Forty Sermons, Sermon 9
SERMON IX. OF THE REST TO BE OBTAIN'D By them that labor and are heavy laden.
Matth. 11. 28.
Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
WERE there no other difference betwixt Law and Gospel than what these words hold out unto us, yet had we abundant reason to rejoice and glory in our condition, who are invited to the news of Gospel-revelations. The way that God revealed himself by Law was by lightnings and thunders on Mount Sinai, the Pomp of it was a Mountain not to be come near unto, that burnt with tempests of fire, things that were not onelyonly mazes but omens, that typified those storms and tempests that were to be the portion of transgressors, that limn'd out that unquenchable brimstone, and denounc'd that dire thunder of Go ye cursed into everlasting fire, which is the sentence of the Law in its own rigour. Yea and besides that blackness and darkness too, so that notwithstanding all those lightnings and those revelations God was still in the thick cloud and in the dark, and Christ might well say in the verse before the Text, No man knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him; and when he comes to do that, he does it in another strain, with words of another nature, all invitation, Come unto me all ye that labor. The strain of Gospel is not to thunder us into obedience, but I beseech you Brethren by the tender mercies of God; and tho there be laboring and burden in the words, yet those are the effects of Law, and there is ease and rest for that labor and those burdens in the words too, and to them it is the Gospel that invites us, and it is Christ that gives them; for it is he that saith, Come unto me.
These words the Church makes use of for her call unto the Sacrament of the Lords body, and certainly it is impossible that they should signify with greater Emphasis than upon that occasion, when he does bid you come to him, that is, to the communication of his body and his bloud; for the bread which we break is the communion of the body of Christ. You come to him not onelyonly for the emty kindness of a visit there, but to partake of his body and his bloud, all the redemtions, graces, mercies, which he purchased on the cross. If ever Christ do call with passion, it is sure when he pours out that bloud for us and saith, every one that thirsteth come, Come unto me all ye that labor.
The words are an invitation of Christ, in which we may observe
1. The Persons invited, All ye that labor and are heavy laden.
2. The invitation it self, Come unto me.
3. The entertainment at this invitation, Rest; I will give you rest.
In the handling of these I shall shew, first who those persons invited are, who they are that are said here to labor and to be heavy laden.
2. What is meant by their invitation, Come unto me.
3. How those persons come to be qualified for this invitation, so as to be invited, and none other; how the laboring heavy laden persons are the onelyonly fit persons to come to Christ.
4. I shall touch the advantages those persons shall gain by coming. Of these, and
1. Who they are that are said to labor and be heavy laden. The words express extremity of burden and labor under it, and weariness by reason of that labor; they are translated, fessi estis & bajulantes onera Syr. labore attriti & gravati onere by the Arab. And indeed they signify pains such as to make us pant and blow foreign, yea thro weakness not be able to stand foreign, so as that the joints are loosed foreign, and the very soul fails and faints, and we become as it were in the shadow of death foreign, all this foreign signifies. Now this excess of pains may denote two things.
1. Either the sinner under that notion as a sinner; sins themselves being in Scripture exprest by words that signify labor, trouble and weight, and therefore the word in the Text translates foreign, which means all those, especially iniquity, Mich. 2. 1. Wo to them that devise iniquity, foreign, that devise labors; and the very next words will warrant it, and work evil: it being a most familiar expression with the Prophet David, the Workers of Iniquity, not onelyonly because it is some mens emploiment and trade, here lies their skill, their managery, they are not Artists in any thing besides; but the secrets of sin, the mysteries of filthiness, the Magisteries of Iniquity, these they are Professors of, in these chair-men: but also Workers of iniquity because it is their toil, they sweat under it, it is the vanity and vexation of their lives, which are rackt in designing, contriving, and acting the sins of their complexions and ambitions. Will you see our Saviors sense of the vexing painfulness of sin: he calls your sins of the least size, peccata levia, as they are esteem'd, motes in the eye Matth. 7. 3. Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brothers eye? that is, why dost thou look so severely on the light faults of others? Our escapes that we make slight of they are of such a nature in themselves, as to cause the anguish and fretting, that dust and splinters do in the tenderest part, the eye. And if our souls were not all corneous, our consciences sear'd and dead, we should with the same impatience bear them as our eye does dust, with restlesness work against it, never quiet till it force out tears to wash away the dust. Yea worse than that, for the word which we translate mote foreign signifies a spill of wood, a little shiver or splinter, a thing absolutely insuppportable to that part, which if suffered, does not onelyonly threaten it with intolerable pains, but with absolute extinction. And truly every one of our slighter sins is foreign a shiver in the eye; and then the grosser iniquities will bear both the words of the text, of labor and burden, and are in the same verse by our Savior entituled to an expression that hath enough of both, even a beam in the eye: And considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye, that is, thine own vaster crimes. Every design'd and gross wickedness is foreign, a thing whose agony is as much beyond imagination as endurance. For how shall the eye bear that which the shoulders must sink under, which onelyonly pillars can support? Yet such is that burden; and therefore the expression is frequent of bearing iniquities;acap. 2. 24. St Peter says it of Christ, He himself bears our sins, and the Prophet Isaiah said it before him c. 53. 