that impression of God, which is in the very being of every creature, God, that is, the whole Trinity, is the Father of every creature, as in Job, Quis pluviae Pater? Hath the rain a Father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew? And so in the Prophet, Have we not all one Father? hath not one God created us? But the second Paternity is more mysterious in it self, and more precious to us, as he is a Father, not by Creation, but by Generation, Even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, Generationem istam quis enarrabit? who shall declare this generation? who shall tell us how it was? who was there to fee it? Since the first-borne of all creatures, the Angels, who are almost six thousand years old, (and much elder in the opinion of many of the Fathers, who think the Angels to have been created long before the general Creation) since, I say, these Angels are but in their swathing clouts, but in their cradle, in respect of this eternal generation, who was present? Quis enarrabit? who shall tell us how it was? who shall tell us when it was, when it was so long before any time was, as that, when time shall be no more, and that, after an end of time, we shall have lived infinite millions of millions of generations in heaven, yet this generation of the Son of God, was as long before that immortal life, as that Immortality, and Everlastingnesse shall be after this life? It cannot be expressed, nor conceived how long our life shall be after, nor how long this generation was before.

This is that Father, that hath a Son, and yet is no elder then that Son, for he is à Patre, but not Post Patrem, but so from the Father, as he is not after the Father: He hath from him Principium Originale, but not Initiale, A root from whence he sprung, but no springtime, when he sprung out of that root. Blessed be God even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore blessed? Quia potuit? Because he could have a Son? Non generavit potentia, sed natura; God did not beget this Son because he had always a power to do so; for then, if this Son had ever been but in Potentia, only in such a condition, as that he might have been, then this had not been an eternal generation, for if there were a time, when only he might have been, at that time he was not. He is not blessed then because cause he could, is he blessed (that is, to be blessed by us) because he would beget this Son? Non generavit voluntate, sed natura: God did not beget this Son, then when he would, that is, had a will to do so, for, if his will determined it, now I will do it, then till that, there had been no Son, and so this generation had not been eternal neither. But when it was, or how it was, Turatiocinare, ego mirer, says S. Augustine, Let others discourse it, let me admire it; Tu disputa, ego credam, Let others dispute it, let me believe it. And when all is done, you have done disputing, and I have done wondering, that that brings it nearer then either, is this, That there is a Paternity, notby Creation, by which Christ and the Holy Ghost are Fathers too, nor by generation, by which God is, though inexpressibly, the Father even of our Lord Jesus Christ, but by Adoption, as in Christ Jesus, he is Father of us all, notified in the next appellation, Pater miserationum, The Father of mercies.

In this alone, we discern the whole Trinity; here is the Father, and here is Mercy, which mercy is in the Son; And the effect of this mercy, is the Spirit of Adoption, by which also we cry, Abba, Father too. When Christ would pierce into his Father, and melt those bowels of compassion, he enters with that word, Abba, Father, All things are possible to thee; take away this Cup from me. When Christ apprehended an absence, a dereliction on God's part, he calls not upon him by this name, not My Father, but My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? But when he would incline him to mercy, mercy to others, mercy to enemies, he comes in that name, wherein he could be denied nothing, Father; Father forgive them, they know not what they do. He is the Lord of Hosts; There he scatters us in thunder, transports us in tempests, enwraps us in confusion, astonishes us with stupefaction, and consternation; The Lord of Hosts, but yet the Father of mercies, There he receives us into his own bowels, fills our emptiness, with the blood of his own Son, and incorporates us in him; The Lord of Hosts, but the Father of mercy. Sometimes our natural Fathers die, before they can gather any state to leave us, but he is the immortal Father, and all things that are, as soon as they were, were his. Sometimes our natural Fathers live to waste, and dissipate that state which was left them, to be left us: but this is the Father, out of whose hands, and possession nothing can be removed, and who gives inestimably, and yet remains inexhaustible. Sometimes our natural Fathers live to need us, and to live upon us: but this is that Father whom we need every minute, and requires nothing of us, but that poor rent of Benedictus sit, Blessed, praised, glorified be this Father.

This Father of mercies, of mercies in the plural; David calls God, Misericordiam suam, His mercy; all at once: God is the God of my mercy: God is all ours, and all mercy. Pardon this people, says Moses, Secundùm magnitudinem misericordiae, According to the greatness of thy mercy. Pardon me, says David, Have mercy upon me, Secùndum multitudinem misericordiarum, According to the multitude of thy mercies: His mercy, in largeness, in number, extends over all; It was his mercy that we were made, and it is his mercy that we are not consumed. David calls his mercy, Multiplicatam, and Mirificatam, It is manifold, and it is marvelous, miraculous: Shew thy marvelous loving kindness; and therefore David in several places, carries it Super judicium, above his judgments, Super Coelos, above the heavens, Super omnia opera, above all his works. And for the multitude of his mercies, (for we are now upon the consideration of the plurality thereof, Pater miserationum, Father of mercies ) put together that which David says, Vbi misericordiae tuae antiquae? Where are thy ancient mercies? His mercy is as Ancient, as the Ancient of days, who is God himself, And that which another Prophet says, Omni mane, His mercies are new every morning, And put between these two, between God's former, and his future mercies, his present mercy, in bringing thee this minute to the consideration of them, and thou hast found Multiplicatam, and Mirificatam, manifold, and wondrous mercy.

But carry thy thoughts upon these three Branches of his mercy, and it will be enough. First, that upon Adams fall, and all ours in him, he himself would think of such a way of mercy, as from Adam, to that man whom Christ shall find alive at the last day, no man would ever have thought of, that is, that to show mercy to his enemies, he would deliver his own, his only, his beloved Son, to shame, to torments, to death: That he would plant Germen Iehovae in semine mulieris, The blossom, the branch of God, in the seed of the woman: This mercy, in that first promise of that Messias, was such a mercy, as not only none could have undertaken, but none could have imagined but God himself: And in this promise, we were conceived In visceribus Patris, In the bowels of this Father of mercies. In these bowels, in the womb of this promise we lay four thousand years; The blood with which we were fed then, was the blood of the Sacrifices, and the quickening which we had there, was an inanimation, by the often refreshing of this promise of that Messias in the Prophets. But in the fullness of time, that infallible promise came to an actual performance, Christ came in the flesh, and so, Venimus ad partum, In his birth we were borne; and that was the second mercy; in the promise, in the performance, he is Pater miserationum, Father of mercies. And then there is a third mercy, as great, That he having sent his Son, and having re-assumed him into heaven again, he hath sent his Holy Spirit to govern his Church, and so becomes a Father to us, in that Adoption, in the application of Christ to us, by the Holy Ghost; and this as that which is intended in the last word, Deus totius Consolationis, The God of all Comfort.

I may know that there is a Messias promised, and yet be without comfort, in a fruitless expectation; The Jews are so in their dispersion. When the Jews will still post-date the comings of Christ, when some of them say, There was no certain time of his coming designed by the Prophets; And others, There was a time, but God for their sins prorogued it; And others again, God kept his word, the Messiah did come when it was promised he should come, but for their sins, he conceals himself from Manifestation; when the Jews will postdate his first coming, and the Papists will antidate his second coming, in a coming that cannot become him, That he comes, even to his Saints in torment, before he comes in glory, That when he comes to them at their dissolution, at their death, he comes not to take them to Heaven, but to cast them into one part of hell, That the best comfort which a good man can have at his death, is but Purgatory, Miserable comforters are they all. How fair a beam of the joys of Heaven is true comfort in this life? If I know the mercies of God exhibited to others, and feel them not in myself, I am not of David's Church, not of his Choir, I cannot sing of the mercies of God: I may see them, and I may sigh to see the mercies of God determined in others, and not extended to me; but I cannot sing of the mercies of God, if I find no mercy. But when I come to that, Consolationes tuae laetificaverunt, In the multitude of my thoughts within me, thy comforts delight my soul, then the true Comforter is descended upon me, and the Holy Ghost hath over-shadowed me, and all that shall be borne of me, and proceed from me, shall be holy. Blessed are they that mourn, says Christ: But the blessedness is not in the mourning, but because they shall be comforted. Blessed am I in the sense of my sins, and in the sorrow for them, but blessed therefore, because this sorrow leads me to my reconciliation to God, and the consolation of his Spirit. Whereas, if I sink in this sorrow, in this dejection of spirit, though it were Wine in the beginning, it is lees, and tartar in the end; Inordinate sorrow grows into sinful melancholy, and that melancholy, into an irrecoverable desperation. The Wise-men of the East, by a less light, found a greater, by a Star, they found the Son of glory, Christ Jesus: But by darkness, nothing: By the beams of comfort in this life, we come to the body of the Sun, by the Rivers, to the Ocean, by the cheerfulness of heart here, to the brightness, to the fullness of joy hereafter. For, beloved, Salvation it self being so often presented to us in the names of Glory, and of Joy, we cannot think that the way to that glory is a sordid life affected here, an obscure, a beggarly, a negligent abandoning of all ways of preferment, or riches, or estimation in this World, for the glory of Heaven shines down in these beams hither; Neither can men think, that the way to the joys of Heaven, is a joyless severenesse, a rigid austerity; for as God loves a cheerful giver, so he loves a cheerful taker, that takes hold of his mercies and his comforts with a cheerful heart, not only without grudging, that they are no more, but without jealousy and suspicion that they are not so much, or not enough.

But they must be his comforts that we take in, God's comforts. For, to this purpose, the Apostle varies the phrase; It was The Father of mercies; To represent to us gentleness, kindness, favor, it was enough to bring it in the name of Father; But this Comfort, a power to erect and settle a tottering, a dejected soul, an overthrown, a bruised, a broken, a trodden, a ground, a battered, an evaporated, an annihilated spirit, this is an act of such might, as requires the assurance, the presence of God. God knows, all men receive not comforts, when other men think they do, nor are all things comforts to them, which we present, and mean should be so. Your Father may leave you his inheritance, and little knows he the little comfort you have in this, because it is not left to you, but to those Creditors to whom you have engaged it. Your Wife is officious to you in your sickness, and little knows she, that even that officiousness of hers then, and that kindness, aggravates that discomfort, which lies upon thy soul, for those injuries which thou hadst formerly multiplied against her, in the bosom of strange women. Except the God of comfort give it, in that seal, in peace of conscience, Nec intus, nec subtus, nec circa te occurrit consolatio, says S. Bernard; Non subtus, not from below thee, from the reverence and acclamation of thy inferiors; Non circa, not from about thee, when all places, all preferments are within thy reach, so that thou mayest lay thy hand, and set thy foot where thou wilt; Non intus, not from within thee, though thou have an inward testimony of a moral constancy, in all afflictions that can fall, yet not from below thee, not from about thee, not from within thee, but from above must come thy comfort, or it is mistaken. S. Chrysostom notes, and Areopagita had noted it before him, Ex beneficiis acceptis nomina Deo affingimus, We give God names according to the nature of the benefits which he hath given us: So when God had given David victory in the wars, by the exercise of his power, then Fortitudo mea, and firmamentum, The Lord is my Rock, and my Castle: When God discovered the plots and practices of his enemies to him, then Dominus illuminatio, The Lord is my light, and my salvation. So whensoever thou takest in any comfort, be sure that thou have it from him that can give it; for this God is Deus totius consolationis, The God of all comfort.

