Imprimatur ROBERTUS SAY VICECANCELLARIUS OXON A SERMON PREACHED BEFORE THE KING Decemb. 31. 1665. AT  IN OXFORD By R. ALLESTREE D. D. one of the Canons of that Church Published by His Majesty's Command OXFORD Printed by W. Hall for James Allestree and Richard Davis A. D. 1666. II. Chap. of St. Luke part of the 34. verse Behold this Child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel and for a sign which shall be spoken against AND Simeon Blessed them and said etc. A Benediction sure of a most strange importance If to bring forth one that is to be a large destruction if to be delivered of a Child that must be for the fall of many and the kill of the Mother's self be blessed if Swords and Ruins be comforts than my Text is full of these But if this be to Bless what is it to forespeak and abode ill Yet however ominous and fatal the words are they give us the event and the design too of the Blessed Incarnation of the Son of God the Child of this Text and of this Season a short view of God's Counsel in it and the Effects of it The Effects in these particulars 1. This Child is for the fall of many 2. For the rising again of many 3. For a sign with the quality of that sign he is for a sign that shall be spoken against 2. The Counsel and Design of this is signified in the word here he is set and preordained to be all this First of the first effect This Child is for the fall of many And here I shall but only name that way whereby many men set this Child for their own fall while they make his holy Time to be but a more solemn opportunity of sinning We know many celebrate this great Festival with Surfeits & Excesses usual appendages of Feasting Oaths and Curses the ingredients of Gaming Dalliance and Lasciviousness the attendants of sporting of all which this seems as it were the Anniversary a set time for their return Thus indeed the Israelites did solemnize the Birth of their Idol-Calf They sat down to Eat and Drink and rose up to Exod. 32. 6 play And must we celebrate this Child too like that Calf because he was born among Brutes And must his Votaries also be of the Herd And he live and be worshipped always in a Stable Because God became man must men therefore become beasts Is it fit to honour that Child with Iniquity and Looseness that did come into the World upon designs of Holiness to settle a most strict Religion Nothing can be more incongruous than this and certainly there is nothing of God's Counsel in it But to you whose time seems nothing else but a constant Festival always hath the Leisure and the Plenties and the Sports of one who as to these things keep a Christmas all their life this season as it does not seem to challenge those things to itself peculiarly so I shall not now insist on them but proceed to those ways by which Simeon did Prophecy This Child would be for the fall of many in Israel And they are three 1. This Child whom I but now declared God had prepared to be the Glory of his People V. 31 32. Israel yet his Birth was so inglorious and his Life answerable to it shall be so mean and poor and his Death so full of shame and curse that these shall prove a scandal to his people who shall be offended at them and being prepossessed with prejudices of a Pompous Royal Messiah they will not believe in this but reject a Saviour that comes upon those disadvantages which will therefore prove occasions of falling to them That it was so is expressly said Behold I lay in Zion a chief corner stone a stone of stumbling Rom. 9 33. 1 Pet. 2. 6. and a rock of offence And that it was so upon this account is clear The great ones cry out of him This fellow we know not whence he is John 9 29. They that seemed to know whence did upbraid him with it Is not this the Carpenter Mar. 6. 3. And therefore with a deal of scorn they question Do any of the Rulers or the Pharisees believe John 7. 48. in him Yea Christ himself knew this would be so great a scandal that in the 11 Chapter of St. Matthew in the close of many Miracles which he wrought on purpose to demonstrate he was the Messiah he adds vers. 6. and Blessed is he that shall not be offended in me As if he thought his mean condition would prove a greater argument against him than his mighty works were for him and it were a vaster Prodigy to see the Saviour of the world the promised Messiah poor and abject then to see one cure the Blind and heal the Lame and raise the Dead and they might think they had a stranger Miracle to confirm their unbelief than any he would work to make them believe in him And really that the Kingdom of the Messiah which the Prophets did express in terms as high as their own Ecstasies and Raptures in transported words as if it Vied with God's Dominion both for extent and for duration should prove at last an Empire only over twelve poor Fishermen and Publicans and one of them a Traitor too And that He that was born this King should be born in a Stable while he lived that he should not have an hole to put his Head in nor his Corpse in when he died but his Grave too must be Charity this would startle any that did wait for the Redemption of Israel in those glorious expresses which the Prophet's tract it out in To you indeed that are Votaries to this Child are confirmed Christians these seeming disadvantages can give no prejudice However mean and abject his condition were that cannot make you to despise him who from that must needs reflect how dear you were to God when for your sakes merely he became so mean and abject He became poor saith St. Paul that you through his poverty might 2 Cor. 8. 