sacrament, they encircle themselves in the rich garments of holy and virtuous habits; then, by leaving their blood, which is the church's seed, to raise up a new generation to God, they leave a blessed memory, and fair example, and are themselves turned into angels, whose felicity is to do the will of God, as their employment was in this world to suffer it. Fiat voluntas tua' is our daily prayer, and that is of a passive signification; Thy will be done' upon us and if from thence also we translate it into an active sense, and by suffering evils increase in our aptnesses to do well, we have done the work of Christians, and shall receive the rewards of martyrs. 5. Let our suffering be entertained by a direct election, not by collateral aids and fantastic assistances. It is a good refreshment to a weak spirit to suffer in good company : and so Phocion encouraged a timorous Greek, condemned to die; and he bid him be confident, because that he was to die with Phocion: and when forty martyrs in Cappadocia suffered, and that a soldier, standing by, came and supplied the place of the one apostate, who fell from his crown, being overcome with pain, it added warmth to the frozen confessors, and turned them into consummate martyrs. But if martyrdom were but a fantastic thing, or relied upon vain accidents and irregular chances, it were then very necessary to be assisted by images of things, and any thing less than the proper instruments of religion but since it is the greatest action of the religion, and relies upon the most excellent promises, and its formality is to be an action of love, and nothing is more firmly chosen (by an after-election at least) than an act of love; to support martyrdom, or the duty of sufferings, by false arches and exterior circumstances, is to build a tower upon the beams of the sun, or to set up a wooden ladder to climb up to heaven; the soul cannot attain so huge and unimaginable felicities by chance and instruments of fancy. And let no man hope to glorify God and go to heaven by a life of sufferings, unless he first begin in the love of God, and from thence derive his choice, his patience, and confidence, in the causes of virtue and religion, like beams, and warmth, and influence, from the body of the Some there are that fall under the burden, when they are pressed hard, because they use not the proper instruments in fortifying the will in patience and resignation, but sun. endeavour to lighten the burden in imagination; and when these temporary supporters fail, the building that relies upon them, rushes into coldness, recidivation, and lukewarmness: and, among all instances, that of the main question of the text is of greatest power to abuse imprudent and less severe persons. Nullos esse Deos, inane cœlum, Factum, dum negat hoc, videt beatum. When men choose a good cause upon confidence that an ill one cannot thrive, that is, not for the love of virtue or duty to God, but for profit and secular interests, they are easily lost, when they see the wickedness of the enemy to swell up by impunity and success to a greater evil: for they have not learned to distinguish a great growing sin from a thriving and prosperous fortune. They that believe and choose because of idle fears and unreasonable fancies, or by mistaking the accounts of a man for the measures of God, or dare not commit treason for fear of being blasted; may come to be tempted when they see a sinner thrive, and are scandalized all the way if they die before him; or they may come to receive some accidental hardnesses; and every thing in the world may spoil such persons, and blast their resolutions. Take in all the aids you can, and, if the fancy of the standers-by, or the hearing of a cock crow, can add any collateral aids to thy weakness, refuse it not but let thy state of sufferings begin with choice, and be confirmed with knowledge, and rely upon love, and the aids of God, and the expectations of heaven, and the present sense of duty; and then the action will be as glorious in the event, as it is prudent in the enterprise, and religious in the prosecution. 6. Lastly, when God hath brought thee into Christ's school, and entered thee into a state of sufferings, remember the advantages of that state: consider, how unsavoury the things of the world appear to thee, when thou art under the arrest of death; remember, with what comforts the Spirit of + Hor. 2. 8. Martial. 4. 21. God assists thy spirit; set down in thy heart all those intercourses, which happen between God and thy own soul, the sweetnesses of religion, the vanity of sin's appearances, thy newly-entertained resolutions, thy longings after heaven, and all the things of God. And if God finishes thy persecution with death, proceed in them: if he restores thee to the light of the world, and a temporal refreshment, change but the scene of sufferings in an active life, and converse with God upon the same principles, on which, in thy state of sufferings, thou didst build all the parts of duty. If God restores thee to thy estate, be not less in love with heaven, nor more in love with the world; let thy spirit be now as humble, as before it was broken: and, to whatsoever degree of sobriety or austerity thy suffering condition did enforce thee, if it may be turned into virtue, when God restores thee, (because then it was necessary thou shouldest entertain it by an af ter-choice,) do it now also by a pre-election; that thou mayest say with David, "It is good for me that I have been afflicted, for thereby I have learned thy commandments.” And Paphnutius did not do his soul more advantage, when he lost his right eye, and suffered his left knee to be cut off for Christianity and the cause of God, than that, in the days of Constantine and the church's peace, he lived not in the