Repentance and Conversion, THE Fabric of Salvation: OR, The SAINT'S joy in Heaven, FOR The Sinners sorrow upon Earth.  
Being the last SERMONS Preached by that Reverend and Learned JOHN HEWYT, D. D. Late Minister of St. Gregory's by St. Paul's.  
With other of his Sermons preached there.  
Dedicated to all his pious Auditors, especially those of the said Parish.  
Also an Advertisement concerning some Sermons lately printed, and pretended to be the Doctors, but are disavowed By 

GEO. WILD.  
JO. BARWICK.    
LONDON, Printed by J. C And are to be sold by Samuel Speed, at the sign of the Printing Press, in St. Paul's Churchyard, 1658.   

TO THE PIOUS AUDITORS OF THE LATE REVEREND AUTHOR, Especially those of St. Gregory's Parish, in London.  
IT is not the Ignis fatuus of Applause, and popular Euge's, that produced this Publication; since 'tis perspicuous, no man, but he that hath as great a stock of impudence, as impiety, can lay claim to it; being the composition of your Reverend Pastor, lately devested of Mortality.  
Nor is the exposing these Sermons to public view intended to add to the mass of any man's dolour or Internal Regret, for the violent death of the pious Author; but to prevent the fictitious Chimaeras of many crazy brains, that would shroud themselves under his Name, induced to it by Avarice,; whose thoughts levelly at no other mark but their own sordid Lucre; and also, that so pious a Beadsman might have somewhat engraven upon the forehead of Time, and his name velit nolit invidia vigere. Wherefore here ye have a Volume of the elaborate Pieces of this famous Pillar of the Church; some, as they did flow in their native purity from his own mouth; others, penned by no meaner a Scribe then his sacred self.  
'Tis but small, as to the Bulk; but vast, as to the Value; in which is such a plerophory of significant expressions, besides the solid Divinity, that if uprightly fathomed by the utmost extent of the sublimest thought, it will be judged so neat and terse a Piece, that the whole World can scarce produce a Parallel. Therefore they crowd and thrust themselves under the wings of your Patronage, that so (being acceptable to you all his quondam-Parishioners) they may be sheltered from the contagious emissions of that universal Basilisk, Detraction.  
That there is nothing able to preserve a man's fame entire and verdant in spite of the Iron teeth of time, but the issue of the Brain, the Muse of Mellifluous Naso, as ingenuously, as harmoniously, informs us, by this warbling Rhythm: 
— Nil non mortale te nemus  
Pectoris exceptis, ingeniique bonis.  Pity it is, they should continue in the obscure darkness of Latency, and the opack shades of silence. Therefore do they now, like Noah's dove, bear an Olive-branch of Assurance and Consolation to all souls, that as yet remain in the Ark of God, preserved from the deluge of sin.  
They were the last that he pronounced in a Pulpit; therefore should be entertained with more zeal, and read with more circumspection: that God may be praised, his servant admired, your souls benefited, and our Holy Mother the Church lamented for the death of so pious a Son of hers; whose loss no pen can portray with its sable colours, nor tongue express by all it's diapered variety. But since it is the will of the Almighty to permit such things for our correction and amendment, let us with a pious silence resign ourselves up unto God (according to the advice of this renowned Clergyman in his last words) and pray for a more comely decorum in the Church, that so the celestial Manna of God's Word, may be administered to us by the truly-Orthodox; that the Queen of Sciences, Divinity, may not be so sluttishly attired, as it appoars too often she is, to our intolerable grief; that men may no longer shun the beauty of the Church, but dwell in Gods Holy Temple.  
One thing may not be omitted, and that is this: when the Library of this famous Divine was surveyed, on some of his writings there was found engraven with his own pen, these words; 
Luk. 18.13.  God be merciful to me a sinner; and underneath, this ingenious and divine Paraphrase: To separate God and Mercy, would be blasphemy; To separate Mercy and Sinner, would be despair; To separate me and sinner, would be presumption: A divine Paraphrase, worthy so rare a Divine.  
To accumulate his Hearse with Encomiums, will be to little purpose, since his works will predicate his Fame, 
— A Gabibus usque  
Auroram & Gangem.   
This is the comfort of all true Christians; he is not amissus, but praemissus; not lost, but sent before: let us crave therefore of the Almighty Jehovah, that we may all meet in Heaven with him, there to sing perpetual Hallelujahs, World without end.   

An Advertisement, concerning some Notes, pretended to be Doctor HEWYT'S Sermons.  
WHereas some imperfect notes were upon a false suggestion, and by other indirect means, entered into the Hall-book of the Company of Stationers, for the use of Mr. Eversden at the Greyhound, and Mr. Rook at the Lamb, both in St. Paul's Churchyard, under the Title of Dr. HEWYT'S Sermons: These are to signify to all whom it may concern,  
1. That they are none of Dr. HEWYT'S Sermons, but only imperfect notes taken from him as he preached, (or perhaps from some others) in short writing.  
2. That they were entered without the consent or knowledge of the right Honourable the Lady MARY HEWYT, Relict of the said Doctor; and are printed contrary to the best endeavours her Ladyship could use by fair means to suppress them, as is very well known to the Master, Wardens, and Assistants of the Stationer's Company.  
3. That if any thing shall be printed or produced in writing, pretending the said Ladies consent, the same hath been, as is still, disavowed by her Ladyship as none of hers: For all that she gave her hand for, or her consent unto, was only a caveat that nothing should be printed in Doctor HEWYTS name without her consent: and whatsoever there is more in that paper under her hand, was an addition, (to call it no worse) of some other (whose name we conceal in mere charity) after the paper was subscribed, as was manifested to the Company at their Court, holden on Monday the 14. of June; and will be further justified upon oath, by two sufficient witnesses, when occasion shall serve.  


Geo. Wild.  
Jo. Barwick.     


IN HAS Conciones Elucubratas admodum Reverendi Doctissimique Viri, JOANNIS HEVETI, S. T. D.  
ITae profanatae procul huc decedite chartae,  
Praelorum pudor, & perniciosa Lues.  
Hic vates Divina docet, Mundique caducas  
Spernere Delicias, & meliora sequi.  
Tum Peccatorem lapsos convertere gressus  
Admonet & vitae poenituisse suae.  
Ind Redemptoris pandit Mysteria magni  
Nosque docet solam justificare Fidem.  
Tum monstrat trepidis quae sit vexatio Sanctis,  
Ballaque cum populis irrequieta Piis.  
Scilicet in mediis posita est Ecclesia damnis,  
 cingunt teneras torna Vepreta Rosas.  
Postremò affectus sacrosque exponit amores,  
Visceraque aeterni semper aperta DEI.  
Sic benè percurris diae Theoremata vitae,  
Gloria Rostrorum, Deliciaeque Togae,  
Quaeque doces, vitâ peragis, Fatoque potitus  
Inter coelicolas stas numerande Choros.  
J. W.   

IN LAUDEM Perillustris Literatissimique JOANNIS HEVETI, D. D. Ad nodum reverendi, nec non Orthodoxa, pietate, fide, & integritate spectatissimi.  
ADsis Melpomene, lugubribus adsis jambis,  
Ut rores teneras Imbre cadente genas.  
Ite procul nugae, fallacia numina vatum,  
Fictaque de nimio monstra creata mero,  
Non Phoci, aut Aganippe tuas jactate Paludes;  
Dulcius ex Sacro Fonte bibuntur aquae.  
HEWETTUM non vana juvant dum coelica pangat,  
Et canat Angelicos sacra Thalia sonos.  
Heu dolor! at mediis vates abscinditur annis,  
Et cadit offenso victima Grata Deo.  
Induitur pulla viduata Ecclesia veste  
Et Pietas socio semisepulta rogo:  
Dum Doctor venerande cadas flentumque veharis  
Fluminibus, superis velificando plagis.  
Nam Coelo adscripsit pietas, virtusque dicavit  
Pectora & in tacto candidiora Nive.  
Ergo quid insano juvat indulgere dolori?  
Fataque flebilibus commemorare modis  
Praesulis erepti terris? dum luce potiri,  
Nec Fato poterat nobiliore mori.  
J. G.    

Repentance & Conversion, THE Fabric of Salvation.  In the Gospel according to St. Luke, Chap. 15. vers. 7. it is thus written: 
I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, that need no repentance.  
NO man can be so sordidly blockish, 
SERM. I.  or so wickedly profane, as to deny the necessity and benefit of Repentance: Nor can there be any that plead a right to the title of Christians, but will acknowledge themselves so implunged into Sin, as, without Repentance, they deserve to be wrapped up in the embraces of eternal flames. This is the stable foundation upon which the solid Christian builds the assured Fabric of his future felicity. There is a procul O procul it oh profane! written upon the gates of heaven, unless Repentance procure you entrance. Since, therefore, Beloved, 'tis so necessary a Christian duty, I have made choice of this Text; wherein (not to stand upon Divisions, for we have too many of them already) there are Two Parts present themselves to your Meditation.  
1. That there is joy in heaven for the souls of the just that are already converted; as appears by that Conjunction 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or quam, then, that hath reference to somewhat preceding.  
2. That there is far more joy in heaven for the conversion of a penitent sinner.  
This second in Order, though first placed in the Verse, shall be the subject of our ensuing Discourse. We must therefore consider, 

1. What Repentance is: and  
2. How to become true Penitents.    
1. What it is: and that you shall know by this ensuing Definition: 'Tis a new Creation, or sacred Metamorphosis of the soul, converting it from sin to God. The Greek word is very emphatical, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, which imports as much as a recollecting of the mind, and meditating as it were upon former offences, so as to repent and be hearty sorry for them; not with a superficial and slight kind of grief, but a real, cordial, and extraordinary Compunction and Contrition for sin.  
Now this Repentance presupposeth some sin formerly committed, some crime heretofore perpetrated. That we are all infected with the Leprosy of sin, no rational Christian I presume will deny, or dare gainsay. Our first parents have infused, or rather left a taint of their first sin upon all their posterity; so that no man, how devout soever he be, can plead a freedom from Original corruption: Nemo non inficitur Adami labe: All persons are infected with the sin of our first parents; and, as thorough a channel, the tincture of it hath taken its course to the whole world. You may as well separate hic homo, and hoc individuum, as Man and Original sin. Besides this, how is our life made up of an infinite number of offences and trespasses! 'Tis but a fasciculus or forrago peccatorum, a Bundle or Miscellany of sin: sins Original, and sins Actual; sins of Omission, and sins of Commission; sins of ignorance, and sins of Knowledge; sins against the Law of God, and sins against his Gospel; sins against Light, and sins against Love. Our sinful Words are more than word can express; our sinful Thoughts are more than thought can conceive: our sinful Deeds have been so many in number, and so heinous in nature, that we have scarce left number for more, or place for worse. Nay, the very Heathens, though poisoned with Idolatry, and guided by no other light but the Rush-candle of Nature, could cry out, Nemo sine crimine vivit: All men sin. Since therefore we are all more or less vicious, all more or less peccato dediti; since we are all sick of this disease of sin, all troubled with this malady; we must seek out a Physician that may prescribe us a Medicine, a Cure for this our filthy Leprosy. The Physician is our Saviour JESUS; and so much is intimated unto us by his Name in the Original, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, which hath its derivation from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to heal, and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to save: first he heals, and then he saves: first he remedies the distemper of the body, and then he saves the soul. And that you may be inexcusable if you split the precious vessels of your souls upon the rock of Perdition; and without defence, that you may not pretend either a sinful Bashfulness, or Insufficiency and Unworthiness; He himself hath vouchsafed to descend so far below himself, as to give you invitation, Matth. 11.28. Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will ease you. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, it is in the Original; all ye that groan under the weight of sin, as Porters do under a heavy burden; and I will ease you, saith our Saviour. So that whosoever he be that groans under the weight of sin, and lies under the wrack of a pricking Conscience, may come, unless he be wilfully bend upon his own ruin, and receive help from the Prince of Physicians, and the God of them too. For he is the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world, as that pious Anagram of his blessed Name doth intimate unto us; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉: Thou art the Lamb, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, the irreprehensible Lamb, or Lamb without spot or blemish: but the Original signifies somewhat more; so undefiled, and so pure, that Momus himself cannot tell how to carp at him. Nay, the blessed Angels, Heaven itself rejoiceth at the conversion of a penitent sinner; Repentance therefore is a thing necessary and requisite to the salvation of a soul. Christ is our Physician, and Repentance is our Physic. We may soon, with the tears of sincere Contrition, wash ourselves in the blood of Christ, from all putrefaction and filthiness that sin hath polluted us withal. Therefore we ought all of us to begin and take a Lesson of Repentance in the School of Christ: we ought to begin ab incunabulis, in our very youth; and not dare florem diabolo, foecem Deo; not waste away the flower and vigour of our youthful years in the devil's vassalage, and when our heads are hoary and Periwiged with the Snow of Age, then to consecrate ourselves to the service of God, and to offer up ourselves to the Altar of his Acceptance, and that he would for the merits of our most blessed Saviour, his most blessed Son, who suffered that cursed and ignominious death, the death of the Cross, for our sins, have mercy upon us, and pardon all our enormities past, present and to come. Begin in May, not in December: for assure yourselves, God will never accept of the devils leave. You must not stream out your Youth in Wine, and live a Lapling to the Silk and Dainties; wear all your Manors on your back at once, and like the rich man in the Gospel, go attired in purple, and far deliciously every day; and then think when you are come to the Spectacle, and bearingstaff, to turn to God, and steer the Vessel of your soul toward heaven. Sera poenitentia raro vera: Repentance in the declining of a man's age, when the Sun of his life is posting to the West, is seldom true. The Thief upon the Cross, of whom we may truly say, Periisset, nisi periisset, was saved: There was one saved, that none might despair; and but one, that none might presume.  
Use not the common Shift of the world, to say that you are not guilty of any Crying sins; they are but petty offences. For I must tell you, Beloved, these are but diabolical suggestions infused into you by the spirit of Darkness: you must first find out a small God, before you can commit a small sin. Nay, all sins, of what sort soever they be, are great sins, sins of a high stature, because committed against the Law of the sin-detesting God. For were it not for the Law of God, that strictly and severely prohibits all manner of sin, and commands uprightness, there would be no such thing in the world as Sin: for what is sin, but the transgression of God's Law? And therefore holy David acknowledged his sins to be committed against God, because he had transgressed & violated his Law and Commandment: which made him to break forth into that penitent and holy Rapture; Against thee, against thee only have I sinned: Psal. 51.4. We are all naturally sinful: there is no difference by Nature, between the Elect and Reprobate, neither in external nor internal disposition, until it be made by Grace. St. Paul was a Persecutor of as deep a Scarlet-dye, as ever Domitian or Julian was: Zacheus, as unconscionable and miserable a Worldling, as the rich Glutton in the Gospel, Luke 16.19. All persons are alike by Nature, till Grace comes in and makes a difference: for we are all by Nature children of wrath, heirs of perdition, and in danger of damnation. 'Tis Regeneration, that procures us our passage to heaven: Except a man be reborn, (or born anew) he cannot see the kingdom of God: Joh. 3. and Luk. 13.5. Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. So that so long as we remain in the state of Nature, being conceived in sin, and brought forth in iniquity, we are still remaining in a most desperate and damnable condition.  
For the poison of our Nature is as virulent in us, as in the wicked; and by Nature we are as much addicted to all manner of sins: And though by the special mercy of the Father of mercies, we have escaped many damnable and detestable crimes, which we find the wicked have been often implunged into; 'tis not because we are of a more pure and undefiled nature than they, (for 'tis the same as theirs) but because the envenomed virulency thereof hath not as yet manifested itself in us; which we have just cause every day to fear: for, in truth, we have taken so much of the devil's Opium, that, without Repentance, we shall never be awakened out of the dead sleep of sin.  
Therefore let us strive with a holy resolution to shake off these rags of Natural Corruption, and cloth out selves with the precious garment of Christ Jesus. Let us get into a state of grace, and by a real & sincere Repentance turn over a new leaf, become converts & disciples of our Saviour. Adam, you know, did not fall as a private man, but as the Root of all Mankind; and we all partake of that Fall, since we are the issue of his loins: and the vessels of our bodies still keep a smack of the old relish. For, according to the Poet, 
Quo semel est imbuta recens servabit odorem,  
Testa diu.   
The sweetest Stream that flows, will relish of the soil that it hath saluted.  Inficitur terrae sordibus unda fluens. 
Sheep never come near a hedge, but they leave some Wool behind them. One man infected with the Plague, will corrupt ten men, sooner than ten men can cure one infected person. You know what the Satirist saith: 
— Grex totus in agris,  
Unius scabie cadit, & porrigine porci.  Which our English Proverb renders exactly, One scabbed sheep will spoil the whole flock.  
Well might that sweet-mouthed Roman call this The Iron Age: for Iniquity is an epidemical distemper, or a Chronical Disease, that admits of no Cure but Repentance, and that sincere too. And I fear that the Poet writ in Prophetic measures, when his Muse warbled this so suitable an expression to our Times: 
Nil erit ulterius, quod nostris moribus addat  
Posteritas.   
Our Age is grown to such a height of Impiety, that Posterity will not be able to add any thing to it. Pride swaggers in the streets, Luxury is housed, and Drunkenness reels to and fro, notwithstanding the heavy Judgements of God denounced against those that exercise such abominations: and all the Armour of the mightiest Potentates in the world is not able to resist the Prophets of God, when their Commission is sealed with God's Ipse dixit, cujus verbum ab intention, quia veritas, factum a verbo, quia virtus, non differt. God's word is a word with a deed; and what he saith, shall be done without doubt or demur: And all good men will obey his Law and Commandment: but where are these good men now adays? A good man is hard to be found; he is rara avis in terris, sprung from the ashes of some dead Phoenix, whose abode is scarce known: he is like the Berries of the Prophet Isaiah's tree, here and there one to be found: nay, 'tis a thousand to one, if you find one in a thousand. The jerking Satirist, the Lash of his time, could say, so long since, much more than may we now, 
Rari quippe boni, numero vix sunt totidem, quot  
Thebarum portae vel divitis ostia Nili.   
There are but seven good men, at most, saith he. A small number indeed! What the Philosopher saith of Good, I'm sure is in these our Times verified of Evil: Malum est sui diffusivum: Evil is diffusive; 'tis of a spreading nature; a disease that is catching; therefore we should never go abroad without an Antidote against it; and that is the Word of God: for, Antidotum verbi serpentis venenum expugnat: The Word of God is a sovereign Antidote against the poison of the Serpent. We live now in the sink of Time, wherein Virtue is accounted a Prodigy, and Piety a Crime, or at the best a Simplicity. And our Aaron's are taken away, and put aside as useless; and the people die of the Plague: I wonder who shall stand between the living and the dead, holding the Censers, and making Atonement for them? They are cast aside, Beloved, and none but a Spurious Issue admitted of, that have no Authority nor Commission. Quicquid libet licet, nunc dierum; and yet 'tis strange, non licet esse bonus. And take this by the way, That he that will be a godly Christian, must, like the Antipodes, run a contrary course to the men of the world. 'Tis sin, and the Fall of our parents, that hath brought us into this condition: here we lie: but thanks to the Almighty, here is comfort enough for the most heinous sinner, so he have not committed the sin against the holy Ghost, if he will but repent. Sacrae paginae scatent hujusmodi consolationibus. The Scripture abounds with Lectures of Comfort to all penitent sinners: Isai. 55.7. Let the wicked forsake his ways, and the unrighteous his own imaginations, and turn unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he is ready to forgive. And so likewise in Ezek. 18.21, 22. If the wicked will return from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right; he shall surely live, and not die: all his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him; but in his righteousness that he hath done, shall he live. The Scripture is an Ocean that flows with such comfortable streams; and that both the Old and New Testament, as it appears in 1 Joh. 1.9. If we acknowledge our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, from all injustice. And so in the 2. Chap. of the same Epistle, vers. the 1. and 2. If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the just. And he is the reconciliation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world: 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉: Now what need we care what suit we commence, at the Upper-bench in Heaven, so long as we have Christ for our Lawyer, our Counsellor? Si Deus nobiscum, quis contra nos? if God be for us, who shall be against us?  
1 Use. This than should serve for a Use of Consolation, to stir up all persons to a real and true repentance. Since Christ is for them; since he calls himself their Advocate, their Pleader, their Counsellor; and hath promised so often that whosoever repenteth shall not perish, but have everlasting life: And though every man be an enemy to his own salvation, & the flesh resist the same work; & the devil doth endeavour by his wicked machinations to stir up in the heart of a man an aversion to conversion; this should create in us more firm and settled resolutions after the work, since we have the promise of our blessed Saviour for success in our undertaking; but this cannot be performed without a holy indefatigable industry on our part; for 'tis called in holy writ, a Birth, a Death, a Circumcision; and you know no Birth, no Death, no cutting off of the flesh can be without care, pain and labour: The Embryo is not delivered out of the womb of the mother without pain; nay, many times the womb proves the tomb; and therefore you cannot imagine it is a thing possible, to be delivered of sin, which is in you, was conceived with you, and which you since your nativity, unto this moment, have cherished with such delight; and not to have a relish or gust of pain and travail in the new birth, in your regeneration. Assure yourself that it will cost you many a salt tear, many a bitter groan, many a heavy sigh, before you have this work of regeneration perfectly wrought in you. Nemo repent fit optimus. No man can arrive to the height of a virtue in a moment; & since 'tis res tam ardua, tantae molis opus: so difficult, and so necessary a work; you ought all to labour more fervently than hitherto you have done, and use all holy means that God hath constituted and appointed in sacred writ as subservient thereunto, viz. The Word read and preached by the faithful & Orthodox Pastors of the Church; the Sacraments reverently and duly administered in the most decent and devout manner; Prayer and holy ejaculations that dart up the desire of the soul to God, and meditation on the Law of God; crying unto him noctes atque dies, night and day for his blessed assistance in a work of so great moment and consequence as the regeneration of man: add hereunto an unfeigned repentance of all sins committed; and let it not be a little lip-labour only, but it must proceed from a real and contrite heart, free from hypocrisy and dissimulation.  
2 Use. Secondly, this serves as Use of Terror to all careless and impenitent sinners, that will follow the swinge of their own pleasure, and the lusts of the flesh, though they shipwreck their souls inevitably. How should this pull down and totally demolish the Pyramid of pride, man's heart, and divest them of their gaudy attire, and change it for sackcloth and ashes, which is far more suitable to their spiritual condition? Yet how do they ruffle in velvet a la mode, and boast and vaunt in the spoils of a poor silkworm! yet in the interim they consider not that the sores of Lazarus will make as good dust as the paint of Jezabel; and that their poor souls languish and are very near starved for want of heavenly Manna, God's Sacred word, whilst they pamper their bodies, and plump them with delicacies, which serves only to make them more fat and gorgeous nourishment for worms. Learn to wash yourselves by the tears of repentance from the filth of sin: your whole life should be a continued Lent; the Springtime of your sanctified resolutions, and the hourglass of your remaining days should be filled with the dust of mortified concupiscence; you should read nothing but lectures of penitency, and so like a good and solid Christian verify what is feigned of the Phoenix, in a bed of spices, in odours of devotion, kindled by the beams of the true Sun of righteousness, quickening out of the ashes an acceptable sacrifice to the Father of Lights; for he delighteth not in the death of a sinner, but rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live. 'Tis not a light sorrow, or petty sigh, or a Miserere mei Domine at the last gasp, when the soul is going to give his ultimum vale to the body, will serve your turn, or procure pardon of your sins from God; no, no; you must labour to be humbled more deeply for your enormous offences and heinous sins, which seal the heavens with their clamour, and cry for vengeance from the Lord of heaven; so that if we could possibly shed tears of blood for our crimson scarlet sins, we should do it; for all come short of that grief for sin, and real contrition of heart, that we ought to have. Can we stream out the residue of our days that it shall please the Almighty to allow us in this vale of misery; could we consume and waste the Taper of our life in sighs, and heart-breaking groans; 'twere all little enough to beg and obtain pardon of God for our sins. You must bathe the Leprosy of your sin in a Jordan of tears, before you can come to the Land of Canaan, the Zoar of salvation. Life you know is uncertain, death certain; you had best therefore beloved take hold of opportunity by the forelock; for, post est occasio calva: an opportunity once slipped, is seldom recovered: whilst it is called to day, harden not your heart: Nemo sibi crastinum promittat; Let no man assure himself of the morrow; for death wrestleth with every man, and serius aut citius mortem properamus adunam; sooner or later he gets a fall: he hath tripped up the heels of all our Ancestors, and you know not how soon he may foil you; Venienti occurrite morbo; meet the distemper, and remedy it whilst it is curable. Delays in rebus sanctis are very dangerous; repent therefore of your sins before death: that though he be termed by the Heathen Philosopher's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, he may be to you a Messenger that bringeth glad tidings: a guide to conduct you from a momentany unto eternal life, which we shall enjoy with God in secula seculorum. I could wish cordially that that saying of that good old man St. Cyprian were not so true as daily experience manifests it, In aetate senescunt, in pietate juvenescunt. Most men now adays have grey heads and green wits, capita cana, and corda vana; and when their heads are full of silver hairs, they have not so much as sucked in their Rudiments: they have need of milk, the food of babes and sucklings, instead of the more solid grounds and fundamentals of Religion. Whereas ancient Christians should be walking Laws, and talking Statutes; their dicta, edicta; and their actiones, axiomata, as Gregory Nazianzen saith. 'Tis a sad thing to be near heaven, and never the near; to be at the gates of death, before they have learned one lesson of repentance: and if their repentance be sorrowless, 'twill prove but a sorry one: Old men should like trees of righteousness bear fruit in their old age, when their heads are candied with hoary hair; but not the fruits of old age, covetousness, suspicion, and the like. If the Evangelists in their time could cry out, Repent, repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand; it must of necessity be nearer at hand now then it was then; therefore beloved, I have the more cause to press this Doctrine of repentance upon you: and let me tell you, that there is no music so melodious in the ears of God, as that which resounds from a broken instrument: God loves a broken heart, and yet he'll have the whole heart or none: 'tis strange, and yet true, repentance is a consumption, yet no sickness; and what man would not willingly condescend to undergo such a consumption here, that he might not be consumed in endless, easeless and remediless flames and torments hereafter? One thing I do very much admire at, viz. how they can expect favour from God, that will grant favour to none but upon the devil's conditions in the 24 of St. Matthew, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, if falling down thou wilt worship. They would have others fall down and worship them, when as they will not worship and adore God. Dejecisti eos, dum elevarentur, saith the Psalmist; a strange kind of expression, Thou hast taken them down, whilst thou liftedst them up: this seems to have an allusion to the Eagle and other birds of prey, who having found an Oyster, that they with their own strength cannot break, or open; they soar aloft, and spying the cleft of a rock (for they are very quicksighted, as natural Philosophers inform us) they let the Oyster fall perpendicularly, and so it breaking to pieces, they come to their desired food: so God he lifts them up on high, that they may the better get a fall.  
— Tolluntur in altum,  
Ut lapsu graviore ruant—  
Such haughty minds are not seasoned aright; they have no true frame of a penitent spirit; neither will God accept of such persons: and till you be reconciled to God through his son Jesus Christ, and are washed and cleansed from all your iniquities by the tears of repentance, and be converted from sin to God, your case is desperate; and it had been better for you to have been a beast, than a man. Display your sins before God, not hypocritically, but really; for there is no dissembling with God: and confession in your mouth, if it be hypocritical, will be like a Shibboleth in the Hebrew; you cannot pronounce it without lisping: your sins are heinous, confess them cordially to be so; your sins are many in number, acknowledge them to be so; the Terra incognita of your corruptions is far larger than the Terra cognita. But let not the heinousness of thy sin, the number or multitude of them, deter thee from repentance; but proceed with a holy resolution to go through all difficulties by the help of Christ Jesus, and all objections that the world, the flesh, and the devil can allege against you, till you have obtained pardon and remission of your sins: never cease, till you come to a period; for he that intends to sing Te Deum to the Almighty, must not break off till he come to the end. Proceed, I say, beloved, ad finem usque, and rely upon the merits of our Jesus: and be not put off by the heinousness of your sins, and the rigour of the Law of God; for if the most holy man that ever breathed upon the face of the earth, should be weighed in the balance of the Sanctuary, and no grain of favour be allowed him, then without all doubt mean tekel might be applied to him, he would be found too light. There will be grains of allowance to thee, without question; therefore be converted, and turn from the broad way of sin and death, to the narrow path of life and eternal glory; for such a soul will be acceptable unto the Lord; the blessed Choir of Angels will rejoice at the conversion of such a sinner; For (according to my Text) joy shall be in Heaven over one sinner that repententh, more than over ninety and nine just persons, that need no repentance. So much for this time.   