11. For he shall bear their iniquities foreign, bear them as a great burden, as the word expresses, and as event did more express, a burden indeed which made the Son of God to sweat bloud, and roar, and sink, and die. 'Tis true there are of those that do delight in life, onelyonly because it is the opportunity of sin, it hath no more pleasure in it than is spent in vanity or iniquity, without that foreign, that foreign life would be a burden, they would labor under it; all their other time is wearisom and perisheth, and notwithstanding in our Saviors character they are the onelyonly drudges, yet in their own opinions they are the onelyonly light hearted creatures, the onelyonly persons whose life is but various ease and diversified pleasure. Yea and the onelyonly great prejudice they have against Religion is, it makes men heavy, sad, and melancholly, hangs plummets upon the soul, plucks down the thoughts and countenance, and does that which no burden can effect in them; whom weights do but exalt, elevate, and in their own expression a load of sin and drink, that sinks their bodies to the earth, doth but heighten imagination and delight. Alas these men do no more discern the true labor of their own sins, than they do the ease and the refreshments of the pious souls. They see his fasts and abstinences, but they discern not how he feeds upon bPsalm 63. 5.marrow and fatness, as David saith, and finds all the words of their luxury in his religious performances, how he tasts of the heavenly gift, and of the powers of the world to come, Heb. 6. 4, 5. how he hath the antepasts of blessedness. These men do not consider that the pious mans weights are as the other bucket, which the heavier it is the faster it lifts that up that is against it: a burden theirs like that of wings, that does but poise their flight and help them up to Heaven, whereas their own lightness shall sink them into the deep of that pit that hath no bottom. 'Tis true indeed those very sins, that make our Savior stile the man a laborer, are in other places called sleep, as if they had the ease of rest, as if to him that were wearied with duties of calling or devotion, to take vicissitudes of sinning would be a soft refreshment and a pleasant reward, as if a little return of iniquity would restore him, as sleep doth the weary laborer. And how shall we reconcile these expressions? Shall we attribute them to the unhappy contradictions of this thing sin, which is at once ease and pressure, sleep and yet heavy labour? or rather shall we gather hence the extremely toilsom condition of the sinner, whose very rest is foreign, and whose refreshments tire, and are most wearisom? where shall he look for ease, whose ease is misery and anxiety. Tho his life be all sleep, yet he is all that while one of the foreign here in the Text. And so those very wickednesses, which are here called heavy burden, are in other places called our own body, our selves. And what shall lighten him whose very self is weight? What shall disburden him who is his own immense pressure? Wretched men that we are, who shall deliver us from these burdens of our selves? Burdens indeed with which the expressions seem to labor as well as the sinner, foreign We have not words for them, the mineries, the Gallies, the Mill, or dungeon are words of ease to the service of sin. No such slavery in the world as his that is bound to serve his lusts and passions; he must adventure thro all black designs and blacker hazards to attend ambition or to wreak ones malice or some hasty choler; adventure upon rotteness, embrace a Purgatory but to please an itch; must be the Martyr of his lust, run upon quarrels, qualms, head-ach, hazard, desperate misfortunes to quench not thirst, but a little custom. If you would see the labor that is in sin, behold your Savior in the Garden; it made the Son of God to sweat like clots of bloud, it squeez'd that very person who was foreign, it made him faint, not able to stand under that tree on which he was to bear the Iniquity. At such hard rates man buyeth damnation, as if he envied himself ease in Ruin; foreign he doth extremely labor, till he faint, to get to Hell. Have you read in Scripture the pains and anguishes of a man possest by a Devil, how it speaks of such a one that was intolerably vext and tormented, how the spirit rent and tore him, & often cast him into the agonies of death, & from it did revive him still onelyonly to throw him back again into them? It were no hard matter to shew that the Scripture does express every gross Sinner to be one of these Demoniacs, to be possessed and inhabited by a Devil, Matth. 12. 43, 44. When the unclean spirit is gon out of a man, he Walketh thro dry places; then he saith, I will return to my house from whence I came out, and he enters in and dwells there. And what doth all this mean, but describe a person that after seeming amendment returns back again to his courses of sin? Of such a one the Devil saith, I will return. A wicked person is the Devil's house, Sathan dwells there, and is not his house Hell? And then are not all the miseries of Tophet, the torments of the vale of Hinnom in a Sinner? Yea experience is fair enough for this, that the habitually wicked person is a Demoniac. Look upon the wrathful angry furious man, and you would think the man possest were but his picture: his passion swels and tears him, he stares and foams, he cries out and is not so innocent as to say,cMark 5. 7. what have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God; for he hath to do with him in blaspheming him with oaths and execrations, and his spirit rends not himself onelyonly, but the wounds of that Holy one of God, and if his passion could speak plain, it would surely say his name also were Legion. The debaucht Drunkards they have the Epilepsies, the falling sicknesses, the dead Apoplexies of men possest, and there the Devil is again enter'd into swine. The lustful person may find also a spirit of uncleaness, and an unclean Devil in the Gospel. And thus our sins do treat us. And who then but wretched man would buy damnation at so hard rates? who would foreign, extremely labor, tire himself till he faint to get to hell? as if he envied himself ease because he is to go down the hill thither, that he may think he has an easy descent, facilis descensus; he will therefore load himself with a most heavy burden to make his passage the more troublesom. Of what a profligated choice are we, that refuse Heaven with ease, and chuse Hell, tho we must labor hard to get it.
