so then there was no law, but men lived free, and rich, and long, and they exercised no virtues but natural, and knew no felicity but natural: and so long their prosperity was just as was their virtue, because it was a natural instrument towards all that which they knew of happiness. But this public easiness and quiet, the world turned into sin; and unless God did compel men to do themselves good, they would undo themselves: and then God broke in upon them with a flood, and destroyed that generation, that he might begin the government of the world upon a new stock, and bind virtue upon men's spirits by new bands endeared to them by new hopes and fears. Then God made new laws, and gave to princes the power of the sword, and men might be punished to death in certain cases, and man's life was shortened, and slavery was brought into the world and the state of servants : and then war began, and evils multiplied upon the face of the earth; in which it is naturally certain that they that are most violent and injurious, prevailed upon the weaker and more innocent; and every tyranny that began from Nimrod to this day, and every usurper, was a peculiar argument to show that God began to teach the world virtue by suffering; and that therefore he suffered tyrannies and usurpations to be in the world, and to be prosperous, and the rights of men to be snatched away from the owners, that the world might be established in potent and settled governments, and the sufferers be taught all the passive virtues of the soul. For so God brings good out of evil, turning tyranny into the benefits of government, and violence into virtue, and sufferings into rewards. And this was the second change of the world: personal miseries were brought in upon A dam and his posterity, as a punishment of sin in the first period; and in the second, public evils were brought in by tyrants and usurpers, and God suffered them as the first elements of virtue, men being just newly put to school to infant sufferings. But all this was not much.

Christ's line was not yet drawn forth; it began not to appear in what family the King of sufferings should descend, till Abraham's time; and therefore till then there were no greater sufferings than what I have now reckoned. But when Abraham's family was chosen from among the many nations, and began to belong to God by a special right, and he was designed to be the father of the Messias; then God found out a new way to try him, even with a sound affliction, commanding him to offer his beloved Isaac: but this was accepted, and being intended by Abraham, was not intended by God; for this was a type of Christ, and therefore was also but a type of sufferings. And excepting the sufferings of the old periods, and the sufferings of nature, and accident, we see no change made for a long time after; but God having established a law in Abraham's family, did build it upon promises of health, and peace, and victory, and plenty, and riches; and so long as they did not prevaricate the law of their God, so long they were prosperous but God kept a remnant of Canaanites in the land, like a rod held over them, to vex or to chastise them into obedience, in which while they persevered, nothing could hurt them; and that saying of David needs no other sense but the letter of its own expression, "I have been young, and now am old; and yet I never saw the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread.” The godly generally were prosperous, and a good cause seldom had an ill end, and a good man never died an ill death,—till the law had spent a great part of its time, and it descended towards its declension and period. But that the great Prince of sufferings might

not appear upon his stage of tragedies without some forerunners of sorrow, God was pleased to choose out good men, and honour them, by making them to become little images of suffering. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Zechariah, were martyrs of the law; but these were single deaths: Shadrach, Meshech, Abednego, were thrown into a burning furnace, and Daniel, into a den of lions, and Susanna was accused for adultery; but these were but little arrests of the prosperity of the godly. As the time drew nearer that Christ should be manifest, so the sufferings grew bigger and more numerous; and Antiochus raised up a sharp persecution in the time of the Maccabees, in which many passed through the red sea of blood into the bosom of Abraham; and then Christ came. And that was the third period in which the changed method of God's providence was perfected for Christ was to do his great work by sufferings, and by sufferings was to enter into blessedness; and by his passion he was made Prince of the catholic church, and as our head was, so must the members be. God made the same covenant with us that he did with his most holy Son, and Christ obtained no better conditions for us than for himself; that was not to be looked for: "The servant must not be above his master; it is well if he be as his master: if the world persecuted him, they will also persecute us ;" and "from the days of John the Baptist, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force." For though the old law was established in the promises of temporal prosperity; yet the Gospel is founded in temporal adversity; it is directly a covenant of sufferings and sorrows; for now "the time is come that judginent must begin at the house of God." This text is a direct antinomy to the common persuasions of tyrannous, carnal, and vicious men, who reckon nothing good but what is prosperous: for though that proposition had many degrees of truth in the beginning of the law, yet the case is now altered, God hath established its contradictory; and now every good man must look for persecution, and every good cause must expect to thrive by the sufferings and patience of holy persons and, as men do well and suffer evil, so they are dear to God; and whom he loves most, he afflicts most, and does this with a design of the greatest mercy in the world.

