WE have had our share in broken and breaking Times, the Lord hath broken us, as Job saith, with Job. 16. 14▪ Breach upon Breach; every thing has been broken but that which should be, our hearts: and though we think we have now a cleare Prospect into the end of our miseries, and the healing of our Breaches, by this miracle of mercy, the happy return of the Soverainge repairer of our Breaches, and restorer of paths to dwell in: Es. 58. 12. Jer. 14. 19. yet we have heard of those that looked for healing, and behold trouble. Whether the great Physician will at this time make a thorow cure of our ruptures I cannot divine, but yet I may safely as sadly say, if he doe not, we may thank our selves for it, we may thank our own thanklessness; if we be any more broken, it is because we are no more broken; as we have been broken so much, because we have not been broken enough, we still want this Breaking in the [Page 2] Text, Heart-breaking: for all our other outward break­ings, we are heart-wholl still (as we use to say) our hearts are not broken, our hearts are indeed sadly divided, but not savingly broken: we are not brok­en for sin, we are not broken from sin; but like the smiths anvill we are rather harden'd than broken by all our strokes, we are word-proofe, and sword­proofe; we neither heare the rod of the Word, nor the Word of the rod; we laugh under the rod and the proud flesh grow's under the Sword; we are not so much as pricked at the heart, if we were, we should be in their posture, Act. 2. 37. When they were pricked at the heart they said unto Peter, and the rest of the Apostles, men and bretheren what shall we doe? But doe we so? surely no; we doe not so because we are not so; were our hearts truly and throwghly bro­ken we would make more hast to the great Phy­sician who is onely able to bind up the broken heart, who healeth the broken in heart and giveth Ps. 1 [...]. 30. them medicine to heale their sicknes. But I will not anticipat an application with a preface: only give me leave to breath out a short ejaculation, and so to our work: the Lord give us broken hearts, break us that we may be broken; and breake us that we may not be broken, and give us contrite spirits that we be not reserved to fall under the weight of that sad and antient Porphesie Conterendj— Polychr [...]icon that we may be contriti, that we be not Conterendi.—But to the words Beza. (and our learned Fuller approves his judgment) sayes that the Apostles [...], Fulleri miscell. p. 224. lib. 3. 2 Tim. 2. 15. rightly dividing the word of truth, is a meta­phore that alludes to the Priests dividing the Sacrifices [Page 3] under the Law, and probably enough, because in preaching the word the Minister chooseth and singles out a particular Text out of all the [...]ock of Scripture to be consecrated for that use as a Sacrifice, by divid­ing it part for God, and part for his people, and to the people their due share in their due season: therefore the businesse of my Text being Sacrifices, I shall o­pen it as they used to open the Sacrifices under the Law, [...] that is the meaning of St Pauls, [...] Heb. 4. 17. [...]. All things are naked and open (so we read it) but it is rather opened as they used to open the Sacrifices of the Law, throwgh the middle, from the neck downward, as we see it cleared in the practise of Abraham. Gen. 15. 10. And he took the Sa­crifices and divide them in the mid'st, and layd each piece one against another, and this beareth a huge proportion with our Text: for [...] and [...], an iron sinew in theneck, and a stone in the heart speak the same thing in Scripture, and must be both alike Sacrificed and broken: so shall I Sacrifice my Text by so breaking of it, that is just in the midst, into two parts, and lay the the parts one against another thus.

The two parts are. 1. Sacrifices offered. 2. Sa­crifices owned and honoured.

1. Sacrifices offered; the Sacrifices of God, that is offered to God, are a broken spirit and a contrite heart.

2. Sacrifices owned and honoured a broken heart and contrite spirit (for I must put both into both) God will not despise.

[Page 4]1. Sacrifices offered, the Sacrifices offered to God, a broken spirit, and a broken and contrite heart: here are two participles in the Hebrew which make two weigh­ty Epithets upon which lies the whole stresse and burden of the Text, and they are [...] and [...] the one signifies to break whole things all of a piece, and the other signifies to breake hard things all to pieces, that is [...] a word of a higher streine, to break a thing to powder. So Psal. 94. 5. They break in pieces thy people, O Lord, [...]. So Job 19. 2. How long will ye vex my soul and break me in pieces with words, [...] Atteretis me, will ye grinde me to powder? So that put both together and you have here Heart, a whole Heart broken in pieces, and a Heart, a hard Heart beaten to powder: things must be whole or they cannot be broken to pieces; and they must be hard, or they cannot be bea­ten to powder: so that this breaking, this beating speakes violence, the macerations and martyrizati­ons of repentance, that holy violence, and force that Heaven is taken with. Therefore a Heart so used is called a broken and a contrite heart. Thus it sig­nifies a soul truly humbled, beaten, and broken and ground to powder; in this sense it is applyed to Christ, Es. 53. 10. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him, he hath put him to grief, the Hebrew is [...] to break him in pieces; thus in the same sense you finde contrite and humble put together twice in one Text, Es. 57. 15. For thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabits eternity, whose name is holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit [Page 5] to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the spirit of the contrite ones: A broken heart then is a spirit duly and deeply humbled under the sense of sin for the School gives a distinction between Attrition: and Contrition: the object of Attrition is the evil of punishment▪ but the object Contrition is the evil of sin. So that a broken heart is a heart bleeding un­der the sight and sense of, and sorrow for sin.

2. Part is the Sacrifices owned and honoured, and to this you rise in state by three stepps. 1. Sa­crifices. 2. Sacrifices of God. 3. Such Sacrifi­ces as God will not despise.

1. Sacrifices in the Plural Number, all Sacrifi­ces, as if all other sacrifices were either nothing at all to this, or without this, or all in all in this, of a broken heart: when we beate or breake hard things into minute parts or powder, we call it the flower of it: a broken heart is slos cordis the flower of the heart and that is the Flower of all Sacrifices, and the finer the flower (that is the more beaten or broken) the fitter offering for God. Thus truly pulvis sanctus, is pulvis cardia [...]us, the Heart pow­der is the holy powder. Besides the ordinary Frankin­cense for common uses, the finest and fittest for Gods Rev. 2 17. 1 Pet. 3. 41. service and sacrifices; the Physicians call Manna thuris, the Broken and Contrite heart is Manna cordis, the Hidden Manna of the Hidden man of the heart: the Broken heart is not only for all services, but for all Sacrifices, nay is all Sacrifices. Every ragg, every shiver, every graine, every atome of the Broken Heart is a whole burnt offering, nay a hecatomb of Sacrifices.

[Page 6]2. The satcrifices of God, it is a frequent Scrip­ture-phrase to raise the price of things of excellence and eminence above others by adding the name of God to them, as the waters of God, the moun­tain of God, the Cedars of God, and so here the Sacrifices of God, that is, the most excellent sacri­fices. We have it in the new Testament, The Peace of God, that is, such a Peace as do's not on­ly passe other Peaces, but all understanding Phil. 4. 7. But I conceive there is more in it than so, the sacrifices of God that is, the sacrifices that God do's most owne and honour and is most interested in: as if he had said, all other sacrifices are but the sacrifices of men: Bullocks and Rammes, Sheepe and Goats: Turtles and Pigeons; Beasts and Birds; Fruits and Flowers; these were but the sacrifices of men; but my son give me thy heart sais God, that is the Prov. 23. 26. sacrifice he only delights in: all the rest without this are an abomination to him; these alone are the Sa­crifices of God, for here as he did to Abraham, God Ezek. 36. 26. himself provides the Sacrifice for himself, for he alone that is the heart-maker is the heart-breaker: it is Gods prerogative royall to take out the heart of stone and put in a heart of flesh: it is no wonder if he liks his own choice and accepts what himself provides. He is the feast, the guest, the well­come, and therefore, sure, he will not despise his own cheere, and tha is thet

3 ^d Step by which we rise to Gods owning and honouring these sacrifices; that God will not de­spise them.

