Jude 13 (part 1 of 2)

THe fourth Resemblance, whereby both the impiety and misery of these Seducers are described, as in these words: Raging waves of the sea, foming out their own shame.

EXPLICATION.

Two things are here to be explan’d.

1. What they are said to be; Raging waves of the sea.

2. What they are said to get by being so; Shame: They fomed out their own shame. Like the raging waves, which after their greatest unquietnesse, breake themselves to a little fome.

For the first, their title, or what they are said to be, in these words, Raging waves of the sea, Gr. κύματα ἄγρια θαλάσσης.

The word ἄγρια here translated raging, signifies uncamed, wilde waves, roaring like the wilde beasts of the wood. Hence the vulgar render this place fluctus feri maris: Erasmus, Undae efferae maris: And Beza Undae maris efferatae. Fluctus vehementes maris. Syriac. fluctus maris commoti Arab. ἄγρια κύματα. 70. Gavisum in fluctus aequora mota truces. Ovid. Latrantes undas. Virg. 7. Aeneid. Rapidas aquas. Act. 27.41. Luk. 21.25 Jer. 31.35. Jer. 5.22. Isa. 51.15. Psal. 73.3. Interpretations that betoken fiercenesse, wildnesse, turbulency. The same expression is there in VVisd. 14.1. A man intending to passe thorough ἄγρια κύματα, fierce, troublesome, boisterous, waves, One Poet cals the waves of the Seas fluctus truces, cruell, terrible; And another calls the waters of the Sea, Latrantes undas, the barking waves; as if they made a noise like a barking dog, when they were stir’d, and rais’d: and we frequently speak of angry roaring; working, boysterous, rough, troublesome, Seas, and read in Scriptures, of violent waves, Acts 27.41. The sea and waves roaring, Luk. 21.25. The ship tossed with waves, Mat. 14.24. The roaring of waves, Jer. 51.55. Jer. 31.35. The tumult of the people, and the noise of the seas and waves are put together, Psal. 65.7. And therefore our Apostle in calling these Seducers raging waves, doth not so much intend their instability, variablenesse, and fluctuation in mind and doctrine, their motion by every wind, and unstablenesse in the truth, though waters are unstable even to a Proverb; nor onely the pride and swelling arrogancy of these Seducers, though the waves are called proud waves, they oft lifting up themselves so high, as if they would kisse the Clouds, and making as if by their fall, they would overspread the earth; but in calling them raging waves, he rather intends (as I said) their troublesomenesse and unquietnesse: and that in three respects.

1. In respect of themselves: Their consciences were unquiet, tossed and troubled, without any inward tranquility and calmnesse in the apprehension of reconciliation with God. Isa. 57.20, 21. Isa. 65.14. Isa. 48.22. Job. 15.20, 21, 24. Thus (saith the Prophet) the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace saith my God to the wicked. Thus Eliphas speaks, Job 15.20. The wicked travelleth with pain all his dayes; And to the same purpose, Zophar, Job 20.20. Surely he shall not feel quietnesse in his belly. Inward Peace belongs onely to the faithfull. Its onely reported of them, Psal. 119.165. Great peace have they who love thy Law. 1 Cor. 1.3. Col. 1.2. 2 Thes. 1.2. Its onely promised to them. He wil speak Peace to his people, Psal. 85.8. God will reveal to them abundance of peace. Its onely requested for them, even that peace which passeth understanding to keep their hearts; Peace from God being never desired for men to live in a state of war against God. Rom. 5.1.9.10 Eph. 2.14. Onely the Faithfull have taken the right course to obtain it: They alone are delivered from Gods wrath, and have an Interest in Christ who is our peace, Gal. 5.22. Isa. 59.8. and the Prince of Peace, and have that spirit which works it in us; and of whom true Peace is a fruit and effect. The wicked have not known the way of Peace. They may have it in the brow, not in the brest; in cortice; not in corde; in the looks, not in the Conscience. Benummed their consciences may be, pacified they cannot be. The guilt of sin is an unseen scourge, a hidden sore. He who hath thorns run into the soals of his feet, wheresoever he goes, treads upon thorns: VVicked men carry their furnace, their wrack, their wo, their prison about them, wheresoever they go; nor can they any more lay these off, then they can lay off themselves.

2. The Apostle may compare these Seducers to waves as they are unquiet, troubled, and moved in regard of God, against and under whose will they were impatient, fretfull and unsubmissive. They did not quietly content themselves with their conditions. They were like chaffe which flies into the face of him who fanneth it, there were within them waves of unquietnesse, and impatiency, raised by the windes of their pride. They were murmurers and complainers, both against God and man. Of this unquietness the Apostle speaks afterwards, vers. 16.

3. They were as the troublesome and raging waves of the sea in respect of others: And this I conceive Jude principally intends in this place. The Sea neither resteth it self, nor doth it suffer any thing to rest which is upon it; it tosseth the ships, and tumbleth the Passengers therein from one side thereof to another: who reel to and fro like a drunken man; and in its rage and fury it often swallows up and devours, both ship and men: The lives of those who are upon the sea, hang by a thred, they themselves being neither reckon’d among the dead, Mo•tude quies•n••. nor among the living: And thus these Seducers were so restlesse and turbulent, that they found no rest but in their motions. Like those of whom Solomon speaks, Prov. 4.16. VVho sleep not unlesse they have done mischief; and their sleep is taken away unlesse they cause someto fal. Meritò haeretici fluctibus maris similes esse dicuntur quòd nunquam quieti sint, nusquam consistant, nova semper moliantur, surgia misceant, seditionem excitent, schismata pariant, omnia deni que perturbent ac pervertant. Justinian. Uti fluctus fcri navim, ita ipsi turbulenti & seditiosi Ecclesiam concutiunt. Lap. And troublesome they were, 1. First to the bodily and outward welfare of others; their names they tost up and down by slanders, and reproaches; they uttered many hard speeches against the Faithful. Their tongue set on fire of hell, did set on fire the whole course of nature. VVhat bittter, and uncharitable censures have such fomented in all times against those who did not joyn and hold with them! They are wont to lowre, brow beat, disdainfully frown, and look sourly upon them, as Cain upon Abel. with a discontented and faln countenance; and what bitter enemies in all ages, Hereticks (especially Seducers) have been to the lives and safeties of the Godly and Orthodox, hath been before in part declared, and of old manifested by the Donatists and Arians, and more lately by the Papists, and Anabaptists, who all by their boysterous violence, and cruelties, shewed themselves raging waves of the sea. They were troublesome enemies to all Publick Order: They were fierce, heady, high-minded, traitors, enflaming and enraging mens spirits against all Government and Rule in Church and State, putting all places into confusion and combustion by strifes, seditions, schismes; They were not afraid to speak evill of dignities; they set their mouth against the heaven, and their tongue walked through the earth.