9 be made rich He was made the Child of Man that you might be made Sons of God it was to pay the price of your Redemption that he Phil. 11. 7. so emptied himself thus he valued you and men do not despise merely because and by those measures that they are esteemed these are not there turns of love its passionate obliging ravishing effects do not use to be thus requited this his great descent cannot occasion your fall who know he descended only to assume you up to glory But 't is worth inquiry why since it was certain that for this this Child should be the fall of Israel that for this they would reject him and the meanness of his condition would prove an unremovable obstruction to their belief as it is to this day Why yet he would choose to be born in a condition so in the utmost extreme to his own nature so all contradiction to his Divinity and so seemingly opposite to the very end of his coming The Jew indeed will find no excuse for his infidelity from this condition for what ever that were yet those Miracles that made the Devils to confess him brought conviction enough to make Jews inexcusable And it was obvious to observe that He who fed five thousand with five loaves and two fishes till they Matth. 14. 19 20 21. left more than was set before them needed not to be in a condition of want or meanness if it were not otherwise more needful he should not abound God that when He brought this first begotten Son into the world said Let all the Angels of God worship him might Heb. 1. 6. have put him into an estate which all mankind most readily would have done Homage too as easily have dressed his Person with a blaze of Pomp and Splendour as his Birthday with a Star If there had not been necessity it should be otherwise And such there was For when the fullness both of time and iniquity was come when Vice could grow no further but did even cry for Reformation and when the Doctrine that must come to give the rules of this Reformation was not only to wage War with flesh and blood with those desires which constitution gives but which perpetual universal custom had confirmed and which their Gods also as well as inclinations did contribute to which their Original sin and their Religion equally fomented for Vice was then the Worship of the world Sins had their Temples Theft its Deity and Drunkenness its God Adultery had many and to prostitute their bodies was most sacred and their very Altar-fires did kindle these foul heats whence Uncleanness is so often called Idolatry in Scripture And besides all this all the Philosophy and all the power of the world engaged in the belief and practice of this and resolved with all their wit and force to keep it so When it was thus the Doctrine that must come to oppose control reform all this must come either armed with fire and sword design to settle itself by conquest or come in a way of meekness and of suffering The first of these Religion cannot possibly design because it cannot aim to settle that by violence which cannot be forced and where 't is force is not Religion One may as well invade and hope to get a conquest over thoughts and put a mind in chains and force a man to will against his will All such motives are incompetent to demonstrate Doctrines for how ever successful their force proves yet it cannot prove the Doctrines true for by that Argument it proves that Religion that it settles true it proves that it destroys was true before while it prevailed and had the power Had this Child come so he had only given such a testimony to to the truth of Christianity as Heathenism had before and Turkism hath since He might indeed have drowned the wicked world again in another deluge of their own blood but sure never had reformed it thus Therefore That Religion that must oppose the Customs and the Powers of the world upon Principles of Reason and Religion must do it by Innocence and Patience by doing good and which was necessary then by consequence as the world stood by suffering evil parting with all not only the advantages but necessaries of this life and life its self too where they stood in competition and were inconsistent with men's duties and their expectations and by this means they must show the world that their Religion did bring Heb. 7. 19 in a better hope then that which all the profits pleasures glories of this world can entertain and flatter Thus they did and thus they did prevail for the first ages of the Church were but so many centuries of men that entertained Christianity with the contempt of the world and life itself They knew to put themselves into Christ's Service and Religion was the same thing as to set themselves aside for spoil and rapine dedicate themselves to poverty and scorn to racks and tortures and to Butchery itself Yet they entered into it did not only renounce the pomps and vanities of the world in their Baptism when they were new born to God quench their affections to them in those waters but renounced them even to the death drowned their affections to them in their own heart blood ran from the world into flames and fled faster from the satisfactions and delights of earth than those flames mounted to their Element and Sphere In fine they became Christians so as if they had been Candidates of Death and only made themselves Apprentices of Martyrdom Now if it were not possible it should be otherwise then thus as the world stood than it was necessary that the Captain Heb. 11. 