[Luke 16. onrselves; and therefore whatsoever pains we take in the one, we had need to take as much, if not much more, to do the other too: for what a sad thing will it be, to see many converted by our Ministry shining in Heaven's glory, and we ourselves lie scorching, in eternal flame! To see them with Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, solacing themselves in those rivers of pleasures which are at "God's right hand for 23.] [Ps. 16.11.] evermore," and ourselves in the meanwhile with Dives in Hell torments, without so much as a drop of water to cool our enflamed tongues! And yet St. Paul foresaw this would be the consequence of his preaching the Gospel to others, unless he himself lived up unto it; and therefore we may be confident it will be so unto us too; but I would not have you think that this concerns us of the Clergy only; the same argument holds good as to all others. For if so holy a person, as we must all acknowledge St. Paul to have been, after all his preaching Salvation unto others, was so solicitous about his own; what cause then have you to fear, lest after all your reading and hearing the Word of God, after all your public and private devotions, after all your receiving the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, you at last be castaways, and so lose all your pains and labour! And by consequence, how much doth it concern you all to take as much care if possible, as St. Paul himself did, of your future happiness! I am sure all that are wise amongst you, cannot but look upon this as a matter of the greatest importance that you have or can have in this world; and howsoever any of you may think otherwise at present, it is not long but you will all be of the same mind; which that you may be before it be too late, I pray and beseech you all seriously to consider, that you have another world to live in as well as this, an eternal world, where you must abide either in the height of happiness, or else in the depth of misery for evermore, so that as really as you now live amongst men, you will there live either with Christ and His holy Angels, or else with the Devil and his damned fiends unto all eternity. Do but seriously consider this, and you will need no other arguments to persuade you to follow the example of this great Apostle in this particular, even to make it your daily,' your constant, your only care and business in this world, to XXXIX. SERM. prepare and fit yourselves for the other, that when you come to die you may then begin to live, to live with God, to live in light, in love, in rest, in peace, in joy, in Heaven itself: in Heaven, I say, where we shall be freed from all those griefs and troubles, from all those cares and fears that here distract our minds, and make us restless and uneasy. In Heaven, where we shall trample upon this lower world, and ride in triumph over both sin and Satan, so as never to be tempted or disturbed more: in Heaven, where our souls shall be reduced to their primitive frame and temper, and be made so perfectly happy, as to be perfectly holy. In Heaven, where our thoughts shall be always pure, our minds serene, and our hearts transported with love and joy in the chiefest good: where we shall always behold the glory, admire the perfections, and enjoy the presence of the great Jehovah, so as always to apprehend Him as well pleased with us, rejoicing over us, and manifesting His infinite love and goodness to us; which is so great, so exceeding great an happiness, that it may justly strike us into admiration, how it is possible for such silly creatures as we are to enjoy and bear it; yet how great soever it be, there is never a soul here present but as yet is capable of it, and invited to it; and if you be not failing to yourselves, you may all ere long be admitted into the actual possession of it. But for that end you must still remember, that as Heaven is the highest happiness you can attain to; so it is the hardest matter in the world to attain unto it: I speak not this to discourage any of you, but I would not have you fooled by the Devil and his emissaries, into a groundless conceit, that it is easy to get to Heaven; for Christ Himself, by whom alone it is possible for any of you to come there, hath told you the contrary, assuring you with His own Matt. 7. 14. mouth, "That the gate is strait, and the way narrow which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." And you cannot but all acknowledge as much, if you do but consider what is necessary in order to it; for what must you do that. you may inherit eternal life? Or rather what must you not do? You must mortify every lust, for one sin will keep you out of Heaven, as well as twenty; you must exercise every grace, and perform every duty that is required of you both to God and man; you must "walk in all the commandments [Luke 1.6.] of God blameless," to the utmost of your knowledge and power, so as to be sincerely, entirely, and constantly holy in all manner of conversation; for it is the irrevocable decree of Heaven, that "without holiness no man shall see the Heb. 12. 