2. But secondly, Fluctus fert, sunt perversi doctores qui & in semet ipsis inquieti semper, tumidi & amari sunt, & pacem Ecclesiae, firmitatem que obicum semper impugnare non cessant. Beda. Quem ad modum fluctus maris saevitiâ at que immanitate suâ integra navigia hauriunt, aut ad scopulos allidunt, it a Gnostici perversis suis dogmatibus plurimos ad interitum pertraehunt sempiternum, Justinian. in loc. Ut fluctus maris intumescunt & attolluntur, & ipsi quodam modo Coelo minantur, non aliter isti in coelum ipsam que Divinam naturam maledicta congerunt. Id. Ib. these raging waves troubled and disquieted the spirituall welfare and peace of those Christians into whose societies they had crept, whom they tost to and fro by the violent urging of their errours, and caus’d to fluctuate and waver in their judgments, overturning their faith, swallowing them up, and drowning them in perdition, by their erroneous and impious doctrines: Through the tossing and fury of these waves, many souls suffered shipwrack, and lost the spirituall and precious Merchandize of Faith and holiness; with these waves of false teachers, and their doctrines, were the Galatians disquieted when the Apostle saith, There be some οἱ ταράσσοντες, who trouble you, or who muddy and stir you like water; and cap. 5.12. I would they were even cut off, which trouble you.

This for the opening of the first Branch of this Resemblance: the second followes, viz. What these raging waves of the sea are said to get, and bring upon themselves by all their swelling and raging; and that was nothing but shame and disgrace; Vulg. B•z. Despumantes. Nonnullidispumantes. Deseumare proprie valet spumam auferre. Dispumare, spumam ejicere. Quando que confundi videntur. Syriacè, qui in manu spumationis suae, indicant ignominiam. Arabicè, sicut fluctus maris commoti, ebulliunt in confusionibus, seu delictis suis. Spumea semifero subpectore murmurat unda. Virg. Foming out their shame. Gr. 〈Greek〉.

The Apostle saith not shame, but shames, αἰσχύνας, Confusiones. Vulg. Dedecora Bez. 〈Greek〉. to note how great that shame and disgrace was which they discovered. And he saith, they fomed out their shames, that is, that by all their forementioned raging and troublesomenesse, they brought forth shame to themselves; as the raging waves of the sea bring forth fome.

And most aptly and elegantly (in the prosecution of the Metaphor of raging waves) doth our Apostle say, Instar tumentium undarum, quanto altius se, superbientes attollunt, tanto amplius confusi quasi in spumas dissolvuntur & percunt. Bed. Per dedecora, intelliguntur peccata linguae ex immundo turbato que corde manantia, sed brevi, in nihilum instar spumae resoluta. Mera sonant tonitrua. Nugas meras, & inanes voces effutiunt. that by their raging and swelling they brought forth disgrace and shame to themselves, as the raging waves of the Sea bring forth fome.

In these three respects did these raging Waves, of whom the Apostle speaks, bring forth shame to themselves, as the waves of the Sea bring forth fome. 1. Because that after all their troubling, and disquieting of the Church by their erroneous, turbulent and soul-destroying opinions and practises, both were found to have as much vanity, lightness, and emptiness as the fome of the Sea; though in their swelling and proud elevation of themselves, and unquiet urging of their doctrines they seemed like the huge waves (which threaten to touch and wash the very clouds) to be raised far above others in knowledg and spiritualness, and especially in enjoying of that liberty which they pretended went along with their practises and opinions, and so to have climb’d (as it were) into the third heavens; Non minus quis confunditur ob ignorantiam quam ob libidinem detectam. Congeries perstrepentium vocum quibus nihil subest sententiae solidioris. Vid. Epiph. haer. 26. Nonnulli denotari volunt fornicationes veterum illorum baereticorum, alii immunditiam gulae, & luxuriae. quae veluti per spum ammanifestentue. yet soon did all their glorious appearances, as a highly rais’d billow of the sea, falling either upon a rock or the shore, end in meer froth and some, emptinesse and vanity. And indeed what are all the Doctrines and opinions (opposed or not warranted by Scripture) whereby any pretend to benefit themselves and others, but gay and gilded nothings (at the best?) what have they in them but a form of knowledge, Rom. 2.20. a shew of wisdom, 2 Col. 23. vain babling; science falsely so called, 1 Tim. 6.20. strifes of words, 2 Tim. 2.4. vain deceit, 2 Col. 8. froth and fome, swelling words of vanity? They bring no real relief and sollid comfort to the soul. They are not bread, but chaff; not milk, but wind to one who hath a holy hunger. And their emptiness doth a humble and serious Christian commonly perceive as soon as their errors are first broched and vented; and it will not be long ere the silly, both seducer and seduced shall know it also, either by being changed to a love of the truth, Non vacat probabilitate, per participium ἐπαφρίζοντα insinuatam effraenem venerem, cujus deam latine dictam venerem, Graci Gentiles appellaverunt Ἀφροδίτην à spuma quae dicitur ἀφρὸς, quod è maris spuma, orta videtur vel quod seminis natura sit ἀφρώδης spumosa, vel quod sit 〈Greek〉 stultitiae dea. Lor. in loc. In medio quondam concreta profundo, spuma sui gratum que manet mihi nomen ab illa. Ovid 4. Met. Per confusione sive dedecora, intelliguntur sordes ac immunditiae quas fluctus & undae coagitatae collisae spumantes in litus egerunt. Lor in loc. Gnostici sua ipsorum dedecora despumant, in spumam post jactabundum inmorem ex vita suae instabili, & dissolubili turpidine desinentes. O•cum. Moles existunt aquarum quanto que tanquam montes, & lapsu suo, videntur absorbere univers•m terram, sed litus, & arenam ubi attigerint, desiciunt, nihil nisi spumam, paleas, limum, fimum, lutum, sordes, relinquunt. Una cum ululatione & despumatione maledicta, calumnias, convitia, injurias, blasphemias contra Deum, san•••s, magestratus, Ecclesiam, omnes ordines ejus•c••e. Lorin. in loc. 2 Tim. 3.8, 9. or by being punished for the love of errour. Now what a shame was it for these seducers after all their appearing bignesse with some rarely featur’d and beautifull truths, to swell with nothing but a tympany of pride and vanity; to seem to travell with a mountain, and to bring forth a mouse; to appear to be the onely illuminate, accomplisht doctors, (accounting others but babes) pretending to be richly laden and fraught with the treasures of understanding, peace, liberty, abilitie, of all which they seemed to have the monoply; and when all comes to all, to discover nothing but beggery, vanity, and disappointment of expectation, meer froth, and fome?