CHRIST THE EXEMPLAR OF SUFFERING.

He entered into the world with all the circumstances of poverty. He had a star to illustrate his birth; but a stable for his bed-chamber, and a manger for his cradle. The angels sang hymns when he was born; but he was cold and cried, uneasy and unprovided. He lived long in the trade of a carpenter; he, by whom God made the world, had, in his first years, the business of a mean and ignoble trade. He did good wherever he went; and almost wherever he went, was abused. He deserved heaven for his obedience, but found a cross in his way thither and if ever any man had reason to expect fair usages from God, and to be dandled in the lap of ease, softness, and a prosperous fortune, le it was only that could deserve that, or any thing that can be good. But, after he had chosen to live a life of virtue, of poverty, and labour, he entered into a state of death ;

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whose shame and trouble were great enough to pay for the sins of the whole world. And I shall choose to express this mystery in the words of Scripture. He died not by a single or a sudden death, but he was the "Lamb slain from the beginning of the world:" for he was massacred in Abel, saith St Paulinus; he was tossed upon the waves of the sea in the person of Noah; it was he that went out of his country, when Abraham was called from Charran, and wandered from his native soil; he was offered up in Isaac, persecuted in Jacob, betrayed in Joseph, blinded in Samson, affronted in Moses, sawed in Isaiah, cast into the dungeon with Jeremiah; for all these were types of Christ suffering. And then his passion continued even after his resurrection: for it is he that suffers in all his members; it is he that" endures the contradiction of all sinners;" it is he that is "the Lord of life, and is crucified again, and put to open shame" in all the sufferings of his servants, and sins of rebels, and defiances of apostates and renegadoes, and violence of tyrants, and injustice of usurpers, and the persecutions of his church. It is he that is stoned in St Stephen, flayed in the person of St Bartholomew: he was roasted upon St Laurence's gridiron, exposed to lions in St Ignatius, burnt in St Polycarp, frozen in the lake where stood forty martyrs of Cappadocia.

All that Christ came for, was, or was mingled with, sufferings: for all those little joys which God sent, either to recreate his person, or to illustrate his office, were abated, or attended with afflictions; God being more careful to establish in him the covenant of sufferings, than to refresh his sorrows. Presently after the angels had finished their hallelujahs, he was forced to fly to save his life; and the air became full of shrieks of the desolate mothers of Bethlehem for their dying babes. God had no sooner made him illustrious with a voice from heaven, and the descent of the Holy Ghost upon him in the waters of baptism, but he was delivered over to be tempted and assaulted by the devil in the wilderness. His transfiguration was a bright ray of glory; but then also he entered into a cloud, and was told a sad story what he was to suffer at Jerusalem. And upon Palm Sunday, when he rode triumphantly into Jerusalem, and was adored with the acclamations of a King and a God, he wet the palms with his tears, sweeter than the drops of manna, or the little pearls of heaven, that descended upon Mount Hermon; weeping, in the midst of this triumph, over obstinate, perishing, and malicious Jerusalem. For this Jesus was like the rainbow, which God set in the clouds as a sacrament to confirm a promise, and establish a grace; he was half made of the glories of the light, and half of the moisture of a cloud; in his best days he was but half triumph and half sorrow: he was sent to tell of his Father's mercies, and that God intended to spare us; but appeared not but in the company or in the retinue of a shower, and of foul weather. But I need not tell that Jesus, beloved of God, was a suffering person that which concerns this question most, is, that he made for us a covenant of sufferings: his doctrines were such as expressly and by consequent enjoin and suppose sufferings, and a state of affliction; his very promises were sufferings; his beatitudes were sufferings; his rewards, and his arguments to invite men to follow him, were only taken from sufferings in this life, and the reward of sufferings hereafter.

For if we sum up the commandments of Christ, we shall find humility, -mortification, self-denial, repentance,-renouncing the world,