You will say this is but a very thin and low and [Page 7] slight way of honouring a thing not to de­spise it.

Sol. I answer that under this lower phrase of owning them, that God will not despise them, is to be understood Gods choisest way of accepting and hon­ouring them in the highest degree, as if he had said as the Apostle sai's of that other sacrifice of doing good and distributing. Heb, 13. 16. With such sacrifices God is well pleased, so v. 17. The same chapt. Obey them that have the Rule o­ver you. &c. For it is profitable for you: this is but a short expression, and reaches not home to the Apostles meaning; for according to his own Doctrine it is not only profitable to do it, but it is damnable not to doe it, because it is to be done for Christs sake and consience sake: so 1 Thes. 5. 20. Despise not prophecying, here is our word again; the Apostles meaning here is that we should honour prophecying, though he sai's only despise it not, and though this Text in the lowest sense has been so long too much despised (even under high pre­tenses of doing it honour (yet, certainly, he that would have honour and double Honour given to the Ministers for their workes sake; would not have lesse given to the work it self. Thus these sacrifices God will not despise, that is God will accept them, own them, honour them above all other sa­crifices in the world.

The result of all these clearings of the sense is this, that a Broken heart is the most acceptable sa­crifice to God, which he most own's most honours. A principle that needs improving more than prov­ing, [Page 8] and therefore the wheels and hinges my dis­course shall move upon shall be these four only.

1. What a broken and a contrite heart is.

2. Some [...], Characters or rules by which a man may be able to pass a judgment upon his heart, whether it be truly broken.

3. Some whets to sharpen your desires and indea­vors after a broken heart.

4. Some arguments to quicken your Care and Caution that you give not over your paines, till you be sure the work is done; that when all is done, you be not deceived in this important duty.

1. What is a broken and a contrite heart? and here because Contraria inter se posita magis eluces­cunt, Contraries are the best fyles to set off and to set out one another. I will pave my way to a Broken heart out of the qua [...]ry of a hard Heart: you may please to know then that there is a threefold hardness of heart.

1. A naturall. 2. An acquired. 3. A Judicial hard­ness of heart.

1. A naturall hardness of heart which every man brings into the world with him: we are all born Prodigies and Monsters with stones in our bosomes neather mill-stones in our hearts: thus the Apostle characters the Gentiles, Eph. 4. 18. Having the understanding darkned, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their hearts, (so we reade it) but it should be, because of the hardnesse of their hearts: so saies the margin, and so should have said the Text, for, besides that blindnesse is under­stood, [Page 9] in the words before, having the under­standing darkned, and the words following through the ignorance that is in them, is in the Greeke, [...]. Which very expression you have translated hardness of heart elswhere. viz, Mark. 3. 5. Being grieved for the hardness of their hearts And yet it is, [...], &c. And that it must be hardness and not blindness the derivation of the word speakes. For the Greeks derive [...], from the stone [...], the nature of which is to harden by the sticking to of viscous and glutinous waters, as the stone hardens in the Reines and Bladder. And so [...], signifies hardness, and is by a kind of Catachresticall metaphore used for those tophi or hard swellings, of purulent matter grown into a callous or brawny substance in the joynts or Lunges, as Arist. tells us in his historia animalium and that (with all reverence to the me­mory of the learned Translators) this is not my Conjecture only, but the sense of the Spirit. I shall give you a Text where both these words are used in their proper sense distinctly, Joh. 12. 40. He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their hearts, that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts, &c. [...] he hath blinded and he hath hardened. This is that naturall hardness of heart which I am speak­ing off, not so much blindness as a Conse­quent and effect of it, a hardness that grow's from blindness: it is hard as well as blind, nay hard be­cause blind (to lappe up both in one English word) it may be stone-blind, for it speakes an affect­ed [Page 10] ignorance, blindness in spite of light and sight.

2. There is an acquired hardness. Heb. 3. 13. least any of you be hardned through the de­ceitfullness of sin. Sin cheates us into custome and custome out of conscience. Sin is like some waters that have a naturall petrifying quality, and will harden any thing into stone that lays any time in them. Let a godly manly in any sin any time, neglect duty and give himself a loose to the world, and he shall see in how short a time a crust will grow over his heart, a scirrus upon his conscience; that will make him both unwilling to duty: and unweildy in duty: his faith will take winde and be apt to taint when he keeps not close to God in duty: Delicata res est spiritus sanstus; the spirit of God is a dainty tender thing and soone snibd; no marvell therefore if that heart be hard that has driven away the softning spirit.

3. There is a judiciall hardness of heart; a hardness that comes or rather is sent, upon the heart by the just judgment of God, to punish those other hardenesses: the Lord does many times turne (as it was reported whether true or false I know not) our hearts (as he did the people in Tripoly) into stone in judgment: as we see Es. 63. 17. O Lord why hast thou made us to erre from thy ways, and hardened our hearts from thy feare? O this is the saddest of all judgments when God does (not only punish sin with sin, whip one sin with another, but) punish putrifacti­on with petrifaction by hardening us in sin steel­ing the conscience and brassing the countenance [Page 11] not only to continuance in sin; but confidence in sinning: O a seared conscience is a sealed condemnation.

2. What is a Broken Heart then? that comes next having done with a hard one. When a thing is broken it is broken into some parts greater or lesser, more or fewer: what then is this Heart broken into? to give you all the little parts and Atomes, a broken heart is crumbled into, were a taske as endless (and needless) as that Venus (in Apuleius) laid upon Psyche, to num­ber and distinguish a heape of petit graines. There­fore I will only give you the prime leading parts, the lesser, inferiour, and more subordinate only, as they offer themselves in our way.

This broken Heart then is broken into pieces.

1. Low thoughts of himself.

2. High thoughts of God.

These parts (to speake properly) though the heart be broken into, yet it is not made of: for as we say of a line, that it is divided into, not made of points; so this heart though bro­ken into, is not made up of these pieces, as ingredients; they divide, not constitute; they doe not make it, but rather speake it broken; for the bloud of Christ alone is the Balme of Gi­lead, or rather the Gilead of Balme, that alone makes up a broken heart.

1. Then what are these low thoughts of a mans selfe, into which it is broken? Here I shall b [...]g the favour of you to helpe me out a little with your fancy: the Prophet speaking of God [Page 12] Jer. 31. 18. Saies I have heard Ephraim bemoan­ing himselfe thus. Suppose now you were be­hind the hanging, and heard Job, David, Peter, Paul, Augustin, Anselm, Jerom, Bernard, or any other humbled Saint of God, at his confession: what doe you think, would such mortified soules, such broken hearts breake out into? I will head a few short hints of a Broken Hearts, low thoughts of himselfe in seven broken sighs; thus.

1. The Broken heart bleeds out a sigh over his emptiness of all good, in S ^t Pauls complaint Rom. 7. 18. I know that in me (that is in my flesh) dwels no good thing. Strangers that are at a distance from me, and know me not, intus & in cute, or in cute only, my outside, only, may perhaps cry me up for Piety, parts, and pains; perhaps those that have any Relation or Obligation to me, may finde out a prety Inventory of goods in me to praise in their judgment. But O the Lord knows, and I know my self, and so would others too, did they know me as well as I doe, or should, and (I thank God) would know my self, that there is no good in me, but that I de­sire to see and weepe the evill that is in me: and that is his

2. Sigh, not only that I am empty of all good, but full of all evill; and here he breaks out into la­mentations, not only for all the evils that have broke out in him, but for the evils that lye hid and dormant in him, and may break out, his la­tent as well as his patent evils.