2. These raging waves, the seducers, brought forth shame to themselves, as the raging waves of the sea bring forth fome; in respect of that impiety, corruption, filthiness, and uncleanness, which they discovered by their swelling rage; what doth the sea after all its boiling & turbulence, cast up, but mire and dirt, an unclean scum, a filthy froth? The more thick & muddy the waters are, the more scum & some do they by their ebullitions and agitations send forth; how aptly did this agree to these impure Seducers! Did not all their swelling, proud, & unquiet contentions, end in profaneness, and Libertinism, as well as emptiness and vanity? did they not turn the grace of our God into lasciviousness? Did not they who were lifted up unto Heaven in shews of spiritualness and piety, afterward fall as low as Hell into all carnal and unclean practises, by luxury, gluttony and uncleanness? When they spake great swelling words of vanity; was it not to allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much waentonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error? when they seemed to be looking up to the Heavens by high speculations, and thereby would needs appropriate to themselves, the name of Gnosticks, or the knowing men, (like that unwary Star-gazer) they tumbled into the ditch of all filthiness and prodigious uncleanness. By their violent and turbulent venting of, and contending for their opinions, whereby they tossed and shipwrackt poor souls, what did they bring forth, but loosness and prophaneness, the casting off, reviling, and slandring of Magistracy, and all restraint, sedition, tumults, rapine, the liberty of being as bad as they would without controle, the blaspheming of God? and in short, while they promised liberty to others, they themselves were the servants of corruption. And was not now the folly of these men of corrupt minds, and reprobate concerning the faith, made manifest to all men? and was there any shame in the world comparable to this? for men not only to appear altogether empty of what good they seemed to have, and love; but wholly filled with all that evill which they seemed not to have, yea to loath? for this (the greatest) folly to be made known to all men, and for all their deluded followers to see, that they who pretended to be healers of others, should be the sickest of any; and that they who were esteemed ghest in holiness, should be found to be lowest in wickedness? Nothing is there of which a man should be so much ashamed, as of sinning, and of no sinning so much, as of sinning after an appeaing height of, and contention for holiness.

3. These Seducers brought forth shame to themselves, as the raging waves of the Sea, bring forth fome, in respect of the destruction and everthrew both of themselves, and their errors. The waves of the Sea cast forth their fome, by being broken and dasht in peeces; they seem’d indeed, when they were lifted up to heaven in their height, and rage, to threaten the breaking or devouring of the rocks or shore whensoever they should fall; but when they fall, they onely break themselves (the rock or shore still continuing unbroken, and unhurt) and so they come to some: And how evidently do seducers bring forth their shame (even as the dasht waves their some) by their own, and their errours destructions? Errours have ever broken by beating upon the rock of truth, which hath in all ages, stood firm against, (in stead of being broken) by all the rage of erroneous seducers. False doctrins, Sicus fluctus licet tumentes, litus & saxa ver•erames ab iis repulsi resiliunt, abeunt que in spumas & evanescunt, si• & impetus fastus, ac furores har•ticorum verberantes Ecclesiam, in s•ipsos dissiliunt & evanescunt. •ap. in loc. like the waves of the sea, may sometimes seem to cover the truth, but never can they conquer it, no more then the stubble can overcome the flame, the cloud the Sun, the wave the rock. Truth hath ever got by losing, and prevailed by being seemingly overcome; Errour hath ever lost by gaining, and been overcom by seeming to conquer. By the advantages of time and Scripture discovery, magnified errours come to be abhorred; and by heresies, as they who are approved are made manifest, so truth it self comes to be both approved and manifested. And as for heresiarchs and seducers themselves, they have been broken in pieces by divisions, by disgrace and ignominy, by dispair, though armed, ever to conquer naked truth; by externall judgements upon their bodies, or else by the everlasting overthrow of their souls, they bringing upon themselves swift destruction: and what greater shame can possibly be brought forth, then that which comes by their own overthrow and destruction: and that after; nay, by their own height and elevation?

OBSERVATIONS.

1. Obs. 1. There is no peace to the wicked when they are at the highest.

The highest waves are yet unquiet; notwithstanding a sinners outward swelling and greatnesse, he (like a limb of the body pained, though swelled) hath a conscience inwardly vexations. He is like a man who hath broken bones under a beautifull sute of apparell; disjoynted fingers under a golden glove; like a book of direfull Tragedies, bound up with a gilded fair cover; or (as some body once said) like Newgate, having a comely outside structure, but within nothing but howling, chains, dungeons, and blacknesse. Ther’s no peace to the proudest, richest, honourablest sinnner. Till the inward distemper of the heart be removed, and that trouble-heart (sin) expel’d, outward advancement can no more help him, than scratching can cure a man of the itch, his bloud being corrupt an dinfected, and no inward means used to cleanse it. Besides, True peace comes from the injoying communion with God, and from the apprehension of the removall of true woes and wretchednesse; what true peace can appearing comforts bring to that man, Fallacia bona, vera mala. who remains under real wretchedness? Outward highness is but seeming and fictitious, spiritual miseries are truly and really such. He who cannot see that he is delivered from wrath to come, cannot be pacified with any enjoyments that are present: He is all his life long subject to bondage; Heb. 2. and but like a rich or noble prisoner, who, though he be plentifully fed, respectively attended, and civily used by his Keeper, is yet in an hourly expectation of condemnation. A child of God is more quiet upon the wrack, than a sinner is upon a bed of down. His motto may well be, mediis traquillus in undis. Though he be in troubles, yet troubles are not in him. So long as the winde gets not into the bowels of the earth, there is no earthquake, though the wind bluster never so boysterously about and without the earth. If the terrours of Gods wrath and the guilt of sin be kept out of the conscience; outward afflictions upon the body, cannot cause any true trouble. We call it a fair day, if there be a clear sunshine, and a fair sky over head, though it be dirty under foot; and if all be well upward, if God shine upon us with the light of his Countenance, our condition is comfortable, though it be afflicted and uncomfortable in earthly respects. A Saint hath musick in the house, when there are storms without it, and when it rains upon the tiles. In a word, the godly have quiet rest in their motion; but the wicked have unquiet motion in their rest; how litle are wicked men to be envied in their triumphs! how much better is it to have peace with God in trials, then to be his enemies in triumph! Of this see pag. 116 part 1. And also before and after, under the head of Peace, very largely.

2. Obs. 2. The erroneous are oft as disquieting and troublesome where they live, as the waves of the sea; Like the raging waves of the sea.