Preciosa divina consolatio, nec omnino tribuitur admittentibus alienam: The comforts of God are of a precious nature, and they lose their value, by being mingled with baser comforts, as gold does with allay. Sometimes we make up a sum of gold, with silver, but does any man bind up farthing tokens, with a bag of gold? Spiritual comforts which have always God's stamp upon them, are his gold, and temporal comforts, when they have his stamp upon them, are his silver, but comforts of our own coining, are counterfeit, are copper. Because I am weary of solitariness, I will seek company, and my company shall be, to make my body the body of a harlot: Because I am drowsy, I will be kept awake, with the obscenities and scurrilities of a Comedy, or the drums and ejulations of a Tragedy: I will smother and suffocate sorrow, with hill upon hill, course after course at a voluptuous feast, and drown sorrow in excess of Wine, and call that sickness, health; and all this is no comfort, for God is the God of all comfort, and this is not of God. We cannot say with any color, as Esau said to Jacob, Hast thou but one blessing, my Father? for he is the God of all blessings, and hath given everyone of us, many more then one. But yet Christ hath given us an abridgement, Vnum est necessarium, there is but one only thing necessary, And David, in Christ, took knowledge of that before, when he said, Vnum petii, One thing have I desired of the Lord, What is that one thing? All in one; That I may dwell in the house ef the Lord (not be a stranger from his Covenant) all the days of my life, (not disseised, not excommunicate out of that house) To behold the beauty of the Lord, (not the beauty of the place only) but to inquire in his Temple, (by the advancement and advantage of outward things, to find out him) And so I shall have true comforts, outward, and inward, because in both, I shall find him, who is the God of all comfort.

Jacob thought he had lost Joseph his Son, And all his Sons, and all his Daughters rose up to comfort him, Et noluit consolationem, says the Text, He would not be comforted, because he thought him dead. Rachel wept for her children and would not be comforted, because they were not. But what aylest thou? Is there anything of which thou canst say, It is not? perchance it is, but thou hast it not: If thou hast him, that hath it, thou hast it. Hast thou not wealth, but poverty rather, not honor, but contempt rather, not health, but daily summons of Death rather yet? Non omnia possidet, cui omnia cooperantur in bonum, If thy poverty, thy disgrace, thy sickness have brought thee the nearer to God, thou hast all those things, which thou thinkest thou wantest, because thou hast the best use of them. All things are yours, says the Apostle; why? by what title? For you are Christ's, and Christ is God's. Carry back your comfort to the root, and bring that comfort to the fruit, and confess, that God who is both, is the God of all comfort. Follow God in the execution of this good purpose upon thee, to thy Vocation, and hear him, who hath left East, and West, and North, and South, in their dimness, and dumnesse, and deafness, and hath called thee to a participation of himself in his Church. Go on with him to thy justification, That when in the congregation one sits at thy right hand, and believes but historically (It may be as true which is said of Christ, as of William the Conqueror, and as of Julius Caesar ) and another at thy left hand, and believes Christ but civilly, (It was a Religion well invented, and keeps people well in order) and thou between them believest it to salvation in an applying faith; proceed a step farther, to feel this fire burning out, thy faith declared in works, thy justification grown into sanctification, And then thou wilt be upon the last stair of all, That great day of thy glorification will break out even in this life, and either in the possessing of the good things of this world, thou shalt see the glory, and in possessing the comforts of this World, see the joy of Heaven, or else, (which is another of his ways) in the want of all these, thou shalt have more comfort then others have, or perchance, then thou shouldest have in the possessing of them: for he is the God of all comfort, and of all the ways of comfort; And therefore, Blessed be God, even the Father, &c.

SERM. XXXIX. Preached upon Trinity-Sunday.

Y Ou may remember, that I proposed to exercise your devotions and religious meditations in these exercises, with words which might present to you, first the several persons in the Trinity, and the benefits which we receive, in receiving God in those distinct notions of Father, Son, and holy Ghost; And then with other words which might present those sins, and the danger of those sins which are most particularly opposed against those several persons. Of the first, concerning the person of the Father, we spoke last, and of the other, concerning sins against the Father, these words will occasion us to speak now.

It is well noted upon those words of David, Have mercy upon me, O God, that the word is Elohim, which is God's in the plural, Have mercy upon me, O God's: for David, though he conceived not divers God's, yet he knew three divers persons in that one God, and he knew that by that sin which he lamented in that Psalm, that peccatum complicatum, that manifold sin, that sin that enwrapped so many sins, he had offended all those three persons. For whereas we consider principally in the Father, Potestatem, Power, and in the Son Sapientiam, Wisdom, and in the holy Ghost Bonitatem, Goodness, David had sinned against the Father, in his notion, In potestate, in abusing his power, and kingly authority, to a mischievous and bloody end in the murder of Uriah: And he had sinned against the Son, in his notion, In sapientia, in depraving and detorting true wisdom into craft and treachery: And he had sinned against the holy Ghost in his notion, In bonitate, when he would not be content with the goodness and piety of Uriah, who refused to take the eases of his own house, and the pleasure of his wifes bosom, as long as God himself in his army lodged in Tents, and stood in the face of the Enemy. Sins against the Father then, we consider especially to be such as are In potestate, Either in a neglect of God's Power over us, or in an abuse of that power which we have from God over others; and of one branch of that power, particularly of Judgment, is this Text principally intended, If ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth, &c.

In the words we shall insist but upon two parts, First, A Counsaile, which in the Apostles mouth is a commandment; And then a Reason, an inducement, which in the Apostles mouth is a forcible, an unresistible argument. The Counsel, that is, The commandment, is, If ye call on the Father, fear him, stand in fear of him; And the reason, that is, the Argument, is, The name of Father implies a great power over you, therefore fear him; And amongst other powers, a power of judging you, of calling you to an account, therefore fear him: In which Judgment, this Judge accepts no persons, but judges his sons as his servants, and therefore fear him: And then, he judges, not upon words, outward professions, but upon works, actions, according to every man's works, and therefore fear him: And then as on his part he shall certainly call you to judgment when you go hence, so on your part, certainly it cannot be long before you go hence, for your time is but a sojourning here, it is not a dwelling, And yet it is a sojourning here, it is not a posting, a gliding through the world, but such a stay, as upon it our everlasting dwelling depends; And therefore that we may make up this circle, and end as we begun, with the fear of God, pass that time, that is, all that time, in fear; In fear of neglecting and undervaluing, or of over-tempting that great power which is in the Father, And in fear of abusing those limnes, and branches, and beams of that power which he hath communicated to thee, in giving thee power and authority any way over others; for these, To neglect the power of the Father, or To abuse that power which the Father hath given thee over others, are sins against the Father, who is power. If ye call on the Father, &c.

First then, for the first part, the Counsel, Si invocatis, If ye call on the Father, In timore, Do it in fear, The Counsel hath not a voluntary Condition, and arbitrary in ourselves annexed to it; If you call, then fear, does not import, If you do not call, you need not fear; It does not import, That if you profess a particular form of Religion, you are bound to obey that Church, but if you do not, but have fancied a religion to yourself without precedent, Or a way to salvation without any particular religion, Or a way out of the world without any salvation or damnation, but a going out like a candle, if you can think thus you need not fear, This is not the meaning of this If in this place, If you call on the Father, &c. But this If implies a wonder, an impossibility, that any man should deny God to be the Father: If the author, the inventer of anything useful for this life be called the father of that invention, by the holy Ghost himself, Iabal was the father of such as dwell in Tents, and Tubal his brother the father of Musique, And so Horace calls Ennius the father of one kind of Poem: how absolutely is God our Father, who (may I say?) invented us, made us, found us out in the depth, and darkness of nothing at all? He is Pater, and Pater luminum, Father, and Father of lights, of all kinds of lights. Lux lucifica, as S. Augustine expresses it, The light from which all the lights which we have, whether of nature, or grace, or glory, have their emanation. Take these Lights of which God is said to be the Father, to be the Angels, (so some of the Fathers take it, and so S. Paul calls them Angels of light; And so Nazianzen calls them Secundos splendores primi splendoris administros, second lights that serve the first light) Or take these Lights of which God is said to be the Father to be the Ministers of the Gospel, the Angels of the Church, (so some Fathers take them too, and so Christ says to them, in the Apostles, You are the light of the world ) Or take these Lights to be those faithful servants of God, who have received an illustration in themselves, and a coruscation towards others, who by having lived in the presence of God, in the household of his faithful, in the true Church, are become, as John the Baptist was, burning and shining lamps, (as S. Paul says of the faithful, You shine as lights in this world, And as Moses had contracted a glorious shining in his face, by his conversation with God) Or take this light to be a fainter light then that, (and yet that which S. James doth most literally intend in that place) The light of natural understanding, That which Pliny calls serenitatem animi, when the mind of man, dis-encumbered of all Eclipses, and all clouds of passion, or inordinate love of earthly things, is enlightened so far, as to discern God in nature; Or take this light to be but the light of a shadow, (for umbrae non sunt tenebrae, sed densior lux, shadows are not darknesses, shadows are but a grosser kind of light) Take it to be that shadow, that design, that delineation, that obumbration of God, which the creatures of God exhibit to us, that which Pliny calls Coelilaetitiam, when the heavens, and all that they embrace, in an opennesse and cheerfulness of countenance, manifest God unto us; Take these Lights of which S. James speaks, in any apprehension, any way, Angels of heaven who are ministering spirits, Angels of the Church, who are spiritual Ministers, Take it for the light of faith from hearing, the light of reason from discoursing, or the light flowing from the creature to us, by contemplation, and observation of nature, Every way, by every light we see, that he is Pater luminum, the Father of lights; all these lights are from him, and by all these lights we see that he is A Father, and Our Father.

