Fifty sermons preached at the parish-church of St. Mary Magdalene Milk-street, London, and elsewhere whereof twenty on the Lords Prayer / by ... Anthony Farindon ... ; the third and last volume, not till now printed ; to which is adjoyned two sermons preached by a friend of the authors, upon his being silenced.

The Three and Fourtieth SERMON. PART. III. (Book 43)

MATTH. VI. 13. And lead us not into tentation; but deliver us from evil.

WE have discoursed in general concerning the Ground of all Tentations, that they are as natural to Man as the faculties of his Soul. We will now give some par∣ticular Reasons why God doth permit them, why he leaves the world so full of snares, so full of stumbling blocks, and layes Man thus open and naked to temp∣tations, and sets him up, as Job speaketh, as a mark for the Devil to shoot his fiery darts at. And first, herein God acteth the part of a Father, when by tentations he maketh tryal of our faith in him and of our love and obedience to him. The skill of a Pilot is best seen in a tempest, and the sincerity of a Christian in the midst of tentations. He who either yields to the flattery of pleasure, or falls un∣der the burden of affliction, he who either by fair weather is enticed or by foul weather is driven from the right way, behaveth himself neither like a son nor a servant. Probandus prius quam laudandus Christianus, A Christian must be tried first, and not till then be commended. Habendo tentationem, habet probationem, Being tempted, he is proved and tryed, as Gold in the fire. Then are the chosen and golden vessels of God known, when they are brought to the touchstone of Temptation. Thus doth God exercise his servants in the spiritual conflict of Temptations. And thus the evils of this world usu bono vertuntur in bonum, by well managing of them are made good, whilst they do not increase our con∣cupiscence, but exercise our patience. Therefore God hath placed a difficulty (which is a kind of tentation) upon every thing that is tru∣ly desirable. The object of our Faith are things not seen; the object of our Hope, happiness at a distance; the object of our Charity, that E∣nemy that persecutes us. And the Invisibility of the object, the Distance of the object, the Unloveliness of the object, these are as so many temp∣tations to shake my Faith, to dead and wither my Hope, and to destroy my Charity. And to believe upon this probability is the merit of my Faith; to hope on earth for that which is laid up in heaven, is the life of my Hope; and to love that which my very bloud riseth at, is the crown and perfection of my Charity.

Again, as God doth permit Temptations and exercise us with afflicti∣ons ad probationem fidei, for the tryal of our Faith, so doth he also ma∣ny times even send them upon us ad emendationem labilis vitae, as St. Augustine speaks, for the amendment of our sinful lives, that being foil'd by one temptation, we may be raised by another; being wounded by plea∣sure, be cured by grief: that the bitterness of affliction may sowre those sins which we drunk-down as the Oxe doth water, and make us distast them. Productior est poena quàm culpa, saith St. Augustine, nè parva puta∣retur culpa, si cum illa finiretur & poena. Our sins were no longer then they were a committing; but their guilt still remains: And lest we should let them sleep with small notice, lest they should put-on a lovely shape, and so deceive us, when the sin is past, the rod is on the back; which maketh us turn our countenance, and behold our sins in their own ugly shapes. O bea∣tum servum, cujus emendationi instat Dominus, cui dignatur irasci, saith the Father; O blessed and happy servant upon whom God takes such pains, whose amendment he thus urgeth and forceth, whom he honours so highly as to vouchsafe to be angry with him! We may think indeed that when God thus brings on his armies and changes of sorrows, that he comes to fight against us, that he sticks his arrows in our sides to destroy us, that he brings these evils upon us to make us worse, and layes us on our beds of sick∣ness to fling us upon that impatience which will sink us into hell, that he pursues us as an enemy. But this is to make those Temptations which should destroy Sin to be exceeding sinful: this is not to savour the things which are of God. For even those smiling temptations, if we had not been willing to be deceived, might have helpt to increase that joy which is real. Had we frowned on them, we had had no sin. But having sinned, God comes towards us in blackness and darkness, in the horror of tempo∣ral afflictions, to see whether we have more patience towards these tempta∣tions of his left hand then those of his right hand; not to sink us deeper, but to draw us out of the pit. He writes bitter things against us, and makes * 1.1 us possess the sins of our youth, as Job speaks: So to possess them that we may drive them out, so to look upon them that we may loath them. He pla∣ceth them in order before us, that we may read and detest them and wipe and blot them out with our tears, and draw a new copy in the reformation of our lives. They are indeed Temptations; but, if we please, they are in∣vitations to mercy. They give indeed but an unpleasing sound; but, if we will attend and hearken to them, they are sermons and instructions, and they may serve to order and compose rotam nativitatis, the whole wheel of our nature. And first they work upon the Understanding part, to clear and enlighten that. We see not only seeds of moral conversation, those practick notions which were born with us, but also those seeds of saving knowledge, which we gather from the Scripture, and improve by instru∣ction and practise, never so darkned and obscured as when Pleasures and Delights have taken full possession of our souls. And as we see in sick and distempered men, that the light of their reason is dimmed, and their mind disturbed; which proceeds from those vicious vapors which their corrupt humors do exhale: it is so in the Soul and Understanding, which could not but apprehend objects as they are and in their own likeness, as it were not dazled and amazed with intervenient and impatient objects and phantasms: but being blinded by the God of this world, it sees objects indeed, but through the vanities of the world, which, as coloured Glass, present the object much like unto themselves. Sin hath now the face and beauty of Virtue: Envy is emulation; Covetousness, thrift; Prodigality, bounty; the Gospel, a promulgation of liberty, and a priviledge to sin. Things now appear unto us as upon a stage, in masques and vizards and strange ap∣parel.

