Causa Dei: Gods pleading his own Cause Set forth in Two SERMONS PREACHED At the TEMPLE in November, 1659. BY Dr. Gauden, Bishop of Excester. LONDON, Printed by John Best for Andrew Crook at the Green Dragon in S. Paul's Churchyard. 1661. TO THE Honourable Societies OF THE TEMPLES. IN order to adorn my departure from you (worthy and honoured Gentlemen) with a Beno decessit such grateful respects and civility as becomes me, to your eminent and worthy Societies, I have formerly prepared, and now dedicated this following Treatise, as my farewell Present to you, or a second monument of mine, yea and of your Honour, after that, which was by me the last year of England's captivity, consecrated to the memory of my reverend and renowned Predecessor Bishop Brownrig, under the patrociny of your Name; that was as the Urn or Conservatory of his and your reciprocal kindness, and mutual merits, with whose mortal remains your piety hath adorned your Temple: This second piece is the substance of those two Sermons which I first preached among you, after I was invited 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in those dark and dangerous times to bestow my pains with you in the Term time. The main subject of this is, the The true Cause of God, and the right pleading of it. Which Theme I then chose to preach on, because I observed in the whole course of our English traged●●, that every party still pretended, to act their factious confusions upon their several stages, in these three Kingdoms, under the specious dress, colour, title and pretence of God's Cause, and the high zeal they had to plead it. This, this was always inscribed on the most bloody banners; with this their tongues and pens were whetted who sought to build their Counter-babels' on the foundations and ruins of Zion: With this Mark of the Lamb were those ravening wolves marked, who drank the blood, and eat the flesh of their Fathers and Mothers, of Kings and Clergy of Church and Country, with this Motto, The Cause of God and Christ, their false tongues, their crazy heads, their cruel hands and impudent faces were to be set off to popular reputation; when nothing indeed was further from their hearts or works. O the Cause of God, the Cause of God, the Cause of jesus Christ cries every tattling and teeming faction, when prostitute to, and impregnated by the Incubus of some novel lust and new fancy, as if it were now in travel, and ready to be delivered of some holy birth, or sacred prodigy. This language or fallacy non causa pro-causa, of urging the Cause where no Cause of God was, the rigid Presbyterian learned in Scotland; this the puny Independent brought from Arnheim or New England: This of old the Anabaptists cried up at Munster, when to increase their Faction they multiplied wives: This the silly Quaker now peeps and mutters in every corner: This the more bloody Papists boasted of in Ireland▪ and other Bigots of that persuasion do every where magnify the Romish cause, as the only Christian Catholic Cause. Mean while all these parties jointly and severally labour to overthrow the true Cause, and excellent constitution of this Church and Monarchy of England: That is the truth, peace, honour and order both of these British Kingdoms and of our Reformed Religion, as it is conform to the Word of God, to our ancient good Laws, and to the customs of the true Catholic Church: In which, the learned, loyal and Religious Nobility, Gentry, Clergy and Commons of this nation, with their Kings, have ever judged that the true Cause of God, as to justice and Religion, holiness and peace, the divine glory and welfare of mankind, was and is most eminently contained. I confess I was then weary and ashamed of the counterpleas & counterscufles of those bold and divided harlots, who did each pretend with great zeal the Cause of God against the other, in order to oppose Gods righteous cause, which certainly ever was and will be but one and the same for ever, as to the main of truth and peace, of faith and good works, of justice and holiness; I evidently saw by many years sad experience, that these rude rivals already had, and ever would first divide, then destroy the true cause of God, and the public interest of this Church and Kingdom only to advance their private and partial causes, which were evidently leavened with most illegal extravagancies, with sacrilegious covetousness, with immoderate ambitions, with inhuman revenges, with implacable cruelties, and with impudent exorbitancies, and with most ●eigned necessities. Hence it was that I adventured in so great and illustrious an Auditory (even before the day of our redemption dawned, or that daystar of the North appeared, which afterward ushered in our Sun of Righteousness) I say I then adventured truly and fully to set forth my sense of God's Cause, with such a resolution as our learned Bradwardin Arch bp. of Canterbury sometime took up, when he set forth his large and elaborate Volume De Causa Dei, of which he thus says in his Preface, De Causa Dei Scripturus sciens manum in ignem terribilem mitto, etc. That he well knew into what flaming fires (with Scoevola) he put his hand; how many enemies he should contract and exasperate, by his honest stating and asserting the Cause of God's grace and glory, against the Pelagian pride and presumption, who sought to advance the impotent power of nature, the cloudy twilight beams of Reason, and the maimed liberty of man's will (which is clogged, corrupted, and hampered with many sensual lusts) above the necessity and against the only sufficiency of God's grace in order to his glory, and a sinner's salvation▪ yet that good Prelate did both proceed and speed: he did his work and had his reward, both in a good conscience and in great successes, as to his repressing that petulancy of poor worms, exalting themselves against the great God, without whom they can do nothing but sin against him, and damn their own souls. In like manner have I lived to see in a few months, after that bold essay of mine among you, the wonderful revolutions of God's providence, pleading at once his own, the Kings, this Churches, and this Kingdom's cause; the Cause of our Laws, Liberties, Lives and Religion; the cause of all honest men, for their souls and bodies, for themselves and their posterities, in their temporal and eternal great concernments: All these great and good Causes are at once pleaded by our wise, just and merciful God, against those strong delusions, those false pretensions, those rebellious usurpations, and those novel intrusions, which under the lie and hypocrisy of setting up God's Cause, and the Cause of Jesus Christ, made profane men abhor the very name, & godly men to pity the reality of God's holy cause, which they saw so miserably mistaken by some, and by others so shamefully deformed, so sordidly defiled, so impudently blasphemed through the wicked policies, and horrid practices of some monsters of men, most unsanctified Saints, who were so diametrally contrary to the Word of God, to the laws of this Land, and to the example of jesus Christ, and all ●rue Saints▪ and so no more capable to set up or promote Gods righteous cause (except that of his punitive justice for our sins, to which the Devils themselves may serve as Executioners) than the sparks of hell can add to the light of heaven, or the falling Stars and Meteors contribute to the lustre of the Sun, or the crooked winding of the Dragon's ●ail could give protection to the Woman and her child, against whom his mouth vomited those black floods▪ and Stygian eructations, which by Heretical or schismatical, or Heathenish, or Atheistical persecutions seek to overwhelm them. The great and blessed God hath taken the matter into his own hand; what you then faithfully heard, and devoutly prayed, for with me, as to Gods pleading of his own Cause, you have lived to see fulfilled, as it was then by me discoursed and foretold, while the poor people of England were halting between man● opinions, all eagerly pretending to be for God's Cause: one for Aristocracy, the other for Democracy, one for Presbyteral, the other for Independency; one for their Antiepiscopal Covenant, another for their Antiregal Engagement; one for abjuration of Kings, the other for extirpation of Bishops, a third for setting up the Kingdom of jesus Christ, in which they might rule instead of both King and Bishops (and all this (forsooth) in order to advance the Cause of God, though in ways quite contrary to the eternal rules of charity, justice and religion, the Laws of God and this Nation) amidst this confusion, the Lord from heaven hath on the sudden convicted, confuted and confounded all those specious, but spurious pretenders to God's Cause, which is not to be begun or carried on (as I after declare) by any means but such as are pure & peaceable, just and ●oly, either by an orderly doing good in our places, or by a patient and humble suffering of evil inflicted on us, though it be for well doing. It is most evident, that as in natural, so in civil and Ecclesiastical motions, all things magnetically move, as they are moved by their chief cause▪ or grand concern, which by a circular kind of influence studies to unite the final to the efficient cause, that the power of the one may enjoy the good of the other. This Cause is the first and last mover of every knowing agent▪ it is the weight and spring of all rational activity; it is a pulse ever importuning the spirit, and beating upon the heart, the one thing necessary, to which men seek to make all other things subservient, or at least subordinate, the centre from which and to which all lines are drawn. The better to compass their respective designs, every Agitator for Faction did cunningly entitle God to their Cause (as some that are cautious of the cracked titles of their estates resign the Fee to the Crown, and take from them a Lease of a thousand years) ●o did the counterfeit and contrariant Causes (larely so scu●●sing in England, for place and power) set themselves up under the name of God's Cause, while they were indeed the causeless corrupters of our Laws, the Nations heavy curse, the Church's moth and corrosive, and confounders of all; yet each of their pretended causes were impudently pleaded by ●ome men▪ in Churches and Courts of justice as God's Cause, y●● & by ●ome supposititious Parliaments they were voted for, till they had run themselves and all of us (like S. Paul's ship in the storm) upon such rocks of Anarchy and confusion, as were past humane hopes of recovery, if God himself had not arose by a providence (scarce ever paralleled in any age or instance of the world) to plead by a still voice, after all our foregoing earthquakes, fires & tempests, the Cause of his own great Name, and the honour of our blessed Saviour, with the sanctity of our Reformed Religion, and the Loyalty of our English Nation, the rights also of the Crown, with the double honour of our Church, and in sum the just restablishment of all our long shaken and overthrown foundations; the cause of all which was pleaded more effectually in a few calm Months, when the voice of Law and Reason, of Loyalty and true Religion, came to be heard in our streets, than they had been, or ever could have been in many years, by plunderings and sequestrings, by killing and slaying, by illegal covenanting, and perjurious engaging, by devouring and destroying both Church and Kingdom. I am piously ambitious (though my station be now removed from you, & made (without my seeking) much uneasier, though somewhat higher, than it was before) to deposit thi● work with you, O worthy and honourable Gentlemen, among whom it had its first productions of whose love and favour, as you know, I never made any mercenary gain, or pecuniary advantage (as that wretched Libeler, 〈◊〉 Creticus Borborites enviously suggests, my charge of attending your service being beyond any benefit I ever received,) so I mus● own this, as the greatest reward and only satisfaction, which I ever had, or expected for my pains among you, that I had thereby an happy opportunity, in so noble an Assembly, and in so desperate paroxysms of our distempered times, to set forth with my wont freedom, the great concern of all good men, which is the true Cause of God, which must be pleaded against our own and others lusts; and to discover those potent epidemical cheats which under that name had so long abused these British Nations and Churches. I well remember, that some of my more touchy and guilty hearers (men of name at that time) were at once scared and scandalised to hear me preach so freely and smartly of that subject; they feared their practice and craft would soon fail, if once the true Cause of God were rightly stated and pleaded: yea some men of the long robe, and of large consciences protested after the hearing of the first Sermon they durst not hear me preach again on that subject, lest their silence should make them guilty of High-treason, by their no● complaining of me to the Traitors then tyrannising over us: Indeed they were justly jealous that the true Cause of God, like Moses Serpent, would eat up al● those of the Magicians: That the Cause of Christ, of the tru● heavenly Jerusalem, would either batter down or undermine those bloody Babel's of their Common● wealths, which were indeed the common woe, though it made for some men's private wealth by the prices of blood and wages of iniquity which they greedily received. I thank God, I never feared the frowns nor affected the smiles of such servile Sycophants, who durst plead any Cause but what was truly Gods, the Kings and the Churches. I had then sufficient encouragement from the love and approbation of the most and best of their Society (without which, yet I ought and should have done my duty, upon the account of conscience and inward comfort) Hence is this my confidence of inviting you again to review the Cause of God, which hath been now mightily pleaded beyond what we could ask or think, God himself conquering the monsters of our sins and miseries, by the miracles of his mercies▪ My aim is to retain and engage as Counsellors, Advocates, and Servients to this righteous cause (yet without any other Fee then that of a good conscience in this world) not only men of my own profession, as Divines and Ministers, but you ●s o that are either the Sages and judges, or the Students and Practisers in the Laws; because I look upon you as Masters of great Reason, and no less careful (I hope) of true Religion, best acquainted with the constitutions of this Church and Kingdom; persons generally adorned with ingenuous education and good literature, yea and, which is more in vulgar eyes and esteem, with good estates; Gentlemen related by birth, or alliance; or clients or acquaintance to the best Families and greatest affairs of the Nation; you either fill the one or attend the other house of Parliament (while no Bishop or other Clergyman never so worthy is admitted to come there, unless as a Supplicant or Delinquent) your counsels and examples are not only influential in your country retirements, but also efficacious in all the Cities and Courts of England. It is your custom, and no less your wisdom and honour to keep to, and plead for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, the Magna Charta, fundamental Laws and ancient and excellent constitutions of this Church and Kingdom (not therefore good because ancient, but therefore ancient because they were judged and experimentally found by our wise and pious Progenitors to be very good, yea best for this Church and State:) It becomes the freedom of your spirits and estates, as Lawyers and Gentlemen (however the poor Clergy are oft compelled to popular dependency, yea and some of them (like leeches) thrive best when they hang most upon the skins of people) I say it becomes you to be the furthest of any men living from flattering or abetting any factius novelties, or Fanatic Novellers in Church or State, which you cannot do without greater sin and shame then other men, because you have more knowledge of good and evil, of Law and justice, of Reason and Religion; the guilt and burden of other men's sins, which are lead and deluded by your counsel or example must needs lie heavy upon your souls (as well as ours of the Clergy) when being their guides, lights and oracles, you or we prove their deceivers and seaucers. Certainly if the poison of some Lawyer's teeth had not venomed the wounds which some Preachers tongues first gave to the life and welfare of this Church and Kingdom, we had not run to such horrid ulcers, such in veterate and incurable gangrenes of disloyalty and irreligion of faction and confusion, nor endured so various, ridiculous, and superfluous Tragedies; which then began when Pulpits rang Aaron's bells backward, as to the Cause of God; and Courts of judicature meanly conformed to the vilest lusts of men, such as have given horror and astonishment to the modest part of mankind; and which threatened (except the Lord had been merciful to us) to have tormented Kings and Parliaments and people of all degrees in the hell fire or Tophet of everlasting feuds, factions and confusions, under the specious name, but most putrid fallacy of God's Cause, the good cause, and at last the good old cause: though nothing was more vile and novel, less ancient or more arrantly wicked, for perjury, perfidy, Sacrilege and Regicide, void of all fear of God, or reverence of man▪ contrary to the Word of God and Laws of that Nation: A Cause, the zealous Martyrs for which are only fit to be put in the Devil● Diptych or Calendar, or in God Black book, not in the Book of lif● Against all which presumptuo 〈…〉 impostors in Church and State You (O worthy professors of the Lafoy 〈…〉 and of our reformed Religion, a● well as we Preachers of the Gospels have now all honourable and saf● encouragement to oppose ou● selves under the protection of God and the King, that both you a 〈…〉 judge's and justices by the civil sword, and we as Bishops and Presbyters, by the spiritual sword▪ may be as valiant for the honour and order of the established Religion and Laws of England, for the ancient and excellent Government Regal and Episcopal of this Church and Kingdom, as others have been impudently pragmatic to broach those novel errors, most illegal injuries and high indignities which they brought upon us, more by our own cowardice perhaps then their courage. Let us dare as much to be Loyal and religious, honest and orderly, as others have dared to be false and base, insolent and irregular, injurious and sacrilegious. They wanted not many black mouths, vile tongues, and libellous pens to plead for the baalim's which they set up (mere Idols and Teraphims in Church and State) which are now (blessed be God cast out to the moles and bats. O let not us, for I would have no difference between your learned Tribe and ours, let none of us who are most versed in God or man's Laws, be wanting to the true Cause of our God and Saviour, of our rightful King, of our reformed Religion, and of our famous Church, in its Doctrine, devotion, discipline and Government, In the cause of which, all your and your posterities happiness are included. Since then by the goodness of God the monstrous and many-shapen Dagons of our late Philistines and oppressors, are now fallen to the ground and broken off head, hands, and feet, a mere fanatic stump; let us turn Israelites unanimously set ourselves, as we have done, to the welcome reception of his Majesty, so to bring home with truth and peace, honour and order, joy and jubilation the Ark of God, the Church of England, restoring it to its place, and adorning it with all the beauties of holiness, worthy of the wisdom and piety, munificence▪ courage and honour of our Ancestors who were famous both for their loyalty and Religion; the fruits of whose care and constancy we enjoyed heretofore, as men and Christians, in a wel-reformed, united and settled National Church, till some men lost their wits and hearts, their credits and consciences, their sense of duty to their God and their King, yea and their first love of our reformed Church and Religion, for which our famous Forefathers had so notably pleaded, not only in the Pulpits & at the Bars, but in prison also, and at stakes, when they were able to say with truth and comfort, as the royal Martyr of admired memory, did now dying That they thanked God they had a good Cause and a gracious God. Certainly 'tis better thus to suffer for God cause (inpietie, justice patience and charity) then to prosper in the Devils with sacrilegious usurpation and injury; this as a fire of thorns may blaze for a time, but it will soon be extinguished, the other carries the laurels and crowns of eternal victory; for though we die for it, yet we shall live by it; the greatest trophies of God's cause are in another world; there our Lord jesus Christ with the Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors, and all the true Professors set up their victorious banners, and rest in eternal Triumphs▪ O let us all cast anchor in God's Cause, and we shall have no cause to fear the toss of this world, which was and ever will be a restless Sea. Let us keep Faith and a good conscience from shipwreck by preservation of our Laws and reformed Religion, so shall we and our posterity, Kings and Subjects be most safe on earth, however we shall be sure to gain our main cause and process at last in heaven, though in other things we be less advantaged as to this world, for all our care & pains in pleading Gods, the Kings, and the Church's Cause. In which I hope I have not been wholly wanting to my duty in the worst of times; nor shall I be now discouraged in these more Halcyon days, however my sun may seem to be in its Western decline, where I find myself preferred as to much more love, civility and honour from the Gentry, sober Clergy & ingenuous people of that Diocese than I can well deserve, so I am exposed to much more business and fatigue of life, sweetened with far less worldly comfort & tranquillity then formerly I enjoyed, when I had the happiness of a more conv●nient as well as a more private and retired condition, but how myself more to the public cause of God and his Church, of my King and Country then to my own ease or private interest, for those we must be willing to do, suffer, and deny our selves in any thing short of heaven, sin and hell; faithful service of them is our greatest freedom, highest honour, and will be at last our greatest reward, if we can but have patience to wait a few years till we pass to another world, where the crown of eternal glory shall be set on the head of that virtue which envy here may depress: That you with myself may persevere in sincerely pleading and promoting Gods blessed Cause (which is our own) is the earnest prayer of, Your very humble Servant John Gauden, Bp. of Exeter. E●ueter Feb. 20. 1660. ERRATA. Pag. 66. line 26. r. which, l. 27. r. of, l. 28▪ deal them (). p. 61 l. 16. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, l. 18. r. Hinges or ●xes. l. 19 r. polar, p. 89. l. 15. r. pleaded, p. 150. l. 19 r. l, p. 153 ● 8. r. pursue. Causa Dei: Gods pleading his own Cause. Set forth in two SERMONS Preached at the Temple in Novemb. 1659. Upon PSAL. 74. 22 Arise, O God, Plead thine own Cause: Remember how the foolish man reproacheth thee daily. THis Psalm is a most Pathetic The scope of the psalm. Lamentation for the deplorable state of the Church of God among the Jews in the Babylonish captivity; after the Justice and Wrath of God had let in the power and malice of enemies, as a mighty flood, which swept away not only the civil peace, liberty, plenty, safety and honour, with the Majesty and Government of the State, but also the very face and form of the Church; The public profession, order, decency and solemnity of Religion, the Worship and Service of God, moral and ceremonial, as to sacrifices and oblations, Prayers and praises in the Temple. . § A matter of the greatest consideration The sad eclipse of true Religion in any Nation. to every pious and devout soul, who cannot but be grieved to see Religion (as the light of the sun) put under a bushel, confined to closerts and corners, driven to private and precarious Conventicles, to be forced to thin and scattered Congregations; or which is worse, to affect separate Conventicles▪ where the ta 〈…〉 d ra●● of verity will never be able to ●●ep charity warm, or cover the 〈…〉 of Schism and Faction. 