So that as the Apostle uses this phrase in another place, Si opertum Euangelium, If the Gospel be hid, with wonder and admiration, Is it possible, can it be that this Gospel should be hid? So it is here, Si invocatis, If ye call God Father, that is, as it is certain you do, as it is impossible but you should, because you cannot ascribe to any but him, your Being, your preservation in that Being, your exaltation in that Being to a well-Being, in the possession of all temporal, and spiritual conveniencies, And then there is thus much more force in this particle Si, If, which is (as you have seen) Si concessionis, non dubitationis, an If that implies a confession and acknowledgement, not a hesitation or a doubt, That it is also Si progressionis, Si conclusionis, an If that carries you farther, and that concludes you at last, If you do it, that is, Since you do it, Since you do call God Father, since you have passed that act of Recognition, since not only by having been produced by nature, but by having been regenerated by the Gospel, you confess God to be your Father, and your Father in his Son, in Christ Jesus: Since you make that profession, Of his own will begat he us, with the word of Truth, If you call him Father, since you call him Father, thus, go on farther, Timete, Fear him; If ye call him Father, fear him, &c.

Now, for this fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom, and the end of wisdom too, we are a little too wise, at least, too subtle, sometimes in distinguishing too narrowly between a filial fear, and a servile fear, as though this filial fear were nothing but a reverend love of God, as he is good, and not a doubt and suspicion of incurring those evils, that are punishments, or that produce punishments. The fear of the Lord is to hate evil, It is a holy detestation of that evil which is Malum culpae, The evil of sin, and it is a holy trembling under a tender apprehension of that other evil, which we call Malum poenae, The evil of punishment for sin. God presents to us the joys of heaven often to draw us, and as often the torments of hell to avert us. Origen says aright, As Abraham had two sons, one of a Bond-woman, another of a Free, but yet both sons of Abraham; so God is served by two fears, and the later fear, the fear of future torment, is not the perfect fear, but yet even that fear is the servant, and instrument of God too. Quis tam insensatus; Who can so absolutely devest all sense, Qui non fluctuante Civitate, imminente naufragio, But that when the whole City is in a combustion and commotion, or when the Ship that he is in, strikes desperately and irrecoverably upon a rock, he is otherwise affected toward God then, then when every day, in a quietness and calm of holy affections, he hears a Sermon? Gehennae timor (says the same Father) regni nos affert coronam, Even the fear of hell gets us heaven. Upon Abraham there fell A horror of great darkness, And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. And that way, towards that dejected look, does God bend his countenance; Upon this man will I look, even to him that is poor, and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word. As there are both impressions in security, vicious and virtuous, good and bad, so there are both in fear also. There is a wicked security in the wicked, by which they make shift to put off all Providence in God, and to think God like themselves, indifferent what becomes of this world; There is an ill security in the godly, when for the time, in their prosperity, they grow ill husbands of God's graces, and negligent of his mercies; In my prosperity (says David himself, of himself) I said, I shall not be moved. And there is a security of the faithful, a constant persuasion, grounded upon those marks, which God, in his Word, hath set upon that state, That neither height, nor depth, nor any creature shall separate us from God: But yet this security is never discharged of that fear, which he that said that, had in himself, I keep under my body, lest when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast-away; And which he persuades other, how safe soever they were, Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, And Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.

As then there is a vicious, an evil security; and that holy security which is good, is not without fear: so there is no fear of God, though it have some servility, (so far, as servility imports but a fear of punishment) but it is good. For, Timor est amor inchoativus, The love of God begins in fear, and then Amor est timor consummatus, The fear of God ends in love; which David intends when he says, Rejoice with trembling; Conceive no such fear as excludes spiritual joy, conceive no such assurance, as excludes an humble and reverential fear. There is fear of God too narrow, when we think every natural cross, every worldly accident to be a judgment of God, and a testimony of his indignation, which the Poet (not altogether in an ill sense) calls a disease of the soul, Quo morbo mentem concusse? timore deorum; He imagines a man may be sick of the fear of God, that is, not distinguish between natural accidents, and immediate judgments of God; between ordinary declarations of his power, and extraordinary declarations of his anger. There is also a fear of God too large, too far extended, when for a false fear of offending God, I dare not offend those men, who pretend to come in his name, and so captivate my conscience to the traditions and inventions of men, as to the word, and law of God. And there is a fear of God conceived, which never quickens, but putrifies in the womb before inanimation; the fear and trembling of the Devil, and men whom he possesses, desperate of the mercies of God. But there is a fear acceptable to God, and yet hath in it, a trembling, a horror, a consternation, an astonishment, an apprehension of God's dereliction for a time. The Law was given in thundering, and lightning, and the people were afraid. How proceeds Moses with them? Fear not, says he, for God is come to prove you, that his fear might be before your faces. Here is a fear not, that is, fear not with despair, nor with diffidence, but yet therefore, That you may fear the Law; for, in this place, the very Law it self (which is given to direct them) is called fear; As in another place, God himself is called fear, (as he is in other places called love too) Jacob swore by the Fear of his Father Isaac; that is, by him whom his Father Isaac feared, as the Chaldee Paraphrase rightly expresses it.

Briefly, this is the difference between Fearfulnesse, and Fear, (for sow are fain to call Timiditatem and Timorem ) Timidity, Fearfulnesse, is a fear, where no cause of fear is; and there is no cause of fear, where man and man only threatens on one side, and God commands on the other: Fear not, thou worm of Jacob, I will help thee, saith the Lord thy redeemer, the Holy one of Israel. Moses Parents had overcome this fearfulness: They hid him, says the Text, Et non metucrunt Edictum Regis, They feared not the Proclamation of the King, Because it was directly, and evidently, and undisputably against the manifest will of God. Queen Esther had overcome this fearfulness; she had fasted, and prayed, and used all prescribed and all possible means, and then she entered the Kings Chamber, against the Proclamation, with that necessary resolution, Si peream, peream, If I perish, I perish; Not upon a disobedient, not upon a desperate undertaking, but in a rectified conscience, and well established opinion, that either that Law was not intended to forbid her, who was his Wife, or that the King was not rightly informed, in that bloody command, which he had given for the execution of all her Countrymen. And for those who do not overcome this fearfulness, that is, that fear where no cause of fear is, (and there is no cause of fear, where God's cause is by godly ways promoved, though we do not always discern the ways, by which this is done) for those men that frame imaginary fears to themselves, to the with-drawing or discouraging of other in the service of God, we see where such men are ranked by the Holy Ghost, when S. John says, The unbelieving, the murderer, the whore-monger, the sorcerer, the idolater, shall have their portion in the lake of brimstone, which is the second death: We fee who leads them all into this irrecoverable precipitation, The fearful, that is, he that believes not God in his promises, that distrusts God in his own cause, as soon as he seems to open us to any danger; or distrusts God's instruments, as soon as they go another way, then he would have them go. To end this, there is no love of God without fear, no Law of God, no God himself without fear; And here, as in very many other places of Scripture, the fear of God is our whole Religion, the whole service of God; for here, Fear him, includes Worship him, reverence him, obey him. Which Counsel or Commandment, though it need no reason, no argument, yet the Apostle does pursue with an argument, and that constitutes our second Part.

Now the Apostles arguments grow out of a double root; One argument is drawn from God, another from man. From God, thus implied, If God be a Father, fear him, for naturally we acknowledge the power of a Father to be great over his children, and consequently the reverent fear of the children great towards him. The Father had Potestatem vitae & necis, A power over the life of his child, he might have killed his child; but that the child should kill his Father, it never entered into the provision of any Law, and it was long before it fell into the suspicion of any Law-maker. Romulus in his Laws, called every man-slaughter Parricidium, because it was Paris occisio, He had killed a man, a Peer, a creature equal to himself; but for Parricide in the later sense, when Parricide is Patricide, the killing of a Father, it came not into the jealousy of Romulus Law, nor into the heart or hand of any man there, in six hundred years after: Cum lege coeperunt, & facinus poena monstravit, says their Moral man: That sin began not, till the Law forbad it, and only the punishment ordained for it, shown that there might be such a thing. He that curseth Father or Mother, shall surely die, says Moses; And he that is but stubborn towards them, shall die too. The dutiful love of children to Parents is so rooted in nature, that Demosthenes says, it is against the impressions and against the Law of nature, for any child ever to love that man, that hath done execution upon his Father, though by way of Justice: And this natural Obligation is not conditioned with the limitations of a good or a bad Father, Natura te non bono patri, sed patri conciliavit, says that little great Philosopher, Nature hath not bound thee to thy father, as he is a good Father, but merely as he is thy Father.

Now for the power of Fathers over their children, by the Law of Nations, that is, the general practice of Civil States, the Father had power upon the life of his child; It fell away by discontinuance, in a great part, and after was abrogated by particular Laws, but yet, by a connivence admitted in some cases too. For, as in Nature man is Microcosmus, a little World, so in nature, a family is a little State, a little Commonwealth, and what power the Magistrate hath in that, the Father hath in this. Ipsum regnū suaptenatura imperium est paternum, The power of a King, if it be kept within the bounds of the nature of that Office, is only to be a Father to his people: And, Gratius est nomen pietatis, quam potestatis, Authority is presented in a more acceptable name, when I am called a Father, then when I am called a Master; and therefore, says Seneca, our Ancestors mollified it thus, Vt invidiam Dominis, contumcliam servis detraherent, That there might accrue no envy to the Master for so great a title, nor contempt upon the servant for so low a title, they called the Master Patremfamilias, The Father of a household, and they called the servants, familiares, parts and pieces of the family. So that in the name of Father they understand all power; and the first Law that passed amongst the Romans against Parricides, was Contra interfectores Patrum & Dominorum; They were made equal, Fathers and Sovereigns: And in the Law of God it self, Honor thy Father, we see all the honor, and fear, and reverence that belongs to the Magistrate, is conveyed in that name, in that person, the Father is all; as in the State of that people, before they came to be settled, both the Civil part of the Government, and the Spiritual part, was all in the Father, that Father was King and Priest over all that family.

Present God to thyself then as a Father, and thou wilt fear him; and take knowledge, that the Son might not sue the Father; Enter no actiō against God why he made thee not richer, nor wiser, nor fairer; no nor why he elects, or refuses, without respect of good or bad works; But take knowledge too, that when by the Law, the Father might punish the Son with death, he might not kill his Son before he was passed three years in age, before he was come to some demonstration of an ill, and rebellious nature, and disposition: Whatsoever God may do of his absolute Power, believe that he will not execute that power upon thee to thy condemnation, till thine actual sins have made thee incapable of his love: What he may do, dispute not, but be sure he will do thee no harm if thou fear him, as a Father.