Or secondly, letting the heavy laden stand as they do, in the sense we have now given, we cannot excuse the Sinner from that expression there foreign; those that labor may signify such as groan under the sense of that burden, such as labor to rid themselves of that weight, that pant and blow after a liberty and ease from that heavy pressure, under which they find themselves sinking into the horror of that deep, the very imaginations of which doth cause faintings of soul in them and Apoplexies of fear; that tire themselves to find out any way to escape from that eternal weight of torments that is prepared for them below, and the weight of indignation and vengeance that hangs over them above, and from that heavy burden, themselves, that sinks faster than either of the other, outvying God's threats with multiplied accumulated iniquities. The sweats of soul under the sense of the burden of sin, the labors of mortifying the flesh and crucifying the affections, of putting the body of sin to death, will justify this sense. The new Birth also hath its pangs, and the Child of God, as he is not engendred by weak purposes, faint resolutions, so neither is he brought forth in a sigh or wish of mercy, there is a labor in it. In this expression you may see the nature of repentance, the dawnings and first flashes of that Catholic Duty; 'tis not that easy thing to change my mind onelyonly, and begin to believe. That that is not the best course I have hitherto trod in, the way of Sinners not the safest and most pleasant path, tho few of us will believe that: neither is it that easy wish, I would I had not don this act; for when the pleasure's gon and dead, the memory of it is so unsatisfying, if not loathsom, that a man can hardly not wish it. Nor yet is it that easy desire of mercy, that sayingdMatt. 7. 21. Lord, Lord. The Penitent they are the foreign; here they are such as even faint under a sense of the horror of their sins, whose hearts are broken and wounded with that heavy galling weight of them. If I should gather up the racks and tortures, the Occultum quatiente animo tortore flagellum, that self whip in the dark rooms and recesses of our thoughts, conscience dealing with us by the discipline of mad men, as knowing the sinner is not onelyonly Solomons fool and Davids man without understanding, but even St Pauls foreign and foreign mad-man, the tacita sudant praecordia culpa, which a Heathen can reckon up to us. And add to these the Scripture expressions, the foreign, the pains of travel, the labor of a woman in child-birth, the agony of the Cross, and the pangs of death; the word repentance would bear them all, and they would let us see that the Penitent is truly one that labors under a very heavy burden, and so is invited here by our Savior, Come.
Thirdly those that labor and are heavy laden may signify such as groan under a burden of afflictions, and look upon them not as chastisements onelyonly but inflictions, and are even wearied and affrighted by them. Thus those judgments which God did by his Prophets threaten to the Nations, are in those Prophets called the burden of those Nations; and the cross and calamities are often called foreign, the labor in the Text 1 Tim. 4. 10. and generally all the troubles and difficulties of this life, Rev. 14. 13. of which death is there made the rescue. And I need make no application of this interpretation, the words labor and heavy laden do in these daies sufficiently apply themselves; I shall onelyonly tell you, that the whole sense of those words sum'd up make thus much, Those that are heavy burdened with sins, and the punishment of those sins, afflictions, and groan under the sense of both of them, laboring earnestly to be rid and be delivered from both, these are bid to come to Christ, which is the invitation, and what it means I am secondly to shew.