10 of Salvation should lead on go before this noble Army of Martyrs if it were necessary that they must leave all who followed Him than it was not possible that He should be here in a state of Plenty Splendour and Magnificence but of Poverty and Meanness giving an example to his followers whose condition could not but be such To give which example was it seems of more necessity then by being born in Royal Purple to prevent the fall of many in Israel who for his condition despised him I am not so vain as to hope to persuade any from this great Example here to be in love with Poverty and with a low condition by telling them this Birth hath consecrated meanness that we must not scorn those things in which our God did choose to be installed that humility is it seems the proper dress for Divinity to show itself in But when we consider if this Child had been born in a condition of Wealth and Greatness the whole Nation of the Jews would have received him whereas that he chose proved an occasion of falling to them Yet that God should think it much more necessary to give us an example of Humility and Poverty below expression than it was necessary that that whole Nation should believe on him When of all the Virgins of that People which God had to choose one out to overshadow and impregnate with the Son of God He chose one of the meanest for he hath regarded the low Luk. 1. 48. estate of his Handmaiden said she and one of the poorest too for she had not a Lamb Luk. 2. 24. compared with Leu. 18. 6 8. to offer but was purified in formâ pauperis When he would reveal this Birth also that was to be the joy of the whole Earth he did it to none of that Nation but a few poor shepherds who were labouring with midnight-watches over their Flocks none of all the great ones that were then at ease and lay in softs was thought worthy to have notice of it Lastly when the Angels make that poverty a sign to know the Saviour by This shall be a sign unto you You shall Luk. 11 12 find the Babe wrapped in swaddling  and laid in a Manger as if the Manger were sufficient testimony to the Christ and this great meanness were an evidence 't was the Messiah From all these together we may easily discover what the temper is of Christianity You see here the institution of your Order the Firstborn of the Sons of God born but to such an Estate And what is so Original to the Religion what was born and bred with it cannot easily be divided from it Generatio Christi generatio populi Christiani Chrysol natalis Capitis natalis Corporis The body and the head have the same kind of birth and to that which Christ is born to Christianity itself is born Neither can it ever otherwise be entertained in the heart of any man but with poverty of spirit with neglect of all the scorns and the calamities yea and all the gaudy glories of this world with that unconcernedness for it that indifference and simple innocence that is in children He that receiveth Mat. 18. 3. not the Kingdom of Heaven as a little Child cannot enter thereinto saith Christ True indeed when the Son of God must become a little child that he may open the Kingdom of Heaven to Believers Would you see what humility and lowliness becomes a Christian see the God of Christians on his Royal Birthday A person of the Trinity that he may take upon him our Religion takes upon him the form of Phil. 2. 6 7. a Servant and He that was equal with God must make himself of no Reputation if he mean to settle and be the Example of our profession And then when will our high spirits those that value an huff of Reputation more than their own souls and set it above God himself when will these become Christians Is there any more uncouth or detestable thing in the whole world then to see the great Lord of Heaven become a little one and man that 's less than nothing magnify himself to see Divinity empty itself and him that is a worm swell and be puffed up to see the Son of God descend from Heaven and the sons of Earth climbing on heaps of wealth which they pile up as the old Giants did hills upon hills as if they would invade that Throne which He came down from and as if they also were set for the fall of many throwing every body down that but stands near them either in their way or prospect Would you see how little value all those interests that recommend this world are of to Christians see the Founder of them choose the opposite extreme not only to discover to us these are no accessions to felicity This Child was the Son of God without them but to let us see that we must make the same choice too when ever any of those interests affront a duty or solicit a good Conscience whensoever indeed they are not reconcileable with innocence sincerity and ingenuity It was the want of this disposition and temper that did make the Jews reject our Saviour They could not endure to think of a Religion that would not promise them to fill their basket and to set them high above Deut. 28. 1. 5. all Nations of the Earth and whose appearance was not great and splendid but looked thin and maugre and whose Principles and Promises showed like the Curses of their Law Mar. 10 30 called for sufferings and did promise persecution therefore they rejected him that brought it and so this Child was for the fall of many in Israel 2. This Child is for the fall of many by the holiness of his Religion while the strictness of the Doctrine which he brings by reason of men's great propensions to wickedness and their inability to resolve against their Vices will make them set themselves against it both by word and deed for they will contradict and speak ill of yea they will openly renounce and fall away from it and him 1. For that reason they will contradict speak ill of Him and of his Doctrines This is said expressly in the last words of my Text He is for a sign that shall be spoken against that is that very holiness both of his Life and Doctrine that shall make him signal it shall make him be derided and blasphemed As if his being a for Isai. 11. 