so, if our hearts were not distracted, in so many forms, and so divers ways of sin, it might the better be cured of any one. St. Augustine had this apprehension, when he said, Audeo dicere utile esse cadere in aliquod manifestum peccatum, ut sibi displiceant: It is well for him, that is indifferent to all sins, if he fall into some such misery by some one sin, as brings him to a sense of that, and of the rest. St. Augustine, when he says this, says he speaks boldly in saying so, Audeo dicere: but we may be so much more bold, as to say further, That that man had been damned, if he had not sinned that sin: for the heart of the indifferent sinner baits at all that ever rises, at all forms and images of sin: When he sees a thief, he runs with him; and with the adulterer he hath his portion: and as soon as it contracts any spiritual disease, any sin, it is presently, not only in morbo acuto, but in morbo complicato; in a sharp disease, and in a manifold disease, a disease multiplied in itself. Therefore it is, as St. Gregory notes, that the prophet proposes it, as the hardest thing of all, for a sinner to return to his own heart, and to find out that, after it is strayed, and scattered upon so several sins. Redite prevaricatores ad cor25, says the prophet: and, says that father, Longe eis mittit, cum ad cor redire compellit; God knows whither he sends them, when he sends them to their own heart: for, since it is true which the same father said, Vix sancti inveniunt cor suum, The holiest man cannot at all times find his own heart, (his heart may be bent upon religion, and yet he cannot tell in which religion; and upon preaching, and yet he cannot tell which preacher; and upon prayer, and yet he shall find strayings and deviations in his prayer) much more hardly is the various and vagabond heart of such an indifferent sinner, to be found by any search. If he inquire for his heart, at that chamber where he remembers it was yesterday, in lascivious and lustful purposes, he shall hear that it went from thence to some riotous feasting, from thence to some blasphemous gaming, after, to some malicious consultation of entangling one, and supplanting another; and he shall never trace it so close, as to drive it home, that is, to the consideration of itself, and that God that made it; nay, scarce to make it consist in any one particular sin.

VOL. V.

24 Psalm L. 18.

25 Isaiah XLvi. 8.

2 H

That which St. Bernard feared in Eugenius, when he came to be pope, and so a distraction of many worldly businesses, may much more be feared in a distraction of many sins, Cave ne te trahant, quo non vis; Take heed lest these sins carry thee farther, than thou intendest thou intendest but pleasure, or profit; but the sin will carry thee farther: Quæris quo? says that father; Dost thou ask whither? Ad cor durum, To a senselessness, a remorselessness, a hardness of heart: Nec pergas quærere, (says he) quid illud sit; Never ask what that hardness of heart is: for, if thou know it not, thou hast it.

This then is the fulness, and so the incurableness of the heart, by that reason of perpetual motion; because it is in perpetual progress from sin to sin, he never considers his state. But there is another fulness intended here, that he is come to a full point, to a consideration of his sin, and to a station and settledness in it, out of a foundation of reason, as though it were, not only an excusable, but a wise proceeding, because God's judgments are not executed. But when man becomes to be thus fully set, God shall set him faster: Iniquitas tua in sacculo signataa; His transgression shall be sealed up in a bag, and God shall sew up his iniquity and Quid cor hominis nisi sacculus Dei? What is this bag of God, but the heart of that sinner? There, as a bag of a wretched miser's money, which shall never be opened, never told till his death, lies this bag of sin, this frozen heart of an impenitent sinner; and his sins shall never be opened, never told to his own conscience, till it be done to his final condemnation. God shall suffer him to settle, where he hath chosen to settle himself, in an insensibleness, an unintelligibleness, (to use Tertullian's word) of his own condition: and, Quid miserior misero non miserante seipsum 23? Who can be more miserable than that man, who does not commiserate his own misery? How far gone is he into a pitiful estate, that neither desires to be pitied by others, nor pities himself, nor discerns that his state needs pity! Invaluerat ira tua super me, et nesciebam, says blessed St. Augustine: Thy hand lay heavy upon me, and I found it not to be thy hand: because the maledictions of God are honeyed and candied over, with a little crust or sweetness of worldly case, or reprieve, we do not apprehend Augustine.

26 Job xiv. 17.

28

27

Gregory.