[Page 13]1. For the ils that have appeared in him, O! saies the Broken heart, the Devill could not suggest, nor the damned in hell commit worse evils then I have done; and here he lanches into that black sea of sin, and runs over those three bead­rolls of evils. Rom. 1. From verse 29. to the 32. 1 Cor. 6. 9. 10. And that catalogue of the works of the flesh Gal. 5. from verse, 19. to the 21. I have sinned so and so and so. The Sun in Heaven doth not warm, nor the fire in hell doth not burn a more false, filthy, foule, base, debauched sinner than I am: Gods mercy never saved, Gods justice never damned a more un­thankfull, unfaithfull, unfruitfull, wretch than wretched I.

2. For his latent evils, for his [...] 2 Cor. 4. 2. The hidden things of dishonesty, or rather the hidden things of shame; so the Greek, and more properly; his secret sins, sins that are so hidden from the world, that they are almost hidden from himself, though he cannot with Caesar call every Souldier that fight's against his soule in this formidable Army, that quarters in his heart, by name: yet he has discovered a vast Army of corruption in ambush there, that makes him cry out upon that discovery with S ^t Paul Rom. 7. 24. O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I have a body of sin in me; sin in a corporation, not only sin in armes, but sin in an Army, sin in a body, sin in a Garrison, sin in a strong hold; I have all the sins in the world in my base heart. Philosophy may [Page 14] flatter me that I have the seeds of all vertves in me, but I see that I have the seeds of all sins in me, even of that fearfull sin against the holy Ghost: And that these sins have not broken out into open defiance against God and man, it is no thank to any goodness in me, but the goodness of God alone; it is nothing but the over-ruling power of Gods grace that has kept me from being outwardly and openly, as vilely wicked as the basest, the beast­lyest of sinners. O I am a den of wild beasts, a bed of Serpents, a cage of uncleane Birds, a sinke of sin: I am all toade, all beast, all Divell: and if God have caged up these birds, charmed these serpents, tyed up these wilde beasts that they have not broken out to the loathing of the world; I am beholding to the goodness of God, not on­ly for that little good I have done, but for the great evils I have not done.

3. He breaths a sigh, not only over his bondage to sin, but to the creatures: who was ever more insnared with dotage on the creatures than I? how am I brought under the power of mean and low things; things which God has designed for no higher ends than to be helps and seasonings and sweetenings of my Pilgrimage, as meats and drinks, relations, re­creations. S ^t Paul would not be so; he would not be brought under the power of any 1 Cor. 6. 12. But severall creatures are Princes and Gods over me: and many times when I have been con­vinced of my duty to doe the will of God, and have been willing and ready to doe it, and even setting upon the work, these petty Divinities, [Page 15] these creature-deitys have exercised such a rugged Empire over my heart, that I durst not obey God, because I durst not disobey them, nay I have chosen rather to obey them than God: O what a slave has my Idolatry to a little painted flesh, or shining earth made me? It has not only unchristianed me, but unmaned me, befooled me, bebeasted me, bedrudged me, bedeviled me.

4. He sighs out his unworthinesse of any of Gods dealings with him: his unworthinesse. 1. Of any mercy from God. 2. Of any relation to God. 3. Of any Correction by God.

1 He sees his unworthinesse of any Gods mer­cies to him. Jacob breathes out the language of a broken heart. Gen. 32. 10. I am less than the least of thy mercies. q. d. I have done my best (that is) my worst to sin away thy mercies by sin­ning with, and against thy mercies; I have de­served that thou shouldest curse thy mercies and blast thy blessings to me, or take them from me [...] I have lessened my self from thy mercies, and made my self unworthy of them: I am less than the least of all thy mercies. And yet thou art pleased to continue thy greatest to me: thy mercy is my miracle, that thou canst find in thy heart to doe any good to a thing that is so bad, so base, so wretched as I am. Lord what is man that thou art mindfull of him? Ps. 8. 4. It is not [...] wretched weake miserable man, so the word signifies, and I the most miserable of all men? Lord what [Page 16] am I miserable sinfull I, that thou shouldest yet looke upon me?

2. He sees himself unworthy of any relation to God. Lord (sayes the broken heart) I pretend in­deed to be thy child and that thou art my father: I say our father with them that understand it but Deut. 32. 5. Ge [...]. 37 32 little, but none deserves it less: O I prophane that holy prayer of my Saviour: I blaspheme that grati­ous name, and blast that glorious Relation: I thy son? no; no, my sin is not the spot of thy chil­dren: is this thy sons coate that is besmeared and spotted with uncleannesse, rolled in bloud, parti­colored with schimes, sects, errors, heresie, divisions, anger, malice, slander, &c. The Spaniards that called themselves the sons of God, when they baptiz­ed whole sholes of Indians in their own bloud, had as just a title to thy sonship as I: if I be thy son, I am such a son as Absolom, a rebellious child, that run that sword atilt at his fathers brest in a horrid rebellion, that came newlyreeking out of the bloud and bowells of his bro­ther; that tongue, those hands, I sin against man with, I fight against God with. If I be a son I am a Simeon and Levi, of whom their father said after they had murdered the King and the people of Sichem, ye Gen. 34. 30. have made me to stink among the inhabitants of the Land, the name of God has been blasphemed through me, therefore according to thine own Di­vinity, John. 8. 44. my father is the Devil, for his workes only I have done: no, no; I am not thy son I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. Luk. 15. 18.

[Page 17]3. Nay Lord I am not only unworthy any mer­cy from thee, or any relation to thee; but e­ven of any correction by thee, as holy Job in the midst of his heart-breaking expostulates it with God. Job 7. 17, 18. What is man that thou shouldest magnify him? and that thou shouldest set thine heart upon him? And that thou shouldest vi­sit him every morning and try him every moment! I am worthy indeed of of punishment to destru­ction, but not to correction: Indignus sum quem vel percutias, as he said: what God sais to proud sinners; Es. 1. 6. Why should ye be strick­en any more? ye will revolt more and more: That a broken heart sayes to himself; why should the Lord take the paines to chasten me? why should he loose a correction upon me? I am nei­ther worthy to be stroked nor to be struck; neither Gods Jacobs hands, his softer hands of mercy, nor his Esaus hands, his rougher hands of justice could doe any good upon me.

5. He sighs over his own inability (as well as un­worthiness) to draw near to God in any duty. O saies the broken heart, the time was, I thought my self some body, nay like S ^t Paul, an Al­mighty man, that I could doe all things, I thought Phil. 4. 13. I could have heard, read, prayed, lived up to means and mercies, lain at the foot of God in submission, when I lay under his hand in affli­ction, and in some measure have performed all the duties the Lord requires of me; but now I feele my self fit for nothing, but to sin against him. I doe not live the life of faith, and there­fore [Page 18] I cannot breath the breath of prayer: thus the Publican stood afarr off and would not so much as lift up his eyes to heaven: as being unworthy Luk. 18. 13. to looke up to the throne of that great King, whose Lawes he had so often broken: even in his very addresses to God, when his broken heart ( labouring and panting for the life of grace,) gasps after nothing more, than to enjoy him in a close & choise communi­on; Luk. 5. 8. [...], so Job 7. 16. [...], out of the sense of Gods Majesty and his misery. he is ready to cry out with Peter depart from me, for I am a sinfull man, O Lord. When he thirst's after nothing more than that God would draw near to him, in his drawing near to God, yet the sense of his own vileness puts such a check upon his spi­rit, that he is ready to say, depart from me, when he is most ardently desirous of his presence. Lord I shall poison thee, wound thee, murder thee, in thy most saving meanes and mercies, I have such a venomed contagious soule; therefore I must say, though I hope thou wilt not doe so; depart from me O Lord, for I am a sinfull man.