Repentance & Conversion, THE Fabric of Salvation.  In the Gospel according to St. Luke, Chap. 15. vers. 7. it is thus written: 
I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, that need no repentance.  
WE have already discoursed upon these words, 
SERM. II.  and demonstrated unto you both by Scripture and other authority, the necessity and excellency of Repentance: We have largely discoursed of the nature of repentance, and defined it unto you. Now not to detain you with any farther repetition, we shall immediately fall upon the second observation that we raised from the words of the Text, and that was this, viz. How to become true poenitents.  
And really, beloved, hic labour, hoc opus est, or at least should be; this should be the white at which every true Christian should levelly his thoughts; This aught to be the Asylum unto which every godly man should have recourse, when he is prosecuted and persecuted both by sin and Satan; This should be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, or sum of every man's actions, and the chiefest and first of his intentions, the cream and top of his holy ambition: But where shall we traffic for true penitent souls? what climate affords them? all Nations are more or less given to some heinous crime. To be sober among the Germans, settled among the French, chaste among the Italians, and loyal among the English, is rare, and worthy admiration: you need not make any strict inquisition after impiety, there is enough daily presented upon the stage of the world; there is too too much, God knows: Truth, the pure, innocent, undefiled Truth, like the Dove of Noah, flies about, and scarce gets any room for her footing; she is mounted to heaven with Astraea: but if you desire to find out a whorish Achan, a covetous Ahab, a hardhearted Pharaoh, a Nebuchadonozor quaffing in the bowls of the Sanctuary, a sacrilegious fellow buying Bishops Lands, you may meet with him in every corner, Scatent plateae hujusmodi viris nequam: for truth is expelled nunc dierum. To be true and loyal, marcheth in the rank of impossibilities, as the world is now: but let us operum dare, labour tooth and nail, as we say proverbially, to avoid the accursed punishment of impenitent persons; seek after the remission of sins by the bloody death and passion of our Saviour; and lay hold with the hand of faith on all Gospel-promises, applicable to a conscience-wounded sinner; that so after we have lived a life of grace here in this vale of misery, we may enjoy a life of glory in perpetuum hereafter.  
Now the main point intended in this discourse, is to discover unto you some ways or means how to apprehend when you are truly penitent; & that I shall demonstrate unto you, 

1. Negatively, and  
2. Affirmatively.    
1. Negatively: and here I will declare unto you, beloved, auspiciis Divinis, by the help of the Deity, what it is not, viz. being true penitents, and that in 5. particulars, 
5 Discoveries of true penitency.  which shall be as so many brands on their foreheads, to inform the world of their impenitency.  
1. He is no true penitent, that is not so perplexed, as to be gnawn at the very heart by that viper Sorrow, for his many enormous offences, and sensible of the need that he stands in of God's mercy, an Ocean of mercy; nay unless he think the burden of his sin so ponderous and weighty, so filthy and impure, as to require every drop of the blood of our Saviour to satisfy for them. King David, (if it be not a crime to allow him his Title) having implunged himself into a gulf and multitude of sins, begs a multitude of mercies, as it appears in the 51. Psal. vers. the 1. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. We stand in need of a Sea of mercies for the innumerable number of our heinous crimes, that we are guilty of: Now he that is so hardened with the yoke of sin, that he is become brawny, and insensible of the weight and heinousness of it, this man hath no penitent frame of spirit; and we may safely say, without any prejudice to our charity, or incurring the evil of censure, that such a man is no true penitent.  
2. They are not become true penitents, no nor in the way to repentance, that are so far from being grieved at sin, as to make no bones of great sins; nay, to dally and toy with sin and impiety: but 'tis bad handling such edged tools; for the sword of God's indignation will soon cut them off: swearing with such persons, is but a grace and lustre to their speech, a splendour, but I fear such a one as will light them to hell: lying, but wit's craft, or policy; drunkenness, jovialness, or good fellowship; whoring, a trick of youth, covetousness, thriftiness: thus do they baptise vice by the name of virtue: see how bestial, fowl and deformed a thing vice is, that it dare not appear in its own native deformity and hue, but it must borrow the Mask of virtue: they think that they can shift well enough without mercy, and imagine that three words at the last gasp is sufficient to save their soul; but I pray God they may not share with that Gentleman in fortune, that was very debauched, and had streamed out his youth in wine and venery, who being desired by his Confessor to acknowledge his misdemeanours towards God and man, and to beseech God to vouchsafe him pardon of his sins; put him off with a pish: Three words at last are of sufficient power to save my soul; meaning, Miserere mei Deus: but it happened that this Gentleman not long after, as he was riding over a bridge, his horse slipped, and down fell horse and man into the river; and in falling, instead of Miserere mei Deus, he was heard to say, Capiat omnia Daemon, The devil take both horse and man: sad words, to be the vehiculo animae suae, to waft his soul over into the other world; a sweet Epilogue to the Tragedy of his life! His Catastrophe was as damnable, as his whole life abominable and odious. This will be a caveat to all serious and solid Christians, to avoid procrastination in repentance, and endeavour after it with all possible speed.  
3. They are not true penitens that are merely earal, verbal, and worded men, that speak more than they really intent; this is not repentance, but a little lip-labour, a foolish weak stratagem, a mere external pomp of words, for which the Pharisees were reprehended by our Saviour, long since: 'Tis strange that men should be so meanly brained, as to imagine the putting of a cheat upon God; to what purpose should the title of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be conferred upon him? If you are bend to sin, & cannot be reclaimed from your lewd courses, but must have your swinge, and forsake your Creator in the days of your youth, and you are resolved to run to hell in full career, and no persuasion will operate or work upon you; then must you look to the event, and feel the smart of God's rod, and the weight of his indignation. And 'twere better far in my judgement, for a man not to be born, then to be deprived and rob of the lustre of Gods emparadising countenance; whose frown's a hell, whose smile's a heaven; for there is hell where God is absent, and there heaven where he is present. Think not then to deprive God of one of his most Glorious Attributes, viz. Omniscience, by endeavouring to counterfeit a kind of repentance, when you have no such intent, but still tread the paths of the impiously profane, and commit sins so in private, though as damnable, as secret: I will only bestow a golden sentence of St. Augustine's on you, Quaere locum ubi te Deus non videat, & fac quid vis: Find out a place where you may commit sin unseen, and then do what you please: not a couch-bed-sin, but lies open to the perspicuity of God's allseeing eye; 'tis not the slender barricado of a curtain can defend you, or prevent his sight; nay there is a sentence of infelicity, and not prospering, pronounced upon all secret Sinners: in the 28. of the Prov. vers. 13. He that hideth his sins shall not prosper: but he that confesseth, and forsaketh them, shall have mercy. Therefore be real, and repent cordially, cheat not your precious souls of so heavenly a viaticum; unless you intent, and are desperately resolute, and bend to defraud yourself of eternal felicity, and so be cast into hell irrecoverably: Repent, Repent, beloved, strive and endeavour after reconciliation with God; get the wedding-garment on, that you may enter into the Bride-chamber, and be a welcome guest to God the Father. Cease provoking of him to wrath by your heinous sin; For it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, Heb. 10. And if the wrath of a King be as the roaring of a Lion, that can only prejudice the body; how much more heavy and weighty shall the wrath and indignation of God be, 
Matth. 5.30.  who can cast both body and soul into eternal unquenchable burn!  
4. It argues a man's repentance not to be solid or laid upon a good foundation, when they are induced to it for fear of shame and punishment; and were it not for this, he could willingly devote his days to sin and uncleanness: though they may be accounted true penitents, and so esteemed by the world; many Pharisaical persons may put such a gloss upon their sins, that their Apocryphal deeds may pass for Canonical actions; but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, The allseeing eye of God will soon pierce into the inmost chambers of their hearts, and discover their deceit, how closely and privately soever they carry it. This will cut the comb of all hypocrites and counterfeits, that think an outward colour, or superficial show is satisfactory & acceptable to God; though like the externally specious Apples of Sodom, they be rotten at the core: such persons are like the Cynamon-tree, whose bark is better than the substance. The Lord is infinitely offended at such proceed, and testifieth his dislike thereof; This people (saith he) come near me with their lips, and honour me with their mouths, but their hearts are far from me; so the Lord telleth the Jews in the 42 ch. of the prophecy of holy Jeremiah, the 20. verse; They did but dissemble with him in their hearts, and promised to do his will, but they do nothing but the contrary, and follow their own lusts. God abhors and detests such persons; he will spew them out of his mouth, and never suffer them to be partakers of his Heavenly Kingdom: Let all such hypocritical persons take notice, and consider the judgement of God on Ananias and Sapphira, Acts the 5. who because they would videri tantum, seem only religious, and forward to sell their Lands, and give it to the poor, (thus covetousness cannot walk without the cloak of religion to cover its deformity) therefore the Lord smote them both dead. And that Christ might manifest how vile and odious hypocritical persons are in the sight of the Lord; He tells us in the Gospel of St. Matthew, chap. 24. vers. 51. All vile sinners shall have their portion with hypocrites; because if there be one place in hell hotter than another, that may be termed locus hypocritarum, The seat of hypocrites. Therefore we should all endeavour to get a sound heart, free from dissimulation and hypocrisy, which may be an acceptable sacrifice to God, and wellpleasing, that he may smell a sweet savour from all our pious works.  
5. Fifthly and lastly, it is a sign of impenitency, when men are so impiously bold as to stand on their own merits and desert, their own goodness and worthiness, when they approach the presence of God; like the proud Pharisee, Luke the 18.11, 12. I thank thee, O God, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this Publican; I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I possess: but the Publican that only smote his breast, and said only, God be merciful to me a sinner, went down to his house justified, saith the Text, rather than the boasting Pharisee: such tumors are as great scars and imperfections to the soul, as a wound or wen to a rare complexion. We should all cast away our own righteousness as a menstruous rag, and rely wholly upon the meritorious death and passion of the immaculate Lamb of God, his Christ, and our Saviour, for the salvation of our immortal souls: We should totally divest ourselves of all worth, for we are all sinful dust and ashes; and therefore may well make this expostulation with all men; Homo bulla, quid superbis? O man, thou that art but an airy bubble, Why art thou proud? Thou that art a bubble that is made of nothing, and when made, as soon blown to nothing; Cum sis humi limus, cur non es humillimus? Since you are composed of the dung of the ground, of earth; why are you not according to the matter you were created of, mean and humble? The whole world is not able to satisfy their ambition, but the aspiring Pyramid of their thoughts mounteth and still lesseneth by degrees, till it come to a mere punctum. Most men now adays, like the Pellaean Hero, Alexander the Great, do Aestuare angusto limit mundi, Sweat for want of room in the world; there is not space enough for the flight of their soaring thoughts, that are winged with ambition: but this is according to the Wiseman, nothing but vanity, vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas: They fish after impossibilities; and grant they could subdue the whole world, and reduce it into their own possession; 'twould not, it could not satisfy their heart, or give them any real solid content: for the world is a Circle, the heart of man a Triangle; now we all know that a Circle cannot fill a Triangle. Cease then, all you that aim at the hilling up of fatal gold, and employ your hours in a more noble traffic, in procuring the riches and treasures of Jesus Christ, that may serve you, and be of use to you in the day of wrath, to get your Sins pardoned, all your crimes expunged with the Sponge of Oblivion, that the Lord may nevermore lay them to your charge; and this must be by an unfeigned repentance, though none of the five forementioned ways. Now that you may know how to gain the salvation of your souls, how to be eternally blessed, and sing Hallelujahs to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, world without end; which felicity will undoubtedly be attained unto by all true penitent souls. And that you may know affirmatively what it is to be true penitents, take it in these following Considerations: 
The five steps of ascension by Repentance.  To this felicity we must ascend by 5 degrees or steps of true and unfeigned repentance.  
1. The first step whereof that leads and conducts to heaven, is for a man to have an internal regret for sin, to be grieved and perplexed for it, to be wounded in conscience for it; for till a man see his Sins in the glass of repentance, and weigh them, and meditate upon the curse of God that hangs over his head in a judgement for them, he will never repent: This is the godly sorrow that leadeth unto repentance never to be repent of. This compunction or pricking of the heart is a clear demonstration of repentance, sincere and sound; and is the first step to heaven, and so per consequens to the salvation of the never dying soul.  
And if it be so that this is the first step to heaven; Use 1 how sad a thing is it to see men in such a miserable estate as many are in these distracted times! how many are there that have not set one foot forward in the way to heaven! and you know the old saying, Non progredi, est regredi; Not to go forward, is to go backward. How many are there that never have been humbled, never touched, never wounded in conscience for their Sins? 
Wilful impenitency, or a careless neglect of Repentance, very dangerous.  O what a miserable condition, what a deplorable estate do they lie in! Now apply this to yourselves, Beloved; did the sacrificing Knife of God's Word never wound your conscience, nor extract one tear from your eyes for the deluge of your Sins, that will overwhelm your soul eternally, without God's infinite mercy? if you have not been thus and thus grieved for your trespasses and transgressions, you are in a desperate condition, and there is very little hope or probability of your salvation.  
Use 2 This serves then for a Use of Consolation to all the Children, all the Sons and Daughters of God; for if you feel your hearts wounded for your Sins, and you bathe your soul in true penitent tears for the many heinous crimes that you are conscious of; it is a true indicium or sign of being in the state of grace, and that God's spirit hath met with us, and his Word hath cut the throat of Sin, which otherwise would have ruinated you, nay aims at God himself; for peccatum, saith Parisiensis, est Deicidium, Sin is the Cutthroat of God, with holy reverence be it spoken; Sin strives to dethrone God; therefore let us endeavour to cast Sin down the precipice of our hearts, and nevermore afford it houseroom, since it offends so merciful, so gracious, and so kind a God as ours; for Sin is an abomination unto the Lord, and so are all Sinners and evil-doers.  
2. The second sign of, or way to true penitency, is this, when a man fears to Sin, not because of the punishment, but because he offends so great a God in so doing: like holy Joseph, who when he was tempted by the sweet caresses of his Mistress, cried out, How can I do this great evil, and sin against God Therefore from him we may learn what is most to be desired here on earth, viz. the love and favour of God▪ so that if any one should put the question to you, and demand what your desire most hunted after, and what your affections were most fixed on? You ought to answer, The love and favour of God in Christ Jesus. 'Tis not your embroidered apparel, your manners and manors, your parts and arts, that are able to appease the trouble and perplexity of a distressed conscience; nothing but the mercy of God in Christ Jesus will afford it: This is the only refuge for a troubled conscience in the greatest extremity. Men may in their extremities go to drink away sorrow, as they term it in their profane gibberish, and betake themselves to their merry company; but alas! this is no comfort, this no remedy for their disease: an old sore gangrened or putrified, if it be not very skilfully handled, will hardly admit of cure; but if it be superficially healed at top, and not throughly at the bottom, as soon as 'tis skinned at the top, it will break out at the bottom; so when men seek to smother the accusation of their own consciences, and strive to blunt the edge of it, it will rebound again, and give a deadly wound, even to desperation. Beg of God therefore power and ability through his strengthening grace, that you may be buoyed up thereby in the midst of an Ocean of troubles, and that the burden of an afflicted wounded conscience may be minorated, and lessened, that so you may not fall into despair. To prevent despair, all godly persons ought like Heraclitus, to weep away their days; and indeed, they are a sea of tears, a mere vapour melted into tears: his voice is painted with tears, which have such an airy power and faculty, as that they are able to mount up to Heaven, and there to insinuate themselves into the ear of the Almighty, begging and craving pardon for sin, and a preservation from despair by the mighty power of God. Lachrymae & preces are the only weapons in a Christian battle; let us so fight with these weapons, as to get the peace of conscience and joy of the Holy Ghost, that passeth all understanding, and that speedily too: for our journey is long, and our time short, therefore we had need to husband it well: Can there be a longer journey than from earth to heaven? and a shorter time than a moment? Yet such is our journey, such is our time: Repent therefore now while it is called to day, harden not your hearts, for procrastination is dangerous: doubt not of the power of God, for he is Omnipotent; and this attribute of his is manifested in every petty piece of the Hexameron Fabric: There is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, something that may challenge our admiration, even in the borders of a gaudy Butterfly, saith Aristotle; which do afford an evident smack or view of the Omnipotency of God. Rely upon him therefore; fear sin, and avoid it, because it offends so gracious a God.  
3. The third step to true repentance, is a constant and settled resolution, never to sin, or displease God; to do his will, walk in the way of his Commandments: I do not say, that a truly sanctified person never sins at all, but he never sins with an intent and purpose to sin; he takes no delight or complacency in sin; 'tis the sole object of his hatred, and resolveth to please God as far as possibly he may by the grace of God that strengthens him: When he can say with holy David, Psalm the 18. and the 23. I have refrained my feet from every evil way. Again, 1 John 3.9. He that is born of God sinneth not, i. e. not with a full purpose of heart, or with a delight in it, or affection to it; but they constantly strive against it, eat and avoid the occasions of sin, suspect themselves upon every occasion, and are continually armed to give battle to the devil and his temptations. In many things we sin all, saith St. James. But if we can but say really and experimentally that it is against our intention, that we hate, abhor & detest sin with an unutterable hatred, and that we condemn the very sins we commit, than we may be comforted, receive joy, and assure ourselves that we are true penitents; for this takes away the dominion of sin in our mortal bodies: doth not quite thrust it out, it doth divest it of its authority; so that it hath no power to prejudice or injure us in our salvation.  
4. The fourth sign of, or way unto true repentance, is an aggravation of our sins; when we render them heinous in the sight of God, acknowledging we have sinned so much, that we deserve eternal damnation; we deserve that the Vials of God's wrath should be poured down upon our heads. You would far the better, not the worse, for aggravating your transgressions; For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believed in him, might not perish, but have everlasting life. This is a sic without sicut: Such a so, as never man loved so; and all this for the salvation of mankind.  
5. The fifth and last sign of, or step unto repentance, is a frank and free confession of sins, not extorted and wrung out of you, but flowing from you liberally, cheerfully and really, in hope of the pardon and remission of them.  
We must so confess our sins, as to beg pardon for them, and to entreat the Lord to have pity on us out of the bowels of his tender compassion. Do not abscond and conceal your sins; manifest them publicly both to God and man: be cordially penitent for them, and no doubt but the merciful God will save your souls. Confession of sins is the forerunner of remission; and this must not be flashy and for a time, but so long as are our years upon the earth measured out; for he that will serve the primus motor, must not write his ne ultra, till he come to the Terminus ad quem. He must proceed with a courage; we must confess them openly, and not like the worldly wise, whose wisdom Lactantius saith, abscondit, non abscindit peccata; conceals, and not cuts asunder, or separates sin. Now we must confess our sins, 

1. To God, and  
2. To Man.    
1. To God, as holy David teacheth us in his own example, Psalm the 51. vers. 4. Against thee, against thee only have I sinned: and again in the 32 Psam, vers. the 6. I said I will confess my sins unto the Lord, and so thou forgavest the wickedness of my sin. 'Tis true, we may injure men by our sin, as David did Uriah; but being sin, the chiefest wrong and injury falleth upon God.  
2. We must confess to men, and that both privately and publicly, according to the quality of the sin; for though we condemn auricular confession, as a trick of State-policy; yet we allow, and not only so, but exhort all Christians to a true voluntary and sincere confession of their sins to the Bishop and Superintendents of the Church: confession must be made to men in respect of the Church, that the Congregation that hath been offended may be satisfied, and that others may be deterred from falling into the same sins, as it is in the 2 Epistle to St. Timothy, 4 ch. and the 26 verse. Them that sin, rebuke openly, that the rest may fear. And last of all, in respect of the Sinner himself, that he may be humbled for it; for were it a pecuniary mulct only, and his purse were to do penance, he would not probably value that; but now it may bring him to an humiliation, and a sincere repentance, accompanied with a godly life hereafter. Now this serves to condemn all those that are so far from acknowledging and confessing their sins, as to justify themselves in them, and plead for them with all the Rhetoric they have; so that if any one in a Christian way reprove them with meekness, 'tis verba ventis dare; to prattle to the wind: they will probably reply with some such kind of cross answer: What need you busy yourself about the state of my soul? I shall be responsible, not to you for it, look to yourself first: if they carouse & follow strange attire, they will say they do but as others do, 'tis the fashion, what care they? and this sly trick of dissimulation we sucked from our first Parents; Genesis the 3. and the 12. where when Adam was examined, he posted off the matter from himself to his wife; The woman that thou gavest me, she gave me of the fruit, and I did eat. We are unwilling to confess and acknowledge our sins, when as we have encouragement enough for it from our Text, since there is such an excessive joy in Heaven at the conversion of one Sinner. God himself rejoiceth, the blessed choir of Angels rejoice, and all the Host of Heaven. How then should we labour after true repentance, since we have so many sacred invitations to it in holy writ? Since God himself doth vouchsafe to come and invite us unto him, and promiseth us acceptance from him, he will bid us welcome, be confident, beloved, whenever we approach his presence with a real and a contrite heart. Overcome yourselves, though it be very difficult: for Fortior est qui se, quam qui fortissima vincit Moenia.  
He is the greatest Conqueror that can subdue his own passions, and keep his body in subjection, as St. Paul did, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, saith he, I chastise my body: from whence Friars draw their authority of chastising themselves, though without cause; and so take the word to be such a chastisement as Schoolmasters use to boys: We ought all of us against the grain of our flesh to mould and fashion ourselves to repentance; that so we may obtain a Trinity of Graces to save us, Faith, Hope, and Charity; and this Trinity of Grace will deliver us from a Trinity of Evils, Blindness, Error, and Unbelief: and if we be delivered from these, we shall be freed from the predominancy of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil: and if we be preserved from these, we shall undoubtedly be crowned by the blessed Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost: to whom be Glory, Honour, and Praise, World without end. Amen.   

