greatest; not the greatest sinner in the world, but the greatest of them upon whom the grace of God hath wrought effectually. St. Augustine's interpretation is for one-half thereof, for the negative part' sake; Primus, says he, non tempore; He says he was the first sinner, but he does not mean the first that sinned, the first in time; but then for the affirmative part, which follows in Augustine, that he was primus malignitate, the first, the highest, the greatest sinner, why should we, or how can we charge the apostle so heavily? Beloved to maintain the truth of this which St. Paul says, we need not say that it was materially true, that it was indeed so; it is enough to defend it from falsehood, that it was formally true, that is, that it appeared to him to be true, and not out of a sudden and stupid inconsideration but deliberately: first, he respected his own natural disposition, and proclivity to great sins, and out of that evidence condemned himself: as when a man who professed an art of judging the disposition of a man by his face, had pronounced of Socrates, (whose virtue all the world admired) that he was the most incontinent and licentious man, the greatest thief and extortioner of any man in the world; the people despised and scorned the physiognomer and his art, and were ready to offer violence unto him: Socrates himself corrected their distemper again, and said, It is true that he says, and his judgment is well grounded, for by nature no man is more inclined to these vices than I am. And this disposition to the greatest sins, St. Paul knew in himself. He that hath these natural dispositions is likely to be the greatest sinner, except he have some strong assistance to restrain him: and then, he that hath the offer of such helps, and abuses them, is in a farther step of being the greatest sinner: and this also St. Paul had respect to now, that he had had a good and learned education, a good understanding of the law and the prophets, a good mortification, by being of the strict sect of the pharisees; and yet he had turned all the wrong way, and was therefore in this abuse of these manifold graces the greater sinner. He looked farther than into his own nature, or into his resistance of assistances; he looked into those actions which these had produced in him, and there he saw his breathing of threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, his hunger and thirst of Christian blood and so says St. Augustine, Nemo acrior inter persecutores, ergo nemo prior inter peccatores, as he found himself the greatest persecutor, so he condemns himself for the greatest sinner. But all these natural dispositions to great sins, negligences, of helps offered, sinful actions produced out of these two, might be greater in many others, than in St. Paul; and it is likely, and it may be certain to us, that they were so; but it was not certain to him, he knew not so much ill by any other man, as by himself. Consider those words in the Proverbs, Surely I am more foolish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man in me : for though they be not the words of Solomon, yet they are the words of a prophet, and a prophet who surely was not really more foolish than any man, then in consideration of something which he found in himself, says so: he that considers himself, shall find such degrees of sin, as that he cannot see that any man hath gone lower: : or if he have in some particular and notorious sin, yet in quovis alio, quid occultum esse potest, quo nobis superior sit: he that is fallen lower than thus in some sin, yet may be above thee in grace; he may have done a greater sin, and yet not be the greater sinner: another hath killed a man, and thou hast not; thou mayest have drawn and drunk the blood of many by usury, by extortion, by oppression. Another in fury of intemperance, hath ravished, and thou hast not; thou mayest have corrupted many by thy deceitful solicitations; and then in thyself art as ill as the ravisher, and thou hast made them worse whom thou hast corrupted. Cast up thine own account, inventory thine own goods; (for sin is the wrath of the sinner, and he treasures up the wrath of God 28) reckon thine own sins, and thou wilt find thyself rich in that wealth, and find thyself of that quorum, that the highest place in that company and mystery of sinners belongs to thee. St. Paul does so here; yea then, when he saw his own case, and saw it by the light of the Spirit of God; when he took knowledge that Christ was come, and had saved sinners, and had saved him; yet still he says Sum primus, still he remains in his accusation of himself that he was still the greatest sinner, because he remained still in his infirmity, and aptness to relapse £6 Prov. xxx. 2. 27 Augustine. 28 Rom. ii, 5. into former sins. As long as we are, we are subject to be worse than we are; and those sins which we apprehend even with horror and amazement, when we hear that others have done them, we may come to do them with an earnestness, with a delight, with a defence, with a glory, if God leaves us to ourselves. As long as that is true of us, Sum primus homo, I am no better than the first man, than Adam was, (and none of us are in any proportion so good) that is true also, Quorum primus sum ego, I am still in a slippery state, and in an evident danger of being the greatest sinner. This is the conclusion for every humble Christian, no man is a greater sinner than I was, and I am not sure but that I may fall to be worse than ever I was, except I husband and employ the talents of God's graces better than I have done. SERMON CXLVI. PREACHED AT