Now when the hand of God is upon us, when to expel that sin which a delightful tentation hath occasioned, he maks us feel the smart of one quite contrary, and to drive out that which entred with delight he sends another with a whip; when this cross tentation hath cut of all hopes of enjoying such pleasing objects as have taken us up, the Understanding hath more li∣berty then before to retire into it self, and begins evigilare, to awake as a man out of sleep, and to enjoy a kind of heaven and serenity, which before did 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, as the Platonicks speak, sleep in a hell of confu∣sion and darkness. Now the seeds of Goodness being freed from the at∣tractive force of allurements, begin to recover life and strength, and sprout forth into those apprehensions which bring with them a loathing of that evil which before they converst withal as with a familiar friend: And anon every sin appears in his own shape: Envy is Murder; Covetousness, Idolatry; Prodigality, Folly; and the Gospel, a Sanctuary not for Liber∣tines, but Repentants. In my prosperity I said, saith David, I shall never be moved. Lord, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong. Thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled. I cryed unto thee, O Lord, * 1.2 and unto the Lord I made my supplication. It is strange, saith Calvine, that God should enlighten Davids eyes by hiding his face, without the light of whose countenance even Knowledge it self is no better than Darkness. But we find it most true, that, when one temptation doth infatuate, a contra∣ry is brought-in to make men wise. Secondly, the Will of man as it is a free so is a perverse and froward faculty, and many times Planet-wise moves∣on in its own way contrary to the strong circumvolution of the First mover: But the Temptations of the left hand serve to settle its irregular motion, and to make it wait upon Reason. For having followed the deceitful al∣lurements of the World, and finding gall and bitterness upon every seem∣ing delight, having found death in the Harlots lips, and misery in every way she wandered, she begins to renounce her self, and, though she be free to every object, yet she fastens her self on one alone, and hath her eye alwayes upon the Understanding, as the eye of the hand-maid is upon the eye of the mistress who directs her. Lastly, Tentations may have their operati∣on on the Memory, and revive those decay'd characters whether of Gods blessings or of our own sins, and bring those sins which did lurk in secret into the open light. How soon when we are at quiet and ease do we for∣get God? how soon do we forget our selves? How many benefits, how many sins are torn out of our memories? Who remembers his own soul in this calm, or can think that he hath a soul? Who thinks of Sin in Jollity? So that it may seem to be a kind of tentation to be long free from tentati∣on. We read in the book of Genesis that Joseph's brethren made no scru∣ple of the sin they committed against him for fourteen years together: but being cast into prison they presently call it to mind, and that upon no apparent reason, We are verily guilty concerning our brother; and therefore is this distress come upon us. Beloved, afflictions are to us à memoriâ: and though they be tentations to distrust and murmuring, yet they may prove (and so they are intended) like Joseph unto his brethren, remembrancers to us, to remove the callum, the hardness, of our consciences, and make them quick of sense, that we may ab ipso morbo remedium sumere, force a remedy from the disease, and make even Sin advantageous to us, by re∣moving it out of the Affection, where it playes the parasite, and fixing it in the Memory, where it is a fury, where it is as operative to destroy as it was in the Affection, to increase it self. To contemplate Sin and to view the horror of it, and the hell it deserves, is enough to break our hearts, and bow our wills, and to make us hate and detest Sin more than Hell it self.

