THE Haughty Heart HUMBLED: OR, THE PENITENTS PRACTICE: IN THE REGAL PATTERN OF KING EZEKIAH.  
Directory and consolatory to all the mourners in Zion, to sow in Tears, and to reap in joy..  
By S. I. Preacher of God's Word.  Tolle & lege, & experto crede. 
LONDON, Printed for Richard More, and are to be sold at his Shop in Saint Dunstanes Churchyard in Fleetstreet. 1628.   

THE HAUGHTY heart humbled; OR, The Penitents Practise. The first Sermon.  
1 The Context: But Hezekiah rendered not again according to the benefit done unto him, for his heart was lifted up, therefore there was wrath upon him, and upon the Inhabitants of judah and jerusalem.  The Text. 2 Chron. 32.26. 
Notwithstanding Ezekias humbled himself for the pride of his heart, (both he and the inhabitants of jerusalem) so that the wrath of the Lord came not upon them in the days of Ezekias.  

CHAP. I.  
THis very Text at the first blush speaks it own Title to any judicious, and ocular understanding: 
The Text divided.  it may rightly be styled and called Ezekias humiliation; in which for method sake (which is the mother of memory) we may briefly, and succinctly observe, and prosecute these remarkable circumstances: First, the subjects of this humiliation, that is Ezekias: primary as in sin, so in sorrow: secondary, the Inhabitants of jerusalem: Secondly, the cause, occasion, or exterior motive of this humiliation, and that is the pride of his hart, (for the interior cause or inward impulsive or main Agent, was the Spirit of God) Thirdly, the sequel, or effect of this humiliation, the removal of due, and deserved wrath: wrath came neither upon the King, nor upon his subjects, in the days of Ezekias. These are the prime parts, and the very materials of the Text, which (as a fountain into her streams, or a main stream into her several sluices) admits many other lesser circumstantial subdivisions, if we narrowly take what ever the words will afford: and first for the subject here humbled, which was Ezekias.  
This first word of the Text, (notwithstanding) as a Relative, to something foregoing, plucks us by the sleeve 
a Cynthius' aurem vellens. , and wills us to look backward, or rather forward to something preceding; by virtue and authority whereof 
b It is one of the rules of Illiricus lib. 2. in Clau. Scripturae, and of Kickerman in his Rhetorica Ecclesiastica: to compare text with Context.  we may well, as having reference to Ezekias the subject in hand, consider the substance of the whole Chapter: without stretching the Text, we may reflect (as every one of them of excellent use) first, upon Ezekias virtues and Graces: secondly, on his sins and infirmities: thirdly, on the Lords castigations, and corrections: fourthly, upon his rising by repentance, and humiliation: fifthly, upon the renovation, and manifestation of the Lords love, and favour to him: demonstrated both privatively in withholding from him, that wrath which his sins have deserved: as also positively, in enriching him, both with these outward blessings of gold, silver, jewels: as also inward Graces, for the pious and prosperous governing of his kingdom, which his soul desired. First Ezekias Graces, and perfections are described and largely exemplified, partly in this Chapter, but more fully, and significantly, in the three former Chapters going before, which are all taken up in delineating & expressing the worthy acts of this worthy King: 1. so zealous for the glory of God, for the restauration of his decayed, for the purging of his polluted worship 
a 2 Chron. 29. v. 16, 17, 18. : 2. so careful to walk with his God, to do that which was right in his sight 
b vers. 2. , to approve his very heart as his father David; 3. to praise and to worship the Lord, both in his own person, & by his example & Injunction, throughout his whole kingdom: 4. to Institute 
c ver. 3, 4, 5, 6. et ver. 25, 26. , and encourage, and increase righteous and zealous Levites, for the service of the house of the Lord; to prepare and provide by his extraordinary costs, care, excessive charge, and indefatigable pains 
d v. 31, 32, 33, 34 et Ch. 30 v. 2  for all things thereunto belonging: 5 by his Proclamations 
e v. 6, 7, 8. , Posts, and Edicts, to excite and prepare his whole Land for the righteous and religious celebration and solemnisation of the long pretermitted Passeover: 6. to extirpate and root out 
f ver. 14.  Idolatry: 7. firmly and resolutely to seek the Lord 
g Chap. 31. ver. 20, 21.  and his Glory, his face and favour: 8. to plant (or replant) his depopulated Church: 9 to supplant all Idolatries and superstitions: to do every thing strictly and exactly according to all that the Lord commanded, for the matter and manner, of right, and religious governing of the Church, and the Commonwealth, committed to his charge, that it may well be said of him, as was said of josias, (who with his Father David, being only excepted) like unto him there was no King, that turned to the Lord, with his whole heart, his whole soul, and whole might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there any 
h 2 King. 23, 25. . And yet the fair sun of these virtues, wanted not his clouding, his eclipsing, in his infirmities: this beauteous Cedar had his blasting; the fading of his leaves (his failing in some duties, his falling in some sins) exposed him to nakedness, even to the deserved blasts, and storms, and blowings down by the whirlwind of God's wrath on him and his people, unless his humiliation (as rain that allays the wind) had prevented what was ready to be executed. For to come to that, which we propounded in the second place, Ezekias Infirmities: the holy Ghost taxeth him of the omission of one main duty, and that is gratitude and thankfulness, for a mercy received: he is branded and marked for an ungrateful person; he is culpable in this sin of Ingratitude: a sin odious and hateful to God and all good men 
* Contra ingratos lege apud Patres, Bernardum Serm. 1. in Cantica Epiph. Augustin. in Psal. 108. Cassiod lib. 2. & 4. epist. Lactant. lib 2 c. 1. Instit. & lib. ●. cap. 3.  yea abhorred of the very heathen, 
* Apud Ethnicos, Senecam lib. 1. de benef. Tullium lib. 2. Offic. ad Atticum 8, et in passim in Orationibus.  by the instinct of nature, yea even of birds and beasts, apes and Lions, that in their kind (as appears by Histories 
* Of which see my Ireland's jubilee.  and experience) have been found thankful to their Benefactors: yet even this sin (besides his other failings) is chalked on Ezekias score: for the holy Text saith: that Ezekiah being sick to death, he prayed to the Lord, and he spoke unto him and gave him a sign: of which we may largely read 2 King. 20.10, 11. but Ezekiah rendered not again, according to the benefit done unto him: (an usual culpable carriage in most men, both towards God and man) withal setting down the mother and original of this and other her hellbred daughters: that, which (as Augustine said of concupiscence) is a sin itself, and the cause, and root of other sins, even that sin which as God first punished in Angels 
i jude ver. 6. , and Man 
k Gen. 3.5.23. , he still abhominates and abhors: into that sin Ezekiah falls, with that sin he is leavened, and his other Graces in part, and for a time poisoned; and that is pride of heart, the bane of virtue, the mother, nurse, and midwife of vice 
l In superbiam lege Patres invehentes: praecipue Bernardum, ser. 3. de resurr. Augustin. serm. 19 serm. 31. & in Psal. 19 Hieron. in Marcum. Gregor. in Moral. Hugo. lib. 2. de anima. Isodor. lib. 3. de summo bono. & Cassiod. in Psal. 18. et in Psal. 147. ver. 25. , the Colioquintida in the best broth: the soiler of the best jewels, the most lustrous perfections of men eminent in the Magistracy or Ministry: the most prejudicial to God's glory: the best agent and factor for Satan: the greatest Enemy, and opposite to God: the greatest curb and cross for doing good, to those whose Talents might otherways gainfully be employed: even this pearl grew on Ezekias eye: this leprosy (like Gehezies') cleaves to his flesh: nay like poison, it was infixed in his marrow, and bones, nay it had searched all his veins, and got to his very heart: for the Text saith further, his heart was lifted up: and this pride of heart, (as fruirfull in other sins, daily generate, as from a fruitful womb) like a liver or lungs inwardly corrupted, breaks out (as into other blains, and biles, and ulcerous sores, so) into this great swelling grievous plague-sore, or Carbuncle of Ingratitude.  
Thirdly, in the same verse ushering my Text (as very near a kindred, closely combined, even hanging together as Burrs, or Bells which ring all one peal,) we have as Ezekiahs' sin, so his sorrow: as his fault, so his whip, or rod: as his transgression, so his castigation: as that wherein he deficiently sinned, so that which he deservedly suffered: nay his suffering, like jacob, comes after this Esau of his sin, takes close hold on it as it were by the heel 
* Hosea 12.3. Deut. 28. Levit. 26. Amos 1. Psal. 11. Mal. 4. Apoc. 28. ver. 25.  to overthrew and supplant it: for it is said, therefore, even because of his pride of heart, and her proud daughter Ingratitude; even therefore, as the meritorious or deserving cause, there was wrath upon him, and upon the Inhabitants of judah and jerusalem: Plainly demonstrating, the Lord the Author of the evil of punishment, as man the Author of the evil of sinning.  
Fourthly, here in my Text we have the clearing again of Ezekiahs' Sun, the dissipating of the congealed and gathered cloud, ready to fall on him and his people in a shower of vengeance: the calming of the threatened Tempest that hung visibly over his head: as the fruit of his Faith, the honour of his humiliation, the acceptable sacrifice of the stooping of his haughty heart, wrath came neither upon him nor his subjects in his days. verse 26.  
To give to every one of these premised parts a little more lustre by amplification, or a soul as it were, to the bodies of them, by explication, ere we come to the special parts and particulars of Ezekiahs' humiliation, in which I intent chief and mainly to insist: Every one of these in which Ezekiah was either an Agent, or a Patient, afford us special and principal matter of meditation and observable consideration.  
For first in Ezekiahs' sin we have a pattern of man's sinning misery.  
Secondly, in Ezekiahs' castigation; a demonstration of God's just and strict severity.  
Thirdly, in his humiliation, the force and fruit of God's all-saving grace.  
Fourthly, in the removal of his rod, upon his renewed repentance, a plain and perspicuous argument of God's all-saving mercy.  
To enlarge every one of these a little more perspicuously.   

CHAP. II.  

SECT. 1. Of man's sinning misery.  
FIrst, I say, in Ezekiah we have a precedent of man's sinning misery: every man in his Glass, may see, and perceive himself, his own estate, what he is, what his power and ability is in himself, from himself, without a superior continual eye of grace watching over him, hand of grace corroborating and strengthening him: alas what is the best man living, if the Lord leave him to himself, never so little, in a trial of temptation from Satan, as he did David, when in the pride of his heart he numbered his people 
l 2 Sam. 14.1. 1 Chr. 21.1.2. : or in a trial of probation from himself, as he did Ezekiah, when in the like pride, in a vain ostentation he shown his Treasures to the Ambassadors of the King of Babel 
m 2 Chr. 32. 3●. : oh what can the best man do, though regenerated by the Spirit, sanctified by grace, renewed according to the heavenly Image, cast in a new mould, made a new creature, adorned with the best jewels of sanctified graces, but in such spiritual desertions for a time left to Satan's winnowing, and to the corruptions of his own heart yielding, to his treacherous flesh, that domestic enemy, betraying; but fail in that which is good, fall into that which is evil: our condition in that reference and relation we have unto God, being significantly expressed, by that reference, which the travellers staff hath unto his hand: the weanling child in his first footing, to the hold of the mother, or the Nurse: the Vine, or the Hop, unto his upholding prop: for if the Lord uphold us by his preventing grace, and his assisting Spirit, we stand like the house built upon the rock, 
Mat. 7.24.25.26  as the Castle built upon the mines of Marble, not to be undermined, as the cliffs and rocks in the main Ocean, or upon the shore, against all the surging waves, and boisterous billows, and raging winds of satanical temptations and suggestions: but if we be left in any trial or temptation to ourselves, as was Peter, Satan desiring to winnow us 
n Luk. 22.31. v. 60. , we fall like the house that is built upon the sand; or the ruinous tottering building, in an earthquake: even Ezekiah himself here, though adorned with many Graces, though tied and obliged to the Lord with the golden cords of many and manifold blessings, privileges and prerogatives, above most of the sons of men, in his time, having received a peculiar and special mercy, even new, and fresh bleeding in his memory; his restauration and miraculous restitution to desired health, in a great and daingerous sickness, repriued for a long Lease of life, even after his summons, yea sentence of expected death: even this Ezekiah forgets God his Saviour too soon, is not so mindful of his mercy as he ought to be, nor so thankful as the Lord desired, or as the beneficence required.   

SECT. 2. The different effects of prosperity and adversity.  
SEcondly, in Ezekiah see briefly the difference betwixt prosperity and adversity, or the different carriage and condition of men, yea sometimes of the best men, in these two different estates: Ezekiah in his sickness, having by no less than a Prophet, as the mouth and unerring Oracle of God, received the dismal sentence of death, sets his house in order, and no doubt of it sets his heart in order, turns himself in his bed, 
o 2 King. 20.1, 2, 3.  remembers his sins, in the bitterness of his soul mourns like a Dove, chatters like a Craine 
p Esay 38.14. , turns himself to the wall and weeps, 
q vers. 2.  turns himself from man and from humane means, (now unavailable) unto the might and mercy of God, as the Needle touched with the Loadstone 
* Apud Albertum lib. 2. metal. tract. 3. cap. 6. & Plin. lib. 36. c. 16.26.  turns to the Pole, and so rests reposed: in the soliloquies of his soul, he pours out his heart and his spirit before the Lord, vnloades his burdened soul in the Lord's bosom, unfolds his griefs, cries for redress, with such zealous fervency, and importunity, that his prayers and ejaculations darted from faith and feeling, surmount the Clouds, ascend (as fiery meteors 
* Arist lib. 1. & 2. meteor, & Mizaldus lib. 1. Cometog. c. 4. ) the highest Regions, penetrate and pierce the Heavens, as importunate suitors and urgent Ambassadors, have audience, acceptance, and a comfortable answer from the God of Heaven, even to the revoking and recalling of that conditional sentence 
r vers. 4, 5, 6. , and verdict (as after with the 
s jon. 3.10. See D. Abbot & B. King in loc.  Ninivites) which God himself had passed upon him. And the like demeanour we have of him, in another straight and exigent, when Senacharib brings such an Army against jerusalem, as his railing Rabsakah in the pride and presumption of his heart, christened and called, (as once that Armado which threatened this sinning Island) Invincible 
t 2 King. 18.22, 23, 24. : then having (as 
u 2 Chro. 2.12  jehosaphat said, and did in the like case) no power nor strength in and from himself, his people being but as a little flock of Kids to the troops of the Assyrians, that were spread as Grasshoppers: he betakes himself to the Lord, (as an endangered child by the ramping of a Lion, and a Bear) cries to his father 
* 2 King. 19.15, 16, 17. , makes speedy recourse to the God of Hosts, as the Tempest-driven Ship puts for the shore; in the day of his trouble calls upon the Lord, makes him (as every Christian ought to do in the like extremities) his rock 
x Psal. 18.1. , his refuge, his Asylum, and Sanctuary: spreads the Letter of reviling Rabsakah before the Lord, entreats the prayers of the Prophet Esay 
y 2 King. 19.2. , for himself and his distressed people; hath a comfortable answer according to his faith 
z vers. 6, 7. & vers. 20, 21. . A promised hook 
a vers. 28.  put in the nostrils of Senacharib, an Angel employed in his behalf, as the organ of God's wrath, to make riddance of his enemies 
b vers. 35. , even 1085 at one clap: but now here is an alteration in Ezekiah, Nova rerum facies, a metamorphosis, a strange change; Mutatus ab illo, & Tottenham (as the phrase is) turned French: Ezekiah in his prosperity hath got a cooler, his hot zeal hath caught cold: It is lukewarm, or rather keycold, or frozen for want of stirring and agitation; as a standing pool in a winter's freeze: the next news we hear of Ezekiah, he is unmindful of that God, who was so mindful of him, and merciful to him: he forgets God, he renders not according to the benefit received.  
Oh thus it was with him, thus it is with us; 
Application.  thus with most of us, with best of us, yea even generally with all of us (so fare as corruption and our carnal unregenerate part prevails, as it prevails in many too fare) in our adversity, we seek the Lord, in the pressures of poverty, penury, upon our estates: sickness, aches, pains, diseases, upon our bodies: Infamy, scandal, reproach, upon our names: horror upon our souls, terror upon our consciences: we perhaps press hard to the Lord by prayer, petition, supplication: we wrestle with him, as 
c Ose. 12.4.  jacob, to bless us; we cry to him as the Disciples in the tossed 
d Luke 8.24.  ship; as Peter walking on the waters, ready to 
e Mat. 14.29, 30  sink; or environed with our enemies by sea or land, beset with horse and foot, as David once by 
f 1 Sam. 23.26.  Saul, hunted and pursued by our enemies, as the Partridge by the Hawk; in peril by the fury and force of any of the creatures, animate or inanimate, Fire, Water, Wolves, Dogs, Bears, Lions: we cry out as jehosaphat did in the battle when the Archers shot at him 
g 2 King. 22.32 , and put him in peril: yea, in sickness chief, and the summons of death, we turn ourselves to the wall and weep, we wash our beds with tears, as David 
h Psal. 6.6. ; we make perhaps many fair heights and vows, and promises to God, of reformation of much amiss, mortification of many lusts, stricter life and conversation, upon our restitution to health, which we indent with God: we confess any thing, as men on the Rack, in the tortures of conscience, we will suffer any lancing for the healing of sins wounds, for the asswaging of their rage; we will covenant and promise any thing, as Schoolboys under their Masters Ferula: when alas, when the Lord easeth our shoulders from our burdens, which we cast upon him: when the God of jacob delivers us out of troubles: when he plucks us out of the stocks, and sets us at liberty: pulls the straight shoe off our foot, takes us off the Racks, leaves smiting and scourging us, seems to burn our rods as it were before our faces, turns our storms into calms: Alas, than we forget him, as some man doth his friend, that hath done him most good in his need, perhaps saved him from the Gallows: we remember the Lords kindnesses as fools and children remember good turns: or as the Oestrich remembers her eggs, buried in the sand: Our promises we keep with God, as the perfidious Carthaginians and lying Cretians 
i Titus 1.12.  with men, as the bankrupt his word, Bill, or Bond with his creditor: our vows in sickness prove still languishing and sick vows, unperformed, even in our best health: our devotions are as hot as some sea mens, who pray aloud and cry out as jonas Mariners 
k jonas 1.5.  in the storm, and are Reuben-like 
l Gen. 4●. 4.  as light as water in excess of riot upon the land: when the Lord turns our sickness into health, our pain into ease, our perturbations into pleasures, our poverty into plenty, our daingers into delights, etc. we then turn praying into playing, fasting into feasting, mourning into music, sorrow into carnal solace: yea even the grace of God, many of us, into wantonness: at least we are too forgetful of God, and of ourselves, as were the Israelites, who (as you may see throughout the whole book 
m judg. 3.5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12.15. chap. 4.1, 2, 3. chap. 6.1, 2.  of judges) when they were in affliction, oppressed by the Midianites, Ammonites, Philistines, Canaanites, they continually cried unto the Lord, and were in outward show exceedingly humbled; but when the rod was off their back, when upon their seeking to God, (though with a dissembling and double hart) the Lord sent them deliverance, and deliverers: Othoniel, Gideon, Iphtah, Tolah, Samson, and other victorious and valiant men, to defend and deliver them in war, and to judge them in peace: 
Psal. 106. per totum.  according to the ancient wont of their Fathers, they forgot God, forsook his laws, revolted from his covenant, ran with as fast a contrary bias to their idolatry as ever, committed sin as greedily, neglected God's worship as carelessly, fell into idolatry as superstitiously, etc. Yea David himself, though a man after Gods own heart, as he confesseth of himself, in his prosperity sung a requiem to his soul, said he should never be removed, and before he was troubled went wrong 
n Psal. 119.67. , though (Crux dans intellectum) in his trouble he sought the Lord diligently, yea with his whole heart: and sure this is the case and condition of most of us, we crouch and bow, and bend to God, cry peccavi, entreat for favour, beg as it were the Psalm of mercy, as the felon before the judge, when we are in exigents, and danger of execution, and falling either into the hands of God or man: but if the Lord bail us, or reprieve us, or absolutely free us, upon our humiliation, or let us escape with some little smart or punishment, as it were with burning in the hand, we then presently, or after some space, when the burning is eaten out, when our former affliction is forgotten, and those sins, that caused it, as we think forgiven: we as stern felons, as bone-bred thiefs, feloniously transgress again, break his statute laws again: steal again, in purloining glory from God, by our scandalous sinning, that we should have given him as his due, by a constant course of repentance: thus we use God, as a perfidious man useth his friend at need; but when our needs and turns are once served, we neglect to observe him, who hath so well served us; we have relation to him, as the Spaniel to the water, use it for a time, for our turns, than once on the dry land, when we have done with it, shake it off.   

SECT. 3. The reason of long afflictions: with Application.  
ANd here my desire is that all and every one of us, chief those that are in affliction, and on whose shoulders the rod of correction hath long laid, whom it most concerns, to take notice of the reason why God keeps oft times his dearest children so long under the rod or ferula, sometimes under one cross, sometimes under more, successively coming (as several waves or blustering winds, or as jobs 
o job 1.14, 16, 18.  messengers with cross news) one in the neck of another; the end of one, being the beginning of another: will any know the reason of this (leaving to pry into the Ark, the secret and inscrutable ends that God hath reserved to himself, he being holy in all his ways, 
Psal. 51.4.  and righteous in all his works, justified ever when he is condemned:) we ourselves from our own experience, if we take true notice of ourselves, and of our crooked natures, rotten rebellious hearts, and perverse dispositions, may easily swim without a cork, and of ourselves, in ourselves, and from ourselves, see sufficient reason, of God's strictest dealings and proceed with us. For the Lord knows what we are, he knows our mould, and metal, whereof we are made, he knows our stern, stubborn, undomable natures, that we are sturdy heifers, hardly brought to the yoke of obedience, without much bowing and bending: headstrong colts, unwilling to take the saddle of subjection, without much beating and breaking: flinty cobbles, marble and stony hearted: knotty Timber, unfit to fill any room, to supply any place in the spiritual building, unless we be much and many times squared, and hewn, and fitted with the axe & hammer of several afflictions 
i Of the admirable use and effects of these afflictions lege Augustinum in Psa. 21. in Psal. 60. in serm. ad Lippium: et in Psal. 125. Greg. lib. 11. moral, et super Ezek. Isodor. de summo bono, l. 3. et soliloq l. 1. Chrysost. hom. 3. de jejunio hom. 44. in Mat. et Saluian. de providentia Dei lib 6. : our Physician knows, we have gross & full bodies, many glutinous and viscous humours, tumors of Pride, Vainglory, Self-love, conceit of ourselves, formality, hypocrisy, emulation at the places and graces of our brethren, with such like, which are so conglutinate together, that they are hard to be purged, and therefore he gives us pill after pill, glister after glister, sends cross after cross, he sees we will grow gross, and fat, and corpulent, and sluggish, yea even lethargical in security, unless he continually diet us with the bread of affliction, and the water of our tears: unless he keep us in continual exercise, as Scipio did his soldiers, and use strict martial discipline, our generous General knows we will grow luxurious, licentious, cowardly cravens, unfit for the Christian camp, unable, as unwilling, to wield any spiritual weapons, against that tripartite Cerberus, that common enemy, the alluring world, the ensnaring flesh, 
Our Mr. Downham his Christian warfare, as also the Tract called joy in Tribulation, In my 7. Helps to Heaven.  the deceiving, destroying Devil. The Lord knows we must as schoolboys be kept at it, held to it, by discipline, as well as doctrine, else we will never prove proficients, but deficients in the school of Christianity; never commence Graduates in any fare degrees of Grace: our Vinitor knows, we are his vines, that must be constantly lopped, and pruned, or else we will grow rank in many superfluous lusts 
* Hinc illud Lactantij, ex prosperitate luxuria, ex luxuria vitia omnia: In hanc rem, lege etiam apud August. de verbis Domini. lib. 2. & cap. 13. cum Greg. lib. 25. Moralium, lib. 1. & Crysologo Curialium Nugarum: habemus etiam exempla in scriptures in Gideone, judg. 8.13, 14. Salomone 1. Reg. 10. v. 26.27. jeroboam 1 Reg. 12.20.28. in Amaso 1 Reg. 24 v. 7.9 Osia 2. Chr. 26.16, 17. in Israelitis, Nehem 4.23. in alijs, Dan. 4. Luk. 12. Luk. 16. Act. 12. in Herode, etc. : he knows we are a strange kind of metal, that will never work kindly without the fire: yea that our hearts are indeed as iron and steel, soft and and tender, and flexible, easy to be wrought any way, in the furnace and forge of affliction; but once out of the fire, they grow hard, and cold, and congealed as ever: yea that as lukewarm water, in the winter's frost, they will freeze faster than ever they thawed, and heated, unless they retain their warmth, by some heat and reflection from afflictions fire. If it were thus with Ezekiah, as my Text and Context plainly demonstrates, and with David and the best of God's servants; then sure it is and will be so with us: our less Grace stands need of quickening, our stronger corruptions have more need of curbing and restraining by the Bit and Rod of Correction, than ever theirs had.    

CHAP. III.  

SECT. 1. The best men subjected to their falls, their failings.  
THirdly in Ezekiah so good and so godly a man, even a Phoenix amongst men, yet as the Scripture saith of Elias a man subject to infirmities 
p james 5.17. , as we are, culpable here in a sin of omission, in ingratitude, in not rendering thanks gratulatory, and Eucharistical Praises proportionable to the mercy received of life and health: after transgressing in a sin of commission, in showing his Treasures in the pride of his heart, to the Ambassadors of the King of Babel: we may see in him the condition of the rest, the best of men: that as the bright Sun is subject to clouding and eclipsing: the clear Moon, to her waning, and shadowing, and overcasting; the strongest and healthfullest body, to a sickening, a fever, an ague, a weakening: the purest lawn to a spotting, and polluting; the nimblest joints subjected to falling; the most metald horse, to his stumbling: so the best of men are subject to sinning: the holiest of men have their infirmities 
* Vide etiam et testimonia patrum praecipue Augustini in Psal. 5. in lib. 1. de nuptijs et concupisc. cap. 25. in tract. 41. in joh. et in lib. 1. de peccat. meritis cap. 23. , as the purest gold hath his dross: the best corn his weeds: the fullest ears, their awnes, and their husks: to begin from the beginning of man's fall, and to reflect ever since on man's frailty, abraham's denying 
q Gen. 12. v. 13. Gen. 20.2. , and twice dissembling his own wife: jacobs' fraudulency and subtlety 
r Gen. 25.31. Gen. 27.19. , in twice defrauding his brother Esau: joseph swearing 
s Gen. 41.15.  by the life of Pharaoh: judah's incest with his daughter in Law: 
t Gen. 38.25.  Rubens incest with his mother in Law 
u Gen. 35.22. : Lot's incest 
* Gen. 49.36.  with his own daughters: Moses his murmuring 
x Numb. 20.12, 13. et 27.14.  and infidelity: Aaron his emulation 
y Numb. 12.2. , and consenting to Idolatry 
z Exod. 23.5. : David his adultery 
a 2 Sa. 11.4.17. , bloodshed, in defiling Vriahs' his bed, his blood, his connivance at his children's sins 
b 1 King. 1.6. , his injustice 
c 2 Sam. 16.4.  towards Mephibosheth, his dissembling 
d 1 Sam. 27.10, 11.  with King Achish, his pride of heart in numbering his people 
e 2 Sam. 24.1. : salomon's Idolatry 
f 1 King. 11. , concubinary uncleanness, Polygamy: with the Polygamy of all the Patriarches: Sampsons' 
g judg. 16.1, 4.  effeminate folly: job 
h job 3.3. , jeremy 
i jer. 20.14, 15, 16. , Elias impatiency 
k 1 King. 19.4. : Zacharies' incredulity 
l Luke 1.20. : Peter's denial 
m Luk. 22.57. , temporising 
n Gal. 2.12, 13. , dissuasion of Christ's passion 
o Matt. 16.22. : Thomas his doubting 
p john 20.25. , and strange diffidence: all the Disciples culpable ignorance, want and weakness of faith 
q Mark. 16.13. : james and john's fiery zeal 
r Luke 9.54. , and aspiring presumption 
s Mat. 20 20, 21 . Paul and Barnabas dissension and division 
t Acts 15.39. . Or to come to history: Augustine's once Manichisme, and luxury 
i Apud Cent. Magd. cent. 5. cap. 10. pag. 1113. , Cyprians 
k Funccius fol. 103. et tom. 1. conc. p. 242.  Rebaptisation, Tertullians' Montanisme 
l Magd. cent. 3. p. 235. , Origens' Idolatry 
m Niceph. lib. 5. c. 12. , Chrysostom and Epiphanius hot and hasty bicker 
n Socrates l. 6. c. 12. et 14. et cent. 3. c. 9 , and carnal mutual revile: Jerome and Ruffinus 
o Extant scripta.  strange and strong unbrotherly oppositions, etc. Or to come to nearer times, Beza his once youthful, light and wanton verses: Luther as also Zwinglius in their heats, and intemperancies every where breaking out in their writings and dispute: Picus Miradula his wanton effeminacy with the Ladies and Courtesans of Rome 
p De eius vita et morte P. jovius , colipsing all that glory which he had won by his learned and witty writings and disputations: together with all these Nevi, as Scultetus calls them 
q Passim in medulla patrum. , these warts, defects and wants, which Illiricus, the German Centuries, and our Moderns observe in the writings of the Fathers, in the Greek and Latin Church 
* Hence have we the errors o● justin Mart. apud Magd. cent. 2. pag. 212. Of Ambrose, apud Osiandrum, in Epit. cent. lib. 3. pag. 391. Of Theophilus, apud eundem cent. 4. l. 4. p. 454 Hence read we too, of good Constantine, murdering his son Licinius, apud eundem, cent. 4. lib. 2. pag. 143. Of Theodosius bloodshed, lib. 4. pag 442. Of the East and West Churches dissenting, apud Funccium, folio 101. Et Magdab. Cent. 2. pag. 152 ad p. 163. : these & all these, with the experience of all Ages, & Times, in all Countries, Churches, Families, etc. do plainly and demonstratively write upon the Columns and Pillars of Truth: That as soon shall we find the heavens ever without clouds, the air without storms, the Sea that moves, without froth: Corn growing without Chaff, or husks; as any mere man, yea the best man, without his sins, his frailties, his infirmities: prudently sing one 
Adam, Sampsonem, Davidem, Salomonem,  
Decepit Mulier: quis modo tutus erit?  
If Adam, Samson, David, Solomon,  
By Women fell: from all sins pure, who one?  Nay, nay, posse non peccare, to have stood in integrity, so fare as to fall or not to fall, was once in the power of Adam's freewill: but now non posse peccare, not to be able to fall at all (since in Adam's fall, we have lost ourselves, and our freewill, as Luther 
t De seruo Arbitrio.  learnedly disputes) this is proper only to God, and the elect Angels, who even by Christ's redemption have obtained the Grace of Confirmation in the purity of their created integrity, without ever danger of falling, much less falling away, as the Reprobate Angels and men do: the very heathen 
u Horatius.  could see thus much, with the eyes of nature, that sine vitijs nemo nascitur, optimus ille, qui minimis urgetur. 
There's no man borne without his faults, his failing,  
The Best is he, in whom sin's least prevailing.  From whence no doubt of it, came also the proverbs; 
Bonus dormitat Homerus: et, Bernardus non vidit omnia.  
Learned Laureate Homer may in somethings wink,  
Nor in best Bernard's brain, doth each truth sink.  As also this; Qui pedibus vadit quat nor, ipse cadat. 
The nimble four-foot Steed, may chance to trip,  
And best of men may fall, or slide, or slip.   
And in these specialties enumerated we have in Ezekiah and the rest, plain evidences of man's humane frailty, his sinning misery.   

