A Following Holy Life. Kenneth Stevenson

all Adam’s

      For though the fall of Adam lost to him all those supernatural assistances which God put into our nature by way of grace, yet it is by accident that we are more prone to many sins than we are to virtue. Adam’s sin did discompose his understanding and affections: and every sin we do does still make us more unreasonable, more violent, more sensual, more apt still to the multiplication of the same or the like actions: the first rebellion of the inferior faculties against the will and understanding, and every victory flesh gets over the spirit, makes the inferior insolent, strong, tumultuous, domineering, and triumphant upon the proportionable ruins of the spirit; blinding our reason and binding our will; and all these violations of our powers are increased by the perpetual ill customs and false principles and ridiculous guises of the world, which make the later ages to be worse than the former, unless some other accident do intervene to stop the ruin and declension of virtue; such as are God’s judgments, the sending of prophets, new imposition of laws, messages from heaven, diviner institutions, such as in particular was the great discipline of Christianity. And even in this sense here is origination enough for sin and impairing of the reasonable faculties of human souls, without charging our faults upon Adam.

      II.191

      Discourse of obedience: free will

      If you will be secure, remove your tent, dwell farther off. God hath given us more liberty than we may safely use; and although God is so gracious as to comply much with our infirmities, yet if we do so too, as God’s goodness in indulging liberty to us was to prevent our sinning, our complying with ourselves will engage us in it: but if we imprison and confine our affections into a narrower compass, then our extravagancies may be imperfect, but will not easily be criminal. The dissolution of a scrupulous and strict person is not a vice, but into a less degree of virtue. He that makes a conscience of loud laughter, will not easily be drawn into the wantonness of balls and revellings, and the longer and more impure carnivals. This is the way to secure our obedience; and no men are so curious of their health as they that are scrupulous of the air they breathe in.

      II.115

      Considerations upon the Presentation in the Temple: Purification and sexual relations

      The turtle-doves were offered also with the signification of another mystery. In the sacred rites of marriage, although the permissions of natural desires are such as are most ordinate to their ends, the avoiding fornication, the alleviation of economical cares and vexations, and the production of children, and mutual comfort and support; yet the apertures and permissions of marriage have such restraints of modesty and prudence, that all transgression of the just order to such ends is a crime: and besides these, there may be degrees of inordination or obliquity of intention, or too sensual complacency, or unhandsome preparations of mind, or unsacramental thoughts; in which particulars, because we have no determined rule but prudence, and the analogy of the rite, and the severity of our religion, which allow in some cases more, in some less, and always uncertain latitudes, for aught we know there may be lighter transgressions, something that we know not of: and for these at the purification of the woman, it is supposed, the offering was made, and the turtles, by being an oblation, did deprecate a supposed irregularity; but by being a chaste and marital emblem, they professed the obliquity (if any were) was within the protection of the sacred bands of marriage, and therefore so excusable as to be expiated by a cheap offering. And what they did in hieroglyphic, Christians must do in the exposition; be strict observers of the main rites and principal obligations, and not neglectful to deprecate the lesser unhandsomenesses of the too sensual applications.

      II.127

      Discourse of meditation

      Note here the threefold process of memory, understanding, and will.

      For meditation is an attention and application of spirit to divine things; a searching out all instruments to a holy life, a devout consideration of them, and a production of those affections which are in a direct order to the love of God and a pious conversation. Indeed meditation is all that great instrument of piety whereby it is made prudent, and reasonable, and orderly, and perpetual: for supposing our memory instructed with the knowledge of such mysteries and revelations as are apt to entertain the spirit, the understanding is first and best employed in the consideration of them, and then the will in their reception, when they are duly prepared and so transmitted; and both these in such manner, and to such purposes, that they become the magazine and great repositories of grace, and instrumental to all designs of virtue.

      II.130

      Considerations upon the disputation of Jesus with the doctors in the Temple: Jesus ‘removed’ from his own

      But we often give God cause to remove and for a while to absent Himself, and His doing of it sometimes upon the just provocations of our demerits makes us at other times with good reason to suspect ourselves even in our best actions. But sometimes we are vain, or remiss, or pride invades us in the darkness and incuriousness of our spirits, and we have a secret sin which God would have us to enquire after; and when we suspect every thing, and condemn ourselves with strictest and most angry sentence, then, it may be, God will with a ray of light break through the cloud; if not, it is nothing the worse for us: for although the visible remonstrance and face of things in all the absences and withdrawings of Jesus be the same, yet if a sin be the cause of it, the withdrawing is a taking away His favour and His love: but if God does it to secure thy piety and to enflame thy desires, or to prevent a crime, then He withdraws a gift only, nothing of His love, and yet the darkness of the spirit and sadness seem equal. It is hard in these cases to discover the cause, as it is nice to judge the condition of the effect; and therefore it is prudent to ascertain our condition by improving our care and our religion, and in all accidents to make no judgment concerning God’s favour by what we feel, but by what we do.

      II.162

      The history of the baptism and temptation of Jesus: John’s baptism transformed all three Persons of the Trinity

      But the holy Jesus, who came (as Himself, in answer to the Baptist’s question, professed) “to fulfil all righteousness,” would receive that rite which His Father had instituted in order to the manifestation of His Son. For although the Baptist had a glimpse of Him by the first irradiations of the Spirit, yet John professed that he therefore came baptizing with water, that “Jesus might be manifested to Israel;” and it was also a sign given to the Baptist himself, that “on whomsoever he saw the Spirit descending and remaining,” He is the person “that baptizeth with the holy Ghost.” And God chose to actuate the sign at the waters of Jordan, in great and religious assemblies convened there at John’s baptism; and therefore Jesus came to be baptized, and by his baptism became know to John, who, as before he gave to Him an indiscriminate testimony, so now he pointed out the person in his sermons and discourses, and by calling Him the Lamb of God, prophesied of His passion, and preached Him to be the world’s Redeemer and the sacrifice for mankind. He was now manifest to Israel: He confirmed the baptism of John; He sanctified the water to become sacramental and ministerial in the remission of sins: He by a real event declared, that to them who should rightly be baptized the kingdom of heaven should certainly be opened: He inserted Himself by that ceremony into the society and participation of holy people, of which communion Himself was head and prince; and He did in a symbol purify human nature, whose stains and guilt He had undertaken.

      As soon as John had performed his ministry, and Jesus was baptized, He prayed, and the heavens were opened, and the air clarified by a new and glorious light; “and the holy Ghost, in the manner of a dove, alighted upon” His sacred head, and God the Father gave “a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” This was the inauguration and proclamation of the Messias, when He began to be the great prophet of the new covenant. And this was the greatest meeting that ever was upon earth, where the whole cabinet of the mysterious Trinity was opened and shewn, as much as the capacities of our present imperfections will permit: the second Person in the veil of humanity, the third in the shape or with the motion of a dove: but the first kept His primitive state; and as to the Israelites He gave notice by way of caution, “Ye saw no shape, but ye heard a voice,” so now also God the Father gave testimony to His holy Son and appeared, only in a voice without any visible representment.

      II.190–1