Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

Herom. I am weary to beare them.` Laboravi fustinens, So the Prophet Malachie complaineth.

Mal. 367.

[ocr errors]

Te have wearied the Lord with your words: yet ye say, wherein have we wearied him? When yee fay, every one that doth evill is good in the fight of the Lord, and he delighteth in them. or where is the God of judgement? Three things weary God.

1. When we multiply our own fins.

12. When we tender God fervice continuing in fin..

10

When we juftifie finners, and flatter them in their fins,as though God had accepted them.

2. Peccatum onus est hominibus, Sin is a burthen to men. Chrift calleth none to him but fuch as are weary of this burthen of finne to fuch he promiseth refreshing,

Ask the first finners if they found not their fin their burthen, when they hid themselves from the prefence of God.

Ask the firft murtherer, if any place were fafe for him, who thought and faid that whofoever met him would kill

him.

They that think that Lamech kild Cain, read the text : occidi hominem in vulnus meum.

Ask Iofephs brethren, when they faw their fad constraint in Egypt, both at their first coming to buy corne, and after the death of their father, if the trefpaffe against their brother IoSeph did not lie heavy upon them...

Ask the tender confcience of any of Gods children, if any weight or burthen be like unto that of the body of finne, and if he do not cry with Paul, Quis liberabit me? Who shall deliver

me.

Till we come to this, to feele the burthen of finne, and to be weary of it, we are the fons of wrath, and every man may call himfelf Ταλαίπωρον, Α wretched man.

Here is pride and vanity cloathing of us, here is gluttony and drunkenneffe feeding of us, here is the mouth full of evil words, the hands of violence or bribes, giving or taking; the day, the night, the yeare, spent in pleaiure and recreations; Gods Sabbath is neglected, Gods Word not regarded,the time served, the humours of finful men obferved, and when these things are not burthen

[ocr errors]

:

burthen to the bearers thereof, there is wrath gone forth from the Lord against them and if timely repentance do not stand in the gap, it will break in upon them that do fuch things, like a flood, and no man fhall escape that is purfued by this judge

ment.

Let me therefore entreat you to hear a word of exhortation, Give not the members of your bodyes fervants to finne.

Give not; for indeed, what have you to give, feeing you brought nothing with you into the world? and what have yee that you have not received? or if you will needs be giving, hands off, give not the members of your body, for your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, or should be, if you would give fo comfortable a gueft welcome; or if you will give your bodies away, do them not the wrong to put them out to fervice; for they are bought with a price, the dearest pennyworth that was ever bought; their liberty coft the binding, their fanitie the breaking, their ease the smart and aking, their life the death of the holiest body that ever lived upon earth.

Or if you will needs give your body a fervant,let it not be to fin, for that is ponderous in the weight,noyfom in the ftinch, bitter in the fmart; the burthen of finne is the wrath of God.

Here let me awake your thankful hearts to an acknowledging confideration of that great redemption performed by Jefus Chrift to his Church, who came to take this burthen upou him, and to cafe us of it; Agnus qui tollit peccata, the Lamb that taketh away fins from us, that he might wafh us in his bloud: upon himself he bore our infirmities, and God made the iniquitie of us all to meet on him.

He did not rob us as Ifrael did the Egyptians, of our jewels of filver, and jewels of gold; he only took our infirmities and our fins from us; and whereas once we might have faid with Caffiodore,

Quantitas delicti menfura eft repudii, the quantity of the fault is the measure of the judgment; for by our fins we might have taken measure of the wrath and judgment of God; now there is an unfcaled height, an unfounded depth, an unbounded bredth of love which hath faid to the Church of the whole burthen of

B. 3

fin,

1. Homini,

Pfal. 18.

fin, Cantantes ut eamus, ego hoc te fafce levabo, let us fing as we go, I will cafe thee of this burthen,

2 The punishment here threatned is a burthen to man. Iffacher under his double burthen, faith; that reft is good, he found rest amongst his burthens.

But there is no peace to the wicked man;a finner that hath any fenfe of fin will fay as David,Non eft pax offibus meis propter peccatum; There is no reft in my bones,because of my firme, he was fo overcharged with the fear of Gods judgments, that fometimes he doubted that God had forgotten to be mercifull, and that he would be no more intreated.

who can ftand in thy fight when thou art angry ?

I can tell you who could not ftand; not the Angels that kept not their first estate, heaven; was too hot for them, God caft them down, ejecit, conjecit, dejecit, rejecit, fubjecit; and char anger is yet their burthen and fhall be for ever.

