them in their true taste, and right nature. Obsurdueram stridore catenarum mearum, says the same father: The jingling and ratling of our chains and fetters, makes us deaf: the weight of the judgment takes away the sense of the judgment. This is the full setting of the heart to do evil, when a man fills himself with the liberty of passing into any sin, in an indifferency; and then finds no reason why he should leave that way, either by the love, or by the fear of God. If he prosper by his sin, then he finds no reason; if he do not prosper by it, yet he finds a wrong reason. If unseasonable floods drown his harvest, and frustrate all his labours, and his hopes; he never finds, that his oppressing, and grinding of the poor, was any cause of those waters, but he looks only how the wind sate, and how the ground lay; and he concludes, that if Noah, and Job, and Daniel had been there 29 their labour must have perished, and been drowned, as well as his. If a vehement fever take hold of him, he remembers where he sweat, and when he took cold; where he walked too fast, where his casement stood open, and where he was too bold upon fruit, or meat of hard digestion; but he never remembers the sinful and naked wantonnesses, the profuse and wasteful dilapidations of his own body, that have made him thus obnoxious and open to all dangerous distempers. Thunder from heaven burns his barns, and he says, What luck was this! if it had fallen but ten foot short or over, my barns had been safe: whereas his former blasphemings of the name of God, drew down that thunder upon that house, as it was his; and that lightening could no more fall short or over, than the angel which was sent to Sodom could have burnt another city, and have spared that; or than the plagues of Moses and of Aaron could have fallen upon Goshen, and have spared Egypt. His gomers abound with manna, he overflows with all for necessities, and with all delicacies, in this life; and yet he finds worms in his manna, a putrefaction, and a mouldering away, of this abundant state; but he sees not that that is, because his manna was gathered upon the Sabbath, that there were profanations of the name and ordinances of God, mingled in his means of growing rich. To end all, this is the true use that we are to make of the long-suffering and patience

29 Ezek. xiv. 14.

of God, that when his patience ends, ours may begin that if he forbear others rather than us, we do not expostulate, as in Job, Wherefore do the wicked live, and become old, and grow mighty in power 30? but rather, if he chastise us rather than others, say with David, Our heart is not turned back, neither have our steps declined from thy ways, though thou hast sore broken us, in the place of dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death": and that if sentence be executed upon us, we may make use of his judgment; and if not, we may continue, and enlarge his mercies towards Amen.

us.

SERMON CXXXVIII.

PREACHED AT WHITEHALL, NOVEMBER 2, 1617.

PSALM LV. 19.

Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God. In a prison, where men withered in a close and perpetual imprisonment; in a galley, where men were chained to a laborious and perpetual slavery; in places, where any change that could come, would put them in a better state, than they were before, this might seem a fitter text, than in a court, where every man having set his foot, or placed his hopes upon the present happy state, and blessed government, every man is rather to be presumed to love God, because there are no changes, than to take occasion of murmuring at the constancy of God's goodness towards us. But because the first murmuring at their present condition, the first innovation that ever was, was in heaven; the angels kept not their first estate: though as princes are gods, so their wellgoverned courts, are copies, and representations of heaven; yet the copy cannot be better than the original: and therefore, as heaven itself had, so all courts will ever have, some persons, that are under the increpation of this text, that, Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God: at least, if I shall meet with no conscience, that finds in himself a guiltiness of this sin, if I shall give him no occasion of repentance, yet I shall give him occasion of praying, and magnifying that gracious God, which

30 Job xxi. 7.

31 Psalm XLiv. 18.

hath preserved him from such sins, as other men have fallen into, though he have not: for I shall let him see first, the dangerous slipperiness, the concurrence, the coincidence of sins; that a habit and custom of sin, slips easily into that dangerous degree of obduration, that men come to sin upon reason; they find a quia, a cause, a reason why they should sin: and then, in a second place, he shall see, what perverse and frivolous reasons they assign for their sins, when they are come to that; even that which should avert them, they make the cause of them, Because they have no changes. And then, lastly, by this perverse mistaking, they come to that infatuation, that dementation, as that they lose the principles of all knowledge, and all wisdom: The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom; and, because they have no changes, they fear not God.

