one of these married angels, and Azael was another. But then all those, who do understand these words, the sons of God, to be intended of angels, who being sent down to protect men, fell in love with women, and married them, all, I say, agree, that those angels that did so, never returned to God again, but fell, with the first fallen, under everlasting condemnation. So that still, the angels of God in heaven, those angels to whom we shall be like in the resurrection, do not marry, not so much as in any such mistaking; they do not, because they need not; they need not, because they need no second eternity, by the continuation of children; for, says St. Luke, they cannot die. Adam's first immortality was but this, Posse non mori, That he needed not to have died, he should not have died; the angels' immortality, and ours, when we shall be like them, in the resurrection, is, non posse mori, that we cannot die, for, whosoever dies, is Homicida sui, says Tertullian; He kills himself, and sin is his sword: in heaven there shall no such sword be drawn; we need not say, that the angels in heaven have, that we when we shall be like them, in the resurrection, shall so invest an immortality in our nature, as that God could not inflict death upon them, or us there, if we sinned but because no sin shall enter there, no death shall enter there neither, for, death is the wages of sin. Not that no sin could enter there, if we were left to ourselves; for, in that place, angels did sin; (and, Fatendum est angelos natura mutabiles, says St. Augustine, Howsoever angels be changed in their condition, they retain still the same nature, and by nature they are mutable) but that God hath added another prerogative, by way of confirmation, to that state; so, as that that grace which he gives us here, which is, that nothing shall put a necessity of sinning upon us, or that we must needs sin, God multiplies upon us so there, as that we can conceive no inclination to sin. Therein we shall be like the angels, that we cannot die; and the nearer we come to that state in this life, the liker we are to those angels here. Now, beloved, only he that is dead already, cannot die. He that in a holy mortification is dead the death of the righteous, dead to sin, he lives, (shall we dare to say so? Yes, we may) he lives a blessed death, for such a death is true life: and by such a heavenly death, death

19 Drusius in Sulpit. Sever.

of the righteous, death to sin, he is in possession of a heavenly life here, in an inchoation, though the consummation, and perfection be reserved for the next world; which is our last circumstance, and the conclusion of all, at the resurrection we shall be like the angels; till then we shall not; and therefore must not look for angelical perfections here, but bear one another's infirmities.

It is as yet but in petition, Fiat voluntas, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven: and as long as there is an earth it will be but in petition; his will will not be done in earth as it is in heaven; when all is heaven, to his saints, all will be well; but not all till then. In the mean time, remember all, (especially you, whose sacramental, that is, mysterious, and significative union now is a type of your union with God in as near, and as fast a band, as that of angels, for you shall be as the angels of God in heaven) that the office of the angels in this world, is to assist, and to supply defects. You are both of noble extraction; there is no defect in that; you need not supply one another with honour: you are both of religious education; there is no defect in that; you need not supply one another with fundamental instructions. Both have your parts in that testimony which St. Gregory gave of your nation, at Rome, Angli angeli, you have a loveliness fit for one another. But, though I cannot name, no nor think anything, wherein I should wish that angelical disposition of supporting, or supplying defects, yet, when I consider, that even he that said Ego et Pater unum sumus, I and the Father are one, yet had a time to say, Utquid dereliquisti? My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? I consider thereby, that no two can be so made one in this world, but that that unity may be, though not dissolved, no nor rent, no nor endangered, yet shaked sometimes by domestic occasions, by matrimonial incumbrances, by perverseness of servants, by impertinencies of children, by private whisperings, and calumnies of strangers. And therefore, to speak not prophetically, that any such thing shall fall, but provisionally, if any such thing should fall, my love, and my duty, and my text, bids me tell you, that perfect happiness is to be stayed for, till you be as the angels of God in hearen; here, it is a fair portion of that angelical happiness, if you be always ready

to support, and supply one another in any such occasional weaknesses. The God of heaven multiply the present joy of your parents, by that way, of making you joyful parents also; and recompense your obedience to parents, by that way, of giving you obedient children too. The God of heaven so join you now, as that you may be glad of one another all your life; and when he who hath joined you, shall separate you again, establish you with an assurance, that he hath but borrowed one of you, for a time, to make both your joys the more perfect in the resurrection. The God of heaven make you always of one will, and that will always conformable to his; conserve you in the sincere truth of his religion; feast you with the best feast; peace of conscience; and carry you through the good opinion, and love of his saints in this world, to the association of his saints, and angels, and one another, in the resurrection, and everlasting possession of that kingdom, which his Son, our Saviour, Christ Jesus hath purchased for us, with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood. Amen.