Come unto me. And first in general the word used foreign Come is not onelyonly a word of exhortation, but of great encouragement also in the doing, so often used,eMatt. 21. 38. Come and let us kill him, and then the inheritance shall be ours; and foreign,fCap. 22. 4. Come ye unto the wedding. And indeed such is needful to the persons here spoken to, the laboring, heavy laden: for them to take a journey, if there be not the encouragement of some great advantage, it will not sound like an invitation, but an infliction; and therefore our Savior besides the rest he promises, used animating words even in the very call foreign. Therefore the whole invitation come unto me, tho it be used in the Gospel, and may very well signify come to me as to a Teacher and Instructer, so Nicodemus is said to come to Christ, and they are said to come to the light as that which was to reveal; yea and that place in Isaiah 55. 3. whither our Savior do's much reflect, when he useth this expression, seems to import but so, Encline your ear and come unto me, hear &c. yea and may so signify in this place, the words going before being all things are given me of my father, and no man knoweth the father, but the son, and he to whom the son will reveal him, it then follows come to me; as if he should say, therefore if you desire to be instructed in the way to life come to me, and tho you do labor under the load of many sins, yet I will shew you a way how you shall find ease and rest, and that way follows in the next verse, take my yoke upon you and learn of me, and ye shall be sure to find rest: this is very natural, yet because to give you rest is more than to shew you a way to it, and so may seem a promise and a reward very apportioned to the duty, rest to coming; therefore it is most probable that come doth not onelyonly signify come to me to learn your duty, but that the come should be it self a duty, and so I shall consider it: and the expression come to me does in the Gospel signify a twofold duty.
1. It signifies to obey and serve. Thus very often most expresly in the Epistle to the Hebrews to come to God is to serve and worship him c. 11. 6. For he that cometh to God must believe that God is, and that he is a rewarder of them that seek him: and c. 7. 25. He is able to save them that come to God by him, that serve God as he commandeth and enableth: c. 10. 1. The sacrifices which they offered year by year could not make the comers thereunto perfect, could not perfectly cleanse them that served God by them, foreign; and the 22d verse there Let us come with a true heart, worship him with unfeigned piety and obedience. And the sense will be fully clear from the expressions that relate to it, Seek the Lord, draw near to him, and then come to him. To seek him is to enter upon such a course of life by which his favor is to be obtain'd, and what it is you will see Isaiah 55. where when he had bid them come to him, that they may do that he bids them, seek him v. 6, 7. Seek the Lord while he may be found: let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let them return unto the Lord. Deut. 4. 29, 30. But if from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thine heart and with all thy soul, if thou turn to the Lord thy God, and shalt be obedient unto his voyce. Nor indeed can we seek God in any other path. The broad way, that goes down the hill, can never land us in God's Habitation, Heaven; and while we do go on in them it is not possible we should draw near to God, the second, which is but to go on in the same paths. And this expression is our own experience, it being the custom of those that are averse to one another to avoid the sight one of the other, but those that are friendly to seek each other, and delight in drawing near and in society. Thirdly then to come to him must needs be to proceed in those very ways wherein we sought him, till we are in his favor, and to walk with him is accordingly to please him: for so the LXX. renders Enoch'sgGen. 5. 24. walking with God, and the Author of the Hebrews c. 11. v. 5. expresses that testimony which the Scripture gives of Enoch, that he walked with God, and which the Chaldee words he walkt in the fear of God, thus, he received the testimony that he pleased God; and that very walking is the same word with this coming foreign and foreign, and here also made the same; for v. 6. of that chapter Without faith it is impossible to please him, for he that cometh must believe, that is certainly; for he that pleaseth him must believe, or else it doth not prove. To walk with God therefore in his Laws, in his fear, and in his favor it is but the progress and the life of this very thing, we are here exhorted to come unto him.
Now if this be to come to God, and coming to him be the end of duty, thither we drive in our whole Pilgrimage of life and piety, to arrive at our Countrey, to come to our Fathers house, to walk with God, to enjoy his society is the very business and delight of Heaven. Why then this duty of conversion and obedience, this piety of life seems like its own reward, crowns it self. This coming is like that they say of the moving of the Heavens, which being in its own place, tho it be still in motion, is still in termino, every parcel of agitation is its own rest, and they have a most perfect acquiescency in that their turbination. And if to lead a good life be to walk with God, it is to be in heaven here; and piety is a translation upon earth.
But secondly there is yet another sense of the invitation Come unto me, and in that sense it is very often used by our Savior, even of believing in him John 6. 35. I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. Where he that cometh shall never hunger is he that eateth this bread that giveth life, and he that believeth shall never thirst is he that drin…eth, to let us see that eating him and drinking him, coming to him and believing on him are all the same. So in v. 40. and 44. This is the will of him that sent me, that every one that seeth the Son, and believeth on him, should have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day. No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him. So c. 7. 37, 38. If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink: He that believes on me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. So that to come to Christ is to believe in him, yet so as to obey him, and to frame our lives according to his prescript and example. For to come to him doth comprehend the duty; we come to him to do, as also to believe in him must be to do that which we cannot but believe he requires. This is clear out of the forecited place, I am the bread of life, he that cometh to me shall never hunger. It is not coming to the bread that satisfies, for then would Tantalus no longer hunger or be thirsty, his hell would be his meal; but doing that which people that hunger and come to bread cannot but be suppos'd to do, even to eat. Why the same is to believe; for if coming to him and believing on him be the same, and coming to him signify not onelyonly that, but doing that which they that come cannot but be supposed to come to do, then to believe must be besides believing the doing that also which they cannot but believe they ought to do. So that come to me here is believe me, devote your selves to my obedience, and trust, and devolve your selves on me.
