FIVE SERMONS, IN Five several Styles; OR Ways of Preaching.  
The First in Bp ANDREWS his Way; before the late King upon the first day of Lent.  
The Second in Bp HALL'S Way; before the Clergy at the Author's own Ordination in Christ-Church, Oxford.  
The Third in Dr MAINE'S and Mr CARTWRIGHT'S Way; before the University at St Maries, Oxford.  
The Fourth in the PRESBYTERIAN Way; before the City at Saint Paul's, London.  
The Fifth in the INDEPENDENT Way; never preached.  
With an Epistle rendering an Account of the Author's Design in Printing these his Sermons, as also of the Sermons themselves.  
By AB. WRIGHT, sometimes Fellow of St John Baptist Coll. in Oxford.  1 Cor. 9 22. 
I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.  
Printed for Edward Archer, at the Adam and Eve in Little Britain, 1656.   

TO THE Christian Reader.  
SIR,  
IT is that Man I mean, whose life speaks the same Creed with his mouth, and whose Actions are the Christian; and not your Chemical Professor of Religion, that hath been twice Dipped, yet never Baptised; whose deeds of darkness Eclipse his New Lights; or rather whose very Lights are a cloud to conceal that darkness, which is daily masked, and veiled, and foiled off to the world even with Light itself. Being therefore such a Christian, as I suppose thee, you are to know something as to the Design of printing these Sermons, and something also as to the Sermons themselves.  
And first for my Design, I hope thou wilt not put any such vainglorious thoughts upon me, nor uncharitable upon thyself, as to say it was to appear in Print; a most ridiculous piece of Foppery, especially in this Age, and this Way too, (the Way of Preaching): which I do acknowledge (as 'tis generally used in this Nation) to be the lowest part of a Scholar, (if indeed it be any part at all) and that it is much harder to teach to Spell, according to the right rules of Spelling, then to make every day of the week a sermon, as sermons are usually now made. Much less, Reader, would I have thee censure my Design here to be guilty of that unpardonable ambition, as to make thee believe I were able to pen either like that incomparable Pair of Bishops, or the other incomparable Pair of Students, who were the Prime Masters of this Nation in their several Ways of Preaching. The chief thing then that I drive at in printing these sermons, is to show the difference betwixt University and Citie-breeding up of Preachers; and to let the people know, that any one that hath been bred a Scholar is able to preach any way to the capacity and content of any Auditory: And secondly that none can do this but they only that have had such Education. For truly as to those so much talked of nowadays extraordinary Inspirations, this Age is so excessively sinful, and notoriously wicked, beyond the days of our Forefathers, that I cannot see that man that is any ways fit for such Revelations. And therefore upon this account there will appear to be a very great conveniency, if not necessity of Humane Learning; especially forasmuch as it is too clear and evident since these Times, that all men will not be brought by the same way of preaching to heaven: some are well satisfied with the plain easy way of Doctrine and Use; others are not taken with any sermon, but what is filled with depth of Matter, height of Fancy, and good Language. And therefore I think it were not an ill wish for the Church of England, if all her Preachers were Scholars likewise, able to deliver themselves upon any occasion, any way, to take every ear, and prevail upon every mind and fancy. So should I see an English Clergyman to equal at the least the Jesuit or Capuchin, who by his exact skill in the Arts and Oratory can command a confused Rabble (met to see an Interlude, or Mountebank) from their sport to a sermon, and change the Theatre into a Church; having a greater power over the passions of their Auditory, than the Actor hath upon the Stage; being able to turn even the Player himself into a Monk, and the Mimical Jester into a religious Votary. By this time (Christian friend) I hope thou seest that my design in making these few sheets public, was not in any vainglorious way for thy applause, but instruction only, to teach thee the necessity of that known distinction between a Scholar and a Preacher. Not that I assume to myself the first, no more than I dare the Learning of any of those whom I have here proposed to thy imitation; but to show thee what a Scholar may do more than a mere Preacher, and that there is a vast difference betwixt Shop-board-breeding and the Universities; the preaching of the one being hardly learned under a double Apprenticeship, whereas the other Knack may be compassed far sooner than the easiest Trade, a truth which these Times have abundantly cleared: and this I look upon as a just judment upon some Predicants in this Nation, who held the people in hand they were the only deserving Churchmen among us, because somewhat more forward than the rest of their Brethren in a popular way of preaching; when now a company of Cloaks, scarce free of the City, have yet made themselves free of the Pulpit, and have outdone those other Predicants even in their own way both of Praying and Preaching. And truly were it not for the ill example in the Church of God, & those bad cousequences that might follow upon such an example, I would teach my very Barber, and Shoemaker, and Tailor the Preaching-trade; that so the Common people should see how slight, and easy, and contemptible a thing it is to be a Preacher, as Preachers are now adays; and that their God-amighties of the Pulpit, which for these late years they have so much adored, are of no higher Gifts▪ nor of a more divine Mission, then what may proceed from a Thimble, a Shuttle, or a Last. And therefore say I (were it not for the scandal) I would teach my Mechanic Relations to preach: by which Act though ('tis confessed) I should appear no good Churchman, yet herein I should perchance show myself no bad Commonwealth's man: forasmuch as there is no way left under heaven to undeceive the people, and take them off from their superstitious idolising this kind of Preaching, but this. For when they shall clearly see, that any one of any Trade, and he too sometimes very deboist and vicious, can serve the turn of the Pulpit, they will then begin also to know, that it is not Gifts, but impudence, not the Spirit of God, but a frontless ignorance that calls out these men to Humour, and in humouring to divide and confound the people. And this the Jesuit knows full well, and accordingly doth make this use of it at this day in this Nation. Which sad truth as often as I seriously think upon, I am instantly brought upon my knees, and to my prayers, for God's mercy and forgiveness of our Pulpit-sins; in that we have prayed and preached the Doctrine and Discipline of three flourishing Nations into complicated Heresies and Confusion, & this too mingled with the blood of near upon an hundred thousand Protestant Christians (so much is the number of the Church of Rome's Adversaries lessened since the year 1640). I would to God that all such of my own Coat, whom this concerns, would but cordially think upon it; and know for certain, that though their bonus Genius the conscience of these Acts hath fled them now, iterum tamen Philippis, yet it will meet them again with horror upon their death▪ beds. I speak not this in malice or revenge; as if any of those men had robbed me of a Living, or Church-preferment; but merely out of a deep Christian sense of that common calamity which they have brought upon the three Nations, and that fearful judgement which will fall upon themselves, being already begun in a contempt of their Praying and Preaching-trade, by those that have out-praied and out-preached them even from the Shop and Stall; and will end upon their Persons & Families in such a way, as I tremble even to think o●. And let this suffice (Christian Reader) for the reason of my Design in publishing these Sermons.  
As for the Sermons themselves be pleased to take notice, that not so much the Doctrine, (though that also will not be disliked by peaceable sober-minded Christians) as the Style and manner of them is offered to thy view. And here I shall not make any comparison between the several Styles, nor determine which Way is best, because I will not prejudice the sincere conscientious endeavours of any, that with an upright, unbyass'd spirit labour in God's vineyard; but shall in my daily prayers desire Gods daily blessing upon them. But then also for the Doctrine of these Sermons in general (however particular Judgements may like or dislike of some particular doctrines: For as I do not expect that those of the Episcopal persuasion should allow of every expression in the last, so neither do I look that those of the contrary judgement will approve of every period in the first Sermon) You are to know further, that this Tract is so far for these Times, as these Times are preaching times, and this Tract a preaching Tract: and yet in this agreement there is a vast difference. For this Pulpit age hath so much of the New light, as it hath almost none of the Old day of the Gospel; but the Tract before you discovers this day to you without that Light. Again, the present Times have preached Congregations into Armies, and Churches into Garrisons; making the Pulpit a Magazine or store-house for the War, and the Minister both the old Trumpet of the Law, and the new Drum of the Gospel; whose Sermons are the great Artillery, made use of not so much to beat down vice as Cities, and men; so that what heretofore was spoken of the true Prophets, may now be applied to these False ones without a figure, The chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof. But, Sir, in these peaceable Sermons you shall meet with no armour but that of Gods, no strong holds taken and sacked unless those of hell. The lines here speak not Petards and Granado's; nor are the Doctrines delivered in a whirlwind or tempest, but in a soft still voice; and answerable are the Applications, for meekness, and peace, and brotherly love, and not under pretence of cursing Meroz to murder Christians. You have here indeed many of the Primitive Doctors of the Church drawn up like so many Commanders (as it were) into an Army, yet not one of that long robe did change his Mitre for an Helmet, nor his Crosier for a Sword. I do not find in Ecclesiastical story, that old Anselm did ever command a troop of horse, or Nazianzen a regiment of foot; neither do I meet with among the Records of the Church for 1500 years together, that, though the Ministers of the Gospel were back and breast proof, they were ever clad in Armour; never did they preach or pray in Buff (and yet even those naked prayers of theirs could subdue heaven itself) never as I read of did those Primitive Saints gather their People into Regiments, nor the Catholic Church into a Catholic Army; and yet that Church was an Army too, and that Army had its weapons, and its war, but both spiritual. The breathe of the Holy Ghost, though sometimes they might come as a mighty rushing wind, that filled both houses and hearts likewise; yet never did that wind blow down the one into ruin, nor the other into despair; and if at any time that wind was cleft into Tongues of fire, those tongues were only to warm and enlighten, not to burn down and consume Cities.  
You are also taught from these leaves, that Secular Learning is not so heathenish but it may be made Christian. Plato, and Socrates, and Seneca were not of such a reprobate sense, as to stand wholly Excommunicate. The same man may be both a Poet & a Prophet, a Philosopher and an Apostle. Virgil's fancy was as high as the Magi's Star, and might lead Wisemen in the West as clearly to their Saviour, as that Light did those Eastern Sages. And so likewise Seneca's Positions may become Saint Paul's text; Aristotle's Metaphysics convince an Atheist of a God, and his Demonstrations prove Shiloes' Advent to a Jew. That great Apostle of the Gentil es had never converted those Nations without the help of their own Learning. It was the Gentiles Oratory, yet ●ot without the Holy Ghost's Rhetoric, that did almost persuade Agrippa to be a Christian; and it was the Gentiles Poetry, but not without a Deity in the Verse, that taught the Athenians to know an unknown God. By which you see it is possible that Gamaliel's feet may be a step to an Apostleship; and that there is no such necessary relation betwixt the Stall and the Pulpit, but that gifted men may proceed from either of the Universities, as well as from the Shuttle, or the last. And I do believe that within these very few years, when the Veil and Vizard of these Times shall be laid aside, all our New lights, and gifts, and inspirations, will appear to the world to have a greater mystery in them then that of a Trade; to be forged in no Shop but a Study, and by no handicraft Company or Corporation, but a Society and a College. And remember you were told this sad truth by him who foretold it twelve years since in his private discourse; and now (as if the Transactions of these days had turned that prophecy into story) dares publish it to this credulous abused Age as an experimented truth, which notwithstanding is still contradicted by the Prayers, though it cannot be by the Reason of,  
SIR, 
 Your Christian friend 
 and Servant 
 AB. WRIGHT.   

THE First Sermon, Which is that in Bp ANDREWS His Style, or Way of Preaching; Delivered before the late King upon (Ash-wednesday) the first day of LENT.  ISAIAH 58. 6. 
Is not this the Fast that I have chosen? to lose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke?  
LONDON, Printed for Edward Archer, at the Adam and Eve in Little Britain, Anno Dom. 1656.   
MAT. 9 VER. 15. And then shall they fast. 
THe words going before are these: Then came to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not? And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bride-chamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, & tunc jejunabunt, And then shall they fast.  
AS it is now the unhappiness of these times, just so was it of the Primitive, not to please all, either full or fasting, neither with their Festivals, nor their Eves. For our Saviour came eating and drinking, and the Pharisees had an [Ecce] for him; Behold a man gluttonous, and a wine-biber. A glutton perchance, for his great feast made to the 4000; and a wine-biber no doubt, for that marriage-miracle of Cana in Galile●, the turning of the six water-p●ts into wine, a great quantity indeed, when each contained two or three ferkins a piece. Again, the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking, saith the the same text, and yet according to the 10 ver. of 69 P. s. even that was turned to his reproach: for they said he had a devil; a strange devil certainly, not unlikely to be of the same kind our Saviour mentioned, Matth. 18. that could not be cast out but by fasting. But John must be content: for if they call the master of the house Beelzebub, well may it be endured by those of the family; and i● Christ, who fasted forty days, be brought in for a glutton, I see not how his Apostles, men that could not abstain nibbling corn on the Sabbath, should scape the disciples of John for not fasting. The disciples of John? What, did the Voice contadict the Word? were the Baptist followers against the Saviour's? did John that came to prepare the way of Christ make it more crooked and uneven? No certainly: for this was done instigan●thus Pharisaeis, says Maldonete, the Pharisees putting them upon it; a sort of people that had their very name from division, which in this place they make good, drawing the disciples of John into their party, & so siding against Christ: A●●rick much practised by the Pharisees of these dries, who the better to colour their own hypocrilie, and increase the faction, abuse the honest simplicity of well-affected men; setting some conscientious, plain-meaning disciples a work to ask questions, and move such doubts in Church and State, as they themselves have long before resolved upon. This Quaere then came not from the disciples of John, as their own proper doubt, but these being wrought over by the Pharisees, came to Christ, and said, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not, etc.  
These words are a precept, or command: in which, may it please you to observe, first the Substance or main business of it in the word Fast, jejunabunt, they shall fast; next the Circumstance, or time measuring this Fast, implied in the Adverb [then] & tunc jejunabunt, and [then] shall they fast. Now from this Precept arise two questions, one about jejunabunt, whether we will fast at all; and we may very well make a question of it, for you know there are certain in the world who have been enjoined by Authority to Fast, yea and to Feast too, but they'll do neither. The other question is about the [tunc], the time when these men will fast; and I fear this question will be answered by them in Felix his words to S. Paul; Not now, but when we have a convenient season, we will send for this tunc: and Felix his convenient season never came as I readoes; when theirs will be voted and resolved upon, they know themselves best, I have not yet found it to sal upon the last Wednesday of any month. Well! but get us a Fast first, and then a time after; and this to do will be no easy task; most of them being like the Israelites in the wilderness, when once they begin to fast, they begin to murmur; to murmur I say, not at the act alone, but the very name and mention of Fasting, at the bare reading of a text that does but look towards an Ember-week: but and if that text be a commanding one, if Authority comes along with it, Authority said I? nay then so much the worse for that; for if it have a jejunabunt, they shall fast in it; why then, forsooth, they will fast; yes they will fast, but it shall be that fast in the 58 of Is● a fast for strife and debate, a fast from all love-feasts you may be sure. How these men can answer my text I know not, sure I am Expositors give it up for a main precept of fasting, and by such an one enjoined, who could command a Fast to the Sea and Grave, two great devourers, and both should abstain, the one from a Peter, the other from a Lazarus. A precept then perchance they will grant it, but by whom to be obeyed: tunc jejunabunt then they shall fast, they, Christ's disciples dead long since, and their. Fast with them; this belongs not to us, they'll cry; and they say true, if they are not of Christ's disciples For if they be of the number of these they in my text, they must be the Nominative case to this Verb, agree with this jejunabunt, they shall fast with Christ disciples here, or not feast with them hereafter. And so much for the Tense shall, next for the Verb Fast, and about this I told you there was a question: Now that all questions may be fully understood, 'tis necessary the terms should be fore known, an sint, & quid sint▪ whether there be any such things or no, and what those things be; the same method must we observe about our term of fast, adding withal the cur sit, the ground and reasons of fasting: First then let us inquire alter the an sit, whether there has been such a thing in the world as Fasting, and that there has, I could bring down, if I so pleased, as others have done in lesser cases, from the very beginning of the world. Nam à principio fuit sic, it was so even in Paradise, and the first precept God gave our forefathers after their Creation was that in Genesis, Ye shall not eat of the tree of good and evil, not eat, that is fast. And surely had their meat and drink been to have done the will of him that sent them, that other place of Scripture had not followed, Meat for the belly, and the belly for meat, but God shall destroy both it and them, there had been no destroying, nor cutting off from eating now. Thus was it before the Law, and no otherwise under it: for you shall find Moses commanding the children of Israel, and that twice in one book, to keep a strict fast every year on the tenth day of the seventh month: and a strict Fast it was, even like unto that in Paradise, In the day thereof that he eats, the party must die the death, Levit. 16. Now more than this one day, though we read not that Moses ordained, yet Prophet Zechary in his 8 Chap. has his Fast of the fourth, his Fast of the fifth, and his Fast of the tenth month; and not only Prophet Zechary, but Prophet Elias, and Prophet Daniel may be brought in for fasters, this last for his three full weeks of abstinence, Eliah for his 40 days; for which act alone he might very well be interpreted by Christ of John the Baptist, they both being our Saviour's forerunners, John in his Doctrine, Eliah in his Fast. Now for the quid sit, what fasting is; all that I have met with, define it to be, An abstinence from meat and drink, joined with an inward grief and sorrow of heart: which last part is made good from the very text: Our Saviour was asked, Why fast not thy disciples? and he said, Can the children of the Bride-chamber mourn. The question was of Fasting, & his answer of Mourning; as if fasting and mourning had been all one: and that this outward fast of the body is an abstinence from all natural food clearly appears out of esther's 3 days fast, a long Lent for a Queen. Now lest any should say we are the children of grace, as little bound to your old Testament Fasts as your old Testament meats, let such but turn over their Bibles, and they shall meet one bringing both Ash-wednesday and Lent home to them in the Gospel, I mean the Baptist coming with his leathern girdle, and garment of Camel's hair, a habit very well agreeing with the humiliation of this day, as also neither eating nor drinking, says the text, an abstinence ●it for the following forty. Fasting then, is a withholding of meat and drink even under the Gospel. But now non omnes capium sormo●●m h●nc, all are not capable of this precept, and therefore our indulgent mother the Church, that none might compleine of wrong do●e to Christian liberty, or the weak stomach of any weak brother, remits all she can of this rigour, and enjoins not for a fast either that of, esther's or this of john's, and yet qui porest capere cap●at, he that can fast so, let him fast a God's name; but if he must needs eat, then let him sit down with Daniel, and fall to his pulse: our Church forbidbing only that pan●m desider abile●, the pleasant bread there mentioned, your Lents of sweetmeats, & Ember-weeks of preserus, all high-feeding dishes, and in parler flesh; and yet even this also doth our Church allow to such as are in Timothy's case, that have their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 often infirmities, and to them is permitted flesh and wine, but it must be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, as 'tis there in Timothy, a little to suffice nature: 'tis not the ●illing of our selus, but our lusts, no de●ay of nature, but chastisement of sin that she aims at; and therefore forbids all die● nourishing blood with blood, not through a superstitious abstinence, as it she did judaize in consecrating mea●s, and placing more holiness in one dish then another, but only that by the waterish and flaccid diet of fish, and so unapt for nourishment, we might keep our bodies low, but our souls high, the flesh in subjection to the spirit, and the appe●i●● to the mind, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, and lusting no more after fleshpots and onions, but Mannah; which brings me to my third Quaere, the cur sit, the reasons why we should fast, & tunc jejunabunt, and then shall they fast. Though according to our Church Homily the civil respects of the Commonwealth may require a fa●t, the narrow ●eas and shambles exact their Ember-weeks & Lents to increase the breed of cattle, and maintain certain fish-trades; yet according to the Scriptures intent and the Churches, we must sanctify a fast, prescribe these forty days to a religious end, to bridle and keep in the lusts of the flesh, so to prevent sins to come, and punish our selus for those already past. And this last S. Paul calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an holy chastising and afflicting himself for that thorn in his flesh, which forced him to his watchings often, and his fastings often, to his castigo corpus meum to correct the outward man, and bring his body under the lash; and certainly to be abridged of that which otherwise we might freely use, has in it the nature of a punishment, they are the very words of the Psalmist, I wept and chastened myself with fasting: chastened himself, a chastisement than it it is. And as it punishes for sin past, so it prevents also for sins to come: and this was Christ's time of fasting before temptation, who fasted to so good purpose, that the Tempter, like the Pharisees, from that day forward never durst ask him any more questions, but this only, What have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth; there was no meddling, no doing with him after his fasting. Now Christ absteined thus, not for himself, for the Devil could not have prevailed had he not fasted; there were no faulty desires of the flesh to be tamed, no possibility of a freer and more easy assent and compliance of his soul with God, who was already perfectly united to the Deity: But as for us he would suffer death, so for us he would suffer hunger, that first as our Saviour, this last as our example, pointing us that had need (for he had none) the best way to encounter the evil spirit of concupiscence, which is not cast out, no not kept out neither but by fasting. Saturitas ventris semin●rium libidinis, a ●ul● belly and a foul heart scarce go uncoupled: for indeed how should they per membr●rum ordinem (says S. August. in his 65 de tempore) ordo vitiorum intelligitur, as in the Anatomy of our bodies the parts of gluttony and lust are linked together, so are the sins themselves. And therefore the Apostle joins them, rioting and drunkenness, chambering and wantonness; first rioting, and then wantonness, that leads on this, and not only this, but a whole troop of rebellious actions, security, disobedience, idolatry. Thus when the fools barns in the gospel were filled with corn, there was no thought of God the benefactor, all the care was about 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, soul take thy case, eat, drink and bemerry. And indeed this eating quite takes away our stomach from all holy duties. I need not tell you of Adam's surfeit, the Isralites in their paradise of Canaan fell to eating 100, and by eating fell, as he did, from their God; and this the Lord foretold them in the 31. of Deuteronomie: when says he I shall have brought Israel into the land that floweth with milk and honey, and they shall have eaten and filled themselves, then will they turn unto other gods, then, and not till then: and just so they did, for in the very next Chap. at the 15 ver: you have Jeshurun (which is Jsraell) waxed fat, and kicking; and then says the text, he forsook God which made him. Another end of fasting is to elevate the soul, and put her upon the wing of holy contemplation and prayer; for it stands with reason, that so long as she is conversant in the kitchen, so long as her spirits and faculties are spent in dispersing vapours and exhalations of meats, she herself must needs be l●sse apt and free for heavenly employment. Full bellies are fittest for ●est, and not the body, so much as the soul, is most active with emtinesse: for this reason fasting and prayer go together in Scripture, and as in Scripture, so in our Church's practice, solemn prayer almost ever takes fasting to attend it. A third reason of fasting is, to testify our repentance by our penance, the prostration of our souls by the humiliation of our bodies; and thus did the primitive times, by their course diet and clothing, present their unworrhinesse of the benefits of this life, and by casting ashes on their heads, speak themselves but dust, altogether deserving to be as far underneath the earth, as they were above it; and this repentance Christ implied to be the most real and unfeigned of all others, when he told the Jews, That had the mighty works been done in Tyre and Siden which were done amongst them they would have repent; and is that all? no, they would have repent sitting in sackcloth and ashes, their very clothes and hair had done penance. For true repentance is not a bare turning to God, but turning with fasting: they are Gods own words, Turn to me with fasting, weeping and mourning. The belly must grieve and sympathise with the heart, and the eye be as contrite as the mind. Repentance then must together with fasting under the Law in Leviticus it was so, their solemn repentance was ever at the time of their general fast: and they which had not the law (as Nineve●) nature itself taught them to take this Physic, as we use all other, fasting; and fasting we must take it, if we would have it work kindly. Nay Saint Basil in his first dejejunto, says, it works not at all upon a full stomach: 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 repentance without fasting is idle, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 merely idle, without any stirring any moving the ill humours atall. The meaning is according to S. James; As faith without works, so repentance without fasting is little better than dead: and again, As faith without works so fasting too without works is dead: and this is another end of our fasts, the exercise of our charity & alms. To keep a fast for a nation and relieve it not, is but to repeat that Sarcasme in the 2d of S. James, Depart in peace, when they are already destroyed by war; warm yourselves and fill your bellies, without fire or meat. Could we everimagine how our devotion should rout an enemy, or our fasts raise a siege? Joshua must sight against Amalek as well as Moses pray; it were well then if they would order it, that our hands may be lifted up no less than our votes and prayers, and our Chests lie as open as our Church-doors. For this is to fast says God by his Prophet Isaiah, To deal thy bread to the hungry, to bring the poor to thy house; Israel was not chid for eating, but laying up of their Mannah; and therefore says a Father, Ita jejuna ut alio manducante prandisse te gaude as, so fast, that the poor may far the better for it; let thy Eves be their Festivals, thy Lent their Easter. And now we have got a fast for our time, let us see whether we can find a time for our fast, a tunc for our jejunabant, which is my last part to be handled, the circumstance or time of this fast, implied in the Adverb then, And then they shall fast; and then. Allowing the thing, we can't choose but allow it a time, for there is a time for every thing under the Sun: a time to weep, and a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance (says the preacher) to dance when the Bridegroom is with us, to sit down and mourn when he is taken away, when the marriage feast is at an end; and this is that then in my text, then shall they fast; that is, when the Bridegroom is taken away; and the Bridegroom is taken away, says our Church Homily, when we are cast down with sickness, grief of mind, or the like. As for sickness 'tis a plain case that takes away the stomach quite, and the time of grief is a time of fasting too. Thus Hannah when she was upbraided by her adversary, wept: and how then? and did not eat says the 1 of Sam. 1. 7. nor drink neither, I believe, unless her tears. So Ahab also when he could not obtain the Vineyard, mourned: I, that's granted you'll say; for 'tis wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and Naboth denied that; mourned? yes and fasted says the text, no meat would down with him he was so vexed. And so 'tis here, while Christ was with the Apostles, they could not grieve, for they had the fullness of joy; but when that fullness of joy was to be taken away, than they shall mourn, & tunc jejunabunt and then they shall fast, mourn and fast all one in the text. Another time of Fasting is the time of danger; for when men are in jeopardy, what pleasure can they take in meat; knowing not how soon they may eat their last. When the children of Israel saw the Egyptians, at their heels, they had no time then to think of their fleshpots and onions. And this then, this time of fasting is the most usual in all the Scripture; if a plague, famine or Rabshekah be feared, sanctify a fast in all haste, put on sackcloth, send for the Ark. And thus was it with the Apostles, Christ was their rock and sure tower of defence from all danger, and the fear of it: but when this rock was removed, when Christ was once taken away, than they were at St Paul's quotidie morimur, every hour in danger to be drawn to the stake, & tunc jeiunabant, and then they did fast. Now if for the effect of sin we fast, for the cause for sin itself much more: and this then, this time of fasting for our sins, should we duly observe, our tunc would be nunc, our then would be now, and as now ita nunc & semper & in secula, so both now and for ever; for should we live always, we should sin always, and so fast always. But this because we cannot, nay, were it possible we could, I believe we would not; for were we left to ourselves, our then would be then when we list, and if we list and not else; I say therefore cause we neither can fast always, neither will fast of ourselves scarce at any time; the primitive Church thought it fit to enjoin the people their set there; their solemn days of fasting, which are these forty days now at hand, & the wednesdays & fridays of every week, & tunc jejunabant, and then says the Church, they shall fast. And this is the Churches then; the Churches? yes and the Scriptures then too; some of these days, if not all, coming under the jurisdiction of this then in the text; for as for the wednesday and friday in that magnâ & sanctâ hebdomadâ, that great and holy week, as the Fathers call it, the Passion-week, the week next before Easter, 'tis confessed on every side the bridegroom was taken from them; for on wednesday counsel was taken against him, money was taken for him, and then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, says the Evangelist, he was taken, as good as taken away then; but upon the friday following, as we all know, he was taken, and taken away quite; and therefore then in a more especial manner they did fast: and not only then, in the Passion-week, but then on those days (at least one of those days, the friday) ever after. For this than must be interpreted of the whole time after the taking away of the bridegrooms bodily presence; tum, tamdiu; then all that time and course of years till his second coming. Now for this time of Lent something may be said to bring it near the text: as that then when we fast for the Bridegroom, we should fast with the Bridegroom (as he did) forty days; thus applying that precept of our Saviour (that we shall fast) to his own example, how we should fast. And this example both the Apostles after Christ, and the Church after the Apostles have strictly followed: whose intent it ever was in the celebration of these her holy Solemnities, not only to inform us in the mysteries commemorated, but also, and that chiefly, to conform us thereby unto him who is our head, and the substance of all our rites and customs. Let us therefore who profess our selus members of the Church, be like affected with the same Church in this holy exercise of Fasting and Penance, the only way to render us conformable to our great example in his sufferings. For repentance is the agony, the bloody sweat, the cross of every Christian: whereby he dies unto sin, and is crucified with his Saviour. Each circumstance then of Christ's Passion, each bloody Scene in this Tragedy must be reacted on our own bodies; which are to be spread upon the cross, as the Prophet was on the dead child, in answerable extension to ●ll parts. First then the remembrance o● o●r sins, and holy cares for a better life must be the thorns, and when our ill thoughts are mortified, then is our head crowned with them. Severe Christian rigour is the gall and vinegar; and when by an holy abstinence we came our wanton and rebellious flesh, then drink we the bitter cup. Restraint from wont courses of sin is the hammer and nails, and the curbing of licentious actions is the striking through our hands and our feet. In a word, deep remorse is the fatal spear, and when the life-blood of our reigning corruptions is let out, then are our hearts pierced, and we crucified with our Saviour. Which if we endeavour to be; the same blessing shall be pronounced from Christ to us, which was from Christ to his Disciples, Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh; blessed are ye that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied, and that with an everlasting Passeover, the Lamb of God at the great Easter day, the day of the general ●●esurrection, & tunc non jejuntibunt, and then there shall be no mourning nor fasting any more, but perpetual hallelujahs, and fullness of joy for ever: of which fullness God of his infinite mercy make us all partakers. To which God, etc.  