SERMON LXXXII.

PREACHED AT A MARRIAGE.

GENESIS ii. 18.

And the Lord God said, It is not good, that the man should be alone; I will make him a help, meet for him.

IN the creation of the world, when God stocked the earth, and the sea, with those creatures, which were to be the seminary, and foundation, and root of all that should ever be propagated in either of those elements, and when he had made man, to rule over them, he spoke to man, and to other creatures, in one and the same phrase, and form of speech, Crescite, et multiplicamini, Be fruitful, and multiply; and thereby imprinted in man, and in

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other creatures, a natural desire to conserve, and propagate their kind by way of generation. But after God had thus imprinted in man, the same natural desire of propagation, which he had infused into other creatures too, after he had communicated to him that blessing, (for it is so said, God blessed them, and said, Be fruitful, and multiply') till an ability and a desire of propagating their kind, was infused into the creature, there is no mention of any blessing in the creation; after God had made men partakers of that blessing, that natural desire of propagation, he takes a farther care of man, in giving him a proper and peculiar blessing, in contracting and limiting that natural desire of his he leaves all other creatures to their general use and execution of that commission, crescite et multiplicamini, the male was to take the female when and where their natural desire provoked them; but, for man, adduxit Deus ad Adam; God left not them to go to one another, but God brought the woman to the man: and so this conjunction, this desire of propagation, though it be natural in man, as in other creatures, by his creation, yet it is limited by God himself, to be exercised only between such persons, as God hath brought together in marriage, according to his institution, and ordinance. Though then societies of men do grow up, and spread themselves into towns, and into cities, and into kingdoms, yet the root of all societies is in families, in the relation between man and wife, parents and children, masters and servants: so though the state of the children of God, in this world be dignified by the name of a kingdom, (for so we pray by Christ's own institution, Thy kingdom come, and so Christ says, Ecce regnum, The kingdom of God is amongst you3) and though the state of God's children here, be called a city, a new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven, and in David, glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God, yet for all these glorious titles of city and kingdom, we must remember, that it is called a family too; the household of the faithful: and so the apostle says, in preferring Christ before Moses, that Christ as the Son was over God's house, whose house we are. So that, both of civil and of spiritual societies, the first root is a family; and of families, the

first root is marriage; and of marriage, the first root that grows out into words, is in this text; and the Lord God said, It is not good, &c.

If we should employ this exercise only upon these two general considerations, first, that God puts even his care and his study to find out what is good for man, and secondly, that God doth provide and furnish whatsoever he finds to be necessary, faciam, I will make him a helper, though they be common places, we are bound to thank God that they are so; that it is a common place to God, that he ever does it towards us, that it is a common place to us, that we ever acknowledge it in him. But you may be pleased to admit a more particular distribution. For, upon the first, will be grounded this consideration, that in regard of the public good, God pretermits private, and particular respects; for God doth not say, non bonum homini, it is not good for man to be alone, man might have done well enough so; nor God does not say, non bonum hunc hominem, it is not good for this, or that particular man to be alone; but non bonum, hominem, it is not good in the general, for the whole frame of the world, that man should be alone, because then both God's purposes had been frustrated, of being glorified by man here, in this world, and of glorifying man, in the world to come; for neither of these could have been done, without a succession, and propagation of man; and therefore, non bonum hominem, it was not good, that man should be alone. And then upon the second consideration, will arise these branches; first, that whatsoever the defect be, there is no remedy, but from God; for it is, faciam, I will do it. Secondly, that even the works of God, are not equally excellent; this is but faciam, it is not faciamus; in the creation of man, there is intimated a consultation, a deliberation of the whole Trinity; in the making of woman, it is not expressed so; it is but faciam. And then, that that is made here, is but adjutorium, but an accessory, not a principal; but a helper. First the wife must be so much, she must help; and then she must be no more, she must not govern. But she cannot be that, except she have that quality, which God intended in the first woman, adjutorium simile sibi, a helper fit for him: for otherwise he will ever return, to the bonum esse solum, it had been better for him, to have been