impotency towards a sin, in any satiety of a sin, we turn from our sin, but we turn not to God; we turn to a sinful delight in the memory of our sins, and a sinful desire that we might continue in them. So also in a storm at sea, in any imminent calamity, at land, we turn to God, to a Lord, Lord; but at the next calm, and at the next deliverance, we turn to our sin again. He only is the true Israelite, the true penitent, that hath Nathaniel's mark, In quo non est dolus, In whom there is no deceit: for, to sin, and think God sees it not, because we confess it not; to confess it as sin, and yet continue the practice of it; to discontinue the practice of it, and continue the possession of that, which was got by that sin; all this is deceit, and destroys, evacuates, annihilates all repentance.

To recollect all, and to end all: Christ justifies feasting; he feasts you with himself: and feasting in an apostle's house, in his own house; he feasts you often here: and he admits publicans to this feast, men whose full and open life, in court, must necessarily expose them, to many hazards of sin and the Pharisees, our adversaries, calumniate us for this; they say we admit men too easily to the sacrament; without confession, without contrition, without satisfaction. God in heaven knows we do not; less, much less than they. For confession, we require public confession in the congregation and in time of sickness, upon the death-bed, we enjoin private and particular confession, if the conscience be oppressed: and if any man do think, that that which is necessary for him, upon his death-bed, is necessary, every time he comes to the communion, and so come to such a confession, if anything lie upon him, as often as he comes to the communion, we blame not, we dissuade not, we discounsel not, that tenderness of conscience, and that safe proceeding in that good soul. For contrition, we require such a contrition as amounts to a full detestation of the sin, and a full resolution, not to relapse into that sin: and this they do not in the Roman church, where they have suppled and mollified their contrition into an attrition. For satisfaction, we require such a satisfaction as man can make to man, in goods or fame: and for the satisfaction due to God, we require that every man, with a sober and modest, but yet with a confident and infallible assurance believe,

the satisfaction given to God, by Christ, for all mankind, to have been given and accepted for him in particular. This Christ, with joy and thanksgiving we acknowledge to be come; to be come actually; we expect no other after him, we join no other to him and come freely, without any necessity imposed by any above him, and without any invitation from us here: come, not to meet us, who were not able to rise, without him; but yet not to force us, to save us against our wills, but come to call us, by his ordinances in his church; us, not as we pretend any righteousness of our own, but as we confess ourselves to be sinners, and sinners led by this call, to repentance; which repentance, is an everlasting divorce from our beloved sin, and an everlasting marriage and superinduction of our ever-living God.

SERMON CXL.

PREACHED AT WHITEHALL, APRIL 2, 1620.

ECCLESIASTES v. 13, 14.

There is an evil sickness that I have seen under the sun: riches reserved to the owners thereof, for their evil. And these riches perish by evil travail : and he begetteth a son, and in his hand is nothing.

THE kingdom of heaven is a feast; to get you a stomach to that, we have preached abstinence. The kingdom of heaven is a treasure too, and to make you capable of that, we would bring you to a just valuation of this world. He that hath his hands full of dirt, cannot take up amber; if they be full of counters, he cannot take up gold. This is the book, which St. Hierome chose to expound to Blesilla at Rome, when his purpose was to draw her to heaven, by making her to understand this world; it was the book fittest for that particular way: and it is the book which St. Ambrose calls Bonum ad omnia magistrum; A good master to correct us in this world, a good master to direct us to the next. For though Solomon had asked at God's hand only the wisdom fit for government, yet since he had bent his wishes upon so good a thing as wisdom, and in his wishes, even of the best thing, had

been so moderate, God abounded in his grant, and gave him all kinds, natural and civil, and heavenly wisdom. And therefore when the fathers and the later authors in the Roman church, exercise their considerations, whether Solomon were wiser than Adam, than Moses, than the prophets, than the apostles', they needed not to have been so tender, as to except only the Virgin Mary, for though she had such a fulness of heavenly wisdom, as brought her to rest in his bosom, in heaven, who had rested in hers upon earth, yet she was never proposed for an example of natural, or of civil knowledge. Solomon was of all; and therefore St. Austin says of him; Prophetavit in omnibus libris suis, Solomon prophesied in all his books; and though in this book his principal scope be moral, and practic wisdom, yet in this there are also mysteries, and prophecies, and many places concerning our eternal happiness, after this life.