FINIS.   

THE Second Sermon, Which is that in Bp HALL'S Style, or Way of Preaching; Delivered before the Clergy, at the AUTHORS own Ordination, in Christ-Church Oxford.  1 TIM. 4. 16. 
Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine: continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.  
LONDON, Printed for Edward Archer, at the Adam and Eve in Little Britain, Anno Dom. 1656.   
DEUT. 33. VER. 8. the former part. And of Levi he said, Let thy Thummim and thine Urim be with thy holy One. 
AFter the sufferance of a forty years' wildernesse-journey, and the more rugged ways of a perverse people, now was Moses drawing to his long home. He had brought the Israelites within sight of their long-looked for inheritance, but himself must enjoy the beatifical vision, and that Jerusalem whereof the promised was but a type. The governors of God's Church would be thought but poorly rewarded, were their wages only the milk and honey of a temporal Canaan. He that sends them to dress his Vineyard is pleased to stand indebted for a better penny than this earth is master of. To receive this, our Prophet must ascend Mount Nebo, and die. And here since God had so well provided for Moses, Moses will do his best for God's people; being not satisfied with his own happiness, unless his charge may prosper; nor content to have been their convoy all his life, except he might direct the way at his death also. 'Tis a clear Sunset that commends the day, and the chief grace of the Theatre is a good come off: wherefore our Prophet reserus his best Scene for the last Act, and in in the evening of his life shines most gloriously; breaking forth upon the Tribes with a double ray of counsel and blessing. Counsel in the former Chap. Set your hearts to do all the words of the Law, etc. How divine a care it is while we are on earth to improve others for heaven, and after the assurance of our own eternity, to help our brother to the same happiness. But counsel is little worth, unless a blessing follow it; as that Sermon is unedifying ●hat is not seconded with a benediction. Now this is given in the Chap●▪ of my text; so fit withal and pertinent to the Tribes, that each had a blessing proper to its self. For of Reuben it is said, Let not his men be few; of Benjamin, that he was the beloved of the Lord. Thus still the retinue, the servants are entailed upon the firstborn, but the last is heir to his parent's love, that is the young master, this the darling. All but Levi were for temporal ends, & their legacies are answerable: Moses gives them as much as they cared for. Zebulun & Issachar shall be filled with the treasures of sea & land, & that's enough to stop their mouths. Benjamin shall be blessed with repose & security, and he'll gladly sit down with that. Lastly surround Judah with a spacious crown, and large territories, you set him upon the highest pinnacle of his ambition. But now it is not wealth, nor ease, no nor honour that best suits with the Ephod: all worldy blessings are jewels of too low a price, too faint a blaze and lustre to be set there; And therefore of Levi he said, etc.  
The text contains the Levites portion, and may be divided into three parts; the Donor, the Donative, and (as our Law terms it) the Donee, or party endowed. The Donor you have implied in the Pronoun Thy, and that's God, who relates to each part; for 'tis Thy Thummim, and Thy Urim, and Thy holy One, all are Gods. And so 'tis not our own perfection nor innate holiness, nor our own illumination or private spirit, neither is this holy One one of our own making, any invention of man, but an order founded by God himself. Secondly the Donative is double, Thummim and Urim, which are perfection and illumination as the Rabbins, holiness and learning as our own men interpret; the two main things enquired after, not only by the University in degrees, but the Church in all her Ordinations. And lastly the party endowed with these gifts, the holy One, includes the whole Tribe of Levi; by concomitance that of the Old, by correspondence this of the New Testament. For Thummim and Urim respects the Clergy in general, and is as large as bot● Covenants. Of these particulars very briefly, and first of the Donor as he severally relates to Thummim, Urim, holy One▪ Non per nos-ipsos necviribus natura, sed perspiritum sanctum was the doctrine of Saint Austin, and the Catholic Church: our will here being like a lower sphere, quae non nisi mota movet: if no inspiration no co-operation; and our graces are as the money in Benjamin's sack, of another's putting in; all springing from Christ, as the branches from the Vine, and cease to be graces when they forget their Author. Our strength then is but borrowed, our going but leading in God's hand; who is to us what his Cloud was to Israel; if he please to make a stand, we know not which way to turn ourselves; mere nature cannot direct to heaven: and therefore we say well in our prayer, for thine is the Power, and the Glori●, it being by that Power we come to this Glory. Secondly as our Thummim, so our Urim too is from God; for there is no illumination but proceeds à Patre luminum, says Saint James, from Him that enlightens every one that comes into the world à Patre per modum naturae, as the child from the father; à Patre luminum per modum emanationis, as the shine from the Sun. As well then the Fierie-tongues as the Dove come from on high, Learning no less than Innocence. Thus if Saint Paul have a door of Utterance, God himself keeps the Key: if Isaiah's lips want purifying, no less than a Seraphin must expiate them, and he too with no fire but the Altars: neither Prophets nor Apostles can speak 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, as 'tis in Acts 2. the wonderful works of the Lord, unless the Holy Ghost first bring the Tongues. But now quis vituperavit? not the most factions but will agree that Thummim & Urim, all perfections and illuminations, even those dim ones of their own private spirits are of God, but this holy One not so far fetched; & therefore you take too much upon you, ye sons of Levi, seeing all the Congregation is holy, even as yourselves. And it must needs be granted they are so; all the Congregation of the Lord sanctified as well as his Priests, yet not to the same degree of holiness, but they sicut populus, as God's people, these sicut Aaron, as his peculiar servants; they are holy 'tis true, but these holiest of holies. Hence it was that when the Law kept Ordinations, certain pieces of the Sacrifice were put into the Priest's hands; and now instead of that, a Bible into ours: Not only as a rule to direct, but a sacred witness of that profession, into which we are by a Divine hand invested. Hence also it is that we so often meet with a mittet operarios, and a dabit Angelos, all of God's mission. And indeed who more fit to appoint Laborers for the Vineyard, than the Lord of the Farm; who Steward for the house, if not the Master. None then may usurp this holy charge, assume this honour. We are Ambassadors; and 'tis treason to enter upon an Embassy, before commanded by our Prince. And therefore to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a man's own ordainer, as Basil's word is, to clap down into Moses chair upon a vain Enthusiasm is profane presumption; and not to undertake our Office, but to invade it: being so esteemed of God, as may appear by that fearful Irony to the false Prophets, I sent them not, yet they run; run, knowing nor why, nor whither▪ like Ahimaaz in Samuel, and at length like him too, they can tell no tidings. Thus neither unbidden nor yet unprepared guests, may come to this Supper of the Lord: For a wedding garment is required. Whom God imploies in his service he calls, and whom he calls he clothes; gives them as well abilities of doing, as authority to do: which leads me to my second part, the double Donative, Thummim and Vrim, life and learning, the two main things enquired after by the Bishop in all Ordinations; And of Levi he said, Let thy &c. Thummim and Urim, Religion takes place of Learning, and he must first be good to himself, that will be so to others. For which end the ancient Fathers, led by example of the Prophets and Apostles (says our Canon) appointed Ember-weeks before Ordination, a strict severe government of our own affections, ere we have antority to guide the people's: example being the life of doctrine; and therefore the Praedicants of old were called operarii, quia opere magis quam ore praedicarent, as Stella glosser, and that both in respect of our calling and charge. For our calling as 'tis most eminent, so most eyed, and worst censured. If an Apostle rub but an ear of corn on the sabbath, 'tis breaking of the day; the people's moats are the Priests beams, and another's indifferency is my evil: somethings being expedient in respect of the man, which are scandalous merely for his coat. None therefore to keep within so strict lines as the Aaronite, being one ever under monitors. For behold (says the Apostle) we are made a gazingstock to the World, to Angels, to Men? to men, which are our charge. Governors live not their own lives alone, but the peoples; their actions being not personal, but epidemical, and whether good or bad are held authentic; it being enough for the rout that their betters did so. Do any of the rulers believe on him was thought sufficient argument why others should not? Thus if Jeroboam transgress, he makes an Israel to sin; and if Aaron set up an idol, a whole nation will worship it. Holiness then becomes every man well, but best of all public persons; and that not only for example of good, but liberty of controlling ill. The snuffers of the sanctuary made to purge others, must be of pure gold themselves. Thus Herod feared John, not 'cause he was a powerful teacher, but a Just man. This holiness casts a more dazleing lustre then any other accomplishment whatever. But let that pass, and suppose this Thummim be not with the holy One, admit the Priest sinful; shall the people notwithstanding follow his doctrine, his doctrine whose life is not the use, his voice whose hand points a contrary way? Nothing more, for what if the sacrificer be unclean, is the offering so? was the glory of Israel, the Ark, any whit lessened when it came from the Philistines? did the breath of the Lord his answers pass by the less regarded, 'cause a Saul Prophesied? Scripture is scripture though the Devil speak it; no man's sins should bring the service of God into contempt, nor may good be refused 'cause the means are accidentally evil. Non ergomerita personarum sed officia sacerdotum considerentur, says Ambrose in his 5 Chapter de iis qui mysteriis initiantur: and 'tis a gross dull capacity that can't distiuguish 'twixt the work and the instrument, the weakness of the person and the power of the function. You know no unclean viands were for the table of an Israelite, no birds of prey ●it company for a Prophet; yet Samson made much of his honey, though in a putrified Lion; and if Ravens are sent to preserv an Eliah, he willingly accepts their courtesy, and dislikes not the meat 'cause the waiters were black. These then of the Law are less scrupulous than some of the Gospel, who disdain the graces of God, when not served in the purest vessels, that loath their Mannah, if not out of the Tabernacles golden pot, all Urim not coupled with Thummim; The other part of the Donative.  
Urim is a large word, and reciprocal with sapience in Tully, the science of humane and divine matters; whence it seems the Levites divinity and scholarship are not synonimas, at least not this and preaching? Lo a vision appeared to me, says Ezekiel, a whirlwind and a fire; to ●hew, the Prophets of the Lord must have light with them as well as noise, understanding as tongue. God's Ministers are Angels, and these called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, from their manifold knowledge. I speak this merely, for that there is a generation which square out the Divines study by the Scripture Canon only, all other rules being crooked, and of no use. Would you know the reason? The less learning the less stipend: and indeed good Letters have not a little pined away, since Divinity began to officiate at the table's end for the trencher. Now 'tis true Scripture was ever the Levites predominant element; but if you'll make him a perfect mixed body, the Arts too are necessary ingredients. And therefore though Hadrian the sixth, in his tract de ver a philsophia cries down humane learning with a noise of Fathers, yet he concludes, utilem esse scientiam gentilium, dummodo in usum christianum convertatur, that to shave and par● the captive woman, & then espouse her, was ever held lawful matrimony. Look back upon the two famous patterns of Jewish and Christian divines; Moses learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and S. Paul wise in all the learning of the Grecians, a great artist, and a good linguist; and no less may we expect from the rest of the Apostles, to whom it was not said, ●ollow me, and straight way be fishers; but follow▪ and I will make you fishers. They were to learn, ere they were to teach, to be Discipls, before Apostles. No man is born an Ar●isicer, his soul coming as naked into the world as his body, not having so much freedom as to set up in the meanest-trade without serving an apprenticeship And for that dabitur in illa hora to speak without cunning, was a promise made to the Twelve, when they should be called to the bar, not to the pulpit. This place, how ever some have made it scandalous, requires both learning and industry; and thus much S. Paul intimated, when he sent for his books, finding as great want of them, as his cloak in winter. Yet here notwithstanding this Urim is os so large an extent, as compassing the whole body of knowledge; we must remember that our most acute and clearest illumination is but dull and glimmering, and though it be said to be Gods, yet 'tis not meant of that light which is tanquam lux in lucido, sed lumen in diaphano, not as the Sun, but as the shine. And therefore if any in this frail tenement of flesh, shall dare to hope for the masterreach in God's secrets of state, such I mean as put the great Apostle to his gaze with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, he mistakes his measure, and forgets that his dwelling is in the dust. And why should I call for day where God will have night, and covet to see that brightness, whose least ray will instantly blind me; it being too strong an object for the weak eye of man's understanding? I will rather admire God in his actions, and be content to know the Almighty no farther than his Word shall reveal, where this light leaves me, I will cease the quest, and boast of my ignorance; never desiring that Urim, that illumination, which leads to utter darkness, nor that Thummim, that holiness, which will unholy me. And this points at my last particular, the party endowed with this gi●t, the Holy One.  
We are all Gods, but not all Gods holy Ones. This title is proper to the Priest's hiraldry, a jewel only for Aaron's breastplate. And certainly the office being sacred, the name must be answerable. Now the Levite was thus styled from a twofold holiness, that of his life, which you have heard, and another of his person. For all sanctity is not inward, nor is all Thummim (perfection) that of the soul. God's holy one must be his fair one too, without blemish no less in body, then in mind. Thus under the law no monstrous issue, no blind seer, might offer the bread of his God Levit. 21. And shall the Evengelicall Ministration be worse served than the Legal? while the Sacrifice is more noble, shall the Priest be less? only the fattest in the herd, the fairest in the flock were the oblations of the Law: and shall the poorest only of the Tribe, the most deformed of all the issue, be the offerings of the Gospel? The Lord's house is no hospital; neither the sacrifice, nor the Priest must be admitted unsound, or imperfect; and if not a maimed lamb, much less a maimed Levite. God of all things will ●rooke no defilement in the Priesthood: we find Miriam ad Aaron both in the same sin, yet Miriam only the Leper; lest (says S. Chrisostom, Hom. 3 ad Colos.) the uncleanness of the others person should stick upon his office; and therefore I find a leprous King, but no where a leprous Priest in all the Scripture. Now seeing our outward bearing and persons must be blameless, why should not our condition be so? To effect this, nothing better than a continual meditation of that solemn pomp and Ceremony used in our Orders. When the reverend Prelate lays his hand on thy head, remember thou art then manumnized from all secular ties, and sequestered no less from the Callings of the people, than their vices: and certainly the holy impression▪ of Episcopal hands set o● from above, is such an Elixir, as by contaction, if there be any disposition of goodness in the base mettle, it will render it of the property. Again, when thou takest the Bible, with authority to dispense the Word and Sacraments; Oh! let us not abuse our Master's trust, in betraying that sacred pledge to the vain Pulpit applan●e and Church flattery of a giddy multitude; but may that Apocalyptical curse be ever before thee, of adding or detracting from the words of God's book; quod dicitur in falsatores hujus libri doctrinae, which is denounced (says a Father) against such as ravish Scripture to force out doctrines for their own ends, and then empty their rancour, by turning them to Uses. But above all, those divine extasying words, Receive the Holy Ghost, strike through the soul; the very sound comes cross me, and ties down those hands which otherwise might stab my brother, that tongue which else might curse my King, or blaspheme my God. Receive the Holy Ghost, the syllables are an history, and present my thoughts with all those sacred breathe of the Spirit throughout the Scripture. Here I find a single Prophet possessed of a double portion, and heir no less to Eliah's Spirit, than his Mantle: there twelve Aprostles, each speaking with as many tongues; whose powerful Rhetoric did convert thousands at a Sermon; their edifying being a conquest, and their Proselytes not so properly to be styled a Congregation, as a people. Receive the Holy Ghost? Good God, what more can we ask, or thou bestow! The holy Ghost? Why then (as S. Paul says) receive also the gift of Prophecy by the same Spirit, the gift of Healing by the same Spirit, the gift of Miracles by the same Spirit. But these are Apostolical talents: and we, O Lord, the most unprofitable of thy servants, are altogether unworthy the meanest of thy gifts: yet vouchsafe us, we beseech thee, who have now devoted ourselves for thy service, to be filled, though with the smallest measure of thy holy Spirit, to be overshadowed but with a single feather of that Dove, enlightened with the least ray of that Cloven-tongued fire; and this for thy Gospel's sake, for thy promise sake, for thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ his sake: to whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost be ever, as is most, etc.  
FINIS.   

THE Third Sermon. Which is that in Dr Maine's and Mr Cartwright's Style, or Way of Preaching; Delivered before the University, at Saint mary's in Oxford.  MAT. 10. 16. 
Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.  
LONDON, Printed for Edward Archer, at the Adam and Eve in Little Britain, Anno Dom. 1656.   
Canticles 2. Vers. 2. As the Lily among the thorns; so is my love among the daughters. 
AS Abraham's mystical Ram in the thicket, when Isaac was offered up on mount Moriah, and yet not sacrificed, was Christ crowned with thorns; so Solomon's typical Lily in the text, is Christ's Church enthroned among the briers: who though she be born a King's daughter, yet is her coronet but in-laied with thorns; and though the 45 Psalm clothes her with a robe of wrought gold, and all glorious within, yet is this glory of her royal apparel at the best but the glory of the Ermine, shadowed over and eclipsed with the black spots, and that gold but the gold of the Psalmists furnace, seven times purified and martyred in the flame. Now that the coat of Christ's Spouse hath been thus blazoned, all History both Ecclesiastical and Civil will be our Heralds, and witness. Ensebius, with his fellow-pens of church-story, have sufficiently written the Acts and Monuments of this truth: their volumes being so many books of Martyrs, in which you may read the Christian baptised in his own blood, and receiving his confirmation from the fire; being condemned ad bestias only for the Roman sport and recreation, and to the stake in usum nocturni luminis, says Tacitus, to save the Citie-candle, and light home passengers in a dark night. Our religion in the mean time being scandalised for superstitio exitiabilis, the very fate and bane of Commonwealths, and the professors of it for novatoresrerum, the grand Innovators and Boutefeus' of the world. Insomuch says Tertullian, that if an Earthquake shook town or territory, strait Christianity was called in question; as if the breath of Christian prayers vented in religous caves (the only Temples of those days) had raised that subterraneous wind, and their groans caused the motion. And for this reason etiam susp●ria & lac●rimae scribebantur saith the historian, their very tears were registered as the Malignant Party, and their sighs for plots against the State. And all this ●t implere●●r, that God's Word might be fulfilled, and written the second time in the afflictions of his Church. Thus Nero persecuting in the Roman story, is the red dragon driving the woman to the wilderness in S. John's Prophecy; and the Church's martyrdom the truth of that type, the sight of that vision, and even the revelation of the Apocalypse. Or if you will, the Woman there is the Love here in the text, that Wilderness these Thorns, representing to you the face of this glass, the original and person of this picture or similitude: As the Lily, etc.  
This text you heard me now call a picture or similitude; in which picture, as in all draughts of the pencil, you may behold the lights & the shadows, the lights shining forth in the Lily and the Love, the shadows masked under the Thorns and the Daughters▪ for those black Thorns are as the shadow to this white Lily, and these soul daughters the foil to set off that fair Love. Now as all pictures must have their place of view; so may it please you to look upon, for a third particular, the seat or▪ standing of this Lily, it is in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the middle, or among the Thorns; and last of all to vouchsafe a glance or two upon the Artisan himself, implied in the particle my; As the Lily among the Thorns, so is my Love▪ my, who am the Limmer that hath drawn and owes this piece, whose hand protects it here, and will new trim and varnish it hereafter, turning these lights into Glories and everlasting shines, and those shadows into utter darkness. Thus have you from a rude pencil the chief lines of this Landscape of the Church, and my present discourse; of all which as they lie in the frame of the text, where you are first presented with the lights of this piece, the Lily and the Spouse, As the Lily, so is my Love.  
The Lily is a flower of that brightness, not Solomon (says our Saviour) exalted on his throne, shined with that majesty as one of these humbled in the valley, no● were his robes half so glorious as their leaves. And as this flower excels in an outward bravery, and gad●nesse of leaves, so in an inward goodness of the stem; outshining not only the King, but all his plants, from his Cedar of Lebanus to the Hisope that groweth on the wall; being of that medicinal virtue with the Herbalist, idolatrous Israel might have received from hence an antidote against the Serpent's sting, and rebellious Pharaoh a new skin for his blistered flesh▪ Now though Christ's spouse in the text answers all, and more than hath been spoken of the Lily; yet for the present I will draw out this parallel but only in two lines; the one pointing to the humility of Christ's Church, in the groweth of the Lily, which is but low, and therefore called the Lily of the valleys; the other to her Virgin purity, and innocency of life, from the whiteness of the same flower; a colour nature doth die; simple and so fittest for religion. I'll take my rise from the humility of Christ's spouse, As the lily, so is my love.  
