AN Offspring of MERCY, Issuing out of the Womb of CRUELTY.  
OR, A Passion SERMON, PREACHED AT Christs-Church in Oxford,  
By that late Renowned Ornament of the University, William Cartwright.  ACTS. 2. 36. Let all the House of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ. 
LONDON, Printed by A. M. and are to be sold by john Brown at the guilded Acorn in Pauls-Church-yard, 1652.   

THE PUBLISHER TO THE Ingenuous Reader.  
READER,  
THe best description I can make of Oxford's Cartwright will be but as an heap of noisome dirt before the Gates of the Stately None-such; My silence then as to this great Subject may be excusable, but my offer to  him will be unexpiable: besides it will be as needless to discourse to the major part of men, and Scholars in this Land, of the admirable qualifications of W. C. as laboriously to inform the People, that England was once governed by Kings, and that Government is now dismissed; I may add that the most comprehensive and sifting head-pieces will find it an hard task to produce an Adequate description of the Author, wherein he shall neither be undervalved nor idolised; For my own part I would not offer to detain thee for a single moment (by the interposition of these gross lines) from the immediate Survey of this critical piece; were it not to assure thee that it is no bastard Posthume, because it's printed according to a Copy written with the Authors own hand; Read one pause, and then (I believe) thou wilt have no more power to leave off till thou hast through read him, than he that runs down an hill hath to stop himself till he come to the bottom; However I am sure that upon a serious and candid view of the whole, thou wilt freely declare that this Child is very like his Father,  
William Cartwr   

An Offspring of MERCY Issuing out of the Womb of CRUELTY.  ACTS 2. 23. Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain. 
THe words present unto us St Peter charging the Jews with our Saviour's death: You may therefore observe in them,  
First, The Patient or Person put to death, together with his quality implied in this word (Him) by its relation to the precedent verse, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you, by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did by him.  
Secondly, The Agents or Contrivers of his death; and these of two sorts,  
1. The supernatural Agent, God, together with his manner of operation, a thing of providence in these words, Being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.  
2. The inferior Agents the Jews, together with their manner of operation, A thing of malice in these words, Ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.  
So now, if you will consider, the Patient as God and man, but united; the Agents God and Man, but separated; they and their operations so disposed, that one answers the other: for God there, man here; for delivering there, taking and crucifying and slaying here: And for determinate counsel and foreknowledge there, wicked hands here.  
I begin with the Patient, and his quality employed, Jesus of Nazereth, etc.  
1. The Patient and his quality. The guilt of the world was now such, that for its original and propriety as it came from us, and was ours, none but a man ought to make satisfaction: and for its object and bound, as it was immense against the immense, none but a God could: because the nature in which this infinite offence was, was of itself finite, and so bore no proportion to that immensity of Majesty which it injured. He therefore that was to make the satisfaction, had a necessity laid upon him to be both God and Man. As man only, his sufferings were unprofitable; for he that hath need of a Mediator himself, how could he perform the office of one to himself and others? As God only, his sufferings were impossible; for he that hath nothing to suffer in, how can he suffer? Both natures therefore met, or rather the God of nature took our nature into himself, that he might both suffer by the flesh he assumed, and give a price to these sufferings by the Divinity which assumed it. And of this that he was both God and man, his life and death sufficiently convinced the Jews: For they were both such, as if he, that was himself the truth, had came to bear witness of it. That he was God, appeared by his miracles: he was Man, by his sufferings, Operatus, ut fortis; passus ut infirmus: August. de Pass. Serm. 1. They saw the power of the Son of God combined and twisted with the infirmities of the Son of man: One part privileged and guarded by miracles, the other unsheltred and liable to injuries: He changed the course of nature by his actions, and confessed the weakness of it in his passion. To have done so, and suffered so, the Apostle thinks here demonstration enough to leave the Jews inexcusable of this slaughter. As for doing of miracles his power was such, that when he said, Come forth, the grave could no longer hold her dead; Death itself grew impotent, and never suffered him to call twice. When he said, receive thy sight, or be ye opened, immediately the veil flew from the eyes, and the bars fell from the ears; with the word the blind saw the man that wrought the cure, and with the word the de●● heard the tongue that made him hear; I do not say, that all miracles prove the author a God, for I know some