6. When he compares himself with others, he bewails himself as worse than any; nay worse Me tanquam signiferum pec­catorum profi­teor. Clarius. than the worst of sinners: so said S ^t Paul 1 Tim. 1. 15. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whome I am chief. I know that lear­ned Grotius, and some others of great name (whose judgment I must beg pardon, if I cannot close with in this) will have this humble confession of the great Apostle to be nothing but an excess of modesty, he knew (say they) there were ten thousand worse than he; but in pure modesty [Page 19] makes himself worse than all: but we must becare [...]ull we doe not make the Apostle to deliver lies; he did not use to complement with God or the world: and therefore (doubtless) the sense of his own vile­ness made him speake so of himself. It is a true rule that a broken heart will be vile in its own eyes: and as true it is that he that is highest in Gods eye is alwayes lowest in his own eye.

Ob. But how can this be made good that one of the greatest Saints should think himself one of the greatest sinners? is Paul turnd Saul a­gain?

Sol. It may be made good upon a fourfold acount.

1. From the kind of his sin, it was a sin of the first magnitude, a sin of malice, the worst of sins, a devil-sin.

2. From the end as well as the kind of his sin: for his end in blaspheming the gospell, was only to establish the righteousness of the Law, which being a sin so diametrically opposite to Christ, made him a greater sinner then all the harlots and Publicans in the world.

3. The Apostle compares himself only with the worst of sinners that were saved in his time, because those meanes prevailed for their conversi­on that did not for his. Publicans and harlots were converted by the preaching of the Gospel, nay even those that crucified Christ: but if the Lord himself from heaven had not appeared to him, and in a most miraculous manner spoken to him himself, dazeled him into light, and blinded [Page 20] him into sight, and frighted him into obedi­ence, it is but too probable he had died in his sin.

4. Duo cum faciunt idem, non est idem. One may commit the very same sin another does, and yet there may be more malice and pollution in the one than in the other, as being heightened by many aggravating circumstances, as committing the sin against more light and stronger covictions, with a stronger bent of the will, and earnestness and eagernesse of affections: and St. Paul here judg­es how much of his spirit went out in his sin. Surely no mans soul was ever drawn out with a more mad zeal to persecute Christ, than his was: So that lay all together, and it will lessen the wonder that he should judge himself the chiefest of sinners that Christ came to save, and he meanes no other; though I am not convinced but that a great Saint may say, he is as great a sinner as any of the damned in hell, and I could make it good had I time, or were there need. But I will say it is very proper and proporti­onable to a broken heart to think so; for he cannot be thought to think too low of himself, that thinks himself nothing. And that is the

7. Broken sigh, that in any thing, in every thing, the broken heart thinks himself lost and nothing without Christ.

And he may be said to own himself nothing in four respects.

1. In respect of his own righteousness.

2. In respect of his own pains and parts.

[Page 21]3. In respect of his own aims and ends.

4. In respect of his own comforts and con­tentments.

1. The broken heart is nothing in respect of his own righteousness. He dares not stand up in his own justification, and plead his innocence before Isa. 64. 6. the Tribunall of God; but rather falls down upon his face, acknowledging with the Prophet, that he is an unclean thing, and all his righteousnesses filthy raggs: all his righteousnesses: his pretty formalities of, and pre­tences to holiness: his pluralityes of righteous­ness are but raggs, tattered and torn things that will not cover his nakedness, and filthy raggs, such as defile rather than adorn him; with the Leper he lays his hand upon his mouth, and his Lev. 13. 45. mouth in the dust, cries, Unclean, unclean. This low posture you find the great Apostle in, Phil. 3. 9. That I may be found in Christ, not having mine own righteousness. The whole ninth Chap­ter of Job is full of this holy emptiness, and humble disowning his own righteousness: How shall I be just with God? I cannot answer one of a thousand: If I justifie my self, mine own mouth shall condemn me: If I say I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse: And I know thou wilt not hold me innocent. All which being summed up, amounts but to Davids totall, in that confessi­on he makes, Psal. 143. 2. Enter not into Judge­ment with thy servant O Lord, for in thy sight shall no man living be justified. Nay there is a thread of this renouncing and disclaiming our own righteousness, runs quite through the whole web [Page 22] of Scripture, which shall supersede any farther proofs: only take notice, that here is the great stick of an unbroken heart, you shall discover his ignorance and infidelity in this point mainly, that he is alwayes hammering at and fixi [...]g upon his own righteousness, something in himself. This is the language of ordinary people, their good prayers, and their good works, what they have done, and what they will do: Or if they be not altogether so gross, they will yet mingle the righteousness of Jesus Christ with their own: They will not take all to themselves, nor yet give all to Christ; but part stakes with him, Nec meum, nec tuum, sed dividatur, nor mine, nor 1 King. 3. 25. thine, but let it be divided; like Salomons har­lot, and it was a whores trick, and it is the trick of the great whore at this day. But take notice, it was the mother of the dead childe that would have the living childe divided;——at least if they may not share and club with Christ, they will have Christ in a way of their own: not to make an Idol of Christ, O have a care of that: Where­as he that truly findes he is any thing in Christ, will as truly finde he is nothing in himself with­out Christ. It is the character of a Christian (which I am sure a man can never be till his heart be broken) that he is nothing, a very no­thing, a thing that is not: His very being is not to be at all; this same miracle of men, and my­stery to men a Saint, is not a man, nay is not at all. See how the Apostle cleares this truth, 1 Cor. 1. 27, 28. God hath chosen the foolish things, [Page 23] and the weak things, and the base things, &c. and the things that are not, to bring to nought the Homines nibili Erasm. in loc. things that are. Certainly these things that are not, are the Saints, that is, that are not in them­selves; but that being they have, is in another, not only naturally, as St. Paul quotes the Poet, Act. 17. 28. In whom we live, move, and have our being; but that supernaturall being of a Christian is wholly from and in Christ: From him they have their nature, as well as name, and therefore called Partakers of the divine nature, 2 Pet. 1. 4. So [...] significat causam prima­riam, ut Rom. 11. 36. [...]. Theoph. Eras. Gro [...]. 1 Cor. 1. 30. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, that ye are at all, it is not at all of your selves, but of him, that is Christ: By the grace of God I am what I am, 1 Cor. 15. 10. Otherwise I am not. Gal. 2. 20. I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. You have this spirituall man (that is a heart broken from the world, and dead to it) painted to the life, by the Pencill of the Spirit in that Phaenix of the old world, E [...]och, Gen. 5. 24. Enoch walked with God, and was not, for God took him. I am not ignorant that St. Paul takes this in the literall sense, Heb. 11. 5. but I hope I may fasten a spirituall sense upon it; it may have one mean­ing in the letter, and another in the spirit: Not that I mean it in that gross (yet thin, sleight) way, some of our late Allegorists have fancied it, (notionall Divines) that have spun Religion into so fine a thread, it will not hold the wearing▪ in practice, sleight and light Cob-web-Laun-Divini­ty, which as it hath much of the art of the Spi­der, so it hath not a little of the Venome. For [Page 24] the former part of it, that Enoch walked with God, is wholly spirituall; that is, as the Apostle else­where interprets himself, He walked not after the flesh, but after the Spirit; and why may not the Rom. 8. 1. Cum Jove vivere [...]ers. Assumptum [...] ait Basil. Sel. sic alti de Elijah. other part be so too? He was not, for God took him; that is, he was not in himself, but God took him to himself in a sense of grace, as well as glory. He was not, or he was nothing, but what he was he was in Christ: in the Hebrew it is [...] and he was not he, very patt to the phrase of the Apostle, Gal. 2. 20. I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. I and not I: Ego non sum ego, I am not I, I am nothing in or of my self.

