Page images
PDF
EPUB

This brought St. Paul to be of that Quorum, quorum ego maximus, not only to discern and confess himself to be a sinner, but the chiefest and greatest sinner of all. Nihil humilitate sublimius; it is excellently, but strangely said by St. Hierome; he might rather and more credibly have used any word than that he might have been easily believed if he had said, Nihil sapientius, There is no wiser thing than humility, for he that is low in his own, shall be high in the eyes of others; and to have said, Nihil perfectius, There is not so direct a way to perfection as humility: but Nihil sublimius, must needs seem strangely said, there is nothing higher than lowness; no such exaltation as dejection; no such revenge as patience; and yet all this is truly and safely said, with that limitation which St. Hierome gives it there, apud Deum, in the sight of God, there is no such exaltation as humiliation. We must not coast and

meet Christ in his end,

cross the nearest way, and so think to which was glory, but we must go after him in all his steps, in the way of humiliation; for Christ's very descent was a degree of exaltation; and by that name he called his crucifying a lifting up, an exaltation. The doctrine of this world goes for the most part otherwise; here we say, lay hold upon something, get up one step; in all want of sufficiency, in all defection of friends, in all changes, yet the place which you hold which raise you to better. In the way to heaven, the lower you go, the nearer the highest and best end you are. Duo nobis necessaria, says St. Augustine. Ut cognoscamus quales ad malum, quales ad bonum: There are but two things necessary to us to know, how ill we are, and how good we may be; where nature hath left us, and whither grace would carry us. And Abraham, (says that father) expresses this twofold knowledge, when he said to God, Loquar ad Dominum, qui pulvis sum et cinis, I know I am but dust and ashes, says Abraham 25, and there is his first knowledge, Qualis ad malum, How ill a condition naturally he is in: but then Loquar ad Dominum, for all this, though I be but dust and ashes, I have access to my God, and may speak to him; there is his improvement and his dignity. Vere pulvis omnis homo, says he; truly every man is truly dust; for as dust is blown from one to

25 Gen. xviii.

another corner by the wind, and lies dead there till another wind remove it from that corner; so are we hurried from sin to sin, and have no motion in ourselves, but as a new sin imprints it in us: so vere pulvis, for our disposition to evil we are truly dust; and vere cinis, we are truly dry ashes; for ashes produceth no seed of itself, nor gives growth to any seed that is cast into it; so we have no good in us naturally, neither can we nourish any good that is infused by God into us, except the same grace that sowed it, water it, and weed it, and cherish it, and foment it after. To know that we have no strength of ourselves, and to know that we can lack none if we ask it of God, these are St. Augustine's two arts and sciences, and this is the humility of the Gospel in general.

To come to St. Paul's more particular expressing of his humility here, Quorum ego primus, Of which sinners I am the chiefest, as it is true Veritas non nititur mendacio, No truth needs the support or assistance of any lie; a man must not belie himself, nor accuse himself against his own conscience, so also, Humilitas non nititur stupiditati, An undiscerning stupidity is not humility, for humility itself implies and requires discretion, for humiliation is not precipitation: when the devil enticed the Jesuit at his midnight studies, and the Jesuit rose and offered him his chair, because howsoever he were a devil, yet he was his better, this was no regulated humility: and therefore this which St. Paul says of himself, that he was the greatest sinner, was true in his own heart, and true in a convenient sense, and so neither falsely nor inconsiderately spoken. How then was this true? As there is nothing so fantastical and so absurd, but that some heretics have held it dogmatically; so Aquinas notes here, that there were heretics that held, that the very soul of Adam was by a long circuit and transmigration come at last into Paul, and so Paul was the same man (in his principal part, in the soul) as Adam was; and in that sense it was literally true that he said, he was primus peccatorum, the first of all sinners, because he was the first man Adam: but this is an heretical fancy, and a Pythagorean bubble. Great divines have referred this Quorum ad salvandos, that Christ came to save sinners; of which sinners that are saved, say they, St. Paul acknowledges himself to be the