SECT. 2. The force of inbred corruption.  
NOw if any will be further inquisitive, in diving into this mystery, (this misery) of man's iniquity; and would know the reasons for his further satisfaction of this sinning condition incident to the best of men: they may be referred I think to these 3. heads, 

respecting God,  
respecting Satan,  
respecting Man himself.    
To begin with the last first. There is in every man duplex homo, as it were a double man, if he be regenerate (for of such we now speak) there is the old man, and the new 
* In me duplex Homo, Caro et spiritus, jacob et Esau, etc. Hieronimus. , (or as divinity useth the phrases) the old Adam and the new: the first Adam, and the second: Grace and nature: flesh, and spirit: corruption, and sanctification; these saith the Apostle, lust the one against the other 
* Gal. 5.17. ; these have in their commotions, contrary motions, appetites, desires, inclinations, affects, effects: betwixt these there is a continual Duel, an irreconciliable civil war, till it be stinted by death: their strive and struggle within the heart, are as the wrestlings 
x Gen. 25.22. See Downam his Christian Warfare.  of jacob and Esau within the womb of Rebecca: the Christian soul, the place of this conflict, is oft, as Rebecca, so greatly distressed, distracted, with the broils & bicker, she knows not oftentimes (she is in such straits) what to say, or think of her own estate, Now, as in all civil wars, as we know (as betwixt Romulus and Remus, Scylla and Marius, Caesar and Pompey, etc.) now the one party had the better end of the staff, now the other 
* Of the effects of these and other civil wars, vide Daneum in Aphoris. polit. p. 18. et p. 21. Pezelitos in postillis part. 3. pag 504. et Antim●tchiauellus l. 2. p. 366. 367. 368. , (as in a pair of weascales) now the one party went up, now the other down: so it is in this spiritual conflict. As it is with two combatants that are weekly in the Field, with Sword, or Rapier, even the stronger may sometimes be foiled: so how ever corruption be in us, as Saul in the Field, pursuing David, the greater party, and Grace be in us, as little David the lesser party, but the stronger because God is with him, and on his side; yet David may fear to fall some day into the hand Saul 
y 1 Sam. 27. , his pursuit is so vehement, and violent: and sure by the allurements, and flatteries of the treacherous flesh, that lays in wait, and ambushment continually to betray the soul, as a domestic inbred Traitor, within the bosom, the soul is often soiled, quelled, overcome, and carried as a manacled and fettered captive to sin, by the strength of corruption; as it was with David, when by that poisoned bullet of Bethshebahs' beauty, 
2 Sam. 11. Cur lumina noxia vidi.  which his treacherous eye shot into his heart, he was so hot and lustfully inflamed, that his fire could not be quenched, till he actually committed adultery with her.   

SECT. 3. The prevailing power of Satan's Temptations.  
SEcondly, as the Apostle saith, we are not ignorant of the wiles of Satan, he goes about (saith St. Peter) as a roaring Lion seeking whom he may devour 
z 1 Pet. 5.8. . He is the serpent that deceived Eve, saith S. Paul 
a 2 Cor. 11.3. , the old Dragon 
b Reu. 12.3.  in the Revelations of S. john: this Lion, this Dragon, this Devil, this Serpent, this Satan, this Tempter 
c Math. 4.1. , (as he was to Christ) this accuser 
d Reu. 12.10.  of the brethren (as he was to 
e 
job 1.9. See Zanchius de sex operibus de malis Angelis. Casman his Angelographic: and Smalcald of the nature of Angels.  
As also Wierus, de prestigijs Demonum. Delrius. l. 2. Disquis. Psellus de Demonibus, Cycogna de Magis, with Augustine de civitate Dei. Of the nature, power and employment of wicked spirits.   job) is another cause of the sins of the Saints: he was chief author of, chief actor in, the fall of the first man, as an envious man whose house being on fire, fires his neighbours too; or having the plague upon himself, seeks to infect a whole town: Satan falling from heaven himself, plots and practiseth man's fall on earth: by the means of the woman, he effects it: This roaring Lion, this Cerberus, or dog of hell, as a slouth-hound being fleshed then, ever since seeks the blood of souls: and for that purpose, as he is a spirit, and so restless; as he is a Devil, and so wicked; as he is Satan, so envious; as a Lion, so powerful; as a serpent, and so subtle: with continuated incessant motion, circling & compassing the earth ᶠ out of his wicked and devilish disposition, he improves all his power and his policy, his might, and his malice, his force, and fraud, uses all his tricks, his traps, his engines, by himself, by his instruments, by outward objects, by inward suggestions, by injected Temptations, from pleasure, profit, and the like, to ensnare men's souls in sin, and so to bring them to desired destruction: and as his malice is against all mankind in general, so chiefly against the Elect, in whom the Image of God is most resplendent, Grace most eminent: his hatred being mainly and immediately against God, against his Christ; it is most extensive against the best servants of this Lord, against the dearest children of this Father 
* The Devil is like a Panther; who when he cannot devour a man, tears his picture, saith Basil. exem. hom. 10. et expressius hom. 50. , hating (as is the manner of his imps in their inveterate malice) even the children, for the father's cause. Rich preys, (souls richliest loaden with precious jewels, lustrous gems: justifying faith, lively hope, ardent zeal, fervent love, the spirit of prayer, Dovelike innocency, invincible patience, etc.) are the most desired booties of this infernal Pirate. Therefore he doth not only fill the heart of Ananias and Saphira with hypocrisy 
* Acts 5.3. , possess the hart of judas by the lusts of Treason 
g john 3.2. , and covetousness, etc. but seeks even to winnow Peter, a disciple 
h Luke 22.31. , a chosen vessel; riseth up against Israel 
i 1 Chron. 21.1. , tempts even David himself the sweet singer of Israel, the man after Gods own heart: neither are the best free from his temptations; no person free, not David, not Peter, not Ezekiah, no not Christ himself in the days of his flesh: no place free, not Paradise 
k Gen. 3. , not the wilderness 
l Matth. 4. To all these is Satan oft alluded by Berchorius in Reductorio Morali, and by Geminianus in summa exemplorum virtutum, et vitiorum. , not the Chamber, not the Temple: no time free, day, nor night; no truce with this Tempter: no weapons unweilded by him, to be victorious in his warfare: for he hath, as a skilful Archer, arrows for every mark; as a Nimrodian hunter, Gins for every beast; as a deceiving fowler, lures, & whistels, & glasses, and nets for every Bird; as a skilful fisher, baits for every fish. Temptations different for every man, accordingly suited, to his Nature, Nurture, Inclination, desires, disposition, calling, education: yea accommodated (by this best observing Physiognomist, that the world hath beside) according to every man's humour, complexion, constitution; joining his suggestions ever so, as he by five thousand year's observance, together with his still retained, created knowledge, conjectures our inclinations: vexing saul's Melancholy 
m 1 Sam. 16.14. , and dejected sadness, to force his desperation: Inflaming David's Sanguine 
n 1 Sam. 16.12. , to luxurious provocations 
o 2 Sam. 11. , and so of the rest: Insomuch that considering Satan's nimbleness in motion, and our sensuality and sluggishness; he a spirit, and we flesh; he ever watching as a waking Dragon, we for the most part sleepy as were the Disciples 
p Luk. 22.46. , even in the greatest perils of his plottings and practices: considering his advantage, he in the air as invisible 
* 
How the spirits were dispersed in the fall, some in the air, some in the earth: whether they be any way corporeal, or no: how they work on our bodies, minds, fantasies: read Aug. l. 9 c 8. l. 10. c. 6. the civet. et l. 5. c. 9 l. 8. c. 22.  
Amb. epist. l. 10. epist. 8. et. 84. Chrys. hom. 53 in 12. Gen. Bartho. de propriet. l. 2. c. 20. Zanch. l. 4. c. 10, 11. de malis Angelis.   (to whom yet we are visible in the works we do, and audible in what we utter, or mutter,) and we on the earth: the enemy's Cannonry planted on the hill, and we exposed in the veil below: considering his wiles and our weakness, his might and our imbecility, his courage (as long fleshed with victories) our cowardice; all these paralleled and laid together, we shall not so much marvel when we see even strong oaks fall, strong pillars in the Church or Common wealth shaken with the violent blasts of his temptations; but we shall much more admire that any one stands, be his graces never so eminent, or is kept from even scandalous falling: we shall not so much be offended at those which sin through frailty, but we shall bless God that the violent streams and torrents of his temptations drive not even all down along before him.   

SECT. 4. God's permission of the falls of the Elect.  
THirdly, the Lord himself permits the false and sins of the Saints, he permits Satan to tempt them: as a master that lets lose his chained mastiff upon a beast, to try the courage and valour of the beast: he leaves his children in the trial, sometimes to themselves, as he did presumptuous Peter; as a mother sometimes leaves a daring adventurous child, to go without hold, till it fall and break the nose, and cry, and bleed, that it should make more of the mother afterwards, and take heed of being so fool hardy the next time: or as the Nurse suffers the child to sing and burn the finger in the candle's flame a little, that it may ever after dread burning: in this sense it is said that the Lord was angry with Israel; and he stirred up David to number Israel, 2 Sam. 24.1. not that God tempted David, or provokes, or stirs up any to sin, for the Lord tempts no man, saith S. james, but every man when he is inescate, (as the fish by the bait) or enticed, is led away by his own lusts 
q james 1.13. Hinc Augustinus allegans hunc locum in respon ad artic. sibi falso impoes. art. 10. & art. 13. Detestanda, inquit, est opinio quae Deum malae voluntatis aut actionis facit authorem. . As well may we say that darkness comes from the Sun, cold from the fire, as evil from God: it is false which Bellarmine objects to Caluin and Melancton, that they make God the author of sin 
* Caluin and Luther are cleared by D. Feild De Ecclesia, and by D. White in his Way to the true Church, etc. : no, the just God is neither author nor fautor of any iniquity, which his soul abhors, and hates: what then, how doth God stir up David? He leaves him to the temptations of Satan, and the corruptions of his own heart: and therefore it is said, 1 Chron. 21.1. that Satan stirred up David to number Israel; how can that be, that God and Satan concur in one action of sin? Yes very well: for in sin, Satan, Man, and God, all concur: 1. Satan temptingly, as in David's adultery, Peter winnowing. 2. Man's will, yielding consentingly, though sometimes with reluctance and resistance: (Satan's seed of temptation being as the father, man's yielding heart as the mother, by which this monstrous issue, this deformed spurious brat of sin is produced.) 3. God concurs two ways: 1. Permissively: 2. Disposingly. 1. Permissively (not operatively,) for God that is liberrimum agens, a free agent, not obliged or tied to give grace to any, further or longer than he will, in the temptation, as he did Adam and Eve, and his Saints ever since, permits their falls. Why will he do so? were it nor better for him to keep and uphold them ever in the fiery trial, then suffer them to be conquered? No. Why so? (and thus comes in the second, that as Oedipus dissolves the knot, and resolves all,) because he knows wisely how to dispose of sin (which he permits) when it is perpetrated and committed, to his own glory, and his children's good. To his own glory? how is that? either to the glory of his mercy in pardoning sin, as he did the sins of David, Peter, Samson, Solomon, upon their true and unfeigned repentance, and satisfaction of the scandalized Church; or to the glory of his justice, in punishing sin, first here in outward plagues upon the body, as he did the Sodomites 
r Gen. 19.24. , the Egyptians 
s Exod. 7.8, 9, 10. chap. , the Philistims 
t 1 Sam. 5.7. , Herod: secondly, in inward plagues upon the soul, as he did on Cain, judas, Saul: thirdly, and in eternal hereafter. And so God that doth none evil actually, operatively; works yet in the evil wisely, providently, dispositively 
u Non agit molum, nec male, sed agit in mal .    

CHAP. IU.  

SECT. 1. God glorified in his mercy in the sins of his Saints.  
ANd indeed (as worthy our discussing) me thinks the Lord in permitting the faults and falls of his servants, or their failings in good duties, as here in Ezekiah, hath a fourfold special reference and relation.  

1. To himself permitting.  
2. To his servants sinning.  
3. To his Saints that yet stand.  
4. To the wicked that stumble.   
All which being considered, first we shall with more caution look to ourselves; secondly, with more charity censure our brethren; thirdly, with less carnality rejoice in their infirmities; fourthly, with more devotion glorify God.  
First, I say the Lord in the sins of the elect hath a special reference to his own glory; that glory of his (to which as to a centre every thing tends 
* joshuah 7.19. Psal. 12.1. Mat. 6.9. john 9.24. Acts 3.12. & 12.23. 1 Cor. 6.20. & 10.31. Philip. 1.20. etc.  in heaven, earth, and hell,) shines as the bright stars in the darkest night, yea as the Sun, through the clouds of the sins of his Saints: he brings good out of evil, light out of darkness: and this as I said, is the glory of his mercy, in pardoning upon their repentance: oh this mercy of his which is his chief attribute, in which he most delighteth 
* De hac divina misericordia lege fusius apud Gregor. Moral. lib. 2. & Bernard. Ser. 88 , that shines amongst the rest, as the Sun amongst the Planets: that is elevate above his truth, as the heavens above the clouds 
(u) Psal. 103.11, 12. : that triumpheth and rejoiceth over justice: Even this Mercy that is over all the Lords works, is most resplendent in the sins of his Saints, in pardoning upon their humiliation sins great for quantity, heinous for quality, many for number, crying for nature, crimson and bloody in hue and colour 
x Esa. 1.16, 17, 18. Ezek. 18.21. Mic. 7.18. joel 2.13. Exod. 34.6. Psal. 86.111.112.145. , as many of these formerly enumerated: oh not only the skill, but the good will of our blessed Physician is wondrously magnified; the virtue of his Balms of Gilead, the vigour of his mercy's mithridate deservedly extolled, that is able and willing even with application of his own blood, (as the Pelican 
y Alciat. in Emblem.  for her young) to cure great ghastly and ulcerous wounds, to pacify and settle distressed consciences; yea even to revive those that were seemingly dead in sins and trespasses: And sure if there were no sinners on earth, where should be the chief exercise of the Lords mercy? Yea, if his Saints should not sinne (for we know the Reprobates never taste of his sealing, assuring, saving, sanctifying mercy; unless with the out-lip, or the tip of a finger; they never drink of the fountains of Shiloh, those are only open for judah 
z Zachar. 13.1.  and jerusalem) if there were none wounded, what need were there of any skilful Surgeon? and if there were none sick and diseased, what occasion were there either of the practice or praise of the most exquisite Physician? What should we regard either the knowledge or use of the most excellent drugs and simples in nature? What reckoning should we make of the most exquisite extractions, the most vigorous quintessence of herbs, plants, minerals, etc. And if there were no sinners, no sins committed by the Saints, the Lord should want the greatest power and praise of his mercy, which is chief exercised where sinning misery is the object: and therefore as the Lord hath daily exercise of his providence even to this day, and of his wisdom in the gubernation and government of the world, in disposing of all actions, events, causes, effects, contraries, contrarieties, evils, good; creatures, animate, inanimate, reasonable, unreasonable; to excellent ends and uses: as he doth still invisibly in the souls and consciences; visibly upon the bodies, goods, good names, and families of Atheists, swearers, drunkards, riotous and profane persons, exercise his justice: so in pardoning, covering, concealing, passing by the sins and culpabilities of his servants, upon their confessing, godly sorrowing, returning, (conditions to which grace is annexed) he doth daily exercise his mercy, and will to the end of the world.   

SECT. 2. The Saints much bettered by their sins.  
SEcondly, even the Saints themselves are bettered by their sins: for if all things, according to the Apostles consolation, 
a Rom. 8.28.  work together for the good of those that love God, (as all the Planets work together by their influence, even the malignant as well as good and benign, for the benefit of these sublunaries 
b Couper in loc, , as all the simples in some compounded Physic, even bitter Aloes, as well as Honey, work together for the health of the Patient) then why not sin? Sure, as an exquisite Physician or Apothecary, that out of venomous Toads, Asps, nuts, Cicutaes, etc. 
* He that reads Gesner de quadrupedibus, & de Serpentibus, etc. Dioscorides and Dodonius Herbals, shall see there is some medicinable extractions from the worst of Animals or Vegetables.  extracts an Antidote against poison, and out of stinking despicable foot-trodden weeds, draws some excellent and sovereign waters, from their leaves and roots, for very useful cures, in inward and outward diseases; so the wise God, even out of the worst, the vilest, the most scandalous transgessions of his servants, can effect his own gracious ends, can both heal them of all their present sores, prevent their future diseases, and make them more healthful and stronger than ever: yea, as experience shows in some, and as the Apostle plainly delineates in the renewed repentance of the Corinthians 
c 2 Cor. 7.11. , the Saints come out of the bed of their sins, as Ezekiah out of his sick bed 
d 2 King. 20. Esay 38. , more humble, more holy, more pious, more penitent: as the Eagle that is wearied comes out of the water, into which she dips her wings 
e Plin. , with a stronger flight, with a more surging ascent towards heaven then ever: with greater care to please God, to walk before him; as a wrong wand'ring Traveller, with a more heedful attention, stronger desires to run the right, the straight, the strait way to Zion; once returning right from his bemoaned wand'ring, with a greater hatred and indignation against sin; as a man against an impostor or deceiver that hath deceived him; as Sampson against Dalilah, or any other penitent person against a harlot that hath betrayed him, with greater fear to offend for hereafter; like the  child that dreads the fire, or fears the water out of which it hath been extract and saved from drowning. Yea, more zealous than ever for God, desirous to restore that glory again to God by all means, by private or public confessing 
f Iosh. 7.19. , as the nature of the offence shall require, that was taken away by scandalous sinning: and thus are the Saints bettered by their sins, God perhaps suffering them once foully to fall, that they may rise for ever 
* Periissemus nisi periissemus O amici, inquit olim Themostocles post exilium. : As those that are Bell-founders deal with their old jarring Bells, the Lord breaks them in pieces, by contrition and godly sorrow, melts them anew in the furnace of affliction, that they may after ring a more sweet and melodious peal of his praises: By marring them once, the Lord ever after mends them and makes them: by pulling them down, he builds them up: by losing their credit with men, they better their conscience with God: yea above all, as spiritual pride is the last enemy that grace subdues 
g 
Cum bene pugnaris, cum cuncta subacta putaris,  
Que magis infestat bincendae superbiarestat.  , as holding out the siege the longest: living (like that messenger which came with news to job) when the rest of sins are dead, breeding (as Serpents out of the reines and marrow of a dead man 
h Plin. lib. 10. cap. 66.  ex venire Bubulum. Vespae. Idem. lib. 11. c. 20. ) out of the very death and mortification of other lusts; even this master Devil is subdued and cast our of his possession, ejection firma, as it were by strong hand, by Gods permitting his proud patient whom he means to cure, to fall into some other sins: for so it is, when the Lord hath bestowed excellent gifts upon some of his children, common or special graces, as the spirit of prayer, wisdom, learning, elocution, prophesying, or the like, and these gifts come to be exercised in some eminent place, in some high and eminent calling, as in the Ministry, Magistracy, or by the chief in the Oeconomy, and the subjects of these gifts, besides their too special notice they take of themselves, Narcissus 
i De Narcisso vide expositionem Ethicam, ex Textoris Theatre lib. 8. pag. 866.  like, becoming enamoured of themselves for them, be further puffed up (as bladders with wind) by the daingerous applauses of the admiring multitude 
k Which applauses once puffed up S. Augustine when he was Rhetoric Lecturer at Milan: and Demosthenes, when they pointed at him, Hic est Demosthenes. , so fare, that they make these gifts that are Gods, as lent them, their own by usurpation, yea their Idols by adoration, still looking at their best, as the Peacock 
l Plin. lib. 10. cap. 20. & Aelianus lib. 5. c. 19  at his proud spread train, and the Swan at his fair feathers, in so much that they forget all duty, all homage to the Donor; The Lord by suffering this inbred corruption of pride, to break out into some great kibe, and visible foul ulcer of other sins, conspicuous to the very eyes of the observing world, and obnoxious to the lash of their whipping tongues, brings them some pegs lower, let's them down by true and serious humiliation, lets them see their foul feet, causeth them to detest and abhor themselves, makes them stoop to admonition, makes them weep at his correction, opens their ears to receive instruction, and every way betters them, in what ever they were (but did not see) amiss, by a thorough reformation; and so, as one nail drives out another, the Lord by other sins drives out this lordly lionly pride, and self exaltation, and rivers in the place this so much loved and approved humiliation.   

SECT. 3. The good use which those that stand, make of the sins of those that fall.  
THirdly, the permitted fall of some Saint may be a good caveat and caution to others, that as yet stand firm and fixed in the obbe of grace, according to the Apostles rule, to take heed lest they fall: it may be to all others, Preachers and Professors, as Senecharibs' Epitaph 
m Luthere Comment. in Genes. cap. 33. pag. 504. : 

In me intuens, pius esto.   

In looking upon me.  
See holy that thou be.   since, Quod cuiquam contigit, id cuivis: That which happens to any one, may happen to every one. Hodie mihi, cras tibi: 
Though that this day it be my lot,  
To morrow thou mayst come to pot.  It sorts as well the funeral of our credit, as of our corpse. Sometimes the Dogs are beaten, that the Lions may fear; but when the Lions themselves fall so dejected, their heroic spirits so fare daunted, that every Mouse may run over them, every Frog frisk upon them, the crow of every dunghill Cock affright them; oh what need have the lesser beasts to fear the hunter's Gynn, and ensnaring trap! When tall Oaks fall, the strong pillars come down, the one by violent blasts, the other by earthquakes, the little tender striplings may easily be borne down, the thin daubed walls may soon be washed away: oh the example of an eminent man in zeal, place, grace, etc. as it is an excellent light, set on a beacon, so long as it shines bright, and burns; so even when the light of his good life and doctrine is eclipsed, and his day gone, even his darker twinkling may serve as candle in a lantern, to show a wise passenger the way in the night: yea it may serve perhaps as the light on some high lantern, at the mouth of the Haven, to the seaman, to avoid the dangerous rocks, and steer aright into the Port. As in vindictive justice, so perhaps in permissive sins, the Lord propounds good ends: ut poena ad paucos, exemplum ad omnes perveniat, that some few may fall, that the rest may fear; that some few may be corrected by the mulct of sin, all bettered and directed aright, from the consideration of the fearful example of the sinner: 
Similes.  and indeed who (that hath either Art, or heart in Navigation) being in a little pinnace, will not steer as fast as he can, from some Gulf, in which he sees some goodly ship before his eyes swallowed: from some Rock on which he sees her split: from some quickesand on which she is gravelled. Who that sees a nimble footed man, walking on the ye perhaps with a Pike staff in his hand, falling for want of heedful footing, and breaking an arm, or a leg, or some joint, will not, being to pass the same slippery place, look very carefully, curiously & circumspectly to every foot he sets, for fear of falling, and harming; ever poising the ye, for fear of breaking, and drowning.  
Without stretching the Metaphor, it is known, the world is the Sea 
n Illustrate Reneccius in Clavi scripturae. , the places on which we walk, are full of ye, brittle, slippery: the Passengers over this glassy sea, these slippery ice, are the Saints: their slips, are falls, wounds in their credit and conscience, now he, that sees, the strongest, the nimblest, the most cautelous of his footings, to slip, trip, stumble, yea fall and tumble before him: and is not cautelous and circumspect over his own station and standing, hath little wit, less Grace; he is worse than the horse and Mule without understanding, for all the switching and spurring which can be used, will not cause the travelling horse to enter into the quagmire, into which he sees another plunged before him, nor all the beating make the sluggish ass, descend the craggy and rocky passage in which he sees his fellow ass, improvidently fall'n before him: Neither will the bird come into the net, in which she sees another flackering before her; and therefore the Fouler must kill, or take out those already caught, ere he catch more: neither will the Rat come into the trap, in which she sees and hears another squeak, and cry: yea some have thought it a good means to rid the house of all these vermin, by burning one of them quick: the rest avoiding as frighted by her cry, and from her smell. But leaving beasts (which yet as Tutors and Schoolmasters may read many good Moral, yea Theogicall lessons, to imprudent and improvident men, as they do in many places of Scripture 
o Prou. 6.6. Prou. 30.24, 25, 26, 27. job c. 37, 38, 39 jer. 8.7. Esay 1.4. Math. 10.18. Math. 23.37. See also Mr. Topsel epistola dedicatoria, before Gesner translated. ) what man is so unwise that going over a narrow bridge with his fellow and friend, more youthful perhaps and nimble than himself, seeing him for want of circumspection fall in the river before him, either to his drowning, or endangering: will not look more carefully to his own feet, go more softly, without that precipitate haste, which perhaps was prejudicial to his fellow, hold him by the rails, or the rope, that is drawn by the side, for the safer passage: yea what soldier seeing his foolhardy fellow-soldier, by his unadvised, unnecessary, presumptuous advancing of himself upon the besieged walls, struck pat in the pate, with a bullet, will presently without any need or warrant, in a rash humour, do the like desperate deed, unless he be weary of his life? or what servant seeing his fellow servant fall down instantly dead before him, by the tasting of daingerous & deady poison (mistook perhaps by the likeness for sweet sugar, Mastic, Olybanum, White Rice, or the like) will so well love his dead fellow, or so ill love himself, as to ear of his baneful drugs? or pledge him in his poisonful dregs? The application is easy to those that are ocular, and understanding, and consider my scope in enlarging the point, by these Parables. A word, yea a wink is enough, to a wise man: Praemonitus, Praemunitus, he forewarned, is forearmed: he sees his face in another man's Glass, reads lectures to himself out of other men's Tragedies, grows more wise, by others follies, more learned, as tutored and instructed by other men's errors, keeps his right course the better by others wanderings: the righteous will consider and lay to heart his own frailties, by others failings: as the Prince's son, that is any thing intelligent, will see his own deservings, when he see● other Boys bet & bright, for less irregularities than he hath fallen into: whereas on the contrary, bray a fool in a mortar, & he will not understand: All the examples of the sins or sorrows of the Saints, preached and pressed to him, are as music to a deaf man 
p Surdo narratur fabula. judg. 16.27. ; meats to a distempered sick man; colours to a blind man: they move him as much either to compassionate the sinner, or his own soul, as the crack of a fallen Oak moves a rock, or a stone. Scilicet id curet populus: what is that to them? unless to make sport with, as the Philistines with that despised Samson, nay they grow more proud, more presumptuous by it, as the Prologue to the Tragedy of their ensuing, approaching ruin   

SECT. 4. The Reprobates more hardened by the sins of the elect, and their repentance hindered.  
FOurthly and lastly, God's permission of the falls of his servants, hath also no small relation and reference even to the wicked and reprobate themselves: for as all things work together for the good of the elect, and for the furtherance of their salvation 
q Rom. 8.28. See with Parr the Scoth Cowper in locum ; so all things (and so amongst the rest, even the sins of the elect themselves) co-work together to the furthering & setting forward of the danation of the reprobate: those that out of their own wicked inclination, & perverse disposition are so proclive & propense to sin, that they run headlong into sin, as the horse into the battle, with a vehement precipitation, haled with the swinge and sway of their unbridled affections and driven with the whirlwind of Satan's temptations that they cannot be bridled, in their outrageous courses, by the bit and curb of the word, and spirit; stinted or stayed by mercies, or judgements threatened, felt, or feared, from running to hell, their centre, more than a stone or bowl, or great Millstone, from running down a hill, till it come to the bottom, drinking up iniquity with greediness, and sin like water; scorning counsel, hating correction, snuffing up a●l admonition, as the wild ass doth the wind: all the means that God useth for their reformation being as oil spilt upon the ground, as plasters spent or misspent on an uncurable wound 
r Vulnus insanabile c●se resecandum. . It is just with God even to send these packing faster, that make such speed to their perdition, to lay as it were the Rod and spur to them, and let them have the head, and the bridle lose, that of their own voluntary thus gallop and post with speed to destruction: giving them up as the Lord did the morally wise, really foolish Gentiles 
s Rom. 1.21, 24. , even to the lusts of their own hearts, hardening their hearts further in justice by the substraction of his grace, and by the scandalous lives of some professors, when they first harden their own hearts like Pharaoh 
t Exod. 8. et Ex. 9 , and will not be softened in mercy: to such, the sins of the Saints are as stumbling blocks laid in the way, on which they stumble, & fall, & break their necks: for they, as blind Beetles, and Owls, delighting only in their dark; seeing clearliest in the night of their sins, but shutting their eyes, and seeing nothing (or at best, but purblind) in the clearer day and light of the rest of their good life, and sun of their Graces, as scarabaean fleas feeding only on the dunghill 
u In stereore viwnt, et semen in Globum ibidem emittunt, Aelianus, l. 9 c. 16 et Clemens, lib. 5. Stromaton. etc. , and delighting in the ill sent of their scandal; as swine ever rooting in their weeds, not regarding their flowers, taking their bran and rejecting their Wheat; casting away the whole Cup or Plate, for one rent or flaw; blemishing the whole body (though never so sound) as ulcerous & leprous, for one wart or some few blisters or blains that break out; contemning and condemning the whole life of the most sanctified Christian, as sensual and sinful, for some few infirmities, and failings in some particulars: their corruption by this means helped forward, by the devil's delusion, is more quickened, animated, fleshed and encouraged, in all profane and irregular courses? Yea by the sins of the Saints they are faster chained in their voluntary prison, further bound apprentice to Satan, for the whole term of life, resolutely contracted and married to their beloved sins, never to forsake them, till death them departed, made ten fold more the children of the devil then before: for besides their former prejudice already specified; as from particulars (like bad Logicians, worse Divines) concluding generals, condemning all the Disciples for one suspected judas; all proselytes and professors for one detected Ananias 
h Act. 5.1, 2, 3. , or Saphira; reviling and hating all profession, all religion for the frailties or faults of some professors formerly reputed religious, & held as holy ones: to their own confusion, they from these false premises make this conclusion, with out-cries, clamours and vociferation: Nay fie upon them all, these Puritans, these precisians, etc. soul shame take these puritanical preachers with their disciples, these holy brethren, these professors, these Bible-bearers, we may see what they are, vile hypocrites, all birds of a feather, no barrels of them better Herring, they are all alike: hath not such a one done thus, and thus. etc. nay, and this be their profession, Lord keep me from being one of them, if this be their religion, etc. And thus from staring they run stark mad, from being before profane, they turn flat Atheists, hickscorners of God, of Grace, of all religion: growing by this means, from something to stark nought; whereas before by some good motions cast into their hearts, they were hover and wavering, sometimes as a feather that hangs in the air, whether they should better their lives or no; in some flashes perhaps at a Sermon, as sermon-sicke (as some are sea-sick) half persuaded to be Christians like Agrippa 
i Acts 26.28. : now by this means, their sparks are quenched, they frieze faster than ever, like Moab, they are frozen even in their dregges, and purpose to continue in their sins as they do without any revolution, in a settled resolution: and thus these sons of Beliall (as spiders from weeds) suck and drain their poison from the sins, and slips of the best: yea as in the same pasture in which the ox finds good pasture, the sheep good grass, the Bee good flowers for honey, the Toad finds matter of poison; so in the best, and worst of the life, and conversation of a professor of religion, whereas a good and a wise hearted Christian, finds a spur and precedent of virtue, and an Antidote and preservative against vice, the wicked man on the contrary finds a Remora, and an obstacle to any good; an Incendary to his lusts, yea a pleader, and a proctor for his profaneness; and this comes to pass, by the just judgement of God, upon the reprobate, that when they will not trace the upright steps of the godly, & insist in their courses, they should stumble upon their sins, and frailties, as on so many stones of offence, and rocks of irrecoverable ruins. The use of this point I should now urge, but the time having overtaken me, being swifter, than my tongue: I refer them, till the afternnoone.     

The second Sermon.  

CHAP. V.  