I have before largely spoken of their raging in point of bloudinesse and cruelty, Vers. 11. but they which are not gone so far as open persecution, are yet commonly men very turbulent and unquiet. They trouble and disquiet peoples consciences, tossing them with the windes of their doctrines, not suffering them to hold any truth certainly, but with hesitancy and doubting, casting in many scruples into their minds, with their doubtfull disputations, wracking both the Scriptures, and their hearers, by distracting their thoughts and apprehensions with what may be said for and against the truth, never studying to ground and stablish them in the knowledge thereof; leaving their Disciples hereby, like a cloud tossed with contrary winds, and a ball bandy’d between two rackets. Their onely work indeed is to unsettle, and first to make people believe nothing, and to unbelieve or at least to waver in their belief of what is true, that so they may be brought to believe that which is false; they who are drunken with errour, will have the spirituall staggers; they are as pendulous and uncertain as a meteor, they have no Center for their unsettled apprehensions: Schisms rend the coat, heresie disquiets and cuts the heart. Nor do seducers onely disquiet and trouble others, by unsetling them from the truth, but also by hurrying and driving people from one errour to another. Sectaries rest not in one, but oft travel through all opinions. One errour is a bridg to another. Errours are like Circles in a pond, one begets another, a lesser makes way for a greater; a lower is but a step or stair to help to an higher, like a whirl-pool, which first sucks in one part, and then the other, and never desists until it draws in the whole body. Heb. 13.9. Vide Danaei annotationes in Lib. Angustini de haer•s. Seducers grow worse and worse, and still increase to more ungodlinesse. Heresie is a flood ever swelling, and a gangrene ever spreading. The Galathians were soon removed to another Gospel. Nor are the erronious less troublesome to the outward temporal peace of persons, witness the divisions and factions which they have made in families, between nearest relations, in Congregations, Cities, Civil States. Hereticks are commonly seditious and tumultuary. Novatus was (as Cyprian calls him) a fire-brand to kindle sedition: an Enemy to peace, turning the world upside down. What raging outragious waves wear the Donatists, Fax et ignis ad conflanda seditionis incendia, hostis quietis, tranquillitatis adversarius, pacis ini micus. Cypr. 49. ad Cornel. August. epist. 50. ad Bonif. Ep. 68. ad Januar. Circumcelliones! Augustine in his Epistles tells us frequently of their rapines, robberies; how near sundry States (in these later times) have been to subversion by the Anabaptists, they who write their histories, have related at large: nor will this unquietness of the erroneous seem strange, if we consider by whose blowing these waves are raised. It is the breath of that Aeolus of hell which stirs them up: he will toss and trouble, though he cannot swallow up the ship of the Church. All hereticks are Satans Emissaries. He is the father of lyes, and lyars, and a lying spirit in the mouth of every false Prophet, and needs must they rage and run, whom he stirs up. Nor is any thing so impatient of restraint as error. No hereticks could ever patiently endure to be oppos’d: whensoever ether the windes of Civil or ecclesiasticall power, of sword or word, have blown against the tide of heresies, presently they grow rugged and boysterous. These seducers spake evil of dignities. Covetousness and pride, which oftnest put men upon error, are (both) impetuous lusts, and impatient of resistance. The thirst after gold and glory hath troubled all the world. Seducers run greedily after their own gain, and compasse sea and Land to make proselytes. The Papists had never raged against Luther, if he had not struck at the Popes Crown, and the Monks bellyes. And lastly, the truth is, when the heretical rage, its much out of cowardise; for though they look highly, and scornfully, yet they are so conscious of the crazmess of their cause, that they cannot but be angry with every adversary. A sickly man cannot indure the sharp ayre, nor a sickly opinion the sharpness of opposition. They who are orthodox, and contend for truth, should hence be cautious: Let them take heed of learning frowardnes of the froward. God wants not our passions to promote his truth. Let the fury of the blinde promote pitie in those who have eyes; and let us break the rage of the waves only by being rocks of constancy, resolution, and zealous opposition. In short, let all those Magistrates who will be favourers of the erroneous, consider whom they nourish, and withall whether it be not the greatest imprudence to cherish their destroyers, and to destroy their preservers; and whether they never heard of some who in opposition to Church-Government, have helpt up those that in opposition to Civil Government, have puld down them.

3. It is the lot of the Church to be amongst raging waves; Obs. 3. to be troubled and disquieted in the world. The faithful on this side heaven are annoyed with the unquiet carriage of the wicked. Psal. 69.15. Psal. 32.6. Is. 59.19. Psal. 32.6. The water-floods (oft) are ready to overflow them: they are in the floods of great waters. The floods of ungodly men (saith David, Ps. 84.4.) made mee afraid. The people of God are oft accounted the troublers, but they are indeed the troubled of Israel. Ther’s no resting place for the feet of these doves, in this deluge of sin and sorrow here below. they are tossed up and down in their names, estates, bodies, soules, by their Enemies, as by raging waves. There is no more likelihood that they should be at rest upon earth, than there is that a man should be quiet upon the sea; nor is it (indeed) fit that it should be otherwise. The windes of trouble and unquietness blow them profit, and working waves work them much benefit. Hereby they are made to long for their haven, for that rest which remaines for the people of God. If the world were a place of rest, they would be too ready, here, to set up their rest, and the thoughts of heaven would be troublesome, and they would be ready to say and hope that they should never be removed, and its good being here: The world is too sweet to them, now ‘its so bitter; they suck at its brests heartily, even when the Lord rubs them over with wormwood. Peregrinationes aerumnas non sentimus. Oh what would they do, were the world altogether sweet! If they love so much to smell to it, when it is full of thorns, what would they do were it altogether roses? The more Noahs flood increas’d, the higher was the ark raised; and the troubles of the world raise the thoughts and desires of the faithfull, the neerer to heaven. The fruitfull over-flowings of Nilus would hinder them from looking up to heaven for rain and refreshment. tossings in the world, make the people of God to be in the world rather patiently, then delightfully. Againe, by the tossings of the world, they are put upon that holy exercise of prayer. He that would learn to pray (saith the Proverb) must goe to sea. Raging waves make the people of God call and cry for help. The Disciples call’d to Christ when they were tossed; even the heathen Mariners in a storme cald every man upon his god. Jonah 1. Θύελλα, à θύω λίαν. The word storme in the Greek is derived from two words, which signifie much sacrificing; how earnestly did David and Hezekiah pray, when they were upon the waves! Musick (we say) sounds best upon the waters, and so do the prayers of the Saints, upon the waters of worldly troubles. When he slew them, then they sought him. Psal. 73.34. In their affliction (saith God) they will seek me early. God oftentimes defers to deliver his people from trouble, though they pray, that so the praying which he so much loves may stil be continued. As we use to deal with some Musicians, whom we wil not presently reward for their musick, because we desire more of it. Again, were it not for these raging waves, the Saints depending upon, and submissiveness to God could not be so manifested. Every one will trust him in a calm; its only true faith that can rest upon him in a restless condition, and see a haven through all the waves. Nor doth God use to teach his people patience, but by being passive; tribulation (saith Paul) worketh patience Rom. 5.3. Trouble is esca patientiae, food, without which patience would starve. Some say, the Saints never can learn their lesson of patience but in the school of trouble. And further, the raging of the waves makes the people of God to magnifie their Pilot and preserver, for his power, wisdome, love: His power which keeps the Church (like another Mesopotamia) in the midst of the sea, and preserves it from being overturned; though not from being tossed; and which bounds those proud waves, so that they shall not overflow the Church, even when the Sea of the wicked world is so much in power and policy about it. His power likewise is seen, in that in the floods of great waters, they shall not come neere to the godly; not to his soule, to destroy its grace, and (oft) not to disturb its peace: it hereby appearing, that even when the floods lift up their voice, yet the Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters. Psal. 93.3, 4. To conclude, How plainly doe the wisdome and love of God discover themselves toward the faithfull, when they are tossed by the waves! his wisdome, in making the very rage of these waves to praise him, and in stead of breaking his Church, onely to cleanse it; and in stead of drowning it, to carry it to its haven, where it shal never be tossed more, and so skilfully to make it saile with every winde! His love, in that he will not refuse to bear his people company when they go through the waters, and to be their companion, yea Pilot in a storm, and then to give them a great calm within: and in a word, to assure them, that they shall never be cast away with the wicked, though they may be cast among them: Let us not censure the faithful in their most tossed estate. There’s not a drop of wrath in a sea of a Saints sufferings. Could you see how free his inside is, and his end shall be from storms and tossings, you would rather envy then censure him; the waves which Satan raiseth, shew that he hath a treasure, which that enemie would fain have cast away; but yet should he so far prevail, tis a treasure which wil swim to shore with him. To conclude, let the faithful (of all people) most prepare for storms, and waves; as it is best for them to be among raging waves, so its too much for them, both to have a haven in their passage, and in the end of their passage too: As long as the people of God are sayling to that port, the divel wil tosse them; and this he wil do though, nay, because he cannot destroy them. Let them be sure, that by faith they get Christ into the ship, or rather into their souls; that by obedience they undertake their voyage for him, that their cause be good, and that by repentance they cast out every Jonah, and then let them fear no waves.