toleration, but in the active piety of a martyr's condition; not now a confessor of the faith only, but of the charity of a Christian. We may every one live to have need of these rules; and I do not at all think it safe to pray against it, but to be armed for it and to whatsoever degree of sufferings God shall call us, we see what advantage God intends for us, and what advantages we ourselves may make of it. I now proceed to make use of all the former discourse, by removing it a little farther even into its utmost spiritual sense; which the Apostle does in the last words of the text; "If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the wicked and the sinner appear?" These words are taken out of the Proverbs,* according to the translation of the LXX. "If the righteous scarcely be safe." Where the word us implies that he is safe; but by 'intermedial difficulties:' and oral, he is safe in the midst of his persecutions; they may disturb his rest, and discompose his fancy, but they are like the fiery chariot to Elias; • Chap. xi. 31. he is encircled with fire, and rare circumstances, and strange usages, but is carried up to heaven in a robe of flames. And so was Noah safe when the flood came; and was the great type and instance too of the verification of this proposition; he was ὁ δίκαιος and δικαιοσύνης κήρυξ, he was put into a strange condition, perpetually wandering, shut up in a prison of wood, living upon faith, having never had the experience of being safe in floods. And so have I often seen young and unskilful persons sitting in a little boat, when every little wave sporting about the sides of the vessel, and every motion and dancing of the barge, seemed a danger, and made them cling fast upon their fellows; and yet all the while they were as safe as if they sat under a tree, while a gentle wind shook the leaves into a refreshment and a cooling shade : and the unskilful, inexperienced Christian shrieks out, whenever his vessel shakes, thinking it always a danger, that the watery pavement is not stable and resident, like a rock; and yet all his danger is in himself, none at all from without: for he is indeed moving upon the waters, but fastened to a rock; faith is his foundation, and hope is his anchor, and death is his harbour and Christ is his pilot, and heaven is his country; and all the evils of poverty, or affronts of tribunals and evil judges, of fears and sadder apprehensions, are but like the loud wind blowing from the right point, they make a noise, and drive faster to the harbour; and if we do not leave the ship, and leap into the sea; quit the interests of religion, and run to the securities of the world; cut our cables, and dissolve our hopes; grow impatient, and hug a wave, and die in its embraces; we are as safe at sea, safer in the storm which God sends us, than in a calm when we are befriended with the world. 2. But μós may also signify rarò;' "If the righteous is seldom safe:" which implies that sometimes he is, even in a temporal sense. God sometimes sends halcyon days to his church, and when he promised kings and queens to be their nurses,' he intended it for a blessing; and yet this blessing does oftentimes so ill succeed, that it is the greater blessing of the two, not to give us that blessing too freely. pós, this is scarcely done; and yet sometimes it is, and God sometimes refreshes languishing piety with such arguments as comply with our infirmities: and though it be a shame to us to need such allectives and infant-gaudes, such But which the heathen world and the first rudiments of the Israelites did need; God, who pities us, and will be wanting in nothing to us, as he corroborates our willing spirits with proper entertainments, so also he supports our weak flesh, and not only cheers an afflicted soul with beams of light, and antepasts and earnests of glory, but is kind also to our man of flesh and weakness; and to this purpose he sends thunderbolts from heaven upon evil men, dividing their tongues, infatuating their counsels, cursing their posterity, and ruining their families, ἄλλοτε δ' αὖτε Η τῶν γε στρατὸν εὐρὺν ἀπώλεσεν, ἢ ὅγε τεῖχος, 'Sometimes God destroys their armies, or their strong holds, sometimes breaks their ships.' But this happens either for the weakness of some of his servants, and their too great aptness to be offended at a prosperous iniquity, or when he will not suffer the evil to grow too great, or for some end of his providence; and yet, if this should be very often, or last long, God knows the danger, and we should feel the inconvenience. Of all the types of Christ, only Joshua and Solomon were noted to be generally prosperous; and yet the fortune of the first was to be in perpetual war and danger; but the other was as himself could wish it, rich, and peaceful, and powerful, and healthful, and learned, and beloved, and strong, and amorous, and voluptuous, and so he fell; and though his fall was, yet his recovery was not, upon record. And yet the worst of evils that happen to the godly, is better, temporally better, than the greatest external felicity of the wicked that in all senses the question may be considerable and argumentative, "If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly appear?" If it be hard with good men, with the evil it shall be far worse. But see the difference. The godly man is timorous, and yet safe; tossed by the seas, and yet safe at anchor; impaired by evil accidents, and righted by divine comforts; made sad with a black cloud, and refreshed with a more gentle influence; abused by the world, and yet an heir of heaven; hated by men, and beloved by God; loses one house, and gets a hundred; he quits a convenient lodging-room, and purchases a glorious country; is forsaken by his friends, but never by a Hesiod. Egy. 243. Gaisford. |