SECT. 1. Charitable censuring of our sinning brethren, prescribed and persuaded.  
AS you may remember, besides other points, (which I pretermit) we have lately seen the Lord permitting the sins of his own Saints, for his own glory pardoning: for the good of the sinner repenting: for the good of others that stand sincere, for their cautelous preventing: for the further obduration of the reprobate stumbling: The uses from the point as obvious, to ourselves, are these:  
First, to be charitable in our censures, towards those, 
1. Use.  of whose sincerity we have been well persuaded, though in some things we find them to have failed, though in every thing they have not answered our expectation, yea though at sometimes, in some temptations, the Lord have far left them to themselves, and to the farprevailing of their corruptions: let us take heed of rash, false and uncharitable judging of our brethren, in respect of some special sins, or sufferings: the judgement of verity belongs unto God, 
jer. 17.9, 10.  who as the trier of the heart, and searcher of the reines, knows what is in man, his better, and his worse, his gold, and his dross; his measure of sanctification and corruption, yea his present, and final estate, to whom he riseth and falls, as to his own master: the judgement of charity belongs unto us, 
Deut. 29.29.  secret things belong unto God, revealed things unto us: It is hard to discern an hypocrite or hypocrisy, till God do himself discover it, as he did the hypocrisy of judas, Demas, Ananias, Saphira, and diverse others: we cannot attain to that which Momus 
* Apud Valerium Maximum.  wished, to have windows in men's hearts: the heart is the Sanctum Sanctorum, into which God himself enters, and sometimes his Priests, his Ministers; when God reveals unto them, the heart of an Hypocrite, as he did judas to the Disciples 
k john 13.26. , Demas to Paul 
l 2 Tim. 4.10. , Simon Magus and Ananias to Peter 
m Act. 8.21, 22, 23. et Act. 5.3, 4. , which is rare and extraordinary: but to call or hold a man an hypocrite, whose general course of life and conversation hath been conscionable, painful, and sincere in his special; zealous, and devout in his general calling, for some few failings, and aberrations; for some errors in judgement, or corruptions in life, yea, though perhaps once or twice in his course or race of Christianity, 
Similes.  very wide wand'ring, very offensively falling or stumbling; from hence to conclude that he never had, more than common Grace, or that his heart was never sincere with God, is as for a man to conclude against both the rules of Physic and experience, that a man is unfound at heart, in a consumption in his lungs, or rot at liver, because of some kibes, blames, or carbuncles which now and then break out in the flesh or skin: or as though a tree were festered at the root, and rot in the sap, because the bark in some places is piled and fall'n off, the fruits dwined with the eastern wind, blasted or worm eaten: or that a horse were heart sick, because of some wind gauls, splints, or spavins he puts our, or because his back is galled, his feet overreached or enterfere, or his fetlocks have the scratches? No certainly, one Swallow makes no Spring, saith experience 
* una Hirundo non facit ver. Erasm. in Adagiis. ; one act makes no habit, saith Philosophy 
* V●a actio non facit habitum. Beda ex Aristotele. ; a vertigo or megrim in the head, or cramp & convulsion in the sinews, or scyatica in the hip, or ache in the bone, or gout in the joint, (which is fare enough from the heart) argues not a man heartsick, saith Physic; and some failings, though perhaps in some things scandalous, argue no hypocrite, saith Divinity: for if this were a demonstrance of an hypocrite, had our ridged Cato's, or severe censurers lived in the days of Abraham, jacob, judah, joseph, Lot, Moses, David, Ely, and the rest of the Patriarches; of Peter, Thomas, james, john, and the Apostles; of Augustine, Epiphanius, Tertullian, jerom, amongst the Fathers; and so in the best and purest times, in which we have shown the failings of the best, none being able to say, his heart is clean; then sure those that were Saints in their times in earth, and now are Saints in heaven, by the computation of these judgers (which will needs enter into a praemunire against God, and take his office out of his ha●d) even these had been ranged and ranked in the beadrole and catalogue of Hypocrites, and in their censure, as sure excluded heaven, as unmerciful rash hypocritical judgers must be, without repentance, extruded into hell, Mat. 7.1. james 2.13.  
Nay certainly it hath been always my opinion, if not judgement, (and perhaps I have been taught something, as Adam knew good and evil by experience) that as the very hypocrite and natural man by the help of nature, conversation, good company, a powerful Ministry, restraining grace, common gifts, may for the matter perform even the strictest duties of Christianity, public and private, in the Church and family, which the Orthodox Christian doth in sincerity, as appears by Esau's weeping 
n Heb. 12.16. , judas his repenting 
o Mat. 27.1, 2. , saul's confessing 
p 1 Sam 15.24. , the Pharises praying 
q Luke 18.13. , Simon Magus his baptism ʳ, Herod's hearing 
s Mark 6.20. , and reverend respect of the Ministry, Demas his conversing with Paul 
t 2 Tim: 4.10. , and professing, with the like; and yet but all a fair thread, a cobweb Lawn, spun by this Spider Hypocrisy: So on the contrary, even the true sincere servant, the dear child of God, by the strength of temptation, by the traps and plots of the wicked, by a desertion for a time, God leaving him to himself (as the Nurse or Mother doth the child without hold, or as the General retires from some fight Soldier, as joab 
u 2 Sam. 11.16, 17.  did from Urias) he may fall for the matter into the very same sin with the natural man, he may act the very same material part, and sympathise in very many grievous circumstances: as for instance, Gehezi lies and dissembles with his master Elishah 
* 2 King. 5.25. ; Abraham lies and dissembles twice, once with Pharaoh 
x Gen. 12.18, 19 , another time with Abimelech concerning Sarah 
y Gen. 20.2. : (for the child of God may fall twice into the very same sin, not only as Peter did, in one heat, as they say, and one passion 
a Luke 22.58. Vno ictu, uno actu. , but even in spaces and times intervenient, in several spaces, places, with several persons, yea after some caveats and warnings from God, or from man, as Sampson in his effeminate folly with the harlot of Azzah 
b judg. 16.1. , and after his fair escape 
c vers. 2, 3. , after that with treacherous deluding destroying Dalilah 
d vers. 4, 5, 6. ,) so Herod we know commits incestuous adultery with his brother Philip's wife 
e Mat. 14.4. , and after that (as the usual fruit of such filth, A malo ad peius, from evil to worse) being reproved, seals it with the blood of a great Prophet 
f vers. 10. , joining murder to uncleanness: did not David 
g 2 Sam. 11.  parallel him as just, (or rather as unjust) in wickedness, for the outward acts, (we leave the repent effects) as ever Plutarch paralleled the Greeks' and Romans in worthiness: for David defiles the bed of Urias, in his adulterizing with his wife, and after in carnal policy to salve all, (Oh the salve fare worse than the sore) defiles his hands and his heart with Urias his blood: yea, the child of God may have many failings, yea scandalous fall, such as may even exasperate the Lords justice, procure wrath, (at least rods and scourges in temporary chastisements) after his serious humiliation in some repent transgression: for leaving what in charity might be urged from Abraham and Samson against our Didimists and sceptics in this disputable point: did David's repent lust and bloodshed, so absolutely mortify and kill every lust, in the root, that it never sprouted into any superfluous sprigs any more: was he then so washed that he never was further polluted? I say as Samuel 
h 1 Sam. 15.15.  to excusing Saul, What then means the bleating of the sheep? how is it we hear after of his most unequal partiality, his strange credulity, his palpable injustice, upon the suggestion and wrong information of a treacherous flattering Ziba, without examination of circumstances, (a great fault in a judge, more in a King) that he gives away half the lands of true, honest, humble hearted Mephibosheth, the son of that fidus Achates, his dear jonathan, unto a perfidious Sycophant 
i 2 Sam. 16.1, 2, 3, 4, 5. etc. ; yea, (omitting his dissembling 
k 1 Sam. 21.13, 14. , and lying 
l 1 Sam. 27.8, 9, 10, 11, 12.  in the Court of the King of Achis, his partiality & Ely-like 
m 1 Sam. 3.13.  connivance at the faults of his cockered children 
n 1 King. 1.6. , his neglect of justice upon the house of Saul, for saul's bloody perfidious zeal in murdering the Gibeonites, for which even Israel smarted 
o 2 Sam. 21.1, 2 , his rash infringed vow 
p 1 Sam. 25.22.  for bloody revenge upon Nabal, etc.) did he not in the pride of his heart by his instrument joab 
q 2 Sam. 24.1, 2 1 Chron. 21.1, 2, 3, 9, 10, 11. etc.  number the people of Israel, from Dan to Beershebah, in which, resting more in the arm of flesh and the strength of Israel, then in the Lord, whom he had ever found his Rock, his refuge, his Asylum, his Sanctuary, etc. making him victorious over the Bear, the Lion 
r 1 Sam, 17.34. , Goliath, Saul, the Philistines, all his enemies, etc. the Lord was so displeased, that he sent him as harsh a message by Gad as before he had done by Nathan, and as terrible in the execution, cutting off by the plague and pestilence in a trice 70000 of his people 
* 2 Sam. 24. : so that from these instances, to judge the child of God an hypocrite, for particular sins, when in the general course of his life he walks with God, as did Enoch 
s Heb. 11.5.  and Elias; is as though a skilful Lawyer should be esteemed no better than a Pettifogger, or an Ignoramus, because perhaps he may miss it in some plead, or mistake it some book Cases: as though an expert experimented Physician should be held a Quacksalver, because he fails in the symptoms, causes, or cures of some diseases: as though we should estimate an exquisite Musician no better than a Fiddler, that by the untuneablenesse of his instrument, or the hoarseness or over-straining of his voice, should miss it in some strains, in vocal or instrumental music: yea as though a Laureate Poet should be held a Poetaster, as a Bavius or a Mevius, because he is not so observant in every quantity of every syllable in an Hexamiter, Saphicke, or jambique verse: yea or to conclude it with a homely simile, as though a well metald nimble footed horse, should be accounted a stumbler, when he stumbles but very seldom, perhaps but once or twice in a days riding, though he seldom fall down right, or if he do by accident, upon some stone, or slipshod, yet nevertheless speedily recovers himself again, without any great damage to his master, and looks better to his feet ever after: Sure he were as the horse without understanding that would make those conclusions. Saint james makes the application, In many things we sinne all 
t james 3.2. ; and saith holy job 
u job 4.18. , The Lord hath found folly in Angels, how much more in the sons of men: yea Adam sinned in the state of integrity 
* Gen. 3. , how much more we in the state of corruption? Oh Lord if thou shouldest be severe to mark what is done amiss, oh who may abide it! who can answer thee one for a thousand 
x job 9.2, 3. ? not I: but abhor myself in sackcloth and ashes 
y job 42.6. 2 King. 20. . David, a man after thine own heart, had his frailties; yea Ezekiah, an excellent instrument of thy glory, after thou hadst humbled him on the bed of sickness, raised him, when there was but a step betwixt him and death, did too soon forget thee and thy mercies, that so mercifully, so mindfully remembered him: yea and after that wrath came upon him and judah and jerusalem for his pride, and was removed upon his humiliation, as though his sore had been but skinned over, superficially healed, and rankling at the bottom, it breaks out again in the very same place and leaves a second a greater scar than the former; for in the same pride of heart, 
2 Chron. 32.  as the original of another provocation, he shows his treasury to the Ambassador of the King of Babel: as an unadvised Traveller shows his purse, or vaunts his gold to a greedy thief. Oh Lord what is man, saith David, that thou art mindful of him 
z Psal. 8.4. ? Nay Lord, what is man if thou be'st not mindful of him? what is man when he is unmindful of thee? forgetful of thy mercies, not fearing thy judgements? Oh, what is the little Chicken or Goseling, that regardless of the clock, or the wings of the dam, wanders alone, till the Puttock or the Hen-arrow swaps and devours it? What is the Lamb or silly Sheep, that straggling from the rest of the flock, or from the eye and rod of the Shepherd, eats Rot-grasse, falls into the ditch, as leaping into forbidden pastures, or is seized upon by the fangs of the Dog, or the wiles of the wild Dog-Fox? Oh who is he but may say, with thy servant David in some particulars? Lord, I have done very foolishly, now I beseech thee forgive the sin of thy servant 
a 2 Sam. 24.10. : Oh I am in a great strait, but let me fall into thy hands, not into the hands of men, not into the mouths of men, for man's mercies are cruelties.  
Secondly, from hence also let the Novations 
* De istis Novatianis cum eorum haresibus, vide fusius apud Funccium fol. 103 Euseb lib. 6. cap. 43. Epiphanium Philastrium, Magd. Cent 3. p. 99 586. & in Tom. 2. Concil. pag. 227. , Catharists, Anabaptists and all perfectists, that dream of any absolute perfection here in this life in any Church, or in any member of the Church militant, stay their precipitate haste, and wait God's leisure, seek it not per saltum, by such high and hasty leaps, but come to it gradatim, as Graduates to their Academical graces, by degrees, they may have golden dreams of perfection in earth, but never attain it till they be triumphant in heaven.   

SECT. 2. Cordials of consolations to be applied to the sorrowful sinner.  
THirdly, from hence also let me whet the exhortation of the Apostle, that if any man sin of frailty, let him be restored with the spirit of meekness 
b Gal. 6.1. : as we would be willing to improve our best skill to the setting and jointing of a bone that is broke, to assuage the pains of the Gout, Stone, Stranguary, , of any friend, neighbour, brother, by any oils, unctions, lenitives, or any good means we could use; so much more in charity and Christianity, let us labour the rejoining and rejointing against of a member of Christ, that by sin is broken for a time from the visible Church, the body of Christ: 
Similes.  Oh if we would pluck a horse or an ox out of a ditch 
* Cadit Asinus est qui sublevat, cadit anima non est qui sublevat. etc. , or to help up an overloaden pack horse from the over-whelming pressure of his load, under which he lies, and groans: how much more mercy should we show to the soul of our brother, grieving and groaning under the insupportable burden of sin, which lies so sadding upon the conscience, as the Liver upon the Heart in the disease called the Nightmare 
* Ephialtes. , that the poor patient can neither stir hand nor foot, but lie, and cry, and dye in the distress of despair, unless help be afforded? Oh that we were ready (chief those that have the tongue of the learned) 
Esay 50.4.  to speak a word to the weary in due season, that with that good Samaritan we would pour in the oil and wine of spiritual consolations, 
Luke 10.30, 31 32, 33.  into those that are sinne-wounded, falling into the hands of these Thiefs and Pirates of the soul, the Flesh, the World, the Devil. Oh that we were as willing to improve our best Talents to administer heavenly comforts out of the Treasury and Fountain of all comforts, the Book of God, as Seneca, Plutarch, Boetius, our late Lipsius, and others, 
In libris de Consolation.  have been ready to prescribe Moral and Philosophical comforts in all humane crosses.  
Oh this mourning with those that mourn 
c Rom. 12.15. 1 Thess. 5.14. , this sympathising with one another's miseries, as the members 
d 1 Cor. 12.26. 1 Cor. 13.1, 2, 3  of one body (the head that feels the grievance of the foot, the heart that feels the dolours of the hand) this bearing one another's burden, as it is commanded by the Apostle, so it is an excellent point and part of Christianity; it is a notable expression and intimation of love, which is the bond of perfection; the very vigour, and life and soul of a Christian, the exercise and improving to the best of every grace; without which a Christian is but keycold, or at best but lukewarm; and his gifts and talents of learning, knowledge, wisdom, zeal, unused, nor employed to the edification and instruction of the ignorant, the consolation especially of the weak and weary Christian, the erection and lifting up of the dejected and drooping soul; are but as candles set under a bushel, as talents wrapped in a napkin, or buried in the ground; or as Gold, rusty and imprisoned in the Miser's purse; yea, but as tinkling Cymbals.   

SECT. 3. The unwarrantable strictness and stearnnesse of some indiscreetly zealous, censured.  
What then shall we say to those that think themselves something, that hold their penny good silver, as they say; that have a name like the Church of Sardis, to be alive 
e Reu. 3.1. , yet show as much love as there is fire in a dead coal. How many be there, that after their brethren be fall'n through frailty in any sin, (though once whilst they stood, more eminent in place and grace then themselves,) yet when their Sun is something clouded and eclipsed, they stand aloof off them, as jobs friends did from distressed job 
f job 2.12, 13. ; they keep a distance from them, as the proud Pharisee 
g Luke 18.11.  in the Temple from the penitent Publican; they say as it is in the Prophet, Come not near me, for I am holier than ye: they wonder at them, as at Arabian monsters, they look at, gaze at them as an amazed Deer, they view them wistly, as a man looks through his fingers at something: they look at them with astonishment, as men look at the Sun or the Moon when it is eclipsed, or at a fair house when it is set on fire; and how ever perhaps they are not so graceless as the Babylonians, to triumph over captived Israel 
h Psal. 137.3. , and to say as the Edomites, and as David's enemies, There, there, so would we have it, there goes the game; as the profaner sort iubilize and rejoice; yet they will how'wt and shout in detestation, not only of the sin which is tolerable, but of the person 
* Odi peccatum non personam, vitium non vitum. , which is unwarrantable and uncharitable: As the lesser birds fly and cry after the hated Hawk and Owl; (they will not come in his company, though he be both willing and desirous to give all satisfaction possible to the scandalized Church, both public and private,) they fly his house, his abode, his presence, as if he had the plague sore; nay as some have tried the stern inhumanity, and almost Scythian and barbarous cruelty of some indiscreet austere zealists, as though they were hewn our of Caucasus, and had drunk the milk of Tigers, they are as wondrously grieved and exasperated, that any good man or great man of place, give them countenance, good look, or good word, or houseroom, as the Pharisees were grieved and vexed that our Saviour Christ feasted with Matthew the Tole-gatherer 
i Mat. 9.11. , and lodged with Zacheus 
k Luke 19 7. , and eat and drunk with Publicans and Sinners: yea, if he be such an one, that hath been employed in the Ministry, and hath any way transgressed 
* As the Derby Minister, who wrote The vnburthening of a loaden soul. , (though never so seriously repent) they marvel how he dare be so bold and impudent as to be seens in a Pulpit, though his zeal and desire to do good, and to bring glory to God, after his peace made with God, be more fervent than ever it was: as though David's practice were no precedent, either for a penitent preacher or professor, where he desires the Lord to restore unto him the joy of his salvation, and then would he teach God's ways unto the wicked, and sinners should be converted unto him 
l Psal. 51.12, 13. , though it seems they either know not, or acknowledge not any such Text; but especially for any comfort or consolation by word, writing, conversing, conference, that a distressed soul gets now a days from most men, chief from some that would be counted most strict; in some places, it is as oil got out of a stone, or water out of a flint: it is such as judas got of the Scribes and Pharisees 
m Mat. 27.3, 4. , unless this be all the cold comfort, gravatis addere gravamina, to add burden to burden, grief to grief, affliction to affliction: when one is down, as the Italian proverb and practice is 
* Prescribed by the Florentin● Matchavill. , to set their foot upon their necks: too many alas know where the shoe pincheth and wrings them in this kind, that too justly may complain of their Swallow friends, that fly from them in the winter of affliction, and as David said of his kinsfolks and acquaintance, stand a loof off from them; as he in the heathen cries, Oh friends, no friends 
* 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 : to expostulate a little this case, with those that I here justly tax, in this culpable carriage towards some that are fall'n.   

SECT. 4. The restitution and restauration, of the repenting sinner persuaded.  
FIrst, Is here any expression, and demonstration of love, which who wants, is destitute of every saving grace? can there be a fire without heat, a Sun without light, a living soul without motion, or love without action, motion, or manifestation, if it be at all? this love saith one, it is active, or else it is not 
n Amor si sit magna operatur. Greg. .  
Secondly, is this according to the precept of the Apostle, that commands the incestuous Corinthian to be comforted after his dejection, lest he be swallowed up too much of sorrow 
o 2 Cor. 2.6, 7. ?  
Thirdly, is it any thing consonant to the Apostles practice, who himself comforted, commended and encouraged the Corinthians by a Consolatory letter, after their godly sorrowing, with enumerated effects? 2 Cor. 7, 8, 9, 10, etc.  
Fourthly, is this consonant to the precept of Christ himself, that we should be merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful 
p Luke 6.36. , threatening judgement merciless, to them that show no mercy 
q jam. 2. v. 13. ? Now are nor the chief and principal mercies spiritual? is not a sinne-burthened-soule, a greater object of mercy to be relieved, than the feeding of a hungry, clothing of a naked, visiting of a diseased body 
* Multo misericordius operatur, qui circa animas infirmorum, quam erga corporum agrotantium: qui panem esurientibus tribuit. Augustin. et Bern. serm. 4. ?  
Fiftly, did not our Saviour Christ himself not only invite and excite 
r Mat. 11.28. , but every where receive and graciously entertain repenting sinners 
s Luke 15.1. , even publicans & harlots 
t Mat. 8.11. Luke 7. , when they came unto him, as appears in many passages in the Gospel? Now shall he entertain such upon their humiliation, and shall we disdain them? shall he accept them as the head, and shall the Church his body reject them? shall he open his arms to embrace thm, and shall his members shut their hands and their hearts too against them? and open their mouths to deject them, to disgrace them? Strange to see the head move one way, and the body another.  
Sixtly, is it not Christ's precept, I will not say an Evangelicall counsel, but an express command to Peter, and so consequently to every Peter, every Pastor, to forgive his offending brother upon confessing and acknowledging, not only until seven times, but until seventy times seven times 
u Mat. 18.21, 22. ? and if every member is bound to this, much more the whole Church.  
Seventhly, as Christ himself with his own mouth exhorted, and dismissed 
* joh. 8.10, 11.  the woman taken in the act of Adultery, and comforted the weeping, washing penitent woman 
x Luk. 7.48. , so he sent Ananias with his own commission to comfort even whilom bloody persecuting Saul, now three days mourning disconsolate 
y Acts 9.111 12, 13, etc. : how much more ought those to be comforted of the Church that have mourned not only three days with Paul, but thirty times three, as a Dove in the Desert, or a Pelican in the wilderness, that have eaten the bread of affliction longer than Daniel, more than twenty one days 
z Dan. 10.3. , and that every night do water their bed with weeping, and their couch with tears 
a Psal 6.6. ?  
Eightly, if God himself turn away even deserved wrath from his children, upon their humiliation, as here from Ezekiah and judah in my Text: shall the Church continue her wrath against repentant sinners, where God stints his? will not the Church wade after, where God breaks the ye?  
Ninthly, hath not the Church always even from the beginning, as a merciful mother opened her arms, yea her breast and bowels to receive her repenting, returning sons, as that merciful Father in the Gospel 
b Luk. 15.20. , did his humbled prodigal? Was not the Incestuous Corinthian received in Paul's Time 
c 2 Cor. 2.6, 7. ? The Emperor Theodosius after his Thessalonian massacre received in St. Ambrose his time 
* Le●c historiam apud Theodor. l. 6. c. 18 et Sozom. lib. 7 c. 24. ? and other penitents admitted, first as penitentiaries after as communicants in all the Primitive times 
d Eccles. hist. passim ex Socrate, Eusebio et Zozomeno. ? and shall our Church now degenerate from a loving mother, to an unjust stepmother? God forbidden.  
Tenthly, is not the heresy of Novatus and his strict, stern Novatians plucked up by the roots long since by Augustine, and Epiphanius 
* Cyprianus etiam concilium congregavit, damnans Nouatianos ut constat l. 1. epist. Cypr. 2 apud Euseb. lib. 6 c. 43 et Magd. cent. 3. p. 192. et pag. 205. , that there is no sprigs remaining in our days? have we any so rough and rigorous as to deny ever admission to the Communion, or fellowship to those that have publicly, scandalously sinned: if there be any such leavened yet with this leaven, I wish him as a zealous Emperor once wished to one of these Novations 
e Tu scalam erige, et ad coelum solus asconde. , even to make himself a ladder and to climb up to heaven alone, for I know none that can follow him.  
Eleventh, beside is this stearnnesse strangeness and heartedness against remorseful sinners (for of such I still speak, and for such as the mouth of the rest I still plead) agreeable to the law of nature? is it consonant to that epitome of all moral equity, which Alexander Senerus so much esteemed? namely that which thou wouldst not have another do to thee, do not to another 
f Quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feoeris. : Do as thou wouldst be done unto, saith the natural Countryman, by the instinct of nature: Now wouldst thou lie languishing all alone on the sick bed, much less in the briers and pricks and stings of a sinne-guilty conscience, unuisited, unvalued, nay dejected, rejected, and more and more discouraged? wouldst thou have more weight laid upon thy back, when thou art almost pressed to death already? wouldst thou have thy wound deeper pierced, and more blood exhaust, when thou hast almost bled to death already? Make the case thine own: mutato nomine de te Fabula narratur Tantal, wouldst thou have God severe against thee for every sin? &c 
g Si quoties peccant homines sua fulmina mittat jupiter, exiguo tempore inermis erit. .  
Object. But it may be, I shall be answered, that in this case I fight with mine own shadow, and contest where there is no enemy: All these arguments and expostulations will be granted as Achillaean, and unanswerable in the behalf of the repenting sinner; but sub judice lis est: here is the question, how the Church should know, that a scandalising sinner, which hath scandalised even profession (which the Civilians say, is the greatest scandal) is truly humbled, as was here Ezekiah, and is willing to give satisfaction.  
Answ. First I say, that the contrite and broken heart is especially known to the maker and breaker of the heart 
h jer. 17.9, 10. . Man knows my sin, but God knows my sorrow, ille vere dolet, qui sine teste dolet, he weeps with a witness that weeps without a witness: it would go better with many an afflicted soul than it doth, if men were but as well acquainted with their saluing sorrow, as with the sore of their sin.  
Secondly, that soul that is willing in every place, in every company, ever in the fellowship of the Saints, to take that course which joshua prescribes to Achan 
i Iosh. 7.19. , to confess his sin, and give glory unto God: nay, to confess and forsake it, that he may have mercy 
k Pro. 28.13. , to desire the prayers of God's Children in his behalf, yea to shame himself if it were in the publickest places, where God might have glory, and the Church satisfaction, if it were even by taking the course of Solomon 
l Eccles. 1.1. , David 
m Psal 51. , and Augustine; by writing, and publishing public recantations, etc. this outstrippes all hypocrisy, 
n Augustine in his books of Confessions and Recantations.  and is a note and demonstrance of humbled penitency: this is all that the Lord doth, that man can require, or the strictest Church exact, for satisfaction, or the humbled heart can do to the utmost for consolation; which the Lord grant to every burdened conscience for his mercy sake.    

CHAP. VI  

SECT. 1. The same subject that sins, the same must be punished.  
ANd so I come now to the second main point at first propounded, and by the Text naturally afforded, and that is Ezekiah's castigation: In which we are to consider, first the primary subject of it, Ezekiah: wrath came upon Ezekiah: and then secondly, the extent of it: the Inhabitants of jerusalem, wrath came upon the Inhabitants of jerusalem: thirdly, the castigation itself, here intimated by this phrase wrath: fourthly, the cause, pride of heart. And first for the first, the subject of this correction; (for I call it a correction, rather than a plague or judgement, since what ever is sent to the elect, is a love-token from a Father, not a vengeance from a severe judge) It is briefly considerable; First, that the party sinning is the party suffering; the very same individual subject sinning, is the very same that smarts for sin: he that is an actor willingly, in all the obscene scenes of the pleasing Comedy of sin, must act, will he nill he, in the black and dismal Tragedy of suffering: He that says what he will (the very heathen could tell us) must hear again, what he would not 
o Qui dicit quod vult, audit quod non vult. , and he that doth what he will, must suffer what he would not: The soul that sins shall die the death, saith Ezekiel 
p Ezek. 18. v. 4. , whether the soul of the father, or the soul of the child, the soul of the Prince, or the soul of the subject, etc.  

Application.  I wish we could lay this to heart, and consider when we are tempted to sin, that if we will needs be Satan's factors, and agents in sinning, we must whether we will or no, be the Lords Patients, in suffering: if we will not do according to the Lords own heart, he will make us to feel his hand: if like truantly boys we will not be lored and tutored by his doctrine, we must be instructed by his discipline: if as straggling sheep we will not be fetched in by his whistle, we must be compelled by his dog or sheepe-crooke: the rod of bands must effect that, as here with Ezekiah, which the rod of beauty could not: look as we sow, 
Zach 11.7.  so we shall reap 
q Gal. 6.7. , our crop shall answer our seed time, as we bake so we shall eat, and as we brew so we shall drink. The very heathen could see and sing in their numbers, that pleasure and pain are linked together in one chain; and so I say it is with sin and sorrow; if sin he at the one end, sorrow is at the other, the last links depend on the first, draw the first the last will follow, as jacob followed after Esau 
r Gen. 25.26. Hos. 12.3.  and supplanted him.   

SECT. 2. God spares not the great ones when they sin.  
SEcondly, see Ezekiah a great man, nay the greatest man upon earth, a terrestrial God, God's Vicegerent, God's Lieutenant over his people Israel, is not spared: if he sin God spares him not: No, God's justice can encounter with Sceptres & Crowns 
* Sceptra ligonibus aequat. , as well as with spades & mattocks, and sheep crooks: God's justice, like death God's pursuivant, or summoner, is as impartial as imperial: it is not to be bribed, not to be corrupted, prevented it may be by repentance (as in the case of the 
s jonas 3.10.  Ninivites) perverted it cannot be: Pauperum Tubernas regumque turres aequo pulsat pede.  
With equal foot, with equal rate,  
It knocks the poor, rich, regal Gate.  
In man's Laws & strictest Statutes, either from ignorance in enacting, or negligence in executing, the little flies (the meaner sort transgressing) are caught, but the greater personages, the stronger flies, more potent in friends, favour, means, break from the intangling webs 
* Similitude Anacharsis apud Stobaeum. : but this imputation can never be fastened justly upon God's laws, or the execution of them in remunerative justice, they fasten upon one as well as upon another; upon Kings as upon Merchants; upon Princes, as upon Peasants; upon great Caesar, as upon poor Conon. Pharaohs first borne is no more spared in the destroying Pestilence 
t Exod. 12.29. , than the child of the meanest subject: the plague rageth in the King's Court, as in the Country: jabin and Sisera are swept away by the river Kishon, yea that ancient river the river Kishon 
u judg. 5.21. , as Deborah sings, as were his common soldiers. God spares Senacherib no more than his ordinary subjects, nay as he sinned more, his judgement was greater, he was unnaturally murdered by his own sons even in the midst of his superstitious Orisons 
* 2 King. 19.37. : the Lord hath a muzzle for the mouth of black Cerberus, reviling Rabsakah, as he hath a hook for the nose of his master 
x ver. 7. v. 28. . God spared not Se●on King of the Amorites, nor Og King of Basan, nor the five Kings which joshua killed in the Cave 
y Iosh. 10.22. , nor Agag, whom Samuel hewed in pieces 
z 1 Sam. 15.33. , nor the rest of the Kings of Canaan, more than he did the country Canaanites themselves whom in his wrath he caused the land to spew out as the sea casts out her froth 
a 2 Chro. 33.2. . In that universal conflagration of Sodom, (a type of the burning of the world & worldlings in the last judgement 
* Luk. 17, 28, 29. ,) the flesh and bones of the aged burning first with lust, escaped the sulphur and brimstone no more than the riotous youth 
b Gen. 19.24. : in the deluge of the old world, Noah might have been a doleful spectator of the reverend aged, the lordly great ones, the proud potentates, the stately dames, floating in the waters 
c Gen. 7.23. , as so many drowned rats or cats, as well as the numerous multitudes of the Plebeians: In Israel's effeminate folly with the daughters of Moah, joining (as sin seldom goes alone to hell) Idolatry to adultery, by the pestilent plot of Balaam 
d Numb. 31.16 , Zimri and Cosbe, an Israelitish Prince, and a Moabitish Princess led the dance to destruction 
e Num. 25.7, 8. : yea a thousand of the Peers and Princes were hanged up before the Lord 
f ver. 4. , and they had God's martial Law, as severe if not more severe, than the common people: yea afterwards Balaam for all the hope of preferment he had swallowed and gulped down by complotting with Balack against Israel (that the Lord may show to all posterity that he detests the plotters of any mischief more than the actors, the spinners of spider's webs more than the weavers) his plot brings him to the pot 
g Numb. 31.8. , with that brand of infamy upon his covetousness 
h 2 Pet. 2.15. , as was upon Cain for his murder 
i jude ver. 11. : and so it were easy to run thorough the whole body of Scripture, of Divinity, of History, for the illustration of this very particular: that there is no respect of persons with God 
k Acts 10.34. , no partiality, no such connivance of his justice, as may be in some Civil and Ecclesiastical Courts: he spares neither Ezekiah for his regality, nor Herod for his pomp, nor Senacherib for his power, nor Nabuchadnezzar for his pride, nor Nabal for his wealth, nor Goliath for his strength, nor Absolom for his beauty, nor Achitophel for his policy, nor Solomon for his wisdom, etc. nay, potentes potenter, etc. the mighty shall be mightily tormented, unless their great and crying sins be repent: The Lord hath gynnes for Nimrodian hunters, that bloodily hunt others; whips and rods in steep for those that whip and scourge his people, the enemies to his Son, to his Zion, will he break with a rod of iron, and crush them in pieces as a Potter's vessel, Psal. 2.9.   