The first tenants of Paradife could not; they fled from the face of God, and the curfe of God lay heavie upon them.

Cain confest, his punishment more then he could bear; the old World all but eight perfons funk under this wrath, and were drowned in the great deep.

The tranfgreffing Cities fuffered the confuming and tormenting flames of fire and brimflone.

The very earth trembled and shake, the foundations also of the mountains moved and quaked, because bee was angry; fmoake went out at his nofthrils, and confuming fire out of mouth.

Beloved, let me tell you what I fear; never any times did more pur almighty God to it to reveal his anger from heaven, and to raine down burthens upon the fons of men,for the clearer the light of the Gospel shineth, the more his expectation is of walking in the light; but our knowledge is rather floating in the braine then working in the obedience of our life. Ra

Chrilt faith, It shall be easier for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of the Lord, then for those of that generation to whom the light appeared in his Miniftery fo clear and glorious; and yet they love darkneffe better then light, because their works were evill. Great

Great is the weight of a milftone hanged about our neck, and wee caft therewith into the bottome of the fea: yet the burthen of Gods wrath hee fayeth, is much heavier then. that.

And yet we make no care nor conscience, and live without fear of this anger; we do this and that great wickedneffe, and fin against God,and provoke him to anger with our actions and inventions, as if the Lord faw not this, as if there were no knowledge in the moft High;

As if he could not pluck his hand out of his bofome, as if we had tollen away his fword, and his quiver full of deadly ar

rowes.

I beseech you my brethren; do not fo wickedly; your oaths and bifalphemies, your pride and vanities, your crueltie and oppreffions, your frauds and circumventions, your abufe of Gods good creatures in excefle and wantonneffe, they are all gone up to heaven, and awake vengeance and chaleng the God of mercy to declane his juftice.

Doth not fome part of the Church now in the Palatinate and in Bohemia groan under the burthen of warre, wherein the goods, the liberties, the lives of men, Chriftian men,profeffours; of the fame faith, with us do lie at the stake,and bloud, toucheth bloud.

Doth not our neighbour Church in France tremble for feare of a new maffacre? hath not the fword of violence tafted already of Proteftant blood? do not the Jefuites the incendiaries of the Christian world, blow the coal and incenfe the King thereof to graffation and deftruction of all that have not the marke of the beaft, either openly in their foreheads or fecretly in their hands? and dare we anger our God who gives us the early and the latter main, who crownes our land with peace, and the daughter of peace plenty!!

Shall we flatter our felves, and fay that although we do wickedly, this burthen fhall not fall upon us? let us pray for them, and amend our own lives, and fin no more least fome worfe judgment do fail upon us, for we fhall elte finde too late that the wrath and judgment of God is too heavie a burthen for us to bear..

2. Deo.

2 The wrath and judgments of God, they are a burthen to God, he profeffeth it.

As I live faith the Lord, I delight not in the death of a finner: he calleth upon his Ifrael, why will yee perish O house of Ifrael?

When he punished his people, how heavy was the burthen of their punishment upon him?

He ímarted under his own rod; the burthens that he put upon his people wearied him.

Ifay. 1.5. Why should you be stricken any more? The whole head is ficke and the whole heart is faint?

I Dco.

From the foal of the foot to the head, there is no foundneffe in it, &c.

Truly God doth bear with us in a double sense; for he doth forbear our punishment in expectation of our amendment, and he doth fuffer with us in our fufferings; he is our father and every stripe he layeth on us fmarteth upon him..

O greive not the Spirit of God by whom you are fealed up to the day of your redemption.

3 The word of God threatning fin is a burthen.

Sul To God.

2. To the Prophet.

3. To the People.

It is a burthen to God to threaten judgment,he loves to speak us faite and to fpeak and treat kindly with us, to draw us with the cords of men, and with the bands of love, to be as one that taketh off the yoake; for he knoweth whereof we be made, for he made us and not we our felves: he will allure and perfwade Japhet to dwell in the tents of Shem.

[ocr errors]

If Adam do tranfgreffe his one commandment given to him in Pa adife, he tarrieth expecting when Adam will come to him to acknowledge his fault, and caft himself at his feet to feek. mercy; if Adam will not, he will come to him; but it fhall be the cool of the day firft,, and he will call him to accompt, but yet fo fatherly that he cannot execute the law without preaching the Gofnel; he cannot banish him the earthly Paradife til he have opened to him an heavenly.

He

« AnteriorContinua »