the spirit returns to him that gave it, there is a dissolution of the man, so when God withdraws his visitation, there is a dissolution of a Christian; for so God expresses the spiritual death, and the height of his anger, in the prophet, I will make my wrath towards thee to rest, and my jealousy shall depart from thee"; that is, I will look no more after thee, I will study thy recovery and thine amendment no farther. Have ye forgot the consolation1? says the apostle; what is that consolation, is it that you shall have no affliction? no; this is the consolation, That whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and he scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. It is general to all sons, for, If ye be without correction, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons; and then, to show us how this purgatory and these indulgences accompany one another, how God's crosses, and his deliverances do ever concur together, we see the Holy Ghost hath so ordered and disposed these two, mercy and correction, in this one verse, as that we cannot say which is first, the correction or the mercy, the purgatory or the indulgence: for first the indulgence is before the purgatory, the mercy before the correction, in one place, whom he loveth, he chasteneth, first God loves, and then he chasteneth; and then after, the purgatory is before the indulgence, the correction is before mercy, He scourgeth every son whom he receiveth; first he scourges him, and then he receives him ; they are so disposed, as that both are made first, and both last, we cannot tell whether precede, or succeed, they are always both together, they are always all one; as long as his love lasts, he corrects us, and as long as he corrects us, he loves us. And so we have a justifiable prayer for the dead, that is, for our souls, dead in their sins, Cor novum, O Lord create a new heart in me; and we have a justifiable purgatory, purgabit aream, it we be God's floor, he hath his fan in his hand, and he will make us clean"; and we have justifiable indulgences, Indulsisti genti Domine, indulsisti genti 20, Thou hast been indulgent to thy people, O Lord, thou hast been indulgent to us; we cannot complain, as they begin, rather to murmur, than to complain, Ah Lord God, surely thou hast deceived thy people, saying, You shall have peace, 18 Heb. xii. 5, 6. 17 Ezek. xvi. 42. 20 Isaiah xxvi. 15. and the sword pierceth to the heart"; for when this sword of God's corrections shall pierce to the heart, that very sword shall be but as a probe to search the wound, nay that very wound shall be but as an issue to drain, and preserve the whole body in health; for his mercies are so above all his works, as that the very works of his justice are mercy. And so, not the prayer for the dead, not the purgatory, not the indulgences of the Roman church, but we, who have them truly, do truly receive a benefit from this text, which text is a proof of the resurrection. Because we feel a resurrection by grace now, because we believe a resurrection to glory hereafter, therefore we can give an account of this baptism for the dead in our text: the particular sense of which words, will be the exercise of another day. This day we end, both with our humble thanks, for all indulgences which God hath given us in our purgatories, for former deliverances in former crosses, and with humble prayer also, that he ever afford us such a proportion of his medicinal corrections, as may ever testify his presence and providence upon us in the way, and bring us in the end, to the kingdom of his Son Christ Jesus. Amen. SERMON LXXVIII. PREACHED AT ST. PAUL'S, JUNE 21, 1626. 1 CORINTHIANS XV. 29. Else, what shall they do which are baptized for the dead? if the dead rise not at all, why are they then baptized for the dead? WE are now come at last, to that which was our first in our intention, how these words have been detorted, and misapplied by our adversaries of the Roman church, for the establishing of those heresies, which we have formerly opposed, and then, the divers ways, which sounder and more orthodoxical divines have 21 Jer. iv. 10. held in the exposition thereof; that so from the first part, we may learn what to avoid and shun, and from the second, what to embrace and follow. Of all the places of Scripture which Bellarmine brings for the maintenance of purgatory (excepting only that one place of the Maccabees; and of that place we must say, as it was said of that jealous husband, which set a watch and spy upon his wife, Quis custodit custodes? Who shall watch them that watch her? so when they prove matters of faith out of the Maccabees, we say, Quis probat probantem, Who shall prove that book to be Scripture by which they prove that doctrine to be true?) but of all other places, there is scarce one, to which Bellarmine himself doth not, by way of objection against himself, give some better sense and interpretation than that, which himself sticks to; and such a sense, as when the matter of purgatory is not in question, his fellows oftentimes in their writings, and himself sometimes in his writings, doth accept and adhere to. I offer it for a note of good use, and in the observing whereof, I have used a constant diligence in reading the Roman writers, that those writers which write by way of exposition, and commentaries upon the Scriptures, and are not engaged in the professed handling of controversies, do very often content themselves with the true sense of those places which they handle, and hunt after no curious, nor forced, nor foreign, nor unnatural senses: but if the same authors come to handle controversies, they depart from that