Aquinas his humility, the lowest of acts, and yet the highest of virtues, would scarce speak good school divinity, had not our Saviour preached it by his actions: who not only died but lived for our salvation; teaching us a way to mount upwards by descending, and to be exalted through humility. Thus he that was the fullness of the Godhead, exinanivit se, emptied himself into a man: he that dwelled in the highest regarded the lowliness of his Handmaiden, as 'tis in the Magnificat, and the brightness of the Father became over-shadowed with a veil of flesh. And as if for a God to be borne, and a Deity to enter a body, were not sufficient humiliation; his whole life was but the Schools twelve rounds or degrees of humility. For though we hear Christ preaching upon the mount, in the 5. of Saint Matth: yet were his doctrines there only of the valleys, To rejoice when men shall revile, to be exceeding glad for a persecution, so the twel●t period of that sermon; again, to have a cheek to receive an injury, to go to law not to recover, but give away a garment, in the 40 ver: of the same chap: last of all to bless for a curse, to wish heaven to such as desire your damnation, to deny even ourselves, that is says a Father, our great parts and eminent endowments; duri sermons hard lessons, and yet all took out by our Saviour; his hand directing the same way with his voice, and what he taught was but his own example; showing, he enjoined no impossibilities, in that he acted his own commands. Thus I find him on the cross in the greatest agony for his persecutors, their blasphemies wrestling with his benedictions; the Jews curse ascending heaven, and Christ's blessing keeping it down: who not suffering them to enjoy their damnation, resolved upon with so much plaudite & acclamation, his blood be upon us and our children, opened the mouth of that blood into a prayer, and made it cry, Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. And this my God was according to thy promise, the giving of a new commandment: for whereas the old runs, I will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, thy law of the Gospel proclaims, I will remit those sins unto the third and fourth generation, I will show mercy upon thousands of them that hate me and not keep my commandments. Now for the second act of our Saviour's humility, the denial of his eminent gifts, what greater could there be, than the forbidding his patients to declare their cure, and desiring his miracles might be as invisible as his Godhead. As if a miraculous health were the shame of the physician, and a Lazarus raised to life, the spoiling of his practice. Or else how is it we read in the Gospel, of our Saviour's unlocking the mouth of the dumb, and then crying, See you tell no man; which was to tie up that organ, which he had before loosed; as he did in drawing the curtain from the blind man's eyes, & yet commanding him not to see and take notice of his physician; or in restoring the withered hand, and straightway drying it up again, in forbidding its use; and saying, point not at me. And therefore learn of me, was our Saviour's saying to his Church, for I am lowly in heart, Mat. 11. In heart, aflecting no vain glory in my miracles, no high opinion of my great parts; which instructs us not to commit Idolatry with our own bosom, and to fall down to the thoughts of our hearts; by which we deify these moulds of earth, as if we could raise eternity out of ashes, or build immortality on pillars of dust; wherefore learn of Christ to think meanly of our selus, and mistrust even what we know: and this, says Aquinas, refraenat animum, is a bridle to curb and keep in our hot-metteled and unweighed minds, from running upon every dangerous precipice; the want of humility expelled our first parent's paradise, the angeltheaven, and may us too from the same joys for some men's eminencies are their vices, and a good name as dangerous to them as a bad, their greatest parts being made their greatest sins; and the rational soul to answer more at the last day, for its knowledge, than ignorance. Hence it is we hear Phisophy turned into Atheism, and a deep discourse to subtle blasphemy; which dares censure the holy Ghost for no good Philosopher in placing the waters above the firmament, cause all their elements are sublunary, & to dispute the first Chap. of Gen. out of the Canon, for that it is no where to be found in the Physics. Thus they cry down Moses by Aristotle, & as i● the Devil were as great a mover of sedition in the study, as in the shop, they raise a Brownistical mutiny of the Arts against Divinity, setting up that to preach which never took Orders. Nor stop we here, but upon the same proud dotage of our able parts presume to remove those Landmarks in Divinity, our Fathers have set; to leave the old beaten way of the Church, trod by so many ages of Divines, and follow a peculiar track of our private fancy leading to theby ways of heresy and schism; God in his just judgement, making all the travel and throws of our brain abortive, like those untimely miscarriages of the womb not honoured with a soul, or the shape and lineaments of an infant. From this self conceit arise those sublimated disputes of Faith, which make men forget their Charity; of Predestination, till they Prove themselves none of the Elect; as also about the blessed Trinity, till at last they believe there is no such thing: a mystery wherein our quickest sight is as but one degree above blindness; and yet there are, who have boasted to make it so clear and easy, as if they enjoyed the beatifical vision in this life: & will have Christ's presence in the Eucharist to ●e as visible, as though by a miraculous multiplying eye they saw him bodily move in each crumb of bread and drop of wine. And why should I call for day, where God will have night, and covet to see that brightness, whose least ●ay will instantly blind me? I will rather with Moses fall flat upon my face, humbly admire that Deity which I cannot conceive, and be content to know the Almighty no farther than his Word shall reveal: where this light leavs me I will cease the quest, and boast of my ignorance; never desiring that illumination which leads to utter darkness, nor that holiness which will unholy me: And this points at the other parallel before mentioned, the whiteness of the Lily, and the innocence or holiness of the Spouse, As the Lily, so is my love.  
Christianity a bare name, Religion a ●●eer shadow; not as they appear in themselves, but as made so by the Seemers of this age; who use God's cause as Hunters do a Scanned, the more covertly to shoot at what game they please; making their Religion their Part, and only personating their godliness; their devotion being like the hangings of the scene, which they can take off and tack on as they list. Thus Saul's sparing of Agag, and the best of the spoil was pretended for ends holy; not for his own private table at any hand, but God's Altar; whose command he neglected to observe his worship, and offered up disobedience in a sacrifice. And thus about an age since, that rebellion of the frantic Sectarists in Germany was anabaptized with the sanctified name of a Reformation, and those barbarous Armies slicked over with the plausible title of lawful brotherly Assemblies, and a Christian Congregation: their burning of Libraries was pretended for the encouraging of Learning; persuading the people, that to take up arms against Charles their Emperor was only to protect his office; and to destroy his person, that they might the better preserve his dignity, & make his Crown the greatest Prince in Christendom: And yet these were esteemed (no Saints indeed but) mere innocent holy men.  
But now our Lilies whiteness is not of this colour, Chist's Spouse her innocence and holiness not of their Religion: the King's daughter in the 45 Psal. was all glorious within; if we be good Christians we are both sides alike, and best at the core. No matter then for this bark and outside of Religion, this skin and shell of Christianity, the heart and the reins are those that God looks after: God? I and man too. For this Love, this Spouse in my text, as she is most fair, so most eyed, and worst censured by the unbelieving world. Thus if an Apostle rub but an ear of corn on the Sabbath 'tis breaking of the day: the Infidels moats are the Christians beams, and his indifferency my evil; somethings being expedient in respect of the man, which are scandalous merely for his Calling. None then to keep within so strict lines as the Christian, being one ever under monitors; for behold (says the Apostle) we are made a gazing stock to the world, to Angels, and to men. Insomuch that we live not our own lives alone, but the life of the whole world; as if at our Regeneration we took upon us no private persons, but the common nature, and were not baptised men, but mankind: our actions being therefore not personal but ecumenical, & whether good or bad are held authentic. Thus had not our Saviour paid tribute, it would have been thought sufficient argument why others should not; it being enough for the Rout that their betters did so. No wonder then if Sechem ravish, when the firstborn of Jacob commits incest; if an Egyptian falls down to an Ox, when an Israelite worships a Calf; if Simon Magus offers to buy the Holy Ghost; when an Apostle dares sell his Master. Holiness then becomes every man well, but best of all the baptised; who is the Mirror in which the unbeliever beholds heaven, and the Convoy to direct him thither: Now if the glass be spotted, instead of an Angel we look upon a fury, and if the conduct be falls, there is more danger in the guide then the way; which hath caused many Pagans to step back, having had one foot in the Church, when they have seen Christians believe so well, and live so ill, breaking the Commandments against the Creed, and contradicting the doctrine of the seventh day by the practice of the other six. And here though I plead for holiness, yet not the Pharisees, Touch me not, for I am holier than thou; no holiness of the Separation, but what is diffusive, and holds communion with all: for our Lily is the Lily of the valleys, and not of the garden; and this Love in my text is seated among the daughters, the daughters of the whole world, and neither of a Parlour nor a Cloister, a Conventicle nor a Nunnery; which leads me to my next particular, the seat or standing of the Lily, it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, in the middle, or among this thorns.  
The blessed Trinity is therefore most perfect, cause most one, and man is more or less God's image, as he does more or less resemble that Trinity, which is one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Nazian. Ora. 12. as well in respect of agreement as essence; being therefore styled in Scripture Peace and Love, to show, that the next way to set thee at opposition with thy God, is to divide thee from thy brother, and to hazard thy interest in the head is to dis-joint thyself from the members; being thus an enemy not only to thine own salvation, but thy neighbours; to thine own, by refusing their goodness; to thy neighbours, by not communicating thine. To prevent this, the Almighty hath made thee a sociable creature, and every part of this world as accessible and sociable as thy creation: the Scythian may embrace the Moor. and the East join hands with the West-Indian. Whilst then thou hold'st no communion with thy brother, thou unman'st thyself, separating from thy humane nature; nay more, being not among these Thorns thou art not with this Lily; but like Donatus, confining to some Africa, thou excommunicates thyself out of the Church Militant below, and perchance the Triumphant above: as the ambition of those apostate Angels no sooner distinguished them from the rest, but it threw then from heaven. Nor is this separation destructive only of thyself, but of the whole Church; from whose body every one that separates tears off a several limb, and becomes a murderer of the whole. For which reason it hath been ever the devil's policy (who is encouraged not so much by his own strength, as our weakness) first to divide this army with banners, and then to assault through the breach; because the conquest is easier against an hundred then against a thousand; especially when the combatants fight with the public enemy against themselves: and that too commonly either about a School-subtilty, or Churchceremonie; the usual difference being not so much in the foundation, as the paint and dress of the building; nay perchance a mere 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 (as Scotus upon the first of the Senten. censures that grand controversy about the procession of the Holy Ghost) a consent of opinions in contrary terms; as a sundry dialect maketh not a several language; both sides speaking the same way to heaven though in a divers tone. In these cases than no separation, only let thy charity pity thy brother's mistreading, & speak it error in him, but no irreligion; in that he loves God with as strong a flame, though of a weaker light, with as high a zeal, though a lower knowledge; his slips (alas) being to him as part of his religion & Creed, & errs merely lest he should dishonour God. Leave him not therefore for his errors in doctrine, nor yet for his errors in life: separate neither from a particular Church nor a particular Congregation, either for the Priest's sin, or the people's; refuse not to take the blessed Eucharist from him, or receive it with these. For first, what if the Priest the sacrificer be unclean, is the offering so? 'Tis a gross dull capaeity that can't distinguish 'twixt the work and the instrument, the weakness of the person and the power of the function. Now as we may not separate from the Communion for the Priest's folly, so neither for the people's. For what though some in the Congregation be profane? Wilt thou thrust all into the pit of hell, because some few walk near the brink? 'Tis a privilege of the Church triumphant to be all fair, and have no spot in her; the best proportioned body hath not every part of an equal comeliness, nor is beauty made up of one colour. Our spouse in this book of Canticles wears a black eye in a clear complextion; that is but her natural beautie-speck: the moon's a glorious body for all her moles; the Church a fair Lily, for all the thorns. And what are those to me? Can't I enjoy the sweetness but I must needs prick my fingers? if I admonish the sinner, and detest his sin, what's another's profaennesse to my religion? Our Saviour could be of the same table with Publicans and sinners, yet none of their counsel, eat of their meat without tasting their gall and bitterness. And we read his Apostles did communicate with Judas, and yet not with his treason; partake of the Paschal Lamb, without tasting the bitter herbs. And now what remedy for this confused communion of the multitude? certainly none. If the Children of God come to present themselves before his Throne, there seldom misses a Satan in the midst, as we read Job 2: no cross or holy water can keep him out. Our bells are not exorcists, they may clear the air if you will, but of no evil spirits; neither is their sound so subtle to distinguish 'twixt good and bad, invites not the Publican and forbids the Pharisee, they both came up to the Temple at the hour of prayer: there seldom being a gathering together into the Ark, the Church, but some unclean beast enters; not the most perfect Synod on earth, even that of the Apostles, but had its Judas; and yet these Apostles were Chist's, and that Ark God's: which points to my last particular, the Artisan or Limmer himself, that hath drawn, and owes, and will protect this piece, implied in the particle my; As the Lily, so is my Love.  
God is in the world as the soul in the body, life and government; and as the soul is in every part of the body, so is God in everypart of the world, no quartermaster, but universal Monarch, a God every where, & every where wholly a God; his power extending as well to an Ant as to a Man, to an Atom as to a City, but not in the same degree: as his glory filled both Moses his bush, and the space about it, but not with the same measure; the one being too holy only for the Prophet's shoe's, the other even for his feet. Thus do Commonwealths inherit a greater share of the almighty's Providence, then single families; their laws being wrapped in his decrees, and their policies in his counsels; plotting and contriving nothing but what meets with an Eternal thought. And even amongst Commonwealths; some enjoy more, otherslesse of divine protection; for though all Nations bear God's stamp and image, yet Israel had his superscription too; those tribes were writ his, and none but his; here was his lot, his inheritance, his Church; and where this is you have still a greater influence of the Deity. And by this right of inheritance hath God jus patronatus, the perpetual Advousen of the Catholic Church: and therefore well may he say in the text my love; mine, for I made her, there is the right of Creation; mine, for I made her again, washed and cleansed her, there is the right of Regeneration; mine, for I bought her, there is the right of Redemption; mine, for she is myself, my Spouse, there is nexus indissolubilis, the right of matrimonial union. And as mine to love, so to defend; the result and inference is natural; I am thine therefore save me, O Lord, was the Prophets▪ Interest cannot stand without protection, as one relation lives not without its brother: the hand says it is my head, therefore I will guard it with my strength; the head replies it is my hand, therefore I will advise it with my counsel. And thus it holds in all, save where is lack of love, or power; but with God is want of neither: not of love, for he that toucheth Israel toucheth the apple of God's eye; nor of power, the agent being omnipotent, able to compass his will both without means, and contrary to all. Thus rather than his children shall perish, either by a deluge, or a drought, by too much, or too little water, the red sea shall be divided into walls, and the stony rock into springs: and if the Church hath yet any adversaries more merciless than water, ●he earth shall open from below, and bury them before dead, or fire shall descend from above, and make them a sacrifice without an offering: God never suffering this Lily either to be cut down by the sword, or burned up by the fire of martyrdom. 'Tis true it may sometimes like a nipped blossom hang down the head; nay, be driven by a winter of persecution to keep house under ground, retire I mean to her ancient Chappel-grots and caves (as flowers in hard weather depart to visit their mother-root) yet those places shall not prove her grave, but sanctuary; and the enemies of God's Church be no more able to bury it in those vaults, than was the stone & guard of our Saviour's sepulchre to lock him up at the third day, or then our graves shall be to keep us down at the general Resurrection: for God hath set bounds to the Devil as well as the Sea, and chained him up from devouring his Church, as he did that from drowning his Israelites. And after this manner do we meet with in Ecclesiastical story now the full face of a Church, and by and by but one cheek and an e●e; yet still the same hand that drew out protecting both. Thus when the believing world was gathered together in Noah's floating Isle, what a wonder of providence do I here meet with! one poor family called out of the world, and as it were eight grains of corn fanned from a barn-full of chaff, and yet for the increase but of these eight grains was the whole earth preserved under the flood, else a shower of fire had purged that world, which could not be cleansed by a deluge. And here how securely doth the Prophet Noah ride out this uproar of heaven and waters; knowing that planted paradise was not so firm as his Ark, whose anchor was his God, and he that owed the waters steering the vessel. After this when the Church was upon the Altar, and now about to be sacrificed in Isaac, when the sword was drawn, and the blow ready, how did the Almighty prevent the execution; the sacrificer Abraham in the mean time, whom it nearest concerned, being least touched; faith having wrought that in the Patriarch which cruelty would in others, not to be sensible of his own action: he contemns all fears, and overlooks all impossibilities; his heart telling him, that the same hand that had raised Isaac from the dead womb of Sarah, could raise that same Isaac again from his own urn; and the God, who promised to increase a single person to the number of the stars, might (for all he knew) make this single persons very dust to conceive and bring forth, and so perform that almighty promise out of the ashes of his sacrifice. Last of all, when this Isaac was multiplied to an Israel, and this Israel (God's Church) was shackled (perchance for their forefathers selling Joseph to be a slave) shackled I say with the Irons of Egypt, where their burdens were turned into bondage, and their bondage into blood; their souls also being ever on the rack of continual fear and suspense, lest their bodies might be thrown into the same Brick-kills they had built, and become the fire to harden their own handiwork: yet here how did God tie up Pharaoh's hands with plagues; and the same voice that cried, Touch not mine Anointed, commanded likewise and my Anointed touch not mine; turning their poisons into cordials, and their enemy's malice to their greatest improvement; in that he made them grow under their burdens, and propagate through that inhuman destruction of the male-fruit of their body: So still does God's Vine bear the better for the pruning-hook, and looks much fresher by being let blood. And thus with the same Prospective might I show you God's providence over-shadowing the Christian Church no less than the Jewish, which hath had her Pharaohs, and her Wilderness, as also her guardian fires and clouds; our persecutions being as many, and our deliverances as great; and as the Jewish Church did multiply by afflictions, so also the Christian▪ whose custom it was to bring her Martyrdoms to the Bank, and to put out persecutions to Use and Interest. Thus a single grain of the Church cast into the ground hath returned an harvest, the blood of a private Christian baptised a City of Unbelievers, and from the Martyrdom of the Twelve Apostles have sprung as many nations of the same Faith: their blood like a second Deluge covering the face of the earth, and their fires as well as their Gospel being the light of the whole world.  
And may thy Church (O Lord) shine still the light of the world, but not still thus (O Lord) in fire; may thy Spouse thy Love look ever beautiful and ruddy, but not with her own blood and martyrdom. To this end let thy Providence lie always thy Church's Leaguer here upon earth, working and counterplotting against ●ll Agents of the Prince of darkness. Protect, we beseech thee, thy Lily both in radice and in flore, from Rooters there, and from Branchers here; I mean from such as strike either at her vitals by Heresy, or at her out●imbes by persecution: and this even till that day when thy Love shall be married to thy Lamb, and this Lily transplanted into thy Paradise; where it shall flourish with a continual spring, and remain like those Lilies of our Saviour's in Saint Matth. That neither toil nor spin; changing her wreath of Thorns for a crown of Stars, and her rod for a Sceptre. And this blessed day God of his mercy hasten for his Church's sake, Amen, Lord Jesus, Amen.  
FINIS.   

THE Fourth Sermon. Which is that in the PRESBYTERIAN Style, or Way of Preaching; Delivered before the City at the Cathedral Church of Saint PAUL in London.  MAT. 25. 34, 35. 
34. Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  
35. For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in.  
LONDON, Printed for Edward Archer, at the Adam and Eve in Little Britain, Anno Dom. 1656.   
Luke 16. 9 And I say unto you, Make to your selus friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness; that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. 
THis Parable presents to your view the reckoning, or bill of accounts of the unjust Steward, and my text is the summa totalis of that bill, or the moral to this parable; in which our Saviour taught his Disciples then, and doth us now, how we should provide against that great Audit the day of Judgement. As for this unjust Steward whether he were Saint Paul before his Conversion, as Theophylact would have him, or the Jews as Tertullian: whether he be only the Richman, or only the Statesman, or only the Churchman, or rather every man to whom any charge is committed by God (as the Doctors have severally given in their opinions) I will not dispute, as being not much to our purpose: sure I am he was bad enough, yet not so bad neither but our Saviour picks good out of him; at your physical Confectioner (the Apothecary) extracts Treacle from the Viper, and the most cordial of Antidotes from the deadliest poison. For what S. Paul makes the Law to his Galathians, Christ hath made this unjust Steward unto us, a Schoolmaster to bring us unto God, and by his care for this world doth point us the way to the next, and that by way of commendation, quia prudenter ●git, non quia fraudulenter, not cause he dealt dishonestly, but wisely; so the verse before my text; that he carried the business cleanly, handsomely; the manner how, you may read from the 5 to the 8 ver. of this Chapter; and therefore make you friends, learn of him, saith Christ. Had it been learn of me, as our Saviour's precept was, Matth. 11. 29. it had been an admirable pattern: nay, had it been but Solomon's lesson, Go to the pismire Pro. 9 I should not have marvelled, for she would have taught honest providence: but learn of an unjust Steward; can there come any goodthing from one so evil? Yes, For the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light, so the 8 ver. of this Chapt. therefore learn of him: what to do? To make you friends. How? Of the unrighteous Mammon. Why? That when ye fail, they may, etc.  
Which three Queries will direct us to three General Parts for our division. The first is the quid, the matter, to provide for ourselves by making us friends. The second the cujus, the manner to use the best means to get them, unrighteous Mammon. The third the cuibono, the end, that when ye fail, they, etc. Of which in their order, beginning with the first, the quid, the mattor, to provide for ourselves by making us friends.  
And that I think is good counsel at any time: and as ever, so most especially now, when brotherly affection is become so changeable and doublefaced, as 'tis hard to find a true friend; and liberality is grown so indirect and improper, that 'tis shown now adays rather to enrich a Closet or Parlour then a Christian, in clothing of walls sooner than men. Now the friends here meant are the Angels say some, who are made out friends by works of mercy towards our brethren; but the common tenet is the friends in my text are the poor, quos Deus permisit egere ad illorum & nostram probationem, whom God suffers to want, for the exercise of their patience and our charity: and the ordinary exposition of make you friends, it, give Alms, make you friends by works of Charity; which shall be the subject of the first part of my discourse; and so much the rather, because the doctrine as well as the practice of it is almost forgot. The Divinity of Justification by Faith alone, like one of Pharaoh's lean kine hath clean devoured the fat ones. And therefore my first particular position, or doctrine raised from this general thesis, shall be to rectife your understanding in this deep point of Justification by Faith, and Justification by Works, to reconcile these two, and make them one.  
The Position is this, That Faith & Works 
1. Doctr-  must always be united, ever go hand in hand in a believer. It is evident to all, except they be blind, that the eye alone seeth in the body, ●et the eye which seeth is not alone in the body without the other senses; the forefinger alone pointeth, yet that finger is not alone on the hand; the hammer alone striketh the bell, yet the hammer that striketh the bell is not alone in the clock; the heat alone in the fire burneth, and not the light, yet the heat is not alone without the light; the helm alone guideth the ship, and not the tackling, yet the helm is not alone, nor without the tackling. Thus we are to conceive, that though Faith alone doth justify, yet that Faith which justifies is not alone, but joined with Charity and good Works. Saint Bernard's distinction of via r●gni and causa regnandi cleareth the truth in this point. Though good Works are not the cause why God crowns us in heaven, yet we must take them in our way to heaven, Mat. 5. 16. It is as impious to deny the necessity, as to maintain the merits of good Works.  
The first reason of the point wherefore 
1. Reason.  Faith and good Works must always be united, always go hand in hand in a Believer, is, because that God hath joined good works and salvation together in his Word, and what God hath joined let not man put asunder. Now doing and life, working and salvation, running and obtaining, winning and wearing, overcoming and reigning in holy Scripture evermore follow one the other: wherefore the young man puts the question to our Saviour, Mar. 10. 17. and the people likewise, and the Publicans,▪ and the Soldiers to Saint John, Luk. 3. 10, 12, 14. and the Keepers of the prison to Saint Pau●, Act. 16. 30. and the Jews to Saint Peter, Act. 2. 37. What shall we do? Not what shall we say, or what shall we believe? but what shall we do? This is the tenor of the Law, Do this and thou shalt live, Levit. 18. 5. Deut. 5. 33. And the Gospel also runs in the same tune, Mat. 7. 24. And again, No● the hearers, but the doers of the Law shall be justified, James 1. 22.  
A second reason of the point is, because 
●. Reason.  that though Faith justify our Works before God, yet our Works justify our Faith before men. Though the just shall live by his Faith, Hab. 2. 4. Yet this his Faith must live by his Charity.  
Let us therefore take from hence first a 
1. Use.  word of Cantion, not to turn the doctrine of Free Justification into carnal liberty, nor impose upon Christ's mercy what it will not bear, nor endeavour to sever faith from good Works, lest we sever our soul from life. I grant, when we have done all we can we may, nay we must say, we are unprofitable servants, Luke 17. 10. None may trust in their own righteousness, but on the contrary all aught to pray that they may be found in Christ, not having their own righteousness, Epb. 3. 9 yet their righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, or else they shall never enter into the kingdom of heaven, Mat. 5. 20.  
In the second place this will serve for a 
2. Use.  word of Reproof for all those that separate Faith and Works. Tell not me, whoever thou art, of Faith without thy Works, nor of Prayers without thy Alms, nor of piety without thy compassion, nor of real without thy charity; if the hands be not Jacob's as well as the voice, I fear thou wilt appear before God for no better than a mere Impostor and Cheat. If we are good trees by our fruit men shall know us, Mat. 7. 15. by your fruit, not by your blossoms of good purposes, or your leaves of good profession, but by the fruit of your actions. What is your devotion when it is peevish; or your zeal when it is malicious, or your purity when it is schismatical, or your conscience when it is factious, a mover, a ringleader of sedition. Too too many in this rotten age wherein we live are speakers, not workers; as if ostendere fidem the Apostle Saint James his show thy Faith by thy Works were o● tendere, to stretch the jaws, to show thy Faith by strong Protistations. But this must not be a work of the mouth, but hand. If a man question thee of thy faith, spare thy lips and let thy mouth make answer. If words might be credited, if a bare profession of the Gospel might be believed, no man would want faith; every one would cry with the blind man to Christ, Lord I believ: what mouth would not make one lie for its master? Nise videro, unless I see, saith Thomas of Christ's rising, so unless I see and feel thy saith, I will not believe. If therefore thou criest, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord with the Jews, and with them dost not obey the Lord of that Temple; if thou art only Sermon-sick whilst thou art rocked in a Church-tempest abroad, and presently dost recover again as soon as thoudo'st lie at hull at home, if thy voice be jacob's, but thy hands Esau's; if thou dost acknowledge God with thy tongue, but deny him in thy life; profess a Christian, and live a Pagan; join together Christ and Beliat, the Temple of God and the Temple of Devils, the holy and the unholy Ghost; if thou dost run to heaven one day, to hell six, and dost contradict the truth of those Sermons thou dost hear by the errors of thy life, I must tell thee by way of reproof, that this is the part of a grand hypocrite, and not of a good Christian, and at the last day shall receiv the portion of hypocrites in the lake of fire and brimstone.  
In the third place you may here take unto 
3. Use.  yourselves a word of Admonition, to beware of these hypocrites, and this is our Saviour's own use, Mat. 7. 15. Beware, saith Christ, of those that come to you in sheep's clothing; in sheep's clothing with such a cast of mortification and integrity, as if their conversation spoke nothing but innocence and immaculatenesse, when within they are ravening wolves. A handsome garment is no argument of a strait body, nor are those always the best men that make the most show of Religion. All are not nathanael's, Israelites indeed, that are of Israel: many have Abraham to their father, but a few his children; many that came out of his loins, but few that shall sit in his bosom. Therefore I say again, take our Saviour's advice; Beware of those that come to you in sheep's clothing: you shall know them by their fruits, says Christ; fruits indeed to the eye beautiful and glorious, but to the finger dust and smoke, like those hypocritical apples, that well-complexioned dust of Sodom: and so much shall suffice for our first doctrinal position, raised from this first general part of the Text.  
The second Observation that I shall 
2. Doctr.  draw from this general point of Charity and Almsdeeds, is, that this work is not a freewill offering, left to ourselves to be done, or left undone, as we think fit, but it is our duty, and we are bound to do it if we are able: and this is proved from 1 Tim 6. 17, 18. It is the rich man's charge, precept, and duty; and therefore what is here with our Saviour a counsel, was with his Apostle a precept. Charge the rich, saith the aforementioned Epistle to Tim. that they do good. It is not left to their free choice to do good if they please, but it is laid upon them as their charge and duty, they must do good Work●, and woe to them if they do not.  
And the reason of the point is, because 
Reason.  God haih not made them owners, but servants, and servants not of their goods, but the giver, not treasures, but stewards and Almoners.  