are reserved for the demonstration of Antichrist, that man of sin. But the miracles of our Saviour were all of that stamp, that if we consider either the actions themselves, or his manner of doing them, they must needs show a personal presence of the Deity, and a grace beyond that of Adoption, A grace of union with the father. For the miracles themselves, they were such deeds as were both deeds and signs; wonders, in which the wonder was the least; wonders, that clouded the marvel with the mystery; wonders, that shown more than was conceived, and hid more than they shown. He knew what they said, and what they said not, and answered them when as yet they had but made the question in their hearts. To go further, His works were such, devils obeyed him, not out of will that they desired to do so, But out of Impotence that they could not do otherwise: they tried to resist, and found themselves unable; legions of them doubted him, and legions when they had doubted him confessed him, and did the office of Apostles without Apostles minds. But if you will not believe but the same works may be done by a limited power, yet certainly they cannot the same way: His manner of doing them must evidence him the Son of God however. Those who work with depandance, and in another's power, use to invoke some higher than themselves, and adjure by a name mightier than their own: But Christ as one himself sufficing to himself, made his own name, the conveyance of his power, and tbought it no robbery to be equal with God. We read often in the Gospel, that Virtue went out of him, 
Mar. 5. 30 Luk. 6. 19  So that he received not another's power, but used his own: An Argument of his Divinity, so forcible, that he himself who did the works, appealed from himself to his works, John 10. 38. Etiamsi mihi non creditis▪ operibus credit, though ye believe not me, believe the works. But to show his Divinity only by miracles, was not enough. Sic debuit per miracula Deitatem ostendere, 
Leo Serm. de pass.  ut crederetur veritas humanitatis ipsius: he was to show his Divinity so, as that his humanity might be believed too. And this he did by many, but chief by that greatest miracle of all, his showing that he who did these miracles could die, and that so great power of God could come wrapped up in so much infirmity of the flesh. You may now think, that one who laboured thus by doctrine and miracles to bring the Nation of the Jews to salvation; who, not content with ordinary and each day's innocence, lived at that rate of perfection, that he reckoned less good among ill, and thought nothing enough where there is room for more. One that brought in Religion as the best policy of Kingdoms; and that preached high virtues, but practised higher, still conquering the hardness of his precept, by the seconding it with a more hard example.  
You may certainly, I say, think that the Jews would have demanded this man of miracles, this man himself a miracle greater than those he did, for their King to go in and out before them. But Qui vident, videre nolunt, though he was approved among them by miracles, and they themselves also knew it, they accused him of Treason, and the common cry ran, We have no King but Caesar. Let me a●k you (O ye perversest of Nations) Did Angels appear at the birth of Caesar? Was Glory to God on high, on Earth peace, good will towards men, sung by them when he came into the world? Was Caesar the glory of Israel, and a Horn of salvation to his people? But (alas) not to take him into the throne was not so great an ignominy: To prefer a Robber, a Murderer before him, this was the Dregs of Scorn: Away with this man, and release unto us Barrabas. And again, Not 
Luk. 23. 18, 21.  him but Barabas. What spirit of contempt is here? It runs not thus, Away with Jesus, and not Jesus; But away with this man, and not him: They account him so vile, that (as their superstition was not to name the thing they held execrable) they endeavoured to abolish his memory before his person. But what Barrabas? O ye seeing who see not! One that fed your multitudes? Not one that rob them of that which should have fed them. What Barrabas? One that cured your blind, or healed your halt and lame? no, one whose violences maimed them, and by the frequency of his injury occasionally increased the number perhaps of those miracles that Jesus wrought. Did he use or deserve the whip? Did Barrabas purge the Temple of thiefs, or make it their Den? Did he cast out Devils, or do Acts by the instigation of the Prince of them? A wicked generation they were to ask a sign, but more wicked 
Matt. 12. 39  not to believe when they had so many given them. Nor are they so quietly and civilly impious as not to believe; that they go on to despite the Author of Miracles, by tempting him to do one upon himself. If thou art the Son of God, come down from the Cross: Why the very condition forbids the inference; He therefore will not come down because he is the Son of God, and came to obey his Father, by whom he was delivered, which calls me from the Patient to the superior Agent, God, with his manner of Operation, A thing of Providence, Delivering by determinate counsel and foreknowledge, the second thing to be spoken of, Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.  
Secondly, Superior Agent and his operation.  