mourning, taking up the cross,-dying for him,-patience and poverty, -to stand in the chiefest rank of Christian precepts, and in the direct order to heaven: "He that will be my disciple, must deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." We must follow him that was crowned with therns and sorrows, him that was drenched in Cedron, nailed upon the cross, that deserved all good, and suffered all evil that is the sum of the Christian religion, as it distinguishes from all religions in the world. To which we may add the express precept recorded by St James; "Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into weeping."* You see the commandments: will you also see the promises? These they are:-" In the world ye shall have tribulation; in me, ye shall have peace :-Through many tribulations ye shall enter into heaven :-He that loseth father and mother, wives and children, houses and lands, for my name's sake and the gospel's, shall receive a hundred fold in this life, with persecution;" that is part of his reward: and, "He chastiseth every son that he receiveth ;—if ye be exempt from sufferings, ye are bastards, and not sons.” These are some of Christ's promises will you see some of Christ's blessings that he gives his church? "Blessed are the poor: blessed are the hungry and thirsty : blessed are they that mourn: blessed are the humble: blessed are the persecuted." Of the eight beatitudes, five of them have temporal misery and meanness, or an afflicted condition, for their subject Will you at last see some of the rewards which Christ hath propounded to his servants, to invite them to follow him? "When I am lifted up, I will draw all men after me:" when Christ is "lifted up, as Moses lift up the serpent in the wilderness," that is, lifted upon the cross, then he will draw us after him.”—“ To you it is given for Christ," saith St Paul, when he went to sweeten and to flatter the Philippians :‡ well, what is given to them? some great favours surely; true-" It is not only given that you believe in Christ,"-though that be a great matter-" but also that you suffer for him," that is the highest of your honour. And therefore St James, "My brethren count it all joy when ye enter into divers temptations :"§ and St Peter; " Communicating with the sufferings of Christ, rejoice."!! And St James again; "We count them blessed that have suffered :”¶ and St Paul, when he gives his blessing to the Thessalonians, useth this form of prayer; "Our Lord direct your hearts in the charity of God, in the patience and sufferings of Christ."** So that if we will serve the King of sufferings, whose crown was of thorns, whose sceptre was a reed of scorn, whose imperial robe was a scarlet of mockery, whose throne was the cross; we must serve him in sufferings, in poverty of spirit, in humility and mortification; and for our reward we shall have persecution, and all its blessed consequents. And this it is to be a Christian.

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and

SUFFERINGS OF THE APOSTLES AND PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANS.

If we begin with the apostles, who were to persuade the world to become Christian, and to use proper arguments of invitations, we shall find that they never offered an argument of temporal prosperity; they never promised empires and thrones on earth, nor riches, nor temporal power: and it would have been soon confuted, if they who were whipt and imprisoned, banished and scattered, persecuted and tormented, should have promised sunshine to others, which they could not to themselves. Of all the apostles there was not one, that died a natural death but only St John ; and did he escape? Yes: but he was put into a cauldron of scalding lead and oil before the Porta Latina in Rome, and escaped death by miracle, though no miracle was wrought to make him escape the torture. And, besides this, he lived long in banishment, and that was worse than St Peter's chains. And after a long and laborious life, and the affliction of being detained from his crown, and his sorrows for the death of his fellow disciples, he died full of days and sufferings. And when St Paul was taken into the apostolate, his commissions were signed in these words: "I will show unto him how great things he must suffer for my name. And his whole life was a continual suffering. "I die daily," was his motto; and his lesson that he daily learned was, to "know Christ Jesus, and him crucified;" and all his joy was to rejoice in the cross of Christ ;" and the changes of his life were nothing but the changes of his sufferings, and the variety of his labours. For though Christ hath finished his own sufferings for expiation of the world; yet there are " portions that are behind of the sufferings" of Christ, which must be filled up by his body, the church; and happy are they that put in the greatest symbol; for "in the same measure you are partakers of the sufferings of Christ, in the same shall ye be also of the consolation." And therefore, concerning St Paul, as it was also concerning Christ, there is nothing, or but very little, in scripture, relating to his person and the chances of his private life, but his labours and persecutions; as if the Holy Ghost did think nothing fit to stand upon record for Christ but sufferings.

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And now began to work the greatest glory of the divine providence : here was the cause of Christianity at stake. The world was rich and prosperous, learned and full of wise men; the gospel was preached with poverty and persecution, in simplicity of discourse, and in demonstration of the Spirit: God was on one side, and the devil on the other; they each of them dressed up their city; Babylon upon earth, Jerusalem from above. The devil's city was full of pleasure, triumphs, victories, and cruelty; good news, and great wealth; conquest over kings, and making nations tributary: they "bound kings in chains, and the nobles with links of iron;" and the inheritance of the earth was theirs: the Romans were lords over the greatest part of the world; and God permitted to the devil the firmament and increase, the wars and the success of that people giving to him an entire power of disposing the great changes of the world, so as might best increase their greatness and power: and he therefore did it, because all the power

*Acts ix. 16.