10. an Ensign lifted up a Standard for all Nations were not for them to betake themselves to but to levelly all their batteries against Accordingly we find they called him Beelzebub because Mar. 10. 25. Mar. 3. 22. he cast out Devils And all this was foretold for although he were fairer than the children of men Psal. 45. yet Isa. 53. It is said He hath no form nor comeliness when we shall see him there is no beauty in him that we should desire him he is despised and rejected of men Surely because his holiness did cloud and darken all his graces Devotion in a countenance does writh and discompose it prints deformity upon it and eyes lifted up with ardency look as bad as eyes distorted set awry Nay Majesty when it was most severe and pious never yet could guard Religion from these scorns David that great and holy King says of himself Psalm 69. 10 11 12. I wept and chastened myself with fasting and that was turned to my reproof as if Repentance were among his crimes and he must be corrected for his discipline I put on Sackcloth also and they jested upon me they that sat in the gate spoke aegainst me and the Drunkards made Songs upon me Sure these jolly men are not companions to those Angels in whose presence Luk. 15. 10 there is joy over one sinner that repenteth that his virtue should be a rejoicing and a song to them too Certainly the penitent man's tears do not fill their cheerful bowls nor his groans make those airs which they set their drunken catches to But that we may be sure it never will be otherwise St. Peter tells us That in the last 2 Pet. 3. 3. days there shall come scoffers walking after their own lusts Now the men of our days have the luck to obey Scripture thus far as to make that Prophecy to come to pass for those scoffers are come in power and great glory The Psalmist tells us of a chair of scorners as if these Psal. 1. 1. were the only men that speak ex cathedra and sure scoffs and taunts at Religion are the only things that may be talked with confidence a loud They imprint an Authority on what is said and conversations that are most insipied on all other scores get account as they come up towards this practice hence they gain degrees commence ingenious as they border on these Atheistical and irreligious blasphemies and when it is pure scorn than it is in the Chair But it stays not there For 2. Upon the same account of strictness of Religion men will fall off from and openly renounce both Christ and his Religion This is that our Saviour Joh. 3. 19 himself found Light saith he is come into the world and men loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil And he said of the Pharisees They repented not that Mat. 21. 3● they might believe as knowing it impossible that they could venture to believe that Doctrine which condemned those courses they would not repent of And if I should affirm that it is nothing else but men's unwillingness to be obliged to those things which if there be a God and a Religion which this Child was set to institute they must account themselves obliged to nothing else but this which makes them so unwilling to believe a God or Christ yea openly renounce them both and their Religion I should have for this not only the late instance of a Na●ion in the Indies which by institution of the Portugals was easily persuaded to embrace the Christian Creed and was Baptised into our Faith but when they were required to lead their lives according to Christ's Precepts and renounce their Heathen Licences they chose rather to renounce their Creed and Saviour and returned instantly to their indulgent Heathenism But to this experience give me leave to add this reason that it is not the difficulty of the mysteries of faith and their being above our comprehension which makes them not to be received because there are as great difficulties in things that we are certain of For in the very sphere of Reason within the lines and measures of her own infallibility in things of which she does assure herself by diagrams and sense yet she is as much amazed as at those objects in the highest and remotest Regions of faith and Mathematics hath her Paradoxes Myster ut vocari jo●e● Asymptoticum & Angul contingent &c that stand in as great danger of a contradiction as any of Religion's mysteries while reason cannot cape what she demonstrates but is to seek how those things can be possible which she proves most certain and they are incomprehensible to her even when they are most evident and then sure if we can think there is a God we must needs think He can do things we cannot comprehend when it is plain our reason cannot comprehend what she herself does find out and create It is not therefore contradiction to Reason but to Appetite that makes things of Religion so incredible which I thus demonstrate to the Atheist Those very difficulties to avoid which he denies a God to wit Those of an Eternal Being that is of himself these very things he must and does acknowledge in the being of the