And this dispensation and ordering of 
Use.  God's, that rich men should be his Stewards, may very well serve for a word of encouragement and exhortation to those rich men to go on and glory in this office of Stewardship, especially when they shall consider that the praise of a Steward is more to lay out well, then to have received much, knowing that Well done faithful servant Mat. 25. 21. is a thousand times a sweeter note than soul take thine ease, Luk 12. 10. for that first is the voice of the Master recompensing, this last of the Carnal Heart presuming; and what followed to the one in the Gospel, but his Master's joy; what to the other, but the loss of his soul. But what need here either our Saviour's counsel, or his Apostles precept you'll say, for we shall have friends enough no doubt, so long as this Mammon in our Text is our friend: we shall indeed; and therefore,  
Our third Observation on the point shall 
3. Doctr.  be, that in making of friends by works of Charity, we must use discretion and prudence: and this will teach us First, Negatively who in this particular are not to be our friends: Secondly, Positively who are to be these friends in the Text. First then Negatively, those are not to be our friends, who when we fail will not receive us into habitations; who will be ready to embrace all the favours and good turns you shall confer upon them, but will return none back again. These are such friends of whom holy Job in his 6 Chap. complained of; like the brooks by the which the merchants do travel into Teman, frozen in winter, and dried up in Summer: friends no longer than you can befriend them, like leavs that fall from the trees when they begin to wither, and with Saint Peter know not the man; such as will be your servant in a compliment, and not look upon you in a business. These are the first sort of friends that are not to be made of the unrighteous Mammon, common sense and reason forbids it. Secondly you must not make those your friends, who though they may perchance receive you into habitations, yet they cannot receive you into everlasting habitations; though they are able to give you houses, they are not able to give you heaven; and these are the rich in this world, of whom our Saviour forewarns you, Luke 6. 82, to 35. We therefore are to engage none of these to our friendship, but such as when we fail, shall receive us into everlasting habitations, and these are the poor and needy: which seemed such a paradox to the Pharisees, as they derided Christ, ver. 14 of this Chap. whose laughter occasioned the following Parable of Dives and Lazarous: had the Rich man there made this Beggar his friend with b●ead (and a few crumbs would have done it) himself had not afterwards wanted water; but now it is but justice, that he which denied a crumb, should be denied a drop.  
Now in the forth place for a fourth observation 
4. Doctr.  upon the point you are to take notice, that if you will be God's Almoners and Stewards, to disburse to the poor, God will be your pay-matter, and undertake for the poor; if you will be their friend here, he will be your friend both here and hereafter. To prove this, you must know that these words of my Text were not spoken, as if the poor were able of themselves to be our friends, but God undertakes for them; he hath given his word, and entered bond for every act of Charity, whether i be a work of piety to his Church, or mercy to the poor. And first for piety, He that receives a Prophet in the name of a Prophet, saith our Saviour, Matth. 10. shall ●…eive a Prophet's reward, either in the blessings of earth, with the widow of Sarepta, 1 King. 17. 14. whose cruse and meal did not waste, of which the Man of God had a cake▪ or in the blessings of the womb with the Shunamite, who for her Candlestick and Stool received life from the deadness of her womb, a son when she was barren, 2 King. 4. there's for piety.  
Secondly for mercy; give, and it shall be given unto you, saith the 6 of Saint Luke: He that commands the one, promiseth the other. Alms never undid their owner, nor is Charity so ill a servant, as to leave the master a beggar. And again, He that gives to the poor, lends to the Lord, Pro. 19: and if God freely gives us what we may lend, will he not much more pay us what we have lent, and give us because we have given; that first is his bounty, this last but his justice.  
Now from this last Observation may be 
1. Use.  gathered by way of Use, the happiness both of Poor and Rich. And first of the Poor, when he shall consider himself God's seedplot, his plow'd-land which God hath so blessed and improved with the showers and dew of heaven, that if you chance but to throw in a single grain, even one poor mite of your charity, it shall return an hundred fold; low earth and you shall reap heaven.  
Secondly from hence appears the blessed 
2. Use.  condition of the Rich. Oh how happy is that man, that may be a creditor to his Maker: heaven and earth shall become empty, before he shall want a royal payment; never any was a loser by God; For God returns large consideration and interest for what he takes up, and paics not the use for the principal, but the principal for the use; not six in the hundred, but an hundred for six, and who then would not be an usurer to the Almighty. But you'll reply, I have talents committed to my charge, knew I but the best way to improve them, I would willingly give, but I see my alms abused.  
To direct you therefore, in this great and necessary duty of Christianity, I shall hold out unto you 4. general rules of giving alms, and out of each of these 4. general rules draw out several particular directions. The 4. general rules are these. First the unjust steward's rule, in my text. Secondly solomon's rule. Thirdly Christ's rule. Fourthly Gods rule.  
For the first, the unjust steward's rule, that 
1. Rule.  will teach you how to give alms, from these particular directions. First saith the 5. ver. of this Chap. he called his master's debtors, and stayed not till they called him Abraham and Lot are said to fit in the door of the Tent to call in strangers; they need not knock: commonly they that crave least have the most need. For there are many persons, that have nothing left them, but misery and modesty, and towards such we must add two circumstances of Charity. First to inquire them out. Secondly to convey our relief so to them, as we do not make them ashamed.  
Secondly, the second particular direction from this unjust steward was this, that what he did was with dispatch; he called his Master's debtors, and bid them sit down quickly, verse 6. ut hilarem ita celerom datorem diligit Deus; God delights in expedition as well as cheerfulness: give alms with a cheerful heart and countenance, not grudgingly, or of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver, 2 Cor: 2. 7: and therefore give quickly, when the power is in thine hand, and the need is in thy neighbour, and thy neighbour at the door. He gives twice, that relieves speedily. The more speed, the more comfort. Neither the times are in our own disposing, nor ourselves. If God had see us a day, and made our wealth inseparable, there were no danger in delay. But now our incertainty if it quickens not deceius us. How many have meant well & done nothing, losing their crown with lingering: to whom that they would have done good, it is n●t ●o great praise as it is dishonour, that they might have done it; their deaths ofttimes preventing their desires, and making their good incentions the Wards of their Executors, who many times prove the executioners of their wills and estates.  
From hence then take a word of advice 
1. Use  and caution; let their wracksbe ourwarning, who are equally mortal, equally fickle. It is a woeful and remediless complaint, that the end of our days should outrun the beginning of our good works: which are commonly so done, as the poor may thank our deathbeds for them, and not us; our disease rather than our Charity. For he that gives not till he dies, shows that he would not give then if he could keep it: and they that give thus give by their testaments it is true, but I can scarce say they give by their wills: the good man's praise Psal. 112. was that himself dispersed his goods, and not left them behind him; and his distribution is seconded with this retribution of Gods, his righteousness endureth for ever. The Saints of God are like Dorcas in the Acts, rich in good works which she did herself, and not entrusted others to do them, being her own executrix.  
Secondly, let this be an use of exhortation and encouragement, to do good in 
●. Use.  your life time. Our Saviour tells us Mat. 5. that our good works, are our lights; Let your light so shine, as m●n may see your good works, and glorify your father which is in heaven. Now which of you will have his candle brought behind him, and not rather carried before, that he may see which way it goes, and which way himself goes by it. Do good therefore in your life: early beneficence hath no danger, many joys Isa. 58. 8. For first, the conscience of good don. Secondly the prayers and blessings of the relieved; Thirdly, the gratulations of the Saints, are as so many perpetual comforters, which will make your life pleasant, and your death happy; when every one of you may say to his Soul with that rich man in the Gospel, but upon better grounds, Soul take thine case, for thou hast treasure laid up, not for many years, but for ever.  
Thirdly, as this unjust steward dealt his alms speedily, so also bountifully; ver. 6. For which, divinity hath no particular and set rule: because Charity is not ●●t by a thread, as justice; but only in general, and at large; that it be proportionable to our ability, parallel to our means, according to what a man hath, was Saint Paul's to them of Corinth 1 Cor. 8. Liberality is as well seen in a little as in much; in a few scattered crumbs, as the rich gluttons thronged table; in the poor widow's mite, as the vast offerings of the treasury; in the good Samaritane's drops of wine and oil, as in all the Vines and Olive-yards of Jury. For charity (say the Schools) is of what a man hath, and not of what he has not. If thy purse will not hold out to a sepulchre for Christ, with Joseph of Arimathea, yet with the Maries, a pound or two of spice would be seen. If silver and gold thou hast none, yet with Saint Peter in the Acts, such as thou hast give unto the poor; and with that Apostle, let at least thy shadow be a covering for their nakedness, if thy substance cannot reach to a garment. It was our Saviour's promise in the Gospel, That he which gave a cup of cold water, should not lose his reward; and certainly I can never be so poor as to want this. Where the widows cruse of oil and meal was low, the Prophet did not look for a feast, but for a cake.  
Lastly, though he was bountiful, yet with discretion and difference; fifty to one, and but twenty to another; the most to those who were most likely to help. Do good to all, but especially to those of the household of faith, was the Apostles advice, Galat. 6. 10. let the righteous man have the greatest share in your Mammon of unrighteousness. Our rule then of doing good, must be a rule of wisdom and charity; of wisdom in making good choice of the parties, of charity in hoping the best of them. Charitatis error salutaris est, we seldom fin in charity: admit their prayers whom thou hast relieved are not acceptable to God, yet thy Alms-deeds are; the beggar may be damned, when the giver shall be saved. To instruct you therefore more particularly in this case take with you these three directions: First, According to thy ability give to all men that need, and in equal needs give first to good men rather than to bad men; and if the needs be unequal, do so too; provided that the need of the poorest be not violent, nor extreme: but if an evil man be in extreme necessity, he is to be relieved rather than a good man who can ●a●…e longer, and may subsist without it; and if he be a good man, he will desire it should be so, because himself is bound to save the life of his brother with doing some inconvenience to himself: and no difference of virtue or vice can make the ease of one beggar equal with the life of another Secondly, give no Alms to vicious persons, if such Alms will support their sin, as if they will continue in idleness; if they will not work, let them not eat, 2 Thes. 3. 10. or if they will spend it in drunkenness and wantonness. Such persons when they are reduced to very great want, must be relieved in such proportions as may not relieve their dying lust, but may refresh their faint and dying bodies. Thirdly, the best objects of charity are poor housekeepers that labour hard, and are burdened with many children; or gentlemen fallen into sad poverty, especially if by innocent misfortune; (and if their crimes brought them into it, yet they are to be relieved according to the former rule;) persecuted persons, widows and fatherless children, putting them to honest trades or Schools of learning; and search into the needs of numerous and meaner families; and when thou spiest a multitude of poor▪ Christians in one family, conceive that family to be an hospital of God's own erecting, into which the charity of well-disposed Christians is to be cast. And so much for the first of our four general rules of almsgiving, drawn from the Unjust Steward.  
Our second general rule is taken from Solomon, 
2. Rule.  in that charitable advice of his, Eccle. 11. 1. Throw thy bread upon the waters; from whence you may observe, First that it is not damn, a thing utterly given away, burr mitte, a thing sent abroad, like an adventure at sea, which shall another day return with great advantage. And then Secondly it is bread, not a stone: when thy brother asks, thou must give him an Alms to fill his belly, not a reproach to break his heart. He that gives Alms must do it in mercy; for Alms without mercy, are like prayers without devotion, or religion without humility. Thy charity then must be distributed in mercy, that is out of a true sense of the calamity of thy brother, first feeling it in thyself in some proportion, and then eudeavouring to ease thyself and thy brother of the common calamity. If thou hast no money, yet thou must have mercy, and art bound to pity the poor, and pray for them, and throw thy holy desires & devotions into the treasury of the Church; & if thou dost what thou art able, be it little or great, corporal or spiritual, the charity of alms, or the charity of prayers, a cup of wine, or a cup of water, if it be but love to the brethren, or a desire to help all, or any of Christ's poor, it shall be accepted according to what a man hath, not according to what he hath not. For love is all this, and all the other Commandments: and it will express itself where it can, and where it cannot yet it i● love still, and it is also sorrow that it cannot. Now against this rule they offend who give Alms out of custom, or to upbraid the poverty of their brother, or to make him mercenary and obliged, or with any unhandsome circumstances.  
Thirdly, it must be de pane tuo, of thine own bread, not another's; thou must not undo an hundred men, their wives and children, and build a poor hospital to keep seven; but of this more hereafter.  
In the fourth place it must be super aquas, upon the waters, expounded in the following ver: thus give thy portion to seven, and to eight, we must not heap all our liberality on one, but contrive it that it may extend to many. Ali●dest dare pauperibus, aliud ditare pauperem; it is one thing to give an alm●, another thing to give an estate. He dispersed and gave to the poor, was the good man's praise Psal. 112. there must be distribution, and then all is well. But now although in giving alms to beggars, and persons of low rank, it is better to give little to each, that we may give to the more, so extending our alms to many persons; yet in cases of religion, as in building Hospitals, Colleges, and houses for devotion; and in supplying the accidental wants of decayed Persons, fallen from great plenty to great necssity; it is better to unite our alms, then to disperse them, to make a noble relief and maintenance to one, and to restore him to comfort, then to support merely his natural needs, and keep him alive only, unrescued from sad discomforts.  
Lastly 'tis said here, Throw thy bread upon the waters, i. e. upon the standing waters, saith a Father, the running waters will shift for themselves: they that abide in their places, whether Hospitals, or Universities, are like standing waters, most subject to putrefaction: and yet by the way these last are not to undergo neither those unjust aspersions of dumb dogg●, or drones; for though they stand in the marketplace, yet they stand not idly there, not altogether unwilling to go into the vineyard, had they a vineyard to go into; ready to be hired, would any one give them their penny. And this shall suffice for our second general rule, Solomon's rule of giving alms.  
Our third general rule of direction 
3. Rule.  in this particular, is Christ's own rule, which you have set down Mat. 5. 16. where in the First place note that they must be works; which is a word that implies difficulty, and pain, and labour, and is accompanied with some loathness and conluctation; do such works for God's sake as are hard for thee to do. In such a word does God deliver his Commandment of the Sabbath; not that word which in that language signifies ordinary and easy works, but servile and laborious works, toilsome and painful works, those works thou mayst not do upon the Sabbath. But those works in the virtue of the precept of this text thou must do in the sight of men, those that are hard for thee to do. David would not consecrated nor offer unto God that which cost him nothing. First he would buy Aranna's threshing floor at a valuable price, 1 Sam. 24. 14. and then he would dedicate it to God. To give old clothes past wearing to the poor, is not so good a work, as to make new for them. To give a little of your superfluities, not so acceptable as the widow's gift, who gave all. To give a poor Soul a farthing at that door where you give a player a shilling, is not equal dealing, for this is to give God the refuse of thy wheat. Amos 8. 6. but do thou some such things as are truly works in our sense, such as are against the nature and ordinary practice of worldly men to do; some things by which they may see that thou dost prefer God before honour, and wife, and children; and hadst rather build and endow some place for God's service, than power out money to multiply titles of honour upon thyself, or enlarge jointures and portions to an unnecessary and unmeasurable proportion, when there is enough done before.  
Secondly these works must be good works. They are not good works how magnificent soever, if they are not directed to good ends. Aseditious end vitiates the best work● great contributions have been raised, and great sums given for the maintenance of such refractory persons, as by opposing the government and discipline of the Church, have drawn upon themselves silencings, and suspentions, and deprivations, but this hath a seditious end; give so then as that thou mayst sincerely say, God gave me this to give thus, and so it is a good work. Thus it must be a work, something of some importance, and a good work not depraved with an ill end; and then in the last place, it must be your work, that they may see your good works.  
They are not your works if that which you give be not your own, nor is it your own if it were ill gotten at the first: how long soever it hath been possessed, and how often soever it hath been transformed, from money to ware, from ware to land, from land to office, from office to honour; the money, the ware, the land, the office, the honour, is none of thine if in thy knowledge it were ill got at the first. Zacheus. Luk. 19 8. gives half his goods to the poor, but it is half of his own: for there might be goods in his house, which were none of his: therefore in the same instrument, he passes that scrutiny, ●f I havetaken anything unjustly, I restore it fourfold. First let that which was ill gotten be deducted and restored, and then of the rest which is truly thine own give cheerfully. When Moses saith that our years are seventy, if we deduct from that term all the hours of our unnecessary sleep, of superfluous sit at feasts, of curiosity in dressing, of largeness in recreations, of plotting & compassing of vanities or sins, scarce any man of seventy, would be ten years old when he dies. If we should deal so with worldly men's estates, (defalce unjust gettings) it would abridge and extenuate many a swelling inventory. Till this defalcation, this scrutiny be made, that you know what's your own, what's other men's, as your tomb shall be but a monument of your rotten bones, how much gold or marble soever is bestowed upon it; so that hospital, that free-school, that college, that you shall build and endow, will be but a monument of your bribery, your extortion, your oppression; and God, who will not be in debt, (though he owe you nothing that built it) may be pleased to give the reward of all that to them, from whom that which was spent upon it was unjustly taken; for the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the righteous, Prov. 13. 22. the finner may do p●o●s works, and the righteous may be rewarded for them; the world may think of one founder, and God knows another.  
We are now at length, come to our last 
4. Rule.  general rule of giving alms, which is God's way and method of giving alms. Which I shall hold out unto you in this position. God's way of giving alms, is a free and a large giving of what is merely his own, looking for no recompense again. To explain this, that you may see that all these conditions are required, to this goodness of God, and in all of them who desire to imitate God in this particular.  
First, he that is bountiful, must be a giver and bestower of good things, and all he bestows, it must be by way of gift, not by way of requital unto, or by desert from the party he bestows all on. Thus Christ says Luk. 6, 33. that to do good to those who have done or do good to us, is not thankworthy, nor is it bounty; but God is therefore truly good, because he simply merely, and absolutely, gives away all which he bestows: for he was not, nor can any way become beholding to any of his creatures, nor had formerly received any thing from them which might move him hereunto. So Rom. 11. 35. who hath etc. Nay until he gave us a being we were not capable of so much, as receiving any good thing from him.  
Secondly, he who is truly termed good, or bountiful, all that he gives away must be his own; and so all which God bestows it is his own▪ So Psal: 24. 1. The earth is the Lords, the ground we tread on, the place we dwell in, he is our Landlord. But is that all? for the house may be the Landlords, when the furniture is the Tenants, therefore he further adds, and the fullness of it is his also, i e, all the things that fill the world, all the furniture and provision of it: both all the moveables, So Psal: 50. 11. 12. the cattle and the fowls upon a thousand hills are mine, saith he, and also all the standing goods, the corn and the oil, which you set and plant are mine, Hos: 2. 9 yea and the Psalmist in the same 24. Psal. adds further, that they who dwell therein are his also; not the house and furniture only, but the inhabitants themselves. And this by the most sure and most Sovereign title that can be, better than that of purchase or inheritance, of and from another: for he hath made them; all is thine because all comes of thee, saith the same David 1 Chron: 29. 11, 12. And all things are not only of him, but through him Rom. 11. 36. i e. they cannot stand nor subsitst without him.  
Thirdly, he must give largely; it is not bounty else: now God is therefore said to be rich in goodness, because he is abundant in it; so we find it comparing Psal. 33. 5▪ with Psal. 104. 24. in which it is said that the earth is full of his goodness, and his riches; which we may judge of, by what he says vers 27. of Psal 104. of what an house he keeps, and what multitudes he feeds, all these saith the Psalmist wait on thee etc. King Ahasuerus to show his bounty, made a feast to his chief Subjects, but it was but for half a year, and not to all: some few half years more would well nigh have beggared him: but God doth this continually. The greatest and most bountiful of men, when they would express the largest of their bounty, speak but of giving half of their Kingdoms; so Herod, and he did but talk so neither. but God▪ bestows whole worlds and Kingdoms, as Daniel speaks Dan. 4. 35. and gives them to whom he pleases.  
Fourthly, he that is bountiful must give all he gives freely and willingly, which though I put together, yet may imply two distinct things; as first, that he that gives must be a free agent in it, who is at his choice whether he would give any thing away or no. The Sun doth much good to the world, it affords a large light, and even half the world at once is full of its glory, yea and all this light is its own, not borrowed as that of the Moon and Stars is; yet this Sun cannot be called good or bountiful, because it sends forth this light necessarily, and naturally, and cannot choose but do so, neither can it draw in its beams: but God is a free giver; he was at his choice whether he would have made the world or no, and can yet when he pleaseth withdraw his Spirit, and then all things perish, Psal. 104. 29. Secondly it must be willingly also, i. e. no way constrained or wrung from him who is to be called bountiful. Now of God it is said, that he gives all away with delight; for Psal. 104▪ 31. having spoken of ●eeding every living thing, and of other the like works of his goodness, he concludes with this, God rejoiceth in all his works; i e. doth all the good he doth with delight: It doth him good, as it were, to see the poor creatures feed. The last requisite in bounty, is to look for no recompense for the time to come: So saith Christ, Luke 6 34. If you give, etc. but ver. 35. So doth not your heavenly father. For saith he, Do good, and hope for nothing again, so shall you be like your Father; and the reason is, because he is so great and so high a God, as nothing we do can reach him, as David speaks, Psal. 16. 2. My goodness extends not unto thee, he is too high to receive any benefit by what we do. And this shall suffice for the four General Rules of giving Alms, and also of the first general part which we observed in the division of these words, the quid, the matter, what we are to do, and that is to provide for ourselves by making us friends.  
The second General that we held out to 
2. General.  you in the division, was the Manner, to use the best means to get these friends, unrighteous Mammon. Where in the first place I shall resolve a doubt, and withal the meaning of this expression, The Mammon of unrighteousness. How comes it to pass that this Mammon, which is the subject of so much good, should deserve a name so bad? why is it styled the Mammon of unrighteusnesse? you are to know therefore that wealth is called the Mammon of unrighteousness for two reasons; the first taken from the cause, the other from the effect.  
1. First from the cause, for that wealth is an instrument and cause of much iniquity. In Cyrus his Court, the Counselors shall be feed, that the building of the Temple may not go on, Ezra 4. and if Saint Paul would but have said tantum dabo to Felix in the Acts, there had been more Rhetoric in the Apostles fee, then in all Tertullus his starched Oratory. For this reason Simon Magus, when he sued in the 8 of the Acts for the holy Ghost, trusted more to his Mammon, than his Familiars; being confident, there was greater power in money then in all the Devils in hell, to have conjured, if it might have been, even the Apostles themselves. And therefore it was the Devil's last assault and battery against our Saviour in the 4 of St. Matt: For it any promise could have seduced Christ, it had been that of the world's Kingdom and glory: he is the Son of God indeed, that for such again will not cast himself from the pinnacles of the Temple. It would be no hard work to manifest this truth through every age of the Church, were it not too visible in our own.  
And therefore, I shall from hence, in the 
1. Use.  first place, draw an use of reproof for the Ministers of these times. I would to God I could not say (but I must) even of our own divine Profession, that which our Saviour of his Twelve, Ye are clean, but not all; for how many have these few year● brought forth, which having been heretofore forward and eager for conformity to the doctrine and discipline of this Church, do now seek to wave and decline both; and that not out of malice or ambition, vices that move with a kind of life and spirit, but out of that base, earthy, dunghil-sin Avarice. These are they that long for the Wedge of gold more than the Babilonish garment, and so themselves may put up the means of a Bishop, care not who puts on the robes. These are they which make use of the Priest's office like him in Samuel, only for a piece of bread, and will with that Chaplain of Micah's, Judg. 17, set you up Idols if you give them but silver. Men that measure their religion by their fortunes, inclining ever not to what weighs most, but what advantageth: Saint Augustine's Amphibions in Christianity; Hermaphrodite Divines; now a Sectarist, and then a Conformist, and next a Sectarist again; now an Episcopal man, than a Presbyterian, after that an Independent; any thing to keep his own, and to get more and more of the Mammon of unrighteousness.  
Secondly from hence let me give them a 
2. Use.  word of Dehortation, from all such corrupt sordid courses, whereby they make Divinity a Trade, and the Pulpit a Shop, where they vent their doctrines according to the fashions of the Time, not the truth; forgetting that solemn pomp and Ceremony used in their Orders; where when they received the Bible from the holy man, with authority to divide the Word and Sacraments, it was not given to abuse their Master's trust, in betraying that sacred pledge either to Pulpit-applause, or Pulpit-gain, to the flattery of the giddy multitude, or the reward.  
Secondly this Mammon is called unrighteous Mammon, or the riches of iniquity, ab effectu, from the effect, because it commonly makes men unrighteous, endangering the soul of the possessor; and therefore the Church Liturgy doth teach us to pray, In all time of our wealth good Lord deliver us; there being as great danger in the multitude of temporal blessings, as there was in the multitude of fish, John 21. where if Christ had not seconded their great draught with divine help, they had lost both the ship and themselves.  
From this expression thus interpreted 
1. Doctr.  our first consideration shall be that of our Saviour, Mat. 19 24. that 'tis a very hard thing for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of heaven. Gold is the heaviest of all metals, no wonder then if it sometimes carries the rich man downwards. 'Tis hard for the soul clogged with many weights to ascend to heaven. Laban and Nabal think only of their Sheepshearing, and making merry when they have done, their business is thought on, not their salvation: so great an enemy is our temporal happiness to our eternal; the love of this world being that great gulf betwixt Abraham's bosom and us. Secondly if it be so hard for the rich, 
2. Doctr.  then surely 'tis as easy for the poor to enter into the Kingdom of heaven, which is our second consideration upon the point.  
Whether a storm or calm are most dangerous, Jonah's Whale or his Gourd, whether prosperity have lost, or adversity recovered more I know not; certain I am, none prays so heartily for his daily bread as he that wants it: misery like Pharaoh's plagues sends them to their prayers that never thought of God when they were well. Outward losses are inwardly gainful, and it is good for us that we have been afflicted, nay it would be worse with us were it not sometimes thus bad; many, had they more wealth would be more wicked, and if they were not kept short of this world would come short of the next, and then it had been better for them had it not been so well. I know 'tis pity that fair weather should do any harm, and yet 'tis often seen, we even adore those Physicians in our sickness, which being recovered, we only salute with a compliment: abundance makes many forget that God, which want would make crouch to; like Pharaoh's Butler, shaking off his friend with his shackles; or like beggars, that are no sooner served, but they are gone. Thus I hear Israel praying in Egypt, quarrelling in the wilderness: When they were at their Brick-kills they would be at their devotion, and no sooner are they at ease, but they are wrangling for their fleshpots. I think many a man had not been so bad had he been but poor. It is the saying of a wise Father, That Solomon's riches did him more hurt then his wisdom did him good. Wealth like knowledge puffs up, when poverty (as their infirmities did many in the Gospel) makes men flock to Christ.  