〈…〉 i● the● time to cry out with old Eli Ichabod; The glory is departed 1 Sam 4. 1. from Israel; the beauty of holiness is turned into sackeloth ashes and; public joys sink into mourning, and solemn hallelujahs into sad lamentations, full of sighs and tears. There is no cause to triumph, or Observe. joy upon any civil and secular accounts in any Nation, never so prospe●●●s when true Religion is eclipsed, or the true Church and its Ministry discountenanced, debased, persecuted, plundered, destroyed, reproached: Then if ever, as the Mariners cried to Jonah in the storm, Every man should cry mightily to his God, apply his hands to the ore; that is, to such means, as being pious and prudent, are only proper to be used in God's Cause. This Psalm bear the name of Asaph▪ The Author of this Psalm. that famous Master in David's time of Church-music, both Vocal and Organical; in which there is so much of humane, yea divine sweetness, composure and rapture, that nothing but savage Barbarity, and rude hypocrisy, can envy or deny the Church of Christ, both Christian and Judaick, the blessing of holy harmony, in singing to God, and setting forth his high praises in the greatest perfections of melody that man can attain unto, and the Church's gravity enjoy. Not that it is like to have been then penned by Asaph, as if by the spirit of prophecy he had foreseen, foretold and forewarned the captivity four hundred years before it came to pass; but either some other of that name wrote it in the time of the captivity; or some man of another name might then write this doleful Psalm or Threnody, to the composure, method or tune of Asaphs excellent melody, who was one of the chief Singers, leaving to after ages further monuments, not only of devout compassion of the Church's affliction, but also of those heavenly comforts, which may in all cases be used and enjoined in such holy forms, as do set forth the exemplary passions of devout men; either as to joy or sorrow, complacenc 〈…〉 compassion, prayer or praise, in public or private concernments; so that, not only (as St. James speaks) If any man rejoice, james 5. 13. he may sing Psalms of praise and thanksgiving; But if he be afflicted, he may read, pray and weep over such divine Ditties as are most suitable to the sense and sorrow of his soul, or the state of the Church, yea, and of any private friend. This holy Penman (whoever he His Sympathy with the Church. were) having an heart full of zeal for God's glory, no less than eyes full of tears, and lips full of complaints for the Church's calamities, suffers himself to boil over to all the Topics of pathetic Oratory, and devout importunity, sometime deploring in general the sad state of things, other while complaining to God in particular instances; yea in one place he seems to complain of God himself, as if he were regardless and negligent of his own interests; Tanquam coecum & surdum numen; as if he needed a Monitor and Remembrancer to mind his own cause: one while he deplores God's fierce anger against his Church; Then he tells him of the near relation Verse 1. he had to that suffering Cause. Verse 2. After he shows God the ●ad and shameful prospect of his Church's Verse 3. ruins: what havoc the enemies insolent and unbridled rage had made; First, of his public Worship, then of the very places which his name had consecrated, and pious gratitude had both dedicated and adorned with politure and art, to be Temples or Synagogues, that is Houses of God in the Land: Then he quarrels and almost chides (as it were) by an humble expostulation, and pious impatience God's long silence Verse 9 and great reservedness. §. At last, to take off any seeming stupor (which is not incident to the Divine omniscience, and most vigilant clemency) he applies the most sharp spur and pickquant goad in the world; namely, the reproaches of God's fear of mant reproaches. God's and his Church's enemies; which the Lord professed long ago so much to fear (speaking after the manner of men) and thereupon more than once disarmed his Justice▪ now brandished against his own people when they had sinned, and highly provoked him not only to punish them, but to purpose and threaten the utterly destroying them; yet he made gracious retractation, that he might avoid the Versa 1●. dint and impression of his enemies poisoned darts and venomed arrows, Psal. 64. 2. even bitter words, petulant scorns, and arrogant reproaches, which Moses represents to him, as a notable allay or cooling to the over-boylings of his wrath: And it wrought so effectually in the highest paroxysms of God's anger, that the Lord chose rather to use the shield of his patience, long-suffering, great goodness and indulgence towards his Church grievously apostatising (that he might thereby defend himself from the sarcasms of his enemies, as if he were either ignorant or impotent, or malicious or mutable) then by using the sword of his Justice too rigorously against his Church, to wound both it and himself, to the most odious joy, and insolent triumph of their common enemies, who hated and opposed the Church, not as smning and swerving sometime against God, but as serving of him, and adhering to him in some measure at least, beyond all other men. 〈◊〉 13, 14, 15, §. The Psalmist further urgeth the former experiments of God's power and providence, as in the general course of nature, which is Verse 16. regular and constant; so in the special exigents of his Church; endeared Verse 19 to him, as the Turtle to its harmless and loving Mate, from which to be separate is as death; God's covenant with the Church is firmly alleged; also his faithfulness is pleaded; his lasting philanthropy or tender regard to all that are oppressed, is inculcated; and nothing omitted that pious passion can suggest, or compassionate Oratory can express in so few words. §. After all these lively colours brought forth with no less skill than plenty and vehemency, to set forth what he either deplores or deprecates, or supplicates; he adds at last this notable Ingemination, to rouse and excite God, to consider, if not his poor Church's calamity, yet his own great concern. The pathetic Penman is resolved not to let God alone, to give him no rest till he had some answer worthy of his love, pity, jealousy and zeal; yea worthy of so merciful a God, who ambitiously delights in the titles of the Father of pity, and God of all consolation; Therefore he adds this Epiphonema, or close, as the ultimi conatus, & n●vissimi ejaculatus ecclesiae; Arise O God, plead thine own cause, etc. As to the partition of the words, The division or parts of the Text. we may easily discern these particulars in them; First, The excitation, Arise. Secondly, The Invocation, O God. Thirdly, The declaration, To plead. Fourthly, The Appropriation, Thy own cause. Fifthly, The grand Motive or Incitation, Thine enemy's reproach thee daily. Sixthly, The Solicitor or promotor of the process, action or plea; The pious and pathetic penman of this Psalm, who had rather seem rude and importune, then irreligious to God, or uncompassionate to the Church, by being either silent, or so cool, as if he were indifferent, and thereby taught God to deny him, by the faintness of his ask; he asks, and seeks, and knocks; he prays, and cries, and roars for the disquietness of his soul; his bowels are turned within him, and his soul poured out like water, impatient of a repulse in such a Cause as was Gods own Cause. The word 'Cause is not here taken Of the word Cause. in a Physical or Metaphysical sense, nor in a natural or logical notion; but (sensu forensi & politico) in a politic sense, as a term used in Courts of Judicature (in foro vel Senatu) to show the rational and just foundation upon which civil Pleas, or legal actions are grounded; and from which, as to the point of right or wrong, all controversies derive the force and efficacy, as all activity and effects do from natural causes. So the Hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, denotes a contest, by way of complaint, Exod. 17 rebuke and repair, whence the waters of Meribah, or strife had their name, where God pleaded with the murmuring people. So Gideon is nicknamed Jerubbaal, for pleading against Baal, Judges 6. 31. And the LXXII. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. And the Latin, Litiga litem tuam Domine; do all import a quarrel or controversy, an action of the Case in point of Trespass, injury, or indignity, wherein God's honour was 2 Sam. 15. 4● concerned, which was not to be put up in silence, but a just reparation to be made. In this sense both the Greeks use 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, & 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉; Also the Latins, Causa, or Caussa, as Tully oft, and other ancient Orators, no less than the later pleaders, according to our common, or the Imperial and Canon Laws. Thus the word 'Cause denotes, Id It's sense or import here. quod est (ut in vita & voto) sic in lite causalissimum; that which is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, or optatissimum, the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉; the main centre, Hinge, Butt, or Design; the chief end & motive, that grand concern and interess which men are most fearful to forfeit or to be frustrated of, and to lose, or miscarry in. Some Etymoligists in their (〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉) The Etymology of Cause. Grammatick curiosity are pleased to derive the word Causa, either from Cautio, because men are most wary not to fail of it, (which is Causa cadere) or from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, heat, and burning, indicating the fervour and zeal with which men prosecute their main cause, and their indignation against those that oppose, or obstruct them in it, or lastly, from Chaos, as that which contained in it all primitive, natural, and elementary causes. This last notation doth very unhappily The many pretonded causes which men plead as Gods. fit our sad condition in England, when under pretence of several causes, which the eager, partial, and inordinate prosecution of them (pleading them (Art & Marte) by arguments and arms too, by word and sword, by fraud and force, by faction and fury) we have run ourselves in (Chaos antiquum) almost to a very chaos or confusion, both in things civil and religious; as if we were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, Terrae filii, gigantum fratreculi) a company of Mushroom men and Christians sprung out of the earth but yesterday, a nation in its infancy or minority, which is now to learn its A. B. C. of Religion and civil government, being set back by a most sad and horrible fate, from Homer's Iliads, to our primer or Pueriles, by I know nor what new Teachers, and many Masters. §. So that it is high time seriously to meditate, conscientiously to preach, freely to write, and fervently to pray upon this subject: The Cause and the Cause of God, since every party pretends a Cause, and Gods Cause too, which they are most eager and ambitious not only to plead fairly (but to) obtrude for o●bly on all others: Thus from the great Pretenders ●● the Cath〈…〉 Cause (of which the Romanis●● would seem the chief Patrons) to all other Sects and Subsection● either in civil or religious factions. All parties are divided by their Causes, and the whole is destroyed by their divisions: Ask any side why they thus shuffle and out, why they thus divide and destroy? why they do things so different from solid Reason and true Religion, contrary to all Laws of God and man contrary to the duty they owe ●● God, their Country, their King their Posterity, the Church and the State, as to Justice, Veracity Peace and Charity? Ask why, like Ixicons wheel, or Sisyphus his stone▪ they overturn, overturn, overturn all things eivil and sacred by their end less vertigoes and rotations? then answer is short, as that of David to his brother Eliab, Is there not ● 1 Sam. 17. 29. Cause? It will not be amiss therefore Trial of Causes. 1 john 4. (as St. John adviseth Christians to try the spirits whether they be of God or ●o, of Christ or of Antichrist; to examine the several pretended and pleaded Causes, whether they be God's Cause (which is indeed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, Causarum causa, the Cause of Causes: The Cause and interest of all the blessed Angels, and all true Saints; worthy of Princes and Peers, of Gownsmen and Swordmen, of all honest and good men; or whether they be not the Cause of the Devil, and of men's own evil ●usts, disguised with this larva or vizard on them, which may not uncharitably be suspected of some of them; Since it is most certain, they cannot all be God's Causes, they are so many, so multiform, so mutable, so divided, so destructive to each other; they must needs fail either of the main end and ground, or matter and method of Godr pleading his own Cause. §. Of which I shall (by God's Address to the Auditors ●n behalf of God's Cause. help) endeavour to give this honourable and Christian Auditory such an account, as may either inform, or at least confirm your judgements in the true Cause of God (that you may not be tossed too and fr●● with every wind of causeless Causes, which blow as men's passions and secular interests do arise.) And further, I hope to excite your judie●ous abilities, and eloquent attentions (who are persons of so great learning, experience, and publi●● influence) to be ever zealous in that good Cause which is Gods as (bon● Causidici) honest and able Lawyers to show your skill and will in the great concerns of God, his Church and your Country; which are no● so eagerly pleaded and counter pleaded among us. Appeals bein● as it were made to every one o● us, to judge in ourselves which ●● the righteous Cause of God, tp which we ought cheerfully to give our suffrages and assistance, as most undoubtedly conducing to our public happiness both in Church and State, in civil and religious concernments; let not this be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a desolate and forsaken Cause, in which no men of parts and estate will appear. §. And cartainly, if I had less experience than I have of the favour of the Court (I mean of this Christian Assembly) which is met in God's Courts and presence, yet I may justly have great confidence, as to the merit of that Cause, which I shall seek to present to you, and plead before you this day in God's behalf; As Jotham therefore said to his Countrymen, Harken to me, judges 9 7. that God may hearken to you: Attend diligently to the pleading of God alone ca● plead our cause. 1 john 2. his cause, who alone can plead yours; yea and hath given us an Advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous, whose blood speaks better things for us; whose wounds are so many eloquent mouths, whose cross was loaden with strong cries for us; Heb. 12. 24. whose merits are undeniable mediators; whose Spirit continually makes intercession in us and for us, even then when we know not what to say, or how to pray; either unable to plead, or ashamed to speak for ourselves: Gods 'Cause may sometimes seem to want our pleading for it before men; but our cause doth really and ever need the plead of God's mercy and Christ's merits before the Tribunal of his Justice, that there may be a prohibition granted at the humble motion of believing and penitent sinners, to remove the suit or action from the Bar of Divine Justice, to the Throne Heb. 4. 16. of the heavenly Grace, where we may find mercy to relieve us in all our distresses, despairs and deaths. §. Before I set before you the main fruits with which I intent to entertain you out of the Text; i● will not be amiss to gather an handful of those fair flowers which offer themselves at the first view of the words, as so many short, but sweet and excellent observations. 1. We may observe. That God 1. Obs. God hath his cause in this world. hath his Cause too in this world, his great design, concern and interest as well as the wise Statists and great Politicians, as well as the strong, and the rich, and the learned, and the ambitious, and the malicious, and the voluptuous, and the covetous men of the world; who so eagerly plead and pursue their, own projects and Causes, that they not only many times forget Gods, but generally cross, contradict and oppose it, as with their sin and folly, so to their shame and ruin; for as the counsel, so the Cause of God shall Psal. 33 11. stand: Nor is it to be baffled by any either force or fraud, strengtl● or sophistry: It is as truth (Magna & praevalebat) a great Cause, and will prevail, by the help of a wise and strong God; though for a time it may be unjustly condemned and crucified by unjust men (as Christ was) yet it will at last be raised again in power and glory; yea and justified before men and Angels; It will, as Aaron's rod or serpent, devour all those of the world's Magicians Exod. 7. 12. and Politicians. It is a Cause which will be (as fire) consumptive of all other, and consummative of itself. 2. Observe. As God hath his Cause 1. Obs. God ever did and will plead his own cause in his due time. in this world, so it becomes him to own it: It is opus Dei; the work of a God to plead his own Cause, as Gideon speaks of Baal. Idols were ●dges ●. ●● convicted to be no Gods, because they could not plead for themselves by speaking or doing good or evil, as the Prophet tells Idolaters. Therefore the Psalmist here so earnestly urgeth it upon God; who he believed ever did and would own his own Cause, so as to plead it himself, in his own way and time; 1 King. 8. 59 Both as to the Majesty, truth, justice, holiness and honour of it; also as to the indignities which are by evil men cast upon it; Summus Deus summas patitur injurias; none is more a sufferer, as to the malice and insolence of wicked men, than the most blessed God; who yet is as impassable, as the sun's light is uninfectible with the filthy exhalations of dunghills. Plato puts this true saying into the mouth of Socrates dying under the malice of his persecutors, Anytus and Melitus; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, etc. It is impossible for evil to make any impression of affliction upon that which is good; and which can (as a jewel) so preserve its native goodness and firmness, that sufferings shall make it not only no way diminished, but (as in the wheel and file) more illustrious and meritorious; such were the sufferings of Christ properly, and of all good men (in an Evangelical sense) being for a good Cause, and on God's account; till God ceaseth to be just, and good, and true, and faithful, vigilant and zealous for his own glory, his cause cannot utterly miscarry. 3. Observe. The Cause of God may 3 O●s. God's cause may be in a very deplored state. be, as to the eye of the world, and to the sense of the best men, in a most sad, dejected, deplored, despised and desperate estate; so sunk and oppressed, that there is no outward 1 Kings 19 10. sign of its being ever boyed up and recovered; thus it was represented to Elias, as if he only were left to plead a lost Cause: So the Disciples expressed their sorrow and despondency; We verily trusted this had been he who should Luk. 24. 31. have redeemed Israel. So Mary weeping to the Angels, answers their questioning of her tears; They have taken away my Lord, john 20. 13. and I know not where they have laid him: many times the foundation of Church and State, of Justice and Religion, are so out of course, that Psal. 11. 3. the righteous know not what to do or say; all things so unhinged by violent, wicked, and unreasonable men, that nothing moves by any order or written Law of God or Man, but by the power and impulse of men's own lusts; who from God's silence, permission and patience, are prone foolishly to conclude his approbation and liking of their cause and ways, yea and to say God is such an one as themselves: and 50. 21. the distress of God's Cause may be such, that the whole Church may be ready to cry out, as the Psalmist, Help Lord, for vain is the help of man; It is time for thee O Lord, to put to thy hand, for they have and 60. 11. made thy Law of none effect. and 119. 126. §. So did the Heathenish persecution, and the latter Romish superstition tyrannically triumph a long time over the slain Witnesses, the Law and Gospel, the Scriptures ●v. 21. 4. and Catholic Traditions, the Preachers and Professors of that true Religion, which hath been testified, both as to moralities and mysteries, faith and manners, not only by the two Testaments, but also by the confessions and conversations of all ancient and modern Christians, conform to God's Word, and the best Churches customs. The vapour of numbers, pomp, prosperity and prevalency, are no demonstrations, either to approve the cause of Arius or Antichrist; or to prejudice the cause of Christ and of God's true Church: But as Lucan speaks of the cause of Pompey and Cesae, in which the justice of the first was overborne by the successes of the second, Victrix causa Diis placuit sed victa Catoni; the gods abetted Cesar by victories, but Cato's constancy adhered to Pompey's and the Senate's conquered cause, because it was most just. 4. Obser. The Cause of the true ●. Obs. The cause of the Church is signally God's cause. Church is God's cause, most signally and peculiarly in this world; his interests and concernments are so linked with its, that they are insep●trable; as jacob's soul was bound up in Benjamins, as the Husband's Gen. ●●. 30. honour in the Wives, as a friends happiness in a friends, so is the relation between God and his Church; if that be black, God is eclipsed, as to the most visible eradiations of his glory to this world; if that be bright and conspicuous; as a City on a hill, in truth and holiness, in charity and prosperity, God's great name, praise and renown are most glorious and illustrious; Then his Wisdom, and Truth, and Justice, and Power, and Mercy, and Patience, and Goodness and Faithfulness are in their meridian strength, as the Sun at noon day. If the Church be hidden, it is as the moon turned into blood; or the Sun of Righteousness into sackcloth, as Joel speaks; as Joshua (astonished Iosh. 7. 9 when Israel turned its back upon its enemies) said to God, And what wilt thou do O Lord to thy great Name? So do holy men, they are prone to despond and deplore Gods own condition and Cause, when they see the Church of God, or any part of it, as to its veracity, sanctity, order, peace, prosperity and unity, decline and decay, under error, profaneness, persecution, disorder, distraction, division, or any uncomfortable condition; Tunc periclitatur coelum, & Dei res agitur; then Gods 'Cause is at stake; then, as in the Giant's assault, his heaven is in hazard, as if he were in danger to be (numen infelix) a miserable God; Then is Christ tossed in the storms; then do true Believers cry out, as the Disciples, Lord save us, we perish; Mark 8. 25. Help Lord, and do it, for thy own name sake, which is called upon by us: God hath no considerable design in the world, but that of his Church; when this is consummated, the world, as the scaffold, or stage, or shell, or chaff, is to be destroyed. The Church cannot be undone, until God is undone and bankrupt. 5. Obser. No Church hath ever 5 Obs. The most flourishing Church may be under great depressions. been so famous and flourishing in outward piety, plenty, peace and prosperity, but it may fall under persecution and great oppression; sometimes indeed (as God said to Satan, job 2. 3. in the case of Jobs trials) without a cause; that is, as to any predominant and unrepented sin, at present provoking God against him; but only as Christ said of the man born blind, That the work of God's joh. 9 3. grace and Spirit might be manifest in the trials and tribulations of his Church: So in the first ages of the Church, when Religion was purest, and love warmest, yet was the fire and furnace of persecution hottest. Sometimes indeed, as a Psal. 107. 