alium virum migro: with that word, Surgite mortui, Arise ye that sleep in the dust, all my pieces shall be put together again, reconcinnor; with that word, Intra in gaudium, Enter into thy Master's joy, I am settled, I am established, componor; and with that word, Sede ad dextram, Sit down at my right hand, I become another manner of man, in alium virum migro; another manner of miracle, than the same father makes of man in this world; Quodnam mysterium, says he, What a mystery is man here! Parvus sum et magnus: I am less in body than many creatures in the world, and yet greater in the compass and extent of my soul than all the world: Humillimus sum et excelsus; I am under a necessity of spending some thoughts upon this low world, and yet in an ability to study, to contemplate, to lay hold upon the next: Mortalis sum, et immortalis; in a body that may, that must, that does, that did die ever since it was made; I carry a soul, nay, a soul carries me, to such a perpetuity, as no saint, no angel, God himself shall not survive me, over-live me. And lastly, says he, Terrenus sum, et cœlestis; I have a body, but of earth; but yet of such earth, as God was the potter to mould it, God was the statuary to fashion it; and then I have a soul, of which God was the father, he breathed it into me, and of which no matter can say, I was the mother, for it proceeded of nothing. Such a mystery is man here: but he is a miracle hereafter; I shall be still the same man, and yet have another being: and in this is that miracle exalted, that death who destroys me, re-edifies me: Mors veluti medium excogitata, ut de integro restauraretur homo: Man was fallen, and God took that way to raise him, to throw him lower, into the grave; man was sick, and God invented, God studied physic for him, and strange physic, to recover him by death. The first, faciamus hominem, the creation of man, was a thing incomprehensible in nature; but the denuo nasci, to be born again, was stranger, even to Nicodemus, who knew the former, the creation, well enough. But yet the immutabimur is the greatest of all, which St. Paul calls all to wonder at, Behold, I show you a mystery, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed: a mystery, which if Nicodemus had discerned it, would have put him to more wonder, than the denuo nasci; to enter into his mother's womb, (as he speaks) to enter into the bowels of the earth, and lie there, and lie dead there, not nine months, but many years, and then to be born again, and the first minute of that new birth to be so perfect, as that nothing can be better, and so perfect as that he can never become worse, that is that which makes all strange accidents to natural bodies, and bodies politic too, all changes in man, all revolutions of states, easy, and familiar to us; I shall have another being, and yet be the same man. And in that state, I shall have the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Christ Jesus. Of which three things being now come to speak, I am the less sorry, and so may you be too, if my voice be so sunk, as that I be not heard; for, if I had all my time, and all my strength, and all your patience reserved till now, what could I say that could become, what, that could have any proportion, to this knowledge, and this glory, and this face of Christ Jesus, there in the kingdom of heaven? But yet be pleased to hear a word, of each of these three words; and first, of knowledge. In the attributes of God, we consider his knowledge to be principium agendi dirigens, the first proposer, and director; this should be done and then his will to be principium imperans, the first commander, this shall be done; and then his power to be principium exsequens, the first performer, this is done this should be done, this shall be done, this is done, expresses to us, the knowledge, the will, and the power of God. Now we shall be made partakers of the divine nature; and the knowledge, and the will, and the power of God, shall be so far communicated to us there, as that we shall know all that belongs to our happiness, and we shall have a will to do, and a power to execute, whatsoever conduces to that. And for the knowledge of angels, that is not in them per essentiam, for whosoever knows so, as the essence of the thing flows from him, knows all things, and that is a knowledge proper to God only: neither do the angels know per species, by those resultances and species, which rise from the object, and pass through the sense to the understanding, for that is a deceivable way, both by the indisposition of the organ, sometimes, and sometimes by the depravation of the judgment; and therefore, : as the first is too high, this is too low a way for the angels. Some things the angels do know by the dignity of their nature, by their creation, which we know not; as we know many things which inferior creatures do not; and such things all the angels, good and bad, know. Some things they know by the grace of their confirmation, by which they have more given them, than they had by nature in their creation; and those things only the angels that stood, but all they, do know. Some things they know by revelation, when God is pleased to manifest them unto them; and so some of the angels know that, which the rest, though confirmed, do not know. By creation, they know as his subjects; by confirmation, they know as his servants; by revelation, they know as his council. Now, Erimus sicut angeli, says Christ, There we shall be as the angels: the knowledge which I have by nature, shall have no clouds; here it hath: that which I have by grace, shall have no reluctation, no resistance; here it hath that which I have by revelation, shall have no suspicion, no jealousy; here it hath sometimes it is hard to distinguish between a respiration from God, and a suggestion from the devil. There our curiosity