And if this be to come to him, belief then is no longer expectation, but enjoiment; 'tis foreign in the highest sense, the giving us the very substance of those things which we believe we shall receive: it seems more than the evidence of things not seen, even the arrival at them and vision of them. 'Tis, saith the Wise Man, foreign the beginning of our cleaving to him, of our being glued and fixed upon him, Ecclesiasticus 25. 12. And by faith we may both tast and see how gracious the Lord is, how foreign, the word following here, how sweet, how pleasant he is even to the eye and palate. If to believe be to arrive to eat and drink, Faith is now all sense, as verily as Christ is all enjoiment, all satisfaction, and happiness.
And to this happines they that labor and are heavy laden are the onelyonly persons that are called; which is the third thing, to shew how this laboring and heavy lading come to be the qualification for this Invitation, how it come to pass that they that are such, are the onelyonly fit ones to come to Christ.
And first, in the first sense as all those words do but signify the grievous Sinner. These sins may in one sense given by Christ be a qualification to this coming, becausehMatt. 9. 12. the whole need not the Physitian, but those that are sick. Do not wounds require, and qualify for a Chirurgeon? The corrupt habitual Sinner is full of wounds, and swellings, and putrified sores. Does not weariness and burdens dispose a man for ease and rest? The Sinner he is the tired laden man, he therefore hath the most need of this Invitation, which makes our Savior say, I cameiLuke 5. 32. to call Sinners; which is no more than saying, I came to say Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.
And hence we learn the all-abundant kindness of our mercifull Savior: he needs no other motive for his helping of us, but our want of help: thou dost fulfill his own direction, when thoukCap. 14. 13. makest a feast, invite not the rich, but the poor and needy. So here he makes the onelyonly cause of his invitation of us Sinners, our necessity. Except he do invite us, we are miserable, must sink under a perpetual burden, and therefore he will call us to give us rest. David was well acquainted with this Attribute, and therefore praies, Help me, O Lord, for I am weak. Our want is argument enough to those bowels, whose business is to extend and diffuse themselves. Yea the Gospel expresses in that manner also; the Ruler there saithlMatt. 9. 19. My daughter lies at the point of death, foreign, that thou maiest come and lay thy hands on her, as if our wants were nothing else but his opportunities. Yea Christ himself hath taught us ground for this confidence, in the very Praier he hath taught us, foreign, Give us our bread: if it be ours, what need we go to beg and pray for it? Why our bread? Why certainly because we are in extreme need of it, we cannot live without it, therefore we go to pray for it; so that want is possession in Christ's esteem, and when we are in need then we may go to Christ and call it ours. He observes that himself here, when he makes our sinful misery the onelyonly motive to his Invitation, Come unto me all ye that labor.
But then secondly in the second sense of the words those that are affected with the sense of their sins, that groan under and are humbled and brought low with the weight of their iniquities, that discern them to be truly heavy loads, and to be the true cause of faintings and languishing of Soul, these are the onelyonly disposed persons to come to Christ in both the senses of that phrase of Coming. First as it signifies to turn from their evil ways and walk in those paths that lead to him. For as long as men apprehend no danger in their courses, how can we expect that they should leave them? While they onelyonly tast the sweets and pleasures of sin, whilest the Devil smooths and strews their way, and makes one temtation receive another, and by the perpetuated vanity makes one sin a divertisement to another; so that none can clog, but each doth recreate, and one iniquity refresh him whom another hath wearied: how is it to be lookt for, that these men should quarrel with their pleasures, and forsake these delights and advantages of iniquity? Nay alas we see, when iniquity is become so cruel as to punish it self, and sin is its own Executioner, as adultery, drunkeness, covetousness and ambition oft are so just as to severely torture them that serve them, if notwithstanding that we see men chuse and embrace those sins that bring their Hell with them, are of such desperate appetites as to long for torments, how can we hope that any will forsake their sins before they find them toilsom burdens, before they begin to see them in their own deformed infernal shapes, to discern their hooks and prongs, their brimstone-flames and worm with which they will eternally torment us? They must be scar'd and mated, before ever they will forsake those things that flow with wanton delicacy and luxuriant delight; and therefore we see very few ever begin seriously to repent before their last death-beds, when the evil day is come, then that time is in which thou shalt say I have no pleasure in them, when the keepers of the house shall tremble, i. e. the hands shall shake with guilt or with infirmity, with palsey or with fear, thou wilt then hate their gripings, the bribery that they have bin the instruments of: how will men contemn their former excesses, their full riots, and their draughts that overflowed like seas, that had their tides and refluxes, when the grinders shall cease, because they are few, when the mouth is toothless, as unable to chew as the stomach is to digest meat; and the pitcher shall be broken at the fountain, and the wheel at the cistern, the bladder ceases to do his office, stopt up by stranguries or leaky with diabetes: punishments that old age, and living faster than nature design'd, bring along with it, very