WHITEHALL, FEBRUARY 29, 1627. ́ ACTs vii. 60. And when he had said this, he fell asleep. He that will die with Christ upon Good Friday, must hear his own bell toll all Lent; he that will be partaker of his passion at last, must conform himself to his discipline of prayer and fasting before. Is there any man, that in his chamber hears a bell toll for another man, and does not kneel down to pray for that dying man? and then when his charity breathes out upon another man, does he not also reflect upon himself, and dispose himself as if he were in the state of that dying man? We begin to hear Christ's bell toll now, and is not our bell in the chime? We must be in his grave, before we come to his resurrection, and we must be in his death-bed before we come to his grave: we must do as he did, fast and pray, before we can say as he said, that In manus tuas, Into thy hands O Lord I commend my Spirit. You would not go into a medicinal bath without some preparatives; presume not upon that bath, the blood of Christ Jesus, in the sacrament then, without preparatives neither. Neither say to yourselves, we shall have preparatives enough, warnings enough, many more sermons before it come to that, and so it is too soon yet; you are not sure you shall have more; not sure you shall have all this; not sure you shall be affected with any. If you be, when you are, remember that as in that good custom in these cities, you hear cheerful street-music in the winter mornings, but yet there was a sad and doleful bellman, that waked you, and called upon you two or three hours before that music came; so for all that blessed music which the servants of God shall present to you in this place, it may be of use, that a poor bellman waked you before, and though but by his noise, prepared you for their music. And for this early office I take Christ's earliest witness, his proto-martyr, his first witness St. Stephen, and in him that which especially made him his witness, and our example, is his death, and our preparation to death, what he suffered, what he did, what he said, so far as is knit up in those words, When he had said this, he fell asleep. From which example, I humbly offer to you these two general considerations; first, that every man is bound to do something before he die; and then to that man who hath done those things which the duties of his calling bind him to, death is but a sleep. In the first, we shall stop upon each of those steps; first there is a sis aliquid, every man is bound to be something, to take some calling upon him. Secondly there is a hoc age; every man is bound to do seriously and sedulously, and sincerely the duties of that calling. And thirdly there is a sis aliquis; the better to perform those duties, every man shall do well to propose to himself some person, some pattern, some example whom he will follow and imitate in that calling. In which third branch of this first part, we shall have just occasion to consider some particulars in him who is here proposed for our example, St. Stephen; and in these three, sis aliquid, be something, profess something; and then hoc age, do truly the duties of that profession; and lastly, sis aliquis, propose some good man, in that profession to follow, and in the things intended in this text, propose St. Stephen, we shall determine our first part. And in the other we shall see that to them that do not this, that do not settle their consciences so, death is a bloody conflict, and no victory at last, a tempestuous sea, and no harbour at last, a slippery height, and no footing, a desperate fall and no bottom. But then to them that have done it, their pill is gilded, and the body of the pill honey too; mors lucrum, death is a gain, a treasure, and this treasure brought some in a calm too; they do not only go to heaven by death, but heaven comes to them in death; their very manner of dying is an inchoative act of their glorified state: therefore it is not called a dying but a sleeping; which one metaphor intimates two blessings, that because it is a sleep it gives a present rest, and because it is a sleep, it promises a future waking in the resurrection. First, then for our first branch of our first part, we begin with our beginning, our birth; Man is born to trouble; so we read it, to trouble. The original is a little milder than so; yet there it is, Man is born unto labour1, God never meant less than labour to any man. Put us upon that which we esteem the honourablest of labours, the duties of martial discipline, yet where it is said, that man is appointed to a warfare upon earth, it is seconded with that, His days are like the days of an hireling. How honourable soever his station be, he must do his day's labour in the day, the duties of the place in the place. How far is he from doing so, that never so much as considers why he was sent into this world; who is so far from having done his errand here, that he knows not, considers not, what his errand was; nay knows not, considers not, whether he had any errand hither or no. But as though that God, who for infinite millions of millions of generations, before any creation, any world, contented himself with himself, satisfied, delighted himself with himself in heaven, without any creatures, yet at last did bestow six days' labour upon the creation and accommodation of man, as though that God who when man was soured in the whole lump, poisoned in the fountain, perished at the core, withered in the root, in the fall of Adam, would then in that dejection, that exinanition, that evacuation of the dignity of man, and not in his former better estate, engage his |