34. fruitful land is made barren for the wickedness of them that dwell therein; so the lukewarmness and corruptions of a Church, the Apostasies and falling of Christians from their first Faith, loyalty, patience, love and good works, may cause God to hide his face, to withdraw his protection, to remove his candlestick, as he threatens, and to give over his Turtle to the will of its adversaries; who shall set up their banners, and roar in the Sanctuaries, and break down all her carved works, and strip her of all her pleasant things▪ as it is, and hath been for some years in England; the wild Psal. 80. 3. Boar and the Fox shall then do their pleasure by force and fraud against her; this is the variable state of the Church Militant, mutable as the Moon; though it be clothed with the light of the Sun, yet it may be so eclipsed and turned into blo●d that there is no help for her but in her God. Perfect and perpetual felicity is a state only expectable in heaven; till there is no sin or spot in the Church and soul, there can be no security against sorrow, shame and sufferings, which are our physic in our valetudinary constitution, to which this life is subject; yea Christ himself the Son of God and Saviour of the Church though without ●in, yet was not without suffering, while he was found in the form of sinful flesh, and bare by way of susception, imputation, and satisfaction, all our sins. 6. Obser. Time's may be so bad ` Obs'. Time's may be such that none but God can plead his Cause. and on such a desperate pin, that none can either safely or effectually plead God's cause or his Churches, but himself; who only can create Psal. 78. 60. 70 and 80. deliverances and mercies, who alone commands the winds and seas to obey him, who can restrain the fury of man, and turn the remainder of wrath to his praise; who can change the heart of Esa●, and stir up the spirit of Princes, as he did Cyrus Ezra 1. 1. and Darius to build his Temple, and restore his captives; who can either conquer Pharaoh by main force and dint of judgements, or change the decree of Ahasuerosh by gentler operations; who can levelly great mountains Zach. 4. 7. before Joshua and Josedeck, and exalt the lower valleys, the day of small things, and of a despised Isa. 49. 23. Cause to bring forth his salvation; who gives nursing Fathers and Mothers Isa. 40. 11. to his flock and family; and such shepherds as shall seek the strayed, carry in their bosom the weary, feed the hungry, and cure the diseased, not with rigour, and austerity, but with love and tenderness: Thus after the sharpest persecution of Dioclesian (when Christian Religion (as Monarchy and Episcopacy hath been by some in our days.) was triumphed over, as extirpated) God raised up Constantine the Great, and other Christian Emperors after him, who restored life, liberty, honour, and support to the Church; after the Church was seemingly dead, as St. Paul when he was stoned, yet it rose up again; when Israel's burdens were heaviest in Egypt, then was their redemption nearest, because their devotion was warmest, and Gods▪ compassions tenderest to them. After the Marian bonfires and but cherries of so many carbonaded Christians in England (filling all things with earthquake, fire, tempest and horror) in what a still voice for many years did God▪ plead by a wonderful and unexpected providence the Cause of his Church and the Reformation of Religion here in England for an hundred years; as I pray he will do again for us in mercy; because he hath not forgotten to be gracious, nor do his compassions fail, but his mercy endureth for ever! 7. Obser. God's cause must never be 7 Obs. God's cause is (●●t) never desperate. given for lost or desperate while God remains, (who is both able and willing to plead it▪) or while any good man, as Moses, or Samuel, or Eliah, or Daniel remain; who by fervent prayers can and will put God in mind of it, and excite him to it. As David and Jehosapha● encouraged 2 Sam. 30. 6 themselves in the Lord then God; so must good men in bad times, when the best cause goes by the worst: A man would even willingly die such a death as our late Martyr King did, on condition that he could with faith and truth die with that divine sentence in his mouth (as he did) I thank God I have a good Cause, and a gracious God. This supported the Martyrs and Confessors so of old, that when they were s●ain for God's cause all the day long, yet (as Sulpitius Severus says of them) they then hastened more ambitiously to Martyrdoms, than afterward in times of peace, others did to the greatest preferments in Church or State. Though figtree, and olive, and Hab. 3. 1●. flock, and field, and all fail, yet (the Prophet tells us) he will rejoice in the Lord, even in the God of his salvation: The Lord will arise Psal. 78. 65. as a Giant refreshed with wine, to plead the cause of Zion, and to vindicate the honour of his great name, which is graven on his true Church, as on the signet of his right hand; in the highest storms we may cast this anchor, God can and will appear for his cause in the midst of the fiery furnace never so hot, no Dan. 3. less then in the cool of the day. 8. Obser. When all means fail, 8 Obs. When all means fail, prayer must be applied to God's Cause. yet the prayer of the faithful must not be wanting to God's cause: This is (in naufragio Tabula) the rafter left the Church in the greatest shipwreck; when neither Sun, nor Moon, nor Stars appear; yet if this Angel Acts 27. 24. the spirit of prayer appear in our agony, we may be of good cheer, as St. Paul was; A good Christian as Moses and the Syrophenician woman, must not give over its pious importunity, though God seems angry, and Christ averse. God cannot deny the fervent prayers of james 5. 16. the righteous; they will be effectual in time, even to open prison doors, as they did in St. Peter's case, when the Church prayed incessantly for him▪ Acts 12. 5. As the vapours that ascend from earth to heaven, are after returned in sweet showers that have in them vital and celestial influences, being impregnated with etherial or heavenly spirits; so are prayers of the faithful. Devout souls that lay to heart the cause of God; cannot be more bold than welcome to him in such cases; God is as well pleased with their excitation or solicitation of him, even to a kind of imperious commanding of him (which the Prophet expresseth) as a Isa. 5 11. man is with that ruder importunity by which he is awaked out of sleep, to quench his house on fire, or to save his son from drowning. There is more efficacy in praying for the Psal. 123. 6. Peace of Jerusalem then in fight. The fiery chariots and horses that are in the breast of zealous and devout Orators will do more good than armed legions of Soldiers. 9 Obser. There is not a greater 6 Obs. It is a sure sign of a gracious heart to lay to heart God's cause. sign of a good and gracious heart, then to lay to heart the Cause of God; even then most passionately, and earnestly, when it is most deserted, most deploring, most despairing; a good Christian must make good what St. Peter said well to Christ, but performed ill, Though all men Match. 26. 33. forsake thee, yet will not I; Is God touched with our concerns, and afflicted in our afflictions, and zealous Isa. 63 9 to plead our righteous cause; to contend with those that contend with his servants, Isa. 49. 25. when we are molested or oppressed in any kind, by sin, temptation, weakness, darkness, dejection, diffidence, persecution, or desertion? and shall we▪ be as Gallio in God's cause, or as Nabal to david's, not caring or concerned? The Cause of God and his Church are (as I said) inseparable; no man is affected with one, who is neglective of the other; this example we have here added to others of Noah, Lot, Moses, Phineas, Samuel, Eliah, Micaiah, Jeremiah, Nehemiah, Daniel, Mordecai and others, whose vigilancy and pertinacy was such in the cause of God and his Church, that they were resolved to give God no rest, till he did arise and plead his own cause; Nothing is Isa. 6●. 7▪ more imitable, nothing more commendable, nothing more practicable, nothing more comfortable▪ provided we rightly understand what the Cause of God is, and apply to it, as becomes God, his cause and our duties; then 'tis heroic to say with Esther, If I perish, I perish: This is Angelic with Esther 4. 16. Moses (〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉) to put God Exod. 32. 32. to the blush and silence, If not, blo● me out of thy book; and 'tis super Rom. 9 3. Angelical to say with St. Paul, I would wish to be accursed from Christ for the Church's sake, and God's cause our duty in which we shall the● best understand and perform, when we have duly considered these four things. 1. What the Cause of God is. The four main subjects of the Discourse. 2. What need we may have of his pleading it. 3. How God doth plead it. 1. Immediately by himself. 2. Mediately by such instruments and means as he is pleased to use among men. In the fourth place is to be showed What is the true method or manner to be observed by all good men in pleading God's cause with him and for him. When these are finished, and such Patheticks applied by way of use, as may cast your wills in the mould of your judgements, and make your affections to keep pace, at least to follow your understandings; I shall (I hope) not only discharge in some tolerable measure my own duty and undertaking, which is great, but answer your favourable and Christian expectation, which I see is not little; for I abhor nothing more than the ostentation of so ample a text, to so ample an Auditory, in such exigents of times, even agonies of God's cause in Church and State, in Justice and Religion, and to do nothing worthy or proportionable to them; which defect in me, and neglect in you God forbid, whose assistance, as I humbly implore, so I may not despair, since it is in his own Cause; which must needs be the best, and may modestly hope for his gracious help in my pleading and preaching for it, against all frivolous, fallacious and impertinent pretenders to it; the rather because it is not only my particular cause, as a Christian and a Minister, but all yours, together with your posterities as men, as Englishmen, as Christians, and as Protestants: We know that of the Orator, In propriacausa unusquisque sibi videtur & potens & eloquens: if in our own, much more in God's Cause (which is our own too) we ought to do our best on all hands. First, What this Cause of God is. 1 General, What this cause of God is. I take it for granted, what I first observed, That God hath his cause in this world, who made all things by his wisdom and power for his glory, and is, as a wise Agent, highly concerned, as to do nothing in vain, so not to fail of his main design: It is no other than Atheistical blasphemy to deny that God hath any concern or causeon earth, or that he regards them that doth, and will ever plead for them; God hath not left himself without Acts 14. 17. witness in the world, that he is, and that he looks to the managery of all things; specially of mankind, and peculiarly of his own Cause: It is not (natura volvente vices & lucis & anni) that all things are fatal and necessary, confining God as well as man to inevitable events; which is the fancy of those (Qui nullo credunt mundum rectore moveri) who have either no Faith in God, or no thought worthy of a God. God's silence and patience are the God's silence and patience in his own cause. prejudices which men have taken against his Providence, and that special care of things, which runs (as spiritus intus agens) in all permissions and events, which are not, as to God, either contingent, or by constraint, but under the free, and sovereign disposition, which is every way worthy of a most wise disposer, and almighty worker; hence mockers, as S. Peter observes, are prone 2 Pet▪ 3. 3. to ask, Where is God's cause, where the promise of his coming? Where are his prophecies, what he would do for the good in mercy, and against the wicked in justice? even thus of old the Gnostick pride and presumption jested, when vengeance was at the door, and judgement overtook them to an utter desolation of the Jewish Polity. They are such as live without God in the world, that say he will do nor good nor evil. Many are willingly ignorant that God hath any cause in this world; and many are mistaken in the true Cause, and in their plead for it; without right understanding the heart Prov. 19 2. cannot be good; since the pregnant Eccles. 7. ●9. inventions of men in all times, especially in ours, have found out many Causes, and every one is cried up for Gods. The first foundation-stone to be laid in this building is to know what the true Cause of God is, of which every one boasts, as his peculiar, Prov. 18. 17. till another comes and finds out the fallacy. This I shall show, first, by giving general characters of God's Cause; such as are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 & 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, proper, essential, and intrinsic marks of it. Secondly, I shall by way of Induction show you the particuliar parts or branches by which it spreads itself in the world. First, The Cause of God is The marks and pr●peri●es o● God's cause. known by these marks, or essential properties. 1 It is Causa optima, not only a ●. The best cause. good cause, but the very best; yea, the only good one in the world; the measure or standard of all others, as the first and best of all Causes, which are only so far good, as they are conform to, and concurrent with the cause of God; whose internal rule is the moral will of God, its end the glory of God; It is good in its principles and in its practices, every way vera, pura, justa, divina. 2. It is true, according to Scriptural 2 most true according to Scriptural verity. verity, which is revealed in the holy Word of God, fixed and infallible, not depending on uncertainties, which are sceptical, conjectural, and opinionative; much less upon fantastical and enthusiastical notions, according to the fancies, dreams, and inventions of men, that are rather heady and giddy, then hearty and godly. §. God's Cause is never to be carried on by fictions or lies, by fables or legends, which are but man's devises Psal. 5. 4. and the Devils stratagems, as impertinent to advance God's Cause, as blackness is to augment light: as with God, so with his Cause no iniquity dwelleth. 3. It is an holy, pure and just 3 It is a most hol●, pure and just cause. Cause, in all points, as it regards 1. God in religious adoration, inward reverence, and outward veneration. 2. Ourselves in chastity and sobriety. 3. Others, in justice, humanity and charity, in all things that are morally and evangelically commanded us as men and as Christians, in civil and religious societies. 4. It is Causa unica & catholica, 4 It is an entire and catholic cause. as to its integrality or completion, but one and the same, as to its main ends and proportions, confined to the love of God and our neighbour, uniform in all moral, spiritual and essential forms of righteousness and true holiness, however it hath had some different dispensations as to outward forms, and variable ministrations, which are still concentred Ephes. 1. 6. in one true God, in one Lord Jesus Christ, in one Spirit, and in one true faith once delivered to the Saints, Judas 2. 5. It is a constant Cause, not any 5 Constant to itself. admitting variations, as to the main end, means and measures of it: It is indeed causa antiquissima, the eldest (as it is the concern of the Ancient of days) affecting no novelty, and abhorring all inconstancy, as to the main and essentials of it: change of circumstances, customs and ceremonies in Religion, which like leaves grow up and fall with time, is nothing to the body and life of the tree, which is still the same, as the man is the same man though he may change his clothes; circumstances of Religion fall under providence and prudence of men; but the substance of it ariseth from an eternal fountain of divine Wisdom, Power and goodness, carrying on all things to the infinite ocean of God's glory; by the various streams or derivations of his providence to mankind, and specially to the Church of God, in Truth, in Justice, and in Mercy, as men either sincerely adhere to, or maliciously oppose the Cause of God. 6. It is every way causa amplissima, 6 The most a●●le and august cause▪ nobilissima & augustissima, the most noble and ample cause, containing in it the greatest concernments of Men, Angels and God himself, yea it is accurate in the least things, essentially belonging to it; as having nothing indeed small in it● nature▪ yea and aggrandising all things, even circumstantial, which it contains in its large circumference of piety, charity and decency; even to the least ceremonious actions and words, yea secret desires and thoughts; as every little point in a great circle, hath its great relations, aspects, and dimensions, in reference to the centre, sphere, and circumference whereto it stands related. §. Although this magnificence be Y●t the cause of Go● consists not in minute matters. true of the Cause of God in its mystical and moral grandeur, yet its name and honour is not to be fixed or confined to, much less inscribed on every partial and covenanting pretention, every small Ceremony, outward circumstances, and petty opinion, which are mutable, dubious, dark, and disputable, of which men may be ignorant, or doubt, or deny, or differ without danger of salvation, as to any unbelief or immorality, with which weak Christians Rom. 14. 1. must not be perplexed nor entertained. In these, many times prejudices and presumptions of men do much mistake and run on the fallacy of Non causa pro causa; crying things up or down, either for or against the cause of God (just as they interpret Prophecies in Scripture) according to their own presumptions and passions, which like Optic glasses, do multiply or magnify them in their fancies, agreeable to their factions and interests; wherein once engaged, they may have such a pride, obstinacy and ambition as affects to do and suffer much for their cause, as they truly call it, which is not Gods, but their own; There that old Maxim of Martyrdom is true, Non poena▪ sed causa facit martyrem; No sufferings can transmute an ill Cause to the honour of martyrdom: men's private and petty causes, like the small by as of a bowl, do too often seek to over sway the great Cause of the great God, which consists 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, But in grand and clear case● of faith and manners. Rom. 1●. 1ST not in meats and drinks, or any minute business and observation, but in Righteousness, Truth, Peace and Holiness. Outward ceremonies of Religion, are but at sring▪ or lace, or pins, or clothes Of ornamentals and essentials in Religion. to the body or being of a man▪ ornamental, not essential; accidental and occasional, not substantial and necessary; they may be changed without 1 Cor. 14. 40. detriment, according to that wisdom, liberty, charity and order which becomes the Church of Christ 1 Cor. 14. 40. and the Cause of God; they must not be cumbersome and uncomely; as pins that scratch or run into the skin; or as garments too straitlaced, heavy and uneasy; there must neither be such a nakedness and deformity, nor such an affected pomp and variety, as exposeth the Cause of God and true Religion to laughter and contempt, as a matter of pageantry or penury. §. It argues men have less sight of the suns greater light, when they much magnify Nebulous stars, or their own farthing candles, or every glow-worm under a hedge; yea the circumstances and ceremonies of Religion most fall off as the mantle from men's eager disputes, and concerns for or against them, by how much men's spirits, with Eliah, ascend highest, to heaven. §. The Cause of God, as to the majesty of its verity, morality and charity, hath in some ages suffered much eclipse, as to its true lustre and grandeure, by these films or clouds, these motes or mists which have risen in men eyes, otherways not bad or blind. They are commonly The cobwebs of small controversies catch fli●●. but as flies, of weak and buzzing Christians, who are so easily catched, and so long held in the cobwebs of ceremonious controversies, which reach no further than the ski●●● and suburbs, that is, the circumstantials of Religion; yet from these sparks (good God) how great fires have been kindled and continued in this Church? As of old in that one dispute, which was so eagerly in the Church, about the time of celebrating Easter; whether the fourteenth day of the month, as the Easter Churches used, or on the next Lord's Day after: Holy Polycarp Bishop of Smyrna, when he came to Rome, conformed to the custom of that Church, in the first Century: yet afterward Pope Victor's passion excommunicated all the Eastern Churches upon that point; which precipitancy Ir●ne●● so justly reproved. There are some innocent varieties Of variety's ● among good Christians. (in things indifferent) which are admittable among Christians, as among the Evangelists in the History of Christ, who all adhere to the true cause of God, serving not only to exercise their charity, and to show the world that unity of the Spirit in the bond of Truth, which Ephes. 4. 3. they yet constantly hold, but further to manifest to the world, That Christian Religion is not a matter of policy and humane conspiracy, but of divine verity in unity, as to the main, to which some variety in lesser matters is no prejudice, but rather a confirmation; as that resemblance which proclaims kindred in the different features of brethren, who had one Father and Mother. Certainly it had been happy as for all Christian Churches, so for England, if we had on all sides more minded the great things of God's Cause, and less troubled ourselves about the nails and hairs of Religion; they are commonly but small minds who make much ado about little matters, which administer much strife and little edification in truth or love; Christians may and must 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, keep the truth in love, Ephes. 4. though they do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, differ in things indifferent; the substance of God's Cause should have more influence to unite hearts, than the ceremonies to divide them. 7. Yet the cause of God is Causa 7 The cause of God is orderly and comely i● all things. ordinata 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, very regular and orderly in all its motions, full of harmony and beauty, abhorring any ways that are preposterous, desultory, violent, uncomely, disorderly, tumultuary, confused: It needs none of these devilish engines to carry on the Cause of him, who is the God of order, decency and peace, 1 Cor. 1●. 33. not of division, confusion and contention. james▪ 1●. 16. Extravagant and excentrics spirits easily lose the Cause of God, while they follow it in a preposterous & wrong way, as men may easily miss the centre of the circle, who lay their rule in the least degree awry from the diameter; the passions of men, and their popular po 〈…〉 es never work out the righteousness of God's Cause, but trouble, foil, james ●. 20. blemish and blaspheme it. Not fire, and earthquakes and whirlwinds, but the still voice and calm ● King's 19 12. spiri● do best bring forth and set 2 Tim. 2. 25. up by meekness of wisdom the true Cause of God, and Christ, and the james 3. 13. Church; especially as to the concerns of Religion: Nor may that cause of civil Justice which some pretend to, be promoted by any unjust and illegal ways, of tumult, sedition, and rebellion; these mar all, and instead of repairing or purging the Temple, with Josiah, Ezra, Josedeck and the blessed Jesus, they set both Church and State, Temple and City on fire, as did Nebuzaradan and his Master Nabuchadnezzar. ●. These 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, or genuine characters are the surest and safest tokens by which to discern God's Cause, both in its own merits or temper, and in the minds of those that undertake to manage it. Other novel popular and politic Of popular and false marks put on the Cause of God. pretensions, as to outward providences, prosperities, successes, multitudes, prevalencies of brutal and irregular power, vulgar flatteries, and factious adherencies; or as to the respect of men's parts, learning, eloquence, seeming zeal, and cried up devotion, they are all spurious, partial and fallacious. 1. The Sunshine of ordinary providence and success, of prosperity and power, may fall upon Causes that are evil and unjust, no less then on the just and good. Mahomet hath ●t. 5. 