GOD AND MAN Mutually Embracing.  In the first Epistle of St. John, the 4 Chap. and the 19 vers. it is thus written: 
We love him; because he first loved us.  
LOve is the punctum or centre, 
SERM. III.  about which the circumference of our thoughts doth move; and the primus motor that induceth us to fix our spirits upon an object. Love is to our souls, as weight is to ponderous bodies; for as the gravity of a body forceth it downward, that it may enjoy a sweet repose in its centre; so Love moves our souls to an object that promiseth repose and contentment; therefore from hence it follows, that as ponderous bodies move in a strait line toward their centre: so if we will obtain a true rest, our Love must be regular, and proceed in a direct line, by a divinely-composed motion.  
This Text, Beloved, that I come from reading to you, is the Epitome of Christian Religion; or the great Folio of Christian duty, reduced into a Decimo-sexto, or pocket-volume.  
In this Text there are two parts; and these two parts are the two pillars of the Church, and the whole Christian World.  
1. Our love toward God, in these words, We love him; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  
2. God's love toward us, which is but the reason, or rather efficient cause of our love toward him; because he first loved us, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  
Not to stand upon the nice and finespun distinctions that the Schoolmen make of Love, we shall only divide it into two sorts; Divinum and Humanum amorem; into Love Divine, and Humane: the divine is couched down by the holy Spirit of God in the latter part of the verse, because he loved us; and the humane in the former, We love him.  
We will begin with the latter, humane love, or the love of man to God.  
Spiritual, or true love, giveth repose and contentment to the soul; when as carnal or false love is an irregular agitation, and an inconsiderate motion without a Terminus ad quem. it is ever  with inquietude and distraction; and never ceaseth or resteth, till it despairs, or is quite tired out; which is not properly a rest, but an impotency and inability of motion; and the desire is strong when the power is weak, like a horse that tied to a manger gnaweth his bridle asunder: such are most persons; their desires are strong, their power but weak; they desire most what they can least perform.  
The cause of this disturbance is this: Our Love selecteth out, 

Reasons why we love not God perfectly.  
1 Cause.   and fixeth upon false objects, and such that cannot satiate the desire; for if you survey all sublunary things that deserve the name of beautiful, you shall find in them no true quiet or rest, but a concatenation of cares, interwoven with perpetual trouble. The greatest delicacies are consited in bitterness. The acquisition of honour and preferment is painful; and many break their necks in riding upon the airy stilts of Fame. The possession of riches is uncertain, and the loss certain; if they leave not us by some accident, Death (Nature's Bailiff) will arrest us, and force us to leave them. To aim at such things is but ventum prosequi, To pursue the wind; an action as ridiculous as can be.  
Grant they be good, yet they are incertain; therefore we must seek after our repose somewhere else, since the earth cannot afford it, and turn the compass of our Love toward Heaven. For as the lower region of the Air is the habitation of winds, tempests, and earthquakes; but that part that is near the Heaven is serene and quiet: so our Love, so long as it adheres to sublunary objects, will be full of trouble, but 'twill find rest and quiet, if it lift itself up to Heaven, and lay hold of the promises of God: and then the soul, though in the midst of the confusions and afflictions of this world, be they never so thorny, will have the fruition of an assured tranquillity: like the Needle of the Compass that remains firm upon one point, notwithstanding the violence of the scolding surges of a Tempestuous Sea; and all because it is guided by the motion of the Heavens. God is the sole object (or at least ought to be) of our Love, and hath only a power to render us amiable by loving us; He that only can, nay that will give them felicity, and that unutterable too, that love him. As the Apostle St. Paul writeth, in the first to the Corinth. the 2 Chap. and the 9 vers. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man to conceive, the things that God hath prepared for them that love him. He promiseth also in St. John, chap. 14. vers. 23. to come unto him that loveth him, and make his abode with him. O unparallelled Love! that makes a Palace of our souls for the King of Glory, and a Sanctuary of the Holy Ghost.  
2. 
2 Cause.  Philosophy itself hath this down for a maxim, that Natura & Deus nihil fecerunt frustra, that God and Nature made nothing in vain. Now that infinite and insatiable desire or appetite that is in man, were in vain, if there were nothing to satisfy and content it; Which since it is impossible to find out upon this Terraqueous Globe, we must search after it in Heaven, of God that is bonum infinitum, an infinite good.  

3 Cause.  3. Besides, God created the world for the use of man, and therefore without doubt he created man for something better than the world, viz. God himself.  

4 Cause.  4. God created man inter omnia animalia, only secundum imaginem, according to his own image, with a strait body, and an upright countenance, according to mellifluous Naso, 
Os homini sublime dedit, coelumque tueri  
Jussit, & erectos ad sydera tollere vultus.  that so he might behold him, whom he represented; and that the But, and White, of all his actions and thoughts, might be Heaven.  
5. 
5 Cause.  The perfection of our spirits cannot be, but in the union of or with the first of spirits, who communicateth his bona, or good things to us his Creatures, as the Sun darts his rays upon us; that is, he gives them so, he bestows them on us, yet so, that they depend on him after he hath disposed of them.  
6. 
6 Cause.  True Love is that transformeth the amantem the Lover, in amatum, into the thing or party loved. Now if a deformed person be never so highly enamoured with the captivitating beauty of a red & white complexion, he will never be able by this love to correct his deformity. On the contrary, in loving God, we become sibi similes, like unto him; and as the holy Apostle saith in the second to the Corinth. the third Chap. and the last verse, Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, with open face, are changed into the same image.  
7. And lastly, Beauty, 
7 Cause.  being the first incitation to Love, or the Tinder of the affections, we shall soon be able to discern when the scales of ignorance are fallen from our eyes, that this beauty, as we term it, that is here below, is but a superficial colour, or a cover to a bundle of filthiness: but that the Lumen, or true Light, is the true beauty; God therefore being the true Light, and the Father of Lights, is the chief beauty, and the object on whom we all ought to fix our affections.  
Natural Philosophy here is diametrically opposite to the Divine, and jars with it much in this case; for Philosophy affirms that Natural motion is better than that is against Nature. On the contrary, quoad amorem, the Word of God, that is, our Divine Philosophy, instructeth and persuadeth us, that Love contrary to Nature, is better than Love natural. For since that Satan in seducing our first Parents, hath defaced the image of God in Man, our desires have had their constant course towards the World, and, as I may say, our Love hath been precipitated from Heaven to the Earth. The affection of the flesh is enmity against God, Romans the 8. and the 7 verse: If one love, that love flows not from him naturally, but it is a free gift of God. And the Apostle St. Paul drawing us out of the mud, and freeing us from the bait of all alluring delights of this World, commands us to seek the things above, Coloss. 3. vers. 1, 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, be skilful in the things above, be wise in heavenly matters; for according to the words in my Text, We love God, because he first loved us.  
Our love therefore it appears manifestly, is an effect of God's Love to us; nor is there any thing that we ought with more devotion or zeal to crave of God, than Love; for it is a pledge unto the faithful of God's Love to him. It is the first fruit, the primitiae of Faith; 'tis the most exact and curious extract of the Image of God. It is the most perspicuous mark of a child of God. 
Love is the sum of Christianity.  This Love is the soul of our soul; the life of virtue; the rule by which we square (or at least ought to do) all our actions; the summary or compendium of the Law: 'Tis the pillar or sustentaculum of Martyrs; the jacob's Ladder, by which you may ascend the Heavens, and true peace of conscience; nay (with holy reverence be it spoken) it is a praelibamen, or earnest-penny of that Sacred union and communion that we expect all to enjoy with God in Heaven, world without end. Our meditation could not pitch upon a more sublime subject; for what is there that dare stand in competition with God, either for his greatness, or the sweetness and candour of his Love? The profit of this Love of God is no way inferior to the delight; for men are termed good or evil, not for what they believe, but what they love.  
Let us all therefore labour for this, and become proficients in the School of Christ, and beseech the spirit so to mould our hearts, that they may be wrought to a true and perfect Love of God: lest we be abused and fooled into error with the sound of this word Love, and mistake the spiritual for a carnal love, an importunate or fretting corrosion of the heart; an aguish alteration; the last of vices for the first and best of virtues, a brutish malady for an Angelical distemper.  
'Tis true; he that disposeth and conformeth himself to the Love of God, must expect the hatred and bespattering calumnies of the world; but God will cause the very discommodities that the world afflicts us with, to be converted into commodity and profit: for (saith the blessed Apostle) Rom. the 8. and the 28. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called, according to his purpose. Their corporeal afflictions, are but spiritual exercises; their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, nocumenta, documenta. The malady of their body, is a remedy for their soul: for God alone is the true Aesculapius, so divine a Chemist, that he will convert poisons into Antidotes for his children's health and security: His wounds are balm, saith the Divine Harper, Psalm 14. vers. 5. In all our sufferings for God's sake, there is not only matter of patience, but occasion for glory; they are scars of credit in the forehead; conformities unto our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ, and the livery of all Christian Soldiers. And all this by the sustentation and support of this Love, the sweetness whereof qualifies and abates the bitterness of all sublunary crosses.  
Object. But here some may object and say, that the Love of God is pro confesso an excellent virtue; but we must know him, before we love him; and we cannot compass any other but a lame and decrepit insufficient notion of him. 'Tis true; but notwithstanding all this, we ought still dare operam to it, and make exact search after it; and when we have it, embrace it; for ignorance must not be a Cloak or tegument to our negligence, since we cannot gain so little of the true knowledge of God, but some profit will accrue to us thereby, and that will blow up the embers of the love of God in us to an acceptable degree of heat and pious zeal. One ray of the love of God will outbalance and overvalue all the splendour of the Meridian Sun. A dark obscure knowledge of God, surpasseth the most acute and sharp insight into all natural things. If one beam of the Sun chance to peep into a Dungeon, the prisoner by this, recollects the beauty and excellency of Light; so that small and imperfect knowledge that we obtain of God, is sufficient for a taste of the excellency of his Love, and able to inflame us therewith; besides, 'tis sufficient for salvation. We love God, because he loved us first.  
We are so incapable of the Love of God, that we understand not what it is to love him: This Tree of Knowledge grows not in our Eden; This flower springs not up in our Garden; 'tis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, a gift dropped out of Heaven, proceeding from the Father, who is Love and Charity, as St. John saith: This is a divine liquor, the true Nectar, that God pours into our souls guttatim, drop by drop, as in narrow-neckt vessels. Wherefore to accommodate ourselves to our native slowness, we'll endeavour to infuse into our spirits by little and little, so by degrees to arrive at the highest degree and Apex of Love.  
There are five degrees of this our Love to God.  
1. The first is, to love God for the good he doth us, and we expect to receive from him still.  
2. Secondly, To love him propter seipsum, or sui ipsius gratia, for his own sake, because he is most excellent, and most amiable.  
3. Thirdly, To love God above all things, nay your own selves; but to love nothing in the World, but for his sake.  
4. Fourthly, To detest and abhor himself for the Love of God.  
5. Fifthly, to love him as we shall in the life to come, when we shall be in glory; with this love the Saints are ecstasied, and assist at the Throne of God in secula seculorum.  
We call these Degrees of Love, and not species or kinds, because the superior contain the inferior, as the chiefest white differs from the other parcels of the same colour that are less clear and transparent, not in specie, but in gradu: we must remount up these degrees or stairs, and rest ourselves a little upon every one of them.  
1. The first degree and lowest is, 
Five degrees by which we are brought to love God.  To love God for the good he doth us; upon this step of Love was King David, when in the 116 Psalms, and in the 1 verse, I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice, and my supplication; and so in the 18 Psalms: for God will have respect and love from us, because he extends his bounty so liberally to us. 'Tis God that created us; 'tis God that preserves and keeps us being created; that nourisheth our bodies, that cherisheth our souls; that redeemeth us by his Son; that governs us by his holy Spirit; that instructeth us by his word, that hath vouchsafed to admit us as his servants, nay his friends and children; and which is more, the same with himself.  
Plato playing the Philosopher with the grace of God, 
Plato blessed God for three things.  thanked him for three things: 

1. That he was created a man, and not a beast.  
2. That he was born a Grecian, and not a Barbarian; and,  
3. That he was a Philosopher.    
Now we that are instructed in the School of Christ, a School of more strict discipline, 
So ought we for these especially.  make another kind of distribution of the grace of God, and return him thanks for these three things:  
1. That of all Creatures, we were created men.  
2. That of all men, Christians; And,  
3. That among those that are Christians, he hath made us in the number of the true elect. And if you please, you may add a fourth, That he hath adopted us by his Son Jesus Christ, before the foundation of the World; having been careful of us, not only before we had any existence, but even before the world had its creation. Now if God did manifest his love to us before we were, how liberally will he extend it to us, how bountifully will it flow from him when we invocate and call upon his Sacred Name, and affect him with a filial and reverential love? Now the smaller our number is, the larger is our privilege; the more extensive and diffusive is his bounty and goodness to us; to endow us with sight, among so many blind persons; as the portion of Jacob in Egypt, solely enlightened in the midst of obscurity, Cimmerian darkness: like the fleece of Gideon, that was only bedewed with the grace of God, when the rest of the earth was dry, and destitute of it. God hath encircled us with abundance of examples of stupendious caecity or blindness, that he might raise our estimation of light, and that we might make a farther progress in the way of salvation, that so whilst it is called to day, we may steer the ship of our souls by the Lantern of his Word. All these virtues, the constellation of all these graces, depend upon one Sovereign and Prime one, viz. reconciliation with God by the passion of our blessed Jesus. This is the Channel through which the graces of God stream unto us. 'Tis jacob's Ladder that joins Heaven and Earth together, that rejoins God and Man. The Angels ascending this Ladder, represent our prayers, that we piously dart up to Heaven: the Angels descending, signify the blessings of God that are distilled in answer to our prayers. Jacob sleeping at the foot of the Ladder, intimates unto us the quiet and tranquillity of conscience, that we enjoy under the cool and comfortable shade of his intercession. Before, man was environed with horror and astonishment; he could not cast his eye aside, but he met with an object of fear. If he looked upon God, he discerned a consuming fire, a supreme Justice, armed with revenge against sinners. If he cast his eye upon the Law, he immediately perceived the arrest of condemnation: If he viewed the Heaven, he concluded himself excluded thence by reason of sin; If the World, he saw his irreparable loss of dominion over the Creatures; if himself, a thousand spiritual and corporal infirmities. At the signs of Heaven, and the Earthquake, he was ague-struck with fear. Then Satan, Death, Hell, were his inveterate foes, that either drew him to perdition, or did behel and wrack him with the expectation of them. But now every person that hath confidence in Christ Jesus, changes his language, and speaks in a more pleasing dialect. If he look upon God, he'll say, 'Tis my Father, that hath adopted me: If his thoughts pitch upon the day of Judgement, he'll bespeak himself thus, My Elder Brother sits there; and he that is my Judge, is also my Counsellor: If he think on the Angels, he cries out, They are my guardians, Psalms the 34. If he view the Heaven, he terms it his habitation. If he hear it thunder, he'll reply, 'Tis the voice of my Father. If he consider the Law, The Son of God (saith he) hath accomplished it for me. If he swim with the flowing tide of prosperity, he'll say, God hath reserved better things for me. If in the low ebb of adversity, Jesus Christ hath endured far more for me. God exerciseth, or proves, corrects or afflicts me, making me therein conformable to his Son. If he thinks on Hell, the Devil, or Death, than he will triumph over all with the holy Apostle; in the 1 to the Corinth. the 15 Ch. and the 55, 56, and 57 verse. O Death, where is thy sting! O grave, where is thy victory! The sting of Death is sin, and the strength of sin is the Law: But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Though these things buzz about his ears like bees provoked or irritated, yet they have lost their sting. If the old serpent bruise his heel, yet his head is broken; if the Devil give us a false alarm by persecutions, yet we are soldiers fight under Christ's Banner, listed and registered into the Book of Life at our Baptism: he hath bought and redeemed us by his most precious blood, and no one can ravish us from him. What soul can be so sordid as to fear the arm of flesh, when he is guarded by the spirit of Christ, that doth not only intercede for sinners, but of sinners makes them become just: That is not only Advocate of a bad cause, but also renders it good; That doth both prey, and pay for us; so that his pardoning of us is not only a work of his mercy, but also an effect of his justice? Besides these obligations, we have an infinite number of incitations to the love of Christ, if we will but recollect ourselves, and seriously consider, how often he hath delivered us from imminent danger; caused inexpected overtures of evil intended to us, that we might avoid them: for according to the old Proverb, Praemoniti, praemuniti, forewarned, forearmed; and afflicted us here, that he might save us hereafter. Now 'twas the wish of that famous pillar of the Latin Church St. Augustin, Hic ure, hic tuned, hic seca, modo in aeternum parcas: Cut, saw, burn my body here, so thou savest my soul hereafter. Now for shame, let it not be said, that God hath showered down his blessings on the sand. Let us not be so bestial, as to drink of the stream, and ne'er think of the fountain; without elevating our thoughts unto God the source of all benedictions.  
But when we say God doth good unto us, to the end that we may love him; not that he stands in need of our Love, but he will have us love him, in regard that we cannot be saved if we hate him. Nay farther, that we love him, proceeds from him as a gift; for 'tis he that kindles in us his love. He doth not only bestow and confer his bona upon us, but he gives us a hand to receive them, grace to use them, and virtue to glorify for them; so that Deus primo dat quod jubet, and then jubet quod vult: first he gives what he commands, viz. Love, 
Love is the gift of God.  and then he commands what is most agreeable to his will and pleasure.  
This first degree or step of Love, though it be holy and useful, yet 'tis but principium amoris divini, 'tis but the prologue to the Love of God; for he that loves God only for profit, is like an infant or child that prays only for his breakfast; and to speak properly, such persons love not God, but themselves. Such love is but mercenary, and injurious to God, a palpable affront put upon the Deity. Therefore he must know, that hath gained this first degree, he must proceed; for non progredi, est regredi; to be at a stand, is to be retrograde: he must therefore, I say, ascend the second step.  
The second degree of our Love toward God, is to Love him, 
2 Degree.  not only for our profit, but also for himself, (i. e.) laying aside all consideration of his benefits, that he is daily pleased to confer on us; and though we expected no profit from him, yet to love him supra omnia. Holy David spoke of this Love in the 69 Psalms, Let all those that love thee rejoice in thy name. He counsels us to love God for his name, because he is the supreme, Wise in his counsel, just in his actions, true in his promises; whose habitation is in glory inaccessible; enjoying a Sovereign perfection. God, whose life was without beginning, and his duration without end; his eternity without alteration, his greatness without measure, and his power irresistible: That created the World by his Word, governs it by his virtue, and will reduce it to a Chaos of ruin, when it is his pleasure: Who in one sole virtue and perfection, which is his Essence, encompasseth all other virtues that are infused into all other creatures. All other virtues do concentre in this punctum; and the more they deviate from him, the more eccentrique they are. God therefore is to be loved for these preceding considerations, more than for the good that he is pleased to confer upon us. Our Saviour instructeth us the same, in that most absolute pattern, that he himself hath set before us; in which he commands to beg the sanctification of his Holy Name, and the advancement of his Kingdom; before we put up a petition for our daily bread. We naturally are enamoured with beauty: now Light is the first of beauties, without which there is no distinction between beauty and deformity. God therefore being the primum lumen, it follows necessarily that he be also the prime beauty. He is the Father of Lights, Pater Luminum, saith St. James; and holy David the Psalmist in the 36 Psalm 9 For with thee is the Fountain of Life; in thy light shall we see light. Wherefore in laying his hand to the stately Fabric of the World, when he reduced the Chaos of confusion into a beautiful and harmonious order, he began first with the light, as that by which his nature is best represented. He is the Sun of Righteousness, a Sun that never comes to the West, never sets, nor casts a shadow; all things are naked unto him, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, all things are bare-neckt unto him, 'tis in the Original, being a metaphor taken from the mode in the Eastern Countries, where they go bare-neckt: such a Sun as doth not only clarify the sight, but gives it also. And judge you what a splendid, sight-offending lustre this is, that the Seraphims assisting at his Throne cover their faces with their wings, as Isaiah saith, 6 Chap. 2 vers. not being able to endure so glorious a splendour. And if at the coming and appearance of the humanity of Christ, the Sun shall be benegroed in darkness, as a petty light at the coming of a greater; how, if you cast an eye upon the life of God 
The life of God.  ours is but a shadow, if compared to it, nay a nihil: for our life is a flux or succession of parts. But God possesseth and hath full and entire fruition of his eadem instanti, and all together. And his only begotten Son was willing to lay down his life for the redemption of us miserable and wretched sinners: That Son that Isaiah calls Chap. the 9 Father of eternity, was content to assume this frail flesh of ours. He became Son of Man, that we might become the sons of God. He was born in a stable, that we might be received into the Kingdom of Heaven; born among beasts, that we might be the associates of Angels. He that was regens sydera, became sugens ubera; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, became 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. He that is the bread of life was pinched with hunger, that we might be satisfied. He that is the fountain of life, became thirsty, that we might have ours quenched. In fine, he that is life itself, did undergo death, that he might make us heirs of eternal life. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, as the blessed Apostle in a holy ecstasy cried out; O the depth of the riches of the Love of Christ! These are prosundities that swallow up our spirits, and there is pleasure in being lost therein: for these are the graces of God that surpass our shallow capacities, but recreate our hearts; that afford matter of admiration, and subject of consolation.  
Now to what end is all this, if not to induce us to love God, and admire the treasures and riches of his grace? Our spirits are ecstasied with the rapture and contemplation of thy bounty. Our words are a degree beneath our thoughts, & yet our thoughts are far beneath the truth. We do but lisp forth thy praise; our commendation and eulogiums of thee, are but an undervaluing of thee; for in so doing we do but lumen soli praeferre, or endeavour to delineate him in his golden tresses, by the dark draught of a charcoal. Therefore we must entreat the Lord, that is our Father, to touch our hearts with a filial affection; that it would please him that bestows and infuseth his love into us, to create also in us strong affections and desires after such a divine virtue; that we may pant after, & pursue it with so much eagerness, as to encounter with all obstructions for the obtaining of it.  
All these considerations do but incite us to the love of God, not for ourselves, but for his own sake; which is perspicuous in this, that our Love cannot be regulate, unless it be form and fashioned on the model of his Love that he bears to us. Now God Loves us for his own sake, according to the Prophet Isa. Chap. 43. 'Tis I, 'tis I, that blot away thy transgressions, for mine own sake: And it is the prayer of holy Daniel in the 9 of his prophecy, Lord hear me, Lord pardon me; O Lord my God tarry not, for thine own sake; for thy name hath been called upon by this people. God considers that we bear his Image on our souls; he considers that we are unworthy of his benefits; but that it is a divine thing to do good to those that are unworthy of receiving it; and which is more, to make them worthy in doing them good. He looks upon his Church as a small fold that carrieth his name, and are baptised the people of God, Hosea the 2. nor will he suffer it to become the prey of Satan, or the triumph of their adversaries. Amen.   