Now to bring that nearer to you, which principally we intended, which is, the consideration and precaution of those sins, which violate this Power of God, notified in this name of Father, we consider a threefold emanation or exercise of Power in this Father, by occasion of a threefold repeating of this part of the Text, in the Scripture. The words are weighty, always at the bottom; for we have these words in the last of the Prophets, in Malachi, and in the last of the Evangelists, in John, And here in this Apostle, we have them of the last Judgment. In Malachi he says, A Son honoreth his Father, if then I be a Father, where is my honor? This God speaks there to the Priest, to the Levite; for, the Tribe of Levi, had before, (as Moses bade them) consecrated their hands to God, and punished by a zealous execution, the Idolatry of the golden Calf; and for this service, God fastened the Priesthood upon them. But when they came in Malachies time, to connive at Idolatry it self, God, who was himself the root of the Priesthood, and had trusted them with it, and they had abused that trust, and the Priesthood, Then when the Prophet was become a fool, and the spiritual Man, mad, or (as S. Jerome reads it) Arreptitius, that is, possessed by others, God first of all turns upon the Priest himself, rebukes the Priest, interminates his judgment upon the Priest, for God is our high Priest. And therefore fear this Father in that notion, in that apprehension, as a Priest, as thy high Priest, that refuses or receives thy sacrifices, as he finds them conditioned; and if he look narrowly, is able to find some spot in thy purest Lamb, some sin in thy holiest action, some deviation in thy prayer, some ostentation in thine alms, some vain glory in thy Preaching, some hypocrisy in thy hearing, some concealing in thy confessions, some reservation in thy restitutions, some relapses in thy reconciliations: since thou callest him Father, fear him as thy high Priest: So the words have their force in Malachi, and they appertain Ad potestatem Sacerdotalem, To the power of the Priest, despise not that.

And then, in the second place, which is in S. John, Christ says, If God were your Father, you would love me: And this Christ speaks to the Pharisees, and to them, not as Sectaries in Religion, but as to persons in Authority, and command in the State, as to Rulers, to Governors, to Magistrates: So Christ says to Pilate, Thou couldst have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above: And so S. Paul, There is no power but of God, The powers that be, be ordained of God. Christ then charges the Pharisees, that they having the secular Power in their hands, they went about to kill him, when he was doing the will of his Father, who is the root, as of Priesthood, so of all Civil power, and Magistracy also. Fear this Father then, as the Civil Sword, the Sword of Justice is in his hand. He can open thee to the malicious prosecutions of adversaries, and submit thee to the penalties of those Laws, which, in truth, thou hast never transgressed: Thy Fathers, thy Grandfathers have sinned against him, and thou hast been but reprieved for two sessions, for two generations, and now mayest come to execution. Thou hast sinned thyself, and hast repented, and hast had thy pardon sealed in the Sacrament; but thy pardon was clogged with an Ita quod se been gerat, Thou wast bound to the peace by that pardon, and hast broken that peace since, in a relapse, and so fallest under execution for thine old sins: God cuts off men by unsearchable ways and means; and therefore fear this Father as a Sovereign, as a Magistrate, for that use this word in S. John may have.

In Malachi we consider him in his supreme spiritual power, and in S. John in his supreme temporal power; And in this Text, this Father is presented in a power, which includes both, in a judiciary power, as a Judge, as our Judge, our Judge at the last day, beyond all Appeale; And (as this Apostle S. Peter, is said by Clement, who is said to have been his successor at Rome, to have said) Quis peccare poterit, &c. Who could commit any sin at any time, if at all times he had his eye fixed upon this last Judgment? We have seen purses cut at the Sessions, and at Executions, but the Cutpurse did not see the Judge look upon him: we see men sin over those sins today, for which Judgment was inflicted but yesterday, but surely they do not see then that the Judge sees them. Thou treasurest up wrath, says the Apostle, against the day of wrath, and revelation of the judgment of God: There is no Revelation of the day of Judgment, no sense of any such day, till the very day it self overtake him, and swallow him. Represent God to thyself as such a Judge, as S. Chrysostom says, That whosoever considers him so, as that Judge, and that day, as a day of irrevocable judgment, Gehennae poenam tolerare malit, quàm adverso Deo stare, He will even think it an ease to be thrown down into hell out of the presence of God, rather then to stand long in the presence, and stand under the indignation of that incensed Judge: The Ite maledicti will be less then the Surgite qui dormitis. And there is the miserable perplexity, Latere impossibils, Apparere intolerabile, To be hid from this Judge is impossible, and to appear before him, intolerable: for he comes invested with those two flames of confusion, (which are our two next branches in the Text) first, He respects no persons, Then, He judges according to works: Without respect of persons, &c.

Nine or ten several times it is repeated in the Scriptures, and, I think, no one entire proposition so often, That God is no accepter of persons. It is spoken by Moses, that they who are conversant in the Law might see it, and spoken in the Chronicles, that they might see it who are conversant in State-affairs, and spoken in Job, that men in afflictions might not mis-imagine a partiality in God: It is spoken to the Gentiles, by the Apostle of the Gentiles, S. Paul, severally; To the Romans, to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Colossians: And spoken by the chief Apostle, S. Peter, both in a private Sermon in Cornelius his house, and now in this Catholic Epistle written to all the world, that all the world, and all the inhabitants thereof might know, That God is no accepter of persons: And lest all this should not be all, it is spoken twice in the Apocryphal books; and though we know not assuredly by whom, yet we know to whom, To all that exercise any judiciary power under God, it belongs to know, That God is no accepter of persons. In divers of those places, this also is added, Nor receiver of Rewards; whether that be added as an equal thing, That it is as great a sin to accept persons, as to accept rewards, Or as a concomitancy, they go together, He that will accept persons, will accept rewards, Or as an Identity, It is the same thing to accept persons, and to accept rewards, because the preferment which I look for from a person in place, is as much a reward, as money from a person rich in treasure; whether of these it be, I dispute not: Clearly there is a Bribery in my love to another, and in my fear of another there is a Bribery too: There is a bribery in a poor man's tears, if that decline me from justice, as well as in the rich man's Plate, and Hangings, and Coach, and Horses.

Let no man therefore think to present his complexion to God for an excuse, and say, My choler with which my constitution abounded, and which I could not remedy, inclined me to wrath, and so to blood; My Melancholy inclined me to sadness, and so to Desperation, as though thy sins were medicinal sins, sins to vent humors. Let no man say, I am continent enough all the year, but the spring works upon me, and inflames my concupiscencies, as though thy sins were seasonable and anniversary sins. Make not thy Calling the occasion of thy sin, as though thy sin were a Mystery, and an Occupation; Nor thy place, thy station, thy office the occasion of thy sin, as though thy sin were an Heir-loome, or furniture, or fixed to the freehold of that place: for this one proposition, God is no accepter of persons, is so often repeated, that all circumstances of Dispositions, and Callings, and time, and place might be involved in it. Nulla descretio personarum, sed morum; God discerns not, that is, distinguishes not Persons, but Actions, for, He judgeth according to every man's works, which is our next Branch.

Now this judging according to works, excludes not the heart, nor the heart of the heart, the soul of the soul, Faith. God requires the heart, My son give me thy heart; He will have it, but he will have it by gift; and those Deeds of Gift must be testified; and the testimony of the heart is in the hand, the testimony of faith is in works. If one give me a timber tree for my house, I know not whether the root be mine or no, whether I may stub it by that gift: but if he give me a fruit tree for mine Orchard, he intends me the root too; for else I cannot transplant it, nor receive fruit by it: God judges according to the work, that is, Root and fruit, faith and work; That is the work; And then he judges according unto Thy work; The works of Other men, the Actions and the Passions of the blessed Martyrs, and Saints in the Primitive Church, works of Supererogation are not thy works. It were a strange pretence to health, that when thy Physician had prescribed thee a bitter potion, and came for an account how it had wrought upon thee, thou shouldst say, My brother hath taken twice as much as you prescribed for me, but I took none, Or if he ordained six ounces of blood to be taken from thee, to say, My Grandfather bled twelve. God shall judge according to The work, that is, The nature of the work, and according to Thy work, The propriety of the work: Thee, who art a Protestant, he shall judge by thine own work, and not by S. Stephens, or S. Peters; and thee, who art a Papist, he shall judge by thine own work, and not by S. Campians, or S. Garnets, as meritorious as thou thinkest them. And therefore if God be thy Father, and in that title have sovereign power over thee, A power spiritual, as High-priest of thy soul, that discerns thy sacrifices; A power Civil, and draws the sword of Justice against thee, when he will; A power judiciary, and judges without accepting persons, and without error in apprehending thy works, If he be a Father thus, fear him, for these are the reasons of fear, on his part, and then fear him, for this reason on thy part, That this time which thou art to stay here, first, is But a sojourning, it is no more, but yet it is a sojourning, it is no less, Passe the time of your sojourning here, &c.

When there is a long time to the Assizes, there may be some hope of taking off, or of smothering Evidence, or working upon the Judge, or preparing for a pardon: Or if it were a great booty, a great possession which we had gotten, even that might buy out our peace. But this world is no such thing, neither for the extent that we have in it, It is but little that the greatest hath, nor for the time that we have in it; In both respects it is but a sojourning, it is but a pilgrimage, says Jacob, And But the days of my pilgrimage; Everyone of them quickly at an end, and all of them quickly reckoned. Here we have no continuing City; first, no City, no such large being, and then no continuing at all, it is but a sojourning. The word in the Text is 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , we have but a parish, we are but parishioners in this world, and they that labor to purchase whole shires, usurp more then their portion; and yet what is a great Shire in a little Map? Here we are but Viatores, Passengers, way-faring men; This life is but the high-way, and thou canst not build thy hopes here; Nay, to be buried in the high way is no good mark; and therefore bury not thyself, thy labors, thy affections upon this world. What the Prophet says to thy Savior, (O the hope of Israel, the Savior thereof in time of trouble, why shouldest thou be a stranger in the land, and as a wayfaring man, that turns aside to tarry for a night?) say thou to thy soul, Sincethou art a stranger in the land, a wayfaring man, turned aside to tarry for a night, since the night is past, Arise and depart, for here is not thy rest; prepare for another place, and fear him whom thou callest Father, and who is shortly to be thy Judge; for here thou art no more then a sojourner; but yet remember withal that thou art so much, Thou art a sojourner.