45. had great and long successions of successive power to assert his cause, and multitudes do follow even that Beast as well as the Lamb or the Messiah: Outward prosperity is the idol of fools, who care not how little the Cause of God prosper and prevail in their souls, if it thrive as to their purses and estates. Successes are pursued by silly and easy people, as gay Butterflies are by children: Gods 'Cause is seldom seen in crowds, or rabble's, and throngs of people, which Christ abhorred and avoided: As its course is strict, so its path is narrow. 2. As for the decoys of personal Of men's rare gifts, great endowments, and severe Professions gifts and endowments, of zeal and seeming or real severities in some things. King Saul had (as his height) so his heats above other Jews, against the Gibeonites and Witches; so Jehu had his zeal against the house of Ahab and Baal; Paul once breathed threatenings against the way of Christ, with equal ignorance, imperiousness and confidence; Novatus wanted not his zelotry and preciser passions; nor Manes and Montanus their spiritual and seraphic pretensions, with rigid fastings; Origen and Tertullian had their excellent abilities, which Vincentius Liri▪ ●ensis calls (Magnae tentationes magnorum ingeniorum) their temptations to extravagancies; they were like fair flowers and fruit, which are too big for themselves, and so crack or break; nor did Donatus want his devotion, nor Pelagius wit and learning; nor Faustus Socinus of late his severity and strictness, with his sophistry; nor any Heretic or Schismatic ever failed to have some lure, either of sensual liberty, or special sanctity to take people withal: So the Anabaptists in Germany, as Sleiden and others tells us, cried most vehemently for Justice, Mercy and Repentance; other Enthusiasts had their rare visions; and the very Idiot Quakers boast of their inward illuminations; so the most putid Friars, and politic Monks, had their forged miracles, and forced celibacies, set off with great austerities, to cover over their fedities. Satan hath many masks and vizards of an Angel of light; yet he is never further off from God's ●atan a pretender to God's Cause. Cause▪ then when he most sets men a-work to cry it up, and carry it on, in ways that are no less unjust, violent and extravagant, then perhaps for a time successful, as was the Arrian perfidy; which seemed so zealous for the unity of the Deity, that they sought to overthrow the sacred Trinity, and the grand foundation of the Christian Faith, honour and comfort, the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, the Word made flesh, the Theanthropy, and Philanthropy of God to mankind, in the Incarnation of the Son of God. Their disputes, as St. Cyrill tells us, were not more sophistical and perverse, then specious and plausible, insomuch that the pest infested in a few years the most part of the Christian world, both in Court, Cities, and Countries; which was (as St. Jerom says) amazed to see itself in a short time so be witched with the Arrian enchantments; which set up a new Saviour and another Gospel than was primitively believed in all Churches. So the Novatians and Donatists, or ancient Catharists (which were the Christian Pharisees, or Puritans) pretended, as Optatus and others tells us, so to promote the Cause of the Church's purity, that they destroyed its unity and charity. And the Pelagians so stickled for the power and liberty of man's will, that they derogated from God's grace and glory, as St. Augustine speaks. 8. Causa crucisixi, saepius crucisixa; God's Cause most what a crucified Cause. as Christ, so his cause (which is Gods) is oft not only circumcised but crucified with him, yea it may seem dead and buried too for a time to the judgement of sense; we must not look for the true Church always clothed with the sun, but rather flying into the wilderness, and covered with sackcloth: The prosperities Reve. 12. and crowns of Gods 'Cause are reserved for another world; here the cross, and thorns, and buffet, and spittings, and blood, and spears, and nails do not misbecome it, but conform it to its head. §. 'tis certain the Cause of God was then purest as to faith and manners, when it was (like gold in the furnace and fiery trial) under the first ten persecutions, which lasted, with some lucid intervals, three hundred years. In vain do those that seem high zealots for the Cause of God, dream and speak big of houses, and lands, and liberties, and victories, and kingdoms, and crowns▪ and Judicatures, and reigning with Christ after secular methods and policies of blood and fraud; these are figs in this world: The honour, riches, crowns and comforts of true Christians are figs, and grapes, and olives that are not to be gathered from the briars and thorns of the Phil. 1. 29. present world; in which, whoever will live godly, must expect, and patiently 2 Tim▪ 3. 12. suffer, but not deserve, persecution. A good Cause must not think it strange to find bad entertainment on earth, where it is a pilgrim and stranger: Times are seldom so good, as really to favour God's Cause; however the policies and lusts of men, their pride, licentiousness, covetousness and ambition may seem to flatter it so far as suits with their present interests; which are most what, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, self-seeking, partial and inordinate, ut in vitis sic in causis homines spes improbas alunt: as in other things so in religion, men have their impipious ambitions, and perverse hopes. §. Whereas the Cause of God is a Tit▪ ●. 12. self denying cause, as to all ungodliness and worldly lusts; teaching us to live contentedly, righteously, soberly and godly in all things. §. So that these large flags and streamers, which some men of the Roman, or other factions of later editions hang out to the vulgar, as to the potency and prosperity of their Cause, argue no more God's cause to be with them, or they with it, than the fine feathers in fools caps argue them to have wit or wisdom in their heads; coppar may be thus stamped and guilded, which will not endure the fiery trial as true gold will; and such is the Cause of God, ever pure, and precious, just and holy, though it be oppressed and persecuted; as a jewel it loseth not its native lustre and worth, though it be ill set, or cast into the dirt. To conclude this general description An Emblem of God's Cause of God's Cause; this may be its Emblem; It is as the tree of life in the Pardise of God; the root of it is the Truth of God in his word the sap is holiness or true sanctity, the leaf is charity without dissimulation, the rind or bark is order and good discipline in the Church; also Equity and civil Justice in the State; the lesser and lower fruit is every grace and good work growing in us or from us; the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, prime and topmost cluster is God's glory and the salvation of sinful souls, through his free grace in Jesus Christ. Having showed the general tokens 2. Particular, wherein the cause of God chiefly consists. or marks of God's Cause, I now proceed by way of Induction and instance to set forth the particulars in which it consists. 1. The grand Cause of God is 1. That his Glory as God be owned in the world. his own glory; this is the first mover, great conservator, and last consummator of all things, which the divine Wisdom contrives, or his Patience permits, or his Power performs, or his Justice, Goodness and Mercy moderates, or his Word commands. For this cause he hath made and manageth all things in heaven and earth, that the glory of his being may appear to men and Angels, who are with all humility, gratitude, adoration, service and admiration, to return the just recognition and praises due to the divine Majesty, for all his essential excellencies, and his gracious emanations: every Attribute and Perfection of God is by them to be owned, with due respect of Faith, Fear, Love, Duty, Adoration and Admiration; thus his Power, Wisdom, Justice, Mercy, Immensity, Eternity, Veracity, Immutability, etc. are to be considered by men and Angels, with suitable affections reflecting from them to God. And among Christians the unity of the Divine Nature, together with the Trinity of the sacred Persons or relations, distinguished by the names of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, must be ever owned, celebrated and adored, according to the wont Doxology, or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, used in the Orthodox Churches. This Cause, God hath in all ages God's plea against Atheists. pleaded, as his own royal concern, against Atheists, Polytheists, Idolaters, Antitrinitarians, Anthropomorphites; against profane and proud livers, who live as if there were no God above them; also against vain and false swearers, who blaspheme the name of God, and bring a curse on their souls, families and countries; against presumptuous wicked doers, who are their own gods and worshippers, both self-Idols and self-Idolaters. This is the first, most immediate cause or concern of the Divine Nature and Glory, that God be owned, and none beside him, or comparable to him: This will be made good against wicked men and Devils; by the pleas and principles of right Reason, by the sensible beauty, order, harmony, proportion, usefulness and constancy of God's Works in the world; by his signal providences in judgement or mercy; by his preservation of the Scriptures and the Church with true Religion; by the predictions fulfilled; and lastly by the terrors, convictions and presages of men's consciences, which are that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, the little God in our own breasts▪ as Mar Aurelius calls it. 2. The next great concern or 2. The cause of jesus Christ is God's Cause. Cause of God is that of the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Word, and coessential Son of God, the blessed Messiah, the brightness of the divine glory, and express image of the Father. It is not enough now to believe in God, as Creator, and Preserver of men, but we must also believe john. 14. 1. in the Lord Jesus Christ, as Redeemer of believing penitent and obedient sinners, by the mercy, love and free grace of God; This is the beloved Son of God, whom we Luk. 6. 35. must hear; the only name under heaven Acts. 4. 12. by which we may be saved; he that doth not obediently believe the testimony of Prophets and Apostles, of Miracles and Angels, of Martyrs and Confessors, of the Church Catholic and an enlightened conscience, in this great Cause of the Messias, even the crucified Jesus, 1 john. 3. is under peremptory condemnation, while such. §. Of this great and mysterious Cause, God gave the world an account of old, under types, figures, sacrifices and many ceremonies, as shadows and resemblances under the Law; but now the Substance, and Son of Righteousness is come, and hath fully taught his Church the will of God, and the work such sinners have to do, which is to repent john. 17. 3 and believe in him, whom the john. 14. 1. Father hath sent; who so beleiveth not, makes God a liar, and is already 1 john. 5. 10. condemned, to which must 1 john. 5. 7. be added to complete the cause of the sacred Trinity, the belief and adoration of the Holy Ghost as God; one with the Father, and the Son in the Divine essence and glory, though a distinct person as to the emanation from, and relation to both. ●. The Cause of God, extends to 3 The Cause of the Church is God's Cause. the true Church of God, as an holy corporation or society of such as do truly believe inwardly, or outwardly, and profess with Order and Charity, the word, worship and service of the true God, with our Lord Jesus, and the blessed Spirit, according to the rule of the Scripture. ●. God owns himself in Jesus Christ, as the Father, friend, head and Husband of the Church; such as fight against that, fight against God, and afflict the apple of his Zack. 2. 8. eye; God is concerned, that the foundation of his Church, which is The Scripture is the tate of God's Cause. Scripture, (written by the Prophets and Apostles) be preserved free from Apocryphal additions, Fabulous traditions, Humane inventions▪ and Fanatic inspirations. That the Ministers of it by The Ministry God's Cause. Bishops, Presbyters, and Deacons, as to its Authority, Order and supports, be maintained, agreeable to the primitive pattern instituted by Christ, in the Twelve Apostles 2 Cor. 5. 2. and the Seventy Disciples, with their attendants in holy offices; this is the cause of God, as that of Mat. 10. 40. Ambassadors, and their followers, in the cause of those Princes that send them so Commissionated and instructed; they that receive them, receive Christ; and they that reject them, reject him; and they that defraud or rob, divide and destroy the Church and Ministry of Christ, are Robbers of God, Sacrilegious Felons, from the blessed Son of God, who is Heir of all, and to whom we owe all we have, as redeemer of is, and all blessings we enjoy. The great Seals of the Church The Sacraments, God's Cause. also; the two Sacraments are the Cause of God, not to be profaned, or neglected; For which cause God sharply punished the Corinthians with sickness and death: Much less may they be changed or diminished, or added to in point of duty and necessity, beyond the stamp and inscription of Divine institution, and that Catholic practice or use of them, which was ever owned by the Church; whose veracity or fidelity is not to be questioned, in things of universal observance, such as were those of the Lords day for the Christian Sabbath; of the books of Canonical Scriptures; of the Baptising of Christians Infants; whose cause is the cause of God, and of his Covenant with the faithful and their seed; so of the giving of the cup, as well as the consecrated bread, to all Communicants, as well Lay as Clergy; and lastly as to The Church's government, God's cause. the constant Order and Government of the Church, in its several distributions by many Presbyters, subordinate and assistant to some one paternal, yet authoratative Bishop, as sons to a presidential Father; This Government by Episcopacy is God's Cause, as the God of order, and the Apostles cause as settled and sealed by their wisdom, and the Churches consent's, as a primitive Catholic custom, the veracity and antiquity of which is asserted by the Church's testimony, both as to all Histories, and in its practice, not to be doubted, desparaged denied or abolished without great in solency and peevishness, either to gratify Presbytery, or Independency, both which are novel ties, of yesterday, and so cannot be God's Cause, which is verissi●●a & antiquissima, as old as it is true and good. §. The Cause of God's Church, as to its Honour, Order, Fidelity, supports, rule and government, is so far God's Cause, as he hath made his Church the Pillar and ground of truth, and as himself is the God of Order and Polity, yea● and the The Church's liberties is God's Cause. Church's cause is Gods as to that prudential liberty and variety, which his wisdom hath granted and indulged to it in the several parts or distributions of it, under the Gospel, as to the circumstantial or ceremonial rites of Religion, incident or annexed to the outward decency of 1 Cor. 14. 40. worship and profession, in several ages and places, so as may most conduce to the planting, propagating, preserving, and reforming of true Religion among all Nations Lastly the unity of the Church The Church's unity God's cause. belongs to God's cause, who is but one, and his Son one, and his Spouse one. Such as cause Schism and divisions in the true Church, by giving or taking unnecessary, and ●om. 16. 17. so unjust scandals, and thereby raising uncharitable separations, these are injurious to the God of peace, and the Prince of peace; Nostrum laceratur in arbore corpus: Christians tear God & rend the body of Christ in their Schisms, which divide them from the love of Christ, and for his sake of one another, which is the great Character of Christ's Disciples. Joh. 13. 35. §. Therefore all the Methods of Primitive Churches care to keep unity and charity among Christians. Ecclesiastical Polity, which were used in primitive times, by which to keep the Catholic Church in an holy unity, and brotherly correspondency, by Bishops, Arch-Bishops, Primates, Metropolitans, and Patriarches, yea and in latter ages when Christians were multiplied, by Arch-Deacons, Suffragans or Chorepiscopacy, (i. e.) rural Deans, and the like, were so far from being Antichristian projects and evil policies, that they were the Counsels and results of Christ's spirit, as helps in Government, for the Order and Unity, Polity and Authority, meet to be observed in his Church. §. Nor is it of any weight which some urge odiously and enviously against these subordinations, and degrees, fitted for the unity of the Church, (which capacitated them to meet and correspond as by general and lesser Councils, in several places, so by Letters communicatory in all the world) that hence the Papal arragancy and Pride, did get footing, and his prescripts became decrees. For if all things of piety or prudence, Of abolishing things once abused. must be abolished with the policy or superstition, (if man lists to abuse them) we shall leave very little to true Religion; So far Popes, and Bishops, and Presbyters, and People too have showed themselves in many things to be but men, subject to prejudices, and passions; yet are they no way capable to destroy or deprave the true principles or practices of Christian wisdom, much less of Divine and Apostolic institution, either binding and perpetual, or prudential and occasional, which lawfully may be used, and are not rashly to be abolished. 4. Next the Church's cause, which 4. The good of mankind is God's Cause. is eminently contained in Gods, comes that of all mankind, as God is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, the lover and preserver of men, in the way of civil societies, the Hangs or Axis, and popular points of which, are Justice commutative and distributive, In civil justice. Isa. 59 1. Micah 6. 8. 1 Cor. 6. 8. Col. 3. 25. private and public; the just God is concerned, that justice be done to all, and by all, according to their place and station. The rule and measure of all civil and Politic Justice, for matter and manner, for what is to be done, and by whom, for the equity of retribution, and authority of dispensation, is that custom and law, In settled Laws. which is prevalent by public consent in every Nation▪ not contrary to the Law of God; what ever is, done contrary to this, is, in Deiinjuriam, and makes the actors (reolaesae Majestatis divinae▪ as well as humanae) guilty of doing injury to the justice and Majesty, not only of men but of God, whose are the laws and Polities, the Princes, Kings, In Polity and Magistracy. and lawful Magistrates of every state, Kingdom and Commonwealth, which are Gods Ordinances, not to be resisted by tumult or Rom. 13. 1. armed force, by sedition, or Treason, without an high sin, which subjects 1 Pet. 2. 13. men to damnation, as Rebels to God, as enemies to the good of their Country, to the duty they ow● to parents, and indeed to the good of all mankind, who would soon be as miserable as beasts, and Devils, if they were not restrained from private extravagancy, preserved in their honest enjoyments by the public laws, and that Sovereign power which is in God's name and stead to enact and execute them. Hence as the just cause of every 8. Every private just cause is Gods. man is Gods, who may say with David and others, Psal. 35. 1. Plead my cause, O Lord, etc. Though never so poor, mean and helpless, yet their cause must not be despised, or wronged and oppressed. God will avenge the meanest Subjects injuries against the greatest Princes or Potentates: so the cause of even subordinate Magistrates is God's The cause of Magistrates is eminently Gods. cause: But (above all) their cause is Gods, whom God hath placed as Supreme above all, in Empires, and Kingdoms, for the good of all: Certainly that of I have said ye are Gods, and, Thou shall not curse Exod. 22. 28. Psal. 105. 15. the Gods, or Rulers of thy people, and that of Touch not mine anointed, and do my Prophets no harm. That of David's tenderness to King Saul, 1 Sam. 24. 6. and 26. 11. of all good men's subjection in all ages, Jewish and Christian, to their princes, though evil, persecutive and oppressive; those orders of Christ to give to Cesar the things Mat. 22. 21. that are Caesar's; and so the Canons 1 Pet. 2. 13. Rom. 13. 1. 2. of the two great Apostles, S. Peter and S. Paul. to obey, to be subject, by all means in all things, actively or passively, to Kings and all in authority, by whose safety the whole state is safe, if they be resisted or injured and destroyed, Iliads of miseries like torrents of blood, usually break in on all sorts of people. Those divine Oracles besides the No friends to God's cause who are enemies to lawful Magistracy. Catholic constant and eminent practice of the primitive Christians (the best commentary on Scripture) when they wanted not numbers and arms, as Tertullian and others tell us, yet they never used other weapons than patience, prayers and tears, petitions and Apologies to the persecuting Princes; all those put together do shrewdly evince, that those men are no friends to, or assertors of the true cause of God, who are not so, of settled laws and Government, of Magistratick power, and civil justice, of which not the will and power of man, but the Law of God in general, and the particular Laws, customs, and constitution of every Nation and Polity, are Arbitrators and Judges; What ever ● done or taught by Prince or People, contrary to these, under any splendid form, and novel names of Arbitrary prerogative, or popular liberty, or high Justice, is the highest Injustice, and done with an high hand (in Dei contumeliam) in affront to God's Ordinances, and of Law, Order, Peace and Government for the good of mankind. §. Nor may any Subjects here fly by Of common principles of reason and liberty urged as God's cause against Magistracy and secled Laws. way of appeal to the common Dictates of reason, and loose principles of natural liberty, or I know not what necessity, after once by public consent, they are limited and confined to the enclosures of laws and rules of obedience, either active or passive; To which God and man's Laws, oblige all men; otherwise there will be no quiet or settling in any State; for there will never want some whose discontentments or ambition, think the Laws themselves too strict and injurious, as to the liberties which are necessary to attain their designs, and fulfil their lusts. §. All true Christians will rest either content or patient, being never so concerned in any worldly momentary business, as to sin upon the account of either getting or preserving it: They have enough while they can in Righteousness and peaceful ways possess their own soul Luke 21. 19 in good consciences, which enjoy God and Christ, and the holy Spirit. Christian's must be very insatiable, not to be content with such society and liberty, which will not suffer them to want what is necessary for life and godliness. After the cause of public Justice and peace, which are a branch of 6▪ Gods cause is in every man's conscience. God's cause, every private man's cause as to sin and grace, vice and virtue, good or evil, trouble or comfort, is Gods, so far as they are on God's side and take his part against the evil of World, Flesh, and Devil; his word and spirit will plead for them, against Satan accusing, and conscience condemning: against their fear and jealousies of God or themselves, against doubts, dejections and despairs. The cause also of the poor, the fatherless and the Widows is peculiarly The cause of the poor and fatherless and widows is Gods. God's cause, which he is patron to, and promiseth to protect them, if they trust in him, as he threatens their oppressors and despisers, Pro. 3●. 9 ●ob 29. 12. that he will plead their cause against them, Pro. 22. 23. Yea the cause not only of good The just cause of a wicked and unholy man is Gods. men but of wicked men, is so far Gods, as they have reason and justice or right on their side; they may not be wronged or robbed because they are wicked or Idolaters; God pleads the cause of Nebuchadnezzer, though an heathen, a persecutor and oppressor, against King Zedekiah; Ezek. 17. 