world if that either be it self Eternal as the Atheist of the Peripatetic Tribe will have it or else if its atoms out of which it was concreted were as those of Epicurus heard assert In a word if they say the world or its materials were made they grant a God that made it If they say they were not made they assert then an Eternal Being of its self that is They allow those difficulties for which they pretend to deny a God There being therefore the same difficulties Greater I could prove them from the divers natures of corporeal and spiritual beings for we are sure in bodies that are still in motion and so subject to succession those things are impossible but if there be a Being that is not in motion & by consequence not subject to the laws of our time all these knots untie themselves those difficulties vanish & have no place But to say no more than I have showed there being the same difficulties in the Atheists hypothesis as in the other 't is apparent not the difficulties of belief but practice make him fix upon his own against the common notions of the world So that 't is not his understanding but his appetite frames his hypothesis & without figure 't is his will that he believes with And it is most evident that because men do not love the precepts of Religion would not have them be their duty therefore they would have the Doctrines of it not be truths and in this they are the Disciples only of their lusts & because they cannot resolve to be otherwise therefore they resolve not to be Christ's Disciples but reject him for his holy Doctrines sake and so this Child is for the fall of many But it were strange if upon this account Christ should be for the fall of any of us who have learned a trick to reconcile his severe Doctrines and our Sins together Where Vice most abounds though it be wilful and men persevere in it they are so far from finding any reason to fall off from him or from his Gospel for this that they therefore take the faster hold of it rely upon Him with the bolder stronger confidence As if good old Simeon were mistaken when he thought because men would not leave those sins which Christ so threatened therefore they would leave him because they could not bear those his hard sayings to pull out the lust and the Eye too cast away the treasures of unrighteousness and the right hand that receives them also therefore they would cast off him for for this reason they betake themselves to him more eagerly devolve and cast themselves upon him with assurance 'T is possible indeed that the new Christianed Indians might believe themselves obliged to lead their lives according to the vow that they had made in Baptism knew not how to live a contradiction to be Christian Pagans therefore thought it absolutely necessary to renounce the one and to reject Christ and his strict Religion was easier they thought Our Saviour also might suppose that when he brought light into the world men would not receive that light because their deeds were evil But our modern wickednesses that are of the true Eagle kind are educated bred up to endure and to defy the light our deeds of night have learned to face both Sun and Men yea and face the Sun of Righteousness and the light of those flames that are to receive them Our Saviour told the Pharisees indeed that that they repented not that they might believe for thinking it impossible they could assent to what he did affirm except they would consent to what he did command He therefore thought they were not able to believe because they would not purpose to amend But there is nothing difficult in this to us who at the same time are so perfectly resolved that every threat of Gospel is so divine truth as that we assure ourselves that we could be content to die ' Martyrs to the truth of them rather than renounce one tittle of them yet even then are Martyrs to those lusts and passions which those threats belong to Who at once believe this Book of God that says except ye repent ye shall all perish Luk. 13. 3. and believe also that notwithstanding we do not repent yet by Believing we shall scape not perish but be saved And is not this directly to believe ourselves into damnation the third and the great fall which this Child is set for 3. This Child is for the fall of many to wit of all those who on these or any other grounds do not believe in or do not obey him who shall therefore fall into Eternal ruin This our Saviour does affirm St. John 3. 19 This is the condemnation that light came into the world etc. This does aggravate the guilt and sentence We were fallen before indeed in Adam and I dare not undertake to be so learned to say whether to determine with some of them that was but a fall from Paradise into the grave and we were forfeit to death only But I may adventure to affirm that in the second Adam sinners finally impenitent shall fall much farther than we did in the first Adam Now their pit shall have no bottom but this Rev. 9 1. 