This life is not a Parenthesis, a Parenthesis that belongs not to the sense, a Parenthesis that might be left out, as well as put in. More depends upon this life then so: upon every minute of this life, depend millions of years in the next, and I shall be glorified eternally, or eternally lost, for my good or ill use of God's grace offered to me this hour. Therefore where the Apostle says of this life, Peregrinamur à Domino, We are absent from the Lord, yet he says, We are at home in the body: This world is so much our home, as that he that is not at home now, he that hath not his conversation in heaven here, shall never get home. And therefore even in this Text, our former Translation calls it Dwelling; That which we read now, pass the time of your sojourning, we did read then, pass the time of your dwelling; for this, where we are now, is the suburb of the great City, the porch of the triumphant Church, and the Grange, or Country house of the same Landlord, belonging to his heavenly Palace, in the heavenly Jerusalem. Be it but a sojourning, yet thou must pay God something for thy sojourning, pay God his rent of praise and prayer; And be it but a sojourning, yet thou art bound to it for a time; Though thou sigh with David, Heu mihi, quia prolongatus incolatus, woe is me that I sojourn so long here, Though the miseries of thy life make thy life seem long, yet thou must stay out that time, which he, who took thee in, appointed, and by no practice, no not so much as by a deliberate wish, or unconditioned prayer, seek to be delivered of it: Because thy time here is such a sojourning as is quickly atan end, and yet such a sojourning as is never at an end, (for our endless state depends upon this) fear him, who shall so certainly, and so soon be a just Judge of it; fear him, in abstaining from those sins which are directed upon his power; which are, principally, (as we intimated at the beginning, and with which we shall make an end) first, The negligence of his power upon thee, And then, the abuse of his power communicated to thee over others.

First then, the sin directed against the Father, whom we consider to be the root and center of all power, is, when as some men have thought the soul of man to be nothing but a resultance of the temperament and constitution of the body of man, and no infusion from God, so they think that power, by which the world is governed, is but a resultance of the consent, and the tacit voice of the people, who are content, for their ease to be so governed, and no particular Ordinance of God: It is an undervaluing, a false conception, a mis-apprehension of those beams of power, which God from himself sheds upon those, whom himself calls God's in this World. We sin then against the Father, when we undervalue God in his Priest. God hath made no step in that perverse way of the Roman Church, to prefer, so as they do, the Priest before the King; yet, speaking in two several places, of the dignity of his people, first, as Jews, then as Christians, he says in one place, They shall be a Kingdom, and a Kingdom of Priests; and he says in the other, They shall be Sacerdotium, and Regale Sacerdotium, Priests, and royal Priests: In one place, the King, in the other, the Priest mentioned first, and in both places, both involved in one another: The blessings from both are so great, as that the Holy Ghost expresses them by one another mutually. When God commands his people to be numbered in every Tribe, one moves this question, Why in all other Tribes he numbered but from twenty years upward, and in the Tribe of Levi from a month upward? Agnosce sacerdos, says he, quanti te Deus tuus fecerit, Take knowledge, thou who art the Priest of the high God, what a value God hath set upon thee, that whereas he takes other servants for other affairs, when they are men, fit to do him service, he took thee to the Priesthood in thy cradle, in thine infancy. How much more then, when the Priest is not Sacerdos infans, A Priest that cannot or does not speak; but continues watchful in meditating, and assiduous in uttering, powerfully, and yet modestly, the things that concern your salvation, ought you to abstain from violating the power of God the Father, in dis-esteeming his power thus planted in the Priest?

So also do we sin against the Father, the root of power, in conceiving amiss of the power of the Civil Magistrate: Whether where God is pleased to represent his unity, in one Person, in a King; or to express it in a plurality of persons, in divers Governors, When God says, Per me Reges regnant, By me Kings reign; There the Per, is not a Permission, but a Commission, It is not, That they reign by my Sufferance, but they reign by mine Ordinance. A King is not a King, because he is a good King, nor leaves being a King, as soon as he leaves being good. All is well summed by the Apostle, You must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.

But then the greatest danger of sinning against the Father, in this notion of power, is, if you conceive not aright of his Judiciary power, of that judgment, which he executes, not by Priests, nor by Kings upon earth, but by his own Son Christ Jesus in heaven. For, not to be astonished at the Contemplation of that judgment, where there shall be Information, Examination, Publication, Hearing, Judgment, and Execution in a minute; where they that never believed, till they heard me, may be taken in, and I that Preached and wrought their salvation, may be left out; where those wounds which my Savior received upon earth, for me, shall be shut up against me, and those wounds which my blasphemies have made in his glorified body, shall bleed out indignation, upon sight of me, the murderer, not to think upon, not to tremble at this judgment, is the highest sin against the Father, and his power, in the undervaluing of it.

But there is a sin against this power too, in abusing that portion of that power, which God hath deposited in thee. Art thou a Priest, and expectest the reverence due to that holy calling? Be holy in in that calling. Quomodo potest observari à populo, qui nihil habet secretum à populo? How can the people reverence him, whom they see to be but just one of them? Quid in te miretur, si sua in te recognoscit? If they find no more in thee, then in one another, what should they admire in thee? Si quae in se erubescit, in te, quem reverendum arbitratur, offendit? If they discern those infirmities in thee, which they are ashamed of in themselves, where is there any object, any subject, any exercise of their reverence? Art thou great in Civil Power? Quid gloriaris in malo, quiae potens es? Why boastest thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man? Hast thou a great body therefore, because thou shouldest stand heavy upon thine own feet, and make them ache? Or a great power therefore, because thou shouldest oppress them that are under thee? use thy power justly, and call it the voice of allegiance when the people say to thee, as to Joshua, All that thou commandest us, we will doc, and whither soever thou sendest us, we will go: Abuse that power to oppression, and thou canst not call that the voice of sedition, in which, Peter and the other Apostles joined together, We ought to obey God rather then man. Hast thou any judicial place in this world? here there belongs more fear then in the rest: Some things God hath done in Christ as a Priest in this world, some things as a King, But when Christ should have been a Judge in civil causes, he declined that, he would not divide the Inheritance, and in criminal causes he did so too, he would not condemn the Adulteress. So that for thy example in judgment, thou art referred to that which is not come yet, to that, to which thou must come, The last, the everlasting judgment. Waigh thine affections there, and then, and think there stands before thee now, a prisoner so affected, as thou shalt be then. Waigh the mercy of thy Judge then, and think there is such mercy required in thy judgment now. Be but able to say, God be such to me at the last day, as I am to his people this day, and for that days justice in thy public calling, God may be pleased to cover many sins of infirmity. And so you have all that we intended in this exercise to present unto you, The first person of the Trinity, God the Father, in his Attribute of power, Almighty, and those sins, which, as far as this Text leads us, are directed upon him in that notion of Father. The next day the Son will rise.

SERM. XL. Preached upon Trinity-Sunday.

C Hrist is not defined, not designed by any name, by any word so often, as by that very word, The Word, Sermo, Speech. In man there are three kinds of speech; Sermo innatus, That inward speech, which the thought of man reflecting upon it self produces within, He thinks something; And then Sermo illatus, A speech of inference, that speech which is occasioned in him by outward things, from which he draws conclusions, and determines; And lastly, Sermo prolatus, That speech by which he manifests himself to other men. We consider also three kinds of speech in God; and Christ is all three. There is Sermo innatus; His eternal, his natural word, which God produced out of himself, which is the generatiof the second Person in the Trinity; And then there is Sermo illatus, His word occasioned by the fall of Adam, which is his Decree of sending Christ, as a Redeemer; And there is also Sermo prolatus, His speech of manifestation and application of Christ, which are his Scriptures. The first word is Christ, the second, the Decree, is for Christ, the third, the Scripture, is of Christ. Let the word be Christ, so he is God; Let the word be for Christ, for his coming hither, so he is man; Let the word be of Christ, so the Scriptures make this God and man ours. Now If in all these, if in any of these apprehensions, any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema, Maranatha.

By most of those, who, from the perverseness of Heretics, have taken occasion to prove the Deity of Christ, this text hath been cited; and therefore I take it now, when in my course proposed, I am to speak of the second Person in the Trinity; but, (as I said of the first Person, the Father) not as in the School, but in the Church, not in a Chair, but in a Pulpit, not to a Congregation that required proof, in a thing doubted, but edification, upon a foundation received; not as though any of us would dispute, whether Jesus Christ were the Lord, but that all of us would join in that Excommunication, If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be, &c. Let this then be the frame that this exercise shall stand upon. We have three parts; The person upon whom our Religious worship is to be directed, The Lord Jesus Christ: And secondly, we have the expression and the limitation of that worship, as far as it is expressed here, Love the Lord Jesus Christ: And lastly, we have the imprecation upon them that do not, If any man do not, let him be Anathema, Maranatha. In the first we have Verbum natural, verbum innatum, As he is the essential word, The Lord, a name proper only to God; And then Verbum conceptum, verbum illatum, God's Decree upon consideration of man's misery, that Christ should be a Redeemer, for to that intent he is Christus, Anointed to that purpose; And lastly, Verbum prolatum, verbum manifestatum, That this Christ becomes Jesus, That this Decree is executed, that this person thus anointed for this office, is become an actual Savior; So the Lord is made Christ, and Christ is made Jesus. In the second Part we shall find another argument for his Deity, for there is such a love required towards the Lord Jesus Christ, as appertains to God only; And lastly, we shall have the indeterminable, and indispensable excommunication of them, who though they pretend to love the Lord, (God in an universal notion) yet do not love the Lord Jesus Christ, God, in this apprehension of a Savior; and, If any man love not, &c.