SECT. 3. Let the meaner fear, when the great ones are not spared.  
LEt every soul be wiser by God's severity: doth not God spare Kings in his wrath, but vex them in his sore displeasure 
l Psal. 2.5. ? (more than Gideon 
m judg. 8.16, 17, 18.  did the Princes of Succoth and Zalmunna) nay, will not God spare Ezekiah here a great King, but whips him in himself, in his people, as he did also David, for the pride of their hearts? alas than what sinner can hope for immunity, impunity? What shall become of such as Christ calls Dogs 
n Mat. 7.6. , and Swine, despising and despiting holiness and holy things, when even these Lions are whipped, from whose line lineally descended even the Lion of the Tribe of judah, Christ, the Saviour of sinners? Oh if the fierce winds of wrath blast and blow and shake such strong oaks, what shall become of the under-wood, the unprofitable rubbish, the briers and thorns, mean men in gifts and grace, nay silly ignorant beasts, as many of the common people are in the things of God, and yet profane vicious varlets in all abominable courses, what can they expect without better fruits, but deserved burning, even to be fuel to the fire of that wrath, which burns to the very bottom of Hell. Oh let men of all sorts imagine with themselves, that (as a zealous man wished to hear 
o Augustine wished to see Christum in carne, and to hear Paulum tonitruantem.  Paul thundering) they hear Christ's forerunner thundering, that now is the axe laid to the roots of the trees, (the Ministry of the Word laid to men's hearts) and that every tree which brings nor forth good fruit is cast into the fire 
p Mat. 3.10. : is cast; the word is to be marked, is cast already into the fire: for judgement is begun here with the impenitent and unbeliever, as heaven is begun here in grace to the believer: he that believes not is condemned already 
q john 3.18. : already? in God's decree for aught he knows; already in the Ministry of the Word, that binds on earth what is bound in heaven 
r Mat 18.18. ; already in his own conscience 
s 1 john 3.20. , (God being a thousand times greater than his conscience) and the extent of the commination is further considerable: every tree that is unfruitful shall be cut down, every ground that receives the first and latter rain, and brings not forth fruit, is near unto cursing 
t Heb 6.7.8. : every ground? every tree? the Lord spares not any tree, neither the Oak for his strength, nor the Ash for his sap, nor the Cedar for his tallness, nor the Laurel for his greenness, nor the Olive for his fatness, etc. neither the aged man for his age, nor the learned for his learning, nor the Scribe for his knowledge, nor the Pharisee for his long Phylactery, nor the Lawyer for his pleading, nor Saul for his Magistracy, nor judas for his Ministry, nor Tully nor Tertullus for their oratory, nor the strong man for his strength, nor the wise man for his wisdom, etc. nor any man, of jew and Gentile, for any other moral part, for any common gift, for any privilege of birth, nature, production, education, place; nay not for the most glorious outside of Religion, for the most formal profession 
u Mat. 7.22, 23. Mat. 8.11. , if he want the salt, the soul, the seasoning of saving grace; if this tree want the true sap of the Spirit, that comes from the root of jesse, if it be not transplanted out of the barren soil of nature, and planted in the true Vine 
* john 15.1.2. See M. Hierons' Sermon on Mat. 3.10. also the Sermon called The doom of the barren tree. , and as a Tree of righteousness brings not fruits worthy of repentance and amendment of life, shall be for all his fair leaves cut down and thrown into the fire: neither shall blossoms, and buds, and leaves, and seeming fruit, as had that cursed Figtree 
* Mark 11.13, 14. , or long standing in the Garden 
x Luke 13.7.  pruned, dunged, watered, by a powerful Ministry, be any plea that it should stand: neither shall the former fruits that it whilom hath brought forth, stand it in any stead, if for the present it be dead at the root, in the sap, and barren in the boughs; according to that fearful and terrible threatening in Ezekiel 
y Ezek. 18.24. , that when the righteous turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, and doth according to all the abominations of the wicked, all his righteousness that he hath done shall not be mentioned: in his sin that he hath sinned shall he die. His former seeming holiness shall no more avail for the salvation of the hypocrite, than the real impiety, be it what it will be or can be, of the truly convert sinner, shall be prejudicial to his destruction, Ezekiel 18.27, 28.    

CHAP. VII.  

SECT. 1. God scourgeth his own children when they transgress.  
THirdly, see further the strictness of God's severity against sin and sinners, in Ezekiah, as in a clear and Crystal glass. God brings wrath upon Ezekiah, a King, a great man, nay on Ezekiah a good man, a gracious man, a holy man, a zealous man, a sincere servant, a strict worshipper of the true God: Oh observe it, and let it be for ever engraven on the tablets of every memory, that is willing to treasure up any thing that is physical and wholesome for the soul's health. That God as a Father spares not the sins of his own children, but as he said of Solomon 
z 2 Sam. 7.14, 15. Psal. 89.31, 32. , and verifies it further on Ezekiah, if they sin against him, though his mercy and loving kindness he will not take from them, though he will not deprive them of their inheritance in heaven, their part and portion in the spiritual Canaan, where their lot is fall'n unto them in a fair ground: yet he will visit their offences with rods, and their sins with scourges: he will not wink at the frailties and follies of any of his children, (as is sometime the fault of some cockering parents, as was seen in old Ely 
a 1 Sam. 3.13.  and in good David 
b 1 King. 1.6. ;) neither will he be partial in making, as they say, fish of one, and flesh of another; curbing one in some ill course, and cherishing another; but as jacob is strict against all his sinning sons, even against incestuous Reuben his eldest, and against cruel perfidious Simeon and Levi his next eldest, in his prophetical sick bed 
c Gen 49.3, 4, 5, 6, etc. , so is the Father of Spirits zealous against the sins of all his children, (be otherwise their graces and endowments never so great,) yea it is very observable, that how ever the child of God, after the perpetration of some great and grievous sin, (such as the Schools call peccatum vastans conscientiam, a sin making great hacks and gashes and slashes in the conscience) may upon his repentance and sincere humiliation, make so far his peace with God, (whose grace is able and willing to pardon every sin, except that sin unto death, that unpardonable (because unrepented) sin against the Holy Ghost, 
* See Sonnius in Thesibus: & Kymnitius in locis, de peccato in Spiritum Sanctum: as also M. Devison his Sermon. ) that he may redeem his soul from death, and his darling Dove from the power of the Lion, the Lord sealing to his heart so far his love, that he smelling the sacrifice of a broken spirit, a bleeding and a believing heart, he shall not dye the second death: nevertheless, howsoever the guilt and punishment of sin may so fare be removed by Christ, that the soul shall be freed from everlasting damnation, and saved in the day of Christ: yet the dear child of God, even for some scandalous lamented repent sin, in temporary rods and castigations may have God's hand upon him even to his dying day: he may by sickness on his body, reproach upon his good name, or other domestic personal crosses, yea sometimes by trouble of mind and grievous perplexities in conscience, he may wear a straight and a pinching shoe, even to his very grave: this is plain here in Ezekiah; no doubt his repentance had made his atonement with God, thorough faith in his expected Messiah, his humiliation had made up the breach so fare, and procured his peace in the Court of heaven, that there is no progress nor proceeding against his salvation; he hath his Quietus est for that, yet notwithstanding wrath comes upon him, and upon judah: (either in some sickness and infirmity on his body, or some grief & trouble of his mind, or in some death and cuttings off of his people, or the like, was this wrath expressed, (though here it be not revealed in the manner:) but more perspicuous is the example of David, who upon the confession and acknowledgement of his sin to Nathan, heard the pardon instantly from the Prophet, as from the mouth and oracle of God 
d 2 Sam. 12.9, 10, 11, 12, etc. , yet nevertheless we know what was both threatened and executed in rods proportioned to his offence: as he had smit unlawfully with the sword, in killing Vriah, so the sword never departed from his house: Absolom kills his incestuous brother Amnon 
e 2 Sam. 13.29. , joab the King's great friend, his instrument in the blood of Urias 
f 2 Sam. 11.13. , even this joab (oh just Nemesis) whether the King will or no 
g 2 Sam. 18.5. , kills his darling, how ever then his rebel Absolom 
h vers. 14. , and Adoniah, (Gallinae filius albae, another of his fair sons) is cut shorter by the head, in being too heady against his King-brother Solomon 
i 1 King. 2.25. . So as David was polluted by adultery, adultery and uncleanness, together with the sword, did cleave to his house and seed, like Gehezies' leprosy: the spurious offspring of his lust died in the infancy 
l 2 Sam. 12.18. , Amnon his own son commits incestuous fornication, aggravated by all circumstances of treachery and tyranny, with his own fair sister, David's own daughter Tamar 
m 2 Sam. 13.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. ; Absolom himself, as a filthy Bird defiling his own nest, (his father's blood in his thoughts,) his bed in his acts, lies with his father's Concubines, (so shameless, impudent, and imprudent is lust) in the sight of all Israel 
n 2 Sam. 16.22. . Other instances may be given; and no doubt of it, the bleeding too dear-bought experience of many of God's children, which for some momentany sin are pursued and prosecuted justly in themselves, or their blood, by the hand of God or man, in perpetuated sorrows, too truly prove this assertion.   

SECT. 2. The reasons of the former Doctrine.  
NOw leaving secret and inscrutable judgements unto God, which though they may be hidden and abstruse from us, yet can never be unjust 
o S●creta esse possunt iudicia Dei, iniusta esse non possunt. Augustinus. . The reasons of these thus proceed of God with his children, may be these, besides others: (that we may not intermeddle or reflect in the least measure upon any Popish satisfactions, which we only with the Scriptures include and conclude in Christ: as though, according as they dream, (and but dream) that these continuated castigations were humane satisfactions 
* Against Popish satisfactions, read Kymnitius his Examen Concilii Tridentini: and Pelargus his jesuitismus: with D. willet's Synopsis of this controverted subject, etc.  to God's justice.)  
First, the repentance of God's servants reiterated and renewed after some great and scandalous sin, is neue● so true and sincere for the quality of it, so great and vehement for, the quantity, (either in that attrition or contrition which the Schools speak of) or so extensive in degrees, or so constant and permanent in the continuance▪ but the Lords pure eyes sees it in many particulars defective and heteroclite, either in the matter, manner, measure, means; grounds, or ends: for which cause he may still continue his rod upon the shoulders of his children, to make their repentance more perfect and exact in all the true and requisite qualifications.  
Secondly, our nature is soon weary of well-doing, we would fain have ease, though by carnal means, (as Saul by David's Harp 
o 1 Sam. 16.23. ) when the Lord hath wounded our consciences with spiritual weapons; we are prone too soon to cast off the Lord's yoke, and to throw down his burden, ere we be thoroughly tamed, and our rebellions subdued, and therefore the Lord knowing our flitting and fugitive natures, our false and fickle hearts, by continuated crosses still holds us to it, and keeps us still strict and straight to the tackling and task of true penitents.  
Thirdly, we are subject, as stall-fed Oxen, to grow too fat and lazy; as pampered horses, to grow too skittish; as that jesurum 
p Deut. 32.15. , to kick against the rider; by too much ease, as Moab, to freeze in our dregges, and as standing pools to grow corrupt without motion and stirring: yea as gross and corrupt bodies, to abound with bad humours, the originals of diseases, without continuated physic and purging: yea to return perhaps even to our former sickness and distemperature, unless the Lord keep us straight laced, in continual exercise and diet, by his successive castigations.  
Fourthly, by these after-corrections, as by so many stakes and rails and pales, the Lord would keep us in, within the parks of obedience; as Sheep, impale and bar us within his fold, from after-wandring: as by curbing bits, hold in our rebellious natures, ever subjected without these restraints to continuated apostasies, tergiversations, relapses again, more daingerous than ever, even to the sins so seriously, as we think, already repent. Even as a man without careful looking to himself, is subject to relapse into the same Tertian, Quartan, or Quotidian Fever, out of which he is with much danger and difficulty recovered.  
Fiftly, the Lord as it were by continual phlebotomizing and blood-letting, will preserve us from this daingerous pleurisy of pride: for as it is the Lords merciful and gracious dealing usually with his children after their serious humiliation, to shine upon them again with the light of his countenance, to restore unto them the joy of his salvation: so he gives them renewed graces, (as we may see plainly in the example of Zacharias 
q Luke 1.20. & 64. , jonas 
r jonas 2.9, 10. , the Corinthians 
s 2 Cor. 7.11. , Martha 
t Luke 10.41. compared with john 11.20, 21. , and some say Peter 
u Fidelior factus est Petrus postquam fidem perdidisse se deflevit, etc. ) more than ever they had before; even as gifts are given betwixt once disagreeing, perfectly reconciled lovers, as pledges and tokens of more pure and perfect love then ever: as the bone that is broke, and once knit, oft proves stronger than ever: now as by the new flux of blood in the body at the Spring of the year, there is oft an occasion and original of a new Ague; so by a new addition and increment of grace, corruption helped forward by Satan, is exceeding prone to be proud; for the prevention of which abhorred and hateful humour, the Lord still administers his castigations: he leaves something ever as the buffet of Satan, (that prick in the flesh to his inspired Apostle 
* 2 Cor. 12.7, 8. ) to hold us low, and keep us under, from being superbient, and too high exalted in ourselves: he stygmatizeth us in our flesh or spirits, which as the scar in the body of a soldier, may continually put us in mind and memory both of the great wound of our sin, to keep us still more humbled, as also of the skill and good will of our heavenly Physician, in curing that which once we despaired as incurable, to make us truly continually thankful.   

SECT. 3. God is more strict with his own Children in this life, then with the reprobates.  
Sixthly and lastly, the Lord hath also by these corrections of his repenting Saints, an aim and an end, at the conviction and instruction of vnhumbled impenitent sinners: First for their conviction, the Lord by this means puts a muzzle upon their blasphemous mouths, when they are ready as Egyptian dogs, to bark against the Moon, as their father the devil 
* joh. 8.44. , to accuse God 
* Gen. 3.4, 5.  of partiality, that he lightly passeth by, and slightly passeth over the sins of some, as an accepter of persons; but lays load on others: that he toucheth some hardly with a finger, others he crusheth with his whole hand: wags not the rod at his own, but whips the wicked with cords of iron, etc. that the Lord may be true when he is judged, and righteous when he is condemned 
x Psal. 51.4. , he makes it plain and perspicuous to the whole world, that he is as strict and severe with his elected ones, as any natural father is with his own children; nay, that he often is rather more resolute, and vehement against the sins of his Saints in temporary proceed, then against the reprobates themselves: for whereas, the wicked and impious oft escape for a time , as repriued like felons, till the Assizes of the General judgement, walking in the mean space under the bond of a guilty conscience, to do, say and think what they please; living as libertines, and voluptuaries, wallowing as swine in the mire, fatted as Bulls of Basan against the day of slaughter 
* Psal. 73.17, 18 job. 20.5.5, 6. job 21.16, 17. : his own sheep in the interim he shears, and shaves, keeps them in a narrow fold, salves their sores, gives them Potions to prevent their rots: his own children upon her least misdemeanours, he whips and corrects, humbles here the pride of Ezekiah; as after, David's for the numbering of the people; reproves Asa 
y 2 Chr. 16.12. , for seeking first to the corporal before the spiritual Physician in his sickness; brings jehosophat into a great strait, to the in dangering of his life, for his taking part with wicked Ahab in his unwarrantable war 
z 1 King. 22.32. ; shamed Noah's drunkenness with the flouts and scoffs of his own son 
a Gen. 19.36, 37. The Moabites and Ammonites being after pricks in their eyes, & goads in their sides. , (as the folly of some Pastor is scourged by his own hearers, as some man is wounded with his own weapons;) makes Lot infamous by the two incestuous bastards which he had by his own daughters ᵇ, Moab and Ammon, whose offspring were after the plagues to Israel *; deprives Samson of his strength, his good name, his bodily lights, yea his life, by the intemperancy of his lusts 
c judg. 16. v. 21.30. ; casts jonas into the Sea, and imprisons him in the bowels of the Whale, for his disobedience 
d jonas 1.15. ; deprives josias of his life by the sword of Pharaoh Necho 
e 2 Chr. 35.22, 23. , for rejecting of Counsel; tears in pieces his own Prophet by a Lion 
f 1 King. 13.24. , for being disobedient in one particular command (though tempted and seduced;) excludes Moses out of temporary Canaan so much desired 
g Deut. 32.50. , for his once distrustful diffidence 
h Numb. 20.23, 24. ; reproves Aaron 
i Num. 12.5, 6. ; makes Miriam leprous 
k ver. 12. , for their emulation & muttering against Moses; strikes Zachary dumb, for his incredulity 
l Luk. 1.19, 20. ; yea, excludes Adam & Eve out of Paradise 
m Gen. 3.23, 24. , for their too much credulity to Satan, and their infidelity in distrusting the threat joined with rebellious disobedience in so small an injunction, as the forbearance of one Fruit. Thus God keeps corrections for his own, & as the Apostle speaks, judgements begin (and have begun you see ever since the beginning) at the house of God 
n 1. Pet. 4.17. : yea, rather at the house of God at Bethel, then at Bethaven the house of vanity, rather at Shiloh, at Zion, then at Sodom: The Father of Spirits herein imitating an earthly father, who if his son be robbing an Orchard 
o Similitude Stellae in Lucam. , or playing waggish tricks in the street, with other straying children, he takes home his own child, reproves him, corrects him, admonisheth him to remember for ever doing the like, he lays on a Memorandum to cause him to remember for ever afterwards: seems to be very rigorous and severe with him; whereas a strange child, his neighbour's son, culpable in the same fault, he never so much as intermeddles with him, never once opens his mouth to reprove him, but passeth by heedless, and regardless of him: why so? because he love's his own better than the other, the one is part of himself, therefore his love descends, so is not the other; he purposeth to bestow on his son, all his lands, his liuings, his inheritance, so doth he not intent towards the other; therefore he is more jealous, more zealous and careful of the good of the one, then of the other. Thus the Lord when his own sons, and the sons of Beliall, the righteous, and the reprobate, commit perhaps materially one and the self same sin, (as David and Herod jumped in the same sins of Lust, and Murder; David and Augustus Caesar 
p Luke 2.1.  jumped in the same sin of numbering their subjects, etc. He corrects his own whom he love's, and chastiseth every son whom he receives: he brays them as pepper or spice in a mortar, for it makes them fit for use; he softens their hearts as wax▪ and purgeth out their dross and tin 
q Esay 4.7. by the spirit of burning.  by the fire of affliction; he fit● them by this means in purging and purifying their corruptions, for that inheritance he hath predestinated them unto 
r Rom. 8.30. Esphes. 1.4. , and reserved for them in the heavens 
s 1 joh. 3.2, 3. : whereas for the subjects of Satan's kingdom 
t v. 8. et 2 Tim. 2.26. ; he passeth by them for a time, seems to connive at their sins, paves their way to hell with oil, and butter, suffers them to play with the wasp and hornets nest, till they be stung to death; to dally with the flame, till they be scorched; lets them run their races with full carcere, till they come to the end of their journey 
u Psal. 9.17. Prou. 9.18. Esay 5.13, 14●. et Esay 30.33. ; permits them to freeze in their dregs, and settle on their lees without removing: they have perhaps all things that their hearts desire, riches, wealth, ease, etc. Yet as Israel had a King, with a curse 
* 1 Sam. 8.11, 12. , and as they had quails in wrath 
x Num. 11.31, 22, 23, etc. , all these, they have as nets and snares to them: God bestows little Physic on them, he sees they are incurable, like Babel; he ploughs them not up with the plough of affliction: he sees they are reprobate ground, he sees they are flints, cobble stones, knotty timber, such as will fit no place in the spiritual building, therefore he never troubles himself with them, never useth the axe or hammer of affliction to them, as to the living stones in Zion 
z 1 Pet. 2.5. . In a word, he purposeth no good unto them, hath no heaven for them: therefore suffers them to frisk and run for a time in all excess of Riot 
a 1 Pet. 4.4.  towards their Centre, as merrily as the fools goes to the stocks, and as senslessely as the Ox goes to the slaughter.   

SECT. 4. If God be strict and severe with his own, how daingerous is the estate and condition of the wicked.  
YEt nevertheless I would not have wicked and godless men to triumph before the victory, to say with Agag, surely the bitterness of death is past 
b 1 Sam. 15.32. , when it is but appraoching, I would not have those that put on their armour, to boast, as when they put it off 
c 1 King. 20.11 , to think that the end of sin shall be as sweet as the beginning 
d Prou. 9.17. et Prou. 23.33. , that the egress out of the devil's service, will be as easy as the ingress: that the harvest will be as pleasant as their seed time; no, no, there will be a time of audit, of reckoning for sinners, as was for that wicked steward, and that unprofitable servant 
e Matth. 25.25, 26. ; a time of coming of the bridegroom 
f ver. 6. , when, as joab said to Abner 
g 2 Sam. 2.26.  of the young men's play, the end of sin will be bitterness at the last, the tail of sin like the tail of a Dragon will sting: and from these former premises, let every man that hath the least dram of either wisdom or grace, extract this conclusion, and treasure it up in his soul as an excellent Antidote, and preservative against sin: and as the Apostles Peter 
h 2 Pet. 2.4, 5, 6.  and jude 
i jude v. 6, 7.  reasoned. If the Lord spared not the Angels that fell, nor the old world, nor Sodom & Gommorrah, but burned her Cities with fire: how much less (which was their scope) would he spare the licentious men of their time. So let every man argue with his own soul, if the Lord have not in the severity of his justice against sin, spared the righteous, Oh where shall the reprobate appear! If he have purged his gold, what shall become of the dross? if he have winnowed the corn, shall not the chaff be burned with unquenchable fire? If jerusalem be searched 
k Si in jerusalem scrutinium, quid f●ciet Babylon.  with lantern and candle light, what shall become of Sodom, of Egypt, of Babylon, of Edom, of Damascus? etc. If the Doves tremble 
l Cum tremunt Columbae quid facient corui. , what shall become of Crows, of Kites, of Kestrels? If the sheep be shorn, what shall become of the unclean Goats? If the trees of righteousness be lopped, and pruned, for what use are Thornes & Briers & Tares, but for the fire? If the vessels of honour be thus scoured and rubbed, what shall become of the vessels of wrath? If judgement begin at the house of God, if the righteous shall hardly be saved, Oh where shall the unrighteous & reprobate 
m 1 Pet. 4.18.  appear? If the Lord whip his own sons though with cords of love, Oh what will he do to Satan's slaves, Atheists, belly gods, libertines, drunkards, swearers, covetous persons, that neglect the day of Grace, and blaspheme God daily 
n The doom● of such is, 1 Cor. 6.9. Gal. 5.19. Colos. 3.5. Rev. 21.8. ? Oh if the Lord here have visited as you see he hath, with Temporary rods, the sins of an Ezekiah, a David, a josias, a jonas, a Moses, a Samson, a Solomon, a Zacharias, with many more of his dear servants, Oh how can the unrighteous, the profane, the in religious who scorn and contemn the Lord daily, and blaspheme all his ordnances appointed for their life, escape endless wrath, everlasting death, without repentance? though here for a time they be reprieved, the Lord giving unto them as he did to jezabel ᵍ, space to repent, 
o Reuel. 2.19.  which they neglecting, treasure up to themselves wrath, against the day of wrath, and the just declaration of the vengeance of God 
p Rom. 2 5, 6. .     

The third Sermon.  

CHAP. VIII.  

SECT. 1. How the subject's smart for the sins of Princes, Children for the sins of Parents.  
NOt to give Cramba biscocta, Coalworts twice sod, in repeating former points; The next thing, that in order, offers itself to our prosecution, is the extension of this castigation, this wrath, that came upon Ezekiah for the pride of his heart, came also upon judah and jerusalem, or the inhabitants of judah (by a Metonymy the continent being put for the contained 
q Continens pro contento. ) the subjects of this King: in which it may seem strange to some, and occasion their doubt as desirous of resolution; how we can well clear God of injustice that punisheth the people for the fault of their Prince: Ezekiahs' subjects for the sin of Ezekiah. Might not Ezekiah say as David almost in the like case; Oh it is I that have sinned 
r 2 Sam. 24.71 , those sheep what evil have they done? let thine hand be upon me, and upon my father's house: or as he in the Poet, I am he that have done the deed, (in me convertite ferrum ô Rutili 
s Virgil of Nisus and Euryalus. ,) Oh you Rutilians', let him smart that did the fact. Can not the Orator blame this injustice, fecit Emilius, plectitur Rutilius etc. when one suffers, for that in which another man sins, without being accessary any way? Nay, doth not the Lord himself say, That the soul that sins shall dye the death, whether it be the soul of the father, or the soul of the child 
t Ezekiel 18.4. , the soul of the Prince, or of the Peer, or of the Plebeian, etc. every one bear their own burden, every one in this life (as in the great judgement) stands on his own legs, every bushel on his own bottom, 
Proverbialia.  every saddle as they say, set on the right horse, every man answer for himself, every herring (according to our proverbs) hang by it own neck: how can these things stand with that which the Lord threatens, that he will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation 
u Exod. 20.5. : that the bastard shall not enter into the congregation, unto the tenth generation; which yet itself sins not actually, as it is a bastard, but the Parents, etc. How stands this with God's executions, that Cham scoffs his father Noah 
* Gen. 9.22. , and his son Canaan is cursed for his father's fact 
x vers. 15. , and here Ezekiah the King transgresseth, yet his subjects feel smart, for wrath comes upon judah and jerusalem. This knot seems hard to lose, being as Gordian: this riddle needs an Oedipus: yet I think, thus we may give satisfaction.   

SECT. 2. The reasons and resolutions of the point.  
FIrst, that the Lord when he purposeth to inflict just and deserved punishment upon the creature, is his own carver, as free & independent, may effect his ends, by what means it pleaseth him, whether immediately upon the individual party transgressing, or mediately upon those that are his: even as we count it no injustice, when a young Prince offendeth to whip his play fellow or companion in his room, which he takes perhaps as grievously as if he were beat himself: so the Lord in punishing a people, which is the glory and the strength of a King, for the sins of a King, in punishing a father in his children, which are webs spun out of his own bowels 
* Of the admirable love of parents to their children, chief to sons, read Examples and Testimonies in Bodin, lib. 1. de Rep. c. 4. p. 33. Nicander in Postillis part. 3 pag. 357. & Pezelius in Gen. cap. 4. pag. 85. 86. , collops, as they say, cut out of his own flesh; comes as near to the heart of good Princes and loving Parents, by this means, as if they were afflicted in their own persons: for Rachel mourns for her sons 
y jer. 31.15. Mat 2.18. The like condoling made Rizpah. 2 Sam. 21.10.  as for herself, and will not be comforted: and jacob is resolved to go mourning to the grave 
z Gen 37.35. , for his supposedly lost joseph.  
Secondly, in these cases the Lord doth as a Physician, who if a man be sick or distempered in one part, applieth perhaps his medicines to another part, where it works as kindly a cure, as if it were laid on the part that is ill affected. As for instance, If a man be pained with an ill blood in the head, or be in danger of a pleurisy of blood throughout the whole body, he lets him blood perhaps in the arm 
* In the vein called Humeralis or Cephalical Barlow Method of Physic, lib. 1. cap. 5. p. 7.  or elsewhere: So if a Prince and Potentate sin, to let him blood as it were in his people 
a In what particulars and wherefore God plague's the sins of Princes in their subjects, read diversified examples in the plagued Sichemites, Sabarites, Troyans', Israelites, jews, for the sins of their Princes, Sichem, Pari, David, Ahas, and some Sabaritish Magistrates, etc. read Luther in Gen. cap. 34. pag 518. Philippus in locis. Manlii pag. 325. 412. Strigellius in 2 Chron. 28. and Aelianus lib. 3. , in s●nding upon them plague, famine, or the sword: If a father sin, to let him blood in his children and posterity, his blood or consanguinity, who can blame the curing skill of the alwise Physician?  
Thirdly, but yet there is a third answer, That as children are usually not so much punished for their parents sins as for their own, chief when they insist in their parents steps 
b Quod peiores plerunque posterior aetas tulit praecipue in Heroum filii●: in plurimis instant Tholosan. lib. 4. de Rep. cap. 2. pag. 149. Cytraeus in Gen. cap. 35. pag. 432. Philippus lib 3. Cron. pag. 155. p. 157. & Brentius in Lucam cap. 15. Hom. 10. pag. 475. etc. , and do evil or worse than their forefathers, seeing perhaps the judgements inflicted on their parents, yet they will take no warning, as Baltazar was nothing bettered by that great judgement upon his proud and profane father Nabuchadnezzar 
c Dan. 5.21, 22. , then in justice the Lord visits upon the children both their own sins and their fathers, as he did on the house of Ahab 
d 2 King. 10.11. , Saul 
e 2 Sam. 21.5.6 , jeroboam 
f 1 King. 13.34. , and other idolatrous bloody families, whom he rooted out, both for their own sins and the abominations of their fathers. So Ezekiahs' people here, as also David's people (thorough whose sides even these two good Kings are whipped) are not so much punished for the sins of their Kings, as for their own sins: the just God, without offering them any wrong, might justly find matter enough of exception against them, and cause them to smart for their own transgressions: their ingratitude for the restauration of the health of their good King, in whose safety they were all interested, and shared deeply; the abuse of their peace and plenty, evil and noisome lusts (as now in our Land) like Gnats and Summer-flyes, engendering and increasing in the long heat and Sunshine of their prosperity, with other such sins, might justly occasion God's hand both against David's people, in cutting off 70000, as also against Ezekiahs', in bringing wrath upon the inhabitants of judah and jerusalem: Oh the Lords pure eyes 
g Hab. 1.13.  penetrate further than man's, and see beams, where man cannot nor will not spy moats; the Lords strict justice condemns those sins as mortal, which blinded man holds less than venial.  
Fourthly, as a man by one stone may hit two birds, or by one bullet kill or wound two men, so God in and by one castigation may effect two ends, both the humiliation of Ezekiah and of his people: even as the Lord by permitting Satan to blow down the house upon jobs feasting sons 
h job 1.18. , both punished the children's intemperate riot, and exercised the father's patience, and so with one pencil, as the phrase is, whited two walls.  
Lastly, if all these answers satisfy not, as they may, yet let us most safely and satisfactorily conclude, that this wrath here mentioned that came upon judah, was but some temporary castigation, external, and exercised upon the outward man, nothing prejudicial to the salvation of the Elect, on whom it seized: it pierced but the outward cask 
i Tuned Anaxarchi vasculum, Anaxarchum non laedis.  of the body, it hurt not the pure wine, the precious soul within: it might exercise and afflict the flesh for this life, but extended not to the life to come: and we know that for these temporary things, whether good or evil, they come all alike to the good and the bad, to him that fears an oath, and to him that swears: they seize upon the Doves for trial, as well as on the Kites for trouble: they are but as fierce blustering winds, 
Similitudo Philippi de Diez in Postillis.  that beat on the outside of the house, the wall of this flesh: they cannot disturb the calm of the house within, they cannot hurt nor hinder the tranquillity and the felicity of the blessed inmate, the sanctified soul.   