14. Lord." And therefore, if ever you desire to see the Lord in glory, you must live above the world whilst you are in it, and contemn it while you use it; you must gather up all your scattered affections from all things here below, and fix them upon God, so that all the inclinations of your souls must meet and rest in Him as their only centre, otherwise you will not be "meet to be partakers of the inheritance of [Col. 1.12.] the saints in light," nor capable of those pure and spiritual joys, which are there prepared for you. 25.] But if these things be so, you may say to me, as the Apostles said to our Lord, "Who then can be saved?" [Matt. 19. "For who is sufficient for these things?" To that I answer, it is true, if we look no further than ourselves, we may justly despair of ever knowing what Heaven is; but our comfort is, that "our sufficiency is of God," who is always ready to [2 Cor. 3. assist us in the use of those means that are appointed by Himself; amongst which we are now, in the second place, to consider one of the most effectual, even that which the Apostle tells us he himself used, saying, “I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection." In speaking to which, I shall not trouble you with any critical observations about the Greek words wiά xai douλaywy here used; for our English translation gives you the full sense and meaning of them, as well as any words are able to express it; "I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection;" as if he should have said, I being still in the body, and finding by experience that that is very apt to resist and rebel against my soul, to tempt me to vice, and to hinder me in the exercise of virtue, I therefore take care to keep it under, in such a temper as that it may be always subject unto, and ready to observe the dictates of my reason, and the motions of God's Spirit within me, and so be no hindrance, but rather a furtherance to me in my progress to Heaven. 5.] SERM. 24, 25. ver. 27. But for our better understanding of this we shall consider two things. I. How the Apostle did, and we may, keep our bodies under, and bring them into subjection. II. How much this conduceth to our being so holy here, that we may be happy hereafter, and so not be cast-aways, as the Apostle here speaks. The first will be soon dispatched; for it is plain that the Apostle kept his body under, and brought it into subjection, by fasting and abstinence, as the Fathers frequently observe; for as for the corporal chastisements by whipping and scourging of themselves, so commonly and ridiculously used by the Papists in their solemn processions, St. Paul never makes any mention of them. He saith indeed, that 2 Cor. 11. he "was thrice beaten with rods, and five times received forty stripes save one." But he received them not from himself or his confessor, as the Papists do, but from his implacable enemies, the Jews. But when he afterwards saith, that "he was in hunger and thirst often, in fastings often," by the former the Fathers generally understand the hunger and thirst which he was forced to undergo in his travels and imprisonments; by the latter those voluntary fastings which he undertook himself, whereby to "keep his body under, and to bring it into subjection," this being indeed the most, if not the only, effectual means to do it; for as much as indulging the appetite, and constant feeding to the full, though without excess, swells the veins, and breeds those petulant and noxious humours in the body, which make it rampant and ungovernable; whereas on the other side, fasting and frequent abstinence, withdraws the fuel which foments those combustions and tumults, those wars and rebellions which the body raiseth against the soul, the inferior against the superior powers; and therefore as it was by fasting that St. Paul did it; so it is by fasting that we must keep our bodies under, if we ever desire to do it effectually. And so I come to the other thing to be considered, even how much this keeping the body under, by fasting and abstinence, conduceth to our being holy here, and by con ΙΓ sequence happy hereafter; which being a thing so seldom thought of in our age, and yet of greater importance than can easily be imagined, for the better explication of it, I shall lay down these propositions. First, therefore, true holiness, we must know, is seated only in the soul, and is indeed nothing else, but the right disposition of the several faculties of the soul, and their acting conformably to the Law and nature of God; and therefore, though the soul can perform many acts of holiness without the body, the body can perform none without the soul; and although to some acts, both parts are required to put forth themselves in their several capacities, yet they are no further acts of holiness, than as they proceed from the soul. Hence the soul may be perfectly holy, and perfectly happy too without the body, as in the state of separation, when the body is capable of neither. 2. Although the soul be a distinct substance from the body, and so is capable of acting separately from it, even whilst it is in it; yet so long as it is tied to the body, and actually informs it, so as to be but one part of that composition which we call man, it ordinarily makes use of the organs of the body, especially of the animal spirits, in all its actions, and those only are properly called human actions, which are thus performed even by the whole man, which therefore cannot but depend very much upon the temper of the body that concurs to the performance of them; as we find by daily experience they do; for if our bodies be out of tune, so are our minds too. If any thing affects our heads, disturb our brains, and so disorders the animal spirits which the soul makes use of in its operations, they are likewise disorderly and irregular: as in music, though the artist be never so skilful, yet if his instrument be out of tune, there can be no harmony or melody in what he plays upon it. Yea, none of us but may easily observe, that whatsoever humour prevails most in the body, as phlegm, choler, melancholy, or the like, our actions are usually tainted with it, in so much that by them we may discover what that humour is which is most predominant; from whence it plainly appears, that so long as the soul is in the body, although it was designed to rule and govern it, R |