pœnitentiam? Hadst thou rather a sickness should bring thee to God, than a sermon? Hadst thou rather be beholden to a physician for thy salvation, than to a preacher? Thy business is to remember; stay not for thy last sickness, which may be a lethargy in which thou mayest forget thine own name, and his that gave thee the name of a Christian, Christ Jesus himself: thy business is to remember, and thy time is now, stay not till that angel come which shall say and swear, that time shall be no more. Remember then, and remember now; In die, In the day; the Lord will hear us In die qua invocaverimus, In the day that we shall call upon him; and in quacunque die, In what day soever we call', and in Quacunque die velociter exaudiet, As soon as we call in any day. But all this is opus diei, a work for the day; for in the night, in our last night, those thoughts that fall upon us, they are rather dreams, than true rememberings; we do rather dream that we repent, than repent indeed, upon our death-bed. To him that travels by night a bush seems a tree, and a tree seems a man, and a man a spirit; nothing hath the true shape to him; to him that repents by night, on his deathbed, neither his own sins, nor the mercies of God have their true proportion. Fool, says Christ, this night they will fetch away thy soul; but he neither tells him, who they be that shall fetch it, nor whither they shall carry it; he hath no light but lightnings a sudden flash of horror, first, and then he goes into fire without light, Numquid Deus nobis ignem pacarit? Non, sed diabolo, et angelis": Did God ordain hell-fire for us? no, but for the devil, and his angels. And yet we that are vessels so broken, as that there is not a sherd left, to fetch water at the pit, that is, no means in ourselves, to derive one drop of Christ's blood upon us, nor to wring out one tear of true repentance from us, have plunged ourselves into this everlasting, and this dark fire, which was not prepared for us; a wretched covetousness, to be intruders upon the devil; a wretched ambition, to be usurpers upon damnation. God did not make the fire for us; but much less did he make us for that fire; that is, make us to damn us. 7 Rev. x. 6. 10 Psalm cii. 2. 8 Psalm xx. 9. 9 Psalm cxxxviii. 3. But now the judgment is given, Ite maledicti, Go ye accursed; but yet this is the way of God's justice, and his proceeding, that his judgments are not always executed, though they be given. The judgments and sentences of Medes and Persians are irrevocable, but the judgments and sentences of God, if they be given, if they be published, they are not executed. The Ninevites had perished, if the sentence of their destruction had not been given; and the sentence preserved them; so even in this cloud of Ite maledicti, Go ye accursed, we may see the daybreak, and discern beams of saving light, even in this judgment of eternal darkness; if the contemplation of his judgment brings us to remember him in that day, in the light and apprehension of his anger and correction. For this circumstance is enlarged; it is not in die, but in diebus, not in one, but in many days; for God affords us many days, many lights to see and remember him by. This remembrance of God is our regeneration, by which we are new creatures; and therefore we may consider as many days in it, as in the first creation. The first day was the making of light; and our first day is the knowledge of him, who says of himself, Ego sum lux mundi, I am the light of the world, and of whom St. John testifies, Erat lux cera, He was the true light, that lighteth every man into the world. This is then our first day the true passion of Christ Jesus. God made light first, that the other creatures might be seen; Frustra essent si non viderentur 12, It had been to no purpose to have made creatures, if there had been no light to manifest them. Our first day is the light and love of the Gospel; for the noblest creatures of princes, (that is, the noblest actions of princes, war, and peace, and treaties) frustra sunt, they are good for nothing, they are nothing, if they be not showed and tried by this light, by the love and preservation of the Gospel of Christ Jesus: God made light first, that his other works might appear, and he made light first, that himself (for our example) might do all his other works in the light: that we also, as we had that light shed upon us in our baptism, so we might make all our future actions justifiable by that light, and not erubescere evangelium, not be ashamed of being too jealous in this profession of his 12 Ambrose. truth. Then God saw that the light was good: the seeing implies a consideration; that so a religion be not accepted blindly, nor implicitly; and the seeing it to be good implies an election of that religion, which is simply good in itself, and not good by reason of advantage, or conveniency, or other collateral and byrespects. And when God had seen the light, and seen that it was good, then he severed light from darkness; and he severed them, non tanquam duo positiva, not as two essential, and positive, and equal things, not so, as that a brighter and a darker religion, (a good and a bad) should both have a being together, but tanquam positivum et primitivum, light and darkness are primitive, and positive, and figure this rather, that a true religion should be established, and continue, and darkness utterly removed; and then and not till then, (till this was done, light severed from darkness) there was a day; and since God hath given us this day, the brightness of his Gospel, that this light is first presented, that is, all great actions begun with this consideration of the Gospel; since all other things are made by this light, that is, all have relation to the continuance of the Gospel, since God hath given us such a head, as is sharp-sighted in seeing the several lights, wise