11 light that came to lighten them shall be to them consuming fire and everlasting burnings And all reason in the world For upon that fall of ours in Adam help was offered us an easy way not only to repair those ruins but to better infinitely that estate which we were fallen from and a way that cost God dear to purchase cost him not this Incarnation only but the Death and Passion of his Son and divers other blessed methods Salvation Now if we refuse the mercy of all this and scorn these miracles of condescending goodness and defy those methods that he makes use of to raise us from our fall it is apparent we provoke and choose deeper ruin this refusal hath in it such desperate malignity as to poison this great mercy of the Incarnataion and all the rest 'T is but a small thing to say that they who Stumble at this Rock of their Salvation spurning at it by their wilful disobedience that these make an infinite mass of lovingkindness to be lost upon them so as that Salvation cannot save them for alas Salvatio ruins them the deeper & this Child is for their fall The condition they were forfeit to before by reason of their breach of the first covenant was advantage comfortable in comparison of that which Christ does put them in This is the Condemnation that he came into the world and it had been infinitely better for them that this child too had never been born The unreformed have the least reason in the world to solemnize this festival they do but celebrate the birth of their own ruin bowdown and do reverence to their fall had it not been for this they had not gone to so severe an Hell So that they do but entertain the great occasion of their greater condemnation Such it proves to them & that it might be so He was foreordained for it This Child is set for the fall of many which does lead me to God's Council in all this my next part This Child is set for the fall of many even by God's direct appointment for saith Grotius Grot. in loc. Accedo iis qui putant non nudum eventum sed & consilium Dei significari I am of their opinion who understand not the success alone but the design of this Child 's coming and God's counsel in it is intended here And without disputing of God's antecedent will and consequent this is safely said God designed this Child should be such an one that they who had no inclinations for Virtue would not entertain the love of it but counted it a mean pedantic thing and all its Rules & Laws unreasonable servitude these loose men would certainly reject Him and his Dsctrines which were so severe and strict Those that did pretend friendship for Virtue and a service for Religion but withal must be allowed to maintain correspondence with the world seek the honours and advantages of Earth and will trespass on Religion where it enterfers with these break with Virtue when their interests cannot consist with it these false hipocritical pretenders should be offended with the mean condition of this Child and of his followers in this world and with the poor spirited principles of his Religion In sum they that upon these or any other grounds finally disbelieve or disobey him God designed this Child to be a means of bringing sorer punishments even to everlasting ruin upon such A black decree this one would think He that had so much kindness for mankind to give away the only Son both of his Nature his Affections and his Bosom to them could he then design that gift to be the ruin of the greatest part of men This Child Simeon said but just before my Text is God's Salvation which he had prepared before all people and does he now say God hath set him for their fall The Angels preached this was a Birth that brought glad tidings of great joy that should be to all people and is there so much comfort in destruction that most men should rejoice at that which is ordained to be the great occasion of it to them But we have no reason to complain 't is not unkind to deny Mercy to them that refuse the offers of it that will not accept Salvation when their God himself does come to bring it to them tenders it upon condition of accepting and amending which if they despise and prefer Hell before Repentance choose sin rather than God's blessed retributions 't is but reason to deny them what they will not have and let them take their chosen ruin will their judgement which they will themselves set and ordain Him to be that to them which themselves do ordain and make him to be to themselves So St Peter says expressly He is a Stone of stumbling and a Rock of offence 1 Pet. 2. 8. to them who being disobedient stumble at the word whereunto they were appointed Disobedience where it is obdurate altars so the temper of our God that it makes Him who swears he would not have the sinner die yet set out his son to make such sinners fall into eternal death Makes judgement triumph over mercy even in the great contrivances and executions of that mercy and while God was plotting an Incarnation for the everlasting safety of mankind prevails with him to decree ruins by the means of that salvation to decree even in the midst of all those strive of his mercies that that Issue of his kindness should be for the fall of such as they Oh! let such consider whether they are likely to escape that which is set and ordained for them by God Whether they can hope for a redemption when the only great Redeemer is appointed for the Instrument of their destruction and God is so bend on their ruin that to purchase it he gives this Child his Son Yea when he did look down upon this Son in Agonies and on the Cross in the midst of that sad prospect yet the ruin of such sinners which he there beheld in his Son's blood was a delight to him that also was a sacrifice and a sacrifice of a sweet smell to him For Saint Paul says We are unto God a sweet savour of Christ in them that perish because we are the savour 2 Cor. 2. 