proportionate to that sin, if you understand it. Or how will they hate the foul inordinacies of unchast beds, when the grashopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail, rupture and hernias and ulcers shall seize the lower ventricle. But these are all expressions that belong to that last day, and made use of by the wise Preacher, that had tried the vanity and emtiness, and the vexation and burden of them, to make us take up a little sooner, Ecclesiastes 12. the 6 first verses. And when those that look out of the windows shall be darkened, when the curtains of thy bed and of thy eyes shall be drawn, and that utter darkness begin to represent it self with which our Savior paints the lower region, when Hell from below is removed at his approach opening her mouth wide to swallow him, whom the vast weight of his iniquity is ready to sink into it; O then his sin is his greatest sickness, and his horror doth more disjoint him than death it self. O for a little life-time now to spend in piety, which before he counted the most unpleasant impertinency that could be, nor could be rectified till these apprehensions, which onelyonly sense will work in most too late, be wrought in him, there being no other way to make us leave and come, but by looking upon death in the iniquity, which certainly is there, that having bin a murderer from the beginning. In the second sense as to come to Christ signifies to rest and devolve our selves upon him, this laboring is a necessary preparative, it is the sense of our misery without him that must drive us to him: the weight of that Legal curse that lies upon us all that must make us run to him, that was mGal. 3. 13.made a curse for us. Who would either value or fly to a Savior, that is not first convinc'd that he wants help? Can you perswade the mad man in the feaver to betake himself to the Physician? He thinks you have more need, that counsel him. It is the drowning man that clings and grasps, and when he sees himself ready to perish, rather than want something to catch hold of, his roming hand do's even catch that water that do's strangle him, and he do's grasp his own ruin. Any rest to a falling man: and we never truly and seriously can depend upon Christ, till we thus apprehend our selves sinking, and find our selves tired and fainting under the load of our iniquities.
No nor secondly on Christ's part, will he receive any that are not thus qualified. For will he, think you, forgive the sins of those that do as yet love those sins? or will he strive to ease them of their iniquities, that find no burden in them, but rather that of a full pleasure? No surely he will not envy them so much their delights, but let them enjoy their beloved ruin. Is it fit Christ should invite those men who do yet cherish those sins that slew him, or that he should receive into his bosom those iniquities that put him to death? No certainly, till we can hate those sins which he could die for, and till we find weight in those iniquities which he found death from, till we labor under that which he sunk under, we have no regard of his mercies to us, but renounce all relation to him, and close with his mortal enimy, and cannot then hope to be received by him. And thus you have the reason why these foreign are the onelyonly fit persons to be invited by him, because till we are so, we cannot truly come unto him, depend upon him; and till we are so, we are not fit to be received by him.
And now for application. But what? cannot we truly come til we find our selves to be heavy laden, till we labor and are tired and wearied with iniquity? We see the perverse conditions of man, whom nothing but misery can perswade to Heaven; Heaven is no bait, tho it prostitute all its glories; Happiness is a word that hath no musick in it; the pleasures with which God entertained himself from all eternity, have no temtation in them compared to those of sin: Come unto me is not an invitation till we labor; till we find our selves perishing in our choice, ruined in those sins we have embraced, we never will uncling, nor come to Christ: we must have our happiness inflicted on us and be goaded into bliss. But then
2. Learn hence how willing Christ is to have us come to him, when he makes use of Hell, not to punish onelyonly them that will not come, but to drive us to come to him. Had it not bin enough for him to set before us life and death, and bid us take our choice? No, he knows our blind and unadvised appetites would chuse the guilt poison, the painted, the pleasant death, and make a Covenant with Hell; and therefore he lets us feel part of that Hell to fright us, and yet then receives us. To force us to love ease he lets us travel under the burdens of our own desiring, and yet after that invites us to rest: he do's not onelyonly accept them whose choice he is not but refuge, when as he might reject us. You would none of me, but chose weight, load, and labor; go and look for ease thence. But alas! if I should bid you seek refreshment from your pleasant sins, what comfort would you find, when you are tired with those sins, and the pleasures of them do forsake you, and leave you nothing but the stings and horror of the after expectations? No no, come to me yet, I will receive you after all your refusals; and tho you come to me but as to a last hold having nothing else to trust to, tho you have already tri'd all other, and slighted me, you shall yet be welcome: my pierced side is yet open to receive all of you that will yet come, and let you into my very heart; my arms are yet as wide as on the Cross, at their full length to take you into their embraces. Ah my Brethren, Christ doth not send us back to our beloved miseries when we come to him, but he makes those miseries a part of his Rhetoric to invite us, uses our labour and weariness to perswade us to come, makes those burdens the indearment of, and provocation to his ease, and Hell it self a part of his