GOD AND MAN Mutually Embracing.  In the first Epistle of St. John, the 4 Chap. and the 19 vers. it is thus written: 
We love God, because he first loved us.  
WE have in one Sermon already discoursed of our Love of God, 
SERM. IU.  and informed you of the several degrees of this Love, which were five: two whereof we have only as yet insisted on; the other three we shall, auspice Christo, dispatch in our subsequent love-discourse. Therefore not to detain you with the reiteration or repetition of what you have formerly heard; we'll proceed at present to the third degree of our Love to God, which is this, viz.  
To Love God so far above all sublunary beings, as to affect nothing, 
3 Degree.  to be enamoured with nothing, but only for his sake. As for instance, in the vast circumference of the terrestrial Globe, there is variety both of persons and things, that we cannot withdraw our affections from them, we cannot but love them; and in reality, 'twere impiety not to Love them. A Father loveth his Children, a Wife her Husband: our Parents, our Kindred, our Neighbours, our Friends, have all share in this amity. So a man loves his health, and labours to preserve it: if it be any way lost, he endeavours by all possible means to recover it. The brawny Peasant is in his element when whistling to his Teem, and manuring of his acres. The Scholar is so ravished with his study, that his very countenance smells of the candle, as the Poet ingeniously expresseth it; Livida nocturnam sapiebant ora lucernam. Their pale countenance did relish of the candle; speaking of excessive students. Nay, to go to disrobe a man of this love, would be a doctrine inhuman, and a degree below brutality. He is worse than an Infidel, that hath not a care of his family, saith the blessed Apostle. Piety doth not extirpate a man's affections, but cultivates them, and makes them colleagues with the Love and fear of God: No otherwise than Joshuah, who having subdued the Gibeonites, would not put them to death, but compel them to service in the House of God: For then doth a father love his sons with a real paternal affection, when he resolves to educate them so in their youth, that they may increase in growth, and become plants that one day may fructify to the glory of God. Then doth a man love his friends as he ought, when their love to God is the efficient cause of his love to them; and that he perceives the Image of God shine in them. Then shall we love our health lawfully and aright, when we desire it, not because it is more pleasant and comfortable, but because it endowes our bodies with a vigour, and our souls with a liberty of serving God in our vocation. The same may be said of Riches, Honour, Learning, and the like; these are things that one may affect, but so, that their love rob us not of our love to God; but rather stimulate us on, and provoke us to good works. And as there is no river so small, but disembogues itself into the Sea; so there is none of God's benefacta, though of the lowest size, of the most dwarfish stature, but conducts and leads our thoughts to the profound abyss of his goodness and greatness. Then shall our affections to our friends be regulated, and sweetly composed, when they shall be branches or arms of the Sea of God's immense Love, and have a reflection upon the Image or benefits of God. Set not a price or estimation upon men for that that is about them, but for what is in them: Love not men as you do Purses, (i. e.) for the money they have. If you honour a person for his stately attire, you might as well salute the Satin when entire in a whole piece: If you reverence a man for his honour, or renown, you pin his dignity upon his sleeve, and fix his worth on an airy title: and this is the mode now adays; this is the frame of most men's spirits in the world, to adore the Casket, and contemn the Jewel that is cabinetted in it; to esteem the bark, and slight the body. It was the ancient complaint of devout St. Bernard, Color, non calor aestimatur; vestium, non virtutum cultus insistitur: 'Tis the gawdiness, not the warmth of apparel, that is minded; the trimming of garments, not the adorning of virtues, is stood upon: 'Tis the lining of his pockets, not that of his brain, that is regarded. Nay Aristotle, Nature's elder son, was of opinion, that an Ass laden with Gold might have a pass through any gate: 'Tis true in a natural, but not in a spiritual sense; for he cannot pass through the strait gate of Heaven. 'Tis Gold, hisce temporibus ferreiss, that is omnium Regina, The Empress of the world; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, Fight with spears of Gold, and you will meet little or no opposition. And pardon me if I go too high, or offend: some dunghill-souls will betray their Royal Sovereign for reward, for a mercenary golden recompense. 'Tis money that rules, and overrules the whole world. Men rise early, sit up late, and eat the bread of carefulness; and all for adding to the mass of their treasure: all is good that procures wealth, be it what it will, or how it will; per fas, & nefass; by hook, or by crook, right or wrong; quo jure, quaque injuria, as the Comedian excellently, and suitable to our present times; whether it be by Hophnies' fleshhook, or Habakkuks' net; all's good fish that comes to the net. The holy Apostle tells us that godliness is great gain: but there are many now living that would tell him, if he were among us, that great gain is godliness; at least, their godliness. 'Tis apparel makes a man, now adays; but if once you be disrobed of your bravery, and ad paupertatum redactus, Then, Nullus ad amissas ibit amicus opes. Then when you are in a threadbare condition, you shall find no friends, few or no visitations: and whereas before they did stick to your threshold, and were unwilling to leave your society, now they'll be as niggardly of their visitations, as before they were prodigal of them. Like the Ass that carried the Image Isis in procession, when adorned with the ornaments; then did they bow the officious knee; but when spoiled and deprived of them, than they come no more about her, but she must be ranked with the rest of her dull, cold, contemptible fellow-creatures. But on the contrary, when your affections are bestowed on a man, because he fears God, he is firm and stable in his faith, advanced in the true knowledge of God, true in his words, just in his deeds, and charitable to the afflicted, inflamed or eaten up with the zeal of God's house, (not like many of the Puritanical faction, whose preposterous zeal hath put the whole Nation into a combustion) your love toward him will continue, as long as he himself. Dispossess such a person of his Lands, deprive him of his Titles, disrobe him of his gorgeous attire, his body and all his ornaments will remain; and that excellency that consists in the Image of God, and the graces of his Spirit.  
I know that the secrets or intentions of men's hearts are profound; and that oftentimes it evenes, that those persons that we make choice of, and pick out for friends, and virtuous too, become vicious, or else demonstrate unto us they have ever been so. In this case, he that loves God, aught to reprove his friend, and redress him with all his power. Adulation or flattery hath robbed amity or true love of all its terms, but only a liberty of reproving. He that reproves not his friend for fear of incurring his displeasure, it is a respect full of cruelty; just as if when he were upon the point of drowning, you should be afraid of lifting him up by the hair of the head, for fear of plucking off a lock. If he mend not when you reprehend him, the love of man must give place to the love of God; you must in this case do as holy Moses did, who made use of his Rod, whilst it was a Rod; but did fly away from it, when 'twas metamorphosed into a Serpent: and 'tis better far, to separate yourself from such a person gradatim, by degrees, and rather untwist your friendship with him, than to tear it all to pieces.  
The Love of God serves as a rule to the overcoming and subduing all the forementioned difficulties. Pagans have amassed and picked up several precepts out of the nature of amity, or friendship; but never discovered that secret that regulates and order all their precepts. viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, first to love God, and to make our love spring from the love of God. What the Brain is to the Nerves, the Liver to the Veins, or the Heart to the Arteries, the same is the Love of God to humane love, (i. e.) filaments, or branches, on which it depends. Without this divine Love, friendship is not friendship, but a conspiracy, an accord of discording with God: friendship whose tottering basis, or shaking foundation, is placed on pleasure or profit, expires when pleasures lose their gust or taste through age; or when the profit is diminished, gins to moulder and crumble away; or when the distribution thereof is unequal. But the love or friendship fixed, or rooted in the Love of God, is firm and stable; because built upon a sure foundation: which love ought to proceed so far, that we must pour out our Love not only upon our friends, but our intestine enemies for God's sake; 'tis the will and pleasure of the Almighty, Matth. the 5. because that even in the midst of this enmity, the impression of the Image of God is apparent. And these are Rods in God's hand to jerk us for correction and amendment; and have such a compulsive virtue, as to induce us to fear him.  

4 Degree.  We are not yet come to the highest round in this jacob's Ladder that reacheth to Heaven; for we must arrive to so high a pitch, as to hate ourselves for the Love of God. For although we concede, that self-love is the strongest and most natural love of man; and it is this amor-sin that is the greatest Antagonist and enemy to the Love of God; and 'twill opus magnae molis, multi sudoris, to overcome and surmount it: What the shirt is among our , the same is self-love among our affections, viz. the last that is pulled off: it is like the last onset or sally that Satan makes upon a soul, that is hard to be repulsed, or made to quit the field: Yet no person can love God, ut deceat, as it behooveth him, that detests not his own nature, that is not irritated against his concupiscence, and wages not a perpetual war with them, with a firm and Christian resolution, to subdue them, (Deo juvante) and to admit of no truce, nor quarter, but to commit a total slaughter, and to destroy them all, without compassion; thirsting after the dissolution of this body, and reigning with God and the blessed Hierarchy of Angels, world without end: He must be willing to exhaust and pour out every drop of blood that flows in the purple channels of his body, for the glory of God. Being wearied out with this fleshly tabernacle, as in a rolling prison, or an ambulatory sepulchre; just like a captive cloistered up in a loathsome prison, that peeps at the grates, aspiring after liberty; you must not expect to have egress, or departed by the door, but by the ruin of the prison, (i. e.) the dissolution and destruction of the body. He that hath commenced war, and stood in defiance to his lusts with most vigour and constancy, shall have the greatest share of peace with God. He that hath accused himself, shall be excused: he that hath despised and made little or no estimation of this life, shall be saved. Luke 9 and the 24. saith the blessed Evangelist there, For whosoever will save his life, shall lose it; but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.  
This is the fourth degree of Love, and the cream and top of Love, whilst we are on this side Heaven: 'Twas this degree of Love, that forced the holy Apostle to so pious and querulous an exclamation; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉; O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death? 'Tis this degree of Love that forced that sweet Harper King David, though his temples at that time were adorned with a Crown, and his hands with a Sceptre, the vanquisher of his enemies, whose name was as famous, as his possessions were vast; confess, and acknowledge himself a stranger, and a sojourner upon the earth. 
Psalm 39.12. & 119.19.  'Tis this degree of love that hath furnished holy Martyrs with resolution and courage, accompanied with a zeal that was hotter than the fire itself, to pass through all torments, and smile at the faggot and sword: they fear not the threats of the brow-bearing Judge, if furnished with this degree of love: they are armed with the murus aheneus of Horace; for a guiltless conscience, with the shield of his own innocency, beats off all opposition and resistance. No man can be such an Ignaro, as to imagine his sinews to be made of wire, or his body to be immured with brass; nor no one can be so whimsical, as to think them to have the Stoics a pathy: no, no; but as the violent heat of a fever doth exsiccate the exterior wounds or ulcers, and so that the less heat is obedient to the greater; so the internal ardour of the Love of God, did predominate over the heat of the flames, and had more power to sustain the pain, than the grief had strength to destroy them. The virtues of the Martyrs do check our vices; their pious embers do reinfuse heat into our cold walking clay. Whose blood, (for as one of the Fathers saith) Sanguis Martyrum semen Ecclesiae, the bloody time of the Saints, is the Seedtime of the Church; their blood, I say, exclaims against our slackness, who of late like a spurious issue have degenerated from their constancy: And be sure, if we imitate them not, and follow their example, they will be a reproach and condemnation unto us. Their red evening was precursor to a most glorious day, and their bloody trial proved a deliverance at last from the world's rage and fury. Now to arrive to this degree, requires a long and stout combat: for our flesh is mutinous and refractory; and concupiscence is so fast rooted in us, that even (Deo judice) it is resembled and assimilated to the cutting off of a hand, 
Matth. 5.  and pulling out of an eye. And the Apostle of the Gentiles terms our lusts, our members, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, Coloss. 3. Yet God himself tells us, that the perfection of his work is manifested in our infirmity; He makes us Conquerors, 
2 Cor. 12. Gal. 5.  after many defeats and failings. Men oftentimes are as in a crooked way, between the flesh and the spirit; between mundane and divine Love, the Love of God, and the Love of the World; and then they meet with several wicked and abominable suggestions, and a terrible counterscustle between them and their lusts. How often and frequently doth it evene, that after the Love of God hath gained the dominion and upperhand in the soul of man, and that he is resolved to live well and religiously; in a small time after, do his lusts and evil concupiscence rally up themselves, and make a fresh assault more violent than the former? But the faithful man, when assaulted with a desire of revenge, rapine, or adultery, will perceive and hear by the ears of faith, the Love of God whispering these following interrogations, and catechising him thus; Miserable wretch that thou art, whither dost thou wander? Doth not God view thee? dost thou despise his menaces? dost thou reject his promises? dost thou forget thy vocation? Why should you grieve the Spirit of God? Why should you bespatter his Church with infamy, and calumny? Where are the promises you made to God? Where is the grateful remembrance of his benefits? Is this the way to the Kingdom of Heaven? Are you certain of arising when you fall? What, will you disturb your peace of conscience for such bitter-sweet pleasures? 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the most guilded pill of pleasure hath is allowed ingredients. What, will you hazard your primogeniture, for a mess of lentile-potage? At these spiritual suggestions, the faithful man makes a stand; sighs and groans before God, and, like Samson, is resolved to break in sunder the bands of his concupiscence. But all is not yet ended; the rebellious and contumacious, surrenders not herself up yet; for oftentimes, after holy resolutions, at certain intervals, or spaces of time, there will arrive some cooling kind of temper, that may induce and persuade carnal reason to a postarize, and especially in these rebellious times; where a man may find more matter for to compose a book of Apostates, rather than Martyrs. Now Satan, who is a spirit, but Abadone, as 'tis in the Revelation, watcheth for an opportunity to find us conversant with debauched company, and void of employment, and to catch us discontinuing, or ceasing from our pious ejaculations to Heaven (which with a fervent and zealous brevity are thrown up to the Throne of Grace; and God showers down his blessings upon them, according to their request, and suitable to their present necessities and indigencies, if they be faithful) Satan, I say, raiseth an Anarchy in the soul of man, and fosters nothing but a Chaos of confusion: then are the concupiscence and lusts of the flesh up in arms against the desires and motions of the spirit, and close and strangle one another; which oftentimes renders the life of a Christian so bitter and uncomfortable, that he is often desiring an end of this conflict or combat, that he may be dissolved and be with Christ. 'Tis a hellish disposition, and suitable to the devil's nature, to give a blow to a man that is already reeling; 'tis his constant course, when he finds you most afflicted with diseases, and enfeebled with age, then doth he redouble his force, and shows you your sins in multiplying glasses; that so he may, if possible, compel you to land the vessel of your soul upon the shore of Despair. Lust will struggle and strive for superiority, and therefore aught to be suppressed, and held in subjection by the power of God's Spirit, operating in, and aiding of us. Man is his own enemy; he nourisheth a bird within him, that will pick out his own eyes. Homo, homini lupus: which made St. Augustin cry out, A me, libera me, Domine; blessed Lord, free me, or deliver me from myself. O the wretched nature and inclinations of men, that procure (or at least endeavour it) their own ruin! O the fixed and fast rooted corruptions of man, that by their mutinies will relead us, or compel us to return into Egypt! that after our departure out of Sodom, persuade us, like Lot's Wife, to look back, and have a kind of internal regret, for the evil we have forsaken. These are corruptions that interpose, and disturb our best actions with wicked suggestions, and bespatter them with some evil. If we seriously meditate on death, the flesh will suggest, and say; What needs all these melancholy dumps? To what purpose all these sighs and erected eyes? There is time enough for that hereafter. If we read or near Gods judgements and menaces against infamous scarlet sinners, the flesh persuades us, that it belongs to others, not to us. If we comtemplate the Heavens, 'twill suggest unto us immediately, that we shall arrive there soon enough. If we go to extend our hand, and manifest our charity out of a real Christian sympathy to a distressed member of Christ; 'twill whisper to your souls, You know not how soon you may want yourselves. If we be resolved to reprove a friend, that we may reduce him from the broad way of sin and uncleanness, and conduct him to the narrow, though blessed path, that leads unto salvation; then 'twill retract and withdraw, and make you desist from your intented purpose, for fear of offending him, or incurring his total displeasure: every good action hath two ansae, by which the world and the flesh take hold, to prevent the execution of it.  
Therefore in this case, we must carefully and piously repair unto God, craving his divine assistance; and imitate Rebecca, who had recourse unto God by prayer, when two Embryones or infants strove in her womb; a most exact figure, or divine Hieroglyphic of the two men that are in every believer; The old, and the new Adam; one, our nature corrupted and cicatrized by sin; the other, our spirit regenerated; which lust one against the other, as the blessed Apostle St. Paul testifieth, Gal. 5.17. So God answers unto Rebecca, telling her, that the greatest should obey the least. For the old man must be brought in subjection to the new, till he be perfectly reduced to the obedience of God; he must be overcome totally, and his forces quite routed.  
Now we are arrived to the top of the Ladder, the fifth and last degree, 
5 Degree.  which is the Love whereby we shall love God in the Kingdom of Heaven, when we shall be clothed with the Robes of Eternal Glory. For our Love proceeds from our knowledge; and according to our knowledge, we proportion our Love: Then shall we love God far more, because we shall know him far better. Now we see (saith the blessed Apostle) through a glass darkly, but then face to face: 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, 
1 Cor. 13.  very emphatical, in a riddle. Our love that looks a great distance, and is distracted by variety of objects, shall then approach, and look near, and shall be totally fixed upon God. And as two great rivers that have forsaken their constant channel, and meeting together, cause a terrible inundation: so the Love of God are two currents that shall be joined whilst on earth; but when we shall arrive, and land on the shore of eternal felicity, they will meet in Heaven. How unutterable will the vehemency of these affections be, when they shall be joined and swallowed up one within the other with a mutual Love? For then in loving God, we shall also love ourselves; because that God shall dwell in us, and because according to the holy Apostle St. John, 
1 John. 3.2.  〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. We shall be like unto him, we shall resemble him. Nor must we doubt, or imagine, that there is not an entire and real Love and mutual affection among the blessed Angels, but it flows from the Love of God: Therefore let us love nothing in ourselves, that prepares us not for the expectation of that Love, that is mingled with the Love of God; a rare and Sacred Dose, composed of two incomparable Ingredients, to cure the distemper of sinsick man.  
But because that Love with which we shall love God in Paradise, hath its original from the sight and contemplation of his glorious aspect, (for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, Love is inflamed by sight:) Let us endeavour to find out what this sight shall be, that is the cause of our Love. The eyes of the body behold all things, two ways, or by two means: either by a reception of the image or species, and so we behold and see all bodies exposed to our view; or in receiving into our eyes the selfsame thing that we see, as we see the light, which enters into our very sight. God that is the primum lumen, or lumen luminum, will manifest himself unto us in Heaven, this last manner: for he dwelleth in his Saints; he is to them all in all. 
Rom. 1.  But in this life we see him in his image, (i. e.) by the contemplation of his works, whereon he hath made an impression, or engraven as it were his own portraiture, and express and significant indicia or marks of his virtue. We shall then see God as we do the light here below; but that we do only see it through the windows of our bodies, viz. our eyes; but then we shall receive on every side the light of God's countenance, that will light us every where with the splendour of its rays, and the beams of its translucent glory: like a man that, if it were possible, could be apple of the eye all over, composed of nothing else, he would receive the light from all parts round about him.  
This sight of God will transform us into his likeness or similitude: so saith St. John, 
1 John 3.2.  We shall be like unto him; for we shall behold him, as he is; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. For as a looking-glass or mirror, if it be exposed to the Sun, will represent the resemblance or image thereof; so God entertains no body with an intent to contemplate his face, but he transforms him into his own likeness or similitude, by the irradiation of his splendour and perfection. And if God be Charity and Love, as the holy Apostle St. John affirms, and all Christians are engaged to believe, in the 1. of St. John, 4 Chap. 8 vers. it follows of necessity, that the creature being by this beatifical vision made like unto God, should be ravished with love, and all on a flame with this spiritual fire: Such a fire as hath imposed a name on the Seraphims, to termed, because of their ardour; which is no other thing but the Love of God, the fervour of their zeal, and their promptitude and agility in his service.  
This now should serve for a Use of exhortation to all good Christians, Use viz. to labour after the love of God with all humility, pious speed, and integrity of heart; that so they might be like unto God, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, as the Apostle expresseth it. And unless you be drunk with momentary, and totally deprived of a sense or imagination of the super-excellency and plerophory of joy that is in Heaven, you cannot but strive by a holy life and conversation to attain unto the everlasting Crown of Glory, and the seat and society of the blessed Angels in Heaven, where you shall chant forth in aeternum Hallelujahs to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost; and live in felicity, and joy that is unutterable, to the praise and glory of God's immortal name, without care, sorrow, grief, or distraction, world without end.  
Use 2 This serves for a Use of terror, and horror, to all wicked persons, whose whole life hath been a perpetual wilful violation of God's Law, without any repentance of, or amendment and conversion from their misdemeanours and offences. They shall never enter into the joy of the Lord, but have that terrible doleful doom and sentence passed upon them, Go ye cursed into everlasting darkness, where there is nothing but weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth; totally deprived of God's comfortable soul-vivifying presence; being entombed alive in this pit of darkness, ubi miseriae, ubi tenebrae, ubi horror aeternus; ubi nulla spes boni, nulla desperatio mali: where you shall be surrounded with miseries, benegroed in more than cimmerian, and that perpetual darkness too, overwhelmed by, and implunged into eternal horror; where there is no hope of restitution to a blessed, or redemption from an accursed estate; but there must be tormented world without end.  
Thus have I demonstrated unto you the happiness of those that fear God; and their unhappiness, that go a whoring after the lusts and concupiscences of the flesh: we have shown you the five Degrees of Love toward God; and our meditation cannot soar any higher; this is the last round of jacob's Ladder that conveys us to Heaven.  
We all profess, I must confess, to love God; but few do it seriously and cordially: and by this kind of external pomp and outward show of profession, we deceive ignorant man, nay we put a fallacy upon ourselves. But there is no humane policy or sophistry that can cheat a God: wherefore it is necessary, for the prevention and knowledge of such counterfeit, hypocritical persons, to bring them to the touch, and try what metal they are composed of; to discern the true, sincere, and pure Love of God, from the false and counterfeit.  
And as there are five degrees of our Love to God, so there are five marks or tokens visible enough, whereby we may discern whether or no we have the true Love of God; 
5 Marks of Gods Love.  which we shall only enumerate, and so conclude for the present.  