SECT. 3. Useful application of the point.  
But as the best part of profitable preaching, to bring that home as useful for ourselves, which we observe either helpful or hurtful to others: this lets us see the vile venom, contagion, pest and pollution that is in sin, what a deadly aconite it is, that poisons all that touch it: a deadly Basilisk, a devouring Crocodile, that kills whomsoever it fixeth on: a Serpent, that stings who ever embrace it: Pitch that pollutes who ever but finger it: a plague that infects who ever comes within sight or sent of it: a Leaven and Leprosy that spreads fare and near, even from Dan to Beershebah, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, over the whole body Economical, Ecclesiastical, Political 
k Sepe propter unum malum civem tota luit civitas: propter paucerum petulantiam, tota gentes delenter, etc. Instant Peucerus de divinatione, p. 31. Lutherus Tom. 1. p. 176. Philippus in locis, pag 412 & Pez●lius in Gen. cap. 20 p. 359. , spreading as poison from vein to vein, till it come to close with the heart, the strongest castle of life: we see here, the venom of ingratitude and pride of heart, fastens upon Ezekiah, and runs like Ill-report from man to man, as wild fire in a train of powder from bag to bag, from barrel to barrel, even throrowout Ezekiahs' Kingdom, and as a bloody enemy upon a conquered country, brings wrath upon all; some temporary judgement, (though here not specially expressed) upon judah and jerusalem.  
Oh that all of us could be warned from having any intermeddling with sin: from courting this Courtesan, from attending the songs of this Siren, lest we be turned into beasts, yea the worst of beasts, Hogs and Swine 
l Huc tendunt fictiones in Metam. Ouidii: in Grillo Plutarch. & Asino Aureo Apulei. ; that we could foresee the hook of every sin's bait, espy the net of destruction spread under the chaff of temptation; that Ezekiah and his subjects, scorched with this fire of wrath, might enlighten us by their flame: that their example might be to all as stakes stuck in a quagmire, as sea marks near some sands or rocks, to forewarn and prevent the peril of travelling or sailing passengers; chief, that to all God's servants, professed proselytes, it might be (as the corrupt judge's skin, caused to be hung up over the judgement seat by Cambyses 
m Ex Herodito, Strigellius in orat de josophat & Gorlicius in axiom. politicis. pag. 773. , as a terror to all successors: or as felons hung in chains, reading a dead lecture of caution to all robbers and murderers) an admonition to all that are eminent in gifts or place, to take heed of ingratitude to the donor, and of pride of heart, the devilish dam of this ingrateful Viper; lest this Viper sting the breast that bred it, the dam that fed it, as here we see in Ezekiah. I give as strict caution against these sins, as Solomon against the traps of the Harlot 
* Prou. 2.16. Chap. 5, 6, 7. per totum. : Harbour not these Serpents in thy bosom, lest they sting thee: let not these fires kindle within thee, as job said of lust, they will burn to 
n job 31.12.  destruction: Oh come not nigh them, lest thou perish by them 
o Ne sedeas, sed eas; ne pereas, sed per eas, etc. Sphinx Philosophica, etc. ; they have been the perdition of many. A father by sinning may plague all his seed and posterity, chief if they succeed him in his sins 
p Propter parentum scaelera, grassari paenas in totas familias, multis interdum seculis, instant in posteris Achabi, Senacharib, Saulis, Pekeiae, Paridis, Tarquinii, Oedipi, Dionysi●, Artaxerxis, Craesi, & aliorum: Melanct. lib 4. Cron. pag. 475 & 456 lib. 2. pag. 53. In locis Manlii p. 320. Strigellius in 2 Sam. 9 & in 2 Reg. 15. & in orat. de jacobo. & orat. de jonatha. .  
Lastly, men of eminence, of place in the Ministry or Magistracy, chief great Princes and Potentates, need look well to their ways, and walk strictly with God, and keep their peace with their Creator: for alas much detriment and damage (besides the sins of their own souls) they bring upon their subjects: their sins trouble Israel, as we see in David and Ezekiah: the falls and sins of great persons, like the fall of some great Oak or Cedar, breaks down many underlings, many lesser boughs. Oh the head cannot be broke, but the heart aches: the Shepherd cannot be smit, but the sheep will be scattered: the Pastor falls not, but the poor people will be scandalised and discouraged: the hearers are oft punished in the sins and for the sins of a Preacher: and so on the contrary, the Preacher for the sins of a people: so the subjects sympathise in the sins and punishments of Princes. The Heathen saw it, how in the fatal wars of Troy, both Troyans' and Grecians smarted for the lusts of their Princes.  

Quicquid delirant Reges plectuntur achivi,  
Intra Ilaicos peccatur muros & extra.   

What Paris 
q Horatius & Dyctin. Cretens. lib. 5. , Priamus, and Menelaus do,  
Greeks', Troyans' pay for all, their lusts, their woe.     

CHAP. IX.  

SECT. 1. God's wrath against sin and sinners explained and expressed.  
THirdly, for the phrase here used, as subjected to our examination; whereas it is said, wrath came upon judah and jerusalem, we must so conceive it: that as the Schools speak, there are no passions incident to God 
r Passiones non incidunt in Deum. Aquinas. , neither love, joy, fear, zeal, or any other affections: much less these passions that are held culpable and sinful, even by Philosophy itself, as anger, hatred, wrath, etc. fare be it from us to think (as these heretical Anthropomorphites) that these are natural in God, as they are humane in man; or that we should attribute them unto God, who is an immortal immaterial Spirit, without any mixture or composition: that in any proper locution we should ascribe to him any humane members, corporeal parts, outward or inward senses, or sinful affections, whether irascible or concupiscible 
s Largius hae● omnia exprimuntur per Zanchium de tribus Elohim: & de attributis Dei: & per Polanum in Syntag. part. 1 , but only by these improper locutions and figurative phrases he speaks ad caeptum sensumque nostrum, to our sense and understanding, and for the expressing of himself unto us, condescends to our Infirmities and capacities, that as a man when he is wroth or angry, shows the effects and symptoms of his passion, by his looks, words, gestures, actions, so the Lord when he is said to be wroth or angry, manifests himself after the manner and fashion of a man, in threatening and executing judgements proportionable to the demerits of a sinner.  
But leaving the Logical term, the Theological conclusion naturally ariseth; that sin makes the Lord wroth and angry: The text here plainly speaks the point: Ezekiahs' ingratitude, proceeding as an ill Crow from a worse egg, from the pride of his heart, brought wrath upon judah and jerusalem: so it is said of David's adultery and murder, and of his numbering of the people by his organ that he used joab, in two several places 
t 2 Sam. 11.27. & 1 Chro. 21.7 , That the thing which David did, angered or displeased the Lord: so it is said oft in the Book of Exodus, and in Deuteronomie a Commentary upon Exodus, and in the Psalms the Epitome and Abridgement of all, that the people of Israel by their mutterings, murmurings, and rebellions, angered the Lord 
u Num. 14.22. Num. 20.13. Exod. 17.7. & vers. 2. & Psal. 95.8, 9, 10. & Psal. 106 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, etc. , so that a fire was kindled in his wrath, and he burnt up the congregations of Corah, Dathan, and Abiram: yea it is said that he was displeased with Moses for their sake. Infinite are the places and passages in holy Writ where the Lord hath revealed and executed his anger against sin and sinners: yea verily the casting of the Angels out of heaven 
* job 4.18. & jude v. 6. , the eiection (though not final rejection) of Adam and Eve 
x Gen. 3 23.  out of Eden: the devastation 
y Gen. 7.23.  and drowning of the old world: the conflagration and burning of Sodom 
z Gen. 19.24. : the successive plagues upon Pharaoh 
a Exod. ch 7, 8, 9, 10, per totum. , & his Egyptians: the casting out of the unclean Canaanites 
b judg. 1. per totum. : the smiting of the Philistims with emerods 
c 1 Sam. 5 6. : the burning of Achan 
d Iosh 7.25. , with his stuff & family: the stinging of the Israelites with fiery Serpents 
e Num 21.6. , smiting them at the graves of Lust 
f Num. 11.33, 34. : cutting them off in the wilderness 
g Num. 26.65. , depriving them of the promised Canaan 
h Heb. 3.11. : rebuking of Kings for his people's sake 
i Psal. 105.14. : killing the lustful sons of Ely 
k 1 Sam. 2.22. & 4.17.  with the sword of the Philistines: destroying the two sons of Aaron with fire from heaven 
l Levit. 10.2. : burning up the two Captains with their fifties 
m 2 King. 1.9.12 , that came to take Elias: smiting the Assyrians with blindness 
n 2 King. 6.18.  that came against Elishah: the Sodomites with blindness 
o Gen. 19.11. , that came against Lot and his harboured Angels: Elimas the Sorcerer with blindness, contradicting Paul 
p Acts 13.11. : striking Herod with death in all his pomp 
q Acts 12.23. : Nabuchadnezzar with madness in his vaunted pride 
r Dan. 4.29, 30. : Baltazar with terrors 
s Dan. 5.6.  and trembling in his abominable profaneness: yea, to wade into Histories, the smiting of Antiochus Epiphanes 
t 1 Mach. 2. & 6.1. De quibus Euseb. lib. 8. Niceph. lib. 7. cap. 6. c. 22. Vincentius lib. 10. cap. 56. , Maxentius, and other truculent Tyrants, with intolerable gripings and convulsions in their bowels ᵘ, with all other grievous, strange, and remarkable judgements upon Anastasius 
* Fulmine ictus. Melancton lib. 3. Cren. , Arrius 
x Theod. lib. 1. cap. 11. Magd. Cent. 3. cap. 11. , Manes ʸ, Michael Seruetus 
z Apud Aretium in fine locorum communium. , and other Heretics 
a Read God's judgements on Montanus apud Niceph. lib. 4. c. 22 on Olympus, apud Sabellicum, lib. 5. c. 4. on Nestorius, apud Niceph. lib. 14. c. 30 with others in fine Zegedini in Tabulis. : on Nero 
b Suetonius in vita. , Decius 
c Eusebius lib. 7. c. 1. , Caligula, etc. Constantius 
d Socrates lib. 2 c. 47. , Valens 
e Ruffinus lib 2. c. 13. , and other Heathenish Popish, and 
f Of all which read Euseb. lib 5 c. 15. lib. 7. c. 21 22. lib. 8. c. 7. Niceph. lib. 3. c. 23. Theod. lib. 3. c. 7. & lib. 4. c. 4. etc. & apud Modernos: lege Zonaram Tom. 3. Phil. Cron. lib. 3. & 4. & 5. Diaconum lib. 3. c. 12. &. c. 18. Fulgosum lib. 9 c. 5. Greg. Tur. lib. 2. c. 3. Antoninum lib. 15. c. 15. Bonfinium Helmoldum c. 24 Fox in Martyrol.  Arrian persecutors, with these examples that have at this day filled Books and extant Volumes both in Latin and English, with Tragical Histories of observed, collected, and recorded judgements upon Atheists, profane persons, persecutors, tyrants, idolaters, murderers, adulterers, blasphemers 
g Of all which read the Theatre of God's judgement, chief Lonicer his Theatrum Historicum, etc. , and the rest: these, and all these, with many more which might be enumerated, are merely the fruits and effects of the constant wrath and anger of God upon sin and sinners, in all times, places, ages, and generations.  
The most profitable use we can make of this point to ourselves, is cautelously and wisely to beware of sin that makes God wroth; lest we drink too deep of the cup of his vengeance: Oh that we were wise by the light and infusion of grace (as the very bruits, beasts, and birds, by the guidance and instinct of nature) to avoid what is prejudicial and hurtful unto us, and that is sin, the Coloquintida in our pottage, the poisoned bullet in our flesh, the consumption in our marrow, the poison of our graces, the destruction of our natures, the reproach of our names, and the damnation of our souls: sin, the fuel that kindleth the fire of God's wrath against us, (which unless quenched with the tears of true repentance) burns to the very bottom of hell: sin, so abhorring to the nature of God, whose pure eyes cannot endure impurity, that he hates nothing more: sin, betwixt which and God there is a greater contrariety and repugnancy, then betwixt light and darkness, good and evil, the Wolf and Lamb, or any other the greatest Antipathies in nature.   

SECT. 2. The folly of sinners in fearing the creature more than the wrath of the Creator.  
ANd here I cannot but expostulate with the follies or rather frenzies of wicked and impenitent sinners, as indeed I have still with the scriptures, thought greatest sinners greatest fools 
h Psal. 14.1. Pro. 7.7. Chap. 8.5. Chap. 9.4. Luke 12.20 Gal. 3.1. Vide etiam Peraldum in summis de stultitia avari. Tom. 2. p. 49. Prodigi p. 123. otiosi p. 130. superbi p. 186. & 196. See also the French Academy, and Adam his world of mad men. , bad man, mad men ⁱ, wicked men, unwise men, who by a natural well-wishing to their bodies, seeking the preservation & conservation of themselues, cautelously avoid the force or fraud, might or malignity, that is in any of the creatures, as the burning of the fire, the choking of the water, the infection of the plague, the sword of the enemy, the famine of dearth, the sacking of our cities, the racking of our joints: yea that seek the avoidance of the venom of the Toad, the poison of the spider, the biting of the Asp, the sting of the Serpents, the sight of the Basilisk, the tooth of the dog, tusk of the Boar, horns of the Bull, horn of the Unicorn, paw of the Bear, fury of the Tiger, with the malignity which is in any other creature, when it is incensed against us, and armed with fury, force, or fraud to do us a mischief; and yet nevertheless have no care, no circumspection to serve and please the Lord, but negligently, inconsiderately, yea ofttimes wittingly, willingly, presumptuously, if not maliciously, displease that Majesty, incense that wrath, anger that great God, that Lord of hosts, who indeed as a General his soldiers, hath all these enumerated creatures sublunary, the worst in the natures of beasts, birds, herbs, plants, together with the malignity of the worst planets, the influence of the heavens, yea even all the legions of his Angels, and even the devil and the damned spirits at his beck and command, as the instruments of his wrath, to be revenged on the rebellious and presumptuous, even in a trice, in the twinkling of an eye. Oh what a piteous thing it is, what a dotage, what a delusion, to fear the creature, to fear a mortal man whose breath is in his nostrils, who can but at furthest torture or torment the body, this out-cask, this carrion flesh: and not to fear by a continuated course of sinning, the anger and displeasure of the Almighty Creator; who besides his judgements here (the prologues of the future) is able to cast both body and soul into hell fire. Oh how every creature observes that, on which it hath an immediate dependence, and is able being offended to do it a displeasure, as the horse his rider, the ox his driver, the dog his master: yea we see how all that are honest (out of conscience) or that are wise (out of fear) reverence and respect those to whom they have that relation; that being observed and pleased they may do them a pleasure; or being neglected in duty, or provoked by misdemeanour, they may do them a displeasure: as all the respect the servants, pages, or prentices give their masters; retainers, and followers, their Lords, scholars their teachers, maids their mistresses; and wives their husbands? yea, we see how seruilie and slavishly men will crouch and kneel, and make friends to those, in whose danger they are (as the Sidonians made Blastus the Chamberlain 
i Act. 12.20.  to Herod) whose wrathful displeasures they fear: and yet alas, the Lord God, in whom we live, move, and have our being 
k Act. 17.28. , to whom we are daily Tenants at will, for our life, health, liberty, goods, good name, callings, functions, wives, children, bodies, and souls, to be turned out at pleasure, even out of all, upon our great landlord's displeasure, and to be with that wicked unprofitable servant 
l Mat 25.28.  cashiered, as a thriftless child disinherited, as a whorish woman divorced, etc. and as reprobates cast into hell: this God that in an instant can pour on us all the viols of his wrath, and vessels of his vengeance, turn his favours into frowns, his blessings into curses: as we turn his graces into wantonness: even this God we care not how we anger, how we displease, yea plainly provoke by sin, (as we do a Bull by blood, an Unicorn by ●ed 
m Gesner de quadrupedibus. , and a spirited man by disgraceful words) and even dare him as the Crow the Eagle in the Fable, to our irrecoverable destruction. Yea it is strange, sometimes how partly out of sordid and servile desire of gaining this filthy lucre; partly out of a base Gnatonicall humour, to flatter: but out of a more servile fear to anger, and displease those who have it in their power, to displease them: we shall see in every place, in City and Country, what a rout and rabble of Parasites, Sycophants, jeasters, jugglers, Rhymers, Bards, Buffoons, Fiddlers, artificial fools, idle and vain persons, observe, and humour, great men, tell them tales, break jests, claw them in their sins, sing them filthy songs, to make their worships laugh, tickle their itching curiosity with all the news stirring in the Country (for want of old, inventing & forging new:) rail upon Preachers, revile professors, make sport with precisians (as they term them) rhyme on Puritans: and like apes perform many other tricks, all to humour and please those, whom they dare not anger, and displease: and yet the most of these, yea the most men of all ranks and sorts (unless only those into whose hearts made of better mould 
n Ex meliori luto sinxit praecordia Titan, etc. , the Lord hath put his fear, that (joseph like) they dare not sin 
o Gen. 39.9. ) make as much conscience, and have as small care by following divers lusts, of displeasing God, though he have power in vitam & necem, to save or destroy them: as an ape makes conscience (as they say) to crack nuts, a dog to tror, or the Fox to eat desired Grapes. Pilot himself herein being a Precedent to all natural men, speaking their thoughts, desires, dispositions and practice, who for the pleasing of the importunate jews, but chief for preventing the feared anger and displeasure of Caesar: (which nevertheless justly and deservedly fallen upon him, in his exile and banishment 
p Historia extat apud Eusebium, l. 2. c. 7. Eutro. l. 7 Nauclerum parte 2. gener. 2. & Niceph. l. 2. c. 10.  afterwards) he unjustly condemns Christ, and lets lose 
q Mark 15.15.  murdering Barabas, for fear not to be counted Caesar's friend, he proves at last after many fair shows to the contrary, Christ's real enemy: So Foelix for no other cause, when he left his Deputiship, left innocent Paul bound, but to curry favour with the jews; 
r Acts 24.27.  though such partiality and injustice did set God himself against him, and against all such corrupt judges as he was.   

SECT. 3. God's wrath kindled, by repentance should be quenched.  
But herein I more marvel at the folly and stupidity of all natural and unregenerate men, that by the ministry of the word, knowing in what estate they stand by nature, as branches from the root of old Adam, being no better in their best pedigrees, than children of wrath, vessels of wrath 
s Ephes. 2.3. & Chap. 4.18. , heirs of hell, by their very natural birth as left them hereditary from their parents & progenitors, bringing their Charter and title to their inheritance, even from the very wombs of their sinning mothers, yet seek not to come out of this estate, to be drawn out of this pit, to get a better assurance for heaven then from Adam, and every way to better their accursed condition by regeneration, as the only prescribed remedy for their misery 
t john 3.6. . Yea more I marvel not only at the children of darkness as yet in the power of the devil 
u Acts 26.18. 2 Tim. 2.26. , but also at the children of light, whose eyes are opened, and their feet in some measure set at liberty, who after their failings in some duties (as here Ezekiah in one) of commission of some sin, of which perhaps their judgements are truly informed, yet are so lethargical and drowsy, and heavy-headed, yea and heavie-hearted too, that procrastinating and deferring their repentance, as the jews did the building of their Temple 
* Haggai 1.3. , going big with their sins, some months (as David did in two sins 
x 2 Sam. 11. & Chap. 24. ,) as a woman goes big with child, till this blessed Grace wife repentance, do deliver them: they make small haste to meet the Lord, to have recourse to the throne of Grace, to make up the breach by godly sorrow; but go on still, perhaps in the performance of some good duties, as it seems David did, ere Nathan and Gad came to him, though heavily and lumpishly, as a man walks with a lame leg, or a bird flies with a hanging drooping wing. Oh what a spur were this to accelerate and hasten repentance with posting, yea, with winged speed, to mend our snails pace, and to turn it into an eagle's flight, even the consideration of this, that sin causeth wrath, yea that it makes the Lord angry, even with his own children, as with Ezekiah here, and these of judah, etc. Now who rightly knowing and laying to heart the force and fury of the fire of God's wrath, would not seek to quench it presently?  
Oh who is so unwise, that when his house, or study of books, or counting house is on fire, in which are all his writings and Evidences, will not instantly cast on water, call for help, bestir himself with speed, not delaying a minute or moment of time? who withal being in danger of his life, by fire, water, pirates, thiefs, enemies, etc. doth not instantly, importunately, cry out for help, as the disciples in the tossed ship 
y Mat. 8.25. , and jehosophat 
z 1 King. 21. 3●▪  in the battle? yea who apprehended and in peril to be executed upon his evident felonies, upon any hope of a pardon, makes not all possible speed, sets not all his friends a work for the procuring it, without procrastination? Oh that we should be so sensible to seek so present redress in our humane miseries, to salve our greatest extremities; and yet upon our felonious sinning against our God, convicted and condemned by the infallible witness, and verdict of our own conscience, in danger of the fearfullest execution in hell: yet as men sleeping on the top of the Mast of the 
a Pro. 23.34.  ship, or before the very mouth of a discharging Cannon senseless of the danger, we make such asslike sluggish pace for prevention. The fire of our lusts already kindling another fire, even the fire of God's wrath, and that kindling a third, even the fire of hell, in tormenting Tophet 
b Esa. 30.33. , to which sin and sinners are fuel; that we should not be so slow, to quench this fire with our tears extracted from a penitential heart, or to smother it with the sighs and sobs of a throbbing soul: Oh that we could as soon as ever we perceive wrath gone from the Almighty, prostrate ourselves before the Lord as Moses & Aaron 
c Numb. 16.46. , and with the golden censer and incense of our fervent prayers, entreat and intercede the good God for pardon, and remission: that we could appeal from the King's Bench of justice, to the Chequer or Chancery of his Mercy, à Deo irato, ad Deum placatum 
d Augustinus in Psalmum 74. , from a wrathful and angry God, as incensed by our sins, to a God appeased, reconciled and well pleased with us, in the mediation of his Christ, whose blood 
e Colos. 1.14.  hath already made the atonement.  
Lastly, that we may make a narrow search and scrutiny into the cause or occasion of Ezekiahs' castigation, and so consequently of his humiliation, that is the pride of his heart, for so the holy Text saith, that Ezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart, and wrath ceased etc. We should do wrong to the Text, wrong to the purpose and scope of the Spirit inditing, wrong to many a proud heart, who perhaps from hence may be kerbed; wrong to many a humbled dejected heart, who perhaps may be erected & comforted, if we should pretermit from this ground, this remarkable observation: that pride brings judgements, humiliation removes them: pride kindleth God's wrath, humility quencheth it: pride casts on oil and fuel, humiliation casts on water: pride casts the soul down, humiliation lifts it up again: prides bring the soul into a snare, humiliation unlooseth & rescues it: pride displeaseth God, humiliation appeaseth him: Oh the plague and pest of pride, oh the helps and honours of humility. Oh here were two Themes in laudem, & vituperium, etc. in praise and dispraise of this virtue, that vice so opposed: worthy the Oratory, not only of a Tully, Demosthenes, or Hortensius that could go no further but morality, but even of a Basil, a Nazianzens' Oration; worthy of a Prudentius, 
Vide Prudentiū●e pugna humilitatis & superbiae.  a Christian Theologue to express the combat, the conquest of humility over pride. Oh how Ezekiahs' own particular vereties that scripture so oft inculcate by our Saviour Christ himself 
f Luke 14.11. , by Solomon 
g Prou. 3.34. , by the Apostles 
h jam. 4.6. 1 Pet. 5.5. , that the Lord resists the proud, and gives grace to the humble: resists the proud indeed as his special enemies, casts down their vain imaginations 
i Luke 1.51. , pulls down their Babel's buildings, brings low their lofty looks, makes their high and haughty hearts stoop 
k ver. 52. , will they ●●ll they, takes them down many pegs lower, when they are exalted, brings them down with a witness, yea some with a vengeance, when they perk aloft and soar too high; makes them to know themselves that they are men, not Gods, yea dust and ashes, base & miserable men, when (Lucifer like) they have made themselves like the most high 
l Esa. 14.12, 13. , and have foolishly affected a Deity amongst the sons of men: thus hath the Lord humbled the proud, in the imaginations of their hearts, and cast down the mighty from their seats: hath blown down the strong Oaks, and cut down the lofty Cedars, whilst the lower shrubs, the humbled souls have stood in safety: the cloud topping advanced hills, and sky threatening mountains have been exposed to storms and tempests of wrath and vengeance, whilst the lower days, the humble hearts have been fruitful in grass, abundant in Grace: thus God resists proud Nabuchadnezzar, and by the strength of his own imagination 
m To this force of imagination D. Willet in his Hexapla in Danielem, Agrippa in occulta Philosophia l. 1. c. 64 Wic●us lib. 3. de Lamijs cap. 10. Ficnus de viribus imaginationis in tribus libris, Et Malleus malific. fol 77. attribute witchcrafts, diseases, transformations.  turns him into a beast: resists proud Herod, in his usurped praise, and as the canker the Rose, eats his pride with worms 
n Act. 12.23. : resists proud Rabsakah, prouder Senacharib his master, and puts his hook in both their nostrils 
o 2 king. 19.28. : resists proud Valens the Arrian 
p Theatrum Historicum, in 3. Praeceptum. fol. 255. , and burns his pride to ashes, in a shepherd's cottage: resists proud Alexander, urbis & orbis domitor, the world's Monarch yea the conqueror of more worlds than one 
q Vnus peleo iweni non sufficit orbis.  in his ambitious desires, the son of jupiter 
r Curtius' lib. 5. Str●gellius in ethic. l. 1. pag. 39 Melancton Cren. l. 2. & in eius vita Plutarch. , as his pride terms himself, cut off in the midst of his years 
s Anno ante natum Christum 323. anno aetatis suae 32 die junij 28. Gorlic p. 378 axiom. polit.  by the hand of the just God, was learned to know that a few feet in the earth could contain that body which was the cell and receptacle of that mind, which many worlds could no more satisfy then the air doth the Camel: resists proud Anastasius the Arrian Emperor 
t Melancton lib. 3. Cron. , and strikes him as jupiter in the fable the Centaurs, with a thunderbolt from heaven: resists proud Arrius himself, and extracts out his bowels with his excrements where he was uncovering his feet 
u ut supra. : resists proud and ambitious Caesar and stabs him in the Senate house, by the hands of his imagined friends 
* Ex Plutarcho Bucholcherus in Cron. p. 137. : resists proud Pompey, his swelling rival, and lays his honour in the dust 
x De quo praeter Livium Cicero l. 7. epist. Amb. lib. 5. epist. 31. , with his head on the Egyptian shore: resists proud Tarquin and by disgraceful banishment 
y Bodimos lib. 4. cap. 5. p. 180.  both pulls down his pride, and cools and schools his lust: resists proud and peremptory Pharaoh, and lays his lofty head and haughty heart, together with all his force and fame as low as the hollowest bottom of the devouring Ocean, nec in caeteris contrarium est videre: all other proud persons in Church and common wealth, in all ages and times have tasted the like sauce, as subjects of God's wrath, the Lord hath contested and contended with them as with his most intestine resolved and professed enemies, he hath crushed their devices as Cockatrice eggs: opposed their erterprises, and pulled down the Babylonian buildings of their inventions, and made them mere Babel's confusions: dealt with them as the Eagle with the shellfish, carried them up aloft, ut moleruant graviori, that he might crush them down with the greater fall 
z Superbi●m semper comitem f●isse ruinam in multis exemplis instant Tolos. de repub. lib. 3. pag. 1388. 1389 139●. & Strigellius lib. 1. ethic. pag. 309. 419. & lib. 7. pag. 528 cum Philippo, in locis Manlij pag. 177. 178. et in lib. 2. Cron. pag. 101. et in▪ Cordiali Bucholc. pag. 21. et pag. 170. .  
But on the contrary, he hath given grace to the humble, they (as was said of Christ their master 
a Luke 2.52. , that humble Lamb) do grow in Grace and favour with God & man: in grace with man 
b Gen. 41.41. , was humble joseph (despised of his brethren 
c Gen. 37.19. , disgraced by his Mistress 
d chap. 39.14. , despited by his Master 
e verse 20. ) at last advanced the greatest save Pharaoh, in the Egyptian Court: so the Lord exalted humble, honest-hearted, penitent Mardocheus 
f Esther 6.11. , as the greatest favourite in the eyes of Assuerus: humble Daniel to be esteemed delicias Domini, etc. the very Darling and jewel of King Darius 
g Dan. 6 3. : humble David, the son of a Countryman, to be son in law to a King 
h 1 Sam. 18.23. , yea to be the King of Israel; brought him from a Sheephook to a Sceptre 
i ● Sam. 12.7. : the humble Virgin Mary 
k Luke 1.48. , a withered branch of the root of jesse, to be the mother of the promised exhibited Messiah: restored humbled Manasses, after his eiection out of his Kingdom, to his Regal place, and adorned his dejected soul with saving grace 
l 2 Chr. 33 11, 12. : healed the servant of the humbled Centurion 
m Mat. 8.8, 9 : cleansed the humbled Lepers 
n Luke 17.13. : pardoned the humbled Thief on the Cross 
o Luk. 23.42, 43 , and promised him paradise: heard and accepted the prayers of the humbled brest-smiting 
p Luke 18.13.  Publican: cast not only the crumbs but the bread of his bounty and mercy to that Canaanitish dog 
q Mat. 15.28. , that humbled Syrophinessean: was entreated for sinning Israel 
r Exod. 32.32. : yea for plagued Pharaoh 
s Exod. 9.29. , at the intercessions of humbled Moses: was contented to have spared even Sodom herself, and to have pardoned her pollutions, if any conditions could have been performed 
t Gen▪ 18.24. ad vers 32. , at the mediation of humbled Abraham: cast out seven Devils, remitted many evils 
* In his & aliis invebunt in superbiam, Augustinus in Ps. 19 Gregor. in Moralibus. Chrysost. Hom 59 in Mat. Cassiodor. in Ps. 18. Bernard. ser. 3. de Resur. Isiodor. lib. 3. de Summo bono, apud Neotericos, in lib. 2. Ethic. Strigell. p. 528. in Prou. 16. pag. 78. Philippus lib. 2. cron. p. 101. lib. 5 pag. 557. & in Posti●●is part. 1. p. 654. & part 4. pag. 624. praecipue Perald. in summit. tom. 2. part. 2, 3, 4. , and sanctified with many saving graces the humbled soul of Mary Magdalen 
u Luk. 7.47, 48. : yea here we see the humiliation of Ezekiah removes that curse or cross from himself and his subjects, which the pride of his heart procured: pride kindles incensed wrath, humiliation quencheth it.  
Oh who would not hate this hateful monster of pride, so hateful to God 
* In his & aliis invebunt in superbiam, Augustinus in Ps. 19 Gregor. in Moralibus. Chrysost. Hom 59 in Mat. Cassiodor. in Ps. 18. Bernard. ser. 3. de Resur. Isiodor. lib. 3. de Summo bono, apud Neotericos, in lib. 2. Ethic. Strigell. p. 528. in Prou. 16. pag. 78. Philippus lib. 2. cron. p. 101. lib. 5 pag. 557. & in Posti●●is part. 1. p. 654. & part 4. pag. 624. praecipue Perald. in summit. tom. 2. part. 2, 3, 4. , so hurtful to man, so consonant to corrupt nature, so repugnant from grace, so near sympathising with the Devil, so good an agent for hell, so prejudicial both to sanctification and salvation? Who on the contrary would not love and admire this heaven-bred humiliation, such a preservative against pride, such a purger of pollutions, such a depresser of corrupt nature, such a keeper in of grace, as the ashes of the imbers, such a curber of corruption, such a plea against the cry of sin, such a Proctor against the guilt of sin, such a favourite in the Court of heaven, yea such a pleader and prevailer before the throne of Grace 
x De his & aliis laudibus humilitatis, lege ipsum Paraldum tom. 1. pag. 367, 368, 369. & Spinaeum de Tranq. lib. 2. pag. 63. ? Oh, as Plato saith of virtue, I say of this virtue, of this grace, (which one of the Ancients calls the first, the second, and the third grace, as one called pronunciation the first, second, and third part of Oratory) if it could be seen and discerned in the lustre and beauty of it, with mortal eyes, it would stir up love and admiration in the dullest spectator: more would be enamoured of this Christian, then of that Grecian Helena. Take the marrow of all that is said, in one word, he that would with Herod, Pharaoh, Rabsakah, Senacharib, Holofernes, Nimrod, Nabuchadnezzar, the Gospel's Pharisee, Herodians Pharisees, be dejected and made to stoop by the rod of wrath, yea ejected as unsavoury salt, from place and grace with God and man; let him exalt himself in the pride of his heart: God hath ways and means enough to pull him down, as experience verifies our proverb, his pride will have a fall, it owes and waits him an ill turn 
y Adrastia vel Nemesi●●on sinit insolentiam abire impunitam, etc. Philippus in Cordial. Bucholch. pag. 122. Hinc Aesopus asserit, Deum in caelis frangere magnas ollas, & exfrustis alias novas componere. apud Philippum, in locis Man●●i, p. 182. , as we say of cording and dicing, it is a false plough to hold; it hath brought some to the Gallows, as it did Achitophel 
z 2 Sam. 17.23. , and Absolom 
a chap. 18.14. ; some to the block and the scaffold, as many proud rebellious Traitors 
b Exempla lege, apud Valerium l●b. 6 lib 9 Liu. lib. 1. lib. 24. Munsterum lib. 3. praecipue in Theatro Histori●o. fol. 320. & 570, etc.  in all Kingdoms and Commonwealths: He that looks too hie, some moat or other will fall in his eye, to blemish or eclipse him. On the contrary, he that would be respected and exalted in grace and favour, with God and man, in heaven and earth, with humble joseph, humble Mary, humble Manasses, humble Mardocheus, humble David, humble Daniel, humble Ezekiah, let him be truly, sound, sincerely humbled; let him fall low, that for ever he may be truly advanced high: for the proud Pharisee is rejected, the Publican accepted.    