wooing. And how will he receive and embrace us, who doth thus desire and court us? The story of the Prodigal is hugely evictive of this, and so indulgent, that it would almost invite a man to sin; but then it do's far more invite a man, that will repent him of his sin, to be secure of God's acceptance. He that had so villanously betraied his Father's dearness to his own beastliness and ruin, to whom all kindness would seem lost, and to receive him in again and to assist him would be but to encourage him, and to furnish him for a return back to the prodigalities of sin and to the former riots of iniquity; yet when he do's repent, he do's obtain far more than he desires: he is received to feast and bosom, is entertain'd much more than the first born, and had he never gon away he had not bin so dear. Do but consult the story Luke 15. When weary and fainting under the burden of himself, which his languishing spirits were scarce able to sustain, he came at last to himself, v. 17. and began to wonder that he chose to stay with husks, with famine, rather than to go to daily plenty, and chose to dwell in the unclean, uncomfortable company of swine before his Father's houshold, and then strait to think of leaving that condition and society, and to resolve on a return. When he began to put those resolutions into act, and his impotent starv'd limbs would scarce serve his desires, at least he was unable to make hast in the pursuit of his intentions, for he was yet a great way off v. 20. yet then his Father had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. His compassions did not keep state, or stand expecting till his ungracious son should come and humble himself, and deprecate and beg; but he ran to meet him, and made far greater hast to receive and entertain, than the other could do to be received; and as if the humiliations or weaknesses had bin on his side, he fell, at least the impotencies of his affection did vie with those of the others condition, for he fell on his neck and kissed him. And whereas his repenting son did resolve to become prostrate, and low in condition as well as posture, I will go to my Father, and say unto him, Father, I have sinned before heaven and against thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son, make me as one of thy hired servants v. 18, 19. I dare not hope for favor from any tie of nature which I have broken all; I do not beg thy kindness as the issue of thy Relation, but as the wages of my labor; I will serve for thy affections, and let me have it as the hire of my repentance and endeavors: but 'twas enough it seems to have resolv'd thus lowly in earnest; for when he comes to act it v. 21. as he had said I am unworthy to be called thy son, his Father cuts him off, and calls for the best Robe, and for a Ring, and for the fatted Calf, will not let him so much as beg to be a servant, but if he once acknowledge himself unworthy for a son, he puts him strait in such an equipage as he may owne him in with credit, in the best Robe; and he rejoyces, quickens and sets out his joy with Feasts and Music. Now saith Tertullian, Quis ille nobis intelligendus Pater? What Father is this in the story? Why certainly 'tis God. No one so much a Father, no one so compassionate, if the Sinner once come to himself, as the prodigal son is said to do; for while he do's go on he is indeed beside himself and in a fit: and when he has collected sober thoughts about him, and do's compare his wanting husks with the full plenties of his Fathers house, the unsatisfying transient delights of sin, that have filthy toil and noisom drudgery in the gaining, and instantly when they are gain'd put out themselves, are gon, and leave nothing but snuff or stink behind, offence onelyonly and trouble of mind; compar'd those with the gladsom expectations of blessedness, with the comforts that are in all the promises of Christ, and the feasts of our Fathers mansion, Gods entertainments, the glories he hath studied for those that love him, and being satisfied these are the better pleasure, resolves to leave the swine, his unclean beastly courses, and betake himself to his Father, he shall then find this fiction experience, and God outdoing all the Parables of himself. He will run to meet him that do's but set himself to come in earnest, not onelyonly, as the proposition saies, accept his service, but prevent it; and however miserable, poor, and naked he do meet him, as the Sinner is Rev. 3. 17. he calls for the best Robe, even the Robe of Christ's Righteousness to put upon him, and puts a Ring upon his finger, he does espouse him to his Son, he kills the fatted calf, makes ready the supper of the Lamb for him, and it is the poor repenting Sinner's wedding supper with his Savior. It is a chapter full of comfort to the Penitent, and hath a greater advance for it than this story v. 3, 4. The Sinner he hath straied into by-paths, gon away from the Shepherd of his soul, is a lost sheep; but yet when he is gon his farthest, and is in his mazes, knows not which way to betake himself, then this good Shepherd do's not invite onelyonly to a return, or as the Father in the Parable run to meet him in his coming back, but he do's go himself to seek him, seems to mind the recovery of each single one that is lost, and contributes as carefully to his return, as if that one were all his charge, and the whole flock is not dearer to him than that one. He leaves the ninety and nine to seek that one, and he seeks till he finds it, and when he finds it he laies it on his shoulders. The wandring sheep was wearied it seems with straying, and had tir'd it self with running from its shepherd; but this too is provided for, he could not come home, therefore he is carried. It is not now, Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, I will not refuse you. Nay when you are so lost in Labyrinths of guilt out of which you can see no issue, when you have so labor'd in the paths