the very plots and devices of that great challenger of hell. We live in a knowing age: and yet how many teachers are very novices in the practic part of this picpaxia; and therefore are either borne down, or tossed up with the vices of the time? whose miscarriages, would God it were as easy to remedy as to lament! Lastly, what is skill in our weapon, without a Heart and Hand to use it? Rabshakeh could say, Counsel and strength are for the war; 2 Kings xviii. 20. Strength without counsel is like a blind giant, and counsel without strength is like a quick-sighted cripple. If heart and eyes and limbs meet not, there can be no fight; but tu pulsas, ego vapulo. What are men in this case, but lepores galeati, or as sword-fishes, that have a weapon, but no heart? Hear the spirit of a right champion of heaven; I am ready, not to be bound only, but to die for the name of the Lord Jesus. Here was a man, fit to grapple with beasts. It is the word of the sluggish coward, There is a lion or a bear in the way. What if there be? If thou wilt be a Sampson, a David, encounter them. There is no great glory to be looked for, but with hazard and difficulty. When the soldier said, "The enemy is strong," it was bravely answered of the captain," The victory shall be so much more glorious.' (2.) I have shewed you the man qualified; I should stay to shew you him Armed: armed with Authority without, with Resolution within: but I long to shew you the Fight. 2. A FIGHT it must be; which I beseech you observe, in the first place. Neither doth he say, "I played with beasts;" except you would have it in Joab's phrase: as neither did the beasts play with him, except, as Erasmus speaks, Ludus exiit in rabiem. He says not, "I humoured their bestiality: I struck up a league or a truce with the vices of men." No; St. Paul was far from this: he was at a perpetual defiance with the wickedness of the times; and, as that valiant commander said, would die fighting. The world wanted not, of old, plausible spirits; that, if an Ahab had a mind to go up against Ramoth, would say, Go up and prosper; and would have horns of iron, to push him forward. St. Paul was none of them: neither may we. He hath indeed bidden us, if it be possible, to have peace with all men; not with beasts. If wickedness shall go about to glaver with us, Is it peace, Jehu? we must return a short answer, and speak blows. Far, far be it from us, to fawn upon vicious Greatness; to favour even Court-sins. If here we meet with bloody oaths, with scornful profaneness, with pride, with drunkenness; we must fly in the face of it with so much more fierceness, as the eminence of the sin may make it more dangerously exemplary: quò grandius nomen, eò grandius scandalum, as Bernard. Let the clearest water mix with the best earth, it makes but mire. If we be the true Sons of Thunder, even the tallest cedar-sins must be blasted with our lightning; and riven with our bolts. Cato would not, they say, have a dumb soldier: I am sure Christ will not. Woe be to us if we preach not the Gospel: yea, woe be to us, if we preach not the Law too; if we do not lash the guilt of the Great, with the scorpions of Judgment. What stand we upon bulk? if the sin be an elephant, harnessed, and carrying castles upon his back; we must, with Eleazar, creep under his belly, and wound that vast enemy with the hazard of our own crushing. It is the charge of God, Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins Isaiah Iviii. 1. The words are emphatical: whereof the first signifies a straining of the throat with crying; and the next, the trum pet, implies a sound of war. This same bellum cum vitiis, 66 with sins," must be acordos óheμos, uncapable of so much as a truce; yea, as a respiration. As that undaunted soldier therefore held first, with his right hand; and, when that was cut off, with his left; and, when both were cut off, with his teeth: so must we resolve to do. That, which is the praise of the mastiffs of our nation, must be ours, To leave our life with our hold. Profectò stabimus, et pugnabimus usque ad mortem ; "We will stand, and fight it out to the very death;" as Bernard speaks. war The MANNER of the Fight follows; and that must needs vary, according to the divers fashions of the onset. For all beasts assail not alike: one fights with his tusks; another, with his paws; another, with his horn; another, with his heel; another, with his sting: one rampeth upon us; another leaps in to us; a third either rusheth us down, or casts us upward; a fourth galls us afar; a fifth wounds us unseen: one kills by biting; another, by striking; another, by piercing; another, by envenoming. According to these manifold changes of assaults, must the expert champion dispose of himself. To speak morally as these Men-beasts are either Beasts of Opinion or Beasts of Practice, and both of them maintain the fight either by close subtlety or by open violence; so did St. Paul's opposition suit them; so must ours, whether for defence or for offence. The Beasts of Opinion were either idolatrous Ethnics, or refractory Jews: the one, worshipping Diana for their goddess; the other, refusing the true Messiah for their Saviour: the one, he beats with the down-right blows of right reason; the other, he hews