1 Mark.  The first mark or token of our Love to God, is this, viz. It extinguisheth all other unchaste and inordinate Love.  

2 Mark.  The second mark and effect of this Love, is, the peace and tranquillity of the soul and conscience.  
The third mark, is, 
3 Mark.  our Love towards our Neighbour.  
The fourth mark, is, 
4 Mark.  the delight and pleasure that we have and take in communing and conversing with God.  
The fifth mark is, 
5 Mark.  a zeal for the glory of God, that is increased or diminished according as God is honoured or dishonoured.  
He, whosoever he be, that perceives these effects wrought in him, may assure himself that he loves God with a true, real, and religious Love: and though it may happen sometimes, that his love may be abated, the heat of his zeal be somewhat quenched, the vigour of his affection somewhat debilitated; though this Love be weak, yet it argues it not to be false, it is true for all that: for as a weak faith is a good faith, so a weak love is a good love. The very Apostles themselves were termed by our Saviour men of little faith: though it be small, so it increase indies, day by day, tending to perfection; 'twill without doubt end in happiness and eternal joy.  
Thus have I laid down these five degrees or marks of our true love to God; which I shall desist from discoursing any farther on at present; but commit you to God, and leave the handling of them to the next opportunity: If God permit. Amen.   

THE SAINTS COMFORT in the day of death.  In the book of Job, the 19 Chapter, and the 25 verse, it is thus written: 
I know that my Redeemer liveth, etc.  
HE always goes stumblingly, 
SERM. V.  that walks in the night, said Jesus Christ the true light of the World, Joh. 11.10. And he that walketh in darkness, knows not whither he goes, said his beloved disciple. If there be any thing wherein this may be clearly known, is is in the mistake of judgement, which those make of themselves, who being destitute of the celestial light of verity, suffer themselves to be led away by their own natural darkness. For there is nothing more frequent in their mouths, than the complaint of their misfortunes; nor nothing more rare than the confession of their faults: they out-speak their punishments, and palliate their crimes; they declare themselves miserable, but would not be thought wicked: you shall often hear the Philosophers call man a dream of a shadow, a weathercock of inconstancy, an example of weakness, a general rendezvous of dolours and misfortunes: A Democritus laughing at his folly, an Heraclitus bemoaning his calamities. The one terms those happy that go quickly out of the world, and th'other those more happy that never come into it. All too much occupied in the sense of their misery, but never in searching or acknowledging their sins: All accusing Nature as a stepdame, but no man himself as a rebellious or disobedient child. He of all men seems to have best hit of man's condition, who hath qualified him the miserablest and proudest of creatures: for whereas all declamations upon the pitiful estate of humane nature, aught to be so many lively lessons of true humility; and that cloud of misfortunes that showers on their heads, bring them down as low as the centre of the earth: on the contrary, like balloones full of wind, the more they are pressed down, the higher they rise: and as it happens in the agitation of a violent tempest, the same wave breaking, makes them sink into the deeps; and keeping itself whole and swelling, carries them again up into the clouds. And their presumption, like a kind of folly, drowning at once both memory and sense of their misfortunes, you see them raise themselves again in their own good opinions, and rejoice in the light of their understandings; they gaze upon themselves in the splendour of their virtues, and lose themselves in the subtlety of their inventions; and to make themselves happy, to depend on no other decree then that of their own wills, to call in no other help then the strength of their own souls. Our life (says one) we have from God; but that we live well and holy, is to be attributed to ourselves. We must (says another) demand our fortune of God, but we must seek for wisdom in ourselves. Every one (says another) hath riches of his own acquisition: for if it were given him from God, he should deserve no commendations. Never any of the wisemen gave thanks to God for making him virtuous; so that by this reckoning of theirs, those people who were lately charged with misfortunes, are now found free from faults: They that are most miserable upon earth, think themselves most worthy of heaven: They who cannot defend themselves from the least creatures, think they have themselves and every thing else in their power: They who for the toothache, made vows to Aesculapius, for the health of their cattle, and the conservation of their corn, sacrificed to Pan and Ceres, do not hold themselves obliged to render thanks to God, for the virtues and excellent qualities that spring and grow in their souls.  
That the Pagans (who are strangers to the Covenant, and ignorant of the way of God, destitute of the light of his Holy Word) should be thus carried and tossed by so contrary opinions in the judgement of their own condition; it seems nothing strange: But that they that call themselves Christians, seeing shine in their climate these two great lights, the Gospel and the Law, that they should go stumbling as in the twilight, and groping like men without their eyes; and without power either in themselves, of knowing the greatness of their miseries, or without themselves of knowing the virtue of the grace and infinity of the mercies of God; that they should go halting on both sides: sometime raising themselves to heaven by their own poor merits; at another time sinking down as low as hell in despair, even by distrust of the gift of God; and of the other side rendering themselves alike unworthy, and throwing themselves into such a distance of his favour: this seems openly to verify the complaint of the Evangelist, Joh. 1.5. that light hath shined in darkness, but the darkness comprehended it not; that his light came into the world, but that the world rather loved darkness, then light. So that it becomes no wonder, if reaping the fruit of what they so much loved; they have also for their part error, uncertainty, and astonishment, the ordinary companions of the night: And if whereas the truly faithful, who by the light of the Law acknowledging their demerits, and by the light of the Gospel embracing the merits of the Redeemer of the World, say with Job, I know that my Redeemer liveth; with the Apostle, 2 Tim. 2.12. I know on whom I have believed, with the well-beloved disciple. 1 Jo. 3.19. We know that we are of God; these men, dazzled with a vain opinion of their own virtues, and undervaluing the redemption of the Lord Jesus, say, We know not whither we shall go; we know not if we believe; we know not whether we shall be saved.  
But if herein they would acknowledge their blindness, there were some hope of bringing them back to the light; but they are so far from this, that in this uncertainty and wand'ring of their troubled souls, they find no infirmity; but on the contrary, this is that which they say, We see: and to say truth, they take a pleasure in their error, as if it were in the brightest clarity; and upon these floating waves and uncertainties, they establish the highest perfection of their faith: Attributing also to the fairest of all the virtues, the three most vicious and abject passions that are to be found in all corrupted nature, which are, Ignorance, Uncertainty, and Fear; keeping in blindness that which should guide us through the darkness of this world, and whose principal action is to see; for, by faith they of old have seen the promises, and saluted them afar of, Heb. 11.13. not staggering through unbelief, but like Abraham, that was strengthened by faith: not fearful and trembling, but being born of God, to overcome the world, 1 Joh. 5.4. What brave exploits can be expected from a Champion that must fight a combat after his eyes be put out, or his soul filled with fear and astonishment? Cursed are they that call evil good, and good evil; bitter to be sweet, and sweet bitter; darkness to be light, and light darkness, Isai. 5.20. To this it is that we would now send back these Doctors of darkness, that we might once be rid of them; and by the lively clarity of Jobs faith, make you follow and consider the true object, where ours should rest; and there to search for her true nouriture and advancement; if we were not for the present hindered, by that bold sacrilege whereby they seek to make holy Scripture a party to their wicked design, and to be the crier for their dishonest gain; making it as much as they can, belie her own nature, which is to be the light and sure guide of souls, to make it serve for a cloak to the night, and as a fantosm for astonishments, wherewith they perplex consciences.  
They say their doctrine is that of Ecclesiastes, Eccl. 9.1. who saith, that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God; and yet no man knoweth either love or hatred that is before them; but all things are kept in uncertainty for the time to come. If these were the words of Ecclesiastes, they had some appearance of reason in them: but that which makes most express for their opinion, is not the words of the wise, but the additions and false expositions of the vulgar Version, whereof they make use, and of which by an unparallelled boldness they correct the Originals. For this last clause, that all things are kept in uncertainty for the time to come, is not at all in the Hebrew Text; and the rest is only couched in these terms; The just, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God, and no man knoweth either love, or hatred, that is before them. Where you see what a violence is used to draw out of these words a certain conclusion against the certainty of faith. For it is a thing to be observed, that in the Holy tongue many times love and hatred are taken for the things which one loves or hates; and that which is translated to know, signifies as often to dispose or to make use of a thing at our pleasure: as, where it is said in Job 38.33. Dost thou know the Ordinances of the Heavens, or dost thou dispose of the government of each of them upon Earth? And in this sense they are not altogether without reason, that turn this verse thus: But all things are so in the hand of God, that none of men can use or dispose at his pleasure of what he either hates or loves. Others, as Arias Montanus, think that by that which is before them, the wise man meant those that were before them; as friends, Parents, or Domestickes, who many times under a veil of friendship conceal their hatreds and mortal envies, which are very hardly discovered while they can be concealed under a feigned appearance. Others understand this uncertainty of events of our love and hatred, which are so hidden from us, that they fall out often contrary to our desires; and sometimes so cross, that to day we hate, what we must love hereafter, and love that which we must ere long detest. But without straying as much as may be from the literal sense, 'tis clear enough, especially if we consider what immediately follows, which serves both as a light and interpretation to this passage: that is, That all happens alike to all, and the same accidents to the good and the bad: for the wiseman would have us know, that by exterior things, by the ordinary course of the world, and the good or evil that can be discerned by the eyes of flesh, it is very hard to distinguish who are loved or hated of God; as 'tis also dangerous to go about to judge of God's curse or grace, by th' adversity or prosperity of men. And here the friends of Job were deceived, when upon the evils that fell upon him, they would conclude against him both the hatred of God, and the impurity of his own life. And here the Jews likewise abused themselves, when they said, We esteem the proud to be blessed, and they that have tempted God were delivered. And to this purpose the Psalmist tells us, 37.7, 9 Fret not thyself, because of him who prospereth in his way, and who bringeth wicked devices to pass: for evil doers shall be cut off; but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth. Sometimes the righteous man mourns under the oppression, and he that walks upright is subject to a thousand evils, & the wicked are terrible, and flourishing like a green bay-tree, and they have more than their heart could wish, Psal. 73.7. And sometimes also joy and the voice of singing and triumph is heard in the tabernacles of the righteous, and the wicked man is ensnared and overthrown by his own iniquities. And so it is a hard matter to judge of this immutable will of God by accidents so divers and changeable: But it goes far otherwise with the inward sense of conscience; for the most righteous among men (setting their life and works before the clearness of God's justice) do know well, and profess openly, that they find themselves worthy of hatred: and so Moses said, We are consumed by thee, we are troubled by thy wrath; thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance, Psal. 90.7, 8. For this the Psalmist cries out, Enter not into judgement with thy servant, for no flesh is righteous in thy sight. And Daniel avowing the verity and justice of God's judgements, said, Dan. 9.7. Lord, with thee there is justice, but shame and confusion of face unto us. So the Centurion said, Matth. 8.8. I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under my roof; and the Apostle St. Paul esteemed himself unworthy to be an Apostle, 1 Cor. 23.9. But these men returning toward the compassions of God, and relying upon the merits of the Redeemer of the World, have not ceased to esteem themselves, in him, and for his sake, worthy of eternal life. And upon this assurance David saith, Psal. 16.11. Thou shalt make me to know the way of life. Daniel besought the Eternal, that according to all his righteousness, his anger and fury might be turned away from Jerusalem. Saint Paul assures himself, that the Crown of Justice is reserved for him, 2 Tim. 4.8. And in the Apocalypse 'tis said of those that have not defiled their garments in the corruptions of the world, that they shall walk with the Lamb in white clothing: for they are WORTHY, Apoc. 3.4.  
And this consideration furnishes an answer to another passage, which they allege to as little purpose, as they have maliciously falsified this, which we have now answered. This is the saying of the Apostle, 1 Cor. 4.4. I find myself guilty in nothing: but for this I am not justified: A passage that cuts their throats; For without doubt, they dare not say that St. Paul was not assured of his salvation; since to some other passages we have already produced, that had no other subterfuge, but that he was assured of it by particular revelation. What is it then the Apostle would say, but that this inward conscience (whereof his conscience bears him witness) is not sufficient to justify him before God? And of this he does not speak doubting, but as in the Epistle to the Galatians he had said, Gal. 3.10. That all they that are of the Law, are under malediction; and all they that seek to be justified by the Law, are fallen from grace, Gal. 5.4. Thus he pronounces openly, and without any sort of uncertainty, that by this he is not justified. And yet it must be observed, that this interior sentiment of his innocency, is not extended over all the actions of his life; for by that which follows, may easily be comprehended, that he speaks only of the execution of his charge, wherein being conducted by the Spirit of God, he knows he hath gone right: As he said in another place, 2 Cor. 1.12. This is now the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and sincerity, and not in carnal wisdom, but according to the grace of God, we have conversed with the world, and chief toward you. Now he that in some one of the actions and occupations of his life, finds himself innocent, will yet not stick to acknowledge himself, in consideration of other things, culpable. And thus we see that David sometimes speaking of some action and particular cause wherein he implores the justice of God against his enemies, does yet glorify himself in his integrity to God, Psal. 18. to have kept the ways of the Lord, and not wickedly to have departed: but elsewhere he confesses his faults; and in the 19 Psal. he prays the Lord, saying, Keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and innocent from the great transgression. And the Apostle himself, who in the exercise of his Apostleship finds himself exempt of fault, yet forgets not to sigh and demand deliverance from this law of his members, which makes him carnal, and sold under sin, Rom. 7.24. And this excellent Organ of the Spirit of God knew very well, that to obtain justification by works, it was necessary that works should be perfect, and innocency and sanctification should be entire, as well in their parts, as their degrees; because that he that fails in one point of the Law, makes himself guilty of the transgression of all; and that no single action, though perfect in itself, can make a perfection of justice: whereas one sin alone is able to slay the soul, to ternish the lustre, and corrupt the value of all precedent justices; and therefore he abandons this feeble prop, whereon whosoever thinks to rely, remains always in uncertainty: And therefore not to testify any incertitude of his salvation, but to affirm the assurance of it upon a foundation invariable, he reputes all things, even his own innocency, as dung; that he may gain Christ, and be found in him, having not his own justice, which is of the Law; but the justice of God, which is by faith in Jesus Christ.  
This is then to beat the air, and fight with his own shadow, to go about to show the weakness and infirmity of man, to sound the depth of the malice of his heart, and to open the dark corners and retraicts of his hypocrisy: we confess more than they can accuse us of; being only sorry that it is out of an envy to do ill, in troubling the consciences, and not the love of the truth, which pulls this confession from our mouth, that no man living can say, My heart is clean, and I am pure from sin: and yet at other times, they contest with this confession, when they fall upon the strength of their free will, and to establish their works of supererogation: Yes, it is true, that there is no just man on earth that doth well, and sins not, Eccl. 7.21. In many things we offend all, James 3.2. If we say we have no sin, we are liars, 1 Joh. All the most holy among men have confessed their sins before God, Job 15.15. and why not? since the Heavens themselves are not pure before him; He put no trust in his servants, and his Angels he charged with folly, Job 4.18. But so little doth this confession shake the assurance of the faith, that contrariwise it settles it so much the more, because hereby a man is led to go forth of himself, to go and put his whole affiance in the only mercy of God; and to withdraw all his hopes from the merit of his own works, to rely entirely upon the infinite merits of him, who of God is made unto us, wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification and redemption, 1 Cor. 1.30. Of ourselves we have not so much as a good thought, but all our sufficiency cometh from God; but yet able to do all things in him that strengthens us, Philip. 4.13. we are combated by him, but we are in all things more than Conquerors through him that loved us, Rom. 8.36. And very well said St. Bernard in the fifth Homily of the dedication of the Temple, entering into consideration of the soul: I seem to have found two things contrary to each other; for if I behold it such as it is in itself, and of itself, I cannot speak better then in saying that it is reduced to nothing: for what need is it for me to recount all her miseries, how it is charged with sins, envelopt in darkness, environed with temptations, boiling with lusts, subject to passions, filled with illusions, inclined to vice, full of shame and confusions? If all the righteousness of man be before God nothing but pollution, what shall be his unrighteousness? If there be nothing but darkness in his light, how obscure then shall be the darkness itself? What shall I then say? For certain man is nothing but vanity, he is reduced to nothing, man is nothing: But how is he thus nothing, whom God so magnifies? How is he nothing, since Godsets his heart upon him? Let us have courage: although we be nothing in our hearts, yet we shall find in God's heart something hidden of us. O Father of mercies! O Father of miserable! how is it that thou setst thy heart upon us? for thy treasure is where is thy heart: and how are we thy treasure, if we be nothing? Certainly in the judgement of thy verity we are nothing, but not so in the affection of thy piety and goodness.  
But why, say they, if we have absolute assurance of our Salvation, are there so many advertisements given us in holy Scripture, to take heed to ourselves; to watch, to pray, and that he that stands take heed he do not fall? and if these be truly profitable, as it is to be presumed; then this is a testimony that a man may fall; and consequently, that he cannot stand firm in his assurance.  
To this we answer: That the exhortations and threaten in Scripture, which are commonly made, aught to be applied according to the quality and necessity of every one: The visible Church, to which the Word of God is announced, is composed of divers sorts of people; some have need of a bridle, others of a spur; some to be held back by threaten from their abandoned vices; others to be wakened from a natural lethargy by lively exhortations: to some, consolation; too others, correction is necessary. There are that abuse themselves, who under pretext of exterior piety, wherein they seem very zealous, thinking themselves to be highflown upon the wings of a holy devotion, while avarice and luxury, and other vanities, have tied them fast to earth, and drag them through the dirt: To these men, the saying of the Apostle addresses properly, 1 Cor. 10.12. that he that thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall: and those that stand truly, ought not to slight this advice, but rather to take it (not as a presage of their misfortune, but) as a testimony, that although of ourselves we are subject to fall, yet nevertheless God would not have us fall, because he directs his word to us; who putting us in mind of our condition, conducts us more and more to seek the confirmation of his grace: And then to fall, is not to make a total loss of our salvation, but only a stumbling or a fall in a spiritual course; a thing that may happen to the most righteous; and yet not that they should fall from the hope of their salvation, because they are soon again restored by repentance; For if the just man fall, yet he can fall no farther, because the Lord holds him by the hand, Psal. 37.24. And so these exhortations tend only to make us distrust ourselves, but not to ravish us of the confidence we ought to have in God: They fight with the carnal security of profane ones, but not with the faith of the children of God, to whom they rather serve as means to advance them towards that glory which they wait for, rendering by a holy vigilance the hope of their vocation still more firm.  
Yet they will say, There is nothing so much recommended to us in Scripture, as fear: Work out your salvation with FEAR and trembling, Philip. 2.12. Happy is the man that FEARETH always, Prov. 28.14. Be not highminded, but FEAR, Rom. 11.20. Pass the time of your sojourning here in FEAR, 1 Pet. 1.17. Certainly, if it were necessary to oppose to these passages that recommend fear, those that chase it from our hearts; for one, we might oppose thirty, there being nothing more common in all the course of Scripture, than these words, which are addressed to the faithful, Fear not: But the Word of God never belies itself, and therefore 'tis necessary, that there be a fear of two sorts; one, that is compatible with assurance, a good, a holy, a commendable fear; because it leads us to God: the other, that extinguishes it, and makes us fly from the face of God, as Adam did after his sin, Gen. 3.8. and this is that which the fear of God ought to chase and banish from every faithful soul: And therefore 'tis no wonder, if fear and assurance be met in one and the same subject, in divers respects. So when I consider the Law, with those thunders and lightnings, and threaten and curses, my soul is ready to vanish for fear: but when I turn myself to the gracious promises of the Gospel, she fills herself with assurance: when I consider my own demerit, I enter into distrust; but under the merits of Christ, I re-assure myself again: I tremble over the pendant slippery paths of this life; but I comfort myself, when I see the hand of God that sustains me: And thus I serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice before him in trembling, Psal. 2.11. This is that filial fear that makes God's children prudent in their ways; not that spirit of fear, that torments the consciences of the wicked, Rom. 8.15. not that which proceeds from distrust of power, or despair of the good will of God; but which is born out of the knowledge of dangers that environ us, and from the sense of our own infirmity: not that which trembles for punishment, but that which is apprehensive for the sin: not that which flies from the face of God; but that which hath recourse to his grace: And such a one, as if there were no punishment nor recompense, no Hell nor Paradise, would not omit her duty toward God, but would take heed to displease him: This goes equal steps with that assurance which is reckoned among the gifts that are shed upon the Son of God, Isai. 12.2. who was not able to enter into any distrust of the love of his Father.  
But what relation to this reverence of true children to their father, hath this trouble, and uncertain trembling fear, which the Roman Doctors cast into men's consciences? Certainly among so divers fluctuations, wherewith (as impetuous winds) our souls since sin are miserably agitated; there is none more strange, than this fear; nor among the judgements wherewith God threatens and punishes the wicked, there is none more terrible than this cry of fear, which he sends into their ears, Job 15.21. This trembling heart, this dimness of eyes, this distress of soul, which makes their life so doubtful before them, that at evening they say, Deut. 28.67. Who shall let us see the morning? and in the morn they demand, Who shall let us see the evening? Fear, like a terrible voice, wakens the soul by start, and so seizes it, that it remains insensible to every thing, except that stroke of astonishment that beats it; and from that which is nothing, makes it feel a thousand dolorous passions: and whereas we feel not other evils, more than they are in us, and the cause remains there: yet fear calls back evils that are past: multiplying and engrossing those that are present, and anticipating those that are not yet, and perhaps that shall never be; and so forges imaginary torments, wherewith it makes miserable souls sensible of a thousand real sorrows. The mortal enemy of all repose, it ravages in an instant whatsoever is either pleasant or delightful in life: and like a feverish heat, it infects and imbitters the best prepared sweetnesses; bringing in a profound sadness into our hearts; which so gnaws and undermines them, as the rust doth steel, and makes us draw a life after us, more miserable than death: Inconsiderate passion! which continually represents to our eyes the image of the danger that attends us, and is thereby so troublesome, that we can neither see, nor foresee for remedies: neither more, nor less, than an abyss, where waters drawn out of the deep, whirl about with so much impetuosity, giving us afar off the warning of shipwreck, and yet draws us in by such an astonishment, that we are plunged and swallowed up in the gulf that we would so fain escape.  
Thus it awakes in our souls a vehement desire to avoid that mischief that treads upon our heels; but it so troubles and astonishes all our senses, that losing both our judgement and discourse, we precipitate ourselves into the danger from which our fear seems to lend us wings; and than it happens to us, as at other times we dream, when pressed by some enemies as we think, or by some hideous fantosm, we seek to fly away, but cannot, because our heavy bodies, or else our trashed feet, will not follow our desire: or if a light seeming swiftness answer our fear, and seem to skip over furlongs, yet which way so ever we turn in the trouble of this affright, though panting for pain; this funeral-object meets us every where, giving us the chase, and leaving us nothing but complaint; in which we would fain cry out, but cannot, because the apprehension stops our voice, and ties up our trembling and stammering tongue to the roof of our mouths: So those that are seized with this passion, apprehend every thing, and fall foul upon all: They are afraid of their dreams; they are troubled at their fancies: They give themselves to be abused by lying spirits; they take all that they meet with for ill presages; and sometimes come to fall into such a confusion of spirit, that they throw themselves headlong into despair. Histories afford us but too many examples of those who being unable to deliver themselves from this passion, have yielded up themselves to death, finding more sweetness in death, then in the fear of dying. Whosoever beholds an affrighted man, may easily read in the tracts of his visage, and in all the actions of his body, what the trouble and confusion is that agitates his soul: for, to observe his scattered eyes, his bleak face, his pale and shaking lips, his dry mouth, his furred tongue, his confused voice, his beating heart, his panting flanks, his knees knocking together, his stumbling feet, and all the movings of the body trembling and uncertain; what can be said, but that his body is so miserably agitated, that his soul must be in great disorder? And in this condition, it is as uncapable to produce a good action, as to take good counsel; but from thence, as from an infernal jakes, do issue the most infamous vices and execrable actions that can be committed by men. And as in an army after a terror taken, the battalions break their ranks in disorder; all fly, all run, and nothing seen but blood and slaughter: so it is when fear possesses the soul; she troubles herself; all virtues abandon her, and the vices make a horrible waist and spoil. From hence sprung up superstition, and so many execrable sacrifices, the very report whereof breeds horror. Cruelty claims her for her mother; perfidiousness, treason, and dissembling, own her their original: She hath hatched tyranny and ill counsels; and it is none but she, that breaking the sacred bonds of nature, is capable to animate fathers and mothers against their proper blood, and their own bowels. In a word, 'tis impossible to love the thing which we fear. Behold then this monster which these Doctors nourish in these poor souls, which God by so many promises of his love and assistance, chaces and banishes from the hearts of his children: Fear not, little flock; for it is your father's pleasure to give you a Kingdom, Luk. 12.32.  
Nay but, say they, To day I am well assured, but who can continue me this assurance till to morrow and afterwards? He that perseveres to the end, shall be saved, Matth. 24.13. And what is there more changeable and inconstant than man? So many assaults that Satan gives us, so many dangers that beset us, so many infirmities that are in us, so many examples of Apostates that make shipwreck of their faith; do they not give us cause enough to doubt? Yes verily, and to despair absolutely, if we look no farther then to ourselves: But the power of God is perfected in our weakness, 2 Cor. 12.19. If we be weak, he is strong; if we be changelings, he's immutable: I have loved thee with an everlasting love, and have therefore extended my loving kindness to thee, Jerem. 31.3. Those whom he hath loved, he hath loved to the end; and the gifts and calling of God are without repentance, Rom. 11.29. His foundation continues firm, 2 Tim. 2.19. He knows who are his, and none shall ravish them out of his hands: and it is impossibile that his elect should be seduced, Matth. 24.24. but those whom he hath foreknown, he hath predestinated, called, justified, and glorified, Rom. 8.29. This chain of his love is altogether inviolable; and therefore rest thyself upon his favourable power, and upon his unchangeable goodness, saying with David, Psal. 138. The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me; thy mercy, O Lord, endureth for ever: forsake not the works of thine own hands: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. This assurance is the true humility which beats down the pride of man, that he may glorify God: pride and presumption are to be feared when we go about to rely upon ourselves, when we sacrifice to our own nets, and exalt the merit of our virtues: but let not that man fear to glorify himself, that seeks his glory in the shame of the cross of Christ; that strips himself of all other ornaments, to put on Christ; that celebrates not his own justice, but the compassions of God: I do not glorify myself because I am just, said St. Ambrose, but because I am redeemed: I will not glorify myself at all, because I am without sin, but because I have obtained pardon of my sins: I will not glorify myself that I have profited any, but because Christ is Advocate for me towards the Father, 1 Joh. 1.2. that he hath shed his blood for my sake, and for me hath tasted of death; this is not arrogance, but faith. To preach and to publish that which thou hast received, is not pride, but devotion, said St. Augustine.  
And for conclusion, it is least to be feared that this doctrine should make men negligent, or be as a pillow under their elbows, to make their souls sleepy in the neglect of the means of salvation. St. Paul draws a quite contrary consequence, when he saith, Philip. 2.12, 13. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling; and adds this for a reason; for it is God that works in you both the will and the performance, according to his good pleasure. Will you say then, that this belief makes men sleepy, and chokes in their consciences, both the duties of prayer, and the exercises of charity? contrariwise, there is not a sharper spur to this acknowledgement, than the knowledge of the Love of God, and the assurance of his grace. Who hath ever seen fear produce a good action? And what is there in the world that is either fair or generous, which is not to be attributed to hope? It were a devilish malice, to be wicked because God is good; to turn the back upon him, when he turns his face upon us; to fly him, because he seek us; to change affection toward him, because his love is for ever unchangeable toward us; and because he will give a kingdom in heaven for us, to cast ourselves into the way that leads to infernal pains. The children of God go another way; and from the faith and assurance, which they have of the love of their father, they inflame their loves the more to him, and feel themselves the more obliged to his obedience. They fear to offend so good a Father; and being purchased by so excellent a price, they consecrate their bodies and spirits to his glory. And as the sick man to whom Physicians have given assurance of recovery, keeps himself from things that are contrary to his health, and takes more willingly the remedies that are ordained him; whereas he that despairs of his health abandons himself to his appetite: So the faithful man knowing that God will impart to him of his glory, goes by the way of sanctity and good works, that he may attain to the other; and having so many fair promises, cleanses himself from all pollution of flesh and spirit, finishing the sanctification in the fear of God, 2 Cor. 7.1. So Daniel knew, that when the 70 years of the captivity were at an end, God should deliver his people, and therefore about that time, he put himself upon prayer and fasting, Dan. 9.2, 3. So St. Paul, Act. 23.24, 31. had a promise for all those that were with him in the ship, that none should be lost; but yet when he saw the Mariners ready to withdraw themselves, he did not spare to tell them, that if they did not tarry with us, we could not be saved. The Pagans themselves never entered into combats with more courage, then when they had their birds, or the entrails favourable: they never engaged into a business with so much vigour, as when they were assured of success by the answers of Oracles. We are called by the vocation of God, to the possession of the heavenly Canaan: He promises us for the getting it, his conduct, favour, and assistance; so that with Job we may very well say, I shall see God. And what then remains, but that casting down every burden, and the sin that so easily enlaces us, we may pursue with constancy the course set before us: and traversing all dangers, and going under hope against hope, we may have our eyes upon Jesus Christ the author and finisher of our faith; that so we may more and more in his love, revive the strength of ours; and recollect in him every day new vigour, until the time that from virtue to virtue, we may appear before his Sacred face, where receiving the Crown and heap of his blessings, we may glorify him for ever; as to him appertains honour and glory from this time forth, and from generation to generation. Amen.   