But then in the Third place, I would not have any one here think I speak this to bar rich men heaven, God forbid. For though 'tis hard for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, yet he may enter notwithstanding, the gate of heaven stands open for him as well as for the poor: and as 'tis Scripture. Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven, so 'tis also as true. Blessed are the rich, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.  
Which shall be our third consideration 
3. Doctrine.  upon the point, that heaven gate stands open for the rich, as well as the poor. Thus Adam and Noah flew up to heaven, with the double monarchy of the world upon their backs: for they were sole Emperors both of the East and West, and the whole universe. The Patriarches also did climb to heaven with much wealth; many holy Kings with massy Crowns and sceptres. It is not wealth therefore as wealth, but sin that is the clog that keeps men from ascending; the burden of covetous desires being more heavy to an empty soul, than much treasure to the full; for not the mere possession and use of riches offends, but the affectation. And to this purpose Lombard puts in his observation with a non dicit propheta, the prophet sails not in the Psal. 62. 10. have not riches, but set not your heart upon them; which is the true meaning likewise of Prov. 23. 5. for cash not your eyes, in the English is, set not your heart in the original, as the 4 ver. also testifies; so that the error hangs not upon those, but ourselves; not on riches but that which Idols them, our heart. And therefore Moses gave a strong caveat to the Israelites, that when their flocks and herds increased, and their silver and their gold was multiplied, they should beware lest their hearts were lifted up, and so they should forget the Lord their God, Deuter. 8. 13. Those sublunary creatures raise not distraction in us, so we make them not our centre, if we rest not in them, if we can look through them to heaven, we may by a good use of them come to heaven, and be received into these everlasting habitations of the Text.  
The use then of this particular consideration 
1. Use.  is, first to direct thee, either to abate of thy load, if thou find it too pressing (which may be done either by loving less, or giving more) or else to add to thy strength and activity, that thou mayst ascend: it is more commendable, by how much more hard to climb to heaven with a burden. But if the soul be not so active and nimble as to carry up its self and such a load, we must with Eliah drop our mantle upon the Prophets, disperse our goods to the poor, it being better going to heaven naked, then to hell in purple. For when we are naked these friends of my text shall clothe us with the garment of righteousness, and when we want, they shall receive us into everlasting habitations.  
Secondly, here is a word of comfort both 
2. Use.  to poor and rich, when they shall think upon the goodness of God, who hath opened heaven gates both to the poor and rich. Art thou poor? he that wore a crown of thorns fo● thee, hath taught thee of thorns and tribulations to make a crown of glory. Art thou rich? he that is Lord of heaven and earth instructs thee from this text to attain everlasting habitations. So the poor and ri●ch, the one by suffering, the other by doing well, may meet at the last day with rich Abraham, and poor Lazarus, in the Kingdom of heaven. Thus have I done with a third consideration upon the point.  
Now in the fourth place, our fourth consideration 
4. Doctrine.  shall be de modo, touching the manner how far we are to desire, and in what respects to entertain this unrighteous mammon. And doubtless we may entertain this unrighteous Mammon in my text not only as a servant, but a friend, but by no means as a Lord. There is virtue in the true use of it, if there be a qualification in our desires. And therefore Saint Augustine (10 ser: de tempore. 5 ser. De Verbis Apost. & cap: 10 de civet dei.) disputing of that impossible analogy between heaven and a rich man; a camel, and the eye of a needle; would have a rich man understood there cupidum rerum temporalium, & de talibus superb●entem, such an one as joins avarice to riches, and pride to avarice: not prohibiting a moderate and timely care of necessary temporals, but their inordinate appetite; not their propriety and possession, but the difficulty and eagerness of the pursuit. A wise man, as he will not make riches the object of his pursuit, so not of his refusal; non amat divitias sed mavult. He weighs them so evenly 'twixt desire and scorn, that he doth neither undervalue nor indulge them, he makes not his mind his chest, but his house; in the which he doth not lock, but lodge them: he loves them not properly, but by way of comparison; not as they are riches, but as they are not poverty. Yes too as they are riches, they may not only be temperately loved and desired, but prayed for, prayed for as our daily bread; not absolutely as for our spiritual improvement but by way of restriction: first humbly with submission to the will of God; then conditionally, so they prove advantageous, either to our civil or moral good.  
And the reasons of the point are first this: 
1. Reas.  For if riches are pursued either with an unlawful or unbridled desire, they lead our reason captive, blindfold our intellectuals, and so damp and dead all the faculties of the inward man, that in way of conscience and religion we are benumbed merely; Naball himself not so stony and chu●●ish, not half so supine and stupid as we. And therefore your earthly sensualists have this woeful brand set upon them by the Spirit of God, they are men of this world, they have their portion in this life only, Psal. 17.  
Secondly we are not to set our hearts 
2. Reason.  upon Riches, because riches have nothing substantial in them that may allure us, but our custom of admiring them. And to cut out our desires by precedents of custom, is at once folly and madness: 'tis miserable to follow error by example. That this man hugs his Mammon, is no authority for my avarice: I must chalk out my proceedingsby the line of God's command, square them by the rule of divine truth, and that tells me riches are but snares, vanities, shadows, nothing, 1 Tim. 6. & Mat. 13. Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not, faith the Wiseman: For certainly riches make themselves wings, they fly away as an Eagle towards heaven, Prov. 18. Mark, all their pomp i● without certainty or station: things not only fleeting, but voluble: they steal not from us, but fly away. Their ebb i● as sudden, as their flow doubtful; and therefore Psal. 62. presupposeth the one with a si affluxerint, if they flow about thee, as if their increase were merely casual: but if they do, what then? Set not your heart upon them, saith the same Psal.  
Thus having shown you how you may 
5. Doctr.  lawfully desire riches, I shall now in the fi●e place declare, how you may as lawfully use them. And to this purpose every Christian ought to imitate the high pattern of his Creator, whose best riches is his bounty; He that hath all, giveth all, reserus nothing; in our Creation he gave us our selves, in our Redemption he gave us himself, and in giving himself for us, gave us ourselves again that were lost. Only good use than commends earthly possessions, and he alone knows the true use of this unrighteous Mammon, that receives it merely to disburse it. For what commendation is it to be the keeper of the best earth? That which is the common Coffer of all the rich Mines, the earth, we do but tread upon and account vile, because it hides those treasures: whereas the skilful metallist that refines these precious veins for public use, is rewarded and honoured. If therefore your wealth and your will be not both good, if your hands be full and your hearts empty, you deserve rather pity then commendation, and may be said to have riches indeed, but not goods nor blessings, your burdens being greater than your estates, and yourselves richer in sorrows then in metals: and this was the rich glutton's case in the Gospel, who was damned, non quia abstulerat aliena, sed quod non donarat sua, not for taking any thing from poor Lazarus, but because he relieved not his wants. 'Tis reported of Warram Archbishop of Canterbury, being on his deathbed sent his Steward to see what store of coin was in his treasury; and when answer was brought that there was either very little, or none at all, the good man cried, in mirum sic oportuit, that it was very fitting it should be so; for when, said he, could I die better, then when I am thus even with the world.  
Last of all, our last consideration shall be 
6. Doctrine.  this; that though we must, as I said, give of our goods to the poor; yet we must not give any of our ill gotten goods to the poor, though we may make to ourselves fri●nds of the mammon of unrighteousness, yet we may not make to ourselves friends by riches unlawfully gotten: God is not pleased with such sacrifice. You know Zacheus his division Luke 19 Half my goods I give to the poor, and if, etc. Restituit aliena, dedit sua, saith Ambrose, he restored other men's, but gave his own. That's given to the poor is given to me, saith Christ, shall we then make our Saviour a receiver of stolen good's? God forbid. Yet one case there is, where ill gotten goods must be bestowed on pious uses, of necessity; and that is, when we know not the right owners, nor where to find them to make restitution: in this case Saint Augustine must be followed; Acquisisti male, impende jambene, thou hast gotten them ill, bestow them well. However what is so bestowed is not alms neither: and therefore it is that generally cheaters and robbers cannot be truly and properly said to give alms of what they have cheated and robbed, unless they cannot tell the persons whom they have injured, or the proportions; & in such cases they are to give those unknown portions to the poor by way of restitution, for it is no alms: Only God is the supreme Lord to whom those escheats devolue, and the poor are his receivers; And therefore are said in my Text, to receive you into everlasting habitations, which is my last general part of the division being the end and motive to good works, That when ye fail, etc.  
In the handling of which part I shall First propose to your consideration three brief positions, and then proceed to a more full explication of this general head.  
For the Positions, the First is this; that if 
1. Position.  men were their own friends, they would make others so with their Mammon, and while they are on earth, provide for heaven. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy, was our Saviour's in the Gospel. God's promises though they be gracious, yet they are confined, and he only shall receive mercy, that shows it: The Almighty being therefore bountiful to us, that we might be so to others; promising, that if we feast those that cannot bid us again, and build for those that cannot lodge us again; We shall be made partakers of that Mariage-feast, and those habitations, whose maker and builder is God. If men then were their own friends, they would make others so with this Mammon; Why should the rust of that gold rise up in judgement against thee, the right use of which will place thee with those, that shall sit in judgement? Turning thy Talents into Cities, and saying the foundation of that building, whose walls reach up to heaven. And that is our First Position. But can good works, purchase these eternal habitations? By no means. And therefore  
Our Second Position is this: That not 
2. Position.  our good works, But Christ's merits, are the formal cause of our Salvation. For neither the virtue of the works, they be but the fruits of charity; nor the virtue of charity, that is but the fruit of faith; nor the virtue of faith, that's but an instrument to apprehend Christ; but he alone our Saviour alone by his merits hath made this purchase, and prepared those mansions for us. And yet mistake me not, there is no less necessity of good works, then if you should be saved by them; & that though you cannot be saved by them, as the meritorious causes of your glory, yet that you cannot be saved without them, as the necessary effects and arguments of that grace which brings glory. Which is our Second Position upon the point.  
Our third runs thus: The poor by 
3. Position.  their prayers receive us into those eternal habitations which Christ bestows and confers upon us. Now the poor here meant in the Text, are either Pauperes spiritu, the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of God. Mat 5. or Pauperes sacculo, the poor in purse, and these by their prayers shall receive thee into heaven. For as Christ is said to receive those alms on earth which the poor put up, and not he: so the poor in heaven are said to receive us into everlasting habitations, which Christ shall bestow, and not they. Can you conceive how the Queen of Sheba and men of Nineve shall rise up at the last day? In the same manner, but for a better end, shall the men women and children of your Hospitals rise up and testify on your behalf, saying, Sweet Jesus! had it not been for these, and these Benefactors, we had perished for want. As therefore Saint Paul said to the Thessalonians, 1 Thes. 1. Ye are our hope, cause these at the last day would witness how he had laboured for their salvation; so may every one of you say of all those to whom you have done good, You are our hope; for that they shall testify your good works before men and Angels, & justify that sentence which shall receiv you into everlasting habitations. These are the three brief Positions I mentioned.  
Now that we may come to a more full explication of the point, these everlasting habitations according to several Expositors are severally interpreted; for first, to be received into these everlasting habitations, is to be taken into the protection of God, according to Psal. 90. 1. which is interpreted by the next Psal. 1, ad 4. ver. from which first interpretation our position shall be, That it is better to give away all that we have to the poor, and have God with nothing, than all the world without God. To have God with nothing, did I say? Nay in having him we have all things, saith Saint Cyprian de Coen. Dom. cum Dei sint omnia. Since all things are God's, to him that hath God nothing can be wanting, except he be wanting unto God: nothing saith the Father, no good thing saith the Prophet; the young Lions do lack and suffer hunger, but they that seek the Lord shall want nothing that is good, Psal. 34. Though all earthly persecutions entrench thee, and misery seems to come upon thee like an armed man, and thou art fallen into the jaws of those enemies, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword, yet Angels shall encamp about thee, and the Lord of Hosts shall be thy buckler and thy shield; the neighing of the horse, the noise of the trumpet shall not invade thee; or if they do, and at such a straight that the arm of flesh grows weak, yet his mercy is great unto the heavens, and his truth reacheth unto the clouds: the glorious host above shall muster all their forces to assist thee; the stars shall fight for thee, and thunder speak loud unto thy enemies. Thus in the height of miseries God shall be thy castle and strong tower, and under the shadow of his wings shall be thy refuge, till these calamities be overpast. God never leaveth his in their extremities, whether in the Cave, or in the Mountain; in the Den, or in the Dungeon; he is always there both in his power and assistance, and sometimes in his person too: when all natural supplies grow hopeless, God purveies for his children by his miracles: rocks shall burst with water, and Ravens provide bread, and clouds drop fatness, and heaven's shower mannah, and Angels administer comforts, which when we are naked shall clothe us, and receive us, or rather usher us into these everlasting habitations.  
Now besides this exposition of the words, these everlasting habitations may receive a double interpretation; one in respect of the everlasting fame and glory of your name in this world, the other in regard of your everlasting reward in the next: and that first branch hath a double relation; one to yourself, the other to your posterity: & truly even this part of the reward and retribution, namely in this life, is worth a great deal of your cost and alms, that God shall establish your posterity in the world, and in the good opinion of good men. The righteous shall have hope in his death, Prov. 14. 32. i e. hope for himself in another world, and hope of his posterity in this world; for, saith he, he leaveth an inheritance to his child's children, Prov. 13. 22. i e. an inheritance out of which he hath taken and restored all that was unjustly got from men, and taken a bountiful part which he hath offered to God in pious uses, that the rest may descend free from all claims and encumbrances upon his child's children. The righteous is merciful and dareth, Psal. 37. 26. merciful as his Father is merciful in perpetual, not in transitory endowments (for God did not set up his lights, his Sun and Moon for a day, but for ever; and such should our light, our good works be) He is merciful and dareth. To whom? for to the poor he giveth, he looks for no return from them; yet he dareth, he that hath pity on the poor, dareth to the Lord, Prov. 19 17. The righteous is merciful and dareth, and then as David adds, his seed is blessed; blessed in this which follows there, that he shall inherit the land, and dwell therein for ever; which he ratifies again, Surely he shall not be removed for ever, i. e. he shall never be moved in his posterity.  
Secondly as he is blessed that way, blessed in the establishment of his possession upon his children's children; so he is blessed in this, that his honour and good name shall be poured out as a fragrant oil upon his posterity, The righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance, Psal. 112. 6. Their memory shall be always alive, and always fresh in their posterity, when the name of the wicked shall rot. So then the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, Prov. 11. 30. i e. the righteous shall produce plants that shall grow up and flourish, so his posterity shall be a tree of life to many generations.  
The other interpretation of everlasting habitations, is in regard of your everlasting reward in the next world: but before I speak of your reward in the next world, I will speak a word or two of your reward in this world, and show you how God will reward you with grace in this world, before he rewards you with glory in the next; by giving you the grace to use those temporal blessings which he hath given you to his glory here, and to your glory both here and hereafter: which shall be cleared to you from Mat. 5. 16. Let your light so shine, etc. Your Father is not meant here as if men should glorify God as the common Father of all by Creation, nor as he is the Father of some in a more particular consideration, in giving them large portions, great patrimonies in this world: for thus he may be my Father, and yet disinherit me; he may give me plenty of temporal blessings, and withhold from me spiritual and eternal blessings. These are not the Paternities of the Text, that men should glorify God as the Father of all men by Creation, nor as the Father of all rich men, by their large patrimonies, but as he is your Father, as he is made yours, as he is become yours by that particular grace of using the temporal blessings which he hath given you to his glory, In letting your light shine before men.  
Upon which our first doctrinal Observation shall be, That it were better God disinherited 
1. Doctrine.  us, so as to give us nothing, then that he gave us not the grace to use that, that he gave us, well. Without this all his bread were stones, all his fishes serpents, all his temporal liberality and blessings, a mere malediction and curse. How much happier had that man been, that hath wasted thousands in play, in riot, in wantonness, in sinful excesses, if his parents had left him no more at first, than he hath left himself at last, how much nearer to the Kingdom of heaven had he been, if he had been born a beggar here. Nay though he have done no ill of such excessive kinds, how much happier had he been, if he had had nothing left him, if he have done no good.  
The second Observation in this particular 
2. Doctr.  shall be, That 'tis a fearful thing for rich men, not to use their riches for God's glory. There cannot be a more fearful commination upon man, nor a more dangerous dereliction from God, then when God says Psal: 50▪ 8, 12. I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices; Though thou offer none, I care not; i'll never tell thee of it, nor reprove thee for it; I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices. And when he saith, as he does there, If I be hungry I will not tell thee, I will not awake thy charity; I will not excite thee, nor provoke thee with any occasion of feeding me, in feeding the poor. When God shall say to thee, I care not whether you come to Church or no, whether you pray or Noah, repent or no, confess, receive or no; this is a fearful dereliction: so it is when he saith to a rich man, I care not whether your light shine out, or no; whether men see your good works, or no; I can provide for my Glory otherwise. For certainly God hath not determined his glory, and his purpose, so much in that, to make some men rich, that the poor might be relieved, for that ends in a bodily relief; as in this, that he hath made some men poor, whereby the rich might have occasion to exercise their charity; for that riches to spiritual happiness. For which use the poor do not so much need the rich, as the rich need the poor; the poor may better be saved without the rich, than the rich without the poor. But when men shall see that that God who is the Father of us all by creating us, and the Father of all the rich, by enriching them, is also become your Father, yours by adoption, yours by infusion of that particular grace to do good with your goods; then are you made blessed instruments to that which God seeks here, his glory, they shall glorify your father which is in heaven; and then your Father which is in heaven will glorify you. Herein is my Father glorified, saith Christ, John. 15. 8. that ye bear much fruit. The seed sowed in good ground bore some a Hundred fold, the least Thirty, Mark. 4. 20. The seed in this case is the example that is before you of those good men whose life hath shined out so, that you have seen their good works. Let this seed, these good examples bring forth Hundreds, and Sixties, and Thirty in you, much fruit: for herein is your Father glorified that you bear much fruit. Of which plentiful increase I am afraid there is one great hindrance that passes through many of you, i. e. that when your Will lies by you, in which some little lamp of this light is set up, something given to God in pious uses; if a Ship miscarry, if a Debtor break, if your Estate be any way impaired, the First that suffers, the first that is blotted out of the Will, is God and his legacy: And if their estates increase, portions increase, and perchance other legacies; but God's portion and legacy stands at a stay.  
Now let me from hence give you a double use▪ as our Saviour did of his passion: Christ left two uses, of his passion, application, and Imitation: he suffered for us; 1. Pet. 2. 22. For us, i e. that we might make his death ours, apply his death; And then as if followers there, he left us an example. So Christ gives us two uses of the reformation of religion; First the Doctrine how to do good works, without relying on them, as meritorous; and then example. Many, very many men in this City, Whose lights have shined out before you, and you have seen their good works; That as this noble City hath justly acquired the reputation; and the testimony of all who have had occasion to consider their dealings in that kind, that they deal most faithfully, most justly, most providently in all things which are committed to their trust, for pious uses from others, not only in a full employment of that which was given, but in an improvement thereof, and then an employment of that improvement to the same pious uses▪ so every man in his particular, may propose to himself some of those blessed examples, which have risen among yourselves, and follow that, and exceed that: that as your Lights are Torches, and not petty Candles, and your Torches better than others Torches, so he also may be a larger example to others, than others have been to him: For herein is your Father glorified, if you bear much fruit; and that is the end of all that we all do, that men seeing it may glorify our Father which is in heaven, that our Father which is in heaven may glorify us, by receiving us into these everlasting habitations, which is the last interpretation of the words, our eternal reward in heaven.  
Of which everlasting habitations of this eternal reward I know not well what to say. And indeed it is not for a finite intellect to conceive, much less to express those infinite joys which God hath prepared (saith the Apostle) for them that love him, 1 Cor▪ 2. 9 And those that think to attein to the knowledge of these eternal habitations by speculation, will be reckoned as curious searchers into God's secrets, and may justly expect the reproof of the Galileans, Acts 1. Why stana ye gazing up into Heaven. Nevertheless to satisfy you as far as the Scripture, and the Ancient Doctors of the Catholic Church warrant me, I will observe this method in explaining these eternal habitations, which is all one with eternal life. I will first show you what this eternal life is by the privation of it, what the life of heaven is by the life of hell; and then I will give you a glimpse (for a full sight it is impossible) what it is in its self.  
For the first the privation of this life 
1. Doctr.  which is hell our first position or Doctrine shall be this; There are some things concerning hell, in which a man may go beyond his reason, and yet those things have no relation to his faith. For that there is an hell, a damnation, an eternal life there; and why it is; and when it is; it is clear enough from Scripture: but what this damuation is, neither the tongue of good Angels, that know damnation by the contrary, by the fruition of salvation; Nor the tongue of bad Angels, who know damnation by a lamentable experience, is able to express it. There are things in which a man may go beyond his reason, and yet not meet with faith neither: of such a kind are those things that concern the locality of hell, and the materiality of the torments thereof. For that hell is a certain and limited place, beginning here, and ending there: and extending no farther; or that the torments of hell, be material, or elementary torments, which in natural consideration can have no consideration, no affection, or appliableness to the tormenting of a spirit; these things neither sets my reason, nor the bind my faith; neither opinion, that it is, or is not▪ so, doth command our reason so, but that probable reasons may be brought on the other side; neither opinion doth so command our faith, but that a man may be saved, though he think the contrary. Our instruction therefore is, that in such a point it is always lawful to think so: as we find does most advance, and exalt our own devotion, and God's glory, in our estimation. But now in the Second place when we shall have given to these words, by which hell is expressed in the scripture the heaviest signification, that either the nature of those words can admit in themselves, or a● they are types and representations of hell; as fire and brimstone, and weeping, and gnashing, and darkness, and the worm; and as they are laid together by the Prophet, Isa. 30. 33. Tophet, (i. e. Hell) is deep and large (there is the capacity and extent, room enough) it is a pile of fire and much wood (there is the durableness of it) and the breath of the Lord to kindle it like a stream of brimstone (there is the vehemency of it): when all is done; the hell of hells, the torment of torments is, the everlasting absence of God, and the everlasting impossibility of ever returning to his presence.  
This then is our second Position of our 
2. Doctr.  discourse in this particular, that hell is the privation of the beatifical vision of the blessed Trinity. And this I shall amplify by giving you the several degrees of this privation. First in general, for the foundation of all the rest, you are to know that the torments and miseries of hell are thus described, by our blessed Saviour, Matt: 25. 4. depart from me ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his angels. In this word from me is the height of paint, the extremity of torment: and thus I will prove it. Frst it is fearful to undergo pain, though that pain be but momentary: as for instance, to thrust a finger into the fire, though but for the turning of a hand, or to have but one single drop of brimstone fall into the eye, the misery but of this single drop of brimstone were unsufferable. But than Secondly, for the whole man to lie under everlasting Cataracts, and showers of Brimstone: to have the body eternally fed upon by a fire that never goes out, and the soul by a worm that never dies, the misery of this as far surmounts that other, as eternity exceeds time; and yet this is not all. For thirdly, the damned sinner must go from Christ into this eternity of torment. Depart from me ye cursed, into everlasting fire. Where the first part of the sentence is incomparably the heaviest; the departing from Christ worse than the everlasting fire: the intensiveness of that fire, the air of that brimstone, the anguish of that worm, the discord of that howling, the gnashing of those teeh is no comparable, no considerable part of the torment, in respect of this departing from Christ. Which is the privation of the sight of God, the banishment from the presence of God, an absolute hopelessness, an utter impossibility of ever coming to that which sustains the miserable in this world; who though they see no sun here, yet they shall see the son of God there. This depart from me than is the perfection of horror, the very essential form and quiddity of damnation itself. The righteous they depart, they go to●, but they go with Christ into heaven, the other must go from Christ into hell. Into hell did I say, why that is not so much neither. It were an happiness to go to hell with Christ, no joy, no blisseat all to the righteous to go without Christ into heaven. For heaven is hell without Christ, and hell with Christ is heaven; and the reason of this is, because the happiness of the Saints doth not consist in the place where they are, but in the company which they enjoy: their beatitude is not bounded and terminated by any etherial dimensions of space, any supernatural localities, but it is comprehended in the Beatifical Vision of the Father's power, the Son's wisdom, the Holy-Ghosts goodness; it is swallowed up in that extati●all ravishing contemplation of the incomparable beauty, the unutterable and unconceivable glory of the blessed Trinity; the privation of which Beatifical Vision exceeds the miseries and torments, those matchless, those endless miseries and torments even of hell itself. And thus have I given you a general description, of this privation of the Beatifical Vision, what it is in the general notion of it.  