19 because of the Oath and Covenant, which was in God's name passed between them; So he did that of Amurath that great Turk against Ladislaus a Christian King of Hungary, when he violated the accord sworn between them, having from the Pope a dispensation for his perjury, which God never gives in lawful Oaths, as he never obligeth to or by unlawful ones. ones True Religion binds us to such as are irreligious, to Heretics, to Mahometans hometans and to all; it is a damnable divillish and Antichristian Doctrine, that to them (much more to Christians) no faith is to be kept, that they have no civil right to any thing: That they are Egyptians and may be robbed: or killed by such as fancy or call themselves Israelites, Moses or Saints; God hath given the earth to the children of men as such, in natural and civil successions, not as to his Children and Saints, by Psal. 115. 16. Heb. 11. 40. grace and Regeneration; God hath better things in store for them in Heaven, which who so believes, will never by fraud or force, and so by way of sin and in justice, seek to shark and scramble for these earthly things, which God gives as a portion and reward sometimes to wicked men, and is indeed their all that they desire or expect from God. Lastly every creature is so far 7. The cause of every good creature is Gods. included to the cause of God, as it hath his Stamp and Character upon it. The abusing of them to sin, riot, luxury, cruelty, is the God's dishonour, as if he made them for no better use and ends. Veneranda est, non erubescenda natura, as Tertullian speaks, God is to be reverenced in all his works, and not reproached; The not owning God in them, not blessing him for them, and not serving him by them, makes the users of them impleadable at God's Bar and Tribunal; Red ratioonem, Red deprosium; Give an account of the Corn, and Wine, Hos. 2. 5. and Oil, the Silk, and Flax, and the Wool; the beauty, strength, estate and honour, time, wit, learning, and all other enjoyments; Non hos quaesitum munus in usus: as they are not ours by merit or by making the least of them, so God's action lies against us for every one of them, if abused, or not used as lent us by him, who is Lord Paramount in chief above all, of whom we have and hold all things in Frank Almoinage, as so many Alms or Beadsmen, Tenants at will, and only by the courtesy of the grand Lord, being less than the least of his mercies, as Jacob humbly and Gen. 32. 10. ingenuously confessed. It will be eternally inculcated upon wicked men, with repeated torments, not only as to their injustice to God and man, (discite●justitiam moniti, & netemnite divos) but as to that which was said to the rich fool, Luke 12. 20. whose are all those good things now, whose will they be when thy soul is taken from thee? enjoying neither thyself, nor any thing, since thou enjoyest not God the chiefest good of all. And that, Son remember thou enjoyedst thy good Luke 16. 25. things in thy life time, not as Gods, but as thine own, and as thy chiefest goods, which made them evil to thee, both as to sinning then, and to suffering now. But I have done with the first particulars, showing you, first, that God hath his cause in this world, and what this cause is, in the particular instances of it. The second General Quere I 2 General. How and why the cause of God oft needs his pleading. proposed, was, 1. How the cause of God comes to stand in need of his pleading. 2. And why the Lord in his providence permits it to come to come to such lapses, low ebbs and distresses? 1. If we consider that cause of ●u the great degeneracy or corruption of mankind as to common principles of reason and Religion. God which is on foot in all the world among all Nations, according to what of God and his glory is made known to them by the works of his power, wisdom, bounty and providence; also by those innate and self-demonstrating principles of right reason, which remain in men's hearts, as the measures of Justice, rules of chastity, sobriety, veracity, humanity, and the impulses to some religion, that is, agnition and reverence of the Divine Majesty; even this common cause of God in nature, may stand in need of his special pleading, by the great degeneration of 2 Pet. 2. 12. people, when they have generally corrupted their ways, so that they Rom. 1. 24. are turned beasts, monsters, devils in pride, lust, oppression and cruelty in contempt of all true Religion, in professed and practised Atheism, and it's giantly consequences, prostituting all things to debauchery and villainy. §. Here the righteousness of God from heaven is usually so revealed by the way of great judgements upon such persons, people, and Nations, by war and famine, or plagues, or inundations, or fires or earthquakes, that the remnant may learn to fear God, and do no more so presumptuously. So when the Old world Gen. ●. & 7. had polluted itself in all sensual fedities, and Cyclopic villainies, God rinsed the earth with a flood, and washed the whole race of mankind, like dung, from the face of the earth, except eight persons, one righteous Noah, and his seven relations; God makes even Heathens and Idolaters as he did the Athenians to acknowledge there is (〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉) an unknown God, who Acts 17. 23. is too hard for all their Idols; too wise for their policies, and too just to be either deceived or despised. §. Thus God's cause was driven to a necessity of some judicial and extraordinary pleading against those proud and presumptuous builders of Gen. 11. Babel, who fancied to ascend (〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉) above the reach of a future flood, forgetting that God had not only Seas and waters to bring upon them from the great deep, but thunderbolts also and fire from above to cast upon them, as he did upon Sodom and those other Cities who burning Gen. 19 with unnatural lusts (the effect of high feeding and idleness) were made the fuel of everlasting flames. So when the sins of the Canaanitish Gen. 15. ●●. Nations were ripe, and their measure full, God brings in the sickle of the Israelites swords; a Nation which▪ of all in the world they would not have feared or suspected, having lately been under hard bondage in Egypt, and their spirits so infinitely cowed, that being Six hundred thousand fight men, they durst not make head against their accustomed Masters, the Egyptians; yet by these did God plead against the abominations of these mighty Nations which cried to heaven for vengeance, even to an utrer extirpation of men, women and children, beyond all pity and sparing. §. So in humane histories, we shall still find such remarkable instances of God's Justice, making Nations punish one the other, by dashing them against each other, by bringing some desolating judgements upon them, that mankind might still preserve some fear of the Divine Majesty. §. Thus he brings the Median and Persian power under Cyrus and Darius Dan. 4. 1●. to hew down the great tree of the Babylonian pride and Monarchy, when Balshazzars saoriledge grew so impudent, as to use the holy vessels of God's Temple, as measures for his drunkenness and excess. After this, when the Persian Monarchy was dissolved to excessive luxury and tyranny under the last Darius, God brings the Grecian sword by the conduct and valour of Alexander the Great, to mow down those Eastern Nations by thousands and ten thousands, yea by hundred thousands in a few years. §. When the Greoian Princes which set up for themselves, in their seve ral shares of that Macedonian Empire, in Persia, in Egypt, in the lesser Asia, and in Greece, when these were debased to all vile affections and actions, against the principles of their own Philosophy and Divinity (to which they pretended.) Then did the Lord stir up the fourth Beast, the Roman Empire, Dan. 7. ●9 with Iron Feet and Teeth, to tear, devour and trample, all the others power and glory, their riches and dominions. As all private judgements are Gods pleading against single persons; so Epidemic miseries, do proclaim some public indignities and extraordinary injuries offered to the Divine Majesty, contrary to those principles of reason justice and Religion, which were known among them; their very light being turned into darkness, and the bounty Matth: ● 23 of God, to all manner of wickedness; when his blessings to them had in vain been witness of his goodness to them, he comes as a swift witness in storms and tempests of desolation, against them, which none could withstand, or escape; as is to this day oft seen even among Mahometans, Tarters, Chineses, and Indians. Secondly, Since the Church of 2 In the Churches great depressions. God is more peculiarly and eminently his Cause, under his special care and cognisance, the chief Quaere is, how this comes to need Gods own immediate pleading. 1. By open enemies, persecuting, 1 By heathenish persecution opposing, and many times utterly oppressing the Church of God, as Vultures or Eagles seizing on Pigeons, or as Lions, Bears and Wolves, on Lambs and Sheep. So when the Church of God Against the Church of the jews grew from a family, to the Nation of the Jews, and were owned by God as his peculiar people and concern above all the world, all the world was generally against them, and sought not only to despise but destroy them as gentem exitiabilem, a vile and execrable Nation, as Tacitus terms them: So Pharaoh first and the Egyptians held them under hard bondage, till they were weary of life, as well as of their burdens; Exod: 5 there was none to plead their cause, but God, who did it at last to purpose, with an high hand, and outstretched arm, confuting Pharaohs Pride and obstinacy (with the Egyptian Gods) in the red Sea; when no other miracles in lesser drops would soften their hard hearts, he soaked them in such great waters, as quite drowned them. After this, how oft was the little flock of God's Church, as a speckled Bird in the Wilderness, surrounded with Enemies, as a Lily Ier: 12. 9 among Thorns? there was Gebal, and Cant: 2. 28 Ammon, and Ameleck, the Philistines Psalm 83. 11 and they of Tyre, the Assyrian, Arabian, Egyptian, all were against them; from not only reason of State, but of Religion, where different principles make the most deadly antipathies, and desperate feuds. Thus the wild Boar sometimes Psalm ●0 ●3 with power, other while the subtle Foxes, of Mongrel Jews, and half Idolaters, with fly insinuations, sought to pull down and waste the peace, honour, plenty, safety, and Religion of the Jews. Thus the Heathens raged, and their Princes set themselves against the Lord and his cause, fulfilled that Psalm 2. 1 first prophecy of an irreconcilable enmity between the Serpent and the seed of the Woman; All the gods and Demons, all the Oracles and Priests, all the Poets and Prophets, all the Orators & Historians, all the great Princes and valiant Soldiers, and subtle Politicians 1. Gour, 1 all the Wise men and Philosophers, set themselves to despise, to reproach, to oppress, and extirpate the name and Nation, and Religion of the Jews, (which was that of the true God,) from under Heaven, as a most pestilent people, and of a most detestable superstition. Afterwards when the blossoms of Persecut on of Heathen against the Church Christian Judaic ceremonies fell off, and in the fullness of time the ripe fruit of Messias came into the world, in spirit and in truth, that all Nations john 4. 24 might worship the true God aright, in every place, without confinement, I need not tell you (who are not ignorant of Scriptural, and Ecclesiastical Histories) how from Herod's malice and subtlety, seeking Matth: 2 to destroy Christ in his cradle, and satiating his defeated malice (like a worrying Wolf, or raging Bear, with the massacring of so many innocent children (who were ever esteemed by the ancient Church, as Infant-Martyrs, suffering in Christ's stead, and upon the first occasion of his cause pleaded in the world, by the baptism of their own blood, until Constantine the Great's days of refreshing and rest for a season) the true Church and cause of God was never out of the furnace of tribulation, martyrdoms, fears, afflictions, and Rome 8. 36. daily deaths: true, the bellows did not always blow up the fire and fury of men to the same flames, but there wanted not those, as Decius and others, who envied Christians their numerous, cheerful and speedy Martyrdoms, of which they were so ambitious. §. Nothing was more wont in the mouths of the people, than, what they clamored against, Polycarp, (a primitive Bishop of Smyrna in S. John's days) Tolle Atheos', away with these Atheists, and Christiani ad Leones; Christians were thought such beasts, that they were only fit to fight with, and to feed Beast; or to be baited in Beasts skins; Yea nomen, crimen, (as Tertullian observes) men were so mad against them, and gnashed on them, as the Jews against S. Stephen, Acts 7. 54 that they would not examine their cause or crime, thinking it accusation enough, that they owned themselves Christians. §. Dioclesian makes such havoc (as Decumanus fluctus) after others, that he not only cut up the harvest, but raked the gleaning of Christians in all the Roman Empire (even so far as here in England, where S. Albanus and others were Martyred) that he gloried and triumphed, and set up Trophies for the extirpation of the Christian superstition. At this dead lift was the Church of Christ and cause of God, when the Bishops of the Churches were banished, or Butchered; the Presbyters starved, destroyed, and scattered; The Oratories and Temples, or Churches all demolished, or put to profane uses; the Christian people condemned to the Metals, Islands, Prisons, Limekills, Racks, Gibbets, and Fires. Thus did the cause of God as to the Christian Church stand, or rather fall, for the first three hundred years, under Heatheninsh Persecutors, and the oppositions of Philosophy, or science falsely so called, which yet afterward came to naught, as all power and polity will at last do, which set themselves to oppose the cause, the truth, the Church and servants of the living God. Thirdly, After the Church had ● The Church's depression by Heretics and Schismatics. some rest in Constantine's time, by the suppression of Heathenish fury, and Idolatrous folly; yet was the cause of God not without its following conflicts, by reason of Hypocrites, Gal. 2. 4▪ Heretics, Schismatics, false Apostles, Hucksters of religion, 2 Cor: 2. 17 deceitful workers, Wolves in sheep's Acts 20. 29, 30 clothing, who delighted to divide and destroy, to shake foundations, and shipwreck consciences, to lead Disciples after them by factions, partialities, and respect of persons, either darkening the verity, or dividing the unity, or defacing the uniformity, or destroying the authority, or confounding that order and subordination which Christ and his Apostles left in the Church of Christ; men full of lusts and pride, daily spawned innovations in the doctrine, or in the faith, or in the customs, and in the forms of Religion. §. Such were all those pristine Heretics and Schismatics, whose names and deeds deserve to be buried with their damnable doctrines, and uncharitable factions in eternal forgetfulness; they are too many and too odious to repeat: I would to God they were not digged up out of their graves in our days by some carrionly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, who searching the graves, and raking the kennels of old errors, seek to fill the English world with such odious, noisome and unsavoury spectacles both of opinions and practices. §. Who that is learned can be ignorant of the prevalent numbers and powers of the Novatians, Arrians and Donatists; what petulancy and cruelty they used against the Orthodox Cause, challenging the Cause and Church of God wholly and only to themselves; what despite they had against St. Cyprian, Athanasius, St. Cyril, St. Hilary, St. Augustine, Optatus and others, that opposed, routed and confounded their contumacious impudence? Thus was the Cause of Christ one whole age or century, like Noah's Ark, floating in a deluge of Arrian perfidy and persecution, to its own grief and astonishment, till God took the matter into his own hand, and pleading the Cause of Jesus Christ, and his eternal Godhead against both people, and Bishops, and Emperors, that were infected with that pestilence; for the inundation of the Goths and Vandals, the Huns and Heruls, the Gauls and Daci, seemed no other but the fountains of the great deep, broke up to wash away with humane blood the blasphemies, with which the Christian world was then polluted, against the glory and honour of the Son and Spirit of the blessed God; when times were such that men would not endure sound doctrine, 2 Tim: 4. 5 but heaped up teachers, and clucked together Councils and conventicles according to their own lusts and interests, without any regard to the primitive Faith, and practice of the Church of Christ, which was so zealously tender for the Cause of Christ, that they loved not their lives unto death, but rather chose (mille mortes) a thousand deaths, than once to crucify again, or deny the Lord that bought them. Fourthly, The Cause of God may 4▪ The Churches decline by corruption of manndrs among true beleivers need his special pleading, by reason of the great corruption of manners, which like weeds grow in the garden of God, or as tares in the field of the Church, which was first Aeatth: 13. 25 sown with good seed. Thus as Eusebius, Salvian, Suspitius-Severus and oaths observe, Christian Religion suffered more by the evil lives of Christians, then by the malice of persecutors, or Heretics; men that had sound heads as to doctrine and Faith, yet had foul hearts; their brains good, but their breath, lungs and liver were naught. This contagion sometimes seized Pastors and Flocks, by idleness, pride, luxury, vain pomps, and superfluous ceremonies, by secular policies, uncharitable actions, and scandalous practices, so far as made the Cause of God, and the name Christ to be blasphemed and abhorred by many; while they could not reconcile the holiness of Christians faith and doctrine, with the solecisms of their sordid actions, and shameful lives. Hence came over the Western The darkness and decay of the western Churches unper Popery. Churches that thick Egyptian darkness for many hundred of years; in which religion was made up for the most part with Images and Pictures, with beads and latin prayers, with repeated Pater nosters and Ave Maries; which people understood not, nor the Priests many times; with Purgatory, Masses and Indulgencies, with infinite superstitious ceremonies, and empty formalities, besides idle fables, and vain janglings, which like heaps of chaff had buried the good wheat of God's floor, and the glory of divine institutions, to make way for Monastic superstitions, Idolatrous adorations, and Papal usurpations, which were built on the flatteries of some, and the fedities of others, who easily dispensed with the honour of marriage, when they had so cheap pardons for those extravagancies and impurities, in which many lived, under the vail of celibacy, but far enough from pure, unspotted, and unviolated virginity. §. To this Augean stable was the Church of Christ and Cause of God brought, by the depravedness of Christian manners, by the rust and moss of superstition, before the Reformation began to dawn in this western World; An hundred grievances, were at once complained of, many confessed, some for very shame reform by even those of the Roman party, who with infinite bloodshed in former ages, fought (under the Notion of holy Wars) not only against Turks, Jews, and Saracens, but against good, at least tolerable Christians, who might have their errors and failing in some things, but it is sure they kept nearer to the primitive piety, purity, and patience, both in faith, administrations and manners, than did their proud and merciless destroyers; who eat up those, poor Christians, as bread, and turned their cruel Croisadoes to crucify their brethren, breaking their fast sometimes with 20000. of the poor Albigenses, Lugdunenses, Waldenses, Berengarians, Wicklesites, Hussites, Bohemians and others; proportionably were their dinners and suppers when the Pope's flatterers and vassals had a mind to fall upon them. 5. Yea, and at this day (even 5 The deccay of the reformed Churches among the reformed Churches) the purity, simplicity, honesty, charity, modesty, and equanimity of Reformers is so abated and wasted by the pride, animosity, bitterness, sacrilege, rapines, cruelties, ambitions and covetousness among Protestants, besides their endless factions, under pretensions of reformation, immoderations, novellizing. and confusions. That thi● Cause of God, as to the true reforming of religion and just protesting against Romish errors and enormities, is brought very low, as in other places and Churches, so in England, which was the greatest beauty, honour, stability, refuge and safety of the reformed Religion▪ and that cause of Christ which hath been so learned and valiantly pleaded by the Clergy and Layty, the Princes and Parliaments, the Martyrs and professors, reverend Bishops and learned Presbyters, against the Roman Usurpation, Superstition, Sacrilege, and Idolatry, which are (without doubt) so far Antichristian, as they are clearly against the Doctrine, example and institution of Christ, besides the judgement and practice of his primitive Churches. §. Even this cause (I say) is now ●ick and ashamed of itself, so decayed, disparaged, and divided, that it is next degree to being destroyed, and despised by all, unless God arise by some extraordinary way of his providence to plead and assert this his own cause of a just and due reformation, against the factious policies and Fanatic fallacies of unreasonable men, whose (〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉) immoderations and transports have marred all by their King killing, rapine and sacrilege, unless God arise to judge the earth. §. Nor is this the first time that God hath helped this Church and the Reformed Religion at a dead lift; for so it was in Queen Mary's days, when the reformed party made conscience not to rebel against their persecuting Sovereign Princess, when her persecution was according to her persuasion and conscience, yea they pleaded and asserted her civil rights, committing the cause of their Religion and 1 Pet▪ 4. 19 Reformation to God, with their loyal souls and consciences in well doing and patience: There did God arise in his due time, and do his own works in his own way, to the great honour of the reformed Religion, which had first the crowns of so many Martyrdoms on its head, without the least spot of civil Tumults, Wars, Seditions, or Rebellions, on the hearts or hands of the reforming Clergy, and reformed people. §. By which preposterous methods of latter years, mightily cried up and carried on by some men in order to reformation of Religion, not only Religion is become retrograde many degrees, if we look to the Dial of God's word, and the primitive, Christian's practice, as it pretends to be reform; but even as it is Christian too▪ that is, the 1 Pe●▪ 3 1● Doctrine and imitation of a crucified, not a crucifying Saviour: The lines which some men have drawn, as the measures of their Doctrine and deeds, are very eccentric and wide, as to the wont▪ centre of God's glory, the circumference of Scripture truth, and that straight rule of charity by which those two were wont to meet in the conscience and conversation of good Christians. §. Nor will either Christian Religion or just Reformation appear in their true beauty and honour, while these are so far at distance and separated from each other, that either verity and charity, patience and subjection, truth and peace are wanting in the ways of Christians. In the close of this second general 2 Particular, Why God suffers his cause to lapse Question, it is fit to answer that other branch of it also, Why God so wise, so potent, so good, s gracious, so compassionate and so vigilant for his own Cause, that is his Glory and great Name (which is so much bound up in his Church's welfare) yet suffers it many times so far to run to lapse, seeming ruin and despair in the eyes of the world, in the triumphs of his enemies, and in the despondencies of his servants; that they give all for gone, save only a little hold and hope they have in their prayers, and in the precious promises of God, to whom nothing is impossible or hard that is worthy of him, and who is a present help, both inward and outward, in time of trouble, when his time of help is come? The Reasons of Gods permitting his Cause thus to lapse for a time, as silent and unconcerned, or as not seeing, nor regarding the low estate of his Church, may in brief be these. 