First then, in the first branch of the first part, in that name of our Savior, The Lord, we apprehend the eternal Word of God, the Son of God, the second Person in the Trinity: for, He is Persona producta, Begotten by another, and therefore cannot be the first; And he is Persona spirans, a Person out of whom, with the Father, another Person, that is, the Holy Ghost proceeds, and therefore cannot be the last Person, and there are but three, and so he necessarily the second. Shall we hope to comprehend this by reason? Quid magni haberet Dei generatio, si angusti is intellectus tui comprehenderetur? How small a thing were this mystery of Heaven, if it could be shut in, in so narrow a piece of the earth, as thy heart? Qui tuam ipsius generationē vel in totum nescis, vel dicere sit pudor, Thou that knowest nothing of thine own begetting, or art ashamed to speak that little that thou doest know of it, wilt not thou be ashamed to offer to express the eternal generation of the Son of God? It is true, De modo, How it was done, our reason cannot, but De facto, that it was done, our reason may be satisfied. We believe nothing with a moral faith, till something have wrought upon our reason, and vanquished that, and made it assent and subscribe. Our divine faith requires evidence too, and hath it abundantly; for, the works of God are not so good evidence to my reason, as the Word of God is to my faith; The Sun shining is not so good a proof that it is day, as the Word of God, the Scripture is, that that which is commanded there, is a duty. The root of our belief that Christ is God, is in the Scriptures, but we consider it spread into three branches, ¹ The evident Word it self, that Christ is God; ² The real declaration thereof in his manifold Miracles; ³ The conclusions that arise to our understanding; thus illumined by the Scriptures, thus established by his miracles.

In every mouth, in every pen of the Scriptures, that delivers any truth, the Holy Ghost speaks, and therefore whatsoever is said by any there, is the testimony of the Holy Ghost, for the Deity of Christ. And from the Father we have this testimony, that he is his Son, This is my beloved Son, And this testimony that his Son is God, Unto his Son he saith, Thy Throne, O God, is forever and ever. The Holy Ghost testifies, and his Father, and himself; and his testimony is true, I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning, and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. He testifies with his Father; and then, their Angels and his Apostles testify with him, I Jesus have sent mine Angels, to testify unto you these things in the Church, That I am the Roote, and the Off-spring of David, not the offspring only, but the root too, and therefore was before David. God and his Angels in Heaven testify it, And visible Angels upon earth, his Apostles, God hath purchased his Church, with his own blood, says S. Paul; He who shed his blood for his Church, was God; and no false God, no mortal God, as the gods of the Nations were, but, This is the true God, and cternall life; and then, no small God, no particular God, as the God's of the Nations were too, but, We look for the glorious appearing of our great God, our Savior Christ Jesus: God, that is, God in all the Persons, Angels, that is, Angels in all their acceptations, Angels of Heaven, Angels of the Church, Angels excommunicate from both, the fallen Angels, Devils themselves, testify his Godhead, Unclean Spirits fell down before him, and cried, Thou art the Son of God.

This is the testimony of his Word; the testimony of his Works, are his Miracles. That his Apostles did Miracles in his name, was a testimony of his Deity. His name, through faith in his Name, hath made this man strong, says S. Peter, at the raising of the Creeple. But that he did Miracles in his own Name, by his own Power, is a nearer testimony; Belssed be the Lord God of Israel, says David, Qui facit Mirabilia solus, Which doth his Miracles alone, without deriving power from any other, or without using another instrument for his Power. For, Mutare naturam, nisi qui Dominus naturae est, non potest: Whosoever is able to change the course of nature, is the Lord of nature; And he that is so, made it; & he that made it, that created it, is God. Nay, Plus est, it is more to change the course of Nature, then to make it; for, in the Creation, there was no reluctance of the Creature, for there was no Creature, but to divert Nature out of her settled course, is a conquest upon a resisting adversary, and powerful in a prescription. The Recedat Mare, Let the Sea go back, and the Sistat Sol, Let the Sun stand still, met with some kind of opposition in Nature, but in the Fiat Mare, and Fiat Sol, Let there be a Sea, and a Sun, God met with no opposition, no Nature, he met with nothing. And therefore, Interrogemus Miracula, quid nobis de Christo loquantur, Let us ask his Miracles, and they will make us understand Christ; Habent enim si intelligantur, linguam suam, If we understand them, that is, If we would understand them, they speak loud enough, and plain enough. In his Miraculous birth of a Virgin, In his Miraculous disputation with Doctors at twelve years of age, in his fasting, in his invisibility, in his walking upon the Sea, in his re-assuming his body in the Resurrection, Christ spoke, in himself, in the language of Miracles. So also had they a loud and a plain voice, in other men; In his Miraculous curing the sick, raising the dead, dispossessing the Devil, Christ spoke, in other men, in the language of Miracles. And he did so also, as in himself, and in other men, so in other things; In the miraculous change of Water into Wine, in the drying up of the Fig-tree, In feeding five thousand with five loaves, in shutting up the Sun in darkness, and opening the graves of the Dead to light, in bringing plenty of Fish to the Net, and in putting money into the mouth of a Fish at the Angle, Christ spoke in all these Creatures, in the language of Miracles. So the Scriptures testify of his Deity, and so do his Miracles, and so do those Conclusions which arise from thence, though we consider but that one, which is expressed in this part of the Text, that he is the Lord, If any love not the Lord, &c.

We reason thus, God gives not his glory to others, and his glory is in his Essentiall Name, and in his Attributes; and to whomsoever he gives them, because they cannot be given from God, he who hath them, is God. Of these, none is so peculiar to him, as the name of Jehovah; the name, which for reverence, the Jews forbore to sound, and in the room thereof ever sounded, Adonai, and Adonai, is Dominus, the name of this Text, The Lord; Christ by being the Lord thus, is Jehovah, and if Jehovah, God. It is Tertullian's observation, Et ss Pater sit, & dicatur Dominus, & Filius sit, & dicatur Deus, That though the Father be the Lord, and be called the Lord, and though the Son be God, and be called God, yet, says he, the manner of the Holy Ghost in the New Testament, is, to call the Father God, and the Son the Lord. He is Lord with the Father, as he was Con-creator, his Colleague in the Creation; But for that Dominion and Lordship which he hath by his Purchase, by his Passion, Calcavit solus, Ple trod the Wine-press alone, not only no man, but no Person of the Trinity, redeemed us, by suffering for us, but he. For the ordinary appellation of Lord in the New Testament, which is 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , it is but a name of Civility, not only no name implying Divine worship, but not implying any distinction of rank or degree amongst men. Mary Magdalene speaks of Christ, and speaks to the Gardener, (as she thought) and both in one and the same word; it is 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , Dominus, Lord, to both: when she says, They have taken away my Lord, meaning Christ, and when she says to the Gardener, Sir, if thou hast borne him hence, it is the same word too. But all that reaches not to the style of this Text, The Lord, for here The Lord, is God; And no man can say, that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. All that was written in the Scriptures, all that was established by Miracles, all that is deduced by reason, conduces to this, determines in this, That every tongue should confess, that Jesus Christ is the Lord; in which essential name, the name of his nature, he is first proposed, as the object of our love.

Now this Lord, Lord forever, is become that which he was not forever, (otherwise then in a secondary consideration) that is, Christ, which implies a person prepared, and sitted, and anointed to a peculiar Office in this World. And can the Lord, the ever-living Lord, the Son of God, the only Son of God, God himself have any preferment? preferment by an Office in this World? Was it a preferment to Dionysius, who was before in that height over men, to become a school-master over boys? Were it a preferment to the Kings Son, to be made governor over a Be-hive, or over-seer over an Ant-hill? And men, nay Mankind is no more, not that, not a Be-hive, not an Ant-hill, compared to this Person, who being the Lord, would become Christ. As he was the Lord, we considered him as God, and that there is a God, natural reason can comprehend; As he is Christ, we consider him God and Man, and such a Person, natural reason (not rooted in the Scriptures, not illustrated by the Scriptures) cannot comprehend; Man will much easilier believe the Lord, that is, God, then Christ, that is, God and Man in one Person.

Christ then is the style, the title of his Office; Non Nomen, sed Appellatio, Christ is not his Name, but his Addition. Vnctus significatur, says he, & unctus non magis nomen, quam vestitus, calceatus; Christ signifies but anointed, and anointed is no more a Name, then appareled, or shod, is a name: So, as he was appareled in our flesh, and his apparel died red in his own blood, so as he was shod to tread the Wine-press for us, So he was Christ. That it is Nomen Sacramenti, as S. Aug. calls it, A mystery, is easily agreed to: for all the mysteries of all the Religions in the World, are but Milk in respect of this Bone, but Catechisms in respect of this School-point, but Alphabets in respect of this hard Style, God and Man in one person. That it is Nomen Sacramenti, as Augustine says, is easy; but that it is Nuncupatio potestatis, as Lactantius calls it, is somewhat strange, that it is an office of power, a title of honor: for the Creator to become a Creature, and the Lord of life the object of death, nay the seat of death, in whom death did sojourn three days, can Lactantius call this a declaration of power? is this Nuncupatio potestatis, a title of honor? Beloved, he does, and he may; for it was so: for, it was an Annointing; Christas is unctus; and unction was the Consecration of Priests, Thou shalt take the annointing Oil, and pour it upon his head. The Mitre (as you may see there) was upon his head then; but then there was a Crown upon the Mitre; There is a power above the Priest, the regal power; not above the function of the Priest, but above the person of the Priest; But Unction was the Consecration of Kings too; Samuel saluted Saul with a kiss, and all the people shouted, and said, God save the King; but, Is it not, says Samuel, because the Lord hath anointed thee, to be captain over his inheritance? Kings were above Priests; and in extraordinary cases, God raised Prophets above Kings; for there is no ordinary power above them: But Unction was the Consecration of these Prophets too; Elisha was anointed to be Prophet in Elias room; and such a Prophet as should have use of the Sword: Him that scapes the Sword of Hazael, (Hazael was King of Syria) shall the Sword of Jehu slay, and him that scapes the Sword of Jehu (Jehu was King of Israel) shall the Sword of Elisha slay. In all these, in Priests who were above the people, in Kings, who (in matter of Government) were above the Priests, in Prophets, who (in those limited cases expressed by God, and for that time, wherein God gave them that extraordinary employment) were above Kings, The Unction imprinted their Consecration, they were all Christ's, and in them all, thereby, was that Nuncupatio potestatis, which Lactantius mentions; Unction, Annointing was an addition and title of honor: Much more in our Christ, who alone was all three; A Priest after the Order of Melchizedek; A King set upon the holy hill of Zion; And a Prophet, The Lord thy God will raise up a Prophet, unto him shall ye hearken: And besides all this threefold Unction, Humanitas uncta Divinitate; He had all the unctions that all the other had, and this, which none other had; In him the Humanity was Consecrated, anointed with the Divinity it self.

