THE LORD THEN, the Son of God, had a Sitio in heaven, as well as upon the Crosse, He thirsted our salvation there; and in the midst of the fellowship of the Father from whom he came, and of the Holy Ghost, who came from him and the Father, and all the Angels, who came (by a lower way) from them all, be desired the conversation of Man, for Mans sake; He that was God The Lord became Christ, a man, and he that was Christ became Jesus, no man, a dead man, to save man: To save man, all wayes, in all his parts, And to save all men, in all parts of the world: To save his soule from hell, where we should have felt pains, and yet been dead, then when we felt them; and seen horrid spectacles, and yet been in darknes and blindnes then when we saw them; And suffered Insufferable torments and yet have told over innumerable ages in suffering them: To save this soule from that hell, and to fill that capacity which it hath, and give it a capacity which it hath not, to comprehend the joyes and glory of Heaven, this Christ became Jesus. To save this body from the condemnation of everlasting corruption, where the wormes that we breed are our betters, because they have a life, where the dust of dead Kings is blowne into the street, and the dust of the street blowne into the River, and the muddy River tumbled into the Sea, and the Sea remaunded into all the veynes and channels of the earth; to save this body from everlasting dissolution, dispersion, dissipation, and to make it in a glorious Resurrection, not onely a Temple of the holy Ghost, but a Companion of the holy Ghost in the kingdome of heaven, This Christ became this Jesus. To save this man, body and soule together, from the punishments due to his former sinnes, and to save him from falling into future sinnes by the assistance of his Word preached, and his Sacraments administred in the Church, which he purchased by his bloud, is this person, The Lord, the Christ, become this Jesus, this Saviour. To save so, All wayes, In soule, in body, in both; And also to save all men. For, to exclude others from that Kingdome, is a tyrannie, an usurpation; and to exclude thy selfe, is a sinful and a rebellious melancholy. But as melancholy in the body is the hardest humour to be purged, so is the melancholy in the soule, the distrust of thy salvation too. Flashes of presumption a calamity will quench, but clouds of desperation calamities thicken upon us; But even in this inordinate dejection thou exaltest thy selfe above God, and makest thy worst better than his best, thy sins- larger than his mercy.
[LXXX. Sermons (40), 1640]
The Study has been prepared by Father Lance McAdam
who entered into rest July 14, 2003
May his soul, and the souls of all the departed rest in peace.
And light perpetual shine upon him.