The Usefulness and Excellency of Christ, Section 14
SECT. 14.
Of Basenesse, the third Let.
3. AS some base people will not 3. Let. Basenesse.gather roses to bestrow their cloathes and roomes with the same, though they smell most odiously and abominably, because they can endure any sent, and make no reckoning of it, being used to it: so carnall men and women are so base and sordid, as that they will not get Christ, because they are so accustomed to the filthy smell of sin, as that they doe scarse perceive it themselves, though a stranger to them, who is not used to such an abominable sent, doe smell it quickly; and therefore, I pray you be sensible of this basenesse, and remaine it by labouring to be sensible of those odious smels, which your filthy hearts doe continually exhale and send forth, as it is written, that every imagination of the thoughts of mans heart (by nature) is onelyonly evill continually, Gen. 6. 6. and that out of the heart proceed evill thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witnesse, blasphemies, which defile a man, Mat. 15. 19, 20.
Doe ye not smell these abominations brethren (I speake but to the guilty) nay should ye not perceive them? how can you chuse? every body that knowes you, cannot but take notice of you how basely you carry your selves, and how strangely you be overswayed with fiercenesse and anger, and with monstrous pride, which doth even stinke before God and man, and sometimes with filthy avarice, and other times with that detestable sinne of drunkennesse; and therefore seeing others note you, can you not, and should you not observe it in your selves, being privy to your very hearts and most secret and reserved imaginations, which others know not so well as you? Well you know that if one doe stirre in a dunghill, and put it abroad, it will stink so much more then it did before, so as that one must needs smell it, and I doubt not but if you shall stirre but a little in this matter, 1. ransacking your hearts; and 2. ripping up your lives, and sifting them exactly, you shall smell more of your odious sinnes then ever you did; and therefore, search your selves, and so labour to come to the sight and sense of all your abominations, that you may get Christ to sweeten you, as roses doe sweeten our houses.
And here looke back a little I pray you to the second branch of the second generall use tending to conviction: For I confesse that there is such a neare affinity between this let and that use, as that one may be said to embrace & to re-imbrace the other, and that both agree in one, I meane in one end principally. For as there I did labour to make men see that they are out of Christ by the ill favour of their abominable thoughts, words and works to fit them for Christ, and for the meanes to be used for the getting of Christ, that they may see what need they have of Christ: so here I strive againe to make men sensible, if I can, of that same odious savour, upbraiding them with their execrable basenesse, that I may take away that which letteth, after men have heard much of Christ, and know what they must doe to obtaine Christ, pressing them before and behinde, as fighting souldiers are wont to doe in the wars, to make some yeeld, who yet will stand it out and maintaine the field against Christ, supposing that they are for Christ, and Christs already, and need not goe to Christ, when indeed they are against Christ, as may appeare by the odious sent of their corrupt hearts and lives, both to others, and to themselves, but to themselves especially.
Brethren, this is my aime I tell you, and therefore I have purposely superadded this lot of Basenesse, not forgetting my selfe what I had said in the former use of conviction, but intending to second that by this, because I know that else all my preaching and my labour will be in vaine, if men be not made sensible of the most odious sent of their abominable deeds; and on the contrary, that if men doe once smell the intolerable stinch of their very dearest and most delicious sins, they will then labour as much as they can for that sweet rose of Sharon, Jesus Christ, to perfume and to sweeten their most corrupt and filthy hearts▪ For doe we not see how men will fetch roses, and other flowers and perfumes to perfume their roomes, if by reason of one that dyed of a filthy disease, and stinks most abominably, they cannot otherwise stay in their houses, as not being able to endure the odious and pestilent sent wherewith the dead corps doth fill the same? and therefore I doe proportionably conclude, that if men were but or could be sensible of that infinitely more abominable and execrable smell, which that body of death, even sinne within their hearts evaporates, and sends forth continually out of their hearts, they would not goe so as they doe without Christ that heart-sweetning rose of Sharon; but rather cry out as those, Acts 2. 37. What shall we doe to get Christ, that he may take away this most odious sent, which we are no longer able to endure; and with the Apostle, Rom. 7. 24. O wretched men that wee are, who will deliver us from that stinking body of death? Oh that Christ would doe it! and oh that we were but able to get Christ to doe it.