by any thing which he suffered, that his merits, or his works of supererogation should be applied to you: and if he did not suffer for you, if all that any Paul (much less any Ignatius) could do, were but enough, and too little for himself, then you are not baptized into his name, nor to be denominate by him.

This is then to be baptized into Christ's death, habere, et reddere testimonium, Christum pro me mortuum, to be sure that Christ died for me; and to be ready to die for him; so, that I may fulfil his sufferings, and may think that all is not done, which belongs to my redemption, except I find a mortification in myself. Not that any mortification of mine works any thing, as a cause of my redemption, but as an assurance and testimony of it; ut sit pignus et sigillum redemptionis; it is a pledge, and it is a seal of my redemption.

Christ calls his death a baptism; so St. Augustine calls our baptism a death, Quod crux Christo, et sepulchrum, id nobis baptisma; Baptism to us, says he, is our cross, and our passion, and our burial; that is, in that, we are conformed to Christ as he suffered, died, and was buried. Because if we be so baptized into his name, and into his death, we are thereby dead to sin, and have died the death of the righteous.

Since then baptism is the death of sin, and there cannot be this death, this conquest, this victory over sin, without faith, there must necessarily faith concur with this baptism; for if there be not faith, (none in the child, none in the parents, none in the sureties, none in the church) then there is no baptism performed; now in the child there is none actually; in the sureties we are not sure there is any; for their infidelity cannot impeach the sacrament; the child is well baptized though they should be misbelievers; for when the minister shall ask them, Dost thou believe in God? dost thou renounce the devil? perchance they may lie in own behalfs; perchance they do not believe, they do not renounce, but they speak truth in the behalf of the child, when they speak in the voice of the church who receives this child for her child, and binds herself to exhibit and reach out to that child her spiritual paps, for her future nourishment thereof. How comes it to pass, says St. Augustine, that when a man presents another man's child at the font, to be baptized, if the minister should ask him, Shall this man child be a valiant

man, or a wise man, shall this woman child, be a chaste, and a continent woman? the surety would answer, I cannot tell, and yet, if he be asked, of that child, of so few days old, Doth that child believe in God now, will he renounce the devil hereafter? the surety answers confidently, in his behalf, for the belief, and for the renouncing: How comes this to pass, says St. Augustine? He answers to this, that as sacramentum corporis Christi, est secundum modum corpus Christi, so sacramentum fidei est fides; as the sacrament of the body, and blood of Christ, is, in some sense, and in a kind, the body and blood of Christ, says Augustine, so in the sacrament of faith, says he, (that is, baptism) there is some kind of faith. Here is a child born of faithful parents; and there is the voice of God, who hath sealed a covenant to them, and their seed; here are sureties, that live (by God's gracious spirit) in the unity, and in the bosom of the church: and so, the parents present it to them, they present it to the church, and the church takes it into her care; it is still the natural child, of the parents who begot it, it is the spiritual child of the sureties that present it; but it is the Christian child of the church, who in the sacrament of baptism, gives it a new inanimation, and who, if either parents or sureties should neglect their parts, will have a care of it, and breed it up to a perfection, and full growth of that faith, whereof it hath this day an inchoation and beginning.

As then we have said, that baptism is a death, a death of sin, and as we said before, sin dies not without faith, so also can there be no death of sin, without sorrow, and contrition, which only washes away sin: as therefore we see the church, and Christ's institution, furnishes this child with faith, which it hath not of itself, so let us bring to this action that sorrow and that condoling, that we produce into the world such miserable wretches, as even by peccatum involuntarium, by that sin, to which no act, nay no will of theirs concurred, that is, original sin, are yet put into the state of damnation.

But let us also rejoice, in our own, and this child's behalf, that as we that have been baptized, so this chile, that shall be, have, and shall put on Christ Jesus in baptism. Both as a garment, for sacramenta sunt vestimenta2, as Christ is a garment, so the sacra

ments are Christ's garment, and as such a garment; as ornat militem, and convincit desertores, it gives him, that continues in God's battle, a dignity, and discovers him that forsakes God's tents, to be a fugitive; baptism is a garland, in which two ends are brought together, he begins aright, and perseveres, so ornat militem, it is an honour to him, that fights out in God's battle, but convincit desertorem, baptism is our prest-money, and if we forsake our colours, after we have received that, even that forfeits our lives; our very having been baptized, shall aggravate our condemnation. Yea it is such a garment, as those of the children of Israel in the wilderness, which are (by some expositors) thought to have grown all the forty years, with their bodies; for so by God's blessed provision, shall grace grow with this infant, to the life's end. And both we and it, shall not only put on Christ as a garment, but we shall put on his person, and we shall stand before his Father, with the confidence and assurance of bearing his person, and the dignity of his innocence.