1. To let wicked men see what 1 To show the malice that is in men's hearts is in fundo cordium, in the bottom and lees of their hearts, if they be let alone unpunished and unrestrained Psalm 50. 21 to the very dregs of their malice, what a perfect enmity and hatred they have to God and his Cause, which is his Truth, Word and Worship, yea every grace, and virtue, or good work, yea all rules of justice, good laws and decent order in Church and State; that as the thoughts of their hearts are only evil and that continually, so will the actings of their lives, if left to themselves. 2. For the trial of his grace in 2 To try and exercise the graces of the godly those that are upright in heart, and on God's side, that their prayers, faith, zeal, patience, perseverance, and Christian courage, together with 1 Pet: 2. 21 james 1. 2, & 4 their love to God, and charity even to enemies, with their compassion for the Church, may be manifested: Hence (as St. Paul tells us 1 Cor. 11.) God permits Heresies, and Apostasies, and Schisms, to rise and prevail in the Church, yea and many sinful, at least superstitious corruptions in doctrine and manners; that by such trials the sounder sort may be approved, who in the hour of temptation persevere without shipwreck of faith or good conscience, either in their judgement or conversation, which is still such as becomes the Gospel of Christ. 3. God permits these lapses and 3 To punish the malicious by penal hardening oppressions of Religion, to punish by penal induration and blindness the obstinate and presumptuous sinners, who gratify their immoralities and lusts, by their errors and Apostasies, letting them alone to add sin to sin, Hosea 4. 17 and to fill up the measure of their iniquity. Hence they are given up to strong delusions, to believe fables, and 2 Thess: 2. 1 speak lies in hypocrisy, because they withheld the truth in unrighteousness, 2 Tim: 4 4 Rome ●: 18 and loved the darkness of sottish john 3. 19 superstition and confusion, more than the truth and power, purity and order of Religion. 4. The Cause of God is many 4 To purge away the dross of his gold times under great depressions, that by such fiery trials God may purge away the dross of such as are for the main sincerely good; but yet gradually lukewarm, too secure, too sensual, too carnal and worldly, too self-conceited, and self-seeking; they are cast into the furnace of affliction to wean their affections from the fleshly and sensual world, to prepare them for death, and a better life, by a nearer conformity to Christ in his cross, that they may not think the greatest reward of Christian piety to be had in this world, that they may embrace (nudum Christum & crucifixum) Christ with the cross as well as with the crown. 5. Lastly, It is magnum praejudicium 5 To give the world presages of an after judgement and pleading. Psalm ●3. 19 and 11. 16 Isai 3. 11 and 6●. 24 futuri judicii; an evident token of after judgement and future recompenses, which shall reward the patience and perseverance of the godly, with a crown of glory, and the wicked after all their prosperous oppressions with the fruit of their own ways, by the impressions of divine Justice, in the balancing of eternity. 3. The third General Head is, 3 General, How God pleads his own cause How God pleads his own Cause; 1. Immediately, by his own special appearing for it against his and his Church's enemies. 2. Mediately, by such instruments, as he stirs up to be on his side. 1. God hath his plead in several 1 More immediately in the Court of conscience against us Courts. 1. In foro conscienciae, in that Court of conscience which is within men; sometimes God pleads against them there, filling them with terrors and stupors, with horror and inquietude, as in Cain (those surda fulmina & secreta fulgura) those silent thunders, and unseen lightnings, which make them self-arraigned, accused, convinced, judged and condemned in interiori tribunali, at the bar or tribunal of their own breasts, as were joseph's brethren when they came into trouble, and were more afraid than hurt; yet guilty consciences are afraid of a leaves shaking, and their own shadow: There is no peace (saith my God) that is no true, well-grounded Isai 57 21 and 48. 22 and constant) to the wicked, as such; they are as a restless sea, not only foaming out their rage and fury against God, but filling and fowling themselves with mire and dirt; Prima est haec ultio; quod se Judice nemo nocens absolvitur; thus the heathens found and owned that the accuser, witness, judge, condemner, and tormentor, which every wicked man had in his own soul, was of all most inexorable and intolerable. Poena autem vehemens, etc. Nocte dieque a suum gestere in pectore testem, yea pestem; that they seem sometime quiet, jolly, merry and secure, it is but as a puddle of fowl water, which stinks the more it stands still, or as a warm gleam before a smart shower; these are the sharp Indictments in men's own souls, not verbal pleas only, but forked arrows, and poisoned darts, which drink up their very spirits, as so many furies, or (animarum hirudines) leeches of their souls. 2. Other times God pleads his 2 God pleads his cause in our conscience for us. own Cause in the Court of conscience, for us, and in our behalf, in troubles, doubts, darkness and desertions; when by the evil of times (as Eliah, Isa: ●0. 10 Jeremiah, Baruch) we are dejected, or by the evil of temptations, buffeted and tossed as St. Paul in a Isa: 41. 21 long and dismal storm, that we see no light; there the promises and Spirit of God pleads for us, crying and making intercession with us, commanding us to lay hold on his strength; God furnisheth us with strong reason, bidding us plead with him, and urge his own name, and Exod: 33. 12 glory and goodness, as Moses did to disarm an angry God: He than puts us in mind of Christ's merits, Rome 8. 1 who is our righteousness, of God's free gift, of pardoning sin for his own sake, of the Law fulfilled, of the no condemnation to them that are in Christ, of his not quenching the smoking flax, or breaking the bruised reed; These and the like are God's gracious plead in us and for us, when we can say nothing for ourselves; as a Judge that turns Advocate for a modest and penitent prisoner. God stops the mouth of the great accuser the Devil; Christ answers for us all doubts and objections, all debts and indictments; they are paid and canceled by his rich and gratuitous grace. 3. God pleads his Cause many times in foro seculi, by the visible 3 God pleads his cause before all the world by his providences Psalm 58. 1● instances of his special power and providence, which makes all men to see there is a God that judgeth the world, who is neither deaf nor dumb, neither negligent nor impotent, only patient and long-suffering toward his adversaries, that they might see they had space of repentance. Here, the plead of God, when he ariseth terribly to judge the world, and Isai 1. 24 to ease him of his adversaries, and to plead the cause of his oppressed Church, are most worthy of the divine majesty: For 1. They are most just in themselves. The nature of Godspleading in the world 2. They are most pregnant and convictive in men's consciences, as the pleas of God, 3. They are unavoidable, and irrisistible, and potent. 4. They carry the cause (at last) against all opposition; the highest cedars are field by it, the Against the greatest and highest Princes greatest mountains leveled: Gods Cause like Moses his serpent devours all those Enchanters and Magicians. 5. They are impartial, without respect of persons, great or strong, rich or noble, wise or foolish, few or many: God sometimes so pleads it, as to pour contempt even upon Princes; to pull down the mighty Psalm 107. 4 from their seats, to confound their counsels, to break the arm of their strength, to lop off all their branches, yea to stub up their roots, as to their posterity and renown, which was done against Nabuchadnezzar, Haman, Balshazzar, and Judas. Sometimes God pleads his cause Miraculous plead of God's cause even by miraculous appearings in signs and wonders, full of terror and destruction; so against Pharaoh and the Egyptians; so against Senacherib and his host, sending a destroying Isai 37. 39 Angel to confute in one night his blasphemous insolency, by slaying the greatest part and flower of his Army, sending him away with shame, which was followed with the parricide of his two sons, who slew him; So in privater cases, God pleads against Miriams' murmuring, by leprosy; Isai 37. 37 so against Nadab and Abihu, by fire; So against Korah and his judges 7. 22 mutinous complices, God wrought a new way of burying them alive, Numb. 16. 33. So against the pride of Herod, whose popular deity was confuted by worms, Act. 12. 23. Sometimes God fills his enemies with Panic terrors, and makes them sheathe their swords in their own bowels, to become executioners of his vengeance; yea and we read Achitophel's or acular wisdom ended in a halter; even so let all perfidious and impenitent Politicians perish O Lord, that are enemies to thy Cause, in true Religion and just Government. Sometimes God stirs up unexpected and despicable enemies against them, who kindle such fires of intestine or foreign wars, as consume his proudest adversaries, as in the Kings of Israel and Judah, when they forsook and rebelled against God. When God ariseth to plead his God's pleas impartial own Cause, he fears the face of none, he spares none; not Families, or Cities, or Nations, or a whole world (as in Noah's days) or the whole race and nature of mankind, as in Adam and Eve, who fell under the curse, Gen. 3 with their posterity, when they believed and obeyed the serpent more than God: Against some he pleads with fire, famine, pestilence, evil Ier: 15. 3 beasts, War, Deluges: Nay he spared not the rebellious Angels, but cast them out of heaven, into hell fire, from the light of his blessed 2 Pet, 2. 4 presence to chains of eternal darkness. Nay God spares not his own servants, God's plead against the sins of the best men, as David, etc. People and Church; he pleaded sorely against David's sin, which argued his despising of God, when he preferred his lust, and caused the 2 Sam: 12. 10, ● enemies of God to blaspheme all religion and grace, by the scandal of his extravagancy; God shows us that as Saints may sin, so he sees sin in them, and will not let it go unpunished. §. So he pleads against Eli and his 1 Sam. 2. sons, even to their untimely death, and the extirpation of that family from the honour of Priesthood: So against King Uzziah, for his sacrilegious 1 Kings 15. 5 intruding on the Priests office. So against King Saul for his rebellion, 1 Sam: 15. 23 which was us witchcraft. So against King Solomon when his wisdom left him, or he left it, and fell to so gross a folly and effeminacy, 1 Kings two as to countenance and tolerate Idolatry, in an uxorious vanity and inconstancy; Isai 29, 5 So against King Hezekiah, 2 Kings 20 when his pride made him forgetful of so great a mercy, as his miraculous recovery and delivery. Nay God pleaded oft (against the 4 Gods pleading against the ewes whole Church of the Jews in their Apostasies) the Cause of his Law, Worship, Service, and Servants, the Prophets whom they slew, by cutting them short, by pulling down, and abasing the crown of their glory, by giving their adversaries dominion over them to destroy them, to burn their Cities and Temple, to desolate their Land, to lead them into captivity, and so to give the Land its rest and Sabbath, which they had profaned: Thus did he oft plead the controversies he had with that Church and people, that City and Sanctuary, which was called by his own name, with whom at last he reckoned for all the blood of the Prophets, and that of the Messias too, which filled up the cup of God's wrath against them, Matth. 23▪ 35 to an utter desolation, which hath held now for near sixteen hundred years. In like sort did the Spirit of God God's pleading against Christian Churches plead his Cause against the famous seven Churches in Asia, and their Angels or Bishops, of which we read in the second and third chapters of the Revelations, reproving and threatening them sorely, both Fathers and children, Bishops and Presbyters, Pastors and people, except they did repent. So against all the Greek and Eastern Christian Churches, whose heresies, luxuries, schisms, ambitions and hypocrisies have at this day put them under the Mahometan bondage and tyranny, that they have scarce now a name to live as Christians or Churches. §. Nor was God wanting to plead his Cause by many terrible judgements against the depraved state of these Western Churches, when overgrown with Image-Saints, and Angels-worship; with Tyranny and superstition, with covetousness and ambition, with sottery and debauchery, even from the Popes or chief Bishops chair, to the Princes, and Peers, and Clergy, and Gentry, and people of all sorts, how were they tossed too and fro in the sactions of Gnelphs and Gibelins, wasted in the holy Wars, as they called them; terrified with excommunication and bans, that 2 Chron: ●5. 5 there was no peace to him that came in, or to him that went out. Lastly, God sometimes pleads his 5 Gods pleading his cause by persecutions Phil: 1 Cause (and gives evident token it is his) by an unexpected way, even by suffering it to fall into fiery trials, and many temptations; not as offended with his Church, but as giving the world experience of the mighty power of his grace, and the eminent faith, courage, patience and constancy of his servants, who love Rev▪ 12. 12 not their lives to the death; but can set all the loss and dung of this world at stake for Christ's sake: So the primitive Martyrs and Confessors, Apostles and others glorified God; So many Bishops, Presbyters, Virgins young and old, filled the world with admiration of that cause, for which they were so resolved and undaunted, that their pious perseverance (as Justin Martyr and others tell us), with their (〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉) pertinacy, as Mar. Aurelius calls it) was a most powerful way to commend the glorious Gospel of Christ to the world: Thus the blessed company and holy Host, after Christ's example, did assert the cause of God and his Christ, not by armed forces fight, but by sober preaching, and patient suffering: This Spirit of glory was a riddle (indeed) and a new way to advance the Evangelical cause, against the powerful oppositions found on all hands, yet it was God's way and prevailed, by the power of his Word, and the testimony 1 Pet: 4. 14 of his Spirit of patience and glory which rested on them. §. As the first foundation stone of the Gospel or Church of Christ was laid in John Baptists and Christ's blood, so it was after builded up by St. Stephens, St. James and their followers: Then Christians, like Parthians, fought flying, and prevailed by not resisting, and were Rome ●. 37 more than conquerors when they were most conquered; the blood of Martyrs being the seed of the Church, and their ashes as the compost ormendment of the world. Fourthly, It remains that I 4 General, God's immediate pleading his Cause by men. show how God pleads his and his Church's Cause, not always by miraculous and immediate instances; but by the mediate instruments of By pious Princes. his ordinary providence; whom he stirs up to protect, to favour, to speak comfortably to his Zion, that his warfare is finished, that the days Isai 41. 2 of refreshing are come; such were some good or tolerable Kings among Acts 3. 19 the Jews, Asa, Uzziah, Hezekiah and josiah; such was Constantine the Great, and some other following Emperors, that were Christian and orthodox too. So since the Reformation, God hath given (specally in these British Churches) Kings and Queens to be Nursing Fathers and mothers to true Religion, Defenders of the true Faith, and the Professors of it, who had long ere this been martyred and burned, butchered or massacred, blown up and extirpated as Heretics, if the Romish Sea had not had bounds of national Laws, and sovereign power set to it, which said Hitherto and no further thou shalt go; here thy proud and threatening waves shall be stopped: I pray God we have not sinned away our defence and glory, making breaches upon the banks of our Laws, Government and Religion, so wide as will let in at last that overflowing scourge again upon us, under the names of Liberty, Toleration, and Super-reformation. Again, God pleads his own cause as to true Religion, by furnishing his Church, First of the Jews with extraordinary Prophets; such as was Moses, Samuel, Eliah, Micah, Isaiah, jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and others, till the Messiah came; After the Apostles (who were Master-builders) God gave to his Christian Church such Heroes of learning, zeal and courage, as in all ages undertook all those Goliahs and sons of Anak, who de●ied the host of God; such of old were Irenaeus, Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian, Clemens, the Cyrils, the Basils, Chrysostom, Epiphanius, the Gregory's, the great Athanasius, St. Augustine, St. Jerom, St. Hilary, Optatus, Prosper and others, during the heat of heathenish, and heretical or schismatical persecution; And this not singly only, but socially, junctis viribus; in Councils or Synods, By Councils and Synods. which were Ecclesiastical Parliaments, either greater or lesser, in several Dioceses or Provinces, or National or Ecumenical of all the Christian world, by their Pastors and Representatives; these did mightily plead the cause of Christ, against heretical novelties, and schismatical partialities; these kept the faith and peace of the true Church entire; these guided, gathered and healed the erring, scattered and worried of the flock; these by many hands made walls against the seas and mighty floods, which the devil cast out of his mouth Rev: 12 against the Woman clothed with the sun; the Church professing Christ. Thus the famous Council of Nice, so pleaded the cause of Christ's Divinity, that they crushed the Arrian Serpent in the egg, and gave that cockatrice its deadly wound, which it never recovered, though it made a foul struggling a long time: So the Council of Constantinople pleaded the cause of the Holy Ghost, against the cavils of Macedonius: So the Council of Ephesus pleaded the unity of Christ's Person, God and Man against Nestorius: And the Council of Chalcedon the distinction of his Natures, against Eutyches his confoundiug of them; so in other cases, as the cause of God and his Church required, Councils were sovereign Physicians, and applied excellent cordials, till they came to be servile to the private causes, lusts, power and interests of men, and less intent to the Word and Spirit of Christ (as the first Council of Jerusalem was, which ought to be the pattern of all after Synods.) And afterwards in the eclipse, God's pleading in the reformed Churches. decline, superstition and darkness of times in the Western Churches, yet there were not wanting some that did still plead the cause of God as his witnesses, against the Apostasies, extravagancies and luxuries of the Romish tyranny and pride. So was St. Bernard, Nicolaus, Clemangis, Alvarus-Pelaegius, Wickliff, John Hus, and Jerom of Prague; our Lincolniensis Baleus, and others. Yea when God arose mightily to shake this Western world, and to rack us off from our Monastic and Roman lees, who can sufficiently muster up the armies of Worthies, both abroad and at home, of reverend Bishops, and other learned Divines, who have either stood in the gap with their arms, or at the bar with their strong arguments, pleading God's cause by Scripture and antiquity, by learned writings and holy lives, against all oppositions: I will name none, because I will not seem partially silent to the merit of any; This only I may without envy say, none have exceeded the worthy Bishops, and others of the Reformed Church of England, who were and ever will be in impartial judgements esteemed among the first therein; and the headmost ranks of Martyrs, Confessors, Reformers, Preachers, Disputers, Writers and Livers, while we were happy to enjoy such Fathers and such Sons of this Church, as were worthy to enjoy those favours and Honours, which this Nation heretofore grudged not to confer upon them, and abhorred to take from them, and their Episcopal Order, which was excellently martialled and employed by worthy Bishops, as Jewel, Usher, Andrews, Davenant, Morton, Prideaux, Hall, White, Bilson, Babington and others; Also by Hooker, Willet, Sutliff, Rogers and others of the Presbyterian subordination. §. 'tis true they were all men, and so might have their infirmities more or less; but they were such men of might and weight, and of valour and renown, that (with all the grains of allowance) they far outweighed all that popular stuff or pomp of either learning or virtue, gifts or graces, Scholarship or Saintship, which▪ hath swelled their adversaries, rather than filled them, with any real truth, or ingenuom worth, comparable to them: And however now (indeed) the Reformed Church and Religion of England doth look like an Army, that hath been so harrased and routed, as it hath lost most of its gallant commanders, which gave life and courage and skill to the whole Protestant party, and the cause of the Reformed Religion; yet we must not despair but that God will return in mercy to us, if once our lives and manners be but as reform as our doctrine was; this needeth not, though the other do, reforming. §. And because there will be failers and infirmities on the best God's pleading at the day of judgement men's part in pleading God's cause in this world; therefore to make amends there is a third Court, wherein God will (unavoidably) plead his cause against every evil doer, and all nakedness in the world; this will be in foro poli or coeli, at the last day, when the books of Omniscience, conscience and Scripture shall be opened; Rev. 20. 12 and men's sins, with their wilful, immoral and impenitent errors shall be set in order before them; Then the great Accuser within and without shall be heard, and sentence and 20. 13 given secundum allegata & probata; according to the merit and evidence of men's works: This is the last appeal of the oppressed righteous cause; where it shall be heard, and have right done it: For then, as St. Bernard tells Judges, and Juries, and Lawyers, Omnia judicata rejudicabuntur; All judgements and causes shall be reviewed and rejudged. §. But the consideration of such 5 The right method of man's pleading Gods Cause. Instruments, as God is pleased to 〈◊〉 up to plead his cause in this world, Leads me to the last particular, which is to show the manner and method▪ (legitimi litigandi) of man's pleading, as becomes him, this holy cause of God, when he is called to it in an ordinary (which all are) or extraordinary way, as some may be. §. It is not only the work of God to plead his own cause (as Joash said judges 6. 31 of Baal, If he be a God, he can and will plead for himself) But it is the duty of every good Christian that loves God, to be a worker and pleader together with him in God's cause and way; we must be all willing to be retained on God's side, to be his Advocates and Attorneys, when he calls us to this work, to contest for God against an evil, perverse, and adulterous generation, either by living or dying, by doing or suffering, by preaching or disputing, by discoursing or writing. It will be demanded, why I add Of pleading God's cause by fight. not by fight? which is now much cried up, and used by some, as a most speedy and effectual way to plead God's Cause, and set up Christ● Kingdom. I answer, The cause of God is sometimes to be pleaded by the way of fight. 