4 The Church hath most trouble from those within her. Obser. 4. She hath sometime (saith Bernard) had peace from Heathens, Pax à Pagauis, nunquam à filiis. never (or but very rarely) from her own children. No adversaries were such raging waves, as these, who were domestical. Of your selves (saith Paul Acts 20.30.) shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. Grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock. These Seducers were not Heathens without, but Professours who had crept into the Church. No evils are so great as those which come to the Church from within. The inward intestine divisions, ruptures, heresies, schisms, have cost the Church more lamentations, then ever did her persecution from without. The heathen Emperors never were so vexatious to her as Arians, Donatists, Anabaptists, Papists. Outward enemies scratch the face, they within, stab the heart of the Church: From the former she suffered; by the latter she both sinned and suffered: by the former she was under Persecution from men, by the latter under Provocation against God; by the former she was but sollicited to tell where her great strength lay, by the latter she cut off her locks, threw away her own weapons, and betrayed her strength; by her suffering from without, the enemies laboured to beat her off from continuing Christian; by her scandal within, she beats them off from becoming Christians. Wonder not then that the Divel hath alwayes used this home-bred engine of evil against the Church; namely, the ungodly carriage of those within her, and the stirring up troubles in her own bowels; He knows, that there is no sword to this; and that they will never adventure their lives for God and one another in war, who will neither love God nor one another in peace. Oh, how should Christians labour to disappoint and countermine this the Divels most destructive policie! Christians, if we must die, let us die like men, by an unanimous holy contention against the common Enemie; not like fools, by giving him our sword, and destroying one another by heresies, schisms, prophaneness in our own bowels.

5 Sin is a persons greatest shame: Observ. 5 That which should most make him ashamed and confounded in himself, and that which shall make him a spectacle of shame, disgrace and infamie to others. O my God (said Ezra, chap. 9.6.) I am ashamed, and blush to lift up my sace to thee, for our iniquities are increased, &c. There is the shame that sin should make in us: Thou hast consulted shame to thine own house, Hab. 2.10. by cutting off many people, and hast sinned against thine own soul, Psal. 40.14. Let them be brought to shame. So Nah. 3.5. I will shew, &c. the Kingdoms thy shame: there is the shame that sin brings upon us. In the former respect sin should be shame; in the latter it shall be shame. Its sin only which deprives a man of true glorie and excellencie, and is the degradation of his nature. Men account that their shame, which to do or suffer, is much below their port and rank. Oh how much goes that man below himself, who was created Gods favourite and son, having his love fixt and image stampt upon him, the Viceroy of the creation, a consort with Angels, whose nature is taken into the union of the person of the son of God; whose purchase was no less then the blood of God, whose soul is a little heaven for the great God to dwell in, whose bodie is the Temple of the holy Ghost; whose habitation shall be the Empyrean heaven, a Citie, a Kingdome purer, more glorious then a thousand Suns, nay in comparison whereof a thousand Suns are but sack-cloth: How much (I say) goes this excellent creature below himself, in being a! thorow-fare, threshold, foot-stool, vassal to unclean spirits! yea, in having his heaven-born soul a very sink or common receptacle for that which is infinitely baser then all the dung, off-scouring, filth, excrements upon earth, or then any thing which hath a being! How much lower is this descending, then for a King to imbrace dung-hils, or for Nebuchadnezzar to be a companion for beasts! Rom. 6.21. Well might the Apostle say, that of this condition the Romans were now ashamed. Indeed, there is nothing but sin which truly disgraceth a man: Nothing but sin which disgraceth a man in Gods eye, whose estimate is the true Standard of Honour: nothing but sin makes us unfit for that habitation of glory: nothing shameful unless sinning, but befell the Lord of glory: Nothing but sin which will make us unglorious at the last day, when Christ shall appear with ten thousands of glorious Saints and Angels.

Oh how much are they mistaken who account sinne their glory, who are asham’d of their glory (holiness;) Pudor est medi. cina pudoris. and glory in their shame, their sin! Are there not many who cannot blush in the doing of that, Eph. 5.12. Jer. 8.12. at the hearing whereof tis our duty to blush? They were not ashamed, neither could they blush; they have sin’d away shame, in stead of being ashamed of sin, and will not (now) suffer nature to draw her vail of blushing before their abominations. When the Colours and Ensigns of a battle are lost, we then give the battle for lost; some have aptly called blushing the colour of vertue displaid by nature in the countenance: When Satan hath taken away our colours, and custome of sin hath banished even sense of sin, and shame for sin, our case seems to be desperate. Other evils which sin bringeth, are curable, the anguish of conscience, the wrath of God, the breach of charity; but the shame of sin can (nay must) never be got out: the more holy we are now, the more should we be ashamed of our former sin. Oh that we could contemplate the shame of sin more in its departure, and less its beauty in its coming, and labour to look upon our old waies with new eyes, opened and enlightned by the spirit of sanctification, and then it wil be our greatest wonder that we should heretofore openly do that which we are now ashamed to think of.