But then in the second place, to come (as I promised) to the several particular degrees of this privation; there is comprehended in this privation of the Beatifical Vision in the first place, a privation of the care of God, that a damned sinner is out of his care, out of his thought. It is a fearful thing, saith the Apostle, to fall into the hands of the living God, Heb. 10. 13. Yet there was a case in which David found it an ease to fall into the hands of the living God, but to fall out of the hands of the living God is an horror beyond our expression, beyond our imagination: that God should let my soul fall out of his hands into a bottomless pit, and roll an unremovable stone upon it, and leave it to that which i● finds there (and it shall find that there which it never imagined till it came there) & never think any more of that soul, never have any more to do withit. Then secondly a second degree of this privation of the Beatifical Vision i●, that herein doth consist a privation of the general providence of God, that such an one is out of his general providence as well as his particular care: that of that Providence of God that studies the life of every Weed, and Worm, and Ant, of every Spider and Toad, and Viper, there should never any beam flow out upon me, never any ray dart upon me, never any line centre in me: That the most contemptible creatures under heaven, and the most loathsome creatures under heaven, and the most venomous creatures under heaven, should be entertained and protected under the shadow of his wing; and I, only I, excluded as a certain prey for the Raven and Dragon of the bottomless pit. Thirdly here is a privation of the power of God; that that God who looked upon me when I was nothing, and called me by his omnipotent power when I was not, as though I had been, out of the womb & depth of darkness, will not look upon me now: when, though amiserable & a banished and a damned creature, yet I am his creature still & contribute something to his glory, even in my damnation. Lastly which is the highest degree of this Privation, here is an eternal privation of the mercy of God: That that God who hath often looked upon me even in my foulest uncleanness, and vilest sins: who when I had shut out the eye of the day, the Sun; and the eye of the night, the taper, and the eyes of all the world with curtains, and windows, and doors, did yet see me, and see me in mercy too, by making me see that he saw me, and sometimes brought me to a present remorse, and for that time to a forbearing of that sin, I was then acting, should now so turn himself from me to his glorious Saints and Angels, as that no Saint nor Angel, nor Christ Jesus himself should ever pray him to look towards me more, never remember him that such a soul there is▪ That that God who hath so often said to my soul, Why wilt thou die? and so often sworn to my soul, As the Lord liveth I would not have thee die but live, will nether let me die nor live, but die an everlasting life, and live an everlasting death: That that God, who when he could not get into me by standing and knocking at my heart, by his ordinary means of entering by his Word, & Ministershis' mercies, hath applied his judgements, and hath shaked the house this body with Agues and Palsies, and hath set this house on fire with Fevers and calentures, and frighted the master of the house, my soul, with horrors and heavy apprehensions, and so made and forced an entrance into me; That that God should frustrate all his own purposes, and practices upon me, and leave me and cast me away, as though I had cost him nothing, that this God at last at the hour of death, should let this Soul go away, as a smoke, as a vapour, as a bubble, and that then this Soul cannot be so happy, as to be a smoke, a vapour, nor a bubble, but must lie in darkness, as long as the Lord of light is light its self, and never spark of that lighe reach to my Soul; what Tophet is not Paradise? what brimstone is not amber? what gnashing of teeth is not music? what gnawing of the worm is not a tickling? what torment is not a marriage bed to this damnation? to be secluded eternally, eternally, eternally from the sight of God. And thus have I shown you what this eternal life is by the privation of it, what the life of heaven is by the life of hell, I will now endeavour to give you a glimpse, for a full sight it is impossible, of these everlasting habitations, this eternal life in itself.  
And here in my expressions of these everlasting habitations, I will take a new course, and only tell you this of them, that they cannot be expressed. For if that beloved aisciple, whose head lay near his Master's heart, who from the bosom of his Lord drank deep of the heavenly wisdom, if Saint John I say brake of his Revelation with a nemo scit no man knows, Apoca: 2. 17. needs must I leave you at this time with a Theologia negativa, a negative divinity, or divine ignorance, and only tell you what is not heaven. The plumage of the swan appears more fair, when it is opposed to the ravens blackness; and we may best conjecture at the joys above, if we consider the miseries here below. This life of ours if it were not short, yet it is miserable, and if it were not miserable, yet it is short. In this world are a world of troubles, we have no resting place here saith the Prophet; glory and rest are two things that meet not here: the glorious life is not the most quiet, and the quiet life is for the most part inglorious; riches and honour like Absalon's mule do sometimes leave their Master in extremity. A consideration if well digested, which would gather our divided thoughts and rouse up our Souls to seek first the Kingdom of heaven; and then we know coetera adjicientur other things shall be added unto us. And indeed when heaven is once named all other things are but & cetera's, not worth the naming. But now for heaven it is observed by those that are skilled in the holy tongue, that in the sacred name Jehova are none but literae quiescentes, mystically impliing thus much unto us, that Deus est centrum quietatiwm, that God is the God of rest; in whose presence there is joy, & fullness of joy, & joy for evermore, as David sings. When once we shall be planted in that celestial paradise, there shall no apple of contention grow between God and us. It is Nazianzens' note, upon that divine anthem, of three parts, Glory be to God on high, on earth peace, good will towards men, Luk. 2. pugnas & dissidia nescire deum & angelos, that there are no broils nor brabbles in heaven. There shall the Soul be satisfied in all her desires: there shall be no actual or potential evil; no actual, because grace being consummate in the Saints, excludes all sin; no poetential, for they being confirmed in goodness, cannot sin. There shall be no sorrow, nor tears the effect of sorrow, those rivers of our eyes shall be dried up; there shall be no more death, for resurrectio erit mors mortis. At that jubilee of glory, the conqueror shall be disarmed, and we whom death hath overcome, shall overcome death. Our bodies rising first immortal, not subject to any more disease or death, we shall not any more stand in need of those ordinary helps of meat and drink, by which our nature is preserved: for it shall then be our meat and drink to do our Fathers will. Secondly, our bodies shall rise glorious, the just shall shine like the sun in the firm ament; says the Prophet, & qualis erit splendor animarum, quando solis claritatem habebit lux corporum, and how great then shall the splendour of our Souls be, when that of our bodies shall exceed the Suns. And to confirm the verity and solidity of this glory, it shall not only be revealed unto us, but (saith the Apostle) in us, Jerusalem (as the King's daughter) is all glorious within. Thirdly, they shall be perfect, every defective member shall be restored to its inregrity. Jacob shall not halt, nor Isaac be blind, nor Mephibosheth be lame. Fourthly, our bodies shall be raised impassionate, free from such passions, as may hurt and offend, but not from the passions of joy, the joy of the soul, shall be the soul of joy. Lastly, they shall be spiritual, that is in quality, not in substance; they shall still remain the same quantitative bodies, bounded and limited with their natural dimensions. For otherwise how could Job see God with the same eyes, he had while he lived. Our bodies therefore shall be endued with most unspeakable perfections, and most perfectly clarified from all imperfections, but they shall not be disrobed of their natural properties: briefly they shall be spiritual in a threefold sense. Fist in that they shall be wholly freed from all earthly drossy corruptions, all the senses shall be more subtle, the body it's self shall become more light, and apt to motion; and as near the nature and quality of a spirit as a body may be. Secondly, cause they shall be no more upheld, and maintained by earthly means and helps, but be preserved by spiritual means, i e. by the power of God's holy Spirit. What use shall there be of the creature, when the Creator himself the Lord of heaven and earth is in place. And in these two respects especially, they shall be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, equal to angels. Thirdly they shall be Spiritual because they shall never rebel, but be always subject and obedient to the regenerate soul, without contradiction they shall obey the motions of the spirit. Other particulars I cease to inquire, cause the Scripture doth forbear to deliver them; and in the silence of the holy-Ghost I will not be curious: lest by this means I lose myself, in the labyrinth of these everlasting habitations, whereto the Arts never taught an entrance in; nor Divinity ever discovered a passage out. The greatest light we have (which is but dim neither) is held out unto us by Scripture, and the primitive Doctors of the Church, in these particulars of eternal life, or eternal habitations: first in the comfort that the Saints shall partake of there, Secondly in their joy, Thirdly in the sight, and Lastly in the knowledge which the Saints shall have of the blessed Trinity in heaven. And first as to the comfort, this is in some sort expressed, John 14 2. In my father's house are many mansions. Where our Saviour administers several Recipees of comfort to his afflcted disciples, by reason of his going away: and of this comfort the first beam is, that that state which he promises them, and in them all faithful believers, is a house; it hath a foundation, no earthquake shall shake it; it hath a wall, no artillery shall batter it; it hath a roof, no tempest shall pierce it. It is a house that affords security, and that is one degree of comfort. And then Secondly it is his Father's house, a house in which he hath interest; and that is another degree of this consolation. It was his fathers, and so his; and his, and so ours; for we are not joint purchasers of heaven with the Saints; but we are coheirs with Christ Jesus: by death we are gathered to our fathers in nature, and by death through his mercy gathered to his father also, where we shall have a full satisfaction, in that wherein Saint Philip placed all satisfaction, Lord show us thy Father and 'tis enough, John the 4. 8. We shall see his father, and see him made ours in Christ. And then a third degree of this comfort is, that in this house of his fathers, thus by him made ours, there are mansions, which word in the original, and latin, and our language, signifies a remaining, an abiding, and fixing, and denotes the perpetuity, the everlastingness of that state, an everlasting State; and yet a state but of one day, because no night shall overtake or determine it, but such a day as is not of a thousand years, which is the longest measure of any day in scripture, but a thousand Millions of Millions of generations; a day that hath no pridie nor postridie, yesterday doth not usher it in, nor to morrow shall not drive it out. Methusalem with all his hundreds of years, Gen. 5. Was but a mushroom of a night's growth to this day. And all the four Monarchies, with all their thousands of years, and all the powerful Kings, and all the bueatiful Queens of the world, were but a bed of flowers, some gathered at six, some at seven, some at eight, all in one morning in respect of this day. In all the two thousand years of nature, before the law given by Moses, and the two thousand years of law before the Gospel given by Christ, and the too thousand years of grace, which are running now, (of which last hour, we have heard three quarters strike already, more than sixteen hundred of this last two thousand spent) in all this six thousand, and in all those which God may be pleased to add, in this house of his Fathers in heaven there was never heard quarter-clock to strike, never seen minute glass to run. No time less than its self would serve to express this time, which is intended in this word mansions: which is also exalted with another beam a fourth beam of comfort, that they are also many; in my Father's house are many mansions. In which circumstance we do consider the comfort of our society and conversation in heaven, since society and conversation is no great element and ingredient into the comfort which we have in this world. First we shall have an association with Christ himself, for where he is it is his promise that we also shall be, John 14. Secondly we shall have an association with the Angels, and such an one as we shall be such as they. Thirdly we shall have an association with the Saints, and not only to be such as they, but to be they; and to be with all those who come from the East etc. Mat. 9 11. Where we shall be so far from being enemies to one another, as that we shall not be strangers to one another; & so far from envying one another, as that all that every one hath shall be every others possession: where all Souls shall be so entirely knit together, as if there were but one Soul, and God so entirely knit to every Soul, as if there were as many Gods as Souls.  
And this is that glimpse of the eternal life I promised you; a mere cursory sight and view of those everlasting habitations and mansions in the Text: and here as I have given you a glimpse of the comforts, so let me beg leave of your patience to present you with a taste of the joys of heaven likewise: and it shall be a taste, most properly so called; For it shall be but of one drop of the Fountain of life; I mean that drop which Dives in Hell desired to cool his tongue with: which must not be so understood, as if the pains of hell were so small that they might be quenched by one drop of water; but rather thus, that one drop of water, where Abraham and Lazarus are, is of that infinite virtue, as could it be but dropped into the pains of hell, it would quench them all. Now the greatness of these joys may be comprehended both by the fullness of the objects in heaven; and also the fullness of our enjoiying the objects there. The objects in heaven are many, but the sum of all is God, whom we shall see face to face; and in him all that is good and joyful; for as looking in a glass we see the glass, ourselves, and most things that are in the room about it: so in the glass of the blessed Trinity, we shall by the Beatifical Vision, see the glory of that Trinity, ourselves, an our own glory, and all the Angels, Saints and pleasures that are about that Trinity. And as our joy shall be full, in regard of the fullness of the object, so it shall be full too in regard of our fullness of enjoying that object. We shall feel this joy with all the powers and faculties of our souls, ever beholding, though always satisfied, and ever drinking, yet still thirsting, not with any thirst of dryness, but with a thirst of desire after that water of life, those rivers of joy, which are said Psal. 46. 4. to make glad the city of the Lord. And thus as I have given you a taste of these joys from the Scriptures drop of water, so now should I give you all those rivers of Rhetorical expressions, should I open all the floodgates of Oratory, with which the Primitive Doctors of the Church have endeavoured to express those joys, all would prove but as one drop of water in respect of the infinite ocean of those joys. And this may appear from that story of Saint Augustine concerning Saint Jerome, of whom Saint Augustine saith, quae Hieronimus nescivit nullus hominum unquam scivit, that that S. Jerome knew not, no man ever knew: and S. Cyril (to whom S. Augustine said that) said also to Saint Augustine in magnifying Saint Jerome, that when a Catholic Priest disputed with an Heretic, and cited a passage of Saint Jerome, and the Heretic said, Jerome lied, instantly he was struck dumb. Yet of this last and everlasting joy and glory of Heaven, in the fruition of God, Saint Jerome would adventure to say nothing, no not then when he was divested of his mortal body, dead: for as soon as he died at Bethlem he came instantly to Hippo Saint Augustine's Bishopric, and though he told him Hieronymi anima sum, I am the soul of that Jerome to whom thou art now writing about the joys and glory of heaven, yet he said no more of that but this, Quid quaeris brev● immittere vascule totum mare? Canst thou hope to pour the whole sea into a thimble, or take the whole world into thy hand? And yet that is casier than to comprehend the joy and ●he glory of heaven in this life. Nor is there any thing that makes this more incomprehensible than that semper in 1 Thes. 4. 17. that we shall be with God for ever▪ For this eternity, this everlastingness, is not only incomprehensible to us in this life, but even in heaven, we can never know it experimentally, no not in heaven: and all knowledge in heaven is experimental; as all knowledge in this world is causal, (we know a thing if we know the cause thereof) so the knowledge in heaven is effectual, experimental; we know it because we have found it to be so. The endowments of the blessed, those which the school calls dotes beatorum, are ordinarily delivered to be these three, visio, dilectio, fruitio, the sight of God, the love of God, and the fruition, the enjoying, the possessing of God. Now as no man can know what it is to see God in heaven but by experimental and actual seeing of him there, nor what it is to love God there, but by such an actual and experimental love of him; nor what it is to enjoy and possess God, but by an actual enjoying, and experimental possessing of him; so can no man tell what the eternity and everlastingness of all these is, till he hath passed through that eternity, and that everlastingness; and that he can never do. For if it could be passed through, than it were not eternity. How barren a thing is Arithmetic? and yet Arithmetic will tell you how many grains of sand will fill this hollow vault to the firmament. How empty a thing is Rhetoric? and yet Rhetoric will make absent and remote things present to your understanding. How weak a thing is Poetry? and yet Poetry is a counterfeit creation, and makes things which are not as though they were; how infirm, how impotent, are all assisttances if they be put to express this eternity? The best help that I can assign you, is to use well aeternum vestrum, your own, as Saint Gregory calls our whole course of this life, aet●rnum nostrum our eternity; aequum est ut qui in aeterno suo pecaverit, in aeterno de● puniatur, saith he, it is but justice, that he that hath sinned out his own eternity, should suffer out God's eternity. So if you suffer out your own eternity, in submitting yourselves to God in the whole course of your life, in surrendering your will entirely to his, and glorifying him in a constant patience under all your tribulations, it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you, and to you which are troubled rest with us, 2 Thess. 1. 6. And thus much shall suffice for the joys of these eternal habitations.  
The third and fourth particulars (that I mentioned before) to illustrate these ever lasting habitations in the text, are the sight and the knowledge which the Saints shall have of the blessed Trinity there. And both these are held out unto us in that single text of the Apostle, 1 Cor. 13. 12. For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part, but then shall I know even as I also am known. Now as for the sight of God here, our theatre is the world, our Medium and Glass is the creature, & our light is reason; and as for our knowledge of God here, our Academy is the Church, our Medium the Ordinances of the Church, and our light, the light of Faith: so we may consider the same terms, First for the sight of God, and then for the knowledge of God in the next life.  
First the sphere, the place where we shall see him, is Heaven. He that asks me what heaven is, means not to hear me, but silence me: he knows I cannot tell him: When I meet him there, I shall be able to tell him, & then he will be as able to tell me: yet than we shall be but able to tell one another this that we enjoy is heaven; but the tongue of Angels, the tongue of gloried Saints, shall not be able to express what that heaven is: for even in heaven our faculties shall be finite. Heaven is not a place that was created, for all places that were created shall be dissolved. God did not Plant a Paradise for himself, & remove to that; as he planted a Paradise for Adam, and removed him to that. But God is still where he was before the World was made. And in that place where there are more Suns, than there are Stars in the firmament: for all the Saints are suns; and more light inanother sun, the Son of righteousness, the Son of glory, the Son of God, then in all them; in that illustration, in that emanation, that effusion of beams of Glory, which began not to shine six Thousand years ago, but six Thousand millions of millions ago; and had been six thousand millions of millions before that, in those eternal, in those uncreated heavensshall we see God. This is our sphere, and that which we are fain to call our place. And then our Medium, our way to see them, is Patefactio sui, Gods laying himself open, his manifestation, his revelation, his evisceration, and unboweling of himself to us there. Doth God never afford this manifestation of himself in his essence to any in this life? We cannot answer yea nor no, without offending a great part in the School. There are that say, that it is fere de Fide, little less than an Article of Faith that it hath been so; And Aquinas denies it so absolutely, as that his followers interpret him De absoluta potentia, that God by his absolute power cannot make a man, remaining a mortal man, and under the definition of a mortal man, capable of seeing his essence; As we may truly say, that God cannot make a beast remaining in that nature capable of grace or Glory. Now as 'tis fairly argued that Christ suffered not the very torments of very hell, because 'tis essential to the torments of hell to be eternal, they were not torments of hell, if they received an end; So it's fairly argued too that neither Adam in his ecstasy in Paradise, nor Moses in his conversation in the mount, nor the other Apostles in the transfiguration of Christ, nor Saint Paul in his rapture to the third heavens, saw the essence of God; because he that is admitted to the sight of God, can never look off, nor lose that sight again. Only in heaven shall God proceed to this patefaction, this manifestation, this revelation of himself, and that by the light of Glory. The light of Glory is such a light, as that our Schoolmen dare not say confidently, that every beam of it is not all of it. For as the essence of God is indivisible, & he that sees any of it, sees all of it; so is the light of glory communicated entirely to every blessed soul. To this light of glory, the light of honour, is but a glow-worm, and majesty itself but a twilight; nay that Gospel its self, which the Apostle calls the glorious Gospel, is but a star of the least magnitude. And if I cannot tell what to call this light by which I shall see it, what shall I call that which I shall see by it, the essence of God himself? and yet there is something else than this fight of God intended in that which remains; I shall not only see God face, to face, but I shall know him, and know him even as I also am known.  
In this consideration God alone is all; in all the former there was a place, and a means, and a light; here for this perfect knowledge of God, God is all those. Then saith the Apostle God shall be all in all, 1 Cor. 15. 28. Here God doth all in all, but here he doth all by instruments, even in the infusing of Faith, he works by the ministry of the Gospel: but there he shall be all in all, do all in all immediately by himself; for Christ shall deliver up the Kingdom to God even the Father; his Kingdom is the administration of his Church by his ordinances in the Church: at the resurrection there shall be an end of that Kingdom; no more Church, no more working upon men by Preaching, but God himself shall be all in all: therefore it is said, in heaven there is no Temple; but God himself is the Temple, Apoc. 21. 22. God is the service and music, Psalm, and Sermon, and Sacrament, and all. We shall live upon the word, and hear never a word. Here God is not all in all, where he is at all in any man, that man is well. Wisdom in Solomon, it was well with Solomon because God was wisdom with him; and patience in Job, and faith in Peter, and zeal in Paul, but there was something in all these that God was not. But in heaven he shall be so all in all, that every soul shall have every perfection in its self, and the perfection of these perfections shall be, that their sight shall be face to face, and their knowledge as they are known.  
But now for the first of these privileges, how shall we see God face to face; is it always a declaration of God's favour, when God shows his face? No; I will set my face against that soul, Levit. 17. 10. but when there is light joined with it, it is a declaration of favour; this was the blessing that God taught Moses for Aaron, Num. 6 25 The Lord make his face shine upon thee. And there we shall see him face to face by the light of his countenance, which is the light of glory. But what shall we see by seeing God so face to face? we shall see whatever we can be the better for seeing. First, all things that men believed here, they shall see there; and therefore let us me ditate upon no other thing on earth, than we would be glad to think on in heaven; and this consideration would put many frivolous, and many fond thoughts out of our mind. This than we shall get concerning our selus by seeing God face to face; but what concerning God? We shall see God as he is in his essence. Why? did all that are said to have seen God face to face see his essence? No. In earth God assumed some material things to appear in, and is said to have been seen face to face when he was seen in those assumed forms. But in heaven there is no material thing to be assumed, and if God be seen face to face there, he is seen in his essence. Saint Augustine sums it up, fully upon those words, In thy light we shall see light, te scil. in te, We shall see thee in thee, i. e. saith he, face to face.  
And then secondly what is it, To know him as we are known: it is not expressed in the Text so: that is only that we shall know so, not that we shall know God so; but the frame and context of the place hath drawn that unanime Exposition from all, that it is meant of our knowledge of God then. A comprehensive knowledge of God it cannot be; to comprehend, is to know a thing as well as that thing can be known; and we can never know God so, but that he will know himself better. Our know ledge cannot be so dilated, nor God condensed or contracted so, as that we can know him that way comprehensively. It cannot be such a knowledge of God as God hath of himself, nor as God hath of us; for God comprehends us and all this world, and all the worlds that he could have made, and himself. But it is not a similitudinis non aequalitatis, as God knows me, so shall I know God, but I shall not know God so as God knows me. It is not quantum, but sicut, not as much, but as truly. As the fire does as truly shine as the Sun shines, though it shine not out so far, nor to so many purposes. So then I shall know God so, as that there shall be nothing in me to hinder me from knowing God: which cannot be said of the nature of man, though regenerate, upon earth, no▪ nor of the nature of an Angel in heaven left to itself, till both have received a super-illustration from the light of glory. And so it shall be a knowledge so like his knowledge, as it shall produce a love like his love, & we shall love him as he loves us. For say the Fathers, whom Oecumenius hath compacted, I shall know him, i. e. embrace him, adhere to him. What an holiday shall this be, which no working day shall ever follow. By knowing and loving the unchangeable, the immutable God, mutabimur in immutabilitatem, we shall be changed into an unchangeableness saith that Father, that never said any thing but extraordinary (Saint Augustine). He saith more; If God should be seen and known in hell, hell in an instant would be heaven. How many heavens are there in heaven? how is heaven multiplied to every soul in heaven? where infinite other happinesses are crowned with this sight, and this knowledge of God there. And how shall all those heavens be renewed to us every day, that shall be as glad to see and to know God millions of ages after every days seeing and knowing as the first hour of looking upon his face? And as this seeing, this knowing of God crowns all other joys and glories even in heaven, so this very crown is crowned; there grows from this an higher glory, which is that we shall be made partakers of the divine nature, 2 Pet. 1. 4. Immortal as the Father, righteous as the Son, and full of all comfort as the Holy Ghost. To which blessed Trinity be ever (as is most due) ascribed all Honour, and Glory, Dominion, and Power, now and for ever. Amen.  
FINIS.   

THE Fifth Sermon. Which is that in the INDEPENDENT Style, or Way of Preaching; Never delivered before any Congregation, and now proposed only as a pattern, or example of that way of preaching.  HEB. 11. 24. 
By Faith Moses, when he came to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter.  
LONDON, Printed for Edward Archer, at the Adam and Eve in Little Britain, Anno Dom. 1656.   
Luke 9 23. And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. 
AFter our blessed Saviour had made known to his Disciples, and the rest, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be reproved of the Elders, and of the High Priests, and be slain, vers. 22. foreseeing that a great many, who now did cry him up, and highly magnify him, would then be ashamed of him; he tells all such, ver. 26. That whosoever shall be ashamed of me, and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his glory. And again, foreseeing likewise that the same men would lose their souls to save their lives; he tells them, that whosoever will save his life, shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it, ver. 24. Lastly understanding by the same divine foresight of his, that divers who were now his professed Disciples, and thronged after him, would upon his imprisonment and trial forsake him, and follow him no longer than they might follow him in safety; he lays them down in my Text the nature and condition of a Disciple; and the necessary duty of every Christian: telling them plainly in this 23 ver. what they must trust to, if they ever intent to be his Disciples, followers of him. And he said unto them all (all of them, his own twelve Apostles as well as the rest of the people, he excepts none) if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.  
Which words, according to the best expositors, hold out this sense unto you in their Paraphrase. If any man will be my Disciple, will be a Christian; for that is the meaning of coming after me, of following me; let him deny himself, i. e his honours, preferments, riches, pleasures: and not only these carnal outward things, but all inward and spiritual endowments likewise; all administrations, ordinances, gifts, graces, hopes, comforts, enjoiments; nay even our religion, and heaven itself must be denied by us, resigned up of us, and laid at Christ's feet. For this is to deny a man'sself; when there is nothing left of self, nothing left to self; but every thing condemned in us, taken from us, and made odious unto us in comparison of Christ. Now the taking up of the Cross will be easily explained, what its full importance extends to; namely the voluntary embracing of shame, and contumely (for the Cross was a contumelious death, Heb. 12. 2.) as likewise the loss of your goods, liberties, and lives for Christ: which are said in the Text to be taken up; not when we bring them unnecessarily upon our own shoulders (for that is to pull the Cross upon us) but when by the providence of God they are laid in our way to Christ; so that we cannot follow Christ, we cannot be Christ's Disciples, but it must become detriment and damage to us: then voluntarily to undergo that detriment or damage whatever it is; to take up that Cross, be that cross never so painful and bloody; and patiently and cheerfully to bear that cross, is the duty without which a man cannot be Christ's Disciple, cannot be a Christian. And these two duties, that of self-denial, and this of taking up the cross, I may very properly call peculiar-Christian-Gospel duties: because they were ne●er so much as in kind required before by God in the Old Testament, nor yet by the laws of nature; nor thirdly by the Canons of any other Religion in the world.  
I shall at present insist only upon the first of these two duties: In the making ou● of the which unto you, I shall present you with these five particulars of self-denial: First, the denial of our honours, preferments, riches, pleasures, lusts, and all our carnal sinful enjoiments. Secondly the denial of our will and affections. Thirdly of our gifts and graces. Fourthly our very Religion and Christianity, which you may perchance think it is the highest sin to deny, yet we must deny even that. And further, that which concerns us something nearer than our Religion, we must in the fifth and last place deny even our own salvation, and heaven its self. And these Five parts I shall call the Five steps, or stairs that make up the story, and lead to the top, the very highest point of Self-denial. I call them stairs, because that one i● still higher than the other, as the Second degree of Self-denial is an higher step or stair then the First; and so likewise in the rest.  