singleness of heart, and that holy ingenuity, and stray aside, or soar up into other senses of the same places. I look no farther for a reason of this, than this, that almost all the controversies, between Rome, and the rest of the Christian world, are matters of profit to them, and raise money, and advance their revenue: so that, as they are but expositors, they may have leave to be good divines, and then, and in that capacity, they may give the true sense of that Scripture; but as they are controverters, they must be good subjects, good statesmen, good exchequer men, and then, and in that capacity, they must give such senses as may establish and advance their profit: as an expositor, he may interpret this place of the resurrection, as it should be; but as a controverter, he must interpret it of purgatory, for so it must be, when profit is their end and as our alchymists can find their whole art and work of alchymy, not only in Virgil and Ovid, but in Moses and Solomon; so these men can find such a transmutation into gold, such a foundation of profit, in extorting a sense for purgatory, or other profitable doctrines, out of any Scripture. So Bellarmine' does upon this place, and upon this place principally he relies, in this he triumphs, when he says, Hic locus apertè convincit quod volumus, Here needs no wrestling, no disguising, here purgatory is clearly and manifestly discovered. Now certainly, if we take the words as they are, and as the Holy Ghost hath left them to us, we find no such manifestation of this doctrine, no such clear light, no such bonfire, no such beacon, no beam at all, no spark of any such fire of purgatory: that because St. Paul says, that no man would be baptized Pro mortuis, for dead, or, for the dead, except he did assure himself of a resurrection, that this should be aperta convictio, an evident conviction of purgatory, is, if it be not a new divinity, certainly a new logic. But it is not the word, but the sense that they ground their assurance upon. Now the sense which should ground an assurance in doctrinal things, should be the literal sense: and yet here, in so important a matter of faith as purgatory, it must not be a literal, a proper, a natural and genuine sense, but figurative, and metaphorical; for, in this case, baptism must not signify literally the sacrament of baptism, but it must signify, in a figurative sense, a baptism of tears. And then that figure must be a pregnant figure, a figure with child of another figure, for as this baptism must signify tears, so these tears must signify all that they use to express by the name of penance, and discipline, and mortification; weeping, and fasting, and alms, and whipping, all must be comprehended in these tears; and then, as there was a mother figure, and a daughter figure, so there is a grand-child too; for here is a prosopopæia, an imagining, a raising up of a person that is not; that all this must be done by some man alive, with relation, and in the behalf of a dead person, that these afflictions which he takes upon himself in this world, may accrue, in the benefit thereof, to a man in another world. Now if any of this evidence be defective, if it be not evident, that this is a 1 De purg. 1. 1. c. 6. figurative speech, but that the literal sense is very proper to the place, if it be not evident, that this figure of baptism is meant for tears, and other penances; if it be not evident, that this penance is more than that man needed to have undergone for his own salvation, but that God became indebted to him for that penance so sustained, and if it be not evident, that this penance and supererogation may be applied and communicated to a dead man, it is a little too forwardly, and too courageously pronounced, Hic locus apertè convincit quod volumus, We desire no more than this place, for the proof of purgatory. Yet he pursues his triumph, Vera et genuina interpretatio, says he; as though he might waive the benefit, of making it a figurative sense, and have his ends, by maintaining it to be the literal sense; This is, says he, the true and natural sense of the place. But it will be hard for him to persuade us, either that this is the literal sense of the place, or that this place needs any other than a literal sense. Since he will not allow us a figurative sense, in that great mystery, in the sacrament, in the Hoc est corpus meum, but bind us punctually in the letter, without any figure, not only in the thing, (for in the thing, in the matter, we require no figure, we believe the body of Christ to be in the sacrament as literally as really as they do) but even in the words, and phrase of speech, he should not look that we should allow him a figurative sense in that place, which must be apertissimus locus, his most evident place for the proof of so great an article of faith, as purgatory is with them. We have a rule, by which that sense will be suspicious to us, which is, not to admit figurative senses in interpretation of Scriptures, where the literal sense may well stand; and he himself hath a rule, (if he remember the Council of Trent) by which that sense cannot be admitted by himself, which is, that they must interpret Scriptures according to the unanime consent of the fathers; and he knows in his conscience, that he hath not done so, as we shall remember him anon. Not to founder by standing long in this puddle, he makes no other argument, that baptism must here be understood of afflictions voluntarily sustained, but that that word baptism is twice used, and accepted so in the Scriptures by Christ himself; it is taken so there, therefore it must be taken so here. But not VOL. III. 2 E |