So then, unio unctio, The hypostatical union of the Godhead to the human nature, is his Conception, made him Christ: for, oleo laetitia perfusus in unione, Then, in that union of the two natures, did God anoint him with the oil of gladness above his fellows. There was an addition, something gained, something to be glad of; and, to him, as he was God, The Lord, so nothing could be added; If he were glad above his fellows, it was in that respect wherein he had fellows, and as God, as The Lord, he had none; so that still, as he was made Man, he became this Christ. In which his being made Man, if we should not consider the last and principal purpose, which was to redeem man, if we leave out his part, yet it were object enough for our wonder, and subject enough for our praise and thanksgiving, to consider the dignity, that the nature of man received in that union, wherein this Lord was thus made this Christ, for, the Godhead did not swallow up the manhood; but man, that nature remained still; The greater kingdom did not swallow the less, but the less had that great addition, which it had not before, and retained the dignities and privileges which it had before too. Christus est nomen personae, non naturae, The name of Christ denotes one person, but not one nature: neither is Christ so composed of those two natures, as a man is composed of Elements; for man is thereby made a third thing, and is not now any of those Elements; you cannot call man's body fire or air, or earth or water, though all four be in his composition: But Christ is so made of God and Man, as that he is Man still, for all the glory of the Deity, and God still, for all the infirmity of the manhood: Divinum miraculis lucet, humanum contumeliis afficitur: In this one Christ, both appear; The Godhead bursts out, as the Sun out of a cloud, and shines forth gloriously in miracles, even the raising of the dead, and the human nature is submitted to contempt and to torment, even to the admitting of death in his own bosom; sed tamen ipsius sunt tum miraculae, tum supplicia, but still, both he that rayses the dead, and he that dies himself, is one Christ, his is the glory of the Miracles, and the contempt and torment is his too. This is that mysterious person, who is singularis, and yet not individuus; singularis, There never was, never shall be any such, but we cannot call him Individual, as every other particular man is, because Christitatis non est Genus, there is no genus nor species of Christ's; it is not a name, which, so (as the name belongs to our Christ, that is, by being anointed with the divine nature) can be communicated to any other, as the name of Man, may to every Individual Man. Christ is not that Spectrum, that Damascene speaks of, nor that Electrum that Tertullian speaks of; not Spectrum, so as that the two natures should but imaginarily be united, and only to amaze and astonish us, that we could not tell what to call it, what to make of it, a spectre, an apparition, a phantasma, for he was a Real person. Neither was he Tertullian's Electrum, a third metal made of two other metals, but a person so made of God and Man, as that, in that person, God and Man, are in their natures still distinguished. He is Germen Davidis, in one Prophet, The branch, the Off-spring of David; And he is Germen Iehovae, The Branch, the Off-spring of God, of the Lord, in another: When this Germen Davidis, the Son of Man would do miracles, then he was Germen Iehovae, he reflected to that stock into which the Humanity was engrafted, to his Godhead; And when this Germen Iehovae, the Son of God, would endure human miseries, he reflected to that stock, to that humanity, in which he had invested, and incorporated himself. This person, this Christ died for our sins, says S. Paul; but says he, He died according to the Scriptures; Non sine onere pronunciat Christum mortuum; The Apostle thought it a hard, a heavy, an incredible thing to say that this person, this Christ, this Man and God, was dead, And therefore, Vt duritiam molliret, & scandalum auditoris everteret, That he might mollify the hardness of that saying, and defend the hearer from being scandalized with that saying, Adjecit, secundùm scripturas, He adds this, Christ is dead, according to the Scriptures: If the Scriptures had not told us that Christ should die, and told us again, that Christ did die, it were hard to conceive, how this person, in whom the Godhead dwelt bodily, should be submitted to death. But therein principally is he Christus, as he was capable of dying. As he was Verbum natural, and innatum, The natural and essential word of God, He hath his first name in the text, He is the Lord: As he is verbum illatum, and Conceptum, A person upon whom there is a Decree and a Commission, that he shall be a person capable to redeem Man by death, he hath this second name in the text, He is Christ; As he is The Lord, he cannot die; As he is Christ (under the Decree) he cannot choose but die; But as he is Jesus, He is dead already, and that is his other, his third, his last name in this Text, If any man love not &c.

We have inverted a little, the order of these names, or titles in the Text; because the Name of Christ, is in the order of nature, before the name of Jesus, as the Commission is before the Execution of the Commission. And, in other places of Scripture, to let us see, how both the capacity of doing it, and the actual doing of it, belongs only to this person, the Holy Ghost seems to convey a spiritual delight to us, in turning and transposing the Names every way; sometimes Jesus alone, and Christ alone, sometimes Jesus Christ, and sometimes Christ Jesus, that every way we might be sure of him. Now we consider him, as Jesus, a real, an actual Savior. And this was his Name; The Angel said to his Mother, Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people; And we say to you, Call upon this name Jesus, for he hath saved his people; for, Now there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus: As he was verbum conceptum, and illatum, The word which the Trinity uttered amongst themselves, so he was decreed to come in that place, The Lord of the vineyard (that is, Almighty God seeing the misery of Man, to be otherwise irremediable) The Lord of the vineyard said, what shall I do? I will send my beloved Son; it may be, they will reverence him when they see him. But did they reverence him, when they saw him? This sending made him Christ, a person, whom, though the Son of God, they might see: They did see him; but then, says that Gospel, they drew him out and killed him. And this he knew before he came, and yet came, and herein was Jesus, a real, an actual, a zealous Savior, even of them that slew him: And in this (with piety and reverence) we may be bold to say, that even the Son of God, was filius prodigus, that poured out his blood even for his Enemies; but rather in that acclamation of the prodigal child's Father, This my son was dead, and is alive again, he was lost, and is found. For, but for this desire of our salvation, why should he who was the Lord, be ambitious of that Name, the name of Jesus, which was not Tam expectabile apud Iudaeos nomen, no such name as was in any especial estimation amongst the Jews: for, we see in Ioscphus, divers men of that name, of no great honor, of no good conversation. But because the name implies salvation, Joshua, who had another name before, Cum in hujus sacramenti imagine parabatur, when he was prepared as a Type of this Jesus, to be a Savior, a Deliverer of the people, Etiam nominis Dominici inaugur atus est figurae, & Jesus cognominatus, then he was canonized with that name of salvation, and called Iosuae, which is Jesus.

The Lord then, the Son of God, had a Sitio in heaven, as well as upon the Cross; He thirsted our salvation there; and in the midst of the fellowship of the Father from whom he came, and of the Holy Ghost, who came from him and the Father, and all the Angels, who came (by a lower way) from them all, he desired the conversation of Man, for Mans sake; He that was God The Lord, became Christ, a man, and he that was Christ, became Jesus, no man, a dead man, to save man: To save man, all ways, in all his parts, And to save all men, in all parts of the world: To save his soul from hell, where we should have felt pains, and yet been dead, then when we felt them; and seen horrid spectacles, and yet been in darkness and blindness, then when we saw them; And suffered unsufferable torments, & yet have told over innumerable ages in suffering them: To save this soul from that hell, and to fill that capacity which it hath, and give it a capacity which it hath not, to comprehend the joys and glory of Heaven, this Christ became Jesus. To save this body from the condemnation of everlasting corruption, where the worms that we breed are our betters, because they have a life, where the dust of dead Kings is blown into the street, and the dust of the street blown into the River, and the muddy River tumbled into the Sea, and the Sea remaunded into all the veins and channels of the earth; to save this body from everlasting dissolution, dispersion, dissipation, and to make it in a glorious Resurrection, not only a Temple of the holy Ghost, but a Companion of the holy Ghost in the kingdom of heaven, This Christ became this Jesus. To save this man, body and soul together, from the punishments due to his former sins, and to save him from falling into future sins by the assistance of his Word preached, and his Sacrrments administered in the Church, which he purchased by his blood, is this person, The Lord, the Christ, become this Jesus, this Savior. To save so, All ways, In soul, in body, in both; And also to save all men. For, to exclude others from that Kingdom, is a tyranny, an usurpation; and to exclude thyself, is a sinful, and a rebellious melancholy. But as melancholy in the body is the hardest humor to be purged, so is the melancholy in the soul, the distrust of thy salvation too. Flashes of presumption a calamity will quench, but clouds of desperation calamities thicken upon us; But even in this inordinate dejection thou exaltest thyself above God, and makest thy worst better then his best, thy sins larger then his mercy. Christ hath a Greek name, and an Hebrew name; Christ is Greek, Jesus is Hebrew; He had commission to save all nations, and he hath saved all; Thou givest him another Hebrew name, and another Greek, when thou makest his name Abaddon, and Apollyon, a Destroyer; when thou wilt not apprehend him as a Savior, and love him so; which is our second Part, in our order proposed at first, If any man love not, &c.

In the former part, we found it to be one argument for the Deity of Christ, That he was Jehovah, The Lord; we have another here, That this great branch, nay this very root of all divine worship due to God, is required to be exhibited to this person, That is, Love, If any man love not, &c. If any man could see Virtue with his eye, he would be in love with her: Christ Jesus hath been seen so: Quod vidimus, says the Apostle, That which we have seen with our eyes, we preach to you, and therefore If any man love not, &c. If he love him not with that love which implies a Confession, that the Lord Jesus is God, That is, if he love him not with all his heart, and all his power: What doth the Lord thy God require of thee? To love him with all thy heart, and all thy soul. God forbids us not a love of the Creature, proportionable to the good that that creature can do us: To love fire as it warms me, and meat as it feeds me, and a wife as she helps me; But because God does all this, in all these several instruments, God alone is centrically, radically, directly to be loved, and the creature with a love reflected, and derived from him; And Christ to be loved with the love due to God himself: He that loveth father or mother, son or daughter more then me, is not worthy of me, says Christ himself. If then we love him so, as we love God, entirely, we confess him to be the Lord; And if we love him so, as he hath loved us, we confess him to be Christ Jesus: And we consider his love to us (for the present) in these two demonstrations of it, first Dilexit in finem, As he loved, so he loved to the end; And then Posuit animam, Greater love there is not, then to die for one, and he did that.

Our Savior Christ forsook not Peter, when Peter forsook him: because he loved him, he loved him to the end. Love thou Christ to the end; To His end, and to Thy end. Finem Domini vidistis, says S. James, You have seen the end of the Lord; That is, says August. to what end the Lord came; His way was contempt and misery, and his end was shame and death: Love him there. Thy love is not required only in the Hosanna's of Christ, when Christ is magnified, and his Gospel advanced, and men preferred for loving it: No, nor only in the Transfiguration of Christ, when Christ appears to thee in some particular beams, and manifestation of his glory; but love him in his Crucifigatur, then when it is a scornful thing to love him, And love him in the Nunquid & tu? when thou must pass that examination, Wert not thou one of them? And in the Nonne ego te vidi? if witnesses come in against thee for the love of Christ, love him when it is a suspicious thing, a dangerous thing to love him; And love him not only in spiritual transfigurations, when he visits thy soul with glorious consolations, but even in his inward eclipses, when he withholds his comforts, and withdraws his cheerfulness, even when he makes as though he loved not thee, love him. Love him, all the way, to his end, and to thy end too, to the laying down of thy life for him.