I will begin at the first and lowest step or stair of Self-denial, the denying of our honours, preferments, riches, pleasures, losts, and all our carnal finful enjoiments. And here first for your honours, preferments, and greatness, you must be ready to deny these, first by doing, secondly by suffering for Christ: first by doing, by an humble submission to the meanest service God shall call you to for his Name and Church's sake; though that service may seem to cloud your honours, and eclipse your greatness never so much in the eye of the world. You should count it an honourable employment to draw water and cut wood for the use of the Sanctuary, and a far greater addition to your birth and place, to be a poor doorkeeper in the house of your God, then to be a Lord Chamberlain to Princes.  
Secondly by Suffering you are to deny yourselves herein, by being willing to suffer the greatest scandals and indignitics that can be thrown upon you for the cause of Christ. Though all your friends and acquaintance, your father, mother, husband, wife should cast you off and abandon you for ever, you must be content to be deprived of all your relations and allies, of all you are born unto, or hope for; to lose your honours, liberty and life to boo●, if God shall call you to it for his Names sake, with that brave resolution of hester's, If I perish I perish, Hest. 4. 16. If I be undone I am undone for God's glory, and his Churches good.  
And the reason wherefore Christ teacheth you to deny yourselves herein is, 'cause you are to take up your Cross and follow Christ, i. e. must expect reproaches, afflictions, tribulations for the name and sake of Christ, Joh 16. 33. A man that hath not learned this lesson of Christ, can never suffer with comfort and joy. O saith wise Self, when it eyes those persecutions that are like to befall those that follow Christ, may I not pass by such a truth, and such a practice and yet get heaven? What need I to adventure myself upon such hardships, when perchance by the neglecting of such or such an opinion, or practise, I may attein my liberty, my reputation, but on the contrary the selfdenying Christian, when he com● to submit to Gospel-Ordinances, which are contemptible in the eyes of the world, for which he is like to suffer shame and disgrace, yet let me submit to Christ, saith he, to every Truth, to every Ordinance, although I suffer loss in the world, reproach and shame from my friends and acquaintance, though I lose the love of my best friends, whether father, mother, husband, wife, yet saith the selfdenying Christian, Christ hath said, that whosoever loveth father or mother better than me, is not worthy of me: And this love of Christ constraineth me to deny myself, & follow Christ in all conditions. Thus you see the selfdenying soul, and none else, is meet to be a disciple, a follower of Christ; because he is most ready to take up the Cross and follow him.  
Secondly we must deny ourselves as in our great places, and honours, and dignities, so likewise in our profits, pleasures, in all our carnal worldly enjoiments. Oh how hard is it for a poor crcature to deny himself in this! How hard is it for a rich man, saith our blessed Saviour, to enter into the kingdom of heaven, Luk. 18. 24. The world is a common bait wherewith the Devil enticeth men to fin, as Judas Anan●as; nay Christ himself is set upon with this temptation, Mat. 4. But when Christ comes into a soul, he teacheth that soul to deny itself, to look upon the world as Christ did, as a very empty thing; he gives power to overcome the world, 1 Joh. 5. 4. For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world. All our worldly desires therefore, and pleasures, and enjoiments must be denied by us; we must use the things of the world as though we used them not. We must be so dead to the world, as to see all things that are now in our possession to be none of ours, so that the very worst things in the world that can befall us will be good to us: all that before were crosses and afflictions now will be joy and comfort, 'cause we shall see it to be the will of the Father; and we shall have peace in every condition. We shall have as much comfort in a dungeon, as in the possession of the greatest state in the world. We shall cast our care upon God, and trust him as well with our bodies as with our souls. We shall not so much care for to morrow, we shall see enough in God to satisfy us both for to morrow and for ever: For the earth is the Lords, and the fullness thereof, saith the Psal. 24. 1. All the labour of men under the Sun is but for two things, food and raiment; now when we are ascended to God by denying ourselves, we shall know that God is able to feed us, and clothe us as miraculously as he did the children of Israel in the wilderness. And thus much shall suffice for our first step or stair of self-denial, the denial of our honours, preferments, riches pleasures, lusts, & all our carnal sinful enjoiments:  
The second now follows, which is the denial of our will and affections. First then for our will, we must deny ourselves in that, as well as our Saviour did. If we will come after Christ, be followers of Christ; we must tread in this step, and follow him in this tract and path, as well as the former. And indeed our blessed Saviour began betimes in the denial of his own will. For when he was but twelve years old, we find him at this work, doing the will of his Father, Luke 2. 49. And he said unto them, how is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business? not fulfilling his own will, or doing his own business, but both were his Fathers. And as he began this course betimes, when he was but twelve years old, so he continued it likewise through the whole course of his life. In his preaching, as you heard before, he did not his own work, nor fulfilled his own will, but his Fathers; and as in his preaching, so in his praying likewise, one of his first petitions was Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven; and this petition was made good even through his whole life, and death. Through his life, John 4. 34. Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his wo●k. And Secondly in his very death & Passion, which was full of this selfdenying Spirit. For even there also his saying was, Not my will, but thine be done. Luke 22. 42.  
Thus you see that our Saviour both praying, preaching, living, and dying, denied himself, and his ●own will: now let us go and do so likewise; let us learn ●ather to deny ourselves, and our own wills, than God's Christ, who is the Saints pattern, did always so walk as to please God. John 8. 29. And he that sent me, is with me: the Father hath not left me alone: for I do always those things that please him: And as he was our pattern, so he teacheth us by his Apostle the same lesson, 1 Thess. 4. 1. Furthermore, than we beseech you, brethren: and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk, and to please God, so ye Would abound more and more. As if the Apostle had said, that which you receive of us, is that you ought to walk according to the example of Christ; to please God though you thereby should displease yourselves. And this is a soul taught by God's Spirit, when he prefers the pleasing of the Lord before himself, the fulfilling of his will before his own. This being once learned, is that which would carry you along, through all oppsition in a way of truth. Perhaps the poor creature resolving with flesh & blood, may be reedy to conclude sometimes, if I submit to this way, to this truth, I must expect reproach, persecution. Now it would wonderfully please carnal will and reason to conceal such a truth in unrighteousoesse; but when a Soul comes to this, it is my duty to fulfil God's will, and not my own; O than I dare not but do it; come what will come I cannot but do it. Truly you who indeed love the Lord Jesus, that love will constrain you to please him, though you displease yourselves, to fulfil his will by denying your own. This Christ himself teacheth and by his own example, hath given us an example so to do, John 4. 34. Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work. Oh blessed example, to be imitated by all the Saints; what shall Jesus Christ when he was but twelve years old dony himself, his own will; and shall not the Saints do it, his disciples, his followers, at fifty, and sixty, and eighty do as much?  
But Christ hath not only given us his example and pattern, but hath enjoined us thereunto also, under penalty of damnation, Matt: 7 21. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father which is in heaven. And the Apostle, Ephe. 6. 6. exhorting servants to be obedient to their Masters, says, Not with eye-service, as men pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart: This self-will is the cause of much stir and division in the world. What is the cause of this war among us, but self-will? One will establish one religion, another, another religion, or else the Nation must rue it. This self-will is it that causes discontents and troubles in Families. The husband will have his will, and the wife her will. This causes contention in Churches among the Saints; when every one will have his own mind, his own way, his own will, will please himself whoever be displeased. And therefore to prevent these and the like inconveniences, let us deny our own wills after the example of Christ, and submit to the will of God in every thing. Let Gods will, his unknown will, his undesired will (by any but himself) be done by us &, upon us. Whatever his will be concerning any, let it take place in them & upon them to the utmost. Let not me nor any else be what we would, but what Gods will pleaseth to have us; and let us pray with our Saviour, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven: that so Gods whole will and counsel may be fulfilled upon us, without so much as desiring him to give us the least account of it, until he pleaseth himself. If God please to suffer us to be lead into folly, sin, death, hell, any thing, let him do what he will, carry us whether he will. Let our own will wholly die in us, that it may never avoid any thing more, nor choose any thing more in any kind, but as Gods will shall choose for us, and avoid for us. For my own particular, let it be so that I perish for ever, I had rather have it so, then have mine own will fulfilled. I know my own will so well that I desire to have it crossed, even in the things that nearest concern me. I would not be saved as I have a mind to be saved, I would not go to heaven in my own way, and after my own will. And on the contrary, I have such a taste though that be but a small one, of the excellency of the hidden will of God, that I would not have it crossed, no not in those things that tend to my greatest prejudice. If it be God's will that I must be damned, I must deny myself in yielding to this will of God, & be content for God's glory to subscribe my own damnation. Nowthis may deserve the name of self-resignation, & the denying of our own wills; which is the second stepof Self-denial.  
We now come to hold out unto you the third step, or degree of our great Gospel-duty of self-denial; namely, the denial of our gifts and our graces, the fruits and improuments of our endowments, whether natural or spiritual. And first for our natural gifts and endowments: there is naturally in every man, selfe-boasting in the creatures own wisdom, & apprehended self-excellency. There is a disposition of nature, even in the Saints to be exalted above measure, not only in those graces received from Christ, but in their own personal excellencies. Saint Paul 2 Cor: 12. 7. Was sensible of both, And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelation, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. And there is in every child of God a natural disposition to spiritual pride: he that knows any thing knows it. This is the filthiness of the spirit that the Saints are liable unto. Truly we have very little cause to glory in any thing, except in Christ Jesus, 1 Cor. 4. 7. Therefore the Prophet saith, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, nor the strong man in his strength, but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth the Lord. It is the exhortation of Christ to his disciples, Luk. 10. 22. All things are delivered to me of my Father, and no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father, and who the Father is, but the Son, and to whom the Son will reveal him; and this lesson Saint Paul learned, and every Christian in some good measure must learn, Gal. 6. 14. But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. Let us therefore in the first place deny our Selfe-sufficiency and Selfe-strength. There is a natural disposition in the creature to think that it hath power in itself to act towards God; hut where Christ comes in power, he teacheth men to deny this principle, Jeh. 15. 5. I am the Vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. And the Apostle that had experience of the workings of God confesseth it, 1 Cor. 15. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me, was not in vain: but I laboured more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was in me. And the reason wherefore we are to deny our self-sufficiency and self-strength, is, that so we may be able to hold out in the evil day, when a man is put to it either by his spiritual, or temporal enemies. Men standing upon their own strength are gone, Isa. 40 30 Even the youths shall faint and he weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: they that apprehend a power in themselves to stand, but ver. 31. They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they that see an insufficiency in themselves, and trust upon the Name of the Lord, etc. Psal. 145. 1. Christ would have his work to be a perfect and full work, his Covenant a sure Covenant, Isa. 55. 3. Incline your ear, and come unto me: he●r, and your soul shall live, and I will make an everlasting Covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. Therefore he undertakes not only to being men into the Covenant, but to keep them there, Jerem. 32 40. And I will make an everlasting Covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good, but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me. It is in the strength of Christ the believer stands, Job. 15. 5. You cannot pray or perform any duty acceptable, Ro●. 8. 26. Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groan which cannot be uttered. Much less stand and hold out to the end against all spiritual oppositions a Christian is to encounter with all. We are therefore to deny all our selfstrength, and self-sufficiency, and so likewise all our our selfwisdom, and knowledge, and whatever natural gifts and endowments are in us more eminent than the rest. Men are naturally too wise for Christ; so were the Grecians, 1 Cor. 1. 22. and therefore the Apostle exhorts the Church to take heed of selfwisdom, 1 Cor. 3. 18. Let no man deceiuhimself: If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become afool, that he may be wise. The readiest way to attain wisdom, is to lay all our wisdom down at the feet of Christ: I beseech you consider this, hath Christ taught your souls this lesson? Is your wisdom heavenly born wisdom, or is it earthly? Is it your own or God's? This is your own wisdom, Jam. 3. 13. but see ver. 17. But the wisdom that is from above, is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy, and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. It is all heavenly like him whose it is; but man's wisdom is all earthly, sinful, devilish, which is the reason wherefore we are here to deny it.  
Then secondly as we are to deny all our natural gifts and parts, so likewise all our spiritual, all our graces, all our fruits and improvements in spiritual matters, and this must be done in a double respect: First in respect of the end of those graces; we must deny our selus herein by doing all for God, and not foe ourselves; for his glory, and not our own. Secondly in respect of the means, by referring all to God, and not to ourselves, to his strength and his assistance, and not our own. First then we must deny ourselves in the end of our receiving these gifts and graces. The Prophet Hosea, Chap. 10. 1. calls Israel an empty Vine, that brought forth fruit: Empty, and yet bringing forth fruit, how can these stand together? Yes, very well. For Israel was an empty Vine, though they brought forth fruit, because the fruit was not such as ought to grow upon them, such as was proper to the root they seemed to grow in; as Wells are said to be empty when they are not full of water, though they are full of air: so here an empty Vine, 'cause it brought forth all its fruit, whether good or bad, to its self: which was not proper for the people and servants of God to do; that is, those ends that did draw up the sap and did put it forth into fruit, were drawn but from themselves, they bring them not forth principally to God, and for him. All their prayers, all their affections in holy duties, if they examine the reason of them all, the ends that run in them all, they will find they are taken from themselves: and though the assistance wherewith they are enabled to do what they do is more than their own, yet their ends are no higher than themselves, and so employ the assistance God gives them, for themselves. Now ●he end for which a true branch brings forth fruit is, that Christ may be glorified: thus Rom. 7. 4. Wherefore my brethren, ye also are become dead to the Law by the body of Christ, that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God, when married to Christ, they are said to bring forth fruit unto God, which is spoke in opposition to bringing forth fruit to a man's self. There is indeed a natural disposition in the creature, to seeck himself, and his own ends and glory in every thing, Phil. 2. 21. For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's. Therefore the Apostle exhorts the Corinthians, 1 Cor. 10. 24. Let no man seek his own glory; and Christ teacheth his to ●ay down all self-ends at his feet, & to seek him & hi● honour so, that now whatever the Christian doth it is for Christ: if he preach, it is Christ, and for Christ, 2 Cor. 4. 5. For we preach not our selus, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus sake. All that ever the Saints do, they do for the honour of Christ, 2 Thes. 1. 12. That the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and ye in him, according to the grace of our God, and the Lord Jesus Christ. And why? They are not their own, they are bought with a price; therefore they are to glorify God in their bodies, and spirits, 1 Cor. 6. 19, 20. But may not a Christian seek himself in any case? may he not seek his own good, his own credit? Yes without question, he may seek his own good, his own credit, but he may not seek himself: he may not seek himself alone, but first the glory of God, and seeking to glorify God, he must of necessity seek his own glory: for God hath so joined his glory and the Saints together, that it is impossible to glorify the Lord, but the glory of the Christian must be included in it. For this is the Saints rule, 1 Cor. 10 31. Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. This is the Saints privilege, Rom. 8. 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.  
Secondly as we are to deny all our spiritual gifts and graces in respect of the end of those graces, by doing all for God and and not for ourselves, for his glory, and not our own; so in the second place we are to deny those graces in respect of the means, by referring all to God, and not to ourselves; to his strength and his assistance, and not our own. For as we must do all things for God as the end, so also we must refer all things to God as the means, acknowledging ourselves to do all things in his strength, and by his assistance. For as it is essential to thee, if thou be'st a true branch of the Vine, a true Christian, to do all for another, as your end, namely to God; so to do all in the strength of another as your sole assistant, namely Christ, who works all in you, and through whose strength, saith Paul, I am able to do all things, and nothing without it, Phil. 4. 13. Therefore we find both these joined, Phil. 1. 11. Being filled with the fruits of righthousness, which are by Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God▪ the latter is meant as the final cause, the other as the efficient. Now temporary believers, as they do all principally for themselves, so also all as from themselves; and as they do not make God their end, so nor Christ their root, because they fetch not their strength, their sap to do all they do from Christ by Faith, and from their Union with him; And the reason is, because they are never emptied of themselves, which is the root they grow upon, both in regard of their own ends, and also of their own efficiency of working: whereas we must all be brought to nothing in our selus both in regard of Self-aims, and also Self-abilities. But indeed it is as hard a thing for us, both in respect of natural, and also spiritual endowments, to live out of our selus, and fetch all from another, as not to live to ourselves but to another. We are full of our own strength as well as of our own ends: and although we do receive all our strength from Christ, and so all we do in what is good, is from him, yet we do not honour Christ in receiving it, by doing all as in his strength, and so do not do it as in him; but though we receive all from Christ, yet we work with it as it were our own stock, and so glory as the Apostle speaks, as if we had not received it. And thus though the sap and liveliness which stirs us to any spiritual duty is really and indeed efficiently from Christ, yet we work with it as if all proceeded from ourselves, because we neither receive our strength by faith, nor act by faith that strength received as men acted by Christ, and working in Christ; being supported with the pride and self▪ sufficiency of our own gifts and parts: whereas all true believers are emptied first of their own strength and ability, and so walk as those who can do nothing without Christ, as those who are not able to love or believe one moment more without him. And therefore a true believer being thus sensible of his own insufficiency and unability, doth (when he is at any time assisted in spiritual duties) attribute all to Christ when he hath done: he glories not in himself as of himself, but as he is a man in Christ, and that as he is a man in Christ he did it, and no otherwise. So the Apostle 2 Cor. 12. 2. 5. I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, etc.— Of such an one will I glory, yet of myself I will not glory, but in mine infirmities. And yet it was himself he speaks of, but yet not in himself as of himself, but as he was a man in Christ, and no otherwise. We have done with our third step or degree of Selfe-denyal, the denial of our gifts and graces both natural and spiritual.  
And as we have denied these natural and spiritual endowments, so in the fourth place we must deny our very religion, our christianity for Christ. This seems at the first sight a contradiction, but it is only a high expression, or if you Please to call it so, a new light of Self-denial. For I do not mean so to deny our Christianity, as to become Jew's, Turks, or Infidels; but so to deny it, as to resign it up unto Christ, to lay it at Christ's feet; so to deny it as not to rely upon it, as the only dispensation and appearance whereby God is able to reveal himself unto his people: for canst thou measure the ways, thoughts and various appearances of God, whom thou thyself callest infinite, and unmeasurable? Art thou sure he can appear no otherwisa then according to what thou exspectest he will? Call but to mind the religion of the Jews: what religion that ever was since the foundation of the world, I will not except our own Christian religion, was more confirmed by miracles then this? what religion for its time had the presence of God more in it; set up by the peculiar appointment of the Almighty; the Doctrine written in Tables of stone with his own finger; the discipline in every circumstance, and ceremony, and Punctilio, dictated not by his Spirit only, but by the express word of his own mouth. Had the Christian religion, for doctrine and discipline, been as punctually set down and enjoined, the Real Presence had not erected so many stakes and gibbets; nor the ceremonies of the Church raised so many armies in Christendom, as we find by woeful experience they have done. And now what is become of all the divine right and confirmation; of all the pomp and glory of the Jewish Church and religion? Is it not called off all and the dross and dung even in the very righteousness of it, Phil. 3. 8. And the doctrine and discipline base and beggarly elements, by the same Apostle, Gal: 4. 9 Insomuch that I here profess before you all, that ever since I knew any thing of religion; nothing hath more amazed and staggered my reason; then that God should first establish, and afterwards disannul the same relgion; and secondly, that the Apostles should set so low a rate upon, should have so mean, base, and contemptible an esteem of any thing, that was at any time set up and avowed by God. Neither know I how to answer the Jew, should he urge this very argument home to me, then by crying out with the Apostle, upon the same account and ground we now mention; O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God how unsearchable are his judgements, and his ways past finding out! Rom. 11. 33. Thou seest therefore that the Jews were cozened (who were as confident as thou canst be, that it should not be so with them as it was;) is it then so impossible that thou shouldest ever be deceived in what thou further expectest, because thou hast gone a step or two beyond these Jews? Is that which thou hast attained and hoped for, of such an enduring nature, that it can never pass away? The Jews knew Christ under the law, and it was a very glorious knowledge, compared with any knowledge the heathen had; but what became of that knowledge? It vanished and became of no account, as you have heard. And so likewise Christians have known Christ under the Gospel, and this kind of knowledge doth far excel that which was imparted to the Jews; Gospel-faith, Gospel-love, Gospel-obedience, do infinitely surpass any legal qualifications and performances whatsoever: but with all consider this, may not these Gospel dispensations pass away? may not these duties be swallowed up in higher and more spiritualised duties, and the? glory of these fall before a greater glory In all these than thou must deny thyself, thou must resign them up, & lay them all at Christ's feet. And how this religion of ours which we now profess, must be denied by us, and be resigned up of us, I shall endeavour to show you in these following particulars. First we mu●t deny all ordinances & administrations, so as to rest & rely upon them: and here first for the ordinance of ministerial preaching, we must not ●est, not put our confidence and faith upon that, because as it is Isa. 54. 13. We shall be all taught of God. Now the teaching of men, and the teaching of God, differ as the light of the Moon, and the light of the Sun; that shines by the help of this, this from its own light. The teachings of men is this Moonlight, which in God's time must vanish. For this Moonlight, this conveying knowledge to others by helps and means, is to be swallowed up into the light of the Sun, that God may become all in all, Jer. 31. 34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. By the mentioning of Sun and Moon in this place, God speaks to the capacity of men, and points out the whole creation of night and day, and that all creature-helps and means should fail, though they were and are as glorious helps as the Sun, that gives light to the day, or as the Moon that gives light to the night; and that the time will come, that God himself will be the light of men without creature-helps or means; and these teachings of God shall never cease. Then secondly, as we are to deny the Ordinance of Preaching, so likewise of Praying, and Fasting, and all ordinances whatsoever; so as I said before to rest upon them, to lay our faith upon them. And the reason is, cause that Ordinances are nothing without the Lord. Every one will confess that the letter is a dead letter without the Spirit; and the Ordinances are mere forms without God's appearance in them: and therefore our design is to couple the Lord and Ordinances together, and we cannot endure to hear of the parting of them; though many now adays do, who cry, so we have Ordinances we are well. Now this is that we must deny, or else it will appear that we promise to ourselves something from the bare outward form of an Ordinance, and so like the Israelites we are hankering after the fleshpots of Egypt, though they had better meat in the wilderness, yet their fleshpots run in their minds. So though God offer himself, and though the Saints tell you they cannot find God in such and such forms, but find him abundantly good in the spirit, and they find that he recompenses the want of all forms in the spirit, and presses you to wait till God appears to you in the spirit: O! say you, I can never believe that God should do it without an Ordinance, or that God should strengthen you without an Ordinance. God, think you, with an Ordinance can strengthen me, and deliver me, and save me out of temptation, not otherwise. This is to say, that the Ordinance, or fleshly form, doth add something to God. If you confess God to be all in an Ordinance, you must confess him to be all without an Ordinance, to be sufficient of himself. I desire not to be mistaken, I judge not those that find God in Ordinances and outward forms. Let them wait upon God, and let them receive and partake of the benefit of the Ordinance, and let them bless God for it, and be faithful to their own principles; and let them be sweet to others. But when we do find God in a Form, and in an Ordinance, to say he is not to be found and enjoyed any other way; this is not a right spirit, and this is to be resigned up and denied by us.  
A main and principal reason of the point is, that God alone may be exalted. For as civil forms are accompanied with many corrupt, yet cleaving interests; so spiritual administrations, are attended in their Proselytes with flesh, form, & self, which do many times deprave and corrupt the Administration, and render it ineffectual to the end for which it was appointed. And as it is the design of God to purge the civil administration from its dregs and filth, so the Lord carries on the same designs in paring away all humane interests from the spiritual, that so he alone may be exalted; besides as civil forms are not the substance but the outside only, and appearanee of that equity and reason which they ought to represent; So is it with the spiritual, as being only supplemental to our wants, absence, weakness, until such time as we come to live in the very life or substance its self. So that spiritual administrations being of an inferior and entervening notion, cannot possibly hold forth the most complete and glorious way of enjoyment, which in the Scripture is said to be by sight, and not by faith; and such a sight as is not in form, or glass, but face to face. The sight which Moses had of God, as it did transcend the ordinary discovery to common Saints▪ so it was far inferior to this vision; for Moses saw but the backpart of God. And yet as their sacrifices did t●●e out the true sacrifices which we enjoy; so this vision, in regard of the immediateness of it, bears some proportion with that glorious discovery in the Saints, where God shall be seen as he is: but this discovery is darkened and veiled in the outward form, even in the design of God himself; for the weak understanding being not able to behold the brightness of this presence (as the Israelites fled from the sight of God) it is the pleasure of the Father to cast a veil over his glory, which vail is the form, that so the discoveries thereof may be born by us. Our enjoy ments will be then most sublime, when this vail is rend a sunder, and way made to the Holy of Holies, or the naked glory by the power and purity of the spirit. In the mean time the form is proportioned to the darkness of the fleshly understanding, and therefore it is that the glory is limited and confined therein; and given out according to the measure of our stature by degrees; this justifies the design and wisdom of God in choosing these ways and methods in the manifestation of himself. For the occasion of spiritual administrations is the darkness and weakness of the creature, all which make up a bundle of necessities, which are thus summed up. Man being clouded with a dark and misty understanding, stands at a great distance from the clear light of God, by reason whereof he apprehends nothing but what is suitable to himself, and his enjoiment is answerable to his light; that is, weak and glimmering. But God stoops down to humane frailty, and gives out himself in weak appearances, Mosaical forms, which are as mediums between God and us. But when this darkness and distance is removed by the power of God, man becomes near, and his enjoiments immediate, which must needs be the best, because nearest the fountain. For the appearances of God, like the beams of the Sun, the farther they pass, the more weak and imperfect are they, as to us. Hence it is that God in spirit being the most immediate appearance, is therefore strongest; God in flesh the next to that, but of an inferior cognisance and operation. And the deeper God descends into flesh, as into the sacrifices of old▪ the more is his glory clothed upon, and by consequence the more dark and obscure is his presence, and our enjoiment. So that still while we are within the compass of appearances, they may afford us a good but not the most excellent life. For the highest life is above all appearances, even in the substance itself. For which is better, to live in the appearance of a thing, or in the thing itself? in the branch, or in the tree? in the root or in the rind? To live in the substance is a life fuller of heavenly contemplation and rest. For as the days of God's labour were common and ordinary, but the day of his rest sanctified and holy; so it is with the Saints: The life of a Christian under administrations and forms is the day of his labour, and he meets with many uncertainties, disappointments, and troubles in the outward form, as the experience of Saints can witness. But the life above is the day of his rest, wherein he studies all things, and sees them to be very good, yea and ceaseth from his works as God did from his.  