Obsurdueram stridore

them in their true taste, and right nature. catenarum mearum, says the same father: The jingling and ratling of our chains and fetters, makes us deaf: the weight of the judgment takes away the sense of the judgment. This is the full setting of the heart to do evil, when a man fills himself with the liberty of passing into any sin, in an indifferency; and then finds no reason why he should leave that way, either by the love, or by the fear of God. If he prosper by his sin, then he finds no reason; if he do not prosper by it, yet he finds a wrong reason. If unseasonable floods drown his harvest, and frustrate all his labours, and his hopes; he never finds, that his oppressing, and grinding of the poor, was any cause of those waters, but he looks only how the wind sate, and how the ground lay; and he concludes, that if Noah, and Job, and Daniel had been there 29 their labour must have perished, and been drowned, as well as his. If a vehement fever take hold of him, he remembers where he sweat, and when he took cold; where he walked too fast, where his casement stood open, and where he was too bold upon fruit, or meat of hard digestion; but he never remembers the sinful and naked wantonnesses, the profuse and wasteful dilapidations of his own body, that have made him thus obnoxious and open to all dangerous distempers. Thunder from heaven burns his barns, and he says, What luck was this! if it had fallen but ten foot short or over, my barns had been safe: whereas his former blasphemings of the name of God, drew down that thunder upon that house, as it was his; and that lightening could no more fall short or over, than the angel which was sent to Sodom could have burnt another city, and have spared that; or than the plagues of Moses and of Aaron could have fallen upon Goshen, and have spared Egypt. His gomers abound with manna, he overflows with all for necessities, and with all delicacies, in this life; and yet he finds worms in his manna, a putrefaction, and a mouldering away, of this abundant state; but he sees not that that is, because his manna was gathered upon the Sabbath, that there were profanations of the name and ordinances of God, mingled in his means of growing rich. To end all, this is the true use that we are to make of the long-suffering and patience

29 Ezek. xiv. 14.

of God, that when his patience ends, ours may begin that if he forbear others rather than us, we do not expostulate, as in Job, Wherefore do the wicked live, and become old, and grow mighty in power? but rather, if he chastise us rather than others, say with David, Our heart is not turned back, neither have our steps declined from thy ways, though thou hast sore broken us, in the place of dragons, and corered us with the shadow of death": and that it sentence be executed upon us, we may make use of his judgment; and if not, we may continue, and enlarge his mercies towards Amen.

us.

SERMON CXXXVIII.

PREACHED AT WHITEHALL, NOVEMBER 2, 1617.

PSALM LV. 19.

Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God. In a prison, where men withered in a close and perpetual imprisonment; in a galley, where men were chained to a laborious and perpetual slavery; in places, where any change that could come, would put them in a better state, than they were before, this might seem a fitter text, than in a court, where every man having set his foot, or placed his hopes upon the present happy state, and blessed government, every man is rather to be presumed to love God, because there are no changes, than to take occasion of murmuring at the constancy of God's goodness towards us. But because the first murmuring at their present condition, the first innovation that ever was, was in heaven; the angels kept not their first estate: though as princes are gods, so their wellgoverned courts, are copies, and representations of heaven; yet the copy cannot be better than the original: and therefore, as heaven itself had, so all courts will ever have, some persons, that are under the increpation of this text, that, Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God: at least, if I shall meet with no conscience, that finds in himself a guiltiness of this sin, if I shall give him no occasion of repentance, yet I shall give him occasion of praying, and magnifying that gracious God, which

30 Job xxi. 7.

31 Psalm XLiv. 18.

hath preserved him from such sins, as other men have fallen into, though he have not: for I shall let him see first, the dangerous slipperiness, the concurrence, the coincidence of sins; that a habit and custom of sin, slips easily into that dangerous degree of obduration, that men come to sin upon reason; they find a quia, a cause, a reason why they should sin and then, in a second place, he shall see, what perverse and frivolous reasons they assign for their sins, when they are come to that; even that which should avert them, they make the cause of them, Because they have no changes. And then, lastly, by this perverse mistaking, they come to that infatuation, that dementation, as that they lose the principles of all knowledge, and all wisdom: The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom; and, because they have no changes, they fear not God.

First then, we enter into our first part, the slipperiness of habitual sin, with that note of St. Gregory, Peccatum cum voce, est culpa cum actione; peccatum cum clamore, est culpa cum libertate; Sinful thoughts produced into actions, are speaking sins; sinful actions continued into habits, are crying sins. There is a sin before these; a speechless sin, a whispering sin, which nobody hears, but our own conscience; which is, when a sinful thought or purpose is born in our hearts, first we rock it, by tossing, and tumbling it in our fancies, and imaginations, and by entertaining it with delight and consent, and with remembering, with how much pleasure we did the like sin before, and how much we should have, if we could bring this to pass; and as we rock it, so we swathe it, we cover it, with some pretences, some excuses, some hopes of covercling it; and this is that, which we call morosam delectationem, a delight to stand in the air and prospect of a sin, and a lothness to let it go out of our sight. Of this sin St. Gregory says nothing in this place, but only of actual sins, which he calls speaking; and of habitual, which he calls crying sins. And this is as far, as the Schools, or the casuists do ordinarily trace sin; to find out peccata infantia, speechless sins, in the heart; peccata cocatia, speaking sins, in our actions; and peccata clamantia, crying and importunate sins, which will not

*

The folio edition has "coveraling." I find "covercle" (couvercle, French) used in Chaucer for a lid: and have corrected the text accordingly.—ED.