15 of death unto death to them As if their brimstone did ascend like Incense shed a perfume up to God and their everlasting burnings were his Altar-fires kindled his holocausts and He may well be pleased with it for He ordained it 'T is true indeed this Child riding as in Triumph in the midst of his Hosannas when he saw one City whose fall he was set for on this very account He was so far from being pleased with it that He wept over it in pity But alas that only more declares the most deplored and desperate condition of such sinners Blessed Saviour Hadst thou no blood to shed for them nothing but tears or didst thou weep to think thy very bloodshed does but make their guilt more crimson who refuse the mercy of that bloodshed all the time that is offered Sad is their state that can find no pity in the tears of God and remediless their condition for whom all that the Son of God could do was to weep over them all that he did do for them was to be their fall Too sad a part indeed for Festival Solemnity very improper for a Benedictus and Magnificat To celebrate the greatest act of kindness the Almighty could design only by the miseries it did occasion to magnify the vast descent of God from Heaven down to Earth only by reason of the fall of man into the lowest Hell of which that was the cause My Text hath better things in view the greatness of that fall does but add height to that Resurrection which He also is the cause of For Behold this Child is set for the rising again of many my remaining part Rising again does not particularly and only refer to the foregoing fall here in the Text which this Child did occasion as I showed you but to the state wherein all mankind both in its nature and its customs lay ingulfed the state of ignorance and sin a state from which recovery is properly a resurrection and a reviving in this life and so called in Scripture often as Ephes. 5. 14. Wherefore he saith A wake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead And Rom. 6. 13. Yield not your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin but yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead Now to raise us from the death of sin into the life of Righteousness by the amendment of our own lives to recover us into a state of virtue is the thing this Child is said here to be set for This was that which God thought worth an Incarnation neither was there any greater thing in the prospect of his everlasting Counsel when He did decree his Son into the world than that He is set for this The Word was made flesh to teach practice and persuade to Virtue To make men reform their lives was valued at the price of a person of the Trinity Piety and his exinanttion yea his blood and life were set at the same rates All of Him given for our recovery The time would fail me if I should attempt only to name the various methods He makes use of to effect this How this Child that was the brightness of his Father's glory came to lighten us shining in his Doctrine and Example how he sent more light The fiery Heb. 1. 3. Tongues Illuminations of the Holy Ghost to guide us in the ways of piety how he suffered Agonies and Death for sin to appall and fright us from it How He rose again to confirm Judgement to us to demonstrate the rewards of immortality to them that will repent and leave their sins and everlasting torments to those that refuse this Grace Grace purchased with the blood of God to enable them to repent and leave Besides all these The Arts and Mesnage of his Providence in preventing and following us by Mercies and by Judgements importuning us and timeing all his blessed Methods of Salvation to our most advantage Arts God knows too many if they serve us only to resist and turn to wantonness and aggravation if we make no other use of Grace but this to sin against and overcome all Grace and make it bolster Vice by teaching it to be an encouragement to go on in it from some hopes we entertain by reason of this Child instead of doing that which he was set decreed to make us do And really I would be glad to see this everlasting Counsel of the Lord had had some good effects some though never so little happy execution of this great decree and that which God ordained from all Eternity upon such glorious and magnificent terms were come to pass in any kind Now certainly there are no evident signs of any great recovery this Child hath wrought among us in the world that 's now called Christian. After those omnipotent inforcives to a virtuous life which he did work out if we take a prospect of both worlds it would be hard to know which were the Heathen and there would appear scarce any other notice of a Christ among us but that we blaspheme Him or deride Him Sure I am there are no footsteps of Him in the lives of the community of men and I am certain that you cannot show me any Heathen age outgoing ours either in loosenesses and foul effeminacies or in sordidness and base injustice or in frauds and falseness or malignity hypocrisy or treachery or to name no more even in the lowest most ignoble disingenuous sorts of Vice In fine men are now as Earthy Sensual yea and Devilish as when Sins and Devils were their Gods Yea I must needs say that those times of dark and Heathen ignorance were in many times of shining virtue and the little spark of light within them broke out through all obstructions into a glory of goodness to the wonder and confusion of most Christians 'T is true we are pretty well revenged on them for setting us Examples so reproachful to us calling their Heroic actions splendida peccata only beauteous sins and well faced wickednesses and we have a reason for it because they never heard of