But because there is no third object for man's love; this world, and the next, are all that he can consider, as he hath but two eyes, so he hath but two objects, and then Primus actus voluntatis est amor2, Man's love is never idle, that is ever directed upon something, if our love might be drawn from this world, Solomon thought that a direct way to convey that upon the next: and therefore consider Solomon's method, and wisdom in pursuing this way because all the world together, hath amazing greatness, and an amazing glory in it, for the order and harmony, and continuance of it (for if a man have many manors, he thinks himself a great lord, and if a man have many lords under him, he is a great king, and if he have kings under him, he is a great emperor and yet what profit were it, to get all the world and lose thy soul) therefore Solomon shakes the world in pieces, he dissects it, and cuts it up before thee, that so thou mayest the better see how poor a thing, that particular is, whatsoever it be, that thou settest thy love upon in this world. He threads a string of the best stones, of the best jewels in this world, knowledge in the first chapter, delicacies in the second, long life in the third, ambition, riches, fame, strength in the rest, and then he shows you an ire, a flaw, a cloud in all these stones; he lays this infancy upon them all, vanity, and vexation of spirit.

Which two words, vanity and vexation, because they go through all, to everything Solomon applies one of them, they are the inseparable leaven, that sours all, and therefore are intended as well of this text, as of the other text, we shall by the way make a little stop, upon those two words; first, How could the wisdom of Solomon and of the Holy Ghost, avile and abase this world more, than by this annihilating of that in the name of vanity, for what is that? It is not enough to recite a distinction; it is so absolutely nothing, as that we cannot tell you, what it is. Let St. Bernard do it; Vanum est, quod nec confert plenitudinem continenti; For who amongst you hath not room for another bag, or amongst us for another benefice? Nec fulcimentum innitenti, For who stands fast upon that, which is not fast itself and the world passeth, and the lusts thereof; Nec fructum laboranti, For you have sown much, and bring in little, Ye eat, but have not enough, ye drink, but are not filled, ye are clothed, but wax not warm, and he that earneth wages, puts it into a bag with holes, Midsummer runs out at Michaelmas, and at the year's end he hath nothing.

And such a vanity is this world, lest it were not enough, to call it vanity alone, simply vanity, though that language in which Solomon, and the Holy Ghost spoke, have no degrees of comparison, no superlative, (they cannot say Vanissimum, The greatest vanity,) yet Solomon hath found a way to express the height of it, another way conformable to that language, when he calls it, Vanitatem vanitatum, for so doth it; Canticum canticorum, The Song of songs, Deus deorum, The God of gods, Dominus dominantium, The Lord of lords; Cali cælorum, The Heaven of heavens, always signify the superlative, and highest degree of those things; vanity of vanities is the deepest vanity, the emptiest vanity, the veriest vanity that can be conceived. St. Augustine apprehended somewhat more in it, but upon a mistaking; for accustoming himself to a Latin copy of the Scriptures, and so lighting upon copies, that had been miswritten, he reads that, Vanitas vanitantum: O the vanity of those men that delight in vanity; he puts this lowness, this annihilation not only in the thing, but in the men themselves too. And so certainly

he might safely do; (for though, as he says, in his Retractations, his copies misled him,) yet that which he collected even by that error, was true, they that trust in vain things are as vain, as the things themselves. If St. Augustine had not his warrant to say so from Solomon here, yet he had it from his father before, who did not stop at that, when he had said man is like to vanity, but proceeds farther; surely that is without all contradiction every man, that is without all exception; in his best state, that is, without any declination, is altogether vanity. Let no man grudge to acknowledge it of himself; the second man that ever was begot and born into this world, (and then there was world enough before him to make him great) and the first good man, had his name from vanity; Cain, the first man, had his name from possession; but the second, Abel, had his name from vacuity, from vanity, from vanishing; for it is the very word, that Solomon uses here still for vanity. Because his parents repose no confidence in Abel, or they thought that Cain was the Messias, they called him vanity. Because God knew that Abel had no long term in this world, he directed them, he suffered them to call him vanity. But therefore principally was he, and so may we, be content with the name of vanity, that so acknowledging ourselves to be but vanity, we may turn, for all our being, and all our well-being, for our essence, and existence, and subsistence, upon God in whom only we live and move and have our being; for take us at our best, make every one an Abel, and yet that is but evanescentia in nihilum, a vanishing, an evaporating. When the prophets are said to speak the motions, and notions, the visions of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord", then because that was indeed nothing, (for a lie is nothing) they are said (in this very word) to speak vanity. And still where the prophets have that phrase, in the person of God Provocaverunt me vanitatibus, They have provoked God with their vanities, the Chaldee paraphrase ever expresseth it, idolis, with their idols; and idolum nihil est, an idol, that is vanity, is nothing. Man therefore can have no deeper discouragement from inclining to the things of this world, than to be taught that they are nothing,

4 Psalm cxLiv. 4; cxxxix. 5.

5 Jer. xxiii. 16.

1 Cor. viii. 4.