CHAP. X.  

SECT. 1. Though the righteous fall, they shall rise again.  
THe third main point comes now to be prosecuted, as first it was propounded, and that is Ezekiahs' humiliation: for the Text saith, notwithstanding Ezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart. In which, as in his sin and transgression, we have seen man's humane frailty, as in himself considered; in God's castigation and chastizing of him for his sin, we have seen both the affection of a father, in correcting him as a son, and the severity of a judge, in visiting him as a sinner: so here as most obvious to our consideration, we have his repentance, an image and demonstration of God's free mercy and saving grace to the vessels of mercy: in that though they be for reasons and causes, as we have heard, permitted to sin, by him who could exempt and free them here on earth from all sin, as they shall be freed in heaven, (and make elect men as inculpable as elect Angels, and their bodies as pure as the glorified Spirits of the just) yet nevertheless he frees them as from the reign and dominion 
c Plurima in hanc rem lege apud Augustin. lib. 1. de Nuptiis et Concupisc. cap. 25. & tract. 41. in johan. & lib. 1. de peccat. meritis & remissione. c. 23. & lib. 6. adversus julianum cap 7. , so from the ruin and damnation of sin 
d Per merita Christi, ut urget Bernard. Ser. 3. in natin. Domin. Ser. 78. in Canticis, & Serm. 91. Chrysost. in Psal. 50 Hom. 2. & August. in Enchirid. cap. 23. ; though they fall yet they rise again, as here we may see in Ezekiah, that fell by pride, as did Angels and Man, but rose again by repentance and humiliation, as the reprobate Angels did not, nor ever shall.  
Oh it is a point for ever to be preached and pressed to the comfort and consolation of the elect, and to the praise and glory of his grace, who is the author and giver of grace, that though the righteous fall seven times a day, that is, often either into sin (or as some interpret, into crosses and afflictions, the fruits of sin) yet nevertheless they shall rise again: though they slumber a while in sin, and take a short nap, as lulled with the sweet allurements of the flesh, and charmed a while with that Witch the World, yet they waken again: they sleep not in death, their sin is not mortiferous and unto death; fall they may, as we instanced in the wisest, the strongest, the holiest, the humblest Patriarches, Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors, Preachers, Professors, that have been from the beginning, in whom follies, frailties, weaknesses, infirmities, have appeared, showing them to be but men, subjected to a sinning condition, but yet (as the Schools well distinguish) they cannot fall away totally and finally, as old Pelagianisme 
* Confuted by Austin, Jerome, Prosper, Bradwarden, and by the three Counsels of Melevitan, Africa, and Orange.  and new Arminianism seem to aver against the Scriptures 
d Psal. 37.23, 24 Psal 94.18. & 145.14. Pro. 3.26. Esay 26.3. Esay 40.11. & 46.3.10. 2 Thes. 3.3. Phil. 4.7. john 10.28. 1 Pet. 1.5. 2 Tim. 4 18. etc. , and Orthodox 
e Lege in hanc rem apud Patres, justin. q. 23. q. 98 Jreneum lib. 5. adue●sus haereses, pag. 550. ad pag. 558. 564. & lib. 2. cap. 47. Clement. Paedog. lib. 1. c. 5. fol. 19 c. 6. folio 20, 23. lib 3 c 6 p. 48. Tertul. de Praescrip. c. 2. pag. 161, 162 & de Corona c. 9 p 156 Hilarium in Ps. 120 pag. 287 in Psal. 128 p. 301 & Can. 6. in Matth. pag. 155. Ambr. in Ps. 50. & in Rom. 8. v. 29, 30 apud modernos: Marlorat. in Ps. 51.125. in joh. 4.14. Art in 2 Tim. 2.19. Zanchium de pursue. tom. 7. pag. 91. ad pag. 174. & Kymidont. de praedest. p. 318. to. 333.  Divinity: they may indeed fall fearfully, who are elected unto life, not only before their conversion, as Paul, Manasses, Mary Magdalen, etc. Augustine, Cyprian, Luther, etc. with others, who laid long in persecution, bloodshed, uncleanness, Necromancy, idolatry, etc. and other sins: but even after their conversion they may have fearful relapses, as had David, Peter, Samson, Solomon, this our Ezekiah, but yet they cannot fall finally and irrecoverably: they may indeed in their fall be sore crushed, as perplexed in soul, in conscience, in spirit, they may break an arm or a joint, (lose their credit for a time, and estimation, not only with the world with whom they war, but with the Church too; which is as their unjointing from the communion of Saints, the members of Christ, till they be knit and right set and jointed again by repentance) but yet their fall is not to precipitation, to neck-breake, as are the falls of the reprobate: they wander indeed out of the way, and go astray like lost sheep, yet they return home again to the Bishop of their souls, their good Shepherd that hath given his life for them, and bought them with a price, even his own blood, he seeks them as the woman did the lost groat, he finds them, and brings them home on his shoulders to the sheepfold of his Church: and this he doth many ways, to prosecute the Metaphor.  
1. Either he whistles and speaks to them in the more secret voice and inspiration of his Spirit, 
Means which the Lord useth as a spiritual Shepherd, to call home his sheep by repenting, which have wandered by sinning.  or else in the audible voice of his word he sends some Gad, some Nathan to cry some harsh message in their ears, or to blow a Trumpet, set up a flag of defiance against their sins, denounce wrath; so wakening them out of their warm nests, rousing and raising them out of their pleasing dreams and slumbers, as he did David 
f 2 Sam. 12. 2 Sam. 24. , etc.  
2. Or else he sends his dogs after them, to fetch them in, to bring them home: and these Shepherd's dogs are either outward crosses and afflictions, as poverty, sickness, diseases, as we may see in the return of the Prodigal Child, whipped home to his Father's house, by outward miseries 
g Luke 15.15, , etc. or above all, by infamy, ignominy, calumnies, reproaches, which are as it were the barkings & bite of the Doegs' 
i  Doeg in Davidem, 1 Sam 12. , the dogs of the world; he brings many straggling sheep apace, even running home to the flock: these dogs are to the elect in respect of their sins, as the dogs of that rich Churl to Lazarus, though sore against their wills they lick whole their sores 
k Luke 16.21. , they heal their sins.  
Or else there is another dog, which is more bloody fangd then the rest, with a more hideous barking and more daingerous biting, sets upon the sheep; and that is this dog of Conscience: which how ere when the elect sin, this Mastiff seems to be muzzled, or lie quietly asleep at the door 
l Of this lethargical quiet Conscience see the B. Abrenethy his Book called The Physic of the Soul, chap. 8. p. 103. , or the pleasant sop of present pleasure or profit be given to this Cerberus, that he may be quiet and fawn for a time: yet when the sin is committed, and the eyes of the sinner opened, the nature, quality, fruits and effects of the sin discerned, than this Mastiff seems to be unmuzzled, he awakes out of his charmed sleep, as a mad dog indeed, bawls and barks at the sinner, as at a felonious thief, gnaws and mangles the very inwards of his soul, as the Wolf that eats within the flesh 
m De stimulis & furiis Conscientiae plurima exempla & testimonia lege apud Ambros. lib. 7. ep. 44. & in epistola ad Constantinum. August. in Psal. 31. Pezelium in Gen. cap. 37. pag. 714. cap. 42. pag. 794. Luther in Gen. cap. 43. p. 652. & in▪ cap. 45. p. 671. & Patritium lib. 5. de Regno, tit. 8. p. 313. cum Strigellio in Ethicis Aristot. lib. 1. pag. 794. & cap. 45. pag. 835. , pursues him as the slouth-hound, sometimes more closely, yet continually, sometimes more furiously with open mouth 
n Hinc vulpina conscientia apud Hugon. lib. 2. de anima. cap. 15. Hinc etiam illud Isodori lib. 2. Soliloq. nunquam s●curus reus animus. Plura lege apud Senecam Epistola 43. & Epistola 88 Tacitum 4. Annalium: Ciceron. pro Client. pro Milon. & Lipsium in politicis, lib. 1. cap. 5. , as the Hound doth the Dear or Hare, from thicket to thicket; lets him have no rest, like that Actaeon in the fable; till the distressed sinner fly to the true shelter and sanctuary, the mercy of God in jesus Christ; till like the pursued Dear he take soil in the troubled Pool of Bethasda, the Laver of true repentance; till he there lose and shake off this Cerberus; till he be athirst after the living God 
o Psal. 42.1, 2. , and after his mercy; as the Dear that is embossed thirsts after the rivers of water; yea, till the poor soul entreat the great Master of the family to take up and take off this Mastiff, and chain him up, there is no rest to the soul of this sinner: and this Dog the Lord sets instantly upon David, when after the numbering of his people, at the return of joab, his heart smote him 
p 2 Sam. 24.10. : and this smiting of the heart, like the smiting of Moses on the Rock 
q Exod. 17.6. , that brought out waters, produced these excellent parts of repentance, contrition 
r Psal. 6.6. , confession 
s Psal. 51.4. , aggravation of his sin, deprecation for mercy in the pardon and remission of it: as also more furiously this Dog set on him after his murder and adultery, as appears by his grievous complaints, in some of his Penitential Psalms 
t Psal. 38.2, 3, 4, etc. : This Dog gnaws and snarls at jonas when he was in the Whale's belly, and makes him cry, as he there complains, even out of Hell 
u jonas 2.1. , as he calls his close prison: Yea not the least sin can be committed by the child of God, but at one time or other, either in general or special, this Dog barks against it, either more or less; as we may see in the same David, who but touching the hem of saul's garment (though his pursuing enemy, and a bloody Tyrant) not imbruing his hands in the blood of the Lords Anointed, (as the jesuites and Friars, by their positions 
* See them extant by the learned D. Morton.  and practices use to do) but even touching his garment, a sin (if any) venial; or (as the Papists call some) even less then venial 
x Affirmed by Coccius in Thes. Catholico, tom. 1. : yet even for this, this waking wacker Dog barks, this Conscience curbs his heart, smote him 
y 1 Sam. 24.10 See also in my Origens' repentance, & Suida Nicephoro, & Eusebio lib. 6. how Origen was afflicted in soul after his idolatrizing. , (as indeed a little moat troubles a tender eye, a little pebble stone pincheth in a straight shoe, and a little sin troubles a tender conscience.)  
3. Besides, this Shepherd uses also to fetch home his straggling sheep, by his rod or sheephook: not only the rod of bands, which are crosses and afflictions, menaces and terrors, which as sharp winds drive soon the ships of sin-burthened souls to the desired haven of saving grace, to the shore of safety, the port of Penitence; but also the rod of beauty, even the consideration of the Lords love, and his blessings, and his mercies in Christ, temporal and spiritual, leads and draws many to repentance, as it did David, who no sooner heard by Nathan the enumeration of God's mercies to him in their particulars, but his heart melts as the wax, with that Sun his spirit thaws, dissolves, and loosens, as Ice before the fire; and as one wholly broken in heart, he sighs or breathes out, I have sinned 
z  supra 2 Sam. 12. : confounded and ashamed of his unworthy walking, not answering these mercies, as one planet-struck, grief stopping the further passage of his speech, (as a watercourse damned up, it gets but a little vent, as the smoke out at some cranny) he speaks shortly and laconically, what his heart largely dilates inwardly; I have sinned: after enlarging that short Text in seven Penitential Psalms. And indeed though I will not deny that sometimes in the repentance of the elect (as always in the hypocritical howl and repentant roar of the Reprobate) there is a work of conscience, who hath a terrifying voice, an affrighting cry, like the sudden invasion of an enemy, by fire and sword to drive them (further then the reprobate ever come) to their strongest Castle, their chief Rock 
a Psal. 18.1. Mat. 16.18. , that Vthiel and Vcal 
b Prou. 30.1. , the mercies of God in jesus Christ: yet the most kindly, and (if I may use the word) the most natural humiliation of the child of God, is that which hath the original from filial love, when the love of God is shed abroad in the heart, when that love which was never extinct, no not in the act of sin, but (as in Peter 
c Hilar. in Psal. 52.4. Bernard. de natura & dignit. amoris Diu. cap. 6 & Leo Serm. 9 de de passione Dom. cum aliis, asserunt, Petrum magis peccasse in veritatem quam in charitatem, ore potius quam cord. Bellar. inquit de Rom. Pont. lib. 3. c. 8. & de Eccl. milit lib 3. c. 17. , even when he denied) is kept hidden, as fire under the ashes; when that spark of love is blown up again by the bellowes or breath of the Spirit of grace, as also by the mouth of the Minister, as God's organ in the Ministry, till it flame so hot, that it thaw the formerly frozen and congealed heart, and melt it into tears; when this love of God reflects on the cloud of our sins, and showers them down in the dissolved waters of Marah: when this love of God, that we have offended so good and gracious a God, rewarding him evil for good, dishonours for mercies, in a viperous ingratitude, more works upon our hearts, than all legal terrors, accusations of conscience, fear of hell: when this love sweetly leads the dance, and is that primus motor the first mover to repentance: Oh than repentance is sincere, than the heart is as nathaniel's 
d john 1.47.  without guile; then the sorrow is godly sorrow 
e 2 Cor. ●. 10, 11. , this repentance is a faithful and trusty friend to the soul, as jonathan was to David.  
4. Lastly, this shepherd draws his wand'ring sheep to to him, not only by his whistle, his voice, his dog, his crook, but even by his hook: not only in their first drawing, as when he looked upon Matthew 
f Math. 9.8, 9 , sitting at the receipt of custom, and, as the Adamant 
* De cuius vi lege Plinium l. 36. c. 16 26. & l. 34. c. 14. & l. 20. c. 7  the Iron, with that look drew him to be a disciple; as with the like look upon Zacheus 
g Luke 19.8, 9 , he drew him out of the Sycamour Tree, from a sinner to be a Saint: but even after their aberrations and wanderings, their stragglings and their strayings, the Lord lends them a look, as he did to denying Peter 
h Luke 22.61. , and draws them out after him into a solitary place, where by the inward voice of his Grace and Spirit, in private soliloquies in the ear of their souls, he talks and expostulates with them, convicts and convinces their consciences, makes them pass an indictment against themselves, prompts them to cry for mercy, assists them in crying and bleating, with sighs and groans 
i Rom 8.26. , and upon their cry seals their pardon 
k Esay 1.18. Micha 7.19. , admits them into Grace and favour, leads them into green pastures 
l Psal. 23. , and to the rivers of mercy, as here he did with Ezekiah.   

SECT. 2. God's children restored to grace with God, and in their Graces renewed by their repentance.  
THe mercies of the good God, in giving unto his sinning children, both the first Grace of repentance, and the second Grace of remission of sins upon their repentance, with the means of both, from this very metaphor of a mindful merciful Pastor, being thus laid open, in the Uses jaenus like looks both ways: It is a double flagon, or bottle, that on the one side hath wine to drink for children, on the other side, vinegar or verjuice for slaves. It hath both bread for the children, and stripes for the backs of fools: For these that are the Lords that have the marks of their Election, the signs of Sanctification, and are sealed up to the day of their Redemption; here is an Anchor for them in the midst of their fluctuations, here is some day-hole to be spied for them, some glimpses of comfort break out even in the darkest night of their sins, namely, that though by their sins the Sun of God's favour towards them, seem to be eclipsed, the light of his countenance abated, his wrath kindled, as here against Ezekiah; their souls wounded, their spirits perplexed, their consciences disquieted 
m Psal. 32: 4, 5. & Psal. 28. , their hearts oppressed with the guilt and grief of sin; their inward peace interrupted, yea disjointed; their former joys perished 
n Psal▪ ●●2. , their feelings abated, or quite lost; their graces soiled, decayed, weakened in the lustre, power, and exercise of them; their faith infirm, their assurance weak, their hopes languishing, their love & zeal cooled, their prayers dull and heavy, their spirits lumpish and drowsy: yea even in that relation that they have to man, though in respect of the world and her worldlings, their sins (chief if they be published in Gath and Askalon) expose them to the exprobration, vituperation, yea derision of the uncircumcised, as Sampsom 
o judg. 16.  was to the Philistines, and in respect of the Church, subject them to her censure, yea perhaps her greatest censure, excommunication 
p Grounded on 1 Cor. 5.5. practised by the Primitive times, authorised by Councils, vide decreta Gratiani 11. de concilio Arausicano, apud Osiandrum, Cent. 5. lib. 2.6.28. p. 300 ; and to the censure, frowns and browbeatings of her strictest children, till satisfaction be given; yet nevertheless even in this case, as David once in a great distress, they may comfort themselves in the Lord their God 
q 1 Sam. 30.6. , that their storms shall have a calm, their candle, that seems to be put out shall be lighted again, their former joys shall be restored, their Sun shall shine, God's face and favour shall be towards them, they shall have the arguments of his love, the feelings of his spirit, the lively stir and motions of his Grace; their unquiet consciences shall be appeased, these blustering waves and winds of accusations, temptations shall be commanded, their heavy hearts shall be comforted, their sadded souls shall be gladded, their feelings shall come again, as a man out of a dead swound, their peace with God shall be assured, their assurance like a bone that is broke, shall again be knit; their seemingly lost Charter shall be again renewed; their weakened decayed Graces shall be strengthened, their faith increased, their dull and dead prayers quickened, their credit and estimation with God's people so far as it stands with God's glory, & their further good, again recovered; and the mouths of the wicked and blasphemous by their future holy and inoffensive life, shall be justly stopped: yea all the breaches and ruins which the hostility of Satan hath made, shall be made up again, all the demolitions and devastations that sin hath made in the soul, spirit, conscience, name, etc. of the sons of Zion, shall at last be re-edified and repaired, and every detriment repaid, in these spiritual buildings: repentance in one word, shall rightly knit & joint again, what ever in the outward or the inward man, sin hath unloosed and disjointed, and the Lord from whom comes every good gift 
r jam. 1.17. , as the light from the Sun, which gives repentance unto Israel 
s Act. 5.31. , shall give it unto them: they shall have freely given them after their sinning, at one time or other, the grace of repentance, and after serious repenting, the after-grace of pardon and remission; though they fall, they shall not long lie wallowing in their sins as the drunkard in the streets disgorging his vomit, or as the swine in the mire, but they get up again, stand on their feet, like men, wash, rubbe and brush off the blots and miry spots which by their fall cleave to the garment of their holy profession, with many tears, and much strictness and austerity of life; for the present and future, take more heed to their ways for ever afterward, as the  child that dreads the fire; they follow no more these pleasing baits, these golden balls of sin, which the world as he once before Atalanta, throws before them, to turn them out of the way: but loath & detest all the causes and occasions of sin, as the pained surcharged stomach loathes that meat, on which it hath daingerously surfeited, yea though they fall as weakling children, not able to rise by their own power and strength; the Lord himself as a loving mother or nurse, lends them the helping hand of Grace, pulls them up, and after their trickling tears and cries for their hurt, cheers and cherisheth them, takes them in the arms of his mercy, and puts them in the bosom of his love 
t Read of this point M. Pryn his Book of the perpetuity of a regenerate man's estate, per totum. ; though they be wounded by sin, yet there is a balm in Gilead, a Mithridate of mercy, that heals them again: as the beasts by an instinct of nature have recourse to their healing physic (as the blinded Swallow to Celidine, the Toad to Plantain, the Hart to Dictanny 
u Of the Medicines which every creature useth by nature's instinct, read Pliny, l. 8. c. 27: chief Greg. Tholosanus in Syntaxi artis Mirab. l. 28. c. 38 p. 541. , etc.) So by the instinct of Grace, they have recourse to that all-saluing, all-saving Panacea 
* Grineum in problematibus de Panacea Christianorum lege.  the blood of the Lamb of God effused in his passive veins, applied to themselves by the hand of faith 
x Rom 4. john 3.16. Gal. 2. ●0. Hab. 2. ; they seek in their sickness to their Physician 
y Math. 9.12. , or rather the Physician to them, as that good Samaritan to him that was wounded 
z Luk. 10.33, 34 , travelling to jerico from jerusalem, from the vision of peace, to the world's vanity, as every sinner doth; stung once with this fiery serpent sin, with the eagle's eye of all-penetrating, all-prevailing faith, they look up to him that was exalted on the cross 
a john 3.14. , whom their sins have pierced 
b Zach. 12.10. , prefigured by the Brazen serpent 
c Num 21.9. . In a word, there is a seed of Grace in all the Elect, the seed of God remains in them saith Saint john 
d 1 john 3.9. , that they cannot sinne to death: we may say of their sins, as our Saviour said of Lazarus his sickness 
e john 11.4. , they are not unto death; but that the Lord may be glorified, even in his power and mercy, in raising up again their seeming dead souls, even out of the bed and grave of corruption: yea though they seem to lie long in this grave, even 4 days, like that Lazarus 
f ver. 29. , till they stink and be corrupted 
g The raising of jarus daughter newly dead of the widow's son longer dead, of Lazarus dead and buried: Augustine applies to three sorts of sinners spiritually raised. , yet that doth not prejudice the power of God in their resuscitation, and spiritual resurrection: though David after his bloody murder and filthy adultery, yea and after his proud presumption in numbering of his subjects, go as long burdened with his sin as a woman man with child even nine months, as is plain by the Text: yet God's grace like the soul's true Grace wife or midwife indeed, delivers him of this uncomfortable burden by repentance; he was not indeed so active and lively of himself by his own natural powers and strength (to which our Pelagian Papists, like the old Philosophers, attribute so much 
h Vide positiones papisticas refutatas per Pelargum in jesuitismo, de libero arbitrio. ) to deliver himself as the Hebrew women, without the Egyptian Midwives 
i Exod. 1.19.  without the help of this Grace; but the Lord sends Nathan and Gad to him to help him by the message of their ministration; and indeed at one time or other, the Lord will waken all his out of their doting dreams and pleasing slumbers, he will pluck them as he did Lot our of Sodom 
k Gen. 19.16. , even by violence, rather than they shall perish in any flames of lust: they shall be pulled out of their pit, out of their prison, as enthralled joseph 
l Gen. 41.14. , in God's good time, and set at liberty; yea perhaps exalted more than ever. In a word, the Saints sin, but they shall not dye in their sins sickness 
m Lege promissiones Hos. 14.4. Mal. 4.2. Psal. 41.2, 3. john 6.51.58. c. 10.18. , they shall repent, and recover in their souls 
n Mich. 7.18, 19 jer. 3.33. Rom. 8.1. .   

SECT. 3. The repentance of the reprobate either nothing, at all for the matter, or as nothing for the manner.  
But this is a privilege and prerogative peculiar only to the Elect; proprium quarto modo, as they say, proper to them, and only to them: It is not a Noverint universi if I may so allude, it is not communicable to all, belongs omnibus Christi fidelibus, to all that are Christ's, all true Christian people, all bleeding believers have interest in this mercy; to the reprobate and  ones that are sold to sin, as yet it is a mystery; as Peter said to Simon Magus 
o Acts 8.21.  in another case, they have no part nor fellowship in this ministration: herein are they clearly shed & distinguished as Goats from sheep, as they shall be at the last judgement 
p Mat. 25.32. , in their sufferings, so now in their sinnings: for alas they sin, but they sorrow not: they either repent not at all, but harden their hearts as the neither millstone, as did Pharaoh 
q Exod. 7.13. , or else they repent hypocritically and superficially, as did judas 
r Math. 27.3. , Saul 
s 1 Sam. 15.24. , Ahab 
t 1 Kings 21.29 , with others: their tears are as the Crocodiles 
u Hominibus maxime infesti, homine rapto, vi lachrymarum dissoluunt cerebrum, Vincent. lib. 17. cap. 606. l. 30. c 91. & Aelian lib. 9 cap. 3. , their confessions as the Traitors on the rack; their repentance is for the punishment of sin which they feel, not for the sin itself which they ought to hate: and so all they say, and do, and weep, and cry, and confess, is but as the howling of an hungry wolf, and pleaseth God as the cutting off a dog's neck 
* Esay 66.3. , their repentance is an hypocrite like to themselves, as good never a whit the titter as they say, as never a whit the better: they ever fail in the matter, or manner and form of repentance: either they repent nothing, or as good as nothing: they are daily deadly stung with this serpent sin, yet though there be balm in Gilead 
x jer. 8.22. , they are incurable 
y jer. 13.23.27. & Rom. 2.5. ; or if they use any means for cure, it is so slightly and uneffectually, that their wound only skinned over for a time, rankles and festers at the bottom, and breaks out again even in outward ulcers and putrefactions, to the scandal and detestation of the spectators: they sleep in their sin so deadly, rocked in the cradle of security so daingerously, as having drunk Poppy or Oppium, that like the sluggish Indian asses 
z Gesner de Asino inter quadrupedes. , nothing will awake them, not the whips & goads of the Law, not Aar●ns bells, the golden promises of the Gospel: not john Baptists voice 
a Math 3.3. , not Christ's cry 
b joh. 7.28.37. , not Esayes Trumpet 
c Esay 58.1. , not Paul's thundering 
d Augustine's desire was to see Christum in carne, and to hear Paul an tonitruantem. , no not the thunderbolts themselves of feared, or threatened judgements, have power to awake them; or if they awake for a time, so strong are their sleepy drugs, so powerful sins charms, so pleasing and bewitching the world's Music, that like a heavy headed drowsy drunkard, by pinching and nipping of some outward cross or inward terror, they look up with one eye, shrug themselves, a little turn themselves as salomon's sluggard 
e Prou. 6 10: , as the door on the hinges, then sleep again more securely than ever. Thus both the Elect & reprobate fall into sin, yea perhaps the same sin, as jacob 
f Gen. 31.4. , & Lamech 
g Gen. 4.19. , into Polygamy; Peter & judas both disciples, both sin against Christ, the one in betraying him 
h john 13. , the other in denying him 
i Luke 26. , but here is the difference (and let every one lay it to heart that would know their estate, and work out their salvation with fear and trembling) the one fall by sinning, but they rise again by repenting, they are wounded and healed: they sleep and are awakened, they sleep not long, for like the Nightingale 
k Traditione creditur.  there is some prick under or in their breast; some sting of conscience, or some wounding of love, that makes them awake, yea, and keeps them waking: And hence it is, that as we read of the sins of David, Peter, jonas 
l jonas 2. , here our Ezekiah, so we read of their repentance; as of their sores, so of their salve, the prescribed remedy 
m Esay 1.16. jer. 3.14.  for sin's malady: Yea, and though the repentance of Abraham, jacob, joseph, Noah, Lot, Gideon, Samson, be not expressly recorded as are their sins, yet besides the judgement of charity, which hopes the best, even in the judgement of verity, their repentance may be gathered and concluded: for besides Sampsons' prayer, so fervent, so effectual 
n judg. 16.28. , conjoined with repentance, he and the rest being recorded in the book of God for believers 
o Hebr. 11. per totum: see Mr. Perkins his Commentating Sermons in locum , approved as just and righteous men, commended for their effectual justifying faith; this mother Faith being ever fruitful 
p Gal. 5.6. jam. 2.26: , could not want her eldest daughter Repentance.  
But it is otherways with the reprobate, and the whole cloud of unbelievers, they daily fall, but like the Elephant overthrown with the Rhinoceros 
q De pugna & ruina amborum, lege Aelian l. 17. c. 40. Surium Comment. anno 15.5, & Nicolaum de comitibus. , they with their lusts, lie still, never rise; their joints are so stiff, they cannot bow, their hearts so hard, they cannot relent, but going on from sin to sin, from thirst to drunkenness, &c, they treasure up wrath against the day of wrath 
r Rom. 2.5, 6. , as the thief adds felonies to felonies, against the great day of Assize in the just declaration of the judgements of God. Their falls are as if a man fall precipitate from a Rock or promontory, even to the neck break of their souls; they cast themselves down headlong to hell, as willingly as that Curtius 
s De quo Livius lib. 17. Propertius l. 3. ex Ovid. in Ibyn.  cast himself into that devouring gulf, or lake, that swallowed him invisibly: they like a man that is unwieldy and stumbles, once tripping never leave till they came down for altogether, and once down like these heavy birds called bustards, or some fat swans, never get wing, never rise again to any height, till that fowler of hell seize upon them: for the Lord neither puts under his hand to keep them from falling, neither lends them any help of Grace to raise them up, but lets them lie wallowing (as once that Amasa 
t 2 S●●. 20.12. ) wounded by sin (that treacherous joab) even in their own blood: these wander continually like blinded men, or as a man in a dark night gone wrong, ever the longer the further off; their reduction and return is per impossibile: it is impossible they should return 
u Heb. 6.4.  & convert, but like that Cain 
* Gen. 4.10. , fly still from God, unless the Lord himself convert them and turn them into the right, strait, and narrow way that leads unto life: I conclude this with one of the Fathers, David sinned, which Kings & great men are wont to do 
x Peccavit Dauid quod solent reges, peccavit & penituit, quod non solent reges, Ambrose. , David sinned and repent, which great men are not wont to do: so the righteous sin as the reprobates do, but the righteous sin and repent, which the reprobates are not wont to do. The wicked imitate the godly as it were by warrant, in the sins which Satan works, but not in their repentance which God works.   