1. In defence of any Church and State, against unjust and foreign invasion, or intestine rebellion and sedition. 2. By way of a Princes relieving his oppressed Subjects and Confederates in other States and Dominions. 3. By way of asserting the proceedings of Justice as to Law, according to that power which is established in any Kingdom or Polity. 4. As to the Cause of Religion; it is no further to be asserted by the Sword, then as it is established by the Law, and under the protection of the Sovereign Power; there to plead its cause by such a Sword, as is the sword of God, and of Gideon, judg. ●▪ 1●. is lawful, when it is done by lawful command and Supreme (which is in England) Regal Authority. Otherwise no Cause of God, as to Of Religion to be asserted by the sword. Religion, is to be either planted and propagated, or reform, or vindicated by the sword of Subjects against any Princes or chief Magistrates will and power, in whose hand the sword is: True, God by a special Prophet, and a commission from Heaven, confirmed by many miracles, did once put a sword into the Jews hand, to make their way against those Nations, which were declared by Divine Justice worthy to be destroyed. But the Evangelical spirit is not of that temper; the Commission of the Gospel, and Christ's Luke 9 55. Spiritual Militia, by which he conquers the World, is not to fight, and kill and slay; but to preach, to pray, Mark 16. 15. and to suffer. They grossly mistake Christ's Kingdom, and Gods Cause now, that fancy it is to be pleaded by the Arm of Flesh; by popular furies and forces, by tumults and violences; by subverting and opposing Magistratick power, and breaking over the boundaries of good Laws and Customs, Civil and Ecclesiastical. §. Christ commanded Peter gladiatorum Mat. 26. 52. forwardness in his defence, to put up his sword into his sheath. Christ had two other swords, of the Word and Spirit, which were enough to do his work; not by Soldiers, but Ministers; not by Colonels and Captains, but by Bishops and Presbyters. There are other ways to exercise a Christians love, zeal, and courage for God's cause; which as it is most worthy of our pleading, so we must take care to plead it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, as becomes our Lord and Saviour: It is a caution which Quintilian a great Orator gave to all Pleaders, Cavendum ne bonam causam male litigando perdamus: Many men are untowardly forward to plead Christ's cause; like hot metalled and heady horses, neither well mouthed, nor well weighed and managed: They endanger more by their rashness, than they advance by their capering activity. The Cause then of God must in times, places, and points, be pleaded so as becomes the Majesty▪ Truth and Honour of the great God. 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉▪ Wisely, with understanding; God's cause to be pleaded by men. by the clear and potent demonstrations of it; grounded on 1 Understandingly. the Word of God; not by humane fancies, wild notions, and extravagant 2 Tim. 3. 17. presumptions, and fanatic fetches: The Word of God is able to make us perfect pleaders of his Cause. We must not add to, nor detract from that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, complete armour, offensive and defensive: If any plead not according to that rule of Isa. ●. 20. Law and Gospel; of Faith and Loyalty; of patience and obedience, it is because there is no light of truth, or grace of humility in them. God's Cause needs no cavil nor sophisms; no wisdom or eloquence of man's invention, which is to join humane fraud and force, mere froth and folly to divine sufficiency: As if one would muster up Frogs and Mice, with their bulrushes, to join with Angels in God's battles, to help the Lord against the mighty. 2. God's cause is to be pleaded by 2. Sincerely. man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, sincerely, for God's sake, not for self-ends and interests, for our glory, gain, or advantage, as to our persons or parties, our secular and civil interests of power and preferment; which are many times the dead Fly cast into this 2 Kings 10. 16. precious Ointment; as Jehu did, whose ambition was the belows and blazoner of his zeal. So they that preached the Gospel out of Envy Phil. 1. 15. and ill will, or for filthy lucre's sake, Tit. 1. 11. to serve their bellies, and not the Lord Jesus; to please men, and not Gal. 1. 10. God; seeking not the salvation of souls, or the good of the Church and State, but their own emoluments and preferments: These are in all ages the greatest deformers of Christian Religion, exposing it first to popular fury, and after to the shame and contempt of all. 3. God's cause must be pleaded 3. Entirely. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, Integre, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, solidly and entirely; not picking and choosing what parts, or points, or duties of it most suit with our fancies, opinions, parties, designs, desires and private interests: We must not so plead for the first table in piety, as to neglect the second in equity and charity: So to contend against superstition in God's worship, as to overthrow the order and decency which ought to be solemnly observed in it; or that duty and obedience we owe to those which are in Church or State called Fathers, and to whom we stand obliged by the first Commandment with promise▪ We must not so plead or urge our duty to God, as to skip over our duty to our neighbour; nor so plead against Idolatry, as to indulge Sacri▪ ledge; or against Adultery, as to acquit Murder; or so cry up Religion or Reformation, as to encourage Rebellion and Sedition: No● may we so inculcate and insist on one duty, as to omit and slight others; to be mere Euchites for prayer, or Acoits for hearing; or (〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉) pragmatics, impertinently and irregularly busy in Church and State, as to neglect the Sacraments; or to be so eager in dispute for Truth (even the minores veritates) as to forget the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉) great things of God in which the Kingdoms of the Gospel consists; so magnifying faith, that we omit good works; and crying down ceremonies, to the overthrow of all orderly and uniform Devotion; to cast out Commandments, Lords Prayer, Creed, and all settled Liturgy out of the Church. 4. The Cause of God must be 4. Holily, an● justly, or lawfully. pleaded by us, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, holily, justly, and lawfully; according to our place and duty; after a righteous manner, also peaceably and orderly: Nor (〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉) violently, rudely, and injuriously: This is the first thing God requires of us, to do justice, and Micah. 6. 8. then to show mercy, and walk humbly with him. Extravagant motions mar the cause of God, and rather prejudice it, than any way plead it: We must not commit Robbery to do Sacrifice; nor lie or oppress, upon Isa. 61. 8. God's account: We must not be so 1 Pet. 4. 15. 2 Pet. 2. 2. far partial to God's Cause, as to do Rom. 3. 8. evil that good may come thereby; this is to turn the staff of Moses into a Serpent: The great care of the Apostles was, to have Mysteries of Religion made good by Moralities. Cardinal Poole well expressed, that those would best understand the eleven first Chapters of the Epistle to the Romans (which are full of high mysteries and disputes) who did most practise the five last, which exhort to holy life; teaching such as believed well, to do all things well, that the Cause and Name of God might not be evil spoken of. 1 Pe●. 2. 12. We must not violate the good laws of civil Societies, under pretence to exalt the Law of God; nor run Church and State into confusion, to set up Reformation of either in seditious ways. God's Cause needs not the Devils engines; either plead it as becomes it, or let it alone. It will support itself, without the rash hand of Uzzah to stay it: If thou canst not plead it actively, thou mayest do it passively, and much more to purpose, as primitive Christians did, then by any inordinate activity: No man, saith the Apostle, 2 Tim. 2. 5. that striveth, is crowned, unless he strive lawfully: Secundum leges Athleticas, such as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, the Institutor and Umpire had appointed. 5. God's Cause must be pleaded 5. With moderation and discretion. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, with moderation, discretion, and calmness; so as not to suffer any Phil. 4. 5. transports of passion and precipitancy to over sway us, to an (〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉) excess or indecency: We must not so plead against superstition, as to reproach or weaken true Religion; or against humane corruptions, as to vacate and void, Divine institutions; or against the abuse of things, as to abolish the good use of them: to have no Our Father, because we would have no Ave Ave-maries in our Prayers. §. Reformation must not run to the ruin of Church, or the riot of State; as if a Physician should destroy the body with the disease, purging away the spirits with ill humours, such as their former methods seem to be, who will have no Bishops according to the primitive and Catholic order of the Church, because some Bishops in after times had their fauls and frailties; or no Ministers, because some of them have been too blame; or no Sacraments, because some may be unworthy receivers: These as immoderations and madnesses, become not those, that undertake to plead God's Cause; It is like theirs who would starve themselves, because some have been gluttons, or destroy all Vines, because of some men's drunkenness, or have no singing, because some may sing out of tune; it is an ordinary error in men to suffer their pleas to pass from the cause to the persons, and so from the persons to the cause, which transports of envy and anger, arise from the overboiling of men's passions, which wastes their judgements, and make them instead of snuffing dim candles, to put them quite out; an error that I fear hath been too prevalent in some men's spirits and practices among us; whose meaning and intentions possibly might be good, or at least not so bad as the event. Sixthly, Valiantly and courageously, ● With Christian courage and magnanimity. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, according to the generosity and magnanimity of a true Christian spirit, which is rather good, then great; or therefore great because good; not by a military robustness, and boisterous forwardness, or childish pertinacy, that resolves to maintain any cause they once engage for; but such a cool and sober valour, as first hath made a just conquest of ourselves, as to all irregular passions, inordinate lusts, & oblique designs; that being listed in Christ's spiritual Militia, and having given our names to him, we may put on that spiritual armour, which becomes a Christian in truth, faith, love, zeal, patience, justice, sobriety, sanctity, and constancy, for these are the solid grounds, and sure guides of a Christians courage in God's cause; whose sacrifice might not be offered with strange Exod. 30. 9 fire, or strange incense, nor may Leu. 10. 1. his cause be pleaded by brutish valour, or by turbulent passions. For that were like baking the shewbread of the sanctuary with man's dung, which the Prophet Ezekiel so much abhorred, and deprecated. Seventhly, God's cause must be pleaded by us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, becoming Christ and Christians, who are persons under the severest restraints of any men, with modesty, gravity, With respect and modesty to superiors. humility, and due respects to our betters and superiors befitting their place authority, and dignity: So the ancient Martyrs and other confessors, (in their Apologies petitions and Remonstrances, as justin Martyr, Tertullian and others presented to the Emperors or Senates) owned them with due honour, and paid that reverence to them which their dignity required, and God's word either commanded or permitted. They never used railing 2 Pet. 2. 11. accusations against them; nor spoke jude ●. evil of dignities, to set a gloss and soil on their good cause, no not in their greatest agonies, in their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when they were dying, and suffering, as well as disputing, preaching, or writing; they blessed those that cursed them: and prayed for those that spitefully Mat. 5. 44. used them; This gave repute to the Cause of God, and showed the spirit of God was in them of a truth: they did not speak but act great things, and if they could less dispute, they would yet readily die for that cause, which was delivered to them by the Pillar and ground of Truth, the Church of Christ. Secondly, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Charitative, 2 With charity and compassion to all men. with charity to all sorts of people, pitying their blindness and barbarity, in meekness of wisdom instructing them, as holy Polycarp did, fervently and humbly praying for them, yea, (osculando prodit orem) even kissing our betrayers, and destroyers, as Crysologus observes of Christ: not behaving themselves as vermin in a trap or wild Bulls in a Net, but as Lambs and Sheep of 1 Pet▪ 2. 23. Christ's Flock and Mark, who opened Acts 8. 32. not his mouth, save only to pray for his crucifiers; as also did the first Martyr S. Stephen, whose Acts 7. 60. name imports the comfort and crown of his thus suffering for Christ's Cause: not as an evil doer, 1 Pet. 3. 16. or an evil speaker, some men's stomaches are so full of Choler, gall and virulency, that they do not plead for God's cause so much, as spit and spew upon it; when pretending high zeal and godliness, they so foully disgorge themselves in ill language against their superiors and betters every way; no Magistrate no Minister Of rude and riotous pleadng Gods cause escape their dirt and mire; All are Beasts and Antichrists, and Satan's and Enemy's, and fit to be destroyed, that do not comply with the cause they look to set up (together with themselves) by pulling down all that stands in their way. §. What scurrilous and scandalous Libels, have some men made, like the waist and filthy papers of Martin Marprelate and others of that bran, to wrap up their several causes in; what undecencies, what barbarities, what●edities, whatfuries what menaces, have their Sermons and Prayers abounded with? and so their action▪ s▪ by a superfluity of self conceit, passion, pride, arrogancy, envy, desire of revenge, and the like enormous distempers? so far beyond a Christian, that they would make a modest and ingenuous heathen blush, and abhor any cause that is pleaded or managed by such poy sonous pens, such polluted lips, and unwashed hands. §. I may truly say with St. james, my brethren these things ought not to james. 3. 10. be so, these are not the methods of Christians pleading their Gods and Saviour's cause, either bitterly to rail like Rabsakeh, or pompously to vapour and flatter like Tertullus, crying up every cause as Gods, that is uppermost, either in power or in popular applause, or vulgar pity, which are no true Touchstones of God's cause, either as to civil justice, or true Religion. And thus (O worthy and Christian Auditors) have I finished the demonstrative or doctrinal part, which showed first, the nature of God's cause. Secondly, the manner of pleading it, and Thirdly what method we must use in our pleading it; so as to observe the holy laws and orders, which become our respects to the cause of God, and to our Superiors, yea, to all men: whose rules are his written word rightly understood, not wrested and depraved by sinister passions and presumptuous dispensations of what is our duty indeed to God and man. I will not abuse your patience, while I crave the use of a little time, to feel how the pulse of your affections and resolutions do beat, and whether your understandings have transmitted the cause of God to your heart, that knowing your duty in so great a concern, you may resolve to do it. 1. Use of instruction: to show 1 Use to direct us to the best cause that is to be pleaded. us what is that cause which is most worthy our pleading, with all the wisdom, power and capacities we have; it is Gods. For this cause as john 18. 37. Christ speaketh, he came into the World, and into the bosom of the true Church; for this cause we are endowed with understanding, memory, eloquence, conscience, civil influences in Counsel and in authority; public and private: for this cause we were baptised by the Blood of Christ, and dedicated to him, suitably educated and instructed; also nourished and refreshed by his body and blood, that we should plead for God's glory, for our Saviour's truth, Worship, Ministry, servants, and institutions against our own jousts and Passions, against the ignorance, Atheism, profaneness, licentiousness, hypocrisy, novelty, extravagancy, error, superstition, idolatry, Flattery, sacrilege, and security of the world. It is a shame for us to be so zealous industrious, solicitous and importune in our own petty concerns, for a little profit, honour, or pleasure; and to neglect that cause, which is worth all we are and have, even our estates liberties and lives, Nec propter vitam vivendi per dere causam; if we expect God to plead ours we must plead his, and with a vehemency as much above all other causes, as heaven is above earth, eternity above a moment, and the excellency of Christ above the loss and dung, the scraps and excrements of this world. 2. Use of Caution; but as we 2 Use, Caution to plead God's cause in God's way. must be careful to adhere to, and assert God's cause, so it must be in God's way, with justice, holiness, order, humility, patience, charity, sincerity, according to the bonds of Gods and man's laws, not with tumult, violence, saction, sedition sraud, sury, partiality, injustice and hypocrisy; God's Ark though it potter's must not be stayed or held up by such rash hands; better it do honest cadere, then inhoneste stare. These Midwives are not fit for the birth of God's children; Such as call in the assistance of these, either mistake God's cause, or they make his cause but a stale and vizard to their own private interests and designs; or lastly they are ignorant of God's methods, and the way of his Saints in all ages; or they greatly distrust his power and goodness, as if he were not sufficient to vindicate himself and his cause, by such means as are only worthy of him, of Christ, and of us as his servants. 3. Use of trial and reproof, Of mistakers and mispleaders of God's cause. you may see clearly what cause they plead, who observe not God's course and method, but think to justify evil pleading by the goodness of the cause. To such violent injurious, perfidious, and unreasonable men, we may put that question which God doth, Psalm. 50. 16. What hast thou to do, to take my cause into thy hand, or my word Psal. 50. 16. into thy mouth, since thou hatest to be reform, etc. On which words they report that Origen after his lapse, commented with his tears. Those that plead God's cause any way by fight or writing, speaking or doing, must have written in their hearts, and affections on their forehead and hands, as the Horses in Zacharies vision had on their bells Zach. 14. 20. or bridles, holiness to the Lord; St. Chrisostome observes in the disorders and corruptions which distracted, with eecstatic convulsions and madness the heathen Sibyls and Prophets in their Oracles; and in the calmness or harmony, which was in God's Prophets, how great a difference there is between Diabolical possession, and divine inspiration; such is the disorder that attends men in their own cause, and the order, which they observe, who intent Gods. There was wont to be proclaimed before the olympian games, and Athletic agonies; That none who were misbegotten, or slaves, or vile or infamous persons, should offer to enter the lists, or contest, in those famous and solemn, yea sacred conflicts, which were not for private gain, but for the honour of their gods, and the Victors; such a proclamation may I make, as to God's cause, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, let no proud, profane, covetous, ambitious, sacrilegious, perjurious, popular, partial, parasitick, insolent, disorderly and licentious persons pretend to plead it, since they do more prejudice and disparage it, than any way advance or forward it; good and wise men are ashamed, and weak men are jealous and afraid to be s●en in that good cause, wherein wicked men appear (not good but great sticklers) as Maggots do in what was a good dish of meats; not to garnish or adorn it, but to defile and devour it. 4. Use, fear to oppose God's cause, 4. Use of Terror, to such as oppose God's cause. or by anyforcible or fallacious ways to plead against it, for it will be as a burdensome stone, a rock of offence, 1 Pet. 2. 8● who ever dasheth against it, or on whom it falls at last, with the weight of God's vindication, It will dash them to pieces; who ever contended against God and his cause, and prospered? For it will at last be pleaded with fire and brimstone, with an omni potent and unexorable justice, which will consume as fire doth stubble, all the opposing powers, and fallacious pretensions. 5. Use of exhortation when we 5. Use, of exhortation, and comfort in the lowest ebb to plead God's cause by our prayers. have done our duty in God's cause, and in his way, according to our place, and see that we profit nothing as to the public, but only to our own peace and discharge of good consciences; yet cease not to follow God with our prayers, and holy importunities, that he would Ps al. 119. 126. take the matter into his own hand, Bonae causae sufficit unus patronus bonus, God's cause is never to be despaired of; though it have no patron or advocate among men, yet it hath one above who is optimus & maximus, the greatest and best of all; It may (as a bladder) be forced under water, for a while, but it will buoy up again: The Church may be as the ship in which Christ was tossed and covered with waves, yet Christum vebit & causam Christi, (as Caesar said to the fearful Mariners, of himself and his fortune) God oft lets things run to low ebbs, that he may show his mighty power, and make the extremities of his cause the opportunities of his help; however let not thy faith or Prayers fast, which have a kind of omnipotency in them, to remove Mountains, and to do miracles, at a dead lift; God's arm is not shortened, though man's be withered: let God alone with his own cause, the gates of bell shall not prevail against it. 6. Use, Measure not the cause of 6. Use, not to measure God's cause by false rules. God by outward prevailings and prosperities; the gayest feathered foul are not the best meat; we must condemn the generation of God's people and the cause of the righteous, Psal. 73. 15. if we think that the worst cause, which hath the worst usage or success in this world, look to the Prophets from righteous Abel to John Baptist, look to the Apostles and the best of their successors, look to the holy Preachers and people, we shall find they had always enough to do to plead the cause of God and his truth, against the many open persecutions and secret undermine of evil men and devils; who many times so prevailed by God's just judgement, that the cause of God seemed wholly routed, such were their powers, their victories, their numbers, their policies, their cruelties, all bent against the cause of God: yet, even their banishment and prison, and tortures, and plunderings, and sequestrations, and loss of all, even to life itself, these with a good cause, and a good conscience, were infinitely to be preferred before all the Treasures, and Triumphs, and Thrones, and successes and applauses of impious Heb. 2. 4. prosperity or prosperous impiety. The just must live by faith not by Rom. 1. 17. sense; the touch stone of God's cause is Godsword, both as to the end, and the means the usual badge or mark of Christ's cause is Christ's cross, to which we were all devoted in our baptism: nor must we fly from those colours, Mat. 7. 