greatest; not the greatest sinner in the world, but the greatest of them upon whom the grace of God hath wrought effectually. St. Augustine's interpretation is for one-half thereof, for the negative part' sake; Primus, says he, non tempore; He says he was the first sinner, but he does not mean the first that sinned, the first in time; but then for the affirmative part, which follows in Augustine, that he was primus malignitate, the first, the highest, the greatest sinner, why should we, or how can we charge the apostle so heavily? Beloved to maintain the truth of this which St. Paul says, we need not say that it was materially true, that it was indeed so; it is enough to defend it from falsehood, that it was formally true, that is, that it appeared to him to be true, and not out of a sudden and stupid inconsideration but deliberately: first, he respected his own natural disposition, and proclivity to great sins, and out of that evidence condemned himself: as when a man who professed an art of judging the disposition of a man by his face, had pronounced of Socrates, (whose virtue all the world admired) that he was the most incontinent and licentious man, the greatest thief and extortioner of any man in the world; the people despised and scorned the physiognomer and his art, and were ready to offer violence unto him: Socrates himself corrected their distemper again, and said, It is true that he says, and his judgment is well grounded, for by nature no man is more inclined to these vices than I am. And this disposition to the greatest sins, St. Paul knew in himself. He that hath these natural dispositions is likely to be the greatest sinner, except he have some strong assistance to restrain him: and then, he that hath the offer of such helps, and abuses them, is in a farther step of being the greatest sinner: and this also St. Paul had respect to now, that he had had a good and learned education, a good understanding of the law and the prophets, a good mortification, by being of the strict sect of the pharisees; and yet he had turned all the wrong way, and was therefore in this abuse of these manifold graces the greater sinner. He looked farther than into his own nature, or into his resistance of assistances; he looked into those actions which these had produced in him, and there he saw his breathing of threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, his hunger and thirst of Christian blood: and so

says St. Augustine, Nemo acrior inter persecutores, ergo nemo prior inter peccatores, as he found himself the greatest persecutor, so he condemns himself for the greatest sinner. But all these natural dispositions to great sins, negligences, of helps offered, sinful actions produced out of these two, might be greater in many others, than in St. Paul; and it is likely, and it may be certain to us, that they were so; but it was not certain to him, he knew not so much ill by any other man, as by himself. Consider those words in the Proverbs, Surely I am more foolish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man in me ": for though they be not the words of Solomon, yet they are the words of a prophet, and a prophet who surely was not really more foolish than any man, then in consideration of something which he found in himself, says so: he that considers himself, shall find such degrees of sin, as that he cannot see that any man hath gone lower: or if he have in some particular and notorious sin, yet in quovis alio, quid occultum esse potest, quo nobis superior sit 27: he that is fallen lower than thus in some sin, yet may be above thee in grace; he may have done a greater sin, and yet not be the greater sinner: another hath killed a man, and thou hast not; thou mayest have drawn and drunk the blood of many by usury, by extortion, by oppression. Another in fury of intemperance, hath ravished, and thou hast not; thou mayest have corrupted many by thy deceitful solicitations; and then in thyself art as ill as the ravisher, and thou hast made them worse whom thou hast corrupted. Cast up thine own account, inventory thine own goods; (for sin is the wrath of the sinner, and he treasures up the wrath of God**) reckon thine own sins, and thou wilt find thyself rich in that wealth, and find thyself of that quorum, that the highest place in that company and mystery of sinners belongs to thee.

St. Paul does so here; yea then, when he saw his own case, and saw it by the light of the Spirit of God; when he took knowledge that Christ was come, and had saved sinners, and had saved him; yet still he says Sum primus, still he remains in his accusation of himself that he was still the greatest sinner, because he remained still in his infirmity, and aptness to relapse

16 Prov. xxx. 2.

27 Augustine.

28 Rom. ii. 5.

into former sins. As long as we are, we are subject to be worse than we are; and those sins which we apprehend even with horror and amazement, when we hear that others have done them, we may come to do them with an earnestness, with a delight, with a defence, with a glory, if God leaves us to ourselves. As long as that is true of us, Sum primus homo, I am no better than the first man, than Adam was, (and none of us are in any proportion so good) that is true also, Quorum primus sum ego, I am still in a slippery state, and in an evident danger of being the greatest sinner. This is the conclusion for every humble Christian, no man is a greater sinner than I was, and I am not sure but that I may fall to be worse than ever I was, except I husband and employ the talents of God's graces better than I have done.

SERMON CXLVI.

PREACHED at whitehalL, FEBRUARY 29, 1627.

ACTS vii. 60.

And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

He that will die with Christ upon Good Friday, must hear his own bell toll all Lent; he that will be partaker of his passion at last, must conform himself to his discipline of prayer and fasting before. Is there any man, that in his chamber hears a bell toll for another man, and does not kneel down to pray for that dying man? and then when his charity breathes out upon another man, does he not also reflect upon himself, and dispose himself as if he were in the state of that dying man? We begin to hear Christ's bell toll now, and is not our bell in the chime? We must be in his grave, before we come to his resurrection, and we must be in his death-bed before we come to his grave: we must do as he did, fast and pray, before we can say as he said, that In manus tuas, Into thy hands O Lord I commend my Spirit. You would not

« PreviousContinue »