SERMON LXXXVIII.

PREACHED AT ESSEX-HOUSE, AT THE CHURCHING OF
LADY DONCASTER.

CANTICLES V. 3.

I have washed my feet, how shall I defile them?

ALL things desire to go to their own place, and that is but the effect of nature; but if man desires to go the right way, that is an effect of grace, and of religion. A stone will fall to the bottom naturally, and a flame will go upwards naturally; but a stone cares not whether it fall through clean water, or through mud; a flame cares not whether it pass through pure air, or cloudy; but a Christian, whose end is heaven, will put himself into a fair way towards it, and according to this measure, be pure as his Father in heaven is pure. That which is our end, salvation, we

use to express in schools by these two terms, we call it visionem Dei, the sight of God, and we call it unionem, an union with God; we shall see God, and we shall be united to God: for our seeing, we shall see him sicuti est, as he is'; which we cannot express, till we see him; Cognoscam ut cognitus, I shall know as I am known, which is a knowledge reserved for that school, and a degree for that commencement, and not to be had before. Moses obtained a sight of God here, that he might see posteriora, God's hinder parts; and if we consider God in posterioribus, in his later works, in the fulfilling of all his prophecies concerning our redemption, how he hath accomplished in novissimis, in the later times, all that which he spake ab initio, by the mouth of his prophets, which have been since the world began, if we see God in them, it is a great beam of that visio beatifica, that beatifical sight of God in heaven; for herein we see the whole way of our salvation, to be in Christ Jesus; all promise, all performance, all prophecy; all history concern us, in and by him. And then for

that union with God, which is also our salvation (as this vision is) when we shall be so united, as that we shall follow the Lamb whithersoever he goes, though that union be unexpressible here, yet here there is an union with God, which represents that too. Such an union, as that the church of which we are parts, is his spouse, and that is eadem caro, the same body with him; and such an union, as that the obedient children of the church are idem spiritus cum domino, we are the same body, and the same spirit: so united, as that by being sowed in the visible church, we are semen Dei, the seed of God', and by growing up there in godliness and holiness, we are participes divinæ naturæ, partakers of the divine nature itself. Now these two unions, which represent our eternal union with God (that is, the union of the church to him, and the union of every good soul in the church to him) is the subject of this song of songs, this heavenly poem, of Solomon's; and our baptism, at our entrance into this world, is a seal of this union; our marriage, in the passage of this world, is a sacrament of this union; and that which seems to be our dissolution, (our death) is the strongest band of this union, when

11 John iii. 2.

1 Cor. xiii. 12.

3 Exod. xxxiii, 23.

41 John iii. 9.

we are so united, as nothing can disunite us more. Now, for uniting things in this world, we are always put to employ baser, and coarser stuff, to unite them together, than they themselves; if we lay marble upon marble, how well soever we polish the marble, yet we must unite them with mortar: if we unite riches to riches, we temper a mortar (for the most part) of our own covetousness, and the loss, and oppressing of some other men; if we unite honours to honours, titles to titles, we temper a mortar, (for the most part) of our own ambition, and the supplanting, or excluding of some other men; but in the uniting of a Christian soul to Christ Jesus, here is no mortar, all of one nature; nothing but spirit, and spirit, and spirit, the soul of man to the Lord Jesus, by the Holy Ghost. Worldly unions have some corrupt foulness in them, but for this spiritual union, Lavi pedes, I have washed my feet, how shall I defile them?

Which words, though in the rigour of the coherence, and connexion of this Scripture, they imply a delay in the spouse of Christ, and so in every soul too, that when Christ called her, the soul was not ready to come forth to him, but made her excuses, that she had put off her coat, and was loath to rise to put it on, that she had washed her feet, and was loath to rise, and foul them again, yet because the excuse itself, (if it were an excuse) hath a piety, and a religious care in it, the fathers for the most part, pretermit that weakness that produced an excuse, and consider in expositions, the care that the soul had, not to defile herself again, being once washed. St. Gregory says, that the soul had laid off, Omnia externa, quæ non tam ornant quam onerant, all outward ornaments, which are rather incumbrances, than ornaments; and St. Ambrose says, Pedes lavi, dum egrederer de corporis contubernio, When I departed from the conferation of my body, and the pampering of that, I washed my feet, Quomodo in tenebrosum carcerem reverterer? And why should I return into that dark, and dirty prison, again, the love of mine own body? Pursuing therefore their pious acceptation of these words, we have in them two festivals of the soul, a resurrection, and an asscension of it; this soul hath raised itself from the dirt and mud of this world, larit pedes, she hath washed her feet, and then she hath ascended to a resolution of keeping herself in that