Had not God from the beginning decreed the passion of his Son Jesus, our redemption had been a thing of rashness, altogether unworthy either the performance or acceptance of a Deity; And chance being more eminent than care and love in the salvation of mankind, the death of our Saviour had been a riot rather than a sacrifice. As the devil's craft projected and brought about our slavery by the labours and anxiety of malice; So the wisdom of God was to exclude fortune from the business of our redemption, by the counsel and contrivance of love. By the subtlety of the Destroyer, the sting of sin entering into one wounded the world; and the infection of the person spread itself in equal wideness with the nature. By the wisdom then of the preserver, the righteousness of one was to justify the world, and the merits of that person to extend themselves to the utmost skirts of nature too. The Passion therefore of one Christ, was purposely projected, so numerous, that not a single lamb was offered but the herd of the world, that mankind rather than one man suffered, and so the Kingdom of that Prince of darkness was dissolved; Dissolved indeed occasionally by that which raised it, sin. Death destroyed death, and iniquity loosed the bands of iniquity, and the works of that malicious one overthrew themselves. And to this stratagem was there not required the foreknowledge, and counsel, and determination of the Deity?  
The Schools have found out 3. ways by which the father is said to have delivered his Son.  
1. Praeordinando ejus passionem ex 
Aquin. p. 3. q. 47. Ar. 3  suâ voluntate; by preordaining his passion from his eternal will, and this is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, 
Phil. 2. 8.  that determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God in the Text. And according to this they say, his thirst upon the Cross was not of nature but decree, preordained from everlasting, not casual or emergent for the time.  
2. Inspirando ei voluntatem patiendi, by inspiring him with a willingness to suffer, and hence it is that the Apostle saith he became 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, obedient to the death, even the death of the Cross. And this his thirst when he was stretched upon it, was not to fulfil any desire but that of our redemption.  
3. Non protegendo eum a passione, by not protecting him from his sufferings, but wholly exposing him to the bitterness of them: Insomuch that he who was one with the father, complained of the father's dereliction, and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Text, the being given and delivered up into wicked hands.  
But was not the Sons love the less in that his father thus gave him up?  
It had been so indeed▪ had he not given up himself too, 〈◊〉 not himself as 'twere been of counsel against himself, and conspired to his own delivery: His father's will was so much his, as that I may say, his father only did not forsake him, but he himself also in a manner forsook himself, for his willingness to die was such, that his 
Isa. 53. 11  Passion which Isaiah calls his Bruising and the Travel of his Soul; he himself calls but a Baptism, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 
Luke 12. 30.  〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. He came to his death as to a holy dipping or washing, something that would consecrate him; and to all his sufferings as to so many Ceremonies of honour. There are indeed passages in Scripture that seem to express a drawing back of our Saviour, and a kind of reluctance of that great Sacrifice: But if we more warily consider them, they show only a large and handsome fear of the danger, not any close or dishonourable desire to avoid the encounter. In Saint Matthew 'tis said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, he began to be sorrowful and heavy; words 
Mat. 26. 37.  that express a greatness and weight of the danger, with a just apprehension of it; Not any dejection of spirit, but a solemn grief, and sad oppression of it, such as is eminent in afflicted fortitude. In Saint Mark it is said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, he 
Ch. 14. v. 33.  began to be sore amazed, a word that intimates astonishment, and standing aghast at the danger, not through any failing of courage, but through a serious manage of it; he had a generous horror of the cup that was to be drunk of, a noble and allowable amazement, as when nature's affection flies back from the face and presence of the evil, but reason corrects it, and thrusts on to the heat and business, and trade or the danger. These his few deliveries of himself, this from their intended stoning, and that from their plotted precipitation of him, were not so much declinings of sufferings, as reservations of himself to this kind of suffering: And this very expiring in this at last, not 
John 19 30.  of necessity but choice, for 'tis said than He bowed the head and gave up the ghost; not bowing because he had given it up already, but bowing because he now would: None of the most innocent Saints that had sleep most at command, so slumbered when he would, as Christ died when he would: He expected that hour which could not compel him when it came, and he resigned his life not to the law of humane nature (which Socinus unadvisedly affirms) but to that deliberate and definite constitution of eternal order: so that His father's foreknowledge and counsel asserted his death from casualty: His own obedience in laying his life down, exempted it from necessity; His expectation of suffering freed it from immaturity: And his manner of suffering, not how nor when they would? but how and when himself would, vindicated it from the conquest of malice. And thus he was that most absolute sacrifice, fore-known, decreed, obedient, fitted, and himself his own Priest: We see hence God foresaw, and from Eternity decreed the passion of his Son, as being the author of all good: But the sins of those that were the Executors of it, he foresaw only without decreeing, as being the Author of no evil: which will somewhat appear in our consideration  

of 

The Inferior Agents, the Jews.  