To conclude this, how blessed are they whose sins are covered, whose transgressions are forgiven, Psal. 32.1. who have bought and put on that white raiment, whereby the shame of their nakednesse cannot appear! If ever the sins of the godly be manifested (as I conceive they shall be) at the day of judgment, they shall be so far from bringing shame and confusion to them, that they shall be glorious trophies of Gods mercy, Christs merit, the strength of faith and the truth of repentance.

6. Obs. 6. The shame of seducers is at length laid open and discover’d. The great endeavour of these, was to be magnified, or rather omnified, to have all others debased and nullified; to have themselves accounted the only men for knowledg, piety, priviledges; and their waies the only waies of peace and liberty; but at length they lost and disgrac’d themselves, foamed out, and discovered their own shame. 1. Sometime their shame is laid open, and foamed forth by the discovery of the emptinesse and meer frothy foame of their opinions, which are manifested to have had nothing of truth or solidity in them. At length they fal upon the shore, or dash upon the rock of the scripture, and then in stead of drowing the shore or breaking the rock, they end in a little froth and emptinesse and in the breaking of themselves alone. Heresies are not permanent; the word of the Lord only endures for ever, it being a lasting fountain never to be dryed up: but that which is against the Lord and his truth, is but a landflood: though for the present it may swel and grow, yet it shal fall and sink, and in time vanish quite away. Heresies which have for a time born all before them, (as that of Arianism, which Augustine in grief and admiration tels us, had invaded all the world) come by the advantages of time and scripture discovery, to be contemned and neglected: Error, like the painted beauty of some harlot, seems amiable when it walkes in the dim twilight, where the orthodox preaching of the word shines not; but bring it to scripture light (which it mainly shuns) and the more we look upon it, the more we shall suspect, and at length abhor it: the sun of scripture scatters the fogs and mists of error; ye erre saith Christ, not knowing the Scripture. How glorious have those adulterate beauties of the whore of Babylon, of image-worship transubstantiation, merit &c. appeared in this nation of old, when the candle of Scripture was hid under a bushel! but afterward it being set upon a candlestick, and giving light to all the house; how clearly did they all appear to be fictitious and adulterate! and the hatred wherewith they are hated (I trust) of some, is (as it was said of Ammons to Thamar) greater then that love wherewith they were loved. 2. Sometime the shame of seducers is laid open and foamed forth by their loosnesse and profanenesse of life; Errors in doctrine producing commonly loosnesse in conversation. Thus the Apostle speaks of some who should proceed no further, for their folly should be made manifest to all men, who should increase to more ungodlinesse, and grow worse and worse; hereby our Lord bids us discover them, (by their fruits (saith he) ye shall know them). The vine of truth never produced the thistles and thorns of prophanenesse and loosnesse: A man of error, is oft left to be a man of sin. Thus these seducers disgraced themselves by foaming out their uncleannesse, cruelty, rebellion. Who wil ever look upon these deformed issues to have truth, beautiful truth for their mother? Wel may he be suspected, who every step stumbles into prophanenesse, to have either no eyes or bad ones: Thus Papists, Anabaptists, Seekers, have been discovered by their taking pleasure in unrighteousness, never to have believed the truth. 3. Lastly, the Lord oft discovers their shame by their own destruction and disgraceful end, and by the judgments which he brings upon them. Arius his bowels gushed out; Nestorius his tongue was consumed with worms, Cerinthus was killed by the fall of an house. Montanus hanged himself. Manes had his skin torn from his flesh, &c. and rotted out of his head; examples of this kind might fil a volume. How many seducers hath God made pillars of salt by their deaths, who were unsavory salt during their lifetime! how many of these stakes hath God set up in the Church, as in a pond to keep men from adventuring into gulfs and whirlpools of error! Sometime the hand of justice hath found them out; witnesse the deaths of many Jesuits and Baals priests, of Anabaptists, and other blasphemous hereticks. And how oft have they been infamous for their strange deaths, who laboured to live caede scripturarum, by the death and downfall of the scripture! Oh (then) how much are they mistaken, who expect to get honour by being patrons of erroneous opinions! While the pure lights of the Church have burnt sweetly, and shined bright to after ages, living when they were dead; the other have rotted in their names, faded in their honour, withered in their graces, and (in a word) even died while they lived: and what is there left of all these false pretended lights, to posterity, but the smoake of a stinking and unsavory snuffe?

7. Obs. 7 The enemies of God cause their own shame and confusion; foaming out (saith our Apostle) their own shame. Hab. 2.10. they are said to consult shame to their own house, i.e. their wisest consultations shal be turned into shame against them, or they shall be as surely ashamed, as if they had consulted or taken counsel to bring shame upon themselves. Though shame be not the end of the worker, yet shal it be the end of every work of ungodlinesse: wicked men twist their own halter, and by sin, curiously weave their own confusion; shame is the natural production of every mans own sin: Basil• de Ira. 〈Greek〉. Pag. mihi 440. The wicked shall be snared in the work of his own hands, Psal. 9.16. and held with the cords of his own sins; Ps. 5.22. Be thy own friend, and none can be thy foe; disgrace not thy self, and then all the world cannot do it. Tis not any thing cast upon us from without, which is truely a shame, but something which growes out of a mans self; tis not poverty, reproach, pains &c. that dishonour us, but impatience, revenge, unreformedness under all these. Every wicked mans dishonour is self-created. A sinner reaps no crop, but that of which he himself was the sower; (its common equity that he who sowes should reap) God wil render to every one according to his own works. As grace is glory in the bud, and glory nothing but grace blown out, so sin is seminally and radically, eternal shame and ignominy, and that shame is nothing but sin extended and displaied. So good is God, that he would not suffer sin, unlesse thereby he were able to make it appear shameful; so much is God in love with his own glory, that he would never endure any to oppose his, unlesse thereby he intended to overthrow theirs; God never gave any of his enemies line, but to strangle themselves: we read of no enemies of God, but they shamed themselves; Infirmitas animositatis. Facites animos mens generosa capit. Tu licet extre mos latè dominare per Indos &c. si prava cupis si duceris irâ, servitii patiere jugum, tolerabis iniquas interius— Claudian in paneg. Theodos. Non fortior judicandus est quileonem, quam qui violentam in scipso inclusam feram superat iracundiam aut qui rapacissi mas volucres dejicit quam qui cupiditates avidissimas coercet aut qui Amazonem bellatricem, quam qui libidi•cm vincit pudoris ac famae debellatricem. Cicer pro Marcel. Pharaoh, Achitophel, Haman, Siserah, Senacherib, Julian, &c. How should this comfort his people in the midst of all the height and glory of his enemies! Though they cannot pull them down, yet they shall lay their own glory in the dust: and how can God want weapons to beat his enemies, who can beat them with their own?