2. A broken heart is broken not only all to pieces, but even those pieces annihilated and made nothing, at least to his own eye, in respect of his own pains and parts, abilityes, and endeavours. He sees himself such a barren soil, that all the manuring and husbandry of art and nature will make no tilth of him, bring nothing out of him without Christ, as Christ saies, John 15. 5. With­out me ye can do nothing. Such a man hath an excellent wit, a stupendious memory, a most com­prehensive judgement; but O if he have nothing of Christ, all these excellencies are but flowers and ribbands upon a dead Corpse, ut majore cum pom­pâ descendat ad inferos, that he may go to hell in more state. Christ is the standard of every mans value: A man is worth just as much and no more, Jo [...]. 15. 5. as he hath of Jesus Christ: Without me ye can do nothing, without me ye are nothing. A broken heart [Page 25] is sensible that he wants Christ, not only for the great work of salvation, but for every particular lesser act of a Christian. He cannot hear a Sermon without Christ; he cannot read a Chapter without Christ; he cannot lift up a prayer without Christ. The very expression of lifting up a prayer speakes weight, and it is such a weight, as the lifting up our hands cannot lift up alone: And therefore the A­postle sayes, Rom. 8. 26. [...], I appeal to the learned whe­ther this may not be the sense of [...]. Jam. 5. 16. the Spirit helpeth our infirmities, but in the Original propriety; the Spirit joyns as it were a shoulder to ours to help to lift up this Heave-offering of prayer. O the deadness of duties, when men throw themselves only upon the wings of their own abilities! How are their mouths stopped many times in the middle of a duty? How narrow, how short do they fall in prayer? What dead Sacrifices do they offer to the living God? as Mary said to Christ, Lord if thou hadst been here my Brother had not died, Joh. 11. 21. So certainly the reason why we offer such carkasses of duties, is because the Lord is not there. This is that which makes our wheeles move so heavily in any services, because the Spirit is not in Ezek. 1. 20. the wheels; that good Spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead, doth not raise us from dead works, to serving the living God in a living way.

3. A broken heart thinks himself nothing in re­spect of his own aims and ends. He is clearly rasa Tabula, white Paper not scribled, and blurred, and blotted with the business and projects of the world; he is wholly resolved into his Masters dictates; he bids do and he doth it. He hath no plots but how [Page 26] he may best serve Christ, and makes all other ends truckle under that of serving God in his generation. All other people but those whose hearts God hath sweetly and savingly broken, have ends of their own, and serve themselves upon God, even in their pretenses of serving him. Jehu will have all the world believe he doth Gods work in destroying the house of Ahab; and that it may be taken notice of, 2 King. 10. 16 he blowes a Trumpet before it, Come and see my zeal for the Lord; but all was but to serve his own ambitious ends: and therefore when God comes to reckon with him, and pay him his wages, he calls it murther, and revenges bloud with bloud, Hos. 1. 4. I will avenge the bloud of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu. The Pharisees did Gods work indeed, and it was good work, to pray, and to give almes, &c. but they did one Chair for their Master, and two for themselves; they served their own base pride and covetousness to be seen of men, and to devour wi­dows houses: And it is worth our observation, how God proportions their wages to their works, they serve him with works that are outwardly duties and in­wardly sins; and he payes them with wages that are outwardly rewards, but judgements within: They have Matth. 6. 2. their reward saith Christ; but what is that? They pretended my praise, but intended their own praise, and they have it; they have the honour of man, but shall never have any of the glory of God. I do not go about to catechize you in this point. I am much taken off from enquiring into the ends why you came hither, with the joy to see you here: But yet let me tell you, it were very good if you did ask your selves [Page 27] that Question which God did Eliah, What dost thou here Eliah? Sure I am upon such an enquiry, a 2 Kings 9 9. Psal. 39. 8. broken heart would return an Answer to this Que­stion by another Question, Lord what are my ends? And give that Question Davids Answer, And now what is my hope, truly my hope is even in thee? So are my ends only in thee; thou art my Alpha and Ome­ga: my terminus à quo, and my terminus ad quem; my beginning, my end, and my all: Lord what are the ends of my faith, and prayers, and hearing, and works of mercy, are they not to honour thee my dear Redeemer! Curse them, curse them, blast them Lord, if they savour of any interest but that of Je­sus Christ. My own heart is a witness to me, and thou art a witness to my heart, that I come not with Herod for curiosity, or with the people for loaves, but for a dear affection, which draws me to thee with a magnetick energy. Thy love is [...] better then wine, Cant. 5. 1. And as the Spouse there goes on vers. 2. Because of the savour of thy good oint­ments, &c. therefore do the Virgins love thee. Draw me and I will run after thee. That ointment, that oil of gladness which thou art annointed withall above thy fellows, and that which thou dost annoint thy fellows withall, that is, those that be in fellowship and communion with thee, it is that that draws me, and I must run after thee. Alas! I am a dull hea­vy piece of iron, I have no motion of mine own, but thou art my loadstone, and my loadstar: I am but a poor inconsiderable Straw, good for nothing but the fire, but thou art the lovely Jett, that forcest me to leap up to thee, as the Apostle sayes, The love of 2 Cor. 5. 14. [Page 28] Christ constrains me, for of my self I am nothing, and good for nothing.