of error that you are not able to come home, if you will but be found, I will seek you, yea and carry you home too. That no one, how far soever he have gon away, may yet despair of coming home, this sheep had wander'd to such a distance and to so much weariness, that he was fain to be born back when he was found. And he laies it on his shoulders rejoycing, was glad of such a burden. How willing is our Savior to find out a straied Sinner, when after such long errors he do's seek him till he finds him, and carries him, if he be weak and fainting; yea and rejoyces in that carriage, as if that rest he gives the Sinner were such ease and refreshment to himself, he joys in it! And that joy spreads it self to Heaven, for there is joy in Heaven at that sight, and v. 10. There is joy in the presence of the Angels of God over one sinner that repents. Heus tu peccator, bono animo sis, vides ubi de tuo reditu gaudeatur: Thou poor disconsolate Sinner, that liest groveling under the sense of the burden of thy sins, thy soul sinking under that heavy weight, and sinking also in the waters of thy fears, drown'd in thy sorrow, be of good chear. Dost thou not think there is some joy in this estate of thine, when it can make a joy in Heaven? Those tears assure thy self have comfort in them; for God, and Christ, and all the Angels do rejoyce at sight of them. And do not dread thy burden, if thou dost truly labor under it, and dost but faithfully desire and endeavor to throw it off thee. Dost thou not see him that laid the lost sheep on his shoulders as ready to take thee up? He that would not reject thy Cross when it was loaden with thy guilt, will not reject thy self when thou art lighted from that guilt. He that would receive thee on his shoulders when thou wast fainting under the burden of thy sins, when that is cast away into the sea and buried in his grave, will certainly receive thee into his bosom. He that would carry thee to give thee ease when thou wert wearied with running from him, when thou dost come to him and faint into his arms, will give thee everlasting rest; a rest whose blessedness to understand were to enjoy it, and to be able to conceive were to be infinite as it self is; a blessedness which to behold is beatific. O cast away your burdens and make hast, and come and see.
Lastly learn hence the method you are to take in coming to him, how you are to begin your journey. The first advance is by this conviction of the burden and horror of sin, till this be in us we will never move a step towards him. The Church hath taught us, when she invites us to come to him in Sacrament, to make the first step this confession, We be heartily sorry for these our transgressions, the remembrance of them is grievous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable. And Christ hath told us here, that we must find the very same things in our selves, an intolerable burden that tires and wearies us until we faint, before we come to him; we are otherwise no part of his invitation, will be no part of his retinue. And then whosoever thou art that art so far from finding them intolerable, that without them thy life is hardly tolerable, so far from burden, that thy very days are burdensom that are restrain'd from conversations of sin, that dost account them thy delight, not weariness, and art refresht, not tir'd with them, and canst not think of parting with them: or if no very vicious company or custom hath brought thee to this necessity and height of sinning, yet thou look'st upon them as slight regardless things, mistakes and oversights that slip from thee, all whose repentance is but Lord have mercy, and never thinkest more of it, dost not apprehend that every such gross fault hath an eternal weight in it, and dost not humble thy self under that weight; bethink thy self whether thou art yet in the way to Christ, or whether thou indeed be called to come. Oh no, the foreign are the men; for thou especially that takest pleasure in them, dost thou think Christ will call thee to do worse with him than the damned do in Hell? There they indeed nourish their sinfull appetites, their lusts advance, but their lusts are their plague and torment them, and they extremely hate and curse those things which they do passionately desire. Now that habitual Sinner his sins they are his emploiment, his delight too, he longs as those other, but he satisfies also and finds pleasure in them: and then, if those others be fit company for the Devils onelyonly, canst thou believe thy self fit company for Christ, that he should bid thee come to him? No, begin to act thy Hell a little sooner, account them here thy torments, hate them in time, perceive them to be burdens while they may be laid down, and then come unto Christ, and he will give thee rest.
And evermore, O Lord, give us of thy rest, a rest from sin here, and a rest from misery eternally. Yea, O Lord, give us to labor, and to find trouble under that intolerable burden of our guilt, that we may with eager hast fly to the refreshment, that we perverse obdurate Sinners, whom thy mercies cannot invite, our own miseries may force to be happy: and tho our wickednesses are multiplied into an infinite mass and weight, yet despise us not, when we fall under them; for thou didst invite us to come, and bring all that load to thee: despise us not, tho heavy laden; for thou thy self didst bear this weight, and didst die under it. And O thou, who didst thy self thus suffer by reason of this load, pity us that labor with it, ease us of the burden of our former guilt, free us from the slavery of our iniquity, from bearing any longer Sathan's loads; then shall we at last sit down with thee in the Land of everlasting rest, deliver'd from all weights but that eternal weight of glory, and resting from all labors save that of praising thee, and ascribing all Honor, Power, Praise, Might, Majesty, and Dominion to Father, Son, and holy Ghost for evermore.