8. Men by rage and fury, lay open and discover their shame; when these seducers came to be raging waves, fierce and impetuous in their way, they soon disgraced themselves, and foamed out their own shame; a weak spirit is by nothing so much manifested as by wrath and passion: commonly men think that anger is an effect of magnanimity, whereas indeed it proceeds from weaknesse; an underling to passion, hath a base low built disposition, to which children, and women (therefore called the weaker sex) are more subject then men. The Latines express all passion (anger especially) by the word impotentia, impotency and weaknesse; and hence Solomon, Prov. 25.28. He that hath no rule over his own spirit, is like a City that is broken down ad without walls; what so weak, and beggarly, and so much at the cruel courtesie of every invader, as a City without all defence? Such a one is he whose raging passions sway him without controle; he who scorns to be a servant to man, is a slave to lust, a base sensual bruitish lust: The strong man (according to scripture censure) is he who is slow to anger, nay (saith Solomon) Prov. 16.32. He is better then the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit, then he that taketh a City: had a man conquered the world without him, and not his lust within him, he were but in a splendid glistering servitude: wel might he with Alexander sit down and weep, but not because their is no other world to conquer, but because their is stil another, or rather, because there are so many, and every one so much stronger than a world; I mean, unmortified passions: David in sparing of Saul, and overcoming of himself, was stronger then David when he overcame Goliah; for killing of Goliah, he was but promised to be Sauls son in law; but by subduing his own passion, Saul deservedly conjectures that David should be his successor; and now I know wel (saith Saul) that thou shalt surely be King &c. Saul seeing in David a power to govern his own affections, foresaw that David was fit to rule a whole kingdome; but how unfit was Saul to be King of Israel, who was not a King over, but a slave to his own passion! A swine in an Emperors robe is most uncomly, and so is he who is a ruler over men without him, and a vassal to beasts within him. Men account it the greatest disgrace to be looked upon and called fools; but the spirit of God makes wrath and passion, the fools coat or badge; frequently do we read of a fools wrath, Prov. 12.16. a fools wrath is presently known: so Pro. 27.3. a fools wrath is mentioned for its heaviness: & He that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly. And anger resteth in the bosome of fools (saith Solomon) Eccles. 7.9. its loved, cherished, delighted in, as a thing laid in a mans bosome, and it resteth there, it departeth not; a wise man useth anger as physick in its proper time, but a fool useth it as his constant dyet: Its an inmate to a fool, tis but a passenger through the heart of a wise man, it doth not lodg in it all night, Ephes. 4.26. Its a mans prudence to defer his anger, and his glory to passe over a transgression, Prov. 19.11. and James calls it the meeknesse of wisdome, cap. 3.13. A governour of his passion is by some called angelus in carne, yea deus terrestris: no lamb was ever so meek, as was he who was wisdome itself: He that is slow to anger, is of great understanding, Prov. 14.29. Nor doth the shame of these slaves to passion only appear in their name, and estimate for folly, but in the shameful effects of this rage, where it mastereth any; A stone is heavy (saith Solomon) and the sand is weighty, but a fools wrath is heavier than them both. Prov. 27.3. A fool having no wisdom to moderate his passion, or to keep it (as a wise man doth) from falling with its full weight. Let a bear robbed of her whelps, meet a man (saith he) rather then a fool in his folly. This cruellest of beasts shews not so much rage, as a man in his fury; how oft hath rage whetted tongue, teeth, swords, prepared snares, poisons, fires, &c. for destruction! How little doth it distinguish twixt friends and foes, sweeping away parents, children, brethren, with its torrent! it regards neither venerable old age, nor the tendernesse of age or sex, nor favours received, nor vertue and piety. Its a short madnesse, and an inter-regnum and eclipse of reason, forgetting even the ruin and destruction of the very party in whom it swayeth, it making him neither to feel nor fear mutilations, wounds, deaths; 〈Greek〉. Incomparabiliter salubriusest, etiam irae justae pulsanti non aperire penetrale cordis, quam admittere non facile recessuram et perventuram. De surculo ad •••bem &c. Aug. •p. 149. it makes a man to put off himself, changing him into a monster, and as if he were to put on a vizar upon a stage (as Basil expresseth it) it represents him another from himself, with eyes flaming, mouth foaming, teeth grinding, colour distempered &c. Christians, as you love true honour, beware of being inslav’d to passion, especially this of wrath and troublesomenesse to others; stop its entrance, take heed (as Augustine excellently) when just anger knocks at the door, that the unjust croud not in with it; from a twig, ‘twil grow to a beam: his advice is (rather then it should do so) to shut the door upon that anger which is just: In the midst of all thy injuries, labour for a meek and a quiet spirit. In sinful contentions, he who is the conqueror, is the slave; let not thy adversary be thy teacher, nor be thou his looking glasse, to shew him his shape in thy self; let him behold in thee a mind above, and deaf to, and impenetrable by reproaches; let not judgment be troden under foot. If thine adversary deserve pitty, why dost thou rage against him? if punishment, why dost thou imitate him? To conclude this, (as Basil in that excellent discourse of his concerning anger) Never think thy self worthy of estimation from others, 〈Greek〉. Et infra, 〈Greek〉. Basil. de Ira. or others unworthy of estimation from thee; studie the due ordering of thy irascible part, let it be at the command of grace, and then it wil be helpful to thee against sin. Oh how happy were we if all our anger and indignation were set upon sin! we can never hate sin enough, unlesse we mix indignation with our hatred; use thine anger like the dog, to spare those of the family, or the flock; I mean men, and set it upon the thief, the wolf, thine own lusts: Let not that which was given thee to be helpful to thee, be by thee made hurtful to thee; let the sword of anger spare Isaak, and sacrifice the ram; be angry but sin not; Anger should not be destroyed, but sanctified. Be angry with the tempter the divel, who stirs up thy brother to wrong thee: and be not like the furious dog, who bites the stone thrown, and meddles not with the hand that threw it. The man is to be pittied, Satan threw this stone at thee, he instigated thy brothers passion. In short, as the Unicorns horn, upon the forehead of that fierce creature, is most hurtful and destructive, but in the Apothecaries shop most useful and salubrious; so passion which men by nature abuse, to the hurt of themselves and others, should by grace be made helpful and beneficial to both.