THE SAINTS COMFORT in the day of death.  In the book of Job, the 19 Chapter, and the 25 verse, it is thus written: 
As for me, I know that my Redeemer liveth, etc.  
IT is impossible to please God without faith, Heb. 11.6. 
SERM. VI  for 'tis necessary that he that comes to God, believe not only that he is, but that he is a rewarder of those that seek him. To God that dwells in the Heavens, we go by faith, not by view. All the view that conducts us to eternal salvation, is faith. And therefore as in vain the Sun sends forth his light, in vain does it enlighten so many torches in the Heavens, and discovers upon Earth so rich an embroidery of leaves and flowers, for those that are without eyes: So as unprofitable are the marveiles which the wisdom of God hath displayed in all this universe, and the divine mysteries which it hath discovered in the clearness of his holy word, for those that are without faith. God complains Esai. 65. that in vain he hath stretched out his hands to a rebellious and contradicting people: and St. Paul, Heb. 4.2. gives a reason why the word of preaching hath not profited the people of the Jews: and it is, because it was not mingled with faith in those that heard it. Who hath believed our preaching, and to whom hath the arm of the Eternal been revealed? Isai. 53.1. Light is the first and most excellent work of God, in the elementary world; the eye is the most admirable beauty of all the humane body: it is the joy of our life, the address of our actions, and the clearest window of the soul: the eye and light of our soul is faith, without which it remains in darkness, ignorant of the way of God, confused in all her actions, and plunged in mourning and despair: and therefore it is also the chief gift of heavenly grace, the first tract of the Image of God that is marked in our hearts, the first action of our spiritual life, and the foundation and origine of all other virtues. By this light Job acknowledges and discovers the eternal benefits which recompense his temporal losses; he finds spiritual sweetness, which tempers the bitterness of his corporal dolours; he sees and embraces the perdurable felicity of the second life, which reinforces his soul against the apprehensions of death.  
For this cause we have so long insisted to describe and represent to you the nature of this faith, by winding it out of ignorance, from the confusion and uncertainty wherein they seek to fold it up, that withdraw souls from the true spring of life, and divert it to the cracked cisterns of superstition; to engrave the lively tracts of it as deep in your souls, as Job desired to have them imprinted in the hard rock, that so the deduction which we shall make you, after him, of the mysteries of your redemption, may not be unfruitful to you, but that being guided by this divine and heavenly torch, you may there find that assurance, firmity and consolation, that Joy inenarrable and glorious, which is necessary for you in the midst of so many evils and combats as the enemies of the truth of God do deliver and prepare for his Church.  
Before we come to a more particular consideration of the Redeemer, and of this life, resurrection and glory, which he hath purchased for us by the price of his redemption; we must upon these words make some general remark, which may be proper to confirm us as much in the verity of our faith, as they will make us see that it is venerable for antiquity, and always veritable and constant in her unity. We see the dolours of Job increase against all other remedies, drawn either from hope of temporal things, or from any rules of the law; and to acquiesce in one only Jesus Christ, seeking in the only benefit of his redemption, his repose and hope; where he teaches us clearly, that the principal and special object of faith hath at all times been the promise of the grace and salvation which was to be purchased by this Mediator betwixt God and men: which holding and embracing, she finds (and not till then) her repose and tranquillity. The whole Word of God is truly the proportioned object to th'extent of our faith; and according to the intelligence and approbation of the understanding, she embraces it wholly, and can go no further: and in every thing, and every where, she reputes God to be true, whether he command or forbid; whether he promise or threaten; whether he instruct or correct: she leads all her thoughts captive under obedience; she receives all his commands with humility; she keeps herself to his prohibitions with fear; she embraces his promises with affection: she fears his threaten, she hearkens to his instructions, and profits by his corrections; for if faith doubt and go reeling in uncertainty of any one point of whatsoever is manifested in the Word of God, there will afterwards need no great violence to shake it in all other things, and to throw it headlong into infidelity: And therefore when we give for the principal object of faith, the promise of salvation and grace, we will not subtract it to other parts of the word, as leaving it indifferent, and every one to liberty of believing or misbelieving at his fancy; but contrariwise, knowing that all hath been brought to us not by the will of man, but by the inspiration of the eternal spirit, which hath guided the tongues and pens of those that have announced and left written this holy word; we maintain that the verity of it must be wholly and in every part both heard and received, with the like reverence. But we say moreover, that as the waters of the Sea are for divers ends spread abroad, and go creeping through an infinity of channels, over and under the face of the earth, yet in such sort, that at last they return all into the bosom of the Ocean from whence they had their birth: so we say, that in the book of Scripture, divers matters, histories, examples, judgements, threaten, laws, instructions and exhortations, which like little rivers rejoice the City of our God, and serve to divers uses in the Church: But after all, Jesus Christ is the mark whereat all aim, the Centre whither all return, and guide our faith in him to find and obtain rest: So Moses and the Prophets give their testimony, Luk. 24.27. and the end of the Law is Jesus Christ, Rom. 10.4. and to this intent speaks St. Paul, 1 Cor. 2.2. that he will know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified; because that is the summary and principal end of all the knowledge of the Scriptures; which faith not only beholds as a thing to be consented to; but embraces it, as the only subject where to find salvation and life. Certainly, faith believes the creation of the world, the genealogy of the fathers, the confusion of tongues in Babel, the captivity of Israel in Egypt, the exploits of the Judges and Kings given to the people of God for Liberators: and from all these things there may be gathered divers instructions for this life: but to find in this recital the means of our reconciliation with God, of the remission of sins, and the eternal glory, it is not possible, because it is not in any of these properly. Where the Eternal offers and presents the gifts of his heavenly grace, that is, a Word of God which he pronounced to Adam with his own mouth, after he had transgressed the commandment; Thou shalt die the death; in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread, Gen. 3.19. These things were conformable to the Law and Word of God: all these fearful menaces which the friends of Job with so much preparative denounced to the hypocrites and wicked: but these are so far from begetting or keeping up faith, (which as 'tis requisite, should be accompanied with peace and consolation) that contrariwise they put the conscience into trouble, they fill the sinful soul with fear; and in stead of giving us access to God, go chase and banishing us behind his face; as we read of the people of Israel, who not able to abide the thundering voice of the Eternal, (giving his Law upon the mountain) stood afar off, and said to Moses, Exod. 20.19. Speak thou with us, and we will hear thee; but let not God speak with us, for fear we die. This very part of the word that commands obedience, and prescribes a rule for works, proposing blessing and life to those that accomplish it; Do this, and thou shalt live, Luk. 10.28. Whosoever doth these things, shall live by them, Levit. 18.5. is not that where our faith rests; because as it promises life to the observers, so it denounces malediction against all those that do not abide in all the words of the Law to fulfil them: And thus our conscience, guilty of many transgressions, cannot find nor affirm her assurance, nor seek for remission of sins, where there is nothing presented but wrath and judgement: And therefore the Apostle in the Epistle to the Romans, and in that which he writes to the Galatians, retires our faith from the Law, and tells us openly, that the Law is not of faith, Gal. 3.12. that all they that are of the works of the Law, are under the curse, Gal. 3.10, 11. that the Law was not given to quicken, but contrary, that it is the minister of death and of condemnation; none being able to be justified before God, by the works of the Law; declaring with David, those to be blessed to whom God imputes justice without works, Psal. 32.1, 2. Nevertheless it ceases not to serve faith, because by it comes the knowledge of sin; and that it serves as a Schoolmaster to lead us to Christ, Rom. 3.23. in whom we are freely justified by the grace of him, by the redemption which is in Jesus Christ, whom God hath proposed a mediator by faith in his blood; by whom the remission of sin is announced, to the end, that in whatsoever we could not be justified by the Law, whosoever believes might be justified by him, Act. 13.39. For to him all the Prophets give testimony, that whosoever shall believe in him, shall have remission of sins by his name, Act. 10.43. Hither it is properly that our faith is invited: Whosoever is thirsty, let him come to me and drink, Joh. 7.37. Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will refresh you, Matth. 11.28. So that this Gospel of peace, this word of reconciliation, ministry of spirit, and of life, power of God unto salvation to all that believe, Rom. 1.16. Which opens to us the Abysses of compassions, of love, grace, and the good pleasure of God, which deduces to us the coming, the incarnation, the sufferances, the justice, and the death of the Redeemer of the world, and which represents to us the Holy Spirit, applying and sealing by the preaching of the Gospel and the Sacraments, these divine and heavenly benefits in our souls, and rendering us assured of our reconciliation with God, of the abolition of our offences, of the imputation of the justice of Christ, and of the gift of heavenly life. The Gospel is the word of life, saith St. Paul, Rom. 10.8. It looks at the whole word of God, but it embraces only his good will: It approves all his truth, but it runs only after his gratuity; and then 'tis best pleased, and content, when both are met in Christ, in whom gratuity and verity are met, justice and peace have kissed each other, Psal. 85.11. by whom the gratuity of God is multiplied upon us, and his truth endures for ever, Psal. 117.2. We do not then reject any part of the word, nor we do not tear the faith in pieces; but in this general object, we observe what is most proper, and most particularly belongs to it, by reason of the differing parts of it. Be then the Word of God a Paradise to the faithful soul; but so, as among so many fruits of different taste and virtue, she may find one tree of life that may fully satisfy the hunger of justice, that she so seeks for: let the Scripture be her Orchard; but yet let there be one appletree whose shadow she desires sitting down under it, and the fruit sweet to her palate: let the truth of God be her garden of aromatic drugs; but let there be one Rose of Sharon, whose sweet smell may recover her fainting heart, and which she may put in her bosom, no otherwise then a bundle of myrrh, Cant. 1.13. He knows well enough that his Redeemer is living.  
But if the Gospel be the particular object of faith, from whence shall we say that Job learned this science, and from whence he could draw the foundations of an assurance so firm, since this was not but many ages after his death, that the Gospel was published to the world, or that the Saviour of the world was come to accomplish the work of our redemption? The Law and the Prophets endured till John; but since his time, the Kingdom of God is Evangelized; Luk. 16.16. Many Kings and Prophets have desired to see the things which were seen, when Jesus Christ conversed in the world, and they have not seen them, Luk. 10.24. And therefore Jesus Christ prefers the least that were under the Gospel, before the greatest that were under the Law: St. John pointed at him with his hand, and shown him to the World, to be the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins; for which cause he was raised above the Prophets; and because he had not seen nor showed the glory and virtue which followed his death and his resurrection, he was therefore set below the Apostles: And St. Paul saith, that the grace which hath been given us in Jesus Christ, from eternal times, is now manifested by the apparition of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath destroyed death, and put into light both life and immortality by the Gospel: It seems then that this mystery of our redemption hath been hidden from precedent ages, and that the ancient Fathers have had nothing but shadows and figures of things that were to come. And yet Jesus Christ himself gives this testimony to Abraham, that he desired to see this day of his, and hath seen it, and rejoiced, Joh. 8.56. and St. Peter, 1 Pet. 1.10. that the Prophets have enquired and made diligent search, concerning the salvation of souls, the reward of faith; and by the Prophetic spirit in them, have declared the sufferances which were to come to Jesus Christ, and the joys which were to follow them: And for this reason it is, that the Son of God says, He had the testimony of Moses and the Prophets, and that the Scriptures of the old Testament bare witness of him, Joh. 5.39.  
To know then how that must be understood, to resolve us in this appearance of contrariety, and to begin our undermining at the foundation of Papistical errors, touching the state of the souls of the Father's deceased before the coming of Christ; let us learn then from this confession of faith, so fair, so firm, so clear as it can be in the noon day of the Gospel, that we have no other faith, nor other means of salvation, than what the ancient Patriarches had before us; and that the ancient Covenant contracted with them, in the substance and truth, is the same thing with the new one contracted with us, that are fallen into these later times: all the difference which is in them, consisting only in the order and the means of the dispensation; which according to the diversity of times, hath made it assume divers visages: for as the Apostle, Heb. 1.1, 2. God hath heretofore many times, and after many sorts, spoken to the fathers by the Prophets; and in these later times by his Son Jesus Christ. Where he seems to distinguish the times by the coming of the Son of God, betwixt the preceding ages, and those that were to come after. The first part hath had divers seasons and divers manners, according to which this dispensation hath been ordered: The first season is counted from the fall of Adam unto Abraham, during which we had no declaration more express of this eternal alliance of God with men, then that which is contained in few words, but of an high and full signification: The seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the Serpent, Gen. 3.15. upon which promise, confirmed, declared and entertained by the usage of sacrifices, and carried from hand to hand, and from father to son, during all the first age of the world, this faith was sustained, and the hope of the faithful founded. In the second season, from Abraham to Moses, during which Job lived (a true Son of Abraham, both according to the flesh and to the promise) this general promise was (as it were) restrained in the family and posterity of this Holy Patriarch; when God made this alliance with him, that he would be their God, and they his children; and discocovered to him, that from him should go forth the Redeemer of the World, when he said, that in his seed all the Nations of the World should be blessed, Genes. 12. giving him beside the sacrifices, the particular seal of the circumcision, as a sign of the justice of faith, Rom. 4.11. The third was from Moses to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; where, in a more especial and ample manner, God was pleased to instruct his people, exposing and confirming his Covenant unto them, after divers fashions; in which are remarkable two principal parts, having reference each to other, and ordained one for the love of the other: Like the two Cherubims, who being placed one right against the other, and extending their wings one toward the other, did both of them look toward the propitiatory, Exod. 25.20. the one was the Law, promising life and everlasting benediction, under the condition of a most perfect observation of his commands: A condition impossible to corrupted nature, whose imaginations were nothing but evil at all times: and yet very necessary and useful, to make men know the duty wherein they were obliged, to make them sensible of weakness, and to make them comprehend the horror of that condemnation into which their transgressions had precipitated them; by that means to conduct them to the second part of the Covenant, which was all of it purely Evangelical; as that which under divers figures and ceremonies did represent man's reconciliation to God, and his plenary deliverance by the ransom of that infinite merit of the sacrifice of the death and passion of Christ. After this, in the fullness of time, came the great Redeemer of our souls, who abolished the first means, that he might establish the second; abolished (I say) not wholly, but in part; not in the substance, but in the accidents: For as for the first part, he exacts no more as it were by force of maledictions that perfect obedience of the Law; but supplying the defects of nature by the abundant effusion of his spirit of grace, he draws from sanctified hearts a voluntary obedience: And in the second, he hath caused the body to succeed the shadows, the truth the figures, the thing the signs; all these things having been fulfilled in the death of Christ.  
And from hence may we easily comprehend the difference that there is betwixt the new Covenant and the old; between the faith of the Fathers that lived under the Law, and theirs that live under the Gospel. For it is the same thing in substance; Having God for the Author, his grace and mercy for the cause, and the satisfaction of Christ for the meritorious foundation; The same things promised, grace and glory: God is to us both, a Sun and a Shield; he gives both grace and glory; and withholds no good thing from such as wait upon him: Distributed in general by the same means, and the preaching of the word; Harken, and your souls shall live, Isai. 55.3. the administration of the Sacraments: He that shall not be circumcised, shall be cut off, Gen. 17.14. and the inward working of the spirit of God, Isai. 59.21. My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put into thy mouth, shall not departed from thy mouth, nor from the mouth of thy seed, nor from the mouth of thy seeds seed, from henceforth and for ever: Aiming at the same end, to wit, salvation and life eternal. But as to the accidents, and in the manner of dispensation, there is no small difference. For in the Gospel, the manifestation of doctrine is more clear, express, and efficacious; as much more clear, as accomplishments are before prophecies; and things present, than things which are as yet hid in the length of ages to come: and so much the more clear, in that at this day of exterior manifestation, hath been added a greater abundance of the Spirits interior light, according as it was prophesied, Joel 2.28. And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy; your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: so that whereas they of old saw Jesus Christ but under shadows and images of what was to come; we hold him as come already, and look upon him as crucified before our eyes. To this may be added, their Covenant was contracted by the mediation of Moses; ours, by that of Christ: The old Covenant was confined to one corner of the world, and tied to one family; the new one hath reached to the ends of the earth, and hath embraced the Nations: The old one lasted but for a time, whereas the new one shall not terminate but by the end of ages.  
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to day, and for ever, Heb. 13.8. This is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, Revel. 13.8. 'Tis he that is a light to the nations, and the salvation of God unto the ends of the earth: in waiting for him, those of old found their consolation, as we have ours in seeing him: and the odor of his sacrifice expanding itself as well over the foregoing as following ages, hath restored those souls who before or since have put their whole trust in him: Wherefore although we see those of old in rudiments which are seemingly gross, let us not the less value their faith, who for having the less of clarity, have not the less of certainty. Certainly, prophecy was like a candle giving light in an obscure place; the Law like the dawning of the day, or the Star of the morning; and the Gospel like the clear noon: But all these lights, though differing in clarity, have been enough to make us see and follow the ways of salvation, 2 Pet. 1.19. And though it seem to us, that we see no more promised to the people of Israel, and their Patriarches, than a Canaan flowing with milk and honey, and with a thousand sweets of temporal blessings; yet let us not think that they stopped there, or that they did not with Job raise their souls, and carry up their desires to things spiritual, to that inward peace, and never-decaying glory, which was represented to them under those shadows of an earthly happiness. For in whatsoever was heretofore offered and presented to them, they still cast their eyes on Jesus Christ the promised Messiah, in whom all God's promises are yea and amen, 2 Corinth. 1.20. The consideration of whom, would by no means suffer them to dwell upon the transitory sweetnesses of this world; his Kingdom being represented to them by Prophecies, not as a carnal or worldly one, but as one altogether celestial and spiritual. The Sceptre (said Jacob to his sons) shall not be taken from Judah, nor the Lawgiver from betwixt his feet, till Silo come, Gen. 40. That is to say, The seed of the woman, the man to be born without a Father; and to him the people shall assemble themselves: He was to come forth of Judah, but at the time that he was to come, Judah must lose the Sceptre; not then to rule or signorize in Judah: for if he were to raise Judah above the Nations, he should not then be the hope of his people, since his coming was to vanquish and subjugate them: but to him all Nations were to run, and to offer him voluntary obedience, because under his yoke they should come to seek their liberty; because he shall reign over their souls, and conduct them with a rod of comfort, delivering them from the bonds of sin, and the tyranny of Satan, whose head he shall bruise, and take away his Empire. So likewise when the Prophets speak of the deliverance of Babylon, of the people's return into the land of promise, and the re-establishment of the Temple; presently you see them transported with a consideration of the Kingdom of this great Messiah, of the deliverance of the souls of the true temple, which is the Church: As if they would teach the people, that the possession of Canaan, and all the contentment depending thereon, were but shadows not to be trusted to; their felicity not consisting, to live, to govern, and reign here below, but to serve God, to be governed by him, as that by the Sceptre of his word, and efficacy of his spirit, he might reign in us, and be fully obeyed: So saith Esai, that the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious; and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel, Isai. 42.3, 4. But with what glory? It is (and he adds) that he that is left in Zion, and he that remains in Jerusalem, shall be called holy; and those that shall be in Jerusalem shall all be written to life, when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof, by the spirit of judgement, and by the spirit of burning: and in the 11 Chapter he shows, that the gifts he hath received from above, to communicate to the world, are all spiritual, when he saith, Isai. 11.2. The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord: He saith moreover, that he will bring his people from the North and from the South, and that the earth shall be too narrow to contain them; that Kings and Queens shall be their nursing fathers and nursing mothers: But this is not to promise a temporal Kingdom, but to represent an arrival of all Nations to his Church; and of their Kings themselves, under whose protection she should abundantly prosper. And here you may see the difference, which is betwixt the advancements which the Eternal promises to Kings, and he entrance which he prepares for his Son into the world. Behold how he speaks to Cyrus, Isai. 45.12, 3. I have taken thee by thy right band, that thou mightst make the Nations thy subjects; and that I might weaken the reins of their Kings: I will break the gates of brass, and bruise the bolts of iron, and give thee the hidden treasures. But when he speaks of the Messiah, We have seen him grow up as a tender plant; and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him: He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with griefs, and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. And after, he shows why he was come into this sad and abject form, because he hath born our griefs, and carried our sorrows: he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, Isai. 53.4, 5. The price which hath purchased our peace, was put upon him; and by his murtherings, we were healed: As Daniel more openly declares, that he should come to put an end to disloyalty, to purge iniquity, 
Dan. 9.24.  and to bring justice into the world. This is that which was so clearly represented to them by the ceremony of the sacrifices, where such things were offered that could not have an entire and proper virtue for the washing of the soul, but did only look after, and search their perfection in the full and entire satisfaction which Jesus Christ hath rendered to the justice of God his Father, by the sacrifice of the Cross. And thus the faithful instructed by all these means, have ever testified that the attendance of their souls hath carried itself higher than the outside of signs, and of the transient benefit of these temporal promises: For Job declares it not only here in formal terms, but likewise, as the Apostle shows, in the Epistle to the Hebr. Chap. 11.9, 10. The Patriarches have dwelled as strangers in the Land of Promise, as if it had not belonged to them; dwelling under Tents, and possessing nothing there but their sepulchers: to let us see, that it was not properly that earth, which being dead they could not enjoy, that was given for a reward of their faith; but that they looked for a City which had a foundation, whereof God himself was the Architect and builder: even that God that had always been their buckler, and was also for ever, and after death itself their abundant reward: A reward which Jacob waited for during all the course of his life; and touching it as with his finger at the point of death, He cried out; Lord, I have waited for thy salvation, Gen. 49.18. A reward for which the Prophet David rejoiced, Psal. 17.15. I will behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness: which goes beyond this life, as himself testifies, when he assures that the death of the children of God is precious in his sight, Psal. 116.15. and hath made this holy and heavenly light so resplendent and sparkling, that even Balaam, though a wicked Prophet, stranger to the Covenant, and enemy of God's people, seeing afar off this Star of Jacob, and this King that should render him blessed, cries out, Numb. 23.10. Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his: which without doubt he could never have desired, if he had not had hope of good after death; and if death, as a Pagan saith, had made an end of all things, and of itself too.  
The faith then that we profess, & the profession of the hope whereto we stick, is no new thing: It is the faith of the fathers, which beholds with knowledge, and receives with assurance, the grace that is given to the merit of the Lord Jesus, and the eternal benefits of the glory which is to come. Let the Papists not more allege the Fathers to us: Job and the Patriarches are more ancient than all the Fathers that they can allege: let them no more produce their enfumed titles, nor the walls of their Churches, which time hath covered with Ivy and Moss; these are but feeble arguments to combat with a faith which hath been from the beginning, and from the first ages, always the same, until this present: we care not if our walls be new, so that our doctrine be ancient: little doth it concern us what the schoolmen ergat in their schools; the very Horse-coursers of heavenly truth, which they have pulled out of her throne, to make her a slave to temporal commodities, and accommodate her to the profit of a dishonest gain; only to this end, that we may appear merchants upon the steps of these ancient Patriarches, who have had testimony to have pleased God; and who following the faith of Job, of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we may also have place with them in the Kingdom of Heaven.  
Only, my brethren, let us have a care of this, that the faith of the Ancients, which amidst the shadows of the Law, and the dusky obscurities of these gross rudiments, hath been so lively, so firm, and so constant, pronounce not a condemnation against our infidelity; of us (I say) on whom the later times are fallen, to whom the saving grace hath clearly appeared, to whom (the veil being taken off) without shadow or aenigma, the mystery of the redemption is in express terms represented; the wonders of the resurrection manifested; and the unspeakable joy of the glory to come discovered: Those that saw these things but obscurely, and afar off, have been nevertheless, so far touched and ravished with so much force, by the excellency of them, that they have contemned their country, their pleasures, the world, and their own lives, to follow them: And we in the midst of the light of so great a knowledge, to keep ourselves to the least of these perishable goods, are but too ready to forsake those excellencies: And where are those at this day, in this clear light of the Gospel, that like Abraham, would suffer to see themselves exiled from their dear Country, or severed from their friends and their parentage, and go they know not whither, to follow the vocation of God? Heb. 11.8. Where are they that like Moses reject the greatness of the world? refuse to be called the son of the daughter of Pharaoh, choosing rather to be afflicted with the people of God, then for a time to enjoy the delights of sin; esteeming the opprobry of Christ greater riches than the treasures that were in Egypt? Or those who with David love rather to have one favourable regard from the face of God, than the favour of Kings, and the abundance of the goods of this world, and to be a simple porter in the House of God, then to dwell with honour in the tabernacles of the wicked? Or else those who with Job, after the loss of their goods, the desolation of their families, and in the very arms of death, are ready to glorify God, and esteem themselves blest to possess his grace, and wait for the certainty of his glory? Where shall we seek them in this perverse age, where there are many that are more ready to sell their Country, their Brethren, and Parents, for a little silver, then to forsake them for the glory of God? Where this rage of getting goods, this infernal fury of avarice, so possesses the greatest part of men, that are so far from quitting their riches to follow Christ, that contrarily they do not stick to truck with Jesus Christ for riches; and do willingly leave the certain hope of the glory of heaven, for the uncertain promise of some honour, or some command in the world, though but for three days; and where at last, in stead of the joy which the children of God resent in their tribulations, and the actions of thanks which they render to God in the midst of his corrections, we see painted upon the faces of the most modest, a consternation and a sadness, which witnesses that we regard his fatherly rods with a wicked eye, and that these light afflictions do send us to death's door, notwithstanding the Weight of Justice, which they carry, nor the glory that follows them, can any ways awaken nor cheer up our hearts: And what is this, but that faith goes by little and little failing and falling to the ground? that we have no more but an appearance of piety, and a show of godliness, but have renounced the force of it: we believe not in the promises of God, and Atheism is but too far insinuated into the greatest part of souls that are slaves to the perishable Mammon, that love your pleasures more than God; unworthy to have an immortal spirit, that set your affections upon things that have not so much honour as to be mortal. Of all that which you sow to the flesh, what do you reap, but corruption? What can you hope for after the contempt of the heavenly gift, whereof you have tasted? Of this power of the world to come, which you have known; of this spirit of grace, which you have grieved; of this blood of the Covenant, which you tread under foot? but an horrible expectation of the judgement of God, a fervour of fire consuming his adversaries, and a vengeance as much redoubled as the knowledge which you have had, renders you more wicked and inexcusable?  
You then (faithful souls) to whom God hath given better inspirations, at this noise and report of the faith of your forefathers, awaken earnestly this drowziness of your own; turn away your hearts from the vanity of this flower of the world that passeth; see that your life is but a wind, and that death shall shortly pull to ground, and reduce to nothing this terrestrial and miserable mass: And therefore seek while you are here below, the spiritual goods of your souls, that may follow you toward the Heavens: And forasmuch as the light of the Gospel discovers move clearly to you, than the Fathers could see under the shadows of the Law; Love them therefore more ardently, pursue them more constantly: And since we are regenerate into a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from among the dead, to obtain the incorruptible inheritance, which cannot be contaminate nor withered, but is reserved in the Hea●en for us; Let us make lighter of the World and of her goods, of these bodies, and of these delights; and esteem it a great gain to have lost them, that we may gain Jesus Christ: And that being found in him, having not our own justice which is of the Law, but his which is by faith; we may also in him, and by him, obtain this good, which eye hath not seen, nor ear hath heard, nor hath entered into the heart of man; and which God hath prepared for those that love him, 1 Cor. 2.9. To which God the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost, be honour and glory, from henceforth and for evermore.  
Amen.   