But did not God himself ordain Form, and where did he abrogate it, you will say? I answer: As there was a time to plant, so there is a time to pluck up what was planted. For Form was never created as a standing rule, but as a temporary help to serve a turn; which when it is once accomplished, the means cease, as having ushered in the end. Neither is the abrogation of Form only in the letter, but in the discovery of an higher glory, which darkens the first, as the Sun darkens the stars. So that the discovery of Gospel-forms is the abrogation of Legal, and the Gospel administration in external rites gives way to an higher glory. And yet there are some hints in the letter of this glorious state, as Isa. 25. and Rev. 21. 2 Pet. 3. 13. Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens, and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Though the glory of the mysteries contained in it are to be experimented in us. You'll say Christ and his Apostles submitted to the outward Form. 'Tis true, Christ in the flesh was made under the Law, and submitted to Circumcision as well as Baptism; he underwent the state of death or sorrow, and the state of flesh or form, Heb. 5. 7. Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared: Wherein he prayed, and at the last was raised up to the state of mirth, or immediate discovery, wherein he did rejoice. So that Christ in the flesh is the figure of several administrations, and every Christian is an emblem in one stage or another of his life. Some live in a crucified, some in a glorified Jesus; some live in his life, some in his death; some live in Christ after the flesh, others in Christ after the spirit. And amongst these the highest pitch of a Christian is, Christ risen, or rather sitting at God's right hand: for here is immediateness of favour and enjoiment. But in the mean time Ordinances and Administrations take place after one sort or other, till this state come. For as the appearances of God are stronger or weaker, so administrations are of several sorts; the most eminent are, Paradifical, Legal, and Evangelical.  
Paradifical administrations than took place, when the angelical nature being clothed upon with a humane appearance, did contemplate its Maker in things below himself the clear stream of the whole creation; and the heavenly spirit being likewise clothed upon, was a proportionated subject to entertain that discovery. This administration did not contain the most complete enjoiment. For here the vail was first set up, and man of necessity must have ceased to his being or form, though he had never sinned, that so he might be raised up to an higher enjoiment. This administration was but for a season; for when flesh and self had defiled the stream, the glory crept inward, and was withdrawn from our view, and in came a multitude of helps to usher in but a review of the same glory, this was the original of legal sacrifices and administrations. But as the fountain was cleared by degrees, and the imagerendred more perspicuous, so Gospel administrations succeeded in the place of the Legal, as differing only from them in degrees of light.  
These administrations are not distinguished by fleshly Epoches or Periods of time, but are interchangeably managed within the Saints, according to their degrees of light, as being partly bond, and partly free; partly in the flesh, form, and letter, partly in the spirit and power Which state is a state of confusion and mixture, not of purity. The death of Christ himself did not straightway determine the Legal administration: for the Apostles and Believers did continue to observe them until such time as an higher discovery was made known within them, and even then when an higher discovery was made known unto them, when they were perfectly under a Gospel state, yet had they but the first fruits of the spirit, and were in the dark in many things. Yea Saint Paul holds forth a state atteinable by the Saints which he himself came short of, Phil. 4. which John saw by the spirit of prophecy, Rev. 21.  
And if any shall deny this new state, let us reason a little from concessions and grants, and see what the enjoiment of a Christian may amount to. It is granted by all, and cannot be denied, that the letter of the word holds forth more glory than is yet attained, and that many prophecies are to be fulfilled relating to that glory of the Saints, among which that in the Revelations is one, as likewise that perfection is to be pressed after, Heb. 6. which certainly is more than uprightness; for the Apostle speaks to upright Saints. Now what this glory, these new heavens, this state of perfection, is the dispute and question of these days, which to me is resolved thus. That there is a glorious state of the Saints to be discovered in the last days, consisting not in a fleshly paradise, or material enjoiment, but in the true vision of God in the spirit and high light of heavenly glory. This state was the hope and joy of the Prophets, Apostles and other Christians who foresaw the day thereof. And well might it be so, considering the many mysteries contained therein, which no other state can attein unto. For here the Christian sees all things in the light of God. Here is opened unchangeable glory, and essential will, perfect freedom, restitution of all things, heavenly rest. There man ceaseth, questions are resolved, union cleared, and all expectations satisfied. And thus have you seen the first particular, wherein we must deny our Religion, it is in relation to Ordinances, and Forms, and administrations.  
Secondly in the second place, we must deny our religion in respect of the Scriptures, so as to rest upon the letter, and to prefer it above the teaching of the spirit in it. Hear this all you that idolise Scripture so much, as to prefer those writings before the God of the Apostles and Prophets: it is very possible that a man may attain to the literal knowledge of the Scriptures, and may speak largely of the history thereof, and draw conclusions, and raise many uses for the present support of a troubled soul, or for the restraining of lewd practices, and direction of a civil conversation; and yet they that speak, and they that hear, may be not only unacquainted with, but enemies to that spirit of truth; by which those Prophets and Apostles write. For it is not the Apostles writings, but the spirit that dwelleth in them, that did inspire their hearts, that gives life and peace to us all. And therefore when the Prophets Isa. Jerem. and Ezekiel, spoke what they saw from God, they spoke Thus saith the Lord, out of experience of what they saw and felt; and they were called true Prophets. But when others rose up that spoke their words & writings, and then applied them to another age and generation of men, saying, Thus saith the Lord, as the other did; they were called false Prophets; because they had seen nothing themselves of God, but walked by the legs and saw by the eyes of the true Prophets. For God doth not threaten death to every city of every age of the world, as to Sodom and Gomrorha; nei●her captivity to every people as he did to Israel under Nebuchadnezar in Babylon. Neither doth he promise victory, or deliverance to every army, or people, from enemies, as he did to Irsael in Jehosophats' time. Now if any man. speak and assures others of victory, when God purposes destruction; or speaks destruction, when God purposes a victory, these men speak at random, and though they speak the very words of the Scriptures, yet they speak not the mind of him that gives life, or destroys, and so having seen nothing from him, they are to be reckoned among the false Prophet's, they run before they are sent. A man may know the Scripture, and yet be an arch enemy to the God of the Scripture, as the Jews were. They knew the writings of Moses, who writ of Jesus Christ; and yet they persecuted and killed Jesus Christ, because they knew him not. For if they had known him to have been of the power of God, they would not have killed him. And so many nowadays do know Scripture, & yet may, & do persecute the spirit of the Scripture, through ignorance and unbelief. Truly friends, it is not the knowledge of the Scripture only, but the knowledge of the God of the Scripture, as God is pleased to make known himself by his mighty working in you, that gives life and peace to you. If you know and speak Scripture, and can see nothing of God; you are like Parrots, that speak the words of another, as you have been taught by humane education. But if the same anointing or power of God dwell in you, as did appear in the Prophets, and Apostles that writ; than you can see into that mystery of the Scripture; and so can speak the mind of the Scriptures; though you should never see, hear, nor read the Scripture from men. If your peace and comfort in God should only remain with you, while you are either hearing, or reading Scriptures, or while you have any society of such as can speak and discourse thereof; and then find again that your peace and comfort is gone, when you are deprived by any occasion of that society of Saints, truly let me tell you, that though you prize and know the Scripture, yet there is a great strangeness between, you and the God of the Scripture. Many enjoy outward reading, and hearing, and Saints Communion, and they are in peace, and they live in heaven as they conceive▪ and it is a sweet life, but it is not the life. For if the wisdom of God hedge up all these enjoyments with thorns, and leave these poor souls alone, (as it was Christ's case, all forsook him and fled,) why then here is your trial. For when God hath denied you the opportunities of hearing, reading, praying, and Saints fellowship; doth not your heart now look for those helps, and mourn in their absence. If it be so with you, (as I know it is with you) then where is your knowledge, experience, and peace, in and with God? It shows plainly that at such a time we sucked refreshment: from the creatures breasts, but not from God.  
We are now come to the ●ast particular, in respect of which we must deny our religion, and that is in respect of the Author of it, our blessed Saviour. And herein we must first deny all false Christ's; secondly all false opinions of the true Christ; thirdly, we must deny but in a Christian qualified sense, even the true Christ himself. First then we must deny all false Christ's, you will find false Christ's coming with signs and wonders Matt: 24. 24. For there shall arise false Christ's, and false Prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch that (if it were possible) they shall deceive the very elect. You shall have Christ's to do what you desire; Christ's to show you signs and wonders, as you gape after, but they shall be false Christ's; and this shall be your judgement. God in judgement hath false Christ's for false Seekers, false Inquirers. This is the plague of the flesh, it shall have what it doth desire, one that will open Scriptures, do mighty miracles, show great gifts, and yet all this is but a false Christ, and the very elect, so far as is possible, shall be deceived therewith. Therefore let it be our special care to deny these false Christ's, most especially in these antichristian times wherein we live; in which you shall have Christ's come upon you more than you would have. If you go into the desert there is Christ; if into the city there's Christ; some shall say lo here, others lo there, you shall have false Christ's every where, a false spirit, a false resurrection, a false glory, a false god, continually offering themselves unto you; lo here, lo there. Such excellent glorious high ravishing, wonderful discoveries of spiritual things, that they shall say plainly to you I am Christ. Such things so far excelling all that ever you have known, so heavenly, so glorious, as thereby you shall be able to say with open face, here is Christ. You shall have a light above men and Angels, and ye● all this shall b● but a delusion. I suppose you are not acquainted with this as yet; but you shall have ●uch glorious discoveries, in such illustrious brightness, majesty and authority, that shall absolutely say in you, I am the Christ: I am the Lord; I am the Son of the living God. In Fzekiel 28. 2. There's a type of the false appearance of God in the world;— Because thine heart is listed up, and thou haist said, I am a God, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas: yet thou art a man and not God, though thou set thine heart as the heart of God. You shall be so enlarged in understanding, that you shall think yourselves wiser than Daniel, that you shall see through all the mystery of Daniel, through all the dark prophecies of Daniel, as a clear thing; yet there will be a false Christ, an antichrist under all this: go not after, saith our Saviour Luke. 17. 23. And they shall say to you, see here, or see there: go not after them, nor follow them. Such appearances will present themselves unto you, and invite you to the discovery, and clear understanding of the dark places of Scripture, but saith God, follow them not; They are such as if it were possible, they should deceive the very elect.  
Now in the second place, as we must deny all false Christ's, so we must likewise deny all false opinions of the true Christ. To this purpose is that, Matt: 24. 23. Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo here is Christ, or there: believe it not. The sum is this, Christ will be spoken by no man, no man will be able to speak Christ, to say here is Christ; Christ will be understood and known by no man; while we are men we cannot understand and know Christ, till we are raised up in Christ, we understand not Christ. None but Christ can speak Christ, non but Christ, can declare Christ. It is not the Kingdom of God if man be able to declare it, and utter it. Let no man say lo here, or lo there. This is the wretchedness of man to be something in himself, to take part himself, and to give part to Christ; or to say here I am when he is not, or this is Christ when it is not Christ. It is the speech of some, I am in Christ, and Christ in me. He is in spiritual things, he is in preaching, and in praying, but he is not in outward things. Lo here he is, when I am wrapped up in heavenly enjoyments, but when I am in my business, in my calling, I cannot say he is here▪ This voice is the same with that in Luke: 17. 21. Neither shall they say, Lo here, or lo there: for behold the kingdom of God is within you. Lo here is Christ, and there is Christ, and here he is not, and there he is not. To shut Christ out of any place, out of any thing, these are false opinions of Christ. This is the wickedness of man to exclude or include Christ, to make him be one where and not another where. For Christ is weakness as well as strength, darkness as well as light, Christ in me, Christ in all. The Lord in triumph, the Lord crucified▪ the Lord exalting, the Lord humbling, the Lord in life, the Lord in death, the Lord here blessing, the Lord there cursing, this is Christ. If you cannot see him in one thing as well as in another, in wicked men as well as in good men, you cannot see him at all. Here's the narrowness of the heart of every man (a sensible creature, full of observation and his own reason) saying, Lo here is Christ, lo there is Christ; here he is not, there he is not, narrowing of him in their own observation: he is in me when I am so qualified, and he is not in me when I am not so qualified; not knowing that he is in some trampled on under the feet of his enemies, and yet there in glory. In some he is at the top, in some he is at the bottom, in some withering, in some bringing forth fruit; in some sweetening and moderateing their natures, in some letting forth wrath and enmity.  
In the third place, as we must deny all false Christ's, and all false opinions of the true Christ, so thirdly must we deny, but in a Christian qualified sense, even the true Christ himself. As thus for instance: The Saints and children of God shall not enjoy Christ, till they have denied Christ, and rejected him. You must forsake him, and leave him, and be Pharisees, and persecute him before you can be crowned with him; that which is in a high degree malignity in the Pharisees, is in a less degree in the Disciples; the Pharisees killing, and the Disciples departing, it's all flesh, man-weaknesse and ignorance. Before any man see the kingdom of God he must first reject it. Ye shall be offended at Christ, you shall stumble and fall, and reject him before you find him. You shall never be acquainted with Christ till you have denied him, and murdered him. I know you are ready to say, What must we be guilty of this wickedness? is there such wretchedness in the heart of man to do thus? Thus speaks the flesh; but th●s saith the Lord, the Son of man must suffer many things from this generation. Christ must suffer by some, and be rejected by others: Some are so wicked as to kill him, others so unbelieving as to forsake him; some revile him, others shake their heads, and cannot tell what to think of him: some cry out violently against him, others are not able to speak a word son him; you shall never see the Lord, till you can say, This is he whom I have denied, this is he whom I have pierced, this is he whom I have reviled and hated. Thus speaks Christ, if you stand upon terms and say, What we crucify Christ? God forbid: what we that are his own people, Jews and Disciples; we that are his own dear children, and shall be saved by him? To whom Christ will say, if I suffer not by you, I will not be a deliverer to you; I will save none but those that kill me. If you will not own that you have slain me, you shall not enjoy me: you shall never eat my flesh and drink my blood, unless you slay my flesh and spill my blood. Jesus Christ suffers by all men, which is clear in this, that in all ye have, in all that ye do, in all that ye are, in all that ye speak, nothing is free from the blood of Jesus; nothing that you do, speak, or act, in the highest, devoutest and most glorious way, is any thing else but murder and blood, killing the Lord of life. Yea it is necessary he must suffer by you, he will not find a throne in you till he hath found a grave in you, he will not be raised in you till he hath been dead and buried in you. You shall never see him in the Resurrection, till you see him killed, and then he will rise again in your hearts, with healing in his wings, to your everlasting joy and comfort.  
Then secondly we must deny Christ according to the ministration of the flesh, according to the history, and the reason is, because that the whole history of Christ will profit you nothing, nor all that you know, except you find experimentally the same things done in you by the Spirit. I beseech you therefore be not offended when as we say, that Christ according to the history of him only, and according to his ministration in the flesh, is but a form in which God doth appear to us, and in which God doth give us a map of salvation; thou knowest it not to be thy real salvation, except it be revealed within thee by the Spirit. Jesus Christ is called the image of the invisible God. God comes forth to be seen in the flesh of Christ as in an image, it is not the naked appearance of God, but it is an image or representation of God. Now we know the image serves in the absence of the lively face of the living person, and so do all these same transactions of Jesus Christ, they serve till the kingdom of God become to us in the spirit. And therefore as Christ said, we may be bold to say after him, The flesh profiteth nothing. If you only know Christ as dying and rising without you, it will profit you nothing, unless you know him as dying and rising within you. Any man is capable of remembering the story of Christ, and rehearsing it if he have but common reason, and can say as well as another that Christ died for him, and can throw himself upon Christ, and can hang upon Christ, this is not faith, this is not salvation; for saith James, Faith without works is dead: and Rom. 8. 2. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, hath `made me free from the law of sin and death: he doth not say that such a proposition or text of the Gospel did set him free; he doth not say, that the hearing that Christ died for the sins of men doth set him free. No: there was the Spirit of life in Christ, as well as the law or letter, it is that entails life upon Christ and his seed. There is an outward Covenant, and there is an inward Spirit: The outward Covenant is this, I will be thy God, and the God of thy seed: and may not any man pretend to be in this Covenant, of this seed? do not thousands profess themselves to be so? Do not thousands in the world say, Lord, Lord, Lord, and press to enter into heaven? We cannot put a difference betwixt one or other except we know this truth: for they say they are within the Covenant, and of Christ's seed: and what hold they forth for this, they hold forth the confession of Christ, and say that he died for their sin, and rose for their justification; and this they believe, and upon this they lay their souls for salvation. May not the veriest hypocrite do so as well as the truest Saint? but here's that which puts the difference, when the spirit of Christ brings this Covenant to the heart of a poor creature, when the Spirit of Adoption, the Spirit of sonship, revealing God as our Father, revealing God in Union with us, our righteousness, & our strength, he doth indeed seal us to the day of Redemption; he sets apart Christ's sheep, and this distinguisheth them from the other. So that if you lay salvation upon an historical Christ, you'll be deceived. If you would have that in which you may confide, you must have Christ revealed in you in the Spirit; you must have the same Spirit of Faith that was in Christ, and the same spirit of power that wrought in him: you must have the same eternal spirit, by which you must offer up your bodies, offer up your flesh to God as a sacrifice; yea yourselves, and your own righteousness; this is true salvation, this is salvation manifested unto life.  
To make this yet more clear I shall show you the difference between Christ in the flesh, and Christ in the Saints; between that work of God within us, and that work of God in Christ; the latter is the truth of the former: Sanctifiethem through thy truth, Joh. 17. 17. that is, do thou act those things really in them, which are done in a figure for them upon me: there is the truth. I desire to clear this to you by some familiar experience. You know that Jesus Christ is said to die for our sins, and rise for our justification. Here is now Christ in the flesh, here is his ministration. Why now hereupon salvation is preached to men, and they are told that God is reconciled, for he hath sent his Son; there is nothing to be done, God is reconciled, his justice satitfied, only believ. Here is the outward difpensation. But now a poor soul, notwithstanding all this, lies under the guilt and weight of sin, whereby he cannot believe, or take comfort in these glad tidings. Do you not see that there is need of another ministration? Is there not need of the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, as well as the proposition of the Gospel. You come and show a poor soul the proposition of the Gospel, that whosoever believeth in Christ shall have eternal life. Yet all this while the poor soul lies dead; till not only the letter, but the spirit of the Gospel comes and appears to him; till Christ appears not only in his first Court, that is his own flesh, or the letter of the Gospel, but the inmost place of all, that is, in this man's conscience. For we may allude to Heb. 9 24. That Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. These words are spoke figuratively. It is true he went visibly into heaven, that is a place remote from their sight, a cloud received him out of their sight. The true heaven, and that heaven where Christ doth appear to the comfort and relief of a poor soul; is the conscience of a poor sinner, and that is called heaven, because as heaven is the place of God; so is the heart of man. He is said ●o be the searcher of the heart, God sits there and wounds, and heals there, that is God's true place. It is not in the understanding of a man in the Notions there; but it is in the heart of man, there it is gone. Christ in the spirit is in the heart of his people, that is Christ's place, and there it is that Christ Jesus speaks a word for a poor soul▪ there it is, that Christ Jesus sits as King in our conscience. Christ may offer himself long enough in the letter, in the history of the Gospel; but if he appear not in the spirit, and sit in our consciences to quiet them; we shall never have any true understanding of the word. Now for this reason I shall desire you to look within yourselves, and I make no question but if you do wait upon God without prejudicated spirits; he will clear this truth unto you.  
And now while I come to some application of this truth, I shall desire you in the fear of God not to mistake me. Let us take heed of idolising even the humanity of Jesus Christ himself, of idolising his doings and his sufferings. We see God through these doings and sufferings of Jesus Christ as through a glass: but it is not blasphemy to say, that a believer may come to see a love born unto him above and before the manifestation of it in the sufferings of Jesus Christ; he may see it in God himself, though by Christ. Do not think you know so much as you need to know in knowing the flesh of Christ, in knowing the man Christ Jesus; for unless you know God in his appearance, under that form you mistake Christ, and make him an Idol. I am nothing saith Christ; and he that sends is greater than he that is sent▪ If God be greater than Christ, than Christ himself is but a medium through which you come to be acquainted with God, and in which you must not rest. Take heed of being offended when you shall hear such like doctrine as this, that the sufferings of Christ for us were as it were but a parable in which God spoke to us; and that God's heart was not set upon the having of a little blood for the sins of the people, but that herein he premeditately (if we look upon it in the original contrivance) would commend his love to us, and herein (if we relate to the lapsed estate of man) he considers us poor creatures as we are, and speaks to our childishness and weakness, who being made under such a Law, and having incurred the curse, could not see how there could be a reconciliation without bloodshedding. Be not offended when you hear that there is a greater work done by the Spirit in the Saints, than was the offering up the flesh of Christ. That there is a greater sacrifice offered up to God, when as the old Adam, man's own righteousness and strength is crucified and offered up to God; I say a greater sacrifice than the sacrificing of the flesh of Christ himself, if you take the flesh of Christ without the mystery. For that sacrifice was indeed the root as well as the figure of this sacrifice.  
And in the second place, if so be you need to be warned of idolising the humanity of Christ, much more of idolising other forms. There are two sort of forms wherein God appears to the world. There is the humanity of Christ, which is the highest and most immediate form and appearance of God; and there are ordinances in which God appears as it were at the second hand, and by reflection; as when the Sun appears by the Rainbow, or when it makes another Sun like its self in a watery cloud, which is but the Sun by reflection: so Ordinances are but the shadow as it were of the image; and thus Christ is the image of the Father, but Ordinances are but shadows of that image; therefore take heed of idolising Forms. Your interest lies in knowing the Father, not in knowing any Form whatever. And take heed of censuring and judging spiritual discoveries; take heed of being offended, if we say there is an higher thing than Ordinances, then Fasting and Praying, yea then Believing too; and that is, seeing the Father, and knowing the Father without a Form, manifesting and revealing himself in his own immediate light.  
Now by the by, let me give you this necessary caution; let no man think that there is no use of Christ, and no use of prayer, and preaching, and other Ordinances. No, this cannot be inferred from the Doctrine, this only may be inferred that this is not that glorious rest, where a Christian is to sit down. Forms are but helps, and God doth by Forms, bring us to know himself without a Form: and no man knows the Father, but he that knows him by Christ whom he did send, therefore you cannot cast away those Forms; the Scriptures will last so long as there is aught of them to be fulfilled. But that which we are contending towards in all these means is the knowing of the Father; and then we shall see that simplicity and unity that is in the truth, than we shall see all those knots loosed, and dark ways opened; then we shall see that all those things of Christ coming, and dying and suffering for us, were but as it were parables. Now this is the sum of the Gospel, that God loves believers, and is their righteousness, and their strength, and love, and faith; and all not thus resolved into the Father, is but a parable that doth cloud the Father. They were not ordained to cloud the Father, but they do through our weakness cloud the Father from us. They were ordained that they might insinuate and convey according to our capacities the knowledge of the Father into us. But as I said before, in all Forms there is weakness, and Forms shall be done away, as time hastens to be no more, and then God shall be all in all.  
I have already brought you up four of those five stairs or degrees of Christian Self-denial: there remains only the last, the Denial of our salvation and heaven its self for Christ, of which but in a word. Oh what a stir there is with Christians to resign up a few lusts to God which notwithstanding they know, and sensibly feel, that it is their greatest happiness to part with, and yet how far are they from attaining even this also; but who in this Nation dares resign up his righteousness in Christ, and go and lie in the grave with the wicked? It is no very easy task with Christians to give up themselves to God at present for him to do what he will with them; so he will bring them to heaven at the last. Thou canst trust God, O Christian, in this present appearance of God to thee, as a Saviour of thee: thou canst love this sweetness, kindness, grace and goodness of his to thee; thou canst give up thyself to him to do what he will with thee, so he he will bring thee to this salvation; this thou hast attained to in some good measure, with much difficulty and striving: but who dares say unto God, take me and throw me into hell, and let me lit there till I fall in love with it for thy sake, till I come to know and feel thee there, till I can embrace thee and hug thee there, and fall in love with thee there, and be able to enjoy thee in the midst of those everlasting torments? Ah miserable is that man that is afraid of hell, and is fain to court God to free him from hell, and to cross and deny himself for fear of being in danger of hell. That life deserveth not the name of life, that can lose any of its strength, vigour, pleasure, sweetness, enjoyments, in the midst of everlasting burnings. For if sin could defile God, where were his holiness? and if death or hell could entrench upon his life or joys, (which life of his, is also made our life by his Son) any where to damp or interrupt that life, or those joys, that life would most certainly prove but a weak a perishing life, and those joys frail momentary joys, obnoxious to the intermixtures of death and sorrow. And just the very same may be said of our life, and our joys; of our salvation, and our heaven its self. If thou be'st wise then, deny thyself in all these things; in thy will and affections; in thy gifts and thy graces; in thy religion; and even in thy very salvation and heaven its self: resign them up all unto Christ, lay them all at Christ's feet. Lest whilst thou lookest for most happiness from God, for greatest nearness to and intimacy with God; thou shouldst be cast behind his back for too much prising and over-valuing these things. 'Tis true, perchance that thou hast sweetly enjoyed God, not only at a distance in longing desires, but nearer at hand in close embraces: gifts, graces, ordinances, duties, spiritual-exercises of all kinds, you have been well acquainted with; and hast known how to suck life from them; but now you must deny all these, you must follow Christ, and learn to suck life even from life it's self: being dead in yourselves to all these, you must have no party, no interest, no principle, no will, no desire, no gift, no grace, no salvation, no heaven of your own; but you must lie like the clay before the Potter, freely delivering up yourselves into his hands, to be new moulded any way, into any form he himself hath a mind to. All the creatures must pass away and be denied, and whatsoever appears in you, and to you, must be God: the creature must be swallowed up; there must be nothing left but the Lord in being, the Lord in motion and operation: even so Lord Jesus for thy mercy sake. Amen.  
FINIS.   

Wright's 5 Sermons in five several Styles or Ways of Preaching.