shall have this noble satisfaction, we shall know how the angels know, by knowing as they know. We shall not pass from author to author, as in a grammar-school, nor from art to art, as in an university; but, as that general which knighted his whole army, God shall create us all doctors in a minute. That great library, those infinite volumes of the books of creatures, shall be taken away, quite away; no more nature; those reverend manuscripts, written with God's own hand, the Scriptures themselves, shall be taken away, quite away; no more preaching, no more reading of Scriptures; and that great schoolmistress, experience and observation, shall be removed, no new thing to be done; and in an instant, I shall know more, than they all could reveal unto me. I shall know, not only as I know already, that a bee-hive, that an ant-hill is the same book in decimo sexto, as a kingdom is in folio, that a flower that lives but a day, is an abridgment of that king, that lives out his threescore and ten years; but I shall know too, that all these ants, and bees, and flowers, and kings, and kingdoms, howsoever they may be examples, and comparisons to one another, yet they are all as nothing, altogether nothing, less than nothing, infinitely less than nothing, to that which shall then be the subject of my knowledge, for, It is the knowledge of the glory of God. Before, in the former acceptation, the glory of God, was our glorifying of God; here, the glory of God, is his glorifying of us : there it was his receiving, here it is his giving of glory. That prayer which our Saviour Christ makes, Glorify me, O Father, with thine own self, with the glory which I had, before the world was, is not a prayer for the essential glory of God; for Christ in his divine nature was never divested, never unaccompanied of that glory; and for his human nature, that was never capable of it: the attributes, and so the essence of the glory, of the divinity, are not communicable to his human nature, neither perpetually, as the Ubiquitaries say, nor temporarily in the sacrament, as the Papists imply. But the glory which Christ asks there, is, the glory of sitting down at the right hand of his Father in our flesh, in his human nature, which glory he had before the world, for he had it in his predestination, in the eternal decree. And that is the glory of God, which we shall know; know, by having it. We shall have a knowledge of the very glory, the essential glory of God, because we shall see him sicuti est, as God is, in himself; and cognoscam ut cognitus; I shall know as I am known that glory shall dilate us, enlarge us, give us an inexpressible capacity, and then fill it; but we shall never comprehend that glory, the essential glory; but that glory which Christ hath received in his human nature, (in all other degrees, excepting those which flow from his hypostatical union) we shall comprehend, we shall know, by having: we shall receive a crown of glory, that fadeth not: it is a crown that compasses round, no entrance of danger any way: and a crown that fadeth not, fears no winter: we shall have interest in all we see, and we shall see the treasure of all knowledge, the face of Christ Jesus. Then and there, we shall have an abundant satisfaction and accomplishment, of all St. Augustine's three wishes he wished to have seen Rome in her glory, to have heard St. Paul preach, and to have seen Christ in the flesh. We shall have all: we 81 80 John xvii. 5. 81 1 Cor. xiii. 12. 82 1 Pet. v. 4. shall see such a Jerusalem, as that Rome, if that were literally true, which is hyperbolically said of Rome, In urbe, in orbe, That city is the whole world; yet Rome, that Rome, were but a village to this Jerusalem. We shall hear St. Paul, with the whole choir of heaven, pour out himself in that acclamation, Salvation to our God, that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb and we shall see, and see for ever, Christ in that flesh, which hath done enough for his friends, and is safe enough from his enemies. We shall see him in a transfiguration, all clouds of sadness removed; and a transubstantiation, all his tears changed to pearls, all his blood-drops into rubies, all the thorns of his crown into diamonds: for, where we shall see the walls of his palace to be sapphire, and emerald, and amethyst, and all stones that are precious, what shall we not see in the face of Christ Jesus? And whatsoever we do see, by that very sight becomes ours. Be therefore no strangers to this face: see him here, that you may know him, and he you, there: see him, as St. John did, who turned to see a voice: see him in the preaching of his word; see him in that seal, which is a copy of him, as he is of his Father; see him in the sacrament. Look him in the face as he lay in the manger, poor, and then murmur not at temporal wants; suddenly enriched by the tributes of kings, and doubt not but that God hath large and strange ways to supply thee. Look him in the face, in the temple, disputing there at twelve years; and then apply thyself to God, to the contemplation of him, to the meditation upon him, to a conversation with him betimes. Look him in the face in his father's house; a carpenter, and but a carpenter. Take a calling, and contain thyself in that calling. But bring him nearer, and look him in the face, as he looked on Friday last; when he whose face the angels desire to look on, he who was fairer than the children of men, as the prophet speaks, who so marred more than any man, as another prophet says, That they hid their faces from him, and despised him; when he who bore up the heavens bowed down his head, and he who gives breath to all, gave up the ghost: and then look him in the face again, as he looked yesterday, not lamed upon 83 Rev. vii. 10. 84 Rev. xxi. 19. 86 Psalm XLV. 3. 85 Rev. i. 12. 87 Isaiah Lii. 14; Liii. 3. |