4. A broken heart is nothing, in respect of his own Comforts and Contentments: he can take comfort in nothing, till he sees God reach out the mercy to him: he dares not be his own Carver to snatch at any thing, but waises with patience and sa­tisfaction, till his Father give it him: so that he may say of all his enjoyments, as Jacob said of his Veni­son but more truely, the Lord thy God brought it to Gen. 27. 20. Gen. 2. 22. me: he owns no comfort in Wife or Children, health or wealth, or any of those things that we are apt to call goods, and think mercies, but as he sees they are from God: As Adam took Eve when God brought her to him: These are the Children which the Lord hath given thy Servant, Gen. 33. O this is the mercy of a mercy, the comfort of a comfort, the Crowne of a broken heart in his saddest condition; this is that which raises, refreshes, ravishes his soul when he can see God in a mercy: this is that Elixar of a broken heart, turns all to Gold, Psal. 37. 16. A little that a righteous man hath, is better than the riches of many wicked. Many wicked, as if he had said, all the riches of the wealthy wicked ones in the world, will not amount to such a Summe, nor rise to such an Income of comfort, nor swell to so vast a Revenue of contentment, as those little pittances that the Father is pleased to give with his own hands to his own Children. When God shall convey a blessing to a man through the Covenant of grace, when it flowes in to him through Prayers and Promi­ses, these are the eldest Sonnes of mercy that are [Page 29] the heires of the Promises: Oh there is a hidden Manna in those mercies that are reached out by the hand of Promise, reached at by the hand of faith, given by the hand of Providence, and taken by the hand of Prayer. All my springs are in th [...]e, sayes David, Psal. 87. ult. All springs, there is their U­niversality: my springs, there's their Propriety; in thee, there is their Eternity. All my springs, my springs of Axa, my upper springs, and my lower springs, my springs of grace, my springs of Peace here: my springs of joy, my springs of glory above, [...] all those living foun­tains of that great depth of Eternity: All my springs are in thee. Carnal hearts have their muddy ponds, and stinking puddles, out of which they think they can fetch waters of comfort; but, alas, when they taste them, they prove but waters of Marah, bitter waters, they come from, and flow into the dead Sea, there are snares in them, there is death in the Pot: at best, they are but broken Cisterns (as God cals Jer. 7. 11. them) that will hold no water; whereas, this bro­ken Jer. 2. 13. Cistern of Gods making, a broken heart may freely fill himself with that, which alone can fill, the fountain of living waters. For God as he is the Fa­ther of mercies, so he is the God of all comforts, who only can give comforts as a God, that is, such 1 Cor 1. 3. comforts as man cannot give, and such comforts as man cannot take away. All are miserable comforts and comforters, (as Job saies) that are dig'd out of the Job 16. 2. Creature: Consolatiunculae Creaturulae, as Luther de­lights to diminutive it. A broken heart would taste a great deal of sweetness in that one delicious promise [Page 30] that flows with milk and hony, wine and oyle, marrow and fatness, Esay 58. 11 And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfie thy soul in drought (it is in droughts in the Original, in the hottest hardest season) and make fat thy bones, and thou shalt be like a watred Garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters faile not, Hebr. whose waters lye not, or deceive not. O all these lower springs are such, not filling and yet failing, not lasting and yet lying, deceiving as well as decaying waters. All the life of the toyling worldling (in the midst of his pleasing dreams and gay hopes that flatter him with golden Indies as the return of his drudgery) is (if really and rationally, as well as religiously considered,) but like the sad trade of the poore Israelites in Aegypt, to go up and down to seek straw, to take a great deal of pains to make up their Bundle, and when they have it, it is but a bundle, and that bundle is but straw, and that straw but to make Brick, to put an edge upon their affliction, and with a great deal of wit and labour to adde new weights to that which is but too heavy without it. Methinks the businesse of the world is most meltingly emblemd in that passionate expression of the poor Widow to the Prophet. Be­hold 1 King. 17. 12. I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress a little Cake for me and my son, that we may eat it and dye: take a great deal of pains, to take a little pleasure, and dye: and many times when a man hath made up his bundle, and resolves to sit down and warm himself and say Aha, (as the Prophet Esa. 44 16. most rhetorically humors it) when a man thinks to enjoy the sweet of his labours, to make his gold [Page 31] fusive and malleable, run it and beat it out into the varied delights of his ownfancy, when he is going to set fire to his bundle, and pleases himself with the chearing project of pleasing himself and his friends Acts 28. 3. with its warmth. How often doth it prove like St. Pauls bundle of sticks? There comes a viper out of it, some sting, some venome, some vexation to poison and sowr his contentments. What do they do that burden their bodies, their brains, their souls too, to loade themselves with thick clay (as the Pro­phet Hab. 2. 6. elegantly) but like men pressed to death, cry more weight still? We run here and there like the Prophets vagrant, and grudge if we be not satisfied, but we are not satisfied for all our grudging: We Psalm 59. 15. knock at the doore of every Creature, but one sayes 'tis not in me, and the other say it is not in me: there is nothing within to entertain us and bid us wel­come: Job 28. 14. Riches, Relations, Learning, Liberty, have nothing in them, any further than we can see God in them: indeed, to see God in any thing though be­low staires is a beatifical vision, and makes even a Hell a Heaven: which makes me often think that speech of Luther not so wilde, as some would have it, Mallem esse in Inferno cum Christo, quàm in cae­lis sine Christo. I had rather be in Hell with Christ, than in Heaven without him: it is the King that makes the Court. This is Sugar to the most bitter Cup of Affliction. A man may make a meal of sowr herbs with contentment, when he sees God in it as a Passeover, when the lintels and doore-posts Exod 12. 7. are sprinkled with the blood of the Lamb, when e­very bit he eat sis dipped in the blood of Jesus Christ. [Page 32] It is a rare Cordiall to a fainting spirit, when he can see God in his distresses, though but as the Sun in April through a showr of teares. Nay S ^t Stephen had joy in his death when he saw God and Christ at Acts 7. 55, 56. 58. his right hand, though through a showr of stones. There is more in that Text of David then is ordina­rily discovered, Psal. 4. 7. Lord lift up the light of thy countenance upon me: Thou hast put gladness in my hear [...], more then in the time that their corn and wine encreased, that is, not only more then these poor empty creatures of corn and wine can give; or more then their corn and wine, that is, more then they can give them whose they are, (though certainly they are the most refreshing creatures, and they have the highest gust of their refreshments whose they are, that are their proprieters) not only more then corn and wine, and their corn and wine, but more then in the time of their corn and wine, that is, the Harvest and the Vintage, the merriest seasons of all the year. Thus David preferres his joy he had in God, as he did Jerusalem, Psal. 137. 6. Above my chief joy, [...] Above the head of my joy. This sight of God in any condition is the top and pinacle of all joy, for this supplyes what a man has not, and sweetens what he has. This was that which sweet­ned Gen. 28. 13. Jacobs dream, and softned his hard pillow, that besides the Angels he saw ascending and descending upon his ladder, the Lord God stood above. Thus have I gathered up the fragments of the first piece the heart is broken into, in shewing you all those low thoughts it has of it self.

It is now high time to come to the

2. His high thoughts of God. This piece of a broken heart is so great that it may be broken into many more; but I will only name five, and I will little more then only name them. 1. Submission to the will of God. 2. Sorrow for sinning against the will of God. 3. Shame, as the proper issue of that sorrow. 4. Fear that he may sin against him again. 5. Prayer that he may not.

1. Submission to the will of God. The broken heart lyes at the foot of Gods will, to do, to be any thing, nothing. A broken heart is a heart after Gods heart, that is, is ready to fullfill all Gods will, as God characters his servant David, Act. 13. 22. A man after mine own heart, that shall fullfill all my will; it is wills in the Original, [...] all my wills. A broken heart is a heart broken to, (as well as by) Gods hands, to do what he will, to suffer what he will. Like his great pattern and principle of obedience Jesus Christ, he first sacrifices his will, and then all he has and is to the will of God; not as I will, but as thou wilt. He cryes, The will of the Lord be done, though I be undone.