Again, in the third place, this exercise in tentations doth not only draw us to repentance for sins past, but also serves as a fence or guard to those virtues and saving graces which make us gracious in the sight of God; it doth temper that portion in us which is the Spirits, that it prove not more dangerous and fatal than that of the Flesh. For as Bernard discanteth up∣on Porphyrie's definition of Man, HOMO EST ANIMAL RATIO∣NALE MORTALE, Man is a rational, but mortal creature: The Mor∣tal, saith he, doth temper the Rational, that it do not swell; and the Ratio∣nal strengthen the Mortal, that it do not weaken and dead our spirits. And therefore St. Augustine was bold to pronounce that it was very happy for some men that they did fall in tentations. For Pride, which threw down the Angels from heaven, will grow not only upon Power and Beauty and Pomp of the world, but upon the choicest virtues; and like those plantae parasiticae, those parasitical plants which will grow but upon other plants, it sucks out the very juice and spirits of them, and is nourisht with that which quickens those virtues and keeps them alive. When we have stood strong against temptations, quâdam delectatione sibimet ipsi animus blanditur, there ariseth in our soul a kind of delight, which doth f••••tter and tickle us to death. Fovea mentis, memoria virtutis, saith Gregory; Too much to look back upon our beauty, and too steddily to view our own perfections, is to dig a pit and a grave for those virtues we boast of. When the soul is lifted up thus high, it will fall with all its honor into the lowest pit. It is St. Hieroms observation of some Monks in his time, That if they did but for some few dayes cloyster up themselves and fast, they did presently think themselves alicujus momenti; and did begin to look big and scornfully on their brethren. Let a blind Votary devote himself to poverty, or go in Pilgrimage to some created Saint, and his own opinion full soon will cano∣nize him. Do we hear a Sermon, or give an alms to the poor? we are in heaven already. But if we keep our selves from those sins which make o∣thers the song and proverb of the people, then we seem to walk upon the pavement of heaven, to converse with Angels, with Seraphim and Cheru∣bim: from which imaginary state we look down and behold our brother on the ground; and how vile doth he appear in our eyes? a worm, a wretch, a son of perdition; and we begin to thunder when God is well pleased to be silent. Now this Pride and Contempt of our brother, ortum habet à pace quam habemus à tentationibus, saith the Schoolman, ariseth from a peacea∣ble conceit which we are very willing to cherish, that we have stood strong against the violence of temptations. And then with us he is scarce a Chri∣stian who is tempted: Therefore St. Paul makes Temptation an argument against Sin, and the Possibility of being tempted a motive to have compas∣sion on those who are fallen into tentation; Brethren, if a man be over∣taken * 1.3 in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such a one in the spirit of meek∣ness, lest thou also be tempted; When Alexander was wounded, who would be thought a God, Callisthenes tells him that certainly the Gods had no such bloud. Heracleotes Dionysius was a great professor amongst the Stoicks, who knew not grief, nor pleasure: but he soon forfook their School, saith Tully, propter dolorem oculorum, when he was troubled with a great pain in his eyes: Beloved, when we have run on smoothly and evenly a long time, and met with no rub or check in our wayes, when we have fought prospe∣rously, and gained some few victories over our spiritual enemies; we may flatter our selves that we reign as Kings, and are indeed the sons of God, whilst we esteem others as worms and no men: But when the Devil hath flung his dart at us, and drawn bloud from us; we begin to think that this bloud is not the bloud of God, that those sins cannot issue from any heart but his who is full of imperfection, who is subject to passions and tentati∣ons,

even as they are who for our seven times fall seventy times a day. And though we number our selves amongst the strictest professors, and separate our selves from our brethren as from the Goats on the left hand, yet when we feel the pain, not of our Eyes, but of our Conscience, we then are content to rank our selves with the brethren of low degree, with vulgar Christians, with Publicans and Harlots, and joyn with them in one common Letany, God be merciful to us miserable sinners.