First then, we enter into our first part, the slipperiness of habitual sin, with that note of St. Gregory, Peccatum cum voce, est culpa cum actione; peccatum cum clamore, est culpa cum libertate; Sinful thoughts produced into actions, are speaking sins; sinful actions continued into habits, are crying sins. There is a sin before these; a speechless sin, a whispering sin, which nobody hears, but our own conscience; which is, when a sinful thought or purpose is born in our hearts, first we rock it, by tossing, and tumbling it in our fancies, and imaginations, and by entertaining it with delight and consent, and with remembering, with how much pleasure we did the like sin before, and how much we should have, if we could bring this to pass; and as we rock it, so we swathe it, we cover it, with some pretences, some excuses, some hopes of covercling* it; and this is that, which we call morosam delectationem, a delight to stand in the air and prospect of a sin, and a lothness to let it go out of our sight. Of this sin St. Gregory says nothing in this place, but only of actual sins, which he calls speaking; and of habitual, which he calls crying sins. And this is as far, as the Schools, or the casuists do ordinarily trace sin; to find out peccata infantia, speechless sins, in the heart; peccata vocatia, speaking sins, in our actions; and peccata clamantia, crying and importunate sins, which will not

* The folio edition has "coveraling." I find "covercle" (couvercle, French) used in Chaucer for a lid: and have corrected the text accordingly.-ED.

suffer God to take his rest, no nor to fulfil his own oath, and protestation he hath said, As I live, I would not the death of a sinner; and they extort a death from him. But besides these, here is a farther degree, beyond speaking sins, and crying sins; beyond actual sins and habitual sins; here are peccata cum ratione, and cum disputatione; we will reason, we will debate, we will dispute it out with God, and we will conclude against all his arguments, that there is a quia, a reason, why we should proceed and go forward in our sin: Et pudet non esse impudentes, as St. Augustine heightens this sinful disposition; men grow ashamed of all holy shamefacedness, and tenderness towards sin; they grow ashamed to be put off, or frighted from their sinful pleasure, with the ordinary terror of God's imaginary judgments; ashamed to be no wiser than St. Paul would have them, to be moved, or taken hold of, by the foolishness of preaching'; or to be no stronger of themselves than so, that we should trust to another's taking of our infirmities, and bearing of our sicknesses; or to be no richer, or no more provident than so, to sell all, and give it away, and make a treasure in heaven, and all this for fear of thieves, and rust, and canker, and moths here. That which is not allowable in courts of justice, in criminal causes, to hear evidence against the king, we will admit against God; we will hear evidence against God; we will hear what man's reason can say in favour of the delinquent, why he should be condemned; why God should punish the soul eternally, for the momentary pleasures of the body nay, we suborn witnesses against God, and we make philosophy and reason speak against religion, and against God; though indeed, Omne verum, omni vero consentiens; whatsoever is true in philosophy, is true in divinity too; howsoever we distort it, and wrest it to the contrary. We hear witnesses, and we suborn witnesses against God, and we do more; we proceed by recriminations, and a cross bill, with a quia Deus, because God does as he does, we may do as we do; because God does not punish sinners, we need not forbear sins; whilst we sin strongly, by oppressing others, that are weaker, or craftily by circumventing others that are simple. This is but leoninum, and vulpinum, that tincture of the lion, and of the fox, that brutal nature that

11 Cor. i. 21.

is in us. But when we come to sin, upon reason, and upon discourse, upon meditation, and upon plot, this is humanum, to become the man of sin, to surrender that, which is the form, and essence of man, reason, and understanding, to the service of sin. When we come to sin wisely and learnedly, to sin logically, by a quia, and an ergo, that, because God does thus, we may do as we do, we shall come to sin through all the arts, and all our knowledge, to sin grammatically, to tie sins together in construction, in a syntaxis, in a chain, and dependance, and coherence upon one another; and to sin historically, to sin over sins of other men again, to sin by precedent, and to practise that which we had read and we come to sin rhetorically, persuasively, powerfully; and as we have found examples, for our sins in history, so we become examples to others, by our sins, to lead and encourage them, in theirs; when we come to employ upon sin, that which is the essence of man, reason, and discourse, we will also employ upon it, those which are the properties of man only, which are, to speak, and to laugh; we will come to speak, and talk, and to boast of our sins, and at last, to laugh and jest at our sins; and as we have made sin a recreation, so we will make a jest of our condemnation. And this is the dangerous slipperiness of sin, to slide by thoughts and actions, and habits, to contemptuous obduration.

Now amongst the manifold perversenesses and incongruities of this artificial sinning, of sinning upon reason, upon a quia, and an ergo, of arguing a cause for our sin; this is one, that we never assign the right cause: we impute our sin to our youth, to our constitution, to our complexion; and so we make our sin our nature we impute it to our station, to our calling, to our course of life; and so we make our sin our occupation: we impute it to necessity, to perplexity, that we must necessarily do that, or a worse sin; and so we make our sin our direction. We see the whole world is ecclesia malignantium, a synagogue, a church of wicked men'; and we think it a schismatical thing, to separate ourselves from that church, and we are loth to be excommunicated in that church; and so we apply ourselves to that, we do as they do, with the wicked we are wicked; and so we make our

2 Psalm xxvi, 5.