22. lest the Lord answer us, as those that plead with him at the last day, have we not prophesied in thy name and cast out Devils etc. So have we not pleaded thy cause O Lord by tumults, mutinies, falsities, sedition, rebellion, by plunder and rapine, by sacrilege and perjury, by blood and violence; To whom the Lord will reply, depart from me ye hypocrites, and accursed, I know you not, you pleaded the cause of your own lusts and belly, of your pride, envy, covetousness, ambition and revenge, and not of my holy name, and true Religion, and reformation, which owns no such manner of pleading or practising. 7. Use, Is by way of examination, Use of examination by putting two Questions. wherein I will propound two Questions to you, with such answers, as I conceive may suit them. 1. Question is, What may be that 1 Quest▪ what is the cause which God thus pleads against us in England. cause of God, for which he thus pleads in wrath against us in England? So far that his hand hath been a long time stretched forth against us, and his wrath is not yet turned away from us, but burns as a consuming fire, to the very foundations, in a long war, and the worst of all, a civil war, which destroys even humanity itself, setting nearest relations at distances, and friends at distances, and neighbours at enmity, and countrymen at mortal contentions. Yea, and this upon the worst account, even religious dissensions and jealousies no less than secular; if we ask why the Lord hath brought all this evil upon a people, that were once called by his name, and but too happy, the very wonder joy or envy of all Churches, and Nations, and Kingdoms; Why is it that the Lord hath pleaded thus severely, against our Kings and Princes, our Parliaments and Peers, our Bishops and Clergy, our Gentry and Commonalty even all sorts of people, against Church and State, against our peace, our laws, our government, our liberties, our estates and our plenty, against the prosperity, and the honour of the Nation, yea against our very Religion, and reformation itself, as if he did abhor us, So that we seem condemned to everlasting torments, to contend with, and devour each other, with endless diesolations and confusions, turning like Ixion in the wheel, or Sisyphus his stone, or St. Laurence from one side to the other, upon the gridiron of daily exactions, vexations, terrors and vastations, while Manasseh is against Ephraim; and Ephraim against Manasseh, and judah against both; That we cannot find or will not follow the way of peace. With what Earthquakes, and Shakes, and Overturning, and bloody Battles, and mutual Exhaustings, and unplacable Annimosities, have we been wasted many years, and are still threatened every day, besides the bitter feuds and factions, the divisions and subdivisions, which like fire have seized on the Temple and House of God, this so famous Church, and our reformed religion, heretofore so blessed with piety and peace, gifts and graces, with the beauty and holiness, and the crown of double honour; against all which God hath written bitter things and poured contempt. §. These frowns and fightings do God's controversy with the Land. all testify to our faces, that God hath a controversy with the land, Hos. 4. 1. against Church and State, that he jer. 25. 31. pleads as an adversary against Court and City, and Country, against all estates and degrees of men; Among whom such an evil spirit is risen, as between Abimeleck, and the men judges 9 23. of Sichem, that there is no peace to him that goes out or comes in, we are left as sheep without a shepherd; as a ship in a storm, without 2 Chron. 15. 5. a Pilot; as Orphans without a Father, and as Widows without an Husband, in a desolate, deplorable, self-destroying condition. Of which abyss or ocean of troubles, we see no bounds or bottom, being condemned to an arbitrary subjection, to a partial monopoly of power, and to a mere military protection, in which not Philosophers (as Plato wished) but Soldiers and men of blood, must be our Governors, and our exactors, our Protectors; Who keep us quiet that they may fleece us, and fleece us, that they may keep us in subjection, of whom we shall find that true, which is said of Physicians, many of them are but a further disease to a Patient, qui medice, sic qui militariter vivit, misere vivit, It is but a sad life, which must be maintained by daily leeches, and bloodlettings, by laneings and sear and cuttings of some parts of the body which are not so unsound, as those that are the executioners of them. §. Certainly God is too wise, and too indulgent a Physician, to use so God's long and sore pleading against us. long and so great evacuations, purgations, and corrosives to this body politic, if there were not many foul and marbose or malignant humours in it? the Heathens were wont in public and long Calamities after they had tried always to appease their angry Gods by supplications and sacrifices, and yet were never the better, to send to some famous Oracle for its direction: Do not presume to be your Oracle, Answer to the first Quaere. but let God's word be it, this will give you a clear and unambiguous answer, why the Lord hath done all this evil against us, why he thus implacably pleads against this Church and State, which formerly were his chief favourites and darlings, ●● the signets or bracelets on his hand and arm, as the vine Hag, 2. 23. which himself had planted, and watered, and wonderful preserved, which is now become a scorn Isaiah. 5. and shame to itself, no less than an hissing and astonishment to all the Nations round about. As the Lord pleads against his God pleads against our unthankfulness to God. Vine of the Jewish Church and State, appealing to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, to judge Isaiah 5. 3. between him and his vine, so may it be said in our case. What could the Lord have done more for us than he did, and what could we have done less for his cause than we have done, or more against it? How were we planted, and watered and weeded, and fenced, and fortified, and loaded with the choicest blessings of heaven and earth? What was there wanting in England to make us happy, but holy, humble and thankful hearts, with suitable lives, the good grapes which God expected; instead of which, Oh what sour grapes did we bring forth to God and man, O how weary were we of God's blessings, as if God had cloyed and overladen us? How like the nansueating jews, we loathed this Manna, the reformed religion, with all holy institutions and Christian Sacraments, and decent devotions and orderly Government. How neglected? how profaned? how despised were these by many wanton Christians? how many scornfully washed off their infant Baptism, by a Fanatic and Schismatic novelty of Anabaptism contrary to the Analogy of faith, and practise of all Churches in all ages. How have many vomited up their former Lords Suppers, and as if they had surfited heretofore have fasted from them these twice seven years. How impatient have they been of such Pastors and Preachers, such Bishops and Presbyters as told them the truth, & sought to restrain those inordinate liberties, which they wickedly affected? how hateful have these Michajahs been to those that loved to be flattered in sin? how have many gnashed their teeth against such Stephens as have sowed no pillows under their elbows? Yea how over Against ourselves seeking▪ zealous have we been in pleading our own secular and civil causes, to much civil War and blood; pretending to preserve our liberty till we overtook our slavery, and really intending on all sides to get places of profit and preferments to ourselves, to feather our nests, and set up our selves on high, above all that was called Gods among us. What vast sums have been expended to make us miserable? on the other side O how cold, careless, formal and indifferent have we been as to God's great Cause, for the good of souls, the true Preaching of the Gospel, the due administration of Religion, the preservation of our happy reformation, for the order, honour, government, support, and just encouragement of able and faithful Ministers in this Church, which are and ever will be wanting in many places of this Nation, where there is as yet no provender for the Ox that should tread out the Corn; Hence St. Austin observed, Quod Christus non capit, capit fiscu●, what Sacrilege cetaines from Christ, is wasted for no purpose. §. We have with great clamour pretended God's Cause, Religion and reformation on all sides, but this on all sides is worsted, abased, deformed, discountenanced, diminished, and by many evil eyes sought to be wholly improverished and starved. God pleads against us Against our Hypocrisy and Sacrilege, for our hypocrisy and pretensions, for our Sacrilegious invasions and confusions, which rob God of his honour, Christ of his right and homage, the Church of its portion and patrimony, Ministers▪ of their maintenance, The nation of its liberality, the dead of their bequeathing or legacies, true Religion of its support, and all sorts of people, of that piety charity and hospitality, which was intended them, by those holy honest and legal donations, against which no man pleads, that hath not a mind to purloyn them, or to have a good pennyworth of them, at the Devils Marke●. God pleads against us for our trusting too much to the arm of flesh, and profaning God's Cause with evil means, with sinister policies and practices, bringing to Gods alter, the lame and lean, and defective and deformed Sacrifices of parsimonious and sordid spirits, which are not propitiations but pollutions, which the Majesty of God is so far from accepting, that he abhors, and casts as dung in the deceivers face, God is not to be mocked. §. God pleads against our unthankefulness Against our unthankfulness to man. as to God, so to man, our discontented humours and impatience that knew not how to bless God and man, for moderate blessings, God pleads against the perjuries and forswearing among us; The little or no conscience made of contradictory Oaths, the familiar but vain and most rude swear, which are so common among, not only the dregs and beasts of the people, but even those persons who pretend to some good breeding; who by evil speaking corrupt good manners. God pleads against us Ministers God pleads against Ministers. of all degrees, for our insufficiencies, presumptions, popularities, inconstancies, and scandals, for not better employing the great advantages and Talents they had, to the glory of God and his Churches good, rather than private Pomp, profit or pleasure. God pleads Against Lawyers. against you Lawyers for your failing in those duties, which the law, your callings, and your consciences call you to, in all righteous causes, public and private; God pleads against the Gentry and Nobility for their luxury and idleness, Against Nobility and Gentry for the looseness and sottery of their lives, doing so little good where they have so much means and opportunities, wanting nothing but good hearts, and a true sense of honour, which aims in all things at God's glory, the Churches flourishing, and their countries' peace. God pleads against all sorts of people Against the people in and out of their Parliaments. in and out of Parliament, for their servility and flattery; their partiality and compliances with any powerful lusts and predominant humours of men, never so palpably against law, reason, religion, oaths, and conscience, prostituting Parliamentary honour, and privileges, fullness and freedom, not only to intern factions, but to extern tumults, and violent impressions, after which open rapes there is no great cause for some men ever to plead their Parliamentary virginity and honour. God pleads against the common people for their Fanatic giddiness and factious foolery, that loves to have many Masters, to heap up teachers to themselves, having itching 2▪ Tim. 4, 3. ears that will not endure sound doctrine, but delight to be carried about with every wind of doctrine, according to the sleights and cheats of those that lie in weight to deceive unstable and silly souls, which are ever learning, and never come to the knowledge of the truth. §. God pleads against the Soldiery, for their variableness, violences, insolences Against the Soldiery. and inconstancies; For their carrying on private and partial interests, so much and so long to the prejudice of the public safety, peace and honour, making their places and pays, their bellies and backs, the Commonwealth; putting the military interest into the scale against the whole Nations: To the exasperating of so many of their countrymen and brethren, who have not patience to see themselves, their Parliaments and Country so oft baffled and defeated, of their long looked for peace, and pretended settlement. Hence they that should be the bulworks and defence of the Nation are looked upon by many, as the le 〈…〉 s and incubuses, that suck the blood and spirits of it, making themselves the only Sovereign Senate, the necessary employment and absolute Government. §. God pleads against Rich men God pleads against rich men. for the uncharitableness of some in hard times, the unhospitableness of others in the distresses of many, even excellent Ministers, who for their consciences sake, and as they think for God's cause, have been reduced to a morsel of bread. For their racking and oppressing poor tenants; for their pusillanimity and cowardice in a good cause; for being so prodigal of their souls and true Religion, to save their estates or their skins. §. God pleads against us all, and as a Nation full of men that are wantonly wicked, and industriously injurious to God and man, delighting to destroy its self, refusing as Against our incorigibleness and obstinacy. Babylon to be healed, when God and good men would have done it long ago. Men that make a mock of such sins as the sober and modest heathens, though Idolaters did abhor; a people as sacrilegious robers' of God, and profaning his house, that in affliction sinned more and more, & contracted dross even in the very fiery furnace; that hath so little fear of God or reverence of man, or sense and conscience of duty to either, that it hath shut its eyes as wilfully blind, and is most impatient to see or seek and follow the things that belong to the public peace; turning piety into policy, and reformation into faction, and the true interests of Religion into those of parties and opinions; that hath so oft prayed and fasted in vain, because we prayed amiss, to consume james 4. 3. blessings on our lusts, fasting only for strife, & for debate, to smite and destroy one another, that might and not right should take place: a Nation that is self condemned and self punished, yet still dares to pursue or applaud most unjust and unwarrantable actions (that is downright villainies and horrid evils) pretending that good willcome thereby; so that from the crown of the head (if we had either Crown or Head) to the sole of the feet it is full of biles and putrified sores, both of sins and pains: We have made necessities of sinning, and God hath made necessities of our sufferings. Therefore hath God suffered us to run God pleads against us by the voice of his rod, & sore afflictions. to this great consumption, and satisfied us with our own delusions; therefore are we smitten once and again by the sword and rod of God, which crieth aloud to us▪ making upon us the wounds of an enemy, which are not healed by any friendly hand, because we are not yet turned to him that smote us; therefore do our eyes fail, not only with the expectation of the calamities that are coming upon us, but also with looking for good things, when behold salvation is far from us, because our iniquities have blinded us, and not only bereft us of, but still keep Our too greattrust in State Physicians. good things from us, yet still we trust to I know not what Physicians or State Montebanks, that are either 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, either many and cannot agree, or unsk lful and of no value, or unfaithful to others, or unhealthful themselves (insani & insanabiles) of inauspicious looks and lives, yea & for the most part incurable as to their sins and sores; loving, as vitiated appetites, to feed not on wholesome food, but on trifles & trash; not Reason and Religion, Law and Gospel, but the froth of seraphic fancies, and unbounded raptures, which the better to colour over and excuse the miseries and ruins of three flourishing Kingdoms, pretend to expect a glorious kingdom of Christ on earth, such as he never yet enjoyed for sixteen hundred years, nor ever will after their methods of blood and violence, which are the weapons of Antichrist and Belial, not of Christ or good Christians. This then is the answer which I may Answer to the first Question. with too much truth and justice give as from the Lord to you or any that inquire of the burden of the Lord, why he pleads, writes, and acts such bitter things against us, as if he would be no more en treated by us, nor his heart could be toward such a people as we are, whose iniquities have forfeited former blessings; the sins of peace made way for war; and war for domestic confusion, and these for foreign invasions, and this for Romish superstitions and Papal usurpations; for there want not factors at home and abroad, Factors for the Romish Cause. who are earnest sticklers for a Cause; (which they call the Catholic Cause) what it means, as to our civil and religious concern, as to the honour of this Nation, and the prosperity, or peace, or liberty of the Reformed Religion, you cannot be such strangers in the Christian world as not to consider. How long (as Eliah said to the Israelites) 1 King. 18. ●●. will you halt between two opinions, between two Causes; nay now they are multiplied to twenty; if the Reformed Church and Religion, which God so blessed with temporal and spiritual blessings, with excellent gifts and graces, to your forefathers in the last century of England's honour and happiness; if it be Gods Cause grounded on his word, sealed by his Spirit, and conform to the best of primitive Churches, let us plead and assert this against all other; for it will be our wisdom and our strength, our honour, our peace and our safety, as it was to our forefathers for the greatest part of an hundred years, while they joined Loyalty to Religion, and thought nothing further from Reformation then Rebellion against lawful Magistrates and their lawful power. The Second Question you may make 2 Query, what is the cause of God we now are to plead in England. to me is, What is this Cause of God, which we are now to plead in England? or what is there left for us to do? I Answer as Joseph to his brethren, this do and live: First, retain righteous Ans. Maintain honest and just principles with in. principles as to civil Justice and true Religion, in your own judgements, and in the Court of your consciences; that you be not warped in them, so as by any events or successes, to call evil good, and good evil, darkness light, and ●sa. 5. 20. light darkness: Though you have not opportunity, or power, or courage at present to plead according to your principles, yet turn not from them, comply not with such as are false, unjust, irreligious; though it be so evil a time, that prudence adviseth, and piety indulgeth you silence; yet time may come when you may plead for Gods Cause according to your principles: Mean time, as by your speaking you do not strengthen the hands of an evil cause and evil doers, so by your silence and reserve, you do cast a just reproach and discountenance upon them; there is yet hope of a good Cause, if the Court and Judge be not corrupted: Notwithstanding that some evil pleaders cry it down. Secondly, As you have power and 2 Plead as you have power and opportunity. opportunity given you, dare to own and plead for God's Cause: 1. In your own breasts and consciences, every grace and virtue, every good thought and 1. In thy own soul. motion is Gods, plead them against thy own lusts and the Devils temptations. 2. In thy Family and relations, plead 2. In thy family. God's Cause against lying, swearing, idleness, profaneness, etc. Thirdly, In civil affairs plead the 3. In the public. cause of Justice against any injury and oppression; the poorest man's cause if just, is Gods; yea and the cause of a wicked man's so far as it is just, is Gods. Specially As to justice. in causes of public Justice, there thou must not be wanting to speak out, by pleading when called to it, by petitioning and praying for Justice, yea and acting for it, according to what is just and lawful; but a just Cause must not be set, as the Ark on the cart of injustice; we must not so plead God's cause as to injure Caesar's, nor Caesar's, as to injure Gods. Fourthly, Plead the cause of true Religion As to true religion. of our reformed Religion, of the The verity of it. Church of England, and its excellent constitutions against the Pseudo Catholic Church of Rome; the cause of Christ's merits and intercession against all mixtures humane or Angelic; the cause of the Scriptures against all Apocryphal traditions, and fanatic illuminations, which are false illusions, and not divine inspirations; The cause of the Lords Supper in its compleatness, against the subductions and seductions of the Mass, which loseth the bread to all, and steals away the wine from the Laity; the cause of the worship of God in a known tongue, to edification, against Latin service, which few understand, so as to say Amen to what is prayed; So the cause of chaste and honourable marriage against scorched and affected coelebacy. Further, Plead as for the verity, so for the unity of the Reformed The unity of it. Religion and this Church, against those louse and locusts, those noxious and noisome vermin of factions, which have so gnawed and deface● this Church, & the reformed religion, and which seek to deprive your children of one, and yourselves of both the holy Sacraments. Plead for the Church's patrimony, for the support and honour of an able, learned, For the Church's patrimony. authoritative and worthy Ministry, in due order and government of it, against those sacrilegious spirits, who with Judas grudge all as waste, that is by a grateful charity and devout superfluity, poured on Christ for the honour of his name, and the encouragement of his Ministers, according to the general tenor of God's word, not only permitting, but commanding us by personal or national donations, to honour God with our substance. Plead for our due ordination & subordination For right ordination and subordination among Ministers. as Ministers, that we may not by novel projects of levelling confusion, & plebeian Anarchy in the Church, be driven from conformity with the ancient Fathers, and the order and universal government of all Christian Churches, as well as our own from our first being Christian. If you think us able or worthy to take care of your souls eternal welfare, and to administer to you spiritual things: Do not think us worthy to be condemned to live to die, and to be buried even yet alive, with the meanest of the people▪ since by what I have now discoursed to you, it may appear that we are neither ignorant of nor enemies to the true cause of God & Jesus Christ, as our blind and bitter enemies do maliciously pretend. Of which cause I have in all my discourse not spoken my own private sense only, but the sense of my Fathers & Brethren, of all true Bishops and Presbyters, and of the whole Church of England. Lastly, Since I hope you are as willing Peroration or conclusion of God's cause and the plead of it. as able to plead God's cause; and since I know you pray that God would plead your and your posterities cause in Church and State, that he would make yours his own cause; Keep, I beseech you, always in your souls this holy resolution, not to be wanting in your place & to your power to assert God's cause; cord et ore, consilio & exemplo, prece & praxi, atramento & sanguine: In which behalf you cannot form your thoughts to a better tune and words than Luther did when he undertook that great Cause of religious reformation, Aut propugnemus causam Dei, aut succumbamus cum causa Dei Either let us stand by the cause of God, or let us fall with it; for as it will rise again in due time, so it will raise those with it to eternal glory, who stood stead fastly by it; Which that we may ever do, God of his mercy grant us wisdom & courage through Jesus Christ our blessed Saviour; to whom with the Father and holy Spirit be everlasting glory. Amen. FINIS.