SECT. 4. The improbability, yea impossibility of a sinner's repentance, till God give the grace.  
THerefore as a further Use, in enlarging the application of this point, let it be as exhortatory, so comminatory, to deter all wicked and  persons from presumptuous sins, that are most prejudicial to their souls, these presumptuous sins I call such, as are wrought with a hie hand, in hope of immunity and freedom either from the eye of God 
y job 22.13. , that he cannot know them; or from the power and justice of God, that he cannot or will not punish them; or from the long suffering of God that he will tolerate & forbear them; or from the clemency and mercy of God, that he will pass by them & pardon them: not to insist in any of the former branches, but only in the last: that God will pardon any sin without repentance, is an Atheistical lie, dissonant from the Scriptures 
z Esay 5.11, 12, 13. Esay 30.33. Psal. 6.11. Ps. 9.17. Reu. 21.8. chap. 12.15. &c , from all examples and testimonies in the Book of God: God never did this, never will do it, nay I say cannot do it, unless he deny himself 
a 2 Tim. 2.13.  and his revealed truth, which were blasphemy once to speak or think. Now then see on what tickle ground a wicked man stands, on what sandy foundations he builds, which is wholly given over to wicked and sinful courses, for repentance is proper and peculiar only to the elect, even as faith is, which is the fountain and the mother of it: proper to an Ezekiah, as here, and to others such as he: whereas a wicked man that is sold to sin, as was said of Ahab 
b 1 King. 21.20 , hath an evil heart of incredulity 
c Heb. 3.12. , and an obdurate heart in impenitency: there is a stone in his heart, saith the Prophet 
d Ezek. 36.26. , till the Lord take it out: yea, (as we read of some felons, stern men, that were opened after hanging 
e Goulart. in his admirable Histories translated to this purpose. Muret. lib. 12. de diversis lect. cap. 10. Columbus lib. 15. anatom. Benevenius de abditis causis, cap. 83. Amatus in cent. 6. & Cornelius Gemma lib. 2. Cyclognomiae pag. 75. allege divers examples. etc. ) there were bones growing through their heart, or hair. Oh such as he are Deucalion's offspring: a stony generation, flinty, adamantine, hard hearted, that cannot repent, saith the Apostle: it is no more in their own power to repent, then to create a new world, to turn the course of the Sea, as once jordan, backward: yea when they would fainest repent in terrors of Conscience, under the hand of wrath, in the time of sickness, in the fearful summons of death, and the more fearful apprehension of judgement: (as experience speaks to the observing eye of those that are wise to mark the passages in the lives and deaths of the wicked) they can no more repent than they can remove mountains or millstones, their hearts are as dry as once Gideons' fleece 
f judge 6.40. , without any dew of grace; they are as the bulrush in Summer, without any mire 
g job 8.11.  or moisture; as it was said of drunken dying Nabal 
h 1 Sam. 25.37. , their hearts are as a stone within them, as heavy as Led, as impenetrable as Steel, as unyielding to any exhortations, comminations, as the Adamant 
i Apud Theophrastum lib. de lapidibus.  to the stroke of the Iron; as uncapable of any comforts, excepting carnal, as mad men are of reason; sometimes grinning like Dogs, howling as hungry Wolves, roaring as Lions 
k To these beasts they are compared, Zephan. 3.3. Mat. 7.6. and so God shows himself to them, Hos. 5.14. & chap. 13. vers. 7, 8. , they lie and cry and dye, distracted, yea desperate in the anxiety of their souls 
l Examples are in Bomelius, Latomus, Gerlach, D. Krans the German, with many more, recorded by Sleidan, Belonius, Lonicer, and our Book of Martyrs. ; or else, which is as ill, with cauterised consciences, insensible of any guilt of sin, as dead flesh is of pricking, as they live so they die, like very bruit beasts: this is all the show of the repentance of the reprobates, of those which God hath given over to a reprobate sense.  
Oh what madness is it then to sin upon hope of immunity, upon presumption of repentance, or of God's merciful acceptance of thy lame and halting humiliation when thou offers it! For alas, who can repent of himself till God give him grace? he can as well see without eyes, and speak easilier (as some Ventriloquists 
m And Pythonists recorded Lorinus comment. in Acts Apostol. cap. 16 Congeries Similium. ) without a tongue: Nay, nay, a wicked man can sinne of himself, but he cannot godlily sorrow of himself: a man may wound himself without any other agent, but he cannot so easily heal himself without a Surgeon: one may of himself leap into a pit, but he cannot come forth again when he will without a rope or a ladder, or some such external means: a man of himself and from his sinful corrupt nature may sinne; it is as natural for him to sin, as for the fire to burn, the sea to flow, the Sun to shine; it is as the running down the hill, as the swimming or sailing with the stream: facilis descensus Auerni, oh the passage to Hell is easy, easily travelling in the broad way 
n Mat. 7.13. : but to repent of sin, to turn from sin unto God, the sovereign good, from the creature to the Creator; this is more difficult, this is to swim against the stream, to sail against the tide, to contend against the hill, as jonathan and his Armour-bearer, to get up to the Rock 
o 1 Sam. 14.13.  with hands and knees; hoc opus, hic ●●bor; this is a work supernatural; this is from the inspiration of the Almighty, not from the spirit of man, which can make no sound this way, no more than the Organ-pipe without wind from the bellowes. Non cuivis contigit, etc. This is not common to all, but to such whose hearts are renewed and changed from their native and natural condition, and moulded aright by the spirit of grace. What a madness is this then to sin, or continue in sin presumptuously, only upon this conceit (indeed devilish deceit) that repentance is in their power, and God will give it at their pleasure, as a free man his alms, even for ask; or as some debtor his debts, for calling for: whereas every man sinning, (much more the wicked) are in their sins as the clay in the hand of the Potter 
p jer. 18.6. Rom. 9.21. ; as the wood in the hand of the Carpenter; as the iron in the hand of the Smith; as the felon in the power of the judge; as the traitor in the power of the King; ●s Pharaohs Buttler and Baker, offending, were in the power of Pharaoh 
q Gen. 40.20, 21 , to pardon or punish them, to forgive or to execute them; as it was in the power of Christ's mercy to give repentance and Paradise to one of the Thiefs upon the Cross 
r Luke 23.39, 40, 41, 42. , in the power of his justice to obdurate and harden the other Thief: And beside, to sin presumptuously because God is merciful to his children upon their humiliation, as here he was to Ezakiah, is as though a slave should wilfully abuse and offend his Master upon hope of impunity, because a son is pardoned upon his petitioning, offending his father of weakness; as though a man should make ropes of sand, because others make cables of suitable matter; as though a man should presume to commit wilful murder, because another man is pardoned his chance-medley: nay, to try and experiment by wilful sinning and presumptuous continuance in sin, whether God will be merciful or no; is as if a man should wilfully surfeit and make himself sick, to see whether the Physician will or can make him well or no: or for a man willingly to cut and lance himself in some parts of his body, to try whether his Surgeon will or can cure him or no: As I saw once an Italian wound his own sides with a Rapier, to try the conclusions of his healing Baulmes 
r Once in the Schools in Cambridge: yet Histories show, some Mountebanks have killed themselves by ●uch tricks. : Or it is as if a man should wilfully leap into a coalpit, to try the charity of his neighbours, whether they will drag and draw him out or no: such a presumptuous murderer in all probability may come to be hanged, such a self wonder may bleed to death, and such a pit-diver may haps as i'll speed, as that jew in Teucksbury, who according to our Chronicles, refusing to be pulled out of a pit, in his superstition, on our Saturday, his Sabbath day, when help was offered, the next day which was our Sabbath and as his Monday, could have no help offered or afforded, but was found dead on the third day, helped forward by hunger or stink. So let thy enemies perish O Lord: for whom thou dost not convert, thou wilt confound.   

SECT. 5. God in all his dealings with his children, doth inflict crosses, but never curses.  
LAstly, here from Ezekiahs' humiliation we may see the nature and quality of that wrath which the Context saith came upon Ezekiah for the pride of his heart; for what ever it was in the particulars, it was not a curse, but only a cross, because it was sent though upon a meriting cause, yet for a good end, and wrought a good end an excellent fruit grew upon this bitter tree, even his repentance never to be repent of 
s 2 Cor. 7.10. : this his Physician (as his use is to all his sick sinning patients) sent this bitter potion to a good use, and it wrought a good effect, it purged his ingrateful humour, and phlebotomized his pride: This his father, as he doth to all his sinning sons, correct him in mercy, not in wrath 
t jer. 10.24. ; visits his sins with rods, and his offences with scourges, but deprives him not of his mercies and loving kindness, according to his promise to his father David 
u 2 Sam 7.14. : and indeed all things working together for the good of the elect 
* Rom. 8.28. Vide Couper in locum. , what ever comes to them, comes as a love-token from a Loner 
x Reuel. 3.19. Heb. 12.7. , an admonition or redargution (at most a correction) from a Father; as a prescription from a Physician, not as a condemnatory sentence of execution from a severe judge: this wrath was only a rod of whips gently to correct a son; not a whip of wires and iron, severely and rigorously to afflict a slave: and indeed as what ever comes to the wicked and reprobate comes to them in justice and vengeance, their very tables, their wives, their children, their prosperity, their friends, etc. being as traps & snares unto them, God giving them these things (as he gave desired quails 
z Num. 11.31, 32. , & a King to Israel 
a 1 Sam. 8.11, 12, 13. , & life to murderous Cain 
b Gen. 4.15. ) even in wrath, and anger; so the bitterest and worst things, even the corrections for sins come to his own children as mercies. We read indeed of the plagues of Egypt 
c Exod 7. Exod. 8. Chap 9, 10. , of Sodom 
d Hos. 11.8. & Amos 4.11. , of Moab 
e Amos 1. & Chap. 2. per totum. , of Edom, of Damascus, and of the burdens of other sinful nations and people, but never of the plagues of David, Ezekiah, josiah, etc. the botches of Egypt 
f Exod. 9 10. , the Emerods' 
g 1 Sam. 5.  of the Philistines, the death of Pharaohs first borne 
h Exod 12.29. , the murrain of his cattles 
i Exod. 9.19. , the frogs in his chamber 
k Exod 8 6. , were indeed real Plagues; prologues and proems were these externals, to plagues eternal: but the gout 
l 2 Ch● 16.12.  in Asaes' feet, jacobs touch in the hollow of his 〈◊〉 
m Gen 32.25.  Ezekiahs' sickness 
n 2 Kings 20. , and here the occasion of his 〈◊〉 ●on, was only a paternal castigation. Oh that we with patience and contentation could drink the bitterest cup which the Lord brews for us, and sends to us for our soul's safety, in our haughty hearts humiliation.   

SECT. 6. Mercy mixed with justice.  
BEsides, in searching the point narrower, we see further in this castigation, that the Lord even in justice remembers Mercy; yea his mercy triumphs over justice, as the oil swims above the water; as we see here that this wrath upon Ezekiah was the just desert of his ingrateful pride, or proud ingratitude, here was justice inflicting: yet this correction as it tended, so it ended in his humiliation, which was physical to his endangered soul; here was Mercy. So to add more instances, Manasses the son of this Ezekiah, for his many and manifold provocations of the Almighty by his idolatries, witchcrafts, charm, sorceries, murders, massacres of the Saints, was justly deprived of his Crown, imprisoned by the King of Ashur, iron fetters put upon his feet, manacles on his hands, here was justice: yet this sharp physic, so bitter to the flesh, was wholesome and medicionable to his soul, for in his tribulation he prayed to the Lord, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, and the Lord was entreated of him; here was Mercy. So in the first sin that ever was committed Adam eating of the Tree prohibited, was questioned, strictly examined, convicted, sentenced, to eat his bread in the sweat of his brows, till he returned to his dust 
n Gen. 3.19. , including all miseries in life, and mortality in death 
o Pezelius & Rimgius in locum. , here wa● justice: but yet even then, though his flesh was corrected, the instrument of sin, ye● his soul was secured of salvation in the promised Messiah▪ the seed of the woman should break and bruise the head of the Serpent 
p vers. 15. , here was Mercy: So the woman being first in the transgression, was deepest in affliction, for her sorrows were threatened to be great 
q v. 16.  in the production of Children, and now by all the propagating daughters of Eve are tried so great, that Imagination can no more but express them, here was justice, for her fact: yet saith our Saviour himself the eternal Truth, as soon as ever a man-child is borne into the world she forgets (in a manner) her former griefs; their delights swallow up their dolours, here was Mercy. Oh wondrous mixture of Mercy and justice, none knows the pains of a childbearing woman, but she that is perturient, here is justice to that sinning sex: yet withal none knows the love of a mother, as she that is a mother, here is Mercy. This course the Lord holds still; God crosses us in our sinful, and for our sinful courses, as the Angel withstands Balaam 
s Numb. 22.26.  in his posting for preferment; yet these crosses (like that scab in the breast which the Roman received by his fight enemy, in stead of killing 
t Apud Plutarchum as that Surgeon who breaking a Gentleman's head, cured him of the headaches D. Cotta against Empirics.  curing his Impostume) curbing, crossing, yea curing our corruptions, demonstrate as plainly a Mercy in the use and end, as justice in inflicting our deserved crosses. Oh that we could with our hearts and tongues, from our words and works bless and praise the Lord as in all the rest of his glorious attributes, so especially that we could glorify him in his Mercy and justice, his two attributes in which he most delighteth, & most exerciseth amongst the sons of men, and to which all things in heaven and earth do tend as to their Centre. Oh that with David's heart and spirit, we could resolve to sing of Mercy and justice, (not political & economical as he in that Psalm 
u Psal. 101.1. , but) as they are Attributes in God essential, in which he is most glorified of Angels and men. Oh that we could see with spiritual eyes, how not only in the redemption of the world by Christ, but even in the gubernation and government of the world, yea even in proceeding with several individual men, which philosophy calls so many Microcosmes 
* See the allusions 'twixt man this Microcosm, & the world this Megacosm apud Alliedium in Theol. natural▪ , or little worlds, but chief in his dealings with his elected once: justice and Mercy meet together; righteousness and truth embrace and kiss each other.    

CHAP. XI.  
NOw from sailing thus long in Ezekiahs' sorrows, lancing into that Ocean of matter, his deep and serious humiliation, we now at last bring the Penitent to his port and haven, to enjoy his calm, and reap the fruit of his renewed repentance never to be repent of; in coming you see by degrees, as we at first laid them down, to this fourth and last maine and material point, which the Text affords, (omitting all the circumstantial) and that is the removal of wrath, or the reprivall of Ezekiah and the inhabitants of judah and jerusalem, from the wrath that in some measure begun to be exercised upon them, but upon their humiliations stinted and ceased, so that it came not fully upon them in the days of Ezekiah, for so indeed may (as I think) the Text and Context be reconciled: the one saying, that wrath was upon Ezekiah and upon judah and jerusalem; the other, that the wrath of the Lord came not upon them in the days of Ezekiah: humiliation being intervenient betwixt wrath denounced, and in part kindled, and the full flaming or execution of wrath that was threatened, 
Num. 16.  humiliation, like Moses and Aaron in the behalf of Israel, standing in the way, or stopping in the gap betwixt wrath in part begun, that it should not be wholly and fully executed. In which memorable and worthy act and effect of sound and saving humiliation, so worthily performed by Ezekiah and his subjects, we may as men on the quiet and calm shore, stand still and admire many particulars in the means and manner, how and by what ways some distressed passengers in a tempestuous storm escaped shipwreck and drowning; helped at a dead lift, as they say, by some speedy Boat or Pinnace coming to them; which Pinnace fraughted with so many rescued and saved distressed wights as Ezekiah and his Israelites, is Humiliation; to this they fly, in this they are safe and secure from all the winds and waves of surging wrath. To make some use to ourselves of this happy Barge, still offered as at hand to us, to save us in the like cases and straits, which we are or may be in, by our overburthening sins, indaingering daily the drowning of our souls in the floods of wrath: we might (following the Card and Compass of our Text, hoisting up sails in this soul's ship, this strong and low-deckt Humiliation) touch upon two points further: 

Ezekiahs' 

act,  
effect.    
the Penitents 

practice,  
and his comforts. etc.      
But because in this great sea of matter obvious before us, in which we purpose (God willing) to discover and discourse of (as so many Lands and Countries) from the grounds laid down, the nature, quality, parts, fruits and effects of this humiliation: our spiritual navigation is like to be long, tedious, as it hath been now already, desiring in our next setting forth, the sweet Favonian winds and gentle gales of the Spirit upon our sails, we will for this time, as a breathing space from our former, and a preparative to a future labour, (deliberating by renewed meditations upon our intended course, as may be most for God's glory, and the poor penitents peace) as here victualling a while, and taking in fresh water, we conclude our first part; referring and reserving (as the best wine last) a second intended part of this penitential project, in further and fuller prescribing the precepts and practice of renewed repentance.    

The second Part. THE HAUGHTY heart humbled, OR, The Penitents Practice: with, The Penitents Peace. The fourth Sermon.  The Text. 2 Chron. 32.26. 
Notwithstanding Ezekias humbled himself for the pride of his heart, (he and the inhabitants of jerusalem, so that the wrath of the Lord came not upon them in the days of Ezekiah.  

CHAP. I.  

SECT. 1. When God's wrath is either feared or felt, humiliation of all, and every one is to be practised.  
I Will use no repetitions: for our natures are so desirous of novelties, that we say not of old matter repeated again, as of old wine in respect of new, the old is better: but we would be fed with variety 
a Certa prodest, varia delectat. , yea sometimes with quails in our curiosity rather than Manna, otherwise I could be content to reflect on things formerly delivered, and give you at least the abstract of all in a brief Epitome: Only as a ground work of our further intended fabric (which is, as in other material buildings to pull down, and to raise up, to pull down the haughty proud some pegs lower, and to lift up the humbled penitent, some strains and notes higher.) I desire you to remember thus much in the last propounded point, (pretermitting purposely all the rest) that Ezekiah for the removal of that wrath which was upon him, and his people, humbles himself, as also the inhabitants of judah and jerusalem: from whose precedent, according to my purpose and promise, I first prescribe my Penitents practice. That a whole Nation, and every particular man, yea every particular family, and every soul, which is of years of discretion, capable of godly sorrow for sin, aught to humble themselves before the Lord in fasting, weeping, mourning, etc. in the Church, the family, the Oeconomie, when the wrath of God is either threatened, or feared or felt, according to the proportion of this wrath in the extension or the limitation of it: for if it hold this humiliation in a whole nation, then much more in a family, in a particular person, sinning or punished for sin: neither indeed is this precept, calling for practice, any paradox, but such as is propped with the pillars of truth, and wants not reasons Theological, to confirm it; beside many more even from Gods own command, and the practice of his Church from time to time, with her members. First for God's command, joel as the mouth and message of God, summons all of all sorts, all sinners to this humiliation, enumerating the judgements of God upon their lands and fields by the devouring Palmerworm, Locust, Cankerworm and Caterpillar: he invites the drunkards to weep and howl 
b joel Chap. 1. v. 5, 6, 7.15, 16. & Chap. 2. ver. 12, 13.  like a virgin girded with sackcloth, for the husband of her youth, he invites the husbandmen to be ashamed, & the vinedressers to howl; yea he invites the Priests and Ministers of the Altar to lament and lie all night in sackcloth, to sanctify a Fast, and call a solemn assembly: yea he commands the Elders and the Inhabitants of the land to be gathered into the house of the Lord and to cry unto the Lord: yea with more vehemency, as redoubling his injunction, he would have all and every one from the highest to the lowest, Prince, Priest and people, even elders and youngers, to turn to the Lord in fasting, weeping and mourning, to rend their hearts and not their garments, etc. yea he spares not the very bride and and bridegroom, but brings them out of their chamber, and closet, to weep and mourn before the Lord. This constant note sung all the rest of the Prophets, as Esay before him, anatomising the corruptions of Israel, that from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot there was nothing but wounds and blains and corruptions and putrefactions 
c Esay 1.6▪ , the very heads and rulers, like the heads of great fishes stinking, and the whole body of the Commonalty smelling ill, calling (for their vncleanness●● their Princes, Princes of Sodom 
d ver. 10. , and the people a ●●●●●n of Gomorrah, prescribing the cleansing and purging 〈◊〉 ●edy for these pollutions, even their serious humiliation, he excites them to wash themselves, to make themselves clean, to cease to do evil 
e vers. 16. , learn to do well; to seek judgement, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow: he prescribes them special parts of humiliation, branches of repentance, aversion from evil, conversion unto God, praeterita plangere, to bewail what is past, to wash and wipe clean, & plangenda non committere, not to commit again former sins bewailed 
* Haec vera penitentia, cum quis sic confitetur ut crimen non repetat, Ambrose. : so jeremy as God's Herald proclaims in this north, that which is the very main soul of humiliation, without which it is dead and rotten, and that is reversion or true turning unto God. Return, return, O backsliding Israel 
f jer. 3.14. : So on this heart's string of humiliation touch also the Apostles, and john the Baptist, Oh generation of Vipers, cries the voice of that Crier, who hath fornewarned you to avoid the wrath or the vengeance to come 
g Math. 3.7. : Every tree that brings not forth good fruit shall be cut down, and thrown into the fire. Bring forth fruits therefore worthy of repentance and amendment of life 
h ver. 10. . So S. Peter in his canonical Epistle to the dispersed jews in Asia, Bythiniae, Capadocea 
i 1 Pet. 1.1. , prescribing a humble and submiss carriage one towards another, giving his reason, because God resists the proud, and gives grace unto the humble, by an excellent climax and gradation goes from humility towards man, to humiliation to wards God: from the premises inferring this conclusion, humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God 
k Ch. 5, 6. , and the Lord in due time will lift you up. The very same point of humiliation, from the very same grounds, even in the same words, is urged by the Apostle james, Ch. 4 v. 10. though pressed also in more words in the verse precedent, be afflicted, and mourn, and weep, let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into heaviness 
l james 4.9. .  
Consonant to this precept hath been from time to time the practice of the Saints of God, not only in a constant and conscionable course (omitted now by too many) humbling themselves for their daily slips & transgressions, but more peculiarly in extraordinary humiliations, meeting the Lord, as did here Ezekiah and the inhabitants of jerusalem, when his judgements were but threatened, when the brandished sword of his wrath was only drawn and flourished, as we may see in the example of the Ninivites, at the threatening of jonas, jon. 3.8, 9 In the example of the Israelites, terrified from the Lord by Samuel at Mizpah, 1 Sam. 7.6. and affrighted of the Philistines ver. 7 8. and menaced by the Angel or messenger of the Lord which came from Gilgal to Bochim; 
judg. 2.3, 4, 5.  but more especially when they have either been smit or wounded, or more immediately in danger of wounding by this brandished sword, whether wielded in the hand of God by plague or pestilence, or in the hand of man in war or bloody persecution, the striking hand hath been assayed to be stayed by humiliation: as many instances may be given in holy writ, as in David whose pride of heart in numbering his people, being kerbed with the death of seventy thousand of them swept away by the plague 
m 2 Sam. 24.16. , as dust with a Besom; he and the elders of Israel seeing the Angel of the Lord stand betwixt the earth and heaven with a drawn sword 
n 1 Chro. 21.16 , fell upon their faces, clothed with sackcloth, and upon David's humble prayer, (as once before when Phineas 
o Psal. 106.30.  prayed) the plague ceased; so jehosophat being wonderfully straitened 
p 2 Chro. 20.3.  when the children of Moab and Ammon with their mighty martial troops, came against him, from beyond the sea on this side Syria, (as our Ezekiah was in the like exigents when the strong and numerous powers of Senacherib besieged jerusalem) he having no power, nor strength to resist them, betakes himself to the strong God, the tower of the righteous, the Lord of hosts, and in the most serious humiliation that ever I read of, he and all judah standing before the Lord, with their wives, their children and their little ones 
q ver. 13. , crying, weeping, fasting, and importuning the Lord with most fervent and effectual prayers, there was the most excellent effect in the discomfiture of their enemies, in the most miraculous manner, most glorious to God, most advantageous to Israel, that ever was instanced in any age, before or since: so when joshua and the men of Israel fled before the men of Ai, and turned their backs of the Canaanites, to the loss of 36 men, joshua rend his clothes, fell to the earth upon his face, before the Ark of the Lord, 
joshua 7.  until the evening, he and the Elders of Israel, and put dust upon their heads, Iosh. 7, 6, 7. here was humiliation; so when the rest of the Tribes in a good & righteous cause, in which victory was promised, were twice put to the foil, with loss & damage, by the insulting Beniamites: the Israelites wondrously humbled themselves, wept and fasted before the Lord a whole day, until evening, offering peace offerings, and burnt offerings before the Lord, and upon that were victorious, judg. 20. ver. 23.26. So we know the practice of Mardocheus and Esther, and the distressed jews at Sushan, when their lives and bloods were sold by that wicked serpentine Hamman: what Ezra and the Elders and people of Israel did 
r Ezra 10.1, 2 , when the Lord was provoked and angered by their taking of strange wives of the Canaanites: what Nehemiah did when he heard of the great affliction & reproach of them, that were left of the captivity, and the breaking down of the wall of jerusalem, and burning the Gates thereof with fire: namely, that in all these afflictions, these fears, these sins, these sufferings: they humbled their souls as here our Ezekiah, under the mighty hand of God, and had a blessed issue, a gracious answer, an excellent harvest, upon their deep ploughing, and wet sowing: I say briefly to all and every one of us, (contenting myself with these reasons at this time) as our Saviour to him in the Gospel, vade & tu fac similiter 
s Luke 10.37. , Oh thou sinning soul, who ere thou art, that liest open till thy humiliation have made thy peace, to all the gunshot Cannons of God's judgement, the force and fury of all the creatures; or thou that art threatened by the rod shaken at thee; or the sword drawn as against Adam by the Cherubin, and Balaam by the Angel; or hast felt or dost feel the smarting rod of wrath upon thy shoulders already, go thou and do the like as did here Ezekiah, David, those Ninevites, those Israelites, those Tribes, joshua, jehosophat, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Mardocheus: humble thyself before the Lord, cast down thy soul before his footstool, fast and pray and weep and lament, suffer affliction and sorrows, as St. james exhorts, 
james 4.9.  eat no pleasing meats as Daniel 
t Dan. 10.2, 3. , for many days, let thy sighing come unto thee before thy eating, as it did to job, cry mightily to the Lord as did Niniveh 
u jonas 3.4. , abhor thyself in sackcloth and ashes 
x job 42, 6. , loathe thy sins, and thyself for thy sin, that the Lord may love thee, and may again look favourably upon thee, and show thee the light of his countenance, and be merciful unto thee 
y Psal. 87.1. , that thy flesh may come unto thee again, like the flesh of a child, that thy sad soul may be solaced, that the tears may be wiped from thine eyes, that thy dejected spirit may be comforted, may rejoice in God thy Saviour, and be made joyful in the joys of the Lords salvation.   

SECT. 2. The Ministers must principally be humbled, and seek to humble others.  
But because our nature is ready to post off duties, and to take that which is said in general to all, as if it belonged to none in particular; like some master that hath oft his work neglected, when he speaks to all his servants at once, because he inioynes not every one his task: I therefore subdivide this duty into several Branches, and cut and carve every one his part and portion.  
First then, we that are Ministers we must be ringleaders in the dance of this duty, we must tread out first these humble modest measures, we must prologue and begin the first Act in these penitential parts; not only for our own personal private sins, which commonly come to be public and published, as daingerously scandalous to the weak, exemplary to the wicked, offensive to the godly, and a stumbling-blocke to all; must we be humbled even to the very dust, beat as it were even to powder, weeping if it were possible more bitterly than Peter, more abundantly than Mary Magdalen, confessing more than Augustine 
z In libris Confessionam. , to God and his scandalized Church, till we have washed and wiped away all these aspersions and blots which a sinning life hath cast upon sound and sincere doctrine; but even for the sins of the times must we be humbled, yea the sins of the Land in general, of the places where, and of the people amongst whom we live, must be unto us as they were to Noah 
a 2 Pet. 2.5. , Lot 
b Gen. 19 & 2 Pet. ●. 7. , David 
c Psal. 119. , jeremy 
d jer. 9.1. , in their times, no small cause of humiliation: chief when there is wrath threatened or feared to come upon the Land and Nation wherein we live, or that we see the fire already kindled in some begun judgement temporal or spiritual, and we see the crying sins of the times calling for, prologuing and heralding still greater; then are w● in a special manner above the rest, to humble ourselves: the Lord calls upon us, as joel upon the Ministers in his time, to weep betwixt the Porch and the Altar 
e joel 2.17. , and to cry to the Lord to spare his people: we should take unto us words 
f Osee 14.3. , and say to the Lord, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: we should as job for his sons 
g job 1.5. , rise up early and offer sacrifices for the sins of our people: we should like Aaron, take the Censer 
h Num. 16.46, 47.  of a clean and upright heart, and put thereon the fire of zeal, and offer up the incense of faithful and fervent prayer, and make an atonement for our Congregations, as soon as ever we perceive that wrath is gone out from the Lord, and the plague is begun: we must with Moses and Aaron oft feru●n●●● intercede for our people, as they did with great importunity 
i Num 16.22. Deut. 9.25, 26, 27. Exod. 32.10. & v. ●2. Psal. 106.23.30. : yea our prayers must oft with Moses even stand as it were in the gap, betwixt the Lord's justice and the people's sins: we must pray even for hard hearted Pharaohs yea as did Abraham, we must intercede for such as Abimelech 
k Gen. 20.17. , and Ishmael 
l Gen. 17.18. , wicked and paganish men, yea even such as the unclean Sodomites, both to turn them from their sins, and to keep and remove judgements from them, that their souls may live: or if we see there is no other remedy but they will needs lie and dye in their sins, our souls must yet with jeremy weep in secret for them we must mourn for them, and bewail as it were their soul's funerals, as Samuel mourned 
m 1 Sam. 16.1.  for reprobate Saul. And as we must thus humble ourselves above all others that are the inhabitants of that jerusalem in which we live, when wrath in any measure is come upon the times, so we must by all means preach and press and procure the humiliation of our people: we must as the Cock 
n Gallus praedicatori● symbolum apud Reusnerum.  clap our own wings to awaken our own hearts, and then crow aloud, lifting up our voices like Trumpets, to awaken others: we must show jacob his sins, and Israel his transgressions 
o Esay 58.1. , together with the judgements hanging over their heads by reason of sin: we must cry unto them with Esay. 
Esay 1.19. jer. 3.14.  Wash you, make you clean: with jeremy, Return O disobedient and rebellious children: we must desire them to return from their evil way, and repent, that the Lord may repent of the evil he purposeth unto them, because of their evil doings, jer. 18.8. jer. 26.1.2.3. We must tell them, their iniquities separate betwixt God and them, and that their sins hide his face from them 
p Esay 59.2. : we must tell them, that the reason of all former felt judgements, which call for new, whether blasting, mildew, cleanness of teeth, pestilence of Egypt, or what ever 
q Deut. 28. & Levit. 26. , is because they have not turned to the Lord, nor prepared themselves to meet their God, Amos 4.9.10. We must expostulate with them, as Moses with Pharaoh, how long they will stand out in their rebellions, how long it will be ere they humble themselves 
r Exod. 10.3. : We must tell them that all their outward sacrifices and services without this serious humiliation, are but abominations before the Lord 
s Esay 1.11. , and that the only thing the Lord requires above all  offerings, is the sacrifice of a broken and humbled heart 
t Ps. 51.16 17. , above the offering of the firstborn: We must tell the hypocrite, the Lord requires he should walk humbly before him, Micah 6.6. We must stand upon the Watchtower, with Habakkuk, and wait for the vision, and tell the proud Peacocks of our time, that the soul which is lifted up, is not upright within him 
u Hab. 2.4. : We must exhort all with Zachary, to turn unto the Lord, that the Lord may turn unto them, Zach. 1.3. We must cry to the rich and proud extortioners, as Daniel to Nabuchadnezzar, to break off their sins by repentance, and to redeem them by almesdeeds, Dan. 4.24. We must exhort all to search themselves, to try and examine their ways, before the decree come forth 
* Zeph. 2.2. , and they be as chaff before the fire of the fierce wrath and anger of the Lord: We must exhort all to afflict their souls 
x Levit. 23.27. ; to put off their costly raiment 
y Exod. 33.5. , and to turn to the Lord in fasting, weeping, and mourning, etc. We must preach to a sinful people, as john the Baptist to the jews 
z Mat. 3.1. , as Peter 
a Acts 2.38.  to Christ's crucifiers, & to Simon Magus 
b Acts 8.22. , to repent of their wickedness, and to amend their lives, else we must tell them as our Saviour Christ the Pharisees 
c Luke 13.3. , except they repent they shall perish, and iniquity shall be their destruction: the soul that sins shall dye the death 
d Ezek. 18.1. : We must cry to all to judge and examine themselves, else they shall be judged of the Lord 
e 1 Cor. 11.31, 32. Psal. 4.4. & Lament. 3.40. . By thus preaching and accordingly humble walking, we shall save ourselves and them that hear us; we shall bring some perhaps out of the power of darkness 
f Acts 26.18. , pluck them out of the snares of the Devil 
g 2 Tim. 2.26. , pull them as brands out of the fire, as the Angels did Lot out of Sodom; we shall cause them by repentance, as here the inhabitants of judah, to turn away the fierce wrath of the Lord from our Nation: at least we shall deliver our own souls 
h Ezek 33. , wash our hands in innocency, and be free from the blood of all, as was good Paul, an excellent pattern in all these duties, Acts 20.26.   

SECT. 3. Those reproved who are neither humbled themselves, nor seek to humble others.  
ANd here ere I go to any further subject of this humiliation, if I may be so bold to expostulate a while with those who seem to be much defective in this duty, failing in acting the parts of humiliates themselves, or to effect humiliation in others.  