Lastly, this conflict with Tentations makes us look-up unto the hills, from whence cometh our salvation; that we may not say with that proud King in Daniel, Is it not I that built Babel? Is it not I that have been wiser than the Serpent? that was not ignorant of his enterprises? that have encountred him both when he roared as a Lion, and when he put on the shape of an An∣gel of light? Is it not I that have coped with him in every shape he put∣on? that have met with Pleasures in their fairest dress, and past them by with a slight and disdain? that have had Honor woo me, and have run from it? Riches thrown into my lap, and flung them away? nay, that have met Satan in all his horror, in misery and affliction and disgrace, and have made him fall off and retire? And this is a tentation greater than all those we have avoided. And therefore the servants of God, being taken with it, have been turned back to grosser sins for a remedy, and as that proud King was made a beast to learn humility, so were they delivered to more brutish affections, to learn that God in their weakness whom they forgat in their strength; to ascribe the victory to him who teacheth our hands to fight, and girdeth us with strength; to acknowledge that, though we sweat and labour and fight it out even unto death, yet the victory is the Lords, even of that God who is not gratiae angustus, as Ambrose speaks, any niggard of his grace, but seeing the many snares in the midst of which we are placed, the many temptations we are to cope withal, hath not only made a Law against Sin, and proclaimed a reward to the righteous, and punishment to the breaker of the Law, placed Punishment against that Pleasure which is but for a season, and eternity of Reward against the Bitterness of these momentany afflictions, but hath also afforded us his Grace and assistance, as a staff by which we may walk. And as when the children of Israel were in the wilderness he rained down Manna upon them, and led them as it were by the hand till they came into the land of Promise, and tasted of the milk and honey there: so God deals with his children and servants whilst they are in viâ, in this their peregrination, ever and anon beset with Philistines and Amalekites, with those tentations which may deter them in their jour∣ney, and drive them back; he rains down abundance of his Grace to as∣sist them against the violence of Temptations; sometimes beating back the blow, removing the temptation; sometimes diverting our thoughts; some∣times strengthning and incouraging us in the very skirmish; sometimes washing off those colours with which the Devil hath painted the object, making Pleasure irksome for the sting in its tail, and Grief delight some for that weight of glory which it worketh; teaching us our postures; discove∣ring to us the enemies stratagems, and where his great strength lyeth; gird∣ing and fencing and compassing of us in on every side, till he hath brought us to the coelestial Canaan, where there is fulness of joy for evermore. And therefore as he hath given us a command to try our Obedience, so he hath commanded us also to call and depend upon him for assistance. Et scimus quià petentes libenter aexaudit, quando hoc petitur largiri quod jubet; And we know it is impossible that he should deny our requests, when we desire him to grant us that which he would have us ask, his help and assistance to do that which he commands. We beg his assistance against the lusts of the Flesh; he commands us to mortifie them: against the pollutions of the world;

his will is our sanctification: against the Devil, he bids us tread him under foot. He bids us, who is Xystarchus, the master of the race, and Epista∣tes, the overseer of the combate. His Grace is Bellonia, that divine Pow∣er which shall drive-back our enemies. And if the Devil inspire evil thoughts, God is both able and willing to inspire good; and in all our tryals, in all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth, in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment, his Grace is sufficient for us; that our re∣joycing and boasting may be in the Lord; that the glorious company of the A∣postles, the goodly fellowship of the Prophets, the noble army of Martyrs, that all the victorious Saints of God may cast-down their crowns at his feet, and confess that Salvation is from the Lord. And thus much be spoken of the Reasons why God doth exercise his servants with divers tentations.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Job 13. 26.
• * 1.2

  Psal. 30. 6, 7, 8
• * 1.3

  Gal. 6. 1.