9. Obs. 9 Its the inward corruption of the heart, which sends forth the foame of shameful actions, These seducers (like the sea) had that foame and filth first within them, which afterward they foamed out and sent forth. There could never be an unclean foame sent forth, unlesse there were first filthinesse in the sea. All the unholinesse and irregularity of practice comes from the hearts depravednesse: Evil things are brought forth from the evil treasure of the heart; out of the heart (saith Christ) come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries; the heart is the womb of all sinful and impure issues; an unholy root sends forth bitter and sinful fruits. All the prodigious abominations which are made visible in the conversation, proceed from an unsanctified disposition; Who sees not, then, at what door to lay all the deformed issues of mens practices? how foolishly are men displeased with themselves for their outward transgressions in their lives, while they tamely and quietly endure an unchanged and unrenewed heart! why should any be displeased with that tree for bearing of fruit, whose roots they wil continue to dung and water? how vaine and preposterous, are those endeavours of reformation, which are without inward renovation! If the tree continue bitter and corrupt, all the influences of heaven cannot make the fruit good. If we would have an holy life, we must labour for a changed heart: A Christians reformation begins at the wrong end, when it begins at his fingers ends; as the heart first lives naturally, so spiritually; the foundation of most mens mortification is too shallow, tis not hearty and inward enough; and hence tis, that their religion (in these daies) is like our buildings, more slight, and lesse durable than of old: Its fond to think of drying up the streams, when we nourish the fountain. David began at the right end, Psal. 51. when he desired the Lord to create in him a clean heart; til the heart be healed, we only skin the sore, we root not out the core of the corrupt matter, and hence the cure comes to be only cloaked. Christians, Curar palliativa. would you heal the unwholsome water of your lives? you must first cast salt into the spring; get thy sea first made pure within at the bottome, and then thy foame, thy mire and dirt wil not be cast up; purge thy stomack, if thou wouldst not have an unsavory breath; remove the inward dunghil, and then thou wilt be rid of outward steams; lay thy mine under the foundation, cleanse your hands ye sinners (saith James;) James 4.8. but then the way prescribed is, purifie your hearts ye double-minded. New professions, expressions sewed to an old disposition, wil but make the rent the greater. And remember that,

10. The unrenewed heart, if stir’d and moved, soon discovers its foame and silthinesse. Isa. 47.20. These seducers (like the sea) put forth their unclean mire and dirt when disquieted and enraged. The waters which are dirtyest at the bottom, appear fair and clear in a calm and serene day; but when the storms and winds arise, they then shew what is in them; til the heart be cleansed, any occasion or tentation wil draw forth its filthiness. If our lusts be not dead, but only sleeping, every jog wil soon stir them up: London-streets (inclinable of themselves to be dirty) are (we say) by a smal showr made foule. A wicked man is but a chained Lion, or a tamed divel at the best. If he appear holy at any time, tis not because he is a sea without mire, but without storms; when his tide of nature is opposed by the winds, either of reprehension or chastisement, he wil shew himself but dirty water: Acts 19 28. we read not that the Ephesians foamed out their shame, til they apprehended their Diana-worship struck at; nor that the Jews foamed out theirs, til Steven had touched them for their hypocrisy; Acts 7.54. nor that they railed and called Christ Samaritan, and one that had a divel, John 8.28. till he convinced them of their sin, and his own innocency; nor did the Sodomites discover their shameful uncleannesse so much, til Lot reproved them: (oh with how gentle a gale was their sea of sin troubled!) Hos. 11.2. Never did the secret sicknesse or wickednesse of Ephraim so much shew it self, nor were the evil humours so much provoked and stirred, until God went about to heal them; nor did the rage of Pharaohs heart against God, swel so prodigiously, til Gods judgment lay upon him. We see then how best to try the truth and strength of grace: O Christian, what art thou when stirred? dost thou not foame out dirt in a storme? art thou good when thou art pleased, calm when the tide of thy nature, and the wind of word or providence go together? truly this is no great matter; but observe thy self, when occasions of sin meet thee, when winds crosse thee, when reproofs and corrections would stop thee, and blow in thy very teeth: will thy heart neither like the dunghil, stink when thou meetest with the sun-shine of an allurement; nor with the sea, foame when thou meetest with the wind of opposition? canst thou then be calm with David, and say, Let the righteous smite me? and with Job, blesse the Lord? and with the Church, say, I wil bear the indignation of the Lord, for I have sinned against him? and with that holy Martyr, Lord I wil bow, and thou shalt beat? John Brown. Canst thou kiss the rod, lay thy hand upon thy murmuring mouth, and desire that God would rather give thee submission to, then deliverance from the stroke? canst thou under smarest severities heartily beg of the Lord that he would have his wil of thee, by pulling down thy proud stomack, before he throws away his smartest rod? And when the blasts of the word resist thy dearest corruption, and oppose thee in thy sweetest wayes of sin; when the faithful Minister levels his darts, and sets the point of the drawn sword of the spirit, most directly against thy bosome-lust, canst thou then (I say) in stead of rebelling, yeild thy self an humble prisoner to Jesus Christ, fall down at his feet, and say, Lord I submit, what wilt thou have me to do? Blessed be thy strictest commands and threatnings against my sin, and blessed be the mouth of thy servant which uttered them? This is an happy sign that God hath begun to cleanse thy heart from that filth, which one unrenewed, would have put forth upon these occasions.

11. Obs. 11 The turbulent and unquiet temper of a wicked man, makes him much to differ from a Saint. The godly are indued with that wisdome from above which is peaceable; they offer no wrongs, they return no revenge; their peace from God inclines their heart to peaceableness toward men: a quiet conscience never produced an unquiet conversation. The peace of God makes those who have offered wrong to others, willing to make satisfaction; and those who have suffered wrong from others, readyto afford remission. If the great God, who is offended, speaks peace to man, should not poor man, when an offender, offer peace much more to man? If God be pacified toward man, upon his free grace; should not man be pacified to man, it being a commanded duty? The more God quiets us, the lesse shall we sinfully disquiet others: Its the portion of Saints, to find trouble in the world, not their property to cause trouble in the world. The reason why Gods people are accounted unpeaceable in the world, is, because they disquiet mens lusts: Their wil is for peace, but tis necessity which makes them contend. Col. 3.15. The peace of God rules in their hearts; and when the unquiet affections of anger, hatred, revenge, arise in them, (like the judg or umpire of publick wrastlings) this peace of God doth βραβεύειν, rule by appeasing strifes, and ending controversies. In short, the people of God are doves, sheep, not birds and beasts of prey: Christ gave the Lamb; they wil not have the Lion, or the Tiger for their cognisance. The unpeaceablenesse of godly men is because they have no more godlinesse: As the sons of God have a precept, so have they a property to be harmlesse. Phil. 2.15.

The last resemblance whereby the Apostle describes the sin and misery of these seducers, is contained in these words: Wandring stars, to whom is reserved the blacknesse of darknesse for ever.