1. He does what God will have him do, though he dye for it. It is not necessary that I should live, sayes he, but it is necessary that God should be obey­ed; and therefore he willingly takes the yoke of Christ upon him. Thy will is my sanctification, sayes the broken heart, and that is it I would will too; that is it I would be at rather then my life, a life of grace rather then a life of nature; I would fain be holy, and live up to the standard of thy Word; I see a great deal of beauty in holiness, and though there be [Page 34] a great deal of weakness in me as to the attaining of it, yet there is a great deal of willingness in me as to the embracing it. Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, Psal. 110. 3. [...] Populus volunta­tum sayes Vatablus; but why not Voluntates? they shall be all wills, for all thou wilt, as Psal. 109. 4. But I give my self unto prayer; it is Heb. [...] But I am prayer, I am all prayer for them, I only or alwayes pray for them, that only or alwayes prey upon me. So for [...] Thy people are all wills, that is, all resolved into thy will, or resolved into all thy wills, they are delivered up to the will of God. So Rom. 6. 17. Ye have received from the heart, the broken heart, that form of doctrine which was delivered to you, or rather to which ye were de­livered, [...], their hard hearts were melted into the will of God, for this is in the day of thy power, that is, when thou hast powerfully broken their hearts. This posture you see St Paul in, Act. 9. 6, When the Lord had unhorsed him, and he lay upon the earth trembling, astonished, and blind, he cryes Acts 9. 6. out, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? As Da­vid sayes, Adhaeret pavimento anima mea, Psal. 119. So his soul cleaved to the dust, as well as his body; he lay groveling in the dust of his own broken heart, as well as that of the earth; his heart was ut­terly broken from his own will, wholly into the will of God; he lyes at the foot of Gods will for orders, and when he gives the word, he obeys. A bro­ken heart is like the Centurions servant, when his Master sayes, goe, he goes; and come, he comes; do this, and he does it. This is exampled in Abra­ham, [Page 35] if God call him out of his native Countrey, and his Fathers house, nay out of his own Father­ship, and bid him sacrifice the name and nature of a Father, in sacrificing his son, his only son, he dis­putes not, but stat pro ratione voluntas. His Masters will is his law; and therefore it is said, Esa. 41. 2. He raised up the righteous man from the East, called him to his foot. That which is Heb. [...] righteousness, we translate the righteous man; and justly, because meant of Abraham, as the Caldee Paraphrase cleares it, [...], Abraham the choise and famous man for righteousness. And it alludes to that of Moses, Deut. 33. 3. All his Saints are in thy hand, and they sit down at thy feet, every one shall re­ceive of thy words (that is) are at thy feet in po­sture of servants and scholars, that heare, to learn, and obey: so obedient Abraham follows his master step by step wheresoever he goes, as the Poet, [...].

2. The broken heart lyes at the foote of Gods will, to suffer as well as to doe, what he will: he can dy for, as well as doe, and live to the will of God whether he please to delay or deny the good he has not, or take away the good he has: when a mans heart is broken from the world, he is not sollici­tous for any of the concernes of the world. I am cru­cified to the world and the world to me saith S ^t Paul. And doe you thinke a man that is crucified or broken upon the wheele, or rack, will care much, what his Cloathes, or diet, or room is. The broken heart is at a point for all outward things, he is content with any thing, because he is nothing. I have larned [Page 36] saith S ^t Paul in whatsoever estate I am, therewith to be content: I know how to be abased, and how to a­bound, Phil. 4. 11. I have quieted my self as a child that is weaned from his mother, my soul is even as a weaned child, Psal. 131. 3. I do not lament for the teates, for the pleasant fields, or fruitfull vines, Esa. 32. 12. I was a froward child indeed, and cryed for all the fine things I saw; but now I am broken from all these things, weaned from the gay nothings that please the children of the world. I am brought up by hand; what my dear Father gives me, that I take thankfully. I eat and am satisfied, and praise the Name of the Lord. The great heart-breaking of the men of the world is, that they have not so great a share in the world as others; Vicinumque pe­cus grandius uber habet. Whereas the truly bro­ken-hearted regards not what the world is to him, or he is in the world. O sayes the broken heart, the very brokenness of my heart makes my heart whole! 'Tis true I am very poor, my house poor, my fare poor, my all is poor; but this doth not break my heart, because my heart is broke for better things. My heart is broken by God, and for God; the clefts of my broken heart, hiatus cordis, the desires of my heart are gaping after him. Though I be poor, I court not the God of riches, but I gasp after the riches of God. I am rich even in my poverty, be­cause I have a rich God, and if he give me no more, yet that I have is more then he owes me of debt, and more then I can pay him for in duty. When pride is never contented, his house, his cloathes, his diet are never good enough, because his heart is not bro­ken. [Page 37] He that is full of his own brokenness, is bro­ken from the worlds fulness, like his Master Christ, exinanivit seipsum; he is full of nothing but his own emptiness, and therefore sees nothing but emptiness in the worlds fulness. He sees all is vanity, and that truly the whole world is but a great nothing; these outward things are all but phantasms, they have no reall being in themselves, but are only what we creat them in our fancyes: besides meate and drinke and clothes, all the rest is meerly opini­on. As the Preacher sayes Eccl. 5. 11. when goods in­crease, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the behold­ing of them with their eyes? Loaden dishes, swell­ing bowles, gay clothes, great houses, vast rents numerous Retinue, are nothing but what the worlds Gen 33. 9 [...] 11 [...] flattery, and our own fancy creates them; the Spi­rit of God calls them no more: for when King A­grippa, Bernice, and Festus came in great state to hear St. Paul, Act. 25. 23. When Agrippa was come and Bernice with great pomp; it is in the Greek [...], with a great deal of fancy: so true is that Arabick Proverb, [...] the world is not in the muches, but in the enoughs. For­tuna multis [...]imium dedit, nulli satis: Many think they have never enough, though they have never so much. And therefore it is very observable how those two Brothers Jacob and Esau differ in their expressions in the Heb. when they seem to pass the same com­plement in our Translation. Esau refuses Jacobs present, because sayes he, I have enough my Brother; and Jacob presses it upon the same termes, Take I [Page 38] pray thee my blessing, &c. because I have enough: But Esau sayes [...] I have much, but Jacobs is [...], I have all. Esau had much because he had a great deal,; but Jacob had all because he had enough; which all had not been enough neither, but that God was his all, and that all makes not on­ly much, but enough of nothing; and if God will give him nothing, or take away that little, 1 Sam. 3. 18. 2 Sam. 15. 26. Esa. 3. Job 1. 21. more than nothing, he has given him, as he gave all, so if he take away al from him; It is the Lord, sayes Eli. It is the Lord, sayes David, let him doe what seem­eth good unto him. God forbid that should seem ill to me that seems good to God Good is the word of the Lord, saies Hezekiah; The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, sayes Job, blessed be the name of the Lord. He gives thanks when God takes, as well as gives, when the Lord comes with a voiding knife and takes away his meate, as well a when he layes his cloth, and furnish­es his table, because his Grace is in his meale. Thus you have seene the first high thoughts of God the Heart is broken into, expressed in his humble submis­sion to the will of God, in being willing to doe and and suffer his will.

There remain four other perticulars in which a broken heart speaks loudly his high thoughts of God, as 1 Sorrow for sinning against him. 2 Shame as well as sorrow. 3 Feare least he may sin again. And 4 Prayer that he may not. But this though a no­ble part of our frait to lighten our vessel and shorten our voyage, I was content should be swallowed in the quick sands of the hourglasse; and I will not weigh them up again for your eys that were [Page 39] drowned to your eares: but rather tack about to the next point, which is the,

2 Thing: How a man may judg whether his heart were ever throughly broken and truly con­trite: and I shall give you Four short Rules for this.

1 Philosophers say Durum non cedit, & durum non sentit. Hard things yeild not, feell not; there­fore hardnesse of heart and contempt of Gods word and commandment are linked together as a chaine­bullet, to be prayed against in that excellent peice of our Leiturgy the Letany. I shall therefore lay it down as a cleare symptome of a broken heart, when it is sensible of its own hardness: when it sighs and weepes, and bleeds over it, and prayes against it, Ut amplius no [...] indurescat cor nostrum, sed ce­dat tibi, &c. Forer. as they, Es. 63. 17, O Lord why hast thou made us to erre from thy ways and hardened our hearts from thy feare? return for thy servants sake. O ther's nothing speaks a broken heart more emphatically, than a sense of, and sorrow for its own hardness; as Divines say of the sin against the holy Ghost, that when a man is afraid he has committed it, and grieves for it, it is a signe he has not committed it; so when a man complaines of a hard heart it is a blessed symptome his heart is not hard. St Chrysostom has a passage to this purpose, of a friend of his that came crying and bellowing to him beseeching him to helpe to break his hard heart. O sayes the good Father the worke is done; thou couldest never de­sire to have thy heart broken if it were not broken already. Therefore if you wold know whether your heart be broken, aske your selves this question, whether you desire to have it broken, from a sense [Page 40] of, and sorrow for, its hardnesse. Sorrow is the great heart breaker under God whose hammer it is to breake this stone, and therefore sorrow that thy heart is not broken is a signe thy heart is broken: it is a signe that God has struck the the Rock when the water gushes out: the weeping of the marble is a degree of softening, at the least a prophesy of and a preparation to its crumbleing.