Their manner of Operation, a thing of malice, taking and by wicked hands crucifying and slaying.  
The last thing to be spoken of, Him being delivered, etc.     
And if delivered by the determinate counsel of God, how could he not be taken? or how taken by wicked hands? what the Almighty foresees, is it not because he foresees? And what is because he foresees, is it not good? These Questions (I must confess) are certainties in things natural, but vain doubts only in moral. For that necessity of unavoidable being from the foresight of God, binds not in morality, because man is a free and master-creature: A Lord of himself and others, and comes not out with a yoke upon his neck, as the rest of the universe, his Servants do.  
The things of nature God foresees as the object of his knowledge, and the effects of i● too: but the actions of men he foresees, not as the effects but the objects only. Or if you will thus. The foreknowledge of God causeth things not simply to be, but to be as he foreknows them. He then making the Agent contingent, foresees his actions contingent, and so is a cause that they are not necessary. We may not then say, because by the foreknowledge and counsel of God Christ took flesh, that what was fore-known might be done, that God by that foreknowledge and counsel caused it to be done; or because God knew that the Jews would apprehend our Saviour, that he armed them to apprehend him. The will to die, and the slaying of him that would die, were too much enemies to come from the same inspiration. Each 
Leo Serm. 16. on Pass.  action is stamped good or bad, from the intent and root from which it springs: God delivered Jesus out of Love, the Jews took him and slew him out of Envy. There the integrity of the design made his death a sacrifice; Here the blemish made it a murder: thence came a Savour of life unto life, hence of death unto death. But whence there that chain of order? Whence such aeconomy and method in their sin? Why, though God be the Author of no sin, he is yet the orderer of all: who squared not the sins of his enemies to the sufferings of his Son; but the sufferings of his Son to the sins of his enemies? And so extracting good of bad, when bad was, used this malice of the Jews; and as a Physician who is not the Author of that poison which he employs, made a restorative of those who had made themselves a Generation of vipers. And this is that 
Serm. 11. on Pass.  which Leo saith, While they were intent to serve themselves, by wickedness they ministered to one whom they thought not of: God according to Saint Augustine's observation, fullfilling his own good purposes, by the purposes of men that are not good. But I consider, that God hath trusted us with his Commandments, and not with the order of the Universe, and that our own endeavovus are therefore to be looked after by us, and the unsearchableness of his charge to be left to himself. 'Twas not then out of obedience (which cannot be but with knowledge of the rule, which was here secret) but out of malice that the Jews took our Saviour; and Saint Peter here justly chargeth that whole Nation with it, they being all guilty (as Calvin states it) either by action, or consent, or silence in the cause of that righteous one. There were Gentiles ('tis true) in the plot as well as Jews, but the Gentiles did not know him, the Jews did: The Gentiles had no Law nor Scripture: The Jews pretended to know and search both: The Jews were inexcusable because they knew what they did; the Gentiles were so fare excusable that Christ himself seemed to pray for them as for a people not knowing what themselves did. The imputation therefore of the Death is the Jews by excellence: And our Saviour's sufferings were in this the greater, that they were from such a people.  
For if we consider the whole Nation, what were they? The slaves of the Romans then, and the refuse of the world ever; A people (as at this day) hating all, and hated of all: A Nation that God chose (as himself intimates) not for any worth or bravery of spirit, but that he might glorify himself in the vile things of the earth, and show his strength in weakness: no comfort then to our Saviour from the Author of his passion, nor the fall any way ennobled by the hand from whence it came: He had that utmost of misfortune in death, not to find an honourable enemy, Their behaviour then was viler than their persons. The Religious and heavy malice of the Priests and Elders, the solemn and severe impiety of the Scribes and Pharisees, seriously advising that no tumult may disturb the feast. You may think this was from the very chair of Religion: The Court indeed pretended devotion, but served a most impious design. This fear of tumult in the solemnity (as is observed by one of the Fathers) was not that the people might not sin, but that they might not save him: They feared not Profanation, but a rescue. These were wicked intentions I am sure, what must the hands then be that executed them? why stand a while, and observe, and then conclude.  