Christ whose Name and Merit 't is most certain is the only thing that can give value and acceptance to men's best performances while on the other side we Christians comfort and secure ourselves in our transgressions from this Child and from his Name But if this Child were set to raise us up from sin and to establish stronger arguments for a good life then the Heathen ever heard of more especial Divine engagements to virtue then if their virtues were because they never heard of these engagements to them sins what censure will be passed upon their actions that know all those engagements and despise them unless to defy knowledge and provoke against all Divine obligations all that God could lay shall prove more tolerable then to labour to obey without them without knowing why 'T is true they had not heard it may be of that Name than which there is no other Name under Heaven given unto men whereby Acts 4. 12. they may be saved Yet they endeavoured in some measure to do that which He that owns that Name and wrought the Covenant of those Salvations does require We know that Name and have it called upon us and know too That he that names that Name that calls himself a Christian owns the being a retainer to the Holy Jesus must depart 2 Tim. 2. 19 from Iniquity otherwise it is no name of Salvation to him yet we never mind the doing that and than which hath the better Plea The Heathens sure were better though he were not virtuous And if so give me leave to tell you how not only this Child but this Resurrection too is for our fall In the first Chapter to the Romans we shall find those Heathens when they did neglect to follow the direction of that light within them by which they were able to discover in some measure the invisible things of God when Verse 20. they did no longer care to retain God in their knowledge then they quickly left off to be Verse 28. men and when they ceased to hearken to their reason they soon fell into a reprobate sense Ibid. What was it else to change God into stocks and stones and Worship into most abominable wickedness to make the Vilest creatures Deities and the foulest actions Religion to turn a disease into a God and a sin into Devotion a stupidity which nothing else but God's desertion and reasons too could have betrayed them to and made them guilty of And then if by how much greater light and means we have resisted we shall be proportionably more vile in the consequents of doing so keep at equal rates of distance from those Heathens that the aggravations of our guilt stand at from theirs Whether alas are we like to fall 'T is an amazing reflection one would tremble to consider how the Christian world does seem to hasten into that condition which St Paul does there decipher You would think that Chapter were our Character but that we have reason to expect we shall fall lower into much more vile affections than those Heathens did as having fallen down from a greater height than they Consider whether men do not declare they like not to retain God in their thoughts when they endeavour to dispute and to deride him too out of the World 'T is true they have not set up any sins or monsters in their Temples yet as they did but if they can empty them of God and Christ and their Religion and make room we may imagine easily whose Votaries they will be that live as if they thought themselves unhappy that they had not lived in those good Pagan days when they might have sinned with devotion been most wickedly Religious and most Godlike in unchastities and other villainies I dare say none of our fine Gentlemen or our great Wits would have been Atheists or irreligious then Think whether those are not already in that reprobate sense St. Paul does speak of who have cast off all discriminating notions of good or evil who say in their hearts & affirm openly there are none such in truth and nature and if we should try by those effects verse 29 30 31. or by that essential signature 32. verse they not only commit such things but have pleasure in them that do them which because they cannot have from those commissions when they do not commit them therefore their debauched minds must be satisfied there is no evil in those doings and must reap the pleasure only of such satisfactions that is have the satisfactions and pleasures only of a reprobate sense In fine because I dare not prosecute the character Men sink so fast as if they were resolved to fall as far below humanity as this Child did below his Divinity O do not you thus break decrees frustrate and overthrow the everlasting counsel of Gods will for good to you He set ordained this Child for your rising again do not throw yourselves down into ruin in despite of his Predestinations He hath carried up your nature into Heaven placed Flesh in an union with Divinity set it there at the right hand of God in Glory do not you debase and drag it down again to Earth and Hell by worldliness and carnal sensuality Make appear this Child hath raised you up already made a resurrection of your souls and your affections they converse and trade in Heaven and that you do not degenerate from that nature of yours that is there Then this Child who is Himself the Resurrection and the Life will raise up Joh. 11 25 your Bodies too and make them like his glorious body by the working of his mighty power Phil. 3. 21. by which he is able to subdue all things to himself To whom with the Father and the H. Ghost be all Blessing Power and Praise Dominion and Glory for Evermore FINIS