Love him then in the laying down of the pleasures of this life for him, and love him in the laying down of the life it self, if his love need that testimony. Of the first case, of crucifying himself to the world, S. Augustine had occasion to say much to a young Gentleman, young, and noble, and rich, and (which is not, in such persons, an ordinary temptation, but where it is, it is a shrewd one) as he was young, and noble, and rich, so he was learned in other learnings, and upon that strength withdrew, and kept off from Christ. It was Licentius, to whom S. Augustine writes his 39. Epistle. He had sent to S. Augustine a handsome Elegy of his making, in which Poem he had said as much of the vanity and deceivableness of this world, as S. Augustine could have looked for, or, perchance, have said in a Homily; And he ends his Elegy thus, Hoc opus, ut jubeas, All this concerning this world I know already, Do you but tell me, do you command me, what I shall do. Iubebit Augustinus conservo suo? says that sensible and blessed Father: Shall I, shall Augustine command his fellow-servant? Et non plang at potiùs frustra juberc Dominum? Must not Augustine rather lament that the Lord hath commanded thee, and is not obeyed? Wouldst thou hear me? Canst thou pretend that? Exaudi teipsum, Durissime, Immanissime, Surdissime; Thou that art inoxorable against the persuasions of thine own soul, Hard against the tenderness of thine own heart, Deafe against the charms of thine own Verses, canst thou pretend a willingness to be led by me? Quam animam, quod ingenium non licet immolare Deo nostro? How well disposed a soul, how high pitched a wit is taken out of my hands, that I may not sacrifice that soul, that I may not direct that wit upon our God, because, with all these good parts, thou turnest upon the pleasures of this world? Mentiuntur, moriuntur, in mortem trahunt: Do not speak out of wit, nor out of a love to elegant expressions, nor do not speak in jest of the dangerous vanities of this world; Mentiuntur, they are false, they perform not their promises; Moriuntur, they are transitory, they stay not with thee; and In mortem trahunt, they die, and they die of the infection, and they transfuse the venom into thee, and thou diest with them: Non dicit verum, nisi veritas, & Christus veritas, Nothing will deal truly with thee but the Truth it self, and only Christ Jesus is this Truth. He follows it thus much farther, Si calicem aureum invenisses in terrae, If thou foundest a chalice of gold in the earth, so good a heart as thine would say, Surely this belongs to the Church, and surely thou wouldst give it to the Church: Accepisti à Deo ingenium spiritualiter aureum, God hath given thee a wit, an understanding, not of the gold of Ophir, but of the gold of the heavenly Jerusalem, Et in illo, Satanae propinas teipsum? In that chalice once consecrated to God, wilt thou drink a health to the devil, and drink a health to him in thine own blood, in making thy wit, thy learning, thy good parts advance his kingdom? He ends all thus, Miserearis jam mei, si tibi viluisti, If thou undervalue thyself, if thou think not thyself worth hearing, if thou follow not thine own counsels, yet miserearis mei, Have mercy upon me, me, whose charge it is to bring others to heaven, me, who shall not be received there, if I bring nobody with me; be content to go with me, that way, which by the inspiration of the holy Ghost I do show, and that way, which by the conduct of the holy Ghost I would fain go. All bends to this, First, love Christ so far as to lay down the pleasures of this life for him, and so far, as to lay down the life itself for him.

Christ did so for thee: and his blessed Servants the Martyrs, in the Primitive Church, did so for him, and thee; for his glory, for thy example. Can there be any ill, any loss, in giving thy life for him? Is it not a part of the reward it self, the honor to suffer for him? When Christ says, Whosoever loses anything for my sake, and the Gospels, he shall have a hundred fold in houses, and lands, with persecutions, we need not limit that clause of the Promise, (with persecutions) to be, That in the midst of persecutions, God will give us temporal blessings, but that in the midst of temporal blessings, God will give us persecutions; that it shall be a part of his mercy, to be delivered from the danger of being puffed up by those temporal abundances, by having a mixture of adversity and persecutions; and then, what ill, what loss, is there in laying down this life for him? Quid hoc mali est, quod martyrialis mali, non habet timorem, pudorem, tergiversationem, poenitentiam, deplorationem? What kind of evil is this, which when it came to the highest, Ad malum martyriale, to martyrdom, to death, did neither imprint in our holy predecessors in the Primitive Church, Timorem, any fear that it would come; not Tergiversationem, any recanting lest it should come; nor Pudorem, any shame when it was come; nor Poenitentiam, any repentance that they would suffer it to come; nor Deplorationem, any lamentation by their heirs, and Executors, because they lost all, when it was come? Quid mali? What kind of evil can I call this, in laying down my life, for this Lord of life, Cujus reus gaudet, when those Martyrs called that guiltiness a joy, Cujus accusatio votum, and the accusation a satisfaction, Cujus poena foelicitas, and the suffering perfect happiness? Love thy neighbor as thyself, is the farthest of that Commandment; but love God above thyself; for, indeed, in doing so thou dost but love thyself still: Remember that thy soul is thyself; and as if that be lost, nothing is gained, so if that be gained, nothing is lost, whatsoever become of this life.

Love him then, as he is presented to thee here; Love the Lord, love Christ, love Jesus. If when thou lookest upon him as the Lord, thou findest frowns and wrinkles in his face, apprehensions of him, as of a Judge, and occasions of fear, do not run away from him, in that apprehension; look upon him in that angle, in that line awhile, and that fear shall bring thee to love; and as he is Lord, thou shalt see him in the beauty and loveliness of his creatures, in the order and succession of causes, and effects, and in that harmony and music of the peace between him, and thy foul: As he is the Lord, thou wilt fear him, but no man fears God truly, but that that fear ends in love.

Love him as he is the Lord, that would have nothing perish, that he hath made; And love him as he is Christ, that hath made himself man too, that thou mightest not perish: Love him as the Lord that could show mercy; and love him as Christ, who is that way of mercy, which the Lord hath chosen. Return again, and again to that mysterious person, Christ; And let me tell you, that though the Fathers never forbore to call the blessed Virgin Mary, Deiparam, the Mother of God, yet in Damascens time, they would not admit that name, Christiparam, that she was the Mother of Christ: Not that there is any reason to deny her that name now; but because then, that great Heretic, Nestorius, to avoid that name, in which the rest agreed, Deiparam, (for he thought not Christ to be God) invented a new name, Christiparam: Though it be true in itself, that that blessed Virgin is Christipara, yet because it was the invention of an Heretic, and a fundamental Heretic, who though he thought Christ to be anointed by the Holy Ghost above his fellows, yet did not believe him to be God, Damascene, and his Age, refused that addition to the blessed Virgin; So reverently were they affected, so jealously were they enamored of that name, Christ, the name which implied his Unction, his Commission, the Decree, by which he was made a Person, able to redeem thy soul: And in that contemplation, say with Andrew, to his brother Peter, Invenimus Messiam; I have found the Messias; I could find no means of salvation in myself, nay, no such means to direct God upon, by my prayer, or by a wish, as he hath taken; but God himself hath found a way, a Messias; His Son shall be made man; And Inveni Messiam, I have found him, and found, that he, who by his Inearnation, was made able to save me, (so he was Christ ) by his actual passion, hath saved me, and so I love him as Jesus.

Christ loved Stephen all the way, for all the way Stephen was disposed to Christ's glory, but in the agony of death (death suffered for him) Christ expressed his love most, in opening the windows, the curtains of heaven it self, to see Stephen die, and to show himself to Stephen. I love my Savior as he is The Lord, He that studies my salvation; And as Christ, made a person able to work my salvation; but when I see him in the third notion, Jesus, accomplishing my salvation, by an actual death, I see those hands stretched out, that stretched out the heavens, and those feet racked, to which they that racked them are foot-stools; I hear him, from whom his nearest friends fled, pray for his enemies, and him, whom his Father forsook, not forsake his brethren; I see him that clothes this body with his creatures, or else it would wither, and clothes this soul with his Righteousness, or else it would perish, hang naked upon the Cross; And him that hath, him that is, the Fountain of the water of life, cry out, He thirsts, when that voice overtakes me, in my cross ways in the world, Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by? Behold, and see, if there by any sorrow, like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me, in the day of his fierce anger; When I conceit, when I contemplate my Savior thus, I love the Lord, and there is a reverent adoration in that love, I love Christ, and there is a mysterious admiration in that love, but I love Jesus, and there is a tender compassion in that love, and I am content to suffer with him, and to suffer for him, rather then see any diminution of his glory, by my prevarication. And he that loves not thus, that loves not the Lord God, and God manifested in Christ, Anathema, Maranatha, which is our next, and our last Part.

Whether this Anathema be denounced by the Apostle, by way of Imprecation, that he wished it so, or pronounced by way of excommunication, That others should esteem them so, and avoid them, as such persons, is sometimes debated amongst us in our books. If the Apostle say it by way of Imprecation, if it sound so, you are to remember first, That many things are spoken by the Prophets in the Scriptures, which sound as imprecations, as execrations, which are indeed but prophesies; They seem to be spoken in the spirit of anger, when they are in truth, but in the spirit of prophesy. So, in very many places of the Psalms, David seems to wish heavy calamities upon his and God's enemies, when it is but a declaration of those judgments of God, which he prophetically foresees to be imminent upon them: They seem Imprecations, and are but Prophesies; and such, we, who have not this Spirit of Prophesy, nor foresight of God's ways, may not venture upon. If they be truly Imprecations, you are to remember also, that the Prophets and Apostles had in them a power extraordinary, and in execution of that power, might do that, which every private man may not do: So the Prophets rebuked, so they punished Kings. So Elisha called in the Bears to devour the boys; And so Elias called down fire to devour the Captains; So S. Peter killed Ananias, and Sapphira with his word; And so S. Paul stroke Elymas the Sorcerer with blindness. But upon Imprecations of this kind, we as private men, or as public persons, but limited by our Commission, may not adventure neither. But take the Prophets or the Apostles in their highest Authority, yet in an over-vehement zeal, they may have done some things sometimes not warrantable in themselves, many times many things, not to be imitated by us. In