in discerning the true light, powerful in resisting foreign darkness; since God hath given us this day, Qui non humiliabit animam suam in die hac, as Moses speaks of the days of God's institution 13, he that will not remember God now, in this day, is impious to him, and unthankful to that great instrument of his, by whom this day-spring from on high hath visited us. To make shorter days of the rest, (for we must pass through all the six days in a few minutes) God in the second day made the firmament to divide between the waters above, and the waters below; and this firmament in us, is terminus cognoscibilium, the limits of those things which God hath given man means and faculties to conceive, and understand: he hath limited our eyes with a firmament beset with stars, our eyes can see no farther: he hath limited our understanding in matters of religion with a starry firmament too; that is, with the knowledge of those things, quæ ubique, quæ semper, which those stars which he hath kindled in his church, the fathers and doctors, have ever from the begin 13 Levit. xxiii. ning proposed as things necessary to be explicitly believed, for the salvation of our souls; for the eternal decrees of God, and his unrevealed mysteries, and the inextricable perplexities of the school, they are waters above the firmament: here Paul plants, and here Apollos waters; here God raises up men to convey to us the dew of his grace, by waters under the firmament; by visible sacraments, and by the word so preached, and so interpreted, as it hath been constantly, and unanimously from the beginning of the church. And therefore this second day is perfected in the third, in the congregentur aqua, let the waters be gathered together; God hath gathered all the waters, all the waters of life in one place; that is, all the doctrine necessary for the life to come, into his church: and then producet terra, here in this world are produced to us all herbs and fruits, all that is necessary for the soul to feed upon. And in this third day's work God repeats here that testimony, videt quod bonum, he saw that it was good; good, that here should be a gathering of waters in one place, that is, no doctrine received that had not been taught in the church; and videt quod bonum, he saw it was good, that all herbs and trees should be produced that bore seed; all doctrines that were to be proseminated and propagated, and to be continued to the end, should be taught in the church: but for doctrines which were but to vent the passion of vehement men, or to serve the turns of great men for a time, which were not seminal doctrines, doctrines that bore seed, and were to last from the beginning to the end; for these interlineary doctrines, and marginal, which were no part of the first text, here is no testimony that God sees that they are good. And, In diebus istis, If in these two days, the day when God makes thee a firmament, shows thee what thou art, to limit thine understanding and thy faith upon, and the day where God makes thee a sea, a collection of the waters, (shows thee where these necessary things must be taught in the church) if in those days thou wilt not remember thy Creator, it is an irrecoverable lethargy. In the fourth day's work, let the making of the sun to rule the day be the testimony of God's love to thee, in the sunshine of temporal prosperity, and the making of the moon to shine by night, be the refreshing of his comfortable promises in the dark ness of adversity; and then remember that he can make thy sun to set at noon, he can blow out thy taper of prosperity when it burns brightest, and he can turn the moon into blood, he can make all the promises of the Gospel, which should comfort thee in adversity, turn into despair and obduration. Let the first day's work, which was the creation Omnium reptibilium, and Omnium volatilium, Of all creeping things, and of all flying things, produced out of water, signify and denote to thee, either thy humble devotion, in which thou sayest of thyself to God, Vermis ego et non homo, I am a worm and no man; or let it be the raising of thy soul in that, pennas columbæ dedisti, that God hath given thee the wings of a dove to fly to the wilderness, in a retiring from, or a resisting of temptations of this world; remember still that God can suffer even thy humility to stray, and degenerate into an uncomely dejection and stupidity, and senselessness of the true dignity and true liberty of a Christian: and he can suffer this retiring thyself from the world, to degenerate into a contempt and despising of others, and an overvaluing of thine own perfections. Let the last day in which both man and beasts were made out of the earth, but yet a living soul breathed into man, remember thee that this earth which treads upon thee, must return to that earth which thou treadest upon, thy body, that loads thee, and oppresses thee to the grave, and thy spirit to him that gave it. And when the Sabbath-day hath also remembered thee, that God hath given thee a temporal sabbath, placed thee in a land of peace, and an ecclesiastical sabbath, placed in a church of peace, perfect all in a spiritual sabbath, a conscience of peace, by remembering now thy Creator, at least in one of these days of the week of thy regeneration, either as thou hast light created in thee, in the first day, that is, thy knowledge of Christ; or as thou hast a firmament created in thee the second day, that is, thy knowledge what to seek concerning Christ, things appertaining to faith and salvation; or as thou hast a sea created in thee; the third day, that is, a church where all the knowledge is reserved and presented to thee; or as thou hast a sun and moon in the fourth day, thankfulness in prosperity, comfort in adversity, or as thou hast reptilem humilitatem, or volatilem fiduciam, a humiliation in thyself, or an exaltation in |