ZION in Sackcloth, AND HER SAINTS in Tears.  In the 137 Psalms, the first verse, it is thus written: 
By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered thee, O Zion.  
A Sad Text in a sadder time; 
SERM. VII.  in which the rivers of Babylon swollen not so high with inundation of water in the letter, as the waters in the Metaphor, out-swelling and breaking down their banks, have overflown both our Church and State. The ways of Zion mourn, and her children are set to a task of weeping, whilst they behold the ruin of their Mother, by the Caledonean Boars on th'one side, and the mixed but wilder Herd than those of Africa, the Foxes busily undermining the vineyard, whilst the fowls of the air, th' Atheists, as did the fowls on Abraham's divided sacrifice, seize on the divided Church; she in the mean while, doubtful to which, as most powerful (though alike pernicious) she should yield up her life, Religion, for a prey.  
And who is there now (if not a stranger in Israel) whose fears have not taught his eyes acquaintance with his heart to pour out water before the Lord, with them at Mizpeth? 1 Sam. 7.6. or whose heart hath not borrowed from his eye compassion with Jeremy? Mine eye affecteth my heart, because of the slain of the daughter of my people, Lam. 3.5. and if so, how shall not our better devotion hollow so pious an expense, by sending them both up in an humble importunity of prayer, to work an atonement with Heaven, that we may recover the departed glory of Israel; and the Ark of the Lord now captived by the Philistines, may be brought back to us, though but upon the necks of the scarce yoked beasts. Happy are those tears that are made the rich tribute of the Church's ransom; happy those passionate groans that hasten to prevent a Jeremy's reiterated lamentation, & a Jerusalem's once total final expiring: happy those children's prevailing prayers, that make their mother a debtor for that life she gave their offerers; who as they live at her breasts, so how shall they not expire in her blood, if either tainted by corruption, or let out by cruelty? It is, 'tis true, our unfortunate and deplorable condition, to see these sad times of distraction and persecution, which as they are for the trial of our patience, who are called to suffering, and for the exercise of their wisdom, to be honoured with public counsel; so they are for the actuating of all our devotions; whose hearts would faint, did not our eyes wait, and our hands knock for a speedy composure, and expected deliverance, from the gates of Heaven. And those that feel not great strive of heart for the division of Reuben; those, whose bowels are restrained, whose souls bleed not within themselves by compassion, do with the actor of a mischief contract a guilt, and by their own neutrality appropriate to themselves a curse; Curse ye Merosh, yea curse, yea bitterly, because they came not forth to help the Lord, to help the Lord against the mighty, Judges 5.13. a Text however sacrilegiously inverted by irreligious religious interpreters, yet God does expect our help; and we help him in his Church: Zion does desire our help, and we help her in our prayers. Heaven and your piety divert the curse; and so it shall, from the blessed offspring of faithful Abraham, whom (me thinks) I may conclude blessed in misery, at home and in captivity, at Jerusalem in Babylon, sigh by those waters remembering dearest Zion. And let not us be less affected to ours, than they were to theirs: our freedom is as strait as was their captivity; our (once) purer waters of the Sanctuary, are as pudled as were they the waters of Babylon; whilst our Jerusalem, once at unity in itself, is now as the City of Babylon, a land of confusion. And if any thing be wanting to make up the parallel of the history, yet let that of the duty be found complete: By the waters of Babylon sit we down and weep, when we remember thee, O Zion.  
Which words admit of a double sense: 1. Historical and literal. 2. Allegorical and moral. If we consider them in the history and letter, than the whole Psalm is a Prophecy of that destruction of Jerusalem, which was acted by Nabuchadnezzar King of Babylon, and lamented by the Prophet Jeremy. Which sense, Hugo Cardinalis seems to observe; nor doth St. Hillary deny it made more probable from the title of the Psalm, which runs thus; A Psalm of David for Jerusalem. And though the inscription he suspects of forgery from the tradition of the Ancient Hebrews, yet not the application of it to their foreseen captivity in Babylon; so Junius. Well then, the parts are these.  
The place of their captivity, [Babylon.]  
The place of their sitting [by the waters] of Babylon.  
Their posture in that place [we sat down.]  
Their affection in that posture, [and wept.]  
The motive of that their affection, [when we remembered thee, O Zion.]  
Each word bears a full sense of sorrow; but of each of them in their order: and,  
First, the place of their captivity [Babylon.]  
Babylon was a City situate in the field of Shinar in Chaldea, North from the Land of Judea; which as it was the Imperial Seat of Nabuchadnezzar (whose victorious army was by God's avenging justice stretched many Kingdoms besides Judea,) so for its magnificence was it styled the glory of Nations, the beauty and pride of the Chaldeans, Esai. 13.19.  
God sometimes prospers the wicked, whilst he suffers his own people to lie under oppression: these have the glory of their houses increased, and have riches in possession, whilst the other are evil entreated of Tyrants; and they that hate them are Lords over them. Babylon sits as a Queen, and seethe no sorrow, whilst Judea is gone into captivity, and her beauty into the enemy's hand. But whilst correction reclaims the erring Saint, the prosperity of the wicked destroys the sinner. God's outward favours (though they be silken cords) seldom draw the wicked to goodness. Babylon is beautiful, rich, and prosperous, yet Babylon is still a City of confusion; and so, not more for the confusion of tongues there, Gen. 11.4, 7. then for their confusion both in Religion and Government.  
For the former, the Sacred Story tells us, a general deluge of water had overflown the whole earth: the remembrance of the former inundation, imprinted in men a fear of a future: and though God had past an Act of Grace for security, and placed his bow in the clouds, to be a Sacrament to the world, that he would never destroy it so again; yet their jealousies and fears prompted them to new inventions of their own, for their own security: a building of their own device shall be more trusted in, than the word, promise, and ordinance of God. But how justly did divine vengeance confound their tongues and hands to a division among themselves, whose impious attempts had made a division betwixt themselves & Heaven? When the wickedness of men opposeth itself to Heaven, God's judgements upon their wickedness sends amongst them divisions and confusions. If man be confederate against his God, God (as in the confusion of Babel) sends a division not so much among the tongues, as the hearts of men. No peace with home-born subjects, either by the free obligation of love, or by the strict tye of allegiance, so strong; no union with our Neighbours so firm, which upon our common breach of faith with Heaven, God suffers not, either for the weakening of a State, or the disturbance of a Church, to conclude in a dangerous rapture, an unnatural disaffection. Our peace with man, is grounded upon our peace with God. If God be with us, who can be against us? was both an Apostles triumph, and an Emperor's motto. But if we be not with God, God will not be with us; and if God be against us, he will (as by sad experience we have found it true) send amongst us division and confusion.  
Secondly, [Babylon] a City of confusion, for their confusion both in Religion and Government. It is the observation of Antiquity, that (after the Languages confusion) through the neglect of words, the ignorance of God got strength, and sent forth a fruitful progeny of false Gods, to the number of their worshippers. Succoth Benoth was the Idol-god chosen and worshipped by the Babylonians, 2 Kings 17.36. But though they had forsaken the Lord, and served Idols, they stayed not here; they will have their glorious reformation; a monstrous golden image is set up, and every one (without liberty of conscience to any) must fall down before it, when the music gives them warning, Dan. 3.15.  
It was the fault of the Jews, that they desired to be like the Nations. And Christians (I fear) have learned too much of Heathenish Idolaters, to alter, not their form of worship only, but their very Creed too.  
It is observed in Disputes, that one absurdity granted, a thousand follow. Men run to error without end, when they have once departed from the truth; and that mischief which (at first) they could not think on without horror, they can (at last) commit without remorse.  
Yet one step further; even Machiavelli himself could say, that the giving God his due, is the cause of the greatness of any State: and that there is a God, is the unanimous language of the whole world, even since the confusion of tongues: yet upon this principle have been built more Babel's of errors, than there have been Nations derived from the languages confusion. For though Nature hath enstamped upon the soul of man the certainty of a Deity; yet the designs of policy have so misrepresented him to men's conceits, as 'tis hard to say whether they were more happy in a dark ignorance, or miserable in a doubtful knowledge. How often have men (for the furtherance of their designs) as if they came into the world, not to receive rules of faith, but to prescribe them, undertaken to be Monarches in the Art of Faith, and to trick up anew (each men after his fancy) that great work of Religion, which derives its accomplishment from God alone?  
Babylon then (the place of their captivity) must needs add to the misery of the captives, if we look no further than the beauty, pride, riches and glory of Babylon; yet to be captive amidst all this, were but to starve in the midst of plenty, to be naked in a rich wardrobe, to be bound in fetters of gold, and to kneel in the dust before a throne of glory: Fetters of gold are but fetters; and the Peasant that from his loamy cottage is carried prisoner to a stately Castle, though for his homely stall, he hath the exchange of a Princely building; yet he changes his golden liberty for iron shackles.  
These Jews whom the Kings of Babylon honoured most, were at the best but captive Governors. When the King of France was here in England, King Edward who had taken him captive, honoured him with all Princely entertainments; yet still was he pensive: and being desired to be merry, answered, How shall I sing songs in a strange land? To be encircled with ten thousand bared heads, and to be served on the bended knees of the mighty men, and to want no ceremonies befitting Majesty; yet to be a captive, a prisoner; this clouds the brightness of the Sun, and shuts it up again in darkness. All honour, beauty, riches, and what else desirable, without liberty, are but glorious Pageants: 'tis liberty that gives life and vigour, and sets a price upon all things else: this is the true Elixir, that turneth all things into gold; and gold itself, without it, resolves to vilest earth. Had they been but Tributaries to that uncircumcised power, their necks might with some ease have born that yoke of subjection; whilst they had this happiness left, their liberty to repair to the Sanctuary, and to visit Gods Holy Temple; but now Ichabod, their glory is departed; their land enjoys her Sabbaths, but they may enjoy neither it nor them: By the waters of [Babylon] they sat down, etc.  
But that's not all; for secondly, they are constrained to dwell in Mesech, and to have their habitation in the Tents of Kedar; they are captives in [Babylon;] where, as almost every day brings forth a new Deity and Religion: so all occasions are sought for their destruction. New decrees and ordinances lay as close siege to their souls, as formerly did their conquering forces to their fortified walls; that their souls and consciences might be alike captivated as their bodies: So as in Babylon they are still but as in a larger prison, or a beleaguered City; and so much the more dangerous, as the assaults to the soul are more dreadful than all violence to the body.  
But they were open enemies that did them this dishonour; and professed adversaries, that magnifying themselves against them, led them into captivity; and therefore the more tolerable, from whom they could expect no better; but that thou my companion, and mine own familiar friend, with whom I took sweet counsel, and walked together in the house of God as friends, should do me this mischief; this was a temptation strong enough to have provoked the spirit of David, to have wished passionately what he spoke Prophetically; Let death come hastily upon them, and let them go down quick into hell; for wickedness is in their dwellings and among them. Whilst these, like melancholy men, betake themselves to the river's side, whose soft murmurs bear consort with their sad tempers; by the waters of Babylon sit we down, and weep, when we remember thee, O Zion. And so I have done with the first thing, the place of their captivity [Babylon] and proceed to.  
The second thing, the place of their sitting [by the waters] of Babylon.  
Hydrographers tell us, that the waters of Babylon flew out of Paradise.  
First, Sin can turn the happy streams of Paradise into the waters of Babylon; this turns the silver into tin, the wine into water, the faithful City it makes an harlot; and the seats of judgement and justice, it fills with murderers, Esai. 1.21, 22. And when Bethel the house of bread, shall become Bethaven a den of thiefs, how shall not Jerusalem become Jerusckecah, an homely and unpleasant place?  
Secondly, Those gracious streams of the Waters of Life, that fertilise some souls into the happiness of a Paradise, wash others with their heavenly current; yet still they remain a Babylon. Those silver drops of Heaven, that falling on a good soil, fill the fields with fruitfulness; lighting upon a clayish ground, it proves wet as well as cold, but barren still. Some say the reason is, that the same Sun of Grace, which is (as it were) in the Meridian to some souls, is but (as it were) in the setting to the other: but those say better, that the same fire that mollifies the wax, hardens the clay; not through want of efficacy in the one, but through the ill disposition of the other. Christ stands at our doors and knocks, and offers to us the waters of life without money, or without price: our rejecting so great salvation, proves, that of ourselves is our own destruction: I would have healed Babylon, and she would not be healed.  
Thirdly, [by the waters] of Babylon. Afflictions have been baptised by the name of [waters.] When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, (saith the Lord by his Prophet.) Here therefore they sat, that by what they saw, they might, by reflecting on themselves, be induced to meditate on what they suffered. Yet it is observable, that they sat but [by,] not [in] the waters; that as none could say with the justifying Hypocrite, This punishment is greater than we have deserved; neither might any say with despairing Cain, This punishment is greater than we can suffer.  
God is just is punishing; yet in punishing is he merciful: though we have deserved more than he inflicts, yet he inflicts less than we have deserved. He might make the deep waters go even over our souls, as sometimes they did cover the face of the new created earth; yet, as than his spirit moved upon the waters, (though as yet there was darkness upon the face of the deep) and anon did gather them into an heap, so as the dry ground appeared: so, though the inundations of our afflictions be deep and broad, and a thick darkness of Heaven's displeasure do cover us; yet even here doth his goodness move, and rests not, but makes the ground of some sparing mercy appear, from which our faith (as Noah's dove) may gather an Olive-branch of comfort, to keep us up, so as these deep waters drown us not, though they rage's so horribly and so long, as by these waters of Babylon we sit down and weep. And so I have done with the second thing, the place of their sitting, [by the waters] of Babylon; and proceed to  
3. The third thing, their posture in that place: [we sat down.]  
Sitting is a posture that implies a stay; yet was it neither desire of ease, nor any content in the delightfulness of the place, that moved them to sit. Things in nature do not more hasten to their centre in which they rest, than did they long after Zion, after which their souls did breath: but a miserable necessity under which they were bound, and that divine will to which they must subscribe, had determined on them their seventy years' captivity, till the time of their return, Jerem. 25.12. and till then, though they might with tears have prevented that captivity; yet though they should now, as Esau for his blessing, beg deliverance carefully with tears, they shall nevertheless till then weep for that misery, which (till they felt) they would not believe. That penitent sorrow which would prevent the decree of vengeance before it brings forth, is oft too late to reverse it, when it is put in execution. Those daily tears which (had they been shed at home) might have expiated their offences, and been in mercy accepted for their Country's ruin, are now condemned to wash a profane land, where (hopeless Exiles) they are faster bound by the decree of Heaven, then by all the power of their enemies. Their lusts had led them willing captives under the Law of sin, and their enemies led them into an unwilling captivity under the power of sinners; and as they had a long time sinned without repentance, so shall they be a long time punished without remission. The gliding streams with happy freedom wash the several banks they pass by, and at length repose themselves in the desired common bosom of waters: but perpetuity gives perfection to these captives misery; from day to day, from morning to evening, they [sit down] in sorrow, and tire their weary souls in a longing expectation of long delayed felicity. The days of our age are but threescore years and ten; and though some be so strong as to live fourscore years, yet then is their strength (naturally) but labour and sorrow, (saith Moses) so soon passeth it away, and we are gone, Psalm 90.10. yet lo, seventy years, threescore years and ten, is the time for their captivity.  
Sin hastens on, and lengthens to us the miseries of our life. When God sets our misdeeds before him, and our secret sins in the sight of his countenance, our days we pass in his anger, and our years in troubles; we consume away in displeasure, and tremble at his wrathful indignation: we are killed from day to day; every days fear ushers in a new trouble, and every day's trouble brings forth a further fear: wave after wave, and billow after billow, come tumbling to our shores, whilst we by these waters of Babylon sit down and weep.  
Again, secondly, if we refer their posture to their affection, [we sat down and wept;] those postures of the body are to be used most, which suit best with the occasion, and move, or (at least) express the inward affection. Isaac walked and meditated; old Jacob leaned upon his staff, and worshipped: Abraham bowed his face to the ground, and did reverence: Solomon stood and prayed: Daniel kneeled upon his knees, to deprecate the captivity of his people: which here the people did bewail but sitting. Standing suits not with a dejected condition; kneeling, not with a simple bewailing of our condition to ourselves, but to God. Job indeed in his affliction arose and fell down, but because he worshipped. Nehemiah, when he heard of the afflictions of Jerusalem, sat down and wept: Hagar, when in the bitterness of her soul she bewailed the death of her son, sat down, Gen. 21.16. and the Jews when in the like sorrow of heart, for the Temple, their own captivity, and the distresses of Zion, as if they would dwell and feed upon sorrow, [sat down:] we sat down and wept.  
Long afflictions require alike length of sorrow to repentance. They are grievous sins, that have provoked the God of mercy to lengthen the smart of his judgements: gravia peccata, gravia desiderant lamenta, (saith Isidore) grievous sins require the greatness of our sorrow, both for intention and duration. But to be plagued for sin, and yet to be senseless of the judgement, is the worst of judgements. No greater Symptom of death, then when the sick man grows senseless, and knows not that he is sick at all. And I would to God such a Crisis could not be made of us; else, why such weariness and neglect of our humiliation, whilst the judgement is continued? Nay, (as if our sores were the more festered for their lancing) why such exemplary profaneness, as former ages have been piously ignorant of, and future (I hope) will detest to imitate? Why such notorious sins, such noonday evils, to which each man's eye and ear bears witness, perhaps some with tingling, others with tears? Why such debauchedness of life, which when it hath unsouled the man, buries the beast in excess and riot? Why such execrable oaths and blasphemies, which pass so frequently through those common shores, the fatal ports of our mouths, which are seldom open, but to transport such carrion and filth? Why those unworthy actions of luxury, that mark of reprobation; as one which engulphs the soul in such base pleasures, and makes it like the worst of Devils, that are more gross, (as the Caldean and Egyptian) that which hath gluttony for the fuel, pride for the flame, unclean words for the sparkles, infamy for smoke, ordure for ashes, & a hell for Centre? O deceive not yourselves! all our longing expectation of the removal of these judgements, will be unsatisfied, till we hearty sorrow, and earnestly repent of those our misdoings, whereby we have provoked God's wrath and indignation against us; there is no hope of our returning to the fair hill of Zion, the beauty of holiness, and the beauty of order, till in sorrow for our transgressions, that have made a separation betwixt God and us, by these waters of Babylon we sit down and weep. And so I have done with the third thing, and come to  
The fourth thing, their affection in that posture, We sat down [and wept].  
As all rivers, so those of Babylon, run into the sea; and as others, so they, receive addition of waters as they run. The heads of the drooping captives were as waters, and their eyes as fountains of tears that streamed into the river's current: as they sat down by them [and wept:] their whole composition was but like engendered clouds, exhaled vapours drawn up by the heat of God's anger, and now distil and melt themselves into continual showers of tears. So as if Babylon's rivers, as once Hagars' bottle, should chance to fail; as she set her dying child, so have they their expiring mother before their eyes, which will force a new supply to fill them up again. And should I say the waters tides were caused by the ebbs and floods of the captives tears, it would be but an Hyperbole that would express the victor's cruelty, and the captives griefs. Nay their grief knows no ebb; their Moon (and so their sorrow calls for a Change at last) is at her Full of sorrow: each pensive enslaved Jew pays to the waters of Babylon their tears for tribute, to the memory of Zion. And (as if what they shed for her sake, they would commit to the waters of faithfulness to carry them) they sit by the river's side [and weep,] that their floating tears might at last greet their Country from her weeping worshippers, whilst they (mean while) weep again in remembrance of thee, O Zion.  
Etiam atque etiam flevimus, (say Junius and Tremellius) they wept, and they wept again. 1. As Patientes, Sufferers, they wept for themselves, and for their children: Weep not for me, O ye daughters of Jerusalem; but weep for yourselves, and for your children: for your houses shall be left unto you desolate, Luk. 23.28. No affliction is joyous, but grievous. The presence of dolorous and dreadful objects, even in minds most perfect, may as clouds overcast all sensible joy, and dissolve into showers of tears. 2. As Compatientes, fellow-feeling members of others miseries, [we wept again,] for thee, O Zion! Mine eye runneth with rivers of waters, for the destruction of the daughter of my people: mine eye trickleth down, and ceaseth not, without intermission, Lam. 3.48. When Christ wept for Lazarus, behold how he loved him (said the Jews:) these were tears, as of love of her good, so of compassion of her misery.  
How shall that heart refrain from tears, with whom love within, and misery without, shall plead for pity? no expression so emphatical, as that of weeping. Tears speak that grief, which no tongue is able to express: no language so sincere as this, nor yet so passionate. Alas, my brother, was the Elegy of that lying Prophet: his words might belly his dissembled mourning; but tears are the Rhetoric of grief, that speak the affections of a true hyperbole. And let who will, divide passions from the soul; let who will, say, fear becomes not a stout heart: it is a senseless heart that is not affected; and a stony heart that doth not weep. Nor is it any shame to confess that grief we cannot conceal. Shall the hunted stag pay a Funeral-Obsequie to his own fleeting life, which now sits upon his utmost lips, with a frequent distilling tear? And shall not we, who are pursued with such a pack of evils, weep for this, That he that is the soul of our soul, the breath of our nostrils, the life of our Zion, the glory of our God, is at a distance from us? The Heavens weep dew at the going down of the Sun: our Sun (I am afraid) is a setting at noonday; our glory is departing; and shall not we weep? David the father, could weep like a child, at the loss of a child; O Absalon, Absalon, my son Absalon! would God I had died for thee; O Absalon, my son, my son: And shall not thy children, O Zion, weep for the destruction of thee their mother, the Church? O daughter of Jerusalem, what shall I liken unto thee? O Virgin Zion, wherewith shall I compare thee? our eye, our eye, runneth down with tears; we can as well die for thee, as in this deny thee: By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered thee, O Zion. And so I have done with the fourth thing, their affection in that posture, We sat down [and wept;] and proceed to  
The last thing, the motive of that their affection: when we remembered thee, O Zion.  
Dura satis miseris memoratio prisca bonorum: the memory of a lost felicity, makes misery itself more miserable. There is more ease in sense of torment, then in loss of happiness. To be in any captivity, is a calamity; but to be captive to the tyranny of an uncircumcised people, whose sportive pastime was in their galling taunts of the afflicted, must needs heighten the affliction. David's sufferings made him complain; but the bitter reproaches he had from his foes, opened a spring of grief in him, which fed his tears day and night: yet the remembrance of his former (now lost) happiness in communion with God in his house, made yet deeper impressions in his soul, Psalm 42.4. former favours and happiness, make the soul more sensible of all impressions to the contrary: we wept, [when we remembered thee, O Zion.]  
But what was Zion, that whilst they remembered it, they could not forget to weep? Take it barely for their native country, (for so the word means in the latitude) and even so, Patriae fumus igne alieno luculentior: there is more pleasant warmth in the smoke of our own, then in the fire of a strange country: and then their loss of happiness, and access of misery, must needs be the more great, the one being a land of promise, the other of captivity; the one an effect of God's favour, the other of his vengeance. But this is not all; the hill of Zion is a fair place; and the joy of the whole earth, Psal. 48.2. Strictly taken, it was a fort in Jerusalem, on the top whereof was a Tower, called the City of David; and so by a Synecdoche, Zion is put for the Kingdom of Judea. Let us then remember what it was in its glory, and consider what it is in its captivity, and refrain from weeping if we can.  
First, Very excellent things are spoken of thee, O thou City of God. The Kings of the earth marvelled to see such things: shall we (as David bids) go round about Zion; and tell the Towers thereof, and mark well her Bulwarks?  
First, There is the Throne of David: but (woe unto us that we have sinned) the Casket is without its Jewel; David is not there on his Throne.  
Secondly, Tell the Towers thereof: The Towers were those many Princely and Noble Families; and the lesser Pinnacles, the Heroic Gentry, who as they added a glory and ornament, so they were the strength and defence of the King and his Throne.  
But all these Towers are either leveled with the dust, or led into captivity, or have by an unworthy compliance basely prostituted themselves to the power of the Conqueror.  
Thirdly, Mark well her Bulwarks. The Bulwarks were the numerous commonalty, whose affections and loyal obedience were such strong fortifications to the Throne of Majesty, as the Kings of the earth have been afraid to assault them. But now all these strong holds are broken down, the right hand of the enemy is set up, and all the adversaries rejoice: Zions' Crown is cast down to the ground, and her honour laid in the dust, so as she is become a scorn to her enemies; and they that hate her, shake their heads against her.  
Fourthly, Thither the tribes go up; but now they are taken captive.  
Fifthly, There is the seat of judgement; but now the chair of tyranny and oppression.  
But secondly, Zion was called the Mount of the Lord, and the Holy Mount; and so it includes in it the Temple, the Church too; and of this God himself did say, This is my rest for ever, here will I dwell: yet, O God, the Heathen are come into thine inheritance, thy Holy Temple have they defiled; that beauty of holiness is ravished with Babylonish fire: That excellent work at whose rearing no noise of iron was heard, is broken down with axes and hammers: that Heavenly Order and Music, wherein God himself hath seemed to tread the measures, (for it's well seen, O God, how thou goest, how thou goest, how thou my God and King goest in the Sanctuary: the singers go before, the minstrels follow after; in the midst are the Damsels playing with their timbrels:) yet all this is huddled up in confusion. That house of holy pleasure wherein King David had rather be a doorkeeper, then dwell in the glorious tents of ungodliness, is sacked and spoiled; and the many thousand vessels of gold and silver, and the rich and hallowed vestments of the house of God, are sacrilegiously carried away, and profaned with revelling. When we think upon these things, we pour out our souls within us; for we were wont to go with the multitude into the house of joy, and praise; but now by these waters of Babylon we sit down, etc.  
But they were Babylonians that did this; Heathens, that had no knowledge of God's Laws: but when men do Gentes agere sub nomine Christi, mask Gentilism with the titles of Christianity, acting works of darkness under vizards of children of light; not carrying the children of Zion captive into Babylon, but turning Zion itself into Babylon: this is enough to make us by these waters of Babylon sit down and weep, when we remember thee, O Zion.  
Ezekiel took up a lamentation for wicked Tyre, Ezek. 27.2. Isaiah bewailed with the weeping of Jaazar the vine of Sibmah: I will water thee with my tears, O Heshbon, Esai. 16.9. and how shall not we take up a lamentation, and a bitter mourning, when we remember thee, O Zion? How doth the City sit almost solitary, that was full of people? she that was Princess among the Provinces, how is she become tributary? Lam. 1.1. How is the gold become dim? how is the fine gold changed? the children that did feed delicately, are almost desolate in the streets; and they that were brought up in scarlet, are ready to embrace dunghills, Lam. 4.5. hinc illae lachrymae: hence, hence are these rivers of tears which gush out of our eyes, whilst by the waters of Babylon we sit down, and remember thee, O Zion.  
I have now done with the parts of my Text, and you may expect I should apply them; but I forbear: only from what hath been spoken, let us gather two things, as a double Corollary: one from them, as they were patientes, sufferers; the other, as they were compatientes, fellow-feeling members of other sufferings.  
1. As they were Patientes, sufferers. A Church may be brought into extreme calamity: [By the waters of Babylon we sat down.]  
2. As Compatientes, as they were fellow-feeling members of others sufferings. We must be affected with the calamities of the Church: we wept, when we remembered thee, O Zion.  
1. Of the first. A Church may be brought into deep misery: by the waters of Babylon we sat down. This Church of the Jews (for I desire not to lead your thoughts into a further pilgrimage) though it had such a magazine of blessings as no Nation or Church under Heaven was owner of; yet was it not exempt from this humane, nay Christian lot of misery: in its very infancy (for in the Egyptian bondage it was but an embryo not yet form) but no sooner did it take but its name, but it was christened with the cross: in samuel's days, God suffered himself (be it spoken with holy reverence) to be taken captive of the uncircumcised Philistines; for the Ark, in which was his immediate presence, was surprised and taken from the Israelites, when the Church, no less than Phinehas son, first got the name of Ichabod, where is the glory? 1 Sam. 4.19. In the days of Zedekiah, when she was now in her perfect age and beauty, Jerusalem was destroyed by fire, and her children led captives into Babylon: which sad story that sorrowful Prophet hath expressed in his pathetical Lamentations, and our Psalmist David here prophesied of. In her decrepit age, after the coming of Christ, Jerusalem was sacked by Vespasian, and made quite desolate; of which Daniel prophesied, Dan. 9 vers. last. And our Saviour himself foretold, there shall not one stone be left upon another, Matth. 24.2. Nothing is left of it, but a name, and ruins that bear the impress of God's vengeance and justice. Where now are those lying words wherein you trusted? the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord; this is the Temple of the Lord, Jer. 7.4. The Ark may be taken, the Temple may be destroyed, and ye may be carried captives into Babylon, where by the waters of Babylon ye may sit down, etc.  
And was God so severe to the natural branches, 
Appl.  which were disobedient, & will he spare the wild olive-branch that is grafted in? Behold, I bring evil upon the City that is called by my name; and shall you go unpunished? Jer. 25.9. What is become of those renowned Churches of the East, mentioned in the Revelations, are they not quite destroyed? What is done to our neighbouring Churches in Germany, are they not miserably defaced? Hath not God been working this strange work of justice also even upon us these many years, here in these three Nations, which though divided from the rest of the world by Seas of waters, yet are conjoined in the same lot of calamity? What will be the end, who can divine? but without speedy and serious repentance, and amendment of life, may we not fear the like destruction in which others have perished? Therefore what was the Angels advise to the Church of Ephesus, it will be happy for us if we can make use of it: Remember from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do thy first works, or else I will come quickly, and remove the candlestick out of its place, except thou repent, Rev. 2.5. And thus considering them as Patientes, sufferers, you see that a Church may be brought into deep calamity: by the waters of Babylon we sat down.  
Secondly; As Compatientes, fellow-feeling members of others sufferings: we must be affected with the miseries of the Church: we wept when we remembered thee, O Zion. Compassion is an act of humanity to any in distress. Did I not weep for him that was in trouble? was not my soul grieved for the poor? saith Job 3.25. but to the Church in evil times, compassion is a duty of piety: If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning: if I remember thee not, O Zion, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. It is a sin that profaneth the affections of nature itself, to hid thy face from them of thine own flesh; how much, that crosseth the divinity of grace, to hid thy face from them of the same spirit? Our Saviour wept over languishing Jerusalem: Daniel set his face to seek God in the captivity, by prayers and supplications, and fasting, and sackcloth and ashes: Nehemiah, when he heard of the afflictions of the people, sat down and wept, and mourned, and fasted, and prayed before the God of Heaven: and these devout Jews here, whom it pitied to see the glory of Zion laid in the dust, wept when they remembered it.  