with the two-edged sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. The Beasts of Practice he smites through with the darts of the Law; whereof Exod. xix. 13: If a beast touch the mount he shall be shot through. Their subtlety he declined by a wise evasion; their violence he repelled with an irresistible force. The particularities would be infinite: neither do any of you expect, that I should turn the pulpit into a Fence-school or a Paris-garden. Only let me reduce St. Paul's practice herein to some few useful rules; as to express his beast-combat, so to direct our own. (1.) Whereof the first, to begin with the Beasts of Opinion, was and shall be, To fight still at the head. When he comes to the theatre of Ephesus, he deals not with collateral matters of a secondary nature, but flies upon the main heads of the highest contradiction; whether one true God only should be worshipped; whether Christ should be acknowledged for the Messiah. No doubt, Ephesus was full of curious and nice scruples: the wise Apostle waves all these; and, as some magnanimous mastiff, that scorns to set upon every cur that barks at him in the way, he reserves himself for these lions and tigers of error. Oh, how happy were it for Christendom, if we, that profess to sit at St. Paul's feet, as he at Gamaliel's, could learn this wit of him! It is true, which Chromatius hath, Non sunt parva quæ Dei sunt; "None of God's matters are slight:" but yet, there is a difference; and that would be observed. The working brains of subtle man have been apt to mince divinity into infinite atoms of speculation; and every one of those speculations breeds many questions, and every question breeds troubles in the Church: like as every corn of powder flies off, and fires his fellow. Hence are those papai, &c. foolish and unlearned disquisitions; 2 Tim. ii. 23. that have set the whole Christian World together by the ears. Ex utráque parte sunt qui pug nare cupiunt, as Tully said of his time; "There are enough on both sides that would fight." The main fort of religion is worth, not our sweat, but our blood: thus must we strive pro aris: so even heresy shall be found, as Chrysostom observes, not more dangerous than profitable. But, if it be only matter of rite or of unimporting consequence, (de venis capillaribus, as he said) Oh, what madness is it in us, to draw the world into sides, and to pour out the souls of God's people like water! What is this, but as if some generous bandog should leave the bear or lion, prime forma feram, which he comes to bait, and run after a mouse? Melancthon cites and approves that saying of Dionysius of Corinth in Eusebius, That schism is no less sin than idolatry. And, if the fish be the better, where the seas are most unquiet; I am sure the souls are worse, where the Church is tumultuous. I cannot skill of these swan's eggs, that are never hatched without thunder; nor of that unnatural brood, that eats through the dam, to make passage into the light of reputation. Oh, for the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace! Justly did Agesilaus lament the state of Greece, that had lost as many soldiers in domestic wars, as might have made them masters of the world. Let me say, Had all our swords and pens been happily bent against the common enemy of Christendom, long ago had that Mahometan moon waned to nothing, and given way to the glorious Sun of the Gospel. Our second rule must be, When we do smite, to strike home. It is St. Paul's: I so fight, in wc déça Ségur as not beating the air; 1 Cor. ix. 26. Here is not a blow lost; non verberat ictibus auras. How doth he cut the throat of the Ephesian beast, Idolatry, while he argues, They are not gods that are made with hands! All the silversmiths of Diana cannot hammer out a reply to this charge. It is no flourishing, when we come to this combat. Weak proofs betray good causes. Demonstrations must have place here, not probabilities. How powerfully doth he convince the unbelieving Jews of Ephesus and Rome, out of Moses and the prophets; Acts xxviii. 23! This, this is the weapon, whereby our Grand Captain vanquished the great challenger of the bottomless pit, Scriptum est. All other blades are but lead to this steel. Councils, Fathers, Histories are good helps; but ad pompam, rather than ad pugnam. These Scriptures are they, whereof St. Augustin justly, Hæc fundamenta, hæc firmamenta. What do we multiply volumes, and endlessly go about the bush? That of Tertullian is most certain, Aufer ab hæreticis quæcunque Ethnici sapiunt, ut de Scripturis solis quæstiones suas sistant, et stare non poterunt; "Take from heretics what they borrow of Pagans, and hold them close to the trial by the Scriptures alone, they cannot stand." Bring but this fire to the wildest beast, his eye will not endure it: he must run away from it for these kind of creatures are all, as that Father, Luci fuge Scripturarum. What worlds of volumes had been spared, how infinite distractions of weak and wavering souls had been prevented, if we had confined ourselves to St. Paul's fence! Our third rule must be, To redouble our strokes uncessantly, un weariably; not giving breath to the beast; not fainting for want of our own. St. Paul laid on, three months together, in the Synagogue of Ephesus; two years more, in the School of Tyrannus; Acts xix. 8, 9: and, accordingly, gives us our charge, State ergo, Stand close to it; Eph. vi. 14. If, when we have dealt some few unsuccessful blows, we throw up the bucklers, or lean upon our pummels, we lose our life with the day. I could, as the case might stand, easily be of the mind of that soldier, who, when he heard Xenophantus by his music stirring up Alexander to the fight, wished rather to hear a musician that could take him off: but, since we have to do with an enemy, which nec victor nec victus novit quiescere, as Hannibal said of Marcellus, there is no way but to fight it out. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, saith the Apostle. If need be, we must do so. Serpens, sitis, ardor arena, Dulcia virtuti, as he said. Oh, be constant to your own holy resolutions, if ever ye look for a happy victory. Well did the dying prophet chide the king of Israel, that he struck but thrice: Thou shouldest have smitten often; then thou shouldest have smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it; 2 Kings xiii. 19. Let neither bugs of fear, nor suppalpations of favour weaken your hands, from laying load upon the Beast of Error. Fight zealously; fight indefatigably; and prevail. In the battles of Christ, as St. Chrysostom observes, the issue is so assured, that the crown goes before the victory: but, when ye once have it, hold fast that you have, that no man take your crown; Rev. iii. 11. Our last rule is, To know our distance; and, where we find invincible resistance, to come off fairly. So did St. Paul in the theatre of the Ephesian Synagogue; when, after three months' disputation, some were hardened, and, instead of believing, blasphemed the way of God, arosas apgire, he departed, and separated, Acts xix. 9. Those beasts we cannot master, we must give up. If Babylon will not be cured, she must be left to herself. To apply this to the theatre of the times. There is no challenge either more frequent or more heavy, than that we have left that Church, which they miscall our Mother. Had we gone from her that is gone from herself, we had but followed her in leaving her: had we left her that hath blasphemed her forsaken truth, we had but followed St. Paul: but now, let the worid know, we have not left her; she hath abandoned us: Non fugimus, sed fugamur; as Casaubon cites from our late learned sovereign. It is her violence, not our choice, that hath excluded us. Because we could not but leave her errors, she hath ejected our persons. This schism shall, one day, before that great Tribunal of Heaven, fall heavily upon those perverse spirits, that would rather rend the Church than want their will; and can be content to sacrifice both truth and peace, together with millions of souls, to their own ambition. (2.) Let this suffice for the Beasts of Opinion, which are Errors. Turn your eyes now, if you please, to St. Paul's fight with the Beasts of Practice, Vices. And, in the first place, see how the Ephesian beasts fought with St. Paul, Acts xix. 28, 29. Ye find them, as so many enraged bulls, scraping the earth with their feet, and digging it with their horns; snuffing up the air with their raised nostrils; rushing furiously into the theatre; tossing up Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul's companions, into the air; and, with an impetuous violence, carrying all before them. This hath been ever the manner of wickedness, to be headstrong in the pursuit of its own courses; impatient of opposition; cruel, in revenge of the opposers. Doth Elijah cry out against the murders and idolatries of Ahab? The beast hath him in chace for his life, and earths him in his cave. Doth Micaiah cross the designs of the false prophets in the expedition of Ramoth? The beast with the iron-horns pusheth him in the face, and beats him down into the dungeon. Doth John Baptist bend his non licet against Herodias's incest? The beast flies in his throat; and, with one grasp, tears his head from his shoulders. So it ever was; so it ever will be. Am I become your enemy, because I tell you the truth? saith St. Paul. Stetisse lego judicandos Apostolos, saith Bernard. If still therefore heart-burnings and malicious censures attend the faithful delivery of God's sacred errand, the beast is like itself. Sagittant in obscurá luná rectos corde, as St. Chrysostom reads that in the Psalm. In the mean time, what doth St. Paul? Doth he give in? doth he give out? No, here was still appoía; Eph. vi. 20. He traverses his ground indeed for his advantage, from Ephesus to Macedonia; but still he galls the beast wherever he is as idolaters, so all sorts of flagitious sinners, felt the weight of his hand, the dint of his stroke; all which, wheresoever he finds them, he impartially pierces through with the darts of denounced judgment, that is, the verbum asperum, and sagitta volans in Psalm xci. 5: the curse of the Law Gal. iii. 13. See how he wounds those other beasts of Ephesus: No whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man which is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of God; Eph. v. 5: and, For these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience; verse 6: Tribulation and anguish to every ། |