Uses of redargution.  First, here those are justly reprehensible, that are insensible of the sins of the times, such as being everywhere taxed by the Prophets for their covetousness, pride, excess of riot, and the like, see no sins either in themselves or others, as matter of this mournful humiliation, but by their own lies and bad lives so strengthen the hands of the wicked, that none do turn from their evil ways: these of all others the Lord threatens shall smart, when judgement begins at the Sanctuary, because both by their lives and doctrine they feed the people with gall and wormwood, with froth and vanity 
i jer. 23.14, 15, 16, 21, 22, 32. Esay 29, 10. Esay 6.6, 7. Esay 29 11. Esay 28.7. .  
Secondly, those also are in the same predicament, whose eyes are so shut that they cannot discern of the plagues that are threatened in the Book of God, such as on whom the Lord hath poured the spirit of deep sleep and slumber, and hath closed their eyes as well as the peoples, that seeing they see not, nor understand not; such as to whom the vision is as a sealed book; such as err through Wine, and are out of the way through strong drink, erring in vision and stumbling in judgement: such as are either doltishly ignorant, blind leaders of the blind, or self conceited of their knowledge, as were some in jeremies' time, which had only a superficial swimming braine-knowledge, (though indeed disjoined from sanctification, there was no wisdom in them) cannot discern either of the cause of plagues and wrath, or of the curse or cure of sin, to avoid sin, or to fear the effects of sin either in themselves or others, are here justly reprehensible.  
Thirdly, these are yet more culpable, who when according their place and calling they should sharply reprove the sins of a people over whom they are placed as Pastors, and show them the annexed judgements to deter and affright them from it, (as the pricks do hinder the hardy child from plucking of the canker-rose) revealing to them all these plagues (as sparks from the fire of wrath) that are Pedissequae, as handmaids or attendants on sin, recorded by Moses and the Prophets, as did Esay, jeremy, Ezekiel, and the rest of the Prophets before alleged; they on the contrary, as did their predecessors in former times, (which every where are declaimed against) as temporising for their own ends, sow pillows under their elbows, to make them take a deeper and deadlier nap in sin, they heal the hurts of the people with fair words, they cry peace, peace, and all is well, when indeed there is no peace to the wicked, saith my God 
k Esay 57.19. ; they prophesy lies in the name of the Lord, and to every one that walks after the stubbornness of his own heart, they say, no evil shall come; when indeed Hannibal ad portas, Hannibal is even at Rome's gates, the Palladian horse is ready to enter Troy, sin lies even at the door 
l Gen 4.7. : Thus they daub with vntempered mortar 
m Ezek. 13.10, 15. , daubing up the consciences of poor people; or as the Prophet Osee terms them, they are Fowlers, who both by their flattery catch for themselves 
n Hos. 5.2.8.8. , and by their fraudulency bring the people into the net and snare of God's wrath, even unawares. Such as these were they in jeremies' time, who when they should have prevented the captivity, by turning the people from their wicked ways, and from the evil of their inventions, which they might have done, had they stood in God's counsel, 
jer. 23.22.  and declared his ways unto his people: They on the contrary, 
Lament. 2.14.  by not discovering the iniquity, helped forward the Captivity. Oh these soothers, 
jer. 23 14.  these flatterers the Lord professeth are unto him as Sodom, he professeth he never sent them, that they prophesy only a lie in his name; but that they sent themselves, that both they and the deluded people might perish.  
Fourthly, yet worse, if worse can be, are those that neither forewarn of the wrath and vengeance to come, as sins due desert, neither with patience will permit others what they ought to do themselves; such as these were the Pseudo-prophets, false Prophets, and false Apostles, who always opposed the true: Such an one was Pashur, who smit jeremy, and put him in prison 
o jer. 20.1, 2. , as also other of the Priests and Prophets, bitter against him to the very death 
p jer. 26. , because he prophesied against the Temple, and against the City and Shiloh: who had indeed prevailed in their purposes, notwithstanding all his apologies, had he not been delivered by a Nobleman Ahikan and others, which stood for him 
q vers. 16, 17, 18, . The like practice used Shemiah the Neholamite against this mournful jeremy 
r jer. 29.24, 25. : the like did Amasiah the high Priest of Bethel, in stirring up jeroboam against Amos 
s Amos 7.10. , as though he had been a turbulent fellow, and had conspired against the King: This success had Christ himself amongst the Scribes and Pharisees, his emulators of that credit he had with the people, even to the death 
t john 9.24.29. : Such success had his Apostles after him, sent among them as Sheep among Wolves, Mat. 23.34. such as these are so fare from turning away judgement from a people, by bringing them to humiliation, that indeed they bring judgements upon themselves, their houses, and bloods, as did Pashur, and Amaziah, and Zidkiah, etc. these must bear the iniquity of the people, and be removed by judgement, since set as Sentinels and Watchmen, they would not awaken others.   

SECT. 3. Magistrates and great ones must be humbled.  
NOw as the Ministers must both be humbled themselves, and be the means to humble others; so the Magistrates also, whether superior or inferior, must move in the next place, according to their motion: Moses falls flat on his face grovelling before the Lord for the sins and rebellions of the people, as well as Aaron 
u Num. 16.45. : not only Ezra the Scribe, but Zerubbabel, johecaniah, and the rest of the Princes and Fathers of the Families, were humbled before the Lord 
* Ezra 9.1. , because the people of Israel, the Priests and the Levites had not separated themselves from the people of the lands, 
Ezra 10.2, 3.  doing according to the abominations of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, jebusites, etc. so (as we have heard) when Israel was smit before the men of Ai, joshuah rend his , and the Elders of Israel, Iosh. 7.6. So in that exigent jehosophat was put unto by the Ammonites and Moabites, he himself first proclaims a fast throughout all judah, and personally 
x See my Ireland's jubilee in David's practice these exemplified. , primarily, purposely sets himself to seek the Lord: So at the dedication of the Temple, Solomon himself humbles himself more than all the people, in the presence of all the Congregations of Israel, spreading forth his hands and praying before the Altar of the Lord 
y 1 King. 8.23. . So Esther a great Princess, is as forward as her handmaids to humble herself in fasting and prayer, for the prevention of the common intended destruction, Esth. 4.16. But above all, the King of Ninivy is a most excellent precedent in this practice to all Princes, and his Nobles to all Magistrates, for he and they not only decreed and proclaimed a fast for the people, yea for man and beasts, but themselves as breaking the ice to the rest by their good example, laid by their Robes, covered themselves with sackcloth, and sat in ashes, jonas 3.6, 7. other great Peers have done the like 
z 
As Theodosius, before his battle with Eugenius, apud Orosium l. 7. c. 35. Ruffin. lib. 2. c 23.  
Charles King of France warring against the Saracens, Casp. Hedion lib 6. cap 15 Arcadius apud Diacorum lib. 15 Clodoucus a French King, in his war with Alaricus the Goth, apud Turonensem Hist. lib. 2. cap. 37. Lewis of France against the Su●uians, apud Auentinum lib. 3. and O●ias the high Priest, apud josephum lib. 14 cap. 1.2.3 Antiq. cum aliis.  . And indeed, that I might by God's blessing be as a spur or goad to all Princes, Potentates, Rulers, Magistrates, Governors in war, Elders in peace, to do the like, upon the like occasion: to imitate the noble and princely patterns of these great Princes and Peers, Ezekiah, joshuah, jehosophat, David, Schecaniah, Solomon, the King of Ninivy, and others, as they are desirous to imitate their fame-worthy heroic acts in other particulars; as also that all Empresses, Queens, Duchess', Ladies, etc. would not think themselves too good to lay off their gorgeous attire, their costly raiment, to remit their revels, and restrain their Court delights; after the example of Queen Esther, (the goodliest, godliest, greatest Lady one of them that the world ever had:) and in any common or particular great cross and calamity, to turn music and masks into mourning, singing into sighing, delights into dolours, feastings into fasts, etc. Me thinks there be reasons and inducements (besides these precedents and exemplary patterns, which man is naturally apt to imitate in the worst things) to persuade and enforce this best of duties.  
As first, because by this means they may bring a great deal of glory to God, which being the end of every Christians creation, preservation, vocation, redemption, yea even of salvation itself, reserved in the heavens, this glorifying of God ought to be the end and aim and scope of the actions and affections of the meanest and the greatest, the very mark that all should shoot at and desire to hit; much more the greatest, who placed in a higher orb above the rest, and adorned with more privileges, the more that they for a time when God's hand is upon them, stoop low before the Lord, remit their height and their greatness, abate and bring down their high spirits, unplume and disrobe themselves of their gorgeous attire, abstain from their sumptuous and superfluous dishes, and every way by their looks, words, gestures, attires, meats, outwardly; as in their hearts and spirits inwardly, cast down themselves before the God of all spirits, and fall low before the throne of the Lord of Lords, and King of Kings, acknowledging (with humbled Nabuchadnezzar 
z Dan. 3.28. , and that Darius 
a Dan 6.25, 26. ,) his rule and sovereignty over all flesh, and so consequently over them, throwing down their rods, their Sceptres, yea with the Angels and Elders 
b Reu. 7.11. & chap. ●. 8.  in the Revelation, even their very Crowns before the Throne of the Lamb, giving all honour, glory, power, praise, sovereignty and dominion, from themselves to him that sits on the Throne, etc. Oh this brings wondrous honour and glory unto God, even as when petty tributary Kings, as once amongst the Romans 
c Reguli, or Deputies, as our Viceroy in Ireland, or Precedents of York or Wales. , and sometimes here in England 
d See Lanquets or Coupers Chronicle. , exceedingly honour the great King that rules over them, and their Provinces, when they at set and certain times come to acknowledge their homage, Fealty, subordination and subjection unto him: and indeed as the greater the person is that sins, the more God is dishonoured: so the greater the person is that is humbled, the more is the Lord honoured; even as in the Irish wars, if a great Earl, a head Rebel had come in, and submitted himself to an offended Princess, it had been more honour to a Maiden Queen, then if this had been done by an ordinary Kearne: so the humiliation of a great Peer, brings more glory to God then of an inferior person.  
Besides, as a further fuel to this motive, let this be as a Noverint universi, known unto all, to high & low, mighty men, and mean men, that who ever have taken away glory from God by sinning, as indeed all flesh have by depraving themselves in original and actual sins, deprived God of that glory he requires of men and Angels, even the very same individual men, or women, in their own persons, by their own Penitence, without any substitute for them, even here in this life, in unfeigned humiliation, confession and contrition, must again restore glory unto God 
* joshua 7.19. , or else they shall never be glorified in heaven, (let Canonists dispute what they will about usuries terrestrial) I am sure without this spiritual restitution 
e Nisi restituatur ablaetum, non demittitur peccatum. Canonistae ex patribus. , there is no salvation ᶠ, vide Maldonatum in Lucam, cap. 19  
Secondly, by this means of humiliation, all great personages show their gratitude, & thankfulness unto God, in thus honouring him, who hath honoured them: yea they take the wisest and the safest course, to continue and perpetuate their honours to themselves, and their houses and posterity: for as pride hath been the ruin and demolition of many great families 
g Vide exempla supra allegata. , so humiliation hath been their prop and upholder, in withholding and diverting from them such judgements as their sins, or the sins of their predecessors have deserved.  
Thirdly, as they by their humiliation bring glory unto God, and good to themselves, so they bring much good to others, much benefit accrewes to the soul of an inferior by the humiliation of a superior, and that both by their example for imitation 
h Regis ad exemplum totus componitur orbis. , as also in God's acceptation. First for imitation, the example of great ones as it is forceable in utramque partem, both towards the better, & towards the worse: as their ill example confirms the inferiors in sin, so their good example conforms them to good: their example saith to the common people (chief to their dependants, their families & observers) as Abimelec 
i judg. 9.48.  and Gideon in another case to their soldiers, as ye see me do, so do you; or as S. Paul once to those he writes unto, Be ye followers of me, nay they will follow: If joshua serve the Lord, he can give that same testimony of his house 
l joshua 24.15. ; if the Centurion be a religious man one that feareth God, his servants and soldiers will be obsequious and obedient both to God and him 
m Ma●. 8.8.9. ; if Esther fast & pray, her handmaids will be found joining with her 
n Ester 4.16. ; yea if the King of Niniveh humble himself, than his nobles will be humbled too; if his Nobles, than the common people; if the common people, than the very beasts 
o jonas 3.7. : yea if (as it is in my Text) that Ezekiah the King be humbled, than not only his Peers, and the Elders of his people, (who conjoined in such a case with David) but even the inhabitants, the vulgar sort, the commons of judah and jerusalem are humbled likewise? Oh the Adamantine force of example! the blessed precedent of great persons, is as the first mover in the heavens, or as the first wheel in a clock, after whose motion all the rest move: it is as the Captain that precedes his following soldiers, and gives the first onset; as the bell-wether that goes before the flock; as the hen that clocks the chickens after her. Secondly, great good it brings in God's acceptation; for as the Lord visits the sins of great ones, sometime even upon their seed, as saul's sons were hanged up for the sin of Saul; and jeroboams' Idolatry, as also Gideons' molten image were the ruins of their house 
p Propter parentum. scelera grassantur poena publicae, in totas familias, in multis instant, Simon Pauli Domin. 2 post Trinit & Strig. in 2 Sam. 9 1 Reg 20. & 2 Reg 1●. in uno peccato periurij: Jnslat Pencerus in Lect. Cron. die 6 Feb. an. 1574. cum Aeliano, lib. 14. & Diodoro Siculo l. 6. antiq. in posteritate Saulis, jasonis, Zedechiae, Senacharebi, Philippi Macedonis, & aliorum. : sometimes upon the whole land or nation, as wrath came upon judah, etc. both in the days of David, and in the days of Ezekiah, for the sins of their Kings: so Ezekiah is no sooner humbled, but wrath is removed. David and the Elders of Israel no sooner fall down before the Lord in sackcloth and ashes, but the destroying Angel set a work by God, at the command of the Lord of Angels, puts up his sword; the devouring plague sweeps not a man away more; as indeed when we make an end of sinning, God makes an end of smiting; when the child is whipped, cries and asketh pardon, and promiseth amendment, the rod is thrown away, or broken or burnt, the child is taken up in the father's arms, set on his knee, and kissed, and the tears wiped away from his eyes.  
Fourthly, great ones usually live in great sins, either as they have greater temptations, (Satan shooting ever at the fairest marks) or more allurements and provocations, for the pleasing of corrupted nature, and delighting the flesh; more objects of vanity, greater means to effect their ends how ever sinister: more Sycophants and Parasites to charm and lull them a sleep in security 
q That flattery hath ever been the bane of Kings, read Camerar. in oper. Succisivis, c. 90. p. 448. Patritium de regno, l. 7. tit. 8. pag. 458. & l. 5. tit. 5. p. 229. Instant in Caligula, Galba, Alexandro, Tiberio, Dionysio. , few by redargution, or admonition, that will or dare offer to shake them, to awake them, so they had need (since their sins are also scored & chalked up as the rest) of a greater measure of humiliation for sin, their salve had need answer their sore; else they are like at last to smart, Reu. 6.16.  
Lastly, the example of David is remarkable, when the Lord in a merciful justice, or Just mercy, sends to David after he had numbered the people, this option or choice, that he should choose him whether he would fly before his enemies in war, or endure the famine for 3. three years, or the plague and pestilence for 3. days, he makes choice of the last: why so? not only for the main cause as he reveals, because the mercies of God are great, but as some note, because as he had been an occasion of evil to the people, by his sin, he would bear part of the burden: for in war though his subjects had smarted, it is likely he would have escaped by flight, or by strong holds in some castles or fortifications; or in dearth and famine had there been one peck of corn in the land, it is likely he should have had part; his part like the Lion's part in the Fable 
r Apud Aesopum , in all probability, should have been best: but from the plague there was no evasion, the arrow of the Almighty might have hit him, as soon as the meanest in his Kingdom. Besides in this choice he aimed also at the good of his people: for had war come upon them, they would have trusted in their shield and target, in their sword and bow, and the strength of Israel: had famine been sent, the poorer sort and Mechanickes perhaps had felt the chiefest smart: the richer sort and moneyed men would either have sent for corn into other Countries, as jacob into Egypt 
s Act. 7.12. , or fled thither, as Naomi into the Land of Moab 
t Ruth 1.6. , they would have changed their places as did Abraham 
u Gen. 12.10. , and Isaac 
* Gen. 26.1.  in the like cases: but now in the plague and pestilence there is no evasion, no escape, no flying from God, (as experience hath shown 
x Non obstante regula, ci●o, long, tarde. , in those that bootlesly have changed airs) whither the plague cannot follow, as the storm did jonas: but their only refuge is (at which David aims) that he and all his people by true and serious humiliation, fly speedily even into the very arms of God, who wounding can only heal 
y Hos. 6.1. . Oh a precedent in David worthy of every great man's meditation, contemplation; desiring by all means, as this Patriarch in this option, his own and others humiliation.   

SECT. 4. Several families, and particular persons must be humbled.  
AS the Lord requires this humiliation in his Ministers, in his Magistrates, in Princes and Prophets, in the heads and eyes of the Church, and of the Commonwealth: so it is requisite also in every family of the faithful, who as in the Scriptures they are called Churches 
z Epist. ad Philemon v. 2. , and have in them representations of a Monarchy (the master being as King, Priest and Prophet, the wife as Queen the children as Nobles, the servants as subjects, etc.) so as sin is propagated even from families into the whole body of the land, the Lord will have humiliation even in particular houses, as well as in the Church or Commonwealth: chief, when any judgement is upon a nation, as here in the times of Ezekiah: for in that great mourning of the people of Israel compared by the Prophet, unto the mourning of one that mourns for his only son, or as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon, it is prophesied that even every family shall mourn apart 
a Zach. 12.11, 12, 13. , the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Levi apart, and their wives apart; the family of Shemei apart, and their wives apart; all the families that remain, every family apart, and their wives apart, chief when the Lord gives occasion of mourning to a family, not only by his hand in general on a land, but in particular upon the family, whether by plague, or famine, or sickness, or death of some remarkable person, some member of the family, then as we may see in the practice of David in the sickness of the child, 
2 Sam. 12.  and of Bathsheba too conjoining with him in humiliation (in probability) as they sinned together:) the family is in a special and peculiar manner to humble themselves. Yea in conclusion, this duty of humiliation, is to be performed of all and every one; joel as we heard, summons even the new married Bride and Bridegroom to it 
b joel 2.16. , upon occasion, to leave even their lawful conversing, (as Vriah 
c 2 Sam. 11.  did in a special cause of afflicting himself) and if these must pretermit the very rites and rights of marriage 
d Vide Pareum in 1 Cor. 7.5 , and all earthly delights; then the duty concerns all and overy one of us, not only the wise, and the learned, and the honourable, but even the Mechanics, the husbandman, the vinedresser on whom joel calls; yea the drunkard, the dicer, the riotous person, yea the tender virgins, and the delicious women that be at case in Zion: every one in our places, Prince, Priest and people, high & low, rich and poor, one with another, must be humbled, for general and particular sins, under the mighty hand of God: there is none exempted (except children at nonage, wanting the act of ripe reason, having it only in disposition; or naturals, and fools, and lunatic madmen, that have neither habit, nor act of reason to distinguish good from evil) all else must be humbled.  

Reasons why all must be humbled.  First, for the Lord calls upon all, as he called upon Zerubbabel & joshua the son of josedech the high Priest, and upon all the people of the land to build the second Temple 
e Hag. 2.4, 5. , so he calls upon all to be strong and valiant to build and re-edify this same spiritual Temple; which is, by pulling down sin and corruption by humiliation.  
Secondly, all have sinned, all are corrupted and have perverted their ways, there is not one that doth good, no not one, saith the Prophet 
f Psal. 14: 1, 2, 3. , alleged by the Apostle 
g Rom. 3.10, 11 12. , sin like a gangrene hath run over all as a leprosy, hath defiled all as a general plague, hath run through all, no place, no person free, who can say, his heart is clean? Oh how many windings and prevarications are in the heart of man 
h Quam multae latebrae multique recessus Cicero. , more in his works, most of all in his words. Now there is not any sin but stands need of repentance, not only are we to be humbled for great, gross, crying, crimson, scandalous sins, such sins as send up a cry against the soul, as the sins of Sodom; such as murder, adultery, extortion, oppression 
i Peccata clamantia. , blasphemy in the highest degree, pollutions of soul and body, main profanations of the Sabbath, and such sins as look with an ugly hue, even in the eye of nature, as against the light of nature and grace: but even such sins, as the blear-eyed world sees not, as the civil and moral men of our time, discern not to be sins, but rather applaud and approve as touching 
k Splendida peccata.  upon virtues, as vain words, unprofitable jangling, idle words, worldly discourse upon the Sabbath, free and promiscuous conversing, yea Tavernizing, Tobacconizing, with good and bad, using familiar recreations, with Papists, profane persons, without any discrepance: swearing by faith and troth 
l 
Against which league Mat. 5.34. & james 5.12.  
See M Gibbins Sermon against vain oaths.  , and the creatures, wasting and misspending of precious time: besides these secret and hidden sins of unbelief, profaneness of hart, hypocrisy, formality in God's worship, idle thoughts, lustful cogitations, doubtings, prevailing passions, secret anger, impatiency, murmurings against God in crosses, secret grudge, emulations, repine at the places or gifts of our brethren: even these, and such as these, besides our will worship, coldness in prayer, sluggishness in good duties, flarnesse of spirit, dulness in our devotions, with the like, must be exceeding matter of our daily, sound, and serious humiliation: for even such negligence, and failings and infirmities as these, and slacknesses in good duties, in good actions, have been occasions of humiliation to some sincere servants of God, as may appear by the letters of these zealous martyrs, Ridley, Latimer, & Bradford, recorded in the Martyrologic: little moats have troubled these tender eyes, as David was troubled for touching saul's garment. Augustine reputes in his Confessions, of his time idly spent in seeing a spider how she caught a fly: of which yet me thinks he might have made a good use, if he had conceited the spider to be the devil, the web his temptations, the fly the credulous soul of a sinner; or the spider the harlot 
m Prou. 5. & Prou. 7. , the web her whorish looks, songs, gestures, plots, allurements; the fly the deluded young fool: or the spider, Dalilah, 
* judg. 14.15:  her deceits and delusious the web; the fly strong-womanish weak Samson: like as that famous hus also is reported by Mr. Fox 
n Martyrol. in Epist. hus. , in his imprisonment, to have repent his loss of time in playing at Chess, occasioning withal his impatiency, & anger. Oh if these small omissions, pretermissions, troubled the tender hearts of these humbled souls, how much more occasion have we to weep even tears of blood if it could be, for our great and grievous abominations? yea even the very best of us, for our daily aberrations and wanderings: first, our coldness in good duties; secondly, our lukewarmness, tepidity 
o Reu. 3.16. , and timidity in our profession; thirdly, our unwise walking in many things unworthy of our holy calling; fourthly, our leaving like the Church of Ephesus 
p Reu. 2.4, 5.  our first love; fifthly, our manifold relapses and Apostasies; sixthly, our manifest breaches of our many vows & covenants with the Lord; seventhly, our inordinate use of the creatures; eightly, the abuse of our Christian liberty even in things lawful; ninthly, our manifold scandals and offences which we justly give in things not expedient; tenthly, our stumbling blocks we cast before the weak brethren; eleventh, our want of love to the Lord, & the Saints; twelfthly, our omissions or slight performances of many duties, of piety and charity to God and man; 13. our little reverence and estimation of, and love to the ordinances; 14. our rash judging 
q Mat. 7.1. ut olim Phar●sei. Mat. 9.11. Luke 19.7. , uncharitable, preposterous, ungrounded censures and surmises of the actions or affections of our brethren; 15. our strangeness and hangings off from the fellowship of the Saints; 16. our self-conceits and opinions we have of ourselves and our gifts, with too proud and peremptory undervaluing of others; 17. our favouring of ourselves in some lesser and smaller sins of our natures or callings 
r As once Naaman, 2 King. 5.18. , which we do not or list not discern; 18. our barrenness and unfruitfulness in grace, not answering the excellent means, we do enjoy; 19 our unthankfulness for so many excellent blessings 
s See D. Carlton his book of God's mercies to England▪ See also my Ireland's jubilee in fine. , temporal, spiritual, general, special, public, private, domestic; 20. our little simpathizing with the afflictions of the Saints; our not remembering of poor distressed joseph in France, and elsewhere; our not mourning with those that mourn, alas, might justly cause us with other failings in this nature, to mourn more than Doves in the desert, and Pelican's in the wilderness, yea to be humbled even the very best of us, lower than the lowest dust, etc.  
Lastly, how much occasion have all of us to be humbled, not only for our own sins, but even for the sins and sufferings of others; (for omitting our own several crosses, which every one of us bear and must bear with Simon Cyrenaeus 
t Luke 23.26. , if we be Christ's Disciples: as every one knows where the shoe wrings him, some being occasioned to mourn for the diseases and infirmities of his body, for jobs Biles, Asaes' Gout; some for his crookedness and deformity, lame like Mephibosheth 
u 2 Sam. 9.3. ; some for loss of their children, as jacob for his joseph, Rachel mourning for her sons 
* Mat. 2. ex jer. , as the Nightingale for her young; some for the barrenness of a wife, as Isaac 
x Gen. 25.21. ; or her perverseness, as Moses for his Zipporab 
y Exod. 4.25. ; some for wicked and bad children, as Aaron 
a Levit. 10.1. , Ely 
b 1 Sam. 3.13. , Samuel 
c 1 Sam. 8.3. , for their sons; some for the untimely death of a friend, as David 
d 2 Sam. 3.23.  for Abner; some in one case, some in another:) I say, leaving these (though daily occasioning our humiliation every one of us in our places, if we be not sensual, feared, cautherized and as senseless stoical stocks and fools in Israel) if we but cast our eye and reflect on these externals, even the sins, infirmities, and miseries of others, unless we be hewed out of Caucasus, and be without all bowels of compassion, we cannot but be exceedingly humbled and dejected.  
To hear the oaths and blasphemies of the multitude, yea of men of all sorts, stairs, and places 
e See M. Downam in one of his 4 Treatises against Swearing. , in City and Country, tearing Christ with their tongues and teeth, and renting his humanity as a company of wide mouthed Hounds rend a silly Kid or Hare: one blaspheming his blood, another his heart, another wounding his wounds, another jewishly setting thorns upon his head, not sparing his very feet, no not his guts, ungracious children shooting thus their envenomed arrows at their Father's heart and breast, vile Serpents hissing thus against him that was exalted on the Cross, as the brazen Serpent in the wilderness, for to cure their souls: to see others as drunk as Apes 
f See M. Harris his Cup of Drunkards. , as filthy as Swine, mere Hermaphrodites, having the faces of men, yet mere womanish, effeminate in their looks, their dangling locks, amorous loves, luxurious lusts: Others as profane as very Pagans, having not so much show of true Religion as Turks, Tartars, Virginians, in their superstition; keeping their Sabbaths' in Taverns more than Temples, serving their lusts, their belly, for their God 
g Philip. 3.17. , and Venus for their Goddess; walking in Cathedrals and public places, even in time of Sermons and religious worship, as though it were in the Royal Exchange, or in some public Fair, or at Franckfurt Mart: others grinding the faces of the poor, eating them up as bread, the great ones devouring the poor, as the great fishes the small, preying upon them as Beasts and Birds of prey; getting and retaining they care not from whom, nor how, perfas, & nefas, by hook or crook, right or wrong 
h Non refert quomodo sed oportet habere. : others plotting and complotting, like Haman and Achitophel, how to rise by another's ruin: more studious in Machiavelli then in Moses: others again leaving their first love, falling from their holy profession, as Stars from Heaven 
i As that Apostate julian. apud Theod. lib. 3 , give too much occasion to any that love God and hate sin, in the least sincere measure, to mourn for all these abominations, like those marked mourners in Ezekiel 
k Ezek. 9.4. ; yea, as Samuel mourned for rejected Saul; and to vex their hearts as did Lot, for the unrighteous conversation of  ones and graceless ones, that every where swarm as Egyptian Locusts, now in the times and days of grace.    

CHAP. II.  

SECT. 1. The Penitents practice in all the parts.  
THus have we proved the point propounded, that all of all sorts ought to be humbled, we have instanced in the Magistracy, the Ministry, the Commonalty, all in general, and might go thorough all persons and professions in particular, Statists, Lawyers, Physicians, Students, Practitioners in every faculty; but this course would be too laborious, too special, too punctual, perhaps subject to exception, construction, etc. I would avoid offence. Yet because the whole world lies in iniquity 
l Totus mundus in maligno positus. , slumbering in a lethargical security, drowned in sensuality, frozen in their dregs, like Moab; careless and at ease like the people of Laish 
m judg. 18.10.27. , least suspicious of danger, like Sodom and the old worldlings, even when they are nearest to destruction 
n Luke 17.26, 27, 28, 29. , singing to the Viol and the Harp, never considering the calamities to which their poor souls are obnoxious: few knowing the doctrine, fewer practising the duties of true repentance and unfeigned humiliation, which is the only physic of the sick soul, the medicine to sin's malady, the freer from sins slavery, the awakener out of sin's lethargy, the port and haven to the endaingered soul in the greatest shipwreck 
o Secunda tabula post naufragium. . I might further dilate and enlarge this profitable point, and from the grounds of Ezekiahs' blessed and pious practice I might labour to build up a perfect penitent, a humbled Publican, every way squared for the spiritual building, as a living stone for Zion: in which persuasion I would bring him, as I aim, to that true jerusalem, the vision of perfect peace, etc.  
And in the forming and framing of this my true Humiliate, which I would have not an Utopian and imaginary Penitent, (like Tully's Orator, or Aristotle's happy man) but a true, express, and lively Idea of a thoroughly humbled heart, lest I lose myself in this main Champion and large field of matter, I might keep myself within the hedges and enclosures of these propounded particulars.  
1. First, I might show wherein this humiliation consists, with the parts and adjuncts of it.  
2. Secondly, examine our own practice according to these parts.  
3. Thirdly, press the performance wherein we are deficient.  
4. Fourthly, examine the sincerity of all, to shed from hypocrisy.  
5. Fiftly, by motives persuade all in the general and special.  
6. Sixtly, prescribe the means by which it is attained.  
7. Seventhly, remove the obstacles and lets by which it is hindered.  
8. Eightly, express the signs by which it is shown and known.  
9 Ninthly, set down the times in which it is to be practised.  
To make only for this time an entrance into these, because I have been already too tedious. For the first, 〈◊〉 true humiliation: as both the body and the soul have sinned, so both should be humbled; as both are subjects o● sin, so both should be subjects of this humiliation. I may therefore be distinguished into 

Externall, and  
Internal.    
Some parts of it must be performed in the outward some in the inward man: the outward being but as th● expression of the inward, the inward (as we say of the prayer of the heart without the voice) being always effectual and available with God, without the outward, but the outward without the inward, as was that of Ahabs', being ever counterfeit and hypocritical, as the body without a soul, even the very out-shell, the out-barke, the out-rinde and slough of Repentance, without any inward sap, or marrow, or kernel of sincerity: yet as the body and the soul make a perfect man, so the casting down both of the body and soul before the Lord, make an humbled man: Or as we may distinguish it, in a further division; in humiliation something is to be performed in respect of 

1. God.  
2. Ourselves.  
3. Our Neighbours.  
4. The Creatures.  
5. Our demeanour in the outward man.    
Again, concerning man something is to be performed, respecting 

1. All in general.  
2. Those with whom we have sinned.  
3. Those against whom we have sinned.  
4. Those whom we have in special wronged.  
5. Our Enemies.  
6. Our Equals.  
7. The Poor.    
Thus have I laid down the particulars of Humiliation, both the substantial and circumstantial requisites of this excellent Grace, as the chief and choice ingredients to this best physic of the soul, if I had not encroached too much upon the hour, and borrowed some quarter now, and more in the forenoon, which I must repay again when I can, in a more resolved brevity: if your attentions were not as well tired, as my strength and spirits exhausted, this day, to the body of these merely proposed points, I should add as it were the very soul, by doctrinal explication, and further useful application: but God is the God of order, and not of confusion: Oft times both in hearing and speaking, as Christ said of his Disciples watching, the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak: and I have oft thought, that as too much rain rather drowns than fructifies the earth, and as too much meat rather exonerates the stomach (as over-weight overballanceth the ship) then turns into good nutriment, when more is received then the natural heat doth concoct: so too long and tedious Sermons rather dull and dead the attention, then turn to Christian edification: therefore though I hope you have found Honey from Ezekiahs' bitter affliction and castigation, (as Samson once out of the Lion's belly) yet according to salomon's caveat, lest eating too much at once you surfeit, lest out of preposterous prolixity I rather ●edifie then edify, I refer the further prosecution of these points, till God give again desired opportunity to bring to a full period and consummation, what now hath only an inchoation.    
FINIS.