Appl.  What shall we say then of those, who now in the time of our Church and Kingdom's calamity, when God seems to call to us as sometimes Jehu did, Who is on my side, who? When the Church cries to us, as sometimes she did, Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by the way? have ye no regard? behold and see, if ever sorrow were like my sorrow: yet neither in heed to his voice, nor in pity to her complaints, will they humble themselves by fasting and prayer, to cry to Heaven for mercy upon her; but rather when God calls to mourning, they are a revelling: they drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with precious ointments, but remember not the afflictions of Joseph: wherefore I have sworn by myself (saith the Lord God of hosts) I abhor the excellency of Jacob, Amos 6.6, 8. And let such read the 22 Chapter of Isaiah, vers. 12, 13, 14. and tremble at the close of it: Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you, till you die. Ye would take it in foul disgrace, to be called hardhearted Jews; yet these were more compassionate of the Church's miseries, then are many of you: these wept when they remembered Zion: How then shall not our hearts agonize under God's displeasure, and our bedewed cheeks trickle down with tears, for the miseries of our Church and State; seeing the Heavens themselves have with waterish eyes long wept for our calamities, not with dews, but showers of compassion, all the summer long; and still (now in winter) keep their gloomy face, to reproove the hardness of our obdurate hearts, that can neither weep for our own, nor pity the miseries of others. O insensate hearts! Is it nothing to you, that you all pass by Zions' sorrow wherewith the Lord hath afflicted her in the day of his fierce anger? The senseless creatures groan and travel, in a fellow-feeling pain; but you, when your own members suffer and perish, O where are the sounding of your bowels? are they quite restrained? The earth trembles at the voice of God, the Sea saw him, and was afraid; and the rocks cleft at our Saviour's passion: and shall men be so obdurate, as not to be moved, nor split asunder at a Church and a Kingdom's passion? If rocks be more affected than we, O God, take away from us these obdurate hearts of flesh, and give us hearts of stone, that seeing we cannot with innocent, yet we may with hearts broken by repentance for all these sins that have pulled down those judgements upon our heads, by these waters of Babylon sit down and weep, when we remember thee, O Zion.  
And so I have done with the words in their literal sense, and proceed now to them,  
Secondly, in their moral sense: of which briefly.  
In this sense, St. Hilary, St. Augustine, Hugo de Sancto Victore, Hugo Cardinalis, with many others, have taken these words: nor in this do we offer any violence to the truth of the history, but only digest gesta in exemplum, & scripta in doctrina (as saith St. Hilary) the passages into example, and Scripture into doctrine:  
The soul (we all know) hath four several states: 

1. Of innocence.  
2. Of a lapsed condition.  
3. Of renovation by grace.  
4. Of expectation of glory.    
And going along with her from her first instant of creation, to the last of eternity, we shall find all of them in the Text.  
1. That of innocence, but implied; so as that captivity supposeth a foregoing freedom: this freedom was that of our created holiness, which we enjoyed in Paradise; that new Jerusalem, that vision of peace: but (God knows) we stayed not long there, before we were carried captive by the devil into Babylon, from Paradise into the world; from our country into exile, from liberty into servitude, from glory into disgrace, from pleasure into grief, from happiness into misery, from integrity into corruption, from life into death; and therefore Merito illic sedemus, merito flemus: there we deservedly sit and weep (as Hugo Victorinus concludes: and that is the second state.  
2. The souls lapsed condition figured in [Babylon, and the waters of Babylon.] That Babylon properly signifies a City of confusion; and that mystically here is meant this sinful world, is agreed on by a general suffrage of Fathers; and therefore consonantly they make [the waters of Babylon] to be bona temporalia, (so Hugo Cardinalis) temporal things; which as the rivers, stay not, but pass from one elbow of earth unto another; the world passeth away, and the lusts thereof, 1 Joh. 2.17. or (as Victorinus calls them) decursiones nostrae corruptiones, the decursions of our corruption and mortality, which (as Solomon speaks) tend to the grave, as the rivers into the Sea: or (as saith St. Augustine) flumina Babyloniae sunt omnia quae hic amantur & transeunt: the rivers of Babylon, are all transitory things whereon we set our hearts: (and so St. Hilary) omnia saeculi & corporalium opera; all secular and corporal travels, which like rivers are transient, without the least station: for what bodily pleasure is it, but when once 'tis past, by that time becomes none? What earthly joy, that dies not in the sense, and perishes not in the enjoying? yet are these those rivers on which the heart of man sets and fastens his delight, and engulphs his care, till at last they drown his soul, and sink it as low as that pit which knows no bottom.  
3. But not so the Saints, whose spiritualised souls are lifted up to a third state of grace's renovation; who though they do with patience, wait their desired change in this flesh of sin, as well as of mortality: and so may be said to [sit by the waters of Babylon] which they account no better than the place of their short captivity; yet humiliatione humiliati, (saith St. Augustine) they sit in humiliation, (so Victorinus;) not erect by pride, nor cast down by despair, but humbly set (so Hugo Cardinalis) because they attend that misery in which they are, that happiness from which they are distant. Or, there they sit, but 'tis (supra flumina) above the waters, (so the old Latin word reads it.) The Citizens of Babylon so drench themselves into the delights of the sinful world, as they drown themselves in their pleasing, but deadly waters: whereas the Citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem sit higher, sit [above,] not so low, as to fear drowning; nor so high, as not to need to [weep:] and [weep] they do too, as well as sit: if sitting be a posture that pleaseth the body; [weeping] I am sure is an evacuation that easeth the soul. O quam sic flere juvat! (saith St. Hierome,) O what sweets are there in hallowed tears! how the soul delights to melt itself into such blessed showers; because when she goeth into the lowest pitch of mourning, she is then lifted up into the highest rapture of joy. You have heard of them that have wept for joy, but not so oft of them that have rejoiced for weeping; yet of all the passions the soul is owner of, she is a debtor to none more for her joy then this; this is her rich treasure, in which she traffics with Heaven; this the rarest dissolved pearl, with which she defrays all the passages of her captivity through the valley of tears. Feelest thou sin? sit down and weep: there is no innocence so clear among mortal men, as that which is drenched in tears. Fearest thou hell? sit down and weep: flames cannot burn, where these drops do fall. O happy weeping, that redeems from eternal weeping.  
4. But lookest thou up to Heaven, that last state of thy souls glory, her Country, her Kingdom, her Security? sit down and weep, that thy Pilgrimage is prolonged, that mortality is not swallowed up of life, that thou art yet a stranger, and a sojourner, nor art thou yet joined with those innumerable companies of Angels, and the first born that are written in Heaven. O when shall that time be, when our souls being delivered from the Babylon of this world, from the prison of this flesh, from the bondage of this corruption, shall be delivered into the glorious liberty of the sons of God? How long Lord, till these souls of ours, which like streams (here) wander from the fountain of bliss, be again readmitted into that glorious source of immortality? For this we breathe, for this we groan, for this each devout heart weeps, when he recounts the miseries of this present exile; but the happiness of Zion which we expect, where all tears shall be wiped from our eyes; where is no death, nor sorrow, nor lamentation any more, but all joys, tranquillity and peace, even for ever and ever.  
To which the God of mercy, for his Son's sake, who is gone before us thither, in his due time bring us: to whom, with the holy and ever-blessed Trinity, three Persons, and one God, be all honour and glory, world without end.  
Amen.  
FINIS.