Jesus taken (if he may be said taken who came into their hands) is hurried from place to place, posted from Judge to Judge, put over from torment to torment, from the Garden to Annas, from Annas to Caiphas, from Caiphas to Pilate, from Pilate to Herod, from Herod to Pilate again; Cruelty walking the circle, and impiety (if ever) now treading the ring. His apprehending joined to his Agony, his accusation to his apprehending, and his condemnation to that: Then his condemnation received by irrision, irrision by stripes, stripes by crowning with thorns. ('Tis not to be told with the same continuation that he suffered it) Then carrying his Cross, extension, nailing, lifting up, and after all this business, and tumult of motion, his rest only upon the Cross. A rest indeed, such as witty cruelty, when it employs and tasks invention to serve it, would at last give: A rest, by which torment ceased not but was continued; A rest that detained the soul only to make it part with more torture; the struggling Spirit escaping by parcels, as water out of a narrow mouthed vessel, the man dying not once, but long. And were not these wicked hands? But there is yet something behind to make even the Cross more infamous, more a Cross; They crucified him (as it is generally observed) In medio terrae, in the very centre and navel of the earth; In medio populi, in the middle channel of floods of people; In medio malefactorum, between thiefs, as the more thief; In an infamous place, on high, without garments, in the force of day, that nothing could be hidden: Lastly, at the Feast of their Passeover, those Nundinae Religiosae, those public Wakes of Religion, and general Mart of Sacrificing, were not these, if any, wicked hands? wicked indeed to the utmost if you consider only the Action; But if the intention, the book of Infamy wants a name to brand them. For they did this to despite the Lord of life, and to grieve his Spirit who was to seal them to the day of redemption.  
And now after these hands, Is this he that is more beautiful than all the Sons of men? This that goodly person that whosoever looked on, blest the Womb that bore him, and the paps that gave him suck? This that face that the Angels cannot look on, and yet will not look off? yes, I add to this, their malice hath augmented that beauty. Quae dabo magis ex horrido 
Seneca.  speciosa, Miseries consecrate worthy countenances, and make that which entire was our pleasure, broken become our worship. Perdiderunt tot mala, they lost all their injuries: That their sponge swelled with gall and vinegar, did (as that froward Painter's sponge) perfect that work they thought to spoil. For when he had drunk, He said, Consummatum est It is finished: and so by a largeness of charity freely breathing out his saving spirit into the world, revived the nations dead in trespasses. Here me thinks I see the Cross set up as the bound and pillar of the Law; and hear God himself saying, Hitherto shalt thou come and no further, and here shall thy kill letter itself die.  
Thus was it his determinate counsel, that the Old Testament should be swallowed up in the New, that all those Ceremonies of sacrifice should be buried in that immaculate sacrifice that he himself delivered, and that the Sepulchre of Moses so long hid from the world, should be found at last in our Saviour Christ. Thus did the Sun of Righteousness set with more grace and sweetness, then either he did rise or run his course with, and enlightening his thorns in so many pointed Rays, of that his greatest work, His death made glories and circles of lustre for all the rest of his actions: Thus when the Jews by divine foreknowledge had brought the Deity to that despicableness, that they occasioned those miracles, That He should be impleaded and condemned who is Judge of all; He laden with curses, that scatters blessings as Sunne-beams over the face of the world; That health itself languished, and the very impassable suffered. God (who is wont to take his rise where men stop) was pleased to strike miracles out of these, greater than these. For behold, An Offspring of Mercy, issuing out of the womb of Cruelty; A bundle of new miracles as fare beyond the former, as they are opposite to them; A condemnation that absolves us; A curse that blesseth us; A sickness that recovers us; and a death itself that quickens us; So much was his love stronger than death, who 
Heb. 5. 8, 9  though He were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things he suffered; and being made perfect he became the Author of eternal salvation to all them that obey him.  
Among which number, O Lord, writ our names, for his sake who this day suffered to blot out that hand-writing that was against us.  
Amen.