2. Catechise your soul with this Interrogatory, Whe­ther you prize a broken heart or no? He that never truly valued a broken heart, never desired a broken heart, and he that never desired a broken heart, ne­ver had a broken heart. There are two sorts of hearts that God chiefly prizes, the upright heart, and the contrite heart, and these are inseparable, for that heart can never be upright, that never was contrite: and therefore St. Bernard sayes, I am daily a trouble­some Question to my self.

3. He that hath a broken heart, his heart hath Joel 2. 12. Jer. 4. 3. been active in, and to its own breaking. Rent your hearts and not your garments, do you rent them your selves. Plough up your fallow ground, and sow not among thornes, do you your selves plough them up. You are not to stay in an idle expectation that God would break your hearts for you. The drunkard must not stay at his Cups till his Wine inflame him, squander away his precious houres, (which must one day be sadly accounted for) dishonour God, abuse his mercies, and (perhaps) wretchedly guzle down his Childrens bread, and his Wives tears, and think that God should pluck the Pot from his nose, and drag him out by the ears, break the knot of good [Page 41] fellows that so tyes him to his debaucheries, that he may break his heart whether he will or no. The un­clean person must not think that God should come [...], and snatch him from his Dalilahs lap to Abrahams bosome, and say he staies but till God will break his heart, but he must pray and grieve and strive and avoid all occasions, or else he doth like the See this and more in Dr. Heyl [...]ng. Hist. Quinquart. Lantgrave of Turing, of whom Heistibachius tels us, that being warnd of his lewd and loose life, and the sadness of his condition, if he should dye in his sins, that he made this wretched answer: Si praede­stinatus sum nulla peccata poterunt regnum Caelorum auferre, si praescitus, nulla opera mihi illud vale­bunt auferre: if I be elected, no sins can hinder me from Heaven, if I be reprobated no services can help me to it: therefore you must be active in breaking your own hearts your own selves.

Quest. But how shall we do it? Alas we would do it with­all our hearts if we knew how.

Sol. Why I will tell you: you must do it, by taking in all humbling and softning and heart-breaking consi­derations, viz. the hatefulness of sin, the deceitful­ness of sin, the deceitfulness of your own hearts, the dreadfulness of wrath, the goodness of God that leads to repentance, and the severity of God, if thou repent not, But after thy hardnesse and impe­nitent Rom. 2. 4, 5. heart, treasurest up unto thy self wrath against the day of wrath. Set the hammer of the word to this stone, and see if that cannot break it. Apply the Bloud of Christ warm by faith, and see if that cannot break this Adamant. Let the love of Christ break it, as we do flints upon a pillow. I know there is another way of breaking and melting the heart [Page 42] which God often uses, but it is commonly when no­thing else will. But he that deserves and desires it, let him have it. They say indeed, that fire will make flints run. But ô it is a shame for us, that weare the name of Christ in such large Phylacteries of a loud Profession, should be overgrown with such a hardness, as not to be made fusile and ductile, mal­leable at least, fit to take the impression of Gods stamp and image, we have defaced, without so intense a heat as a fiery Furnace.

4. Whosoever's heart is broken, nothing will sa­tisfie Matth. 4. him but pardoning mercy. Give him the De­vils offer to Christ, the world and all the glory of it. All the splendor and grandeur, the pomp, peace, plenty and pleasure the whole world can afford in all outward Accommodations, are all empty Ciphers, insignificant nothings to him, till he sees God shine upon him in the face of Jesus Christ. O nothing can binde up the wound of a broken heart, but a sight of God reconciled in Jesus Christ. God hath par­doned me, Christ is mine, Heaven is mine: this a­lone will do the work, and nothing till this: of other mercies, till this, and without this he cries with Ter­tullian, Suspectam habeo hanc Dei indulgentiam, these are suspicious mercies I will have none of them; and with St. Bernard, Misericordiam hanc nolo Do­mine: and as the Tradition goes of Thomas Aquinas, Bene de me scripsisti Thoma, quam ergo mercedem accipies? Nullam Domine praeter teipsam. Thomas thou hast written well of me, what reward wilt thou have? None but thy self Lord. Look upon a broken heart on his death-bed, when his body is breaking into dust. O the end of that man is peace, see him Psalm 37. 37. [Page 43] entring upon the confines of eternity, with what pati­ence, with what peace, with what pleasure, can he see the glory and beauty of the world melt and moulder away? he can [...], relations, liberty nay life it self slide from him with no more disturbance, and with more comfort and contentment, than Passengers in a Boat upon the Thames, see the great City, and the fair houses glide from them, when their business is at Whitehall and Westminster, the City and Court of the great King: His soul is landed in Heaven al­ready. It was rarely spoken by that old Souldier of Henry the 4 ^th of France, who having received his deaths wound in one of his many battles, when he was above 80. years old, and his friends coming a­bout him to condole and comfort him against the fear of death, what saies he, have I lived above four­score years, and do you think I do not know how to die a quarter of an hour? he can die any day, every day, 2 Cor. 25. 31. that dies daily: his heart will never be broken for leav­ing the world at his death, whose heart hath bin broken in leaving the world in his life.

3. I have nothing to do now, but only to give you two words.

1. To quicken you to get your hearts broken, if they be not.

2. To caution you that you be sure they are broken.

1. That you would get your hearts broken if they be not: and that for two short Reasons.

1. Is from the Text, that this is the only sacrifice that God will not despise, this he ownes and loves above all others, at least, all others for and in this: All sacrifices and services without this, are but bro­ken [Page 44] sacrifices, broken services: A sacrifice without a heart was a Prodigy, and without a broken heart is a Profanation: that which break [...] makes us: Vul­nus opem tulit: our wounds blee [...] [...]am.

2. A broken and contrite heart gives you a key into Gods presence-chamber; you have a Patent for it under Gods hand and seal: will you see the Char­ter? Esay 57. 15. Thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabits eternity, whose name is holy: I dwell in the high and the holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the pir it of the humble, and to revive the spirit of the contrite ones: Here is oyle of Gladnesse indeed, but it is a broken vessel that must receive it, a broken and humble heart.

2. To caution, as well as quicken you, that you give not over the work till you be sure your hearts are broken: I shall hint four Reasons.

1. Because your hearts are deceitfull, and apt to put a cheate upon you, especially in this duty, this irksome duty, of searching your own hearts, to be satisfied that they are really broken: you had need call a Parli­ament, a great Councel of all the facultys in the polity of man together, for this scrutiny; and be assured thou shalt find thy heart as full of tricks and juggles to keep thee off from calling this Councel, as the Church of Rome put upon the Christian Princes of that age, about calling that councel which proved the Councel of Tre [...]t. It was a good time before his holiness would be preswaded the Church or Court of Rome needed reformation there was omnia benè: Therefore a Councel would be as needlesse as physick to a sound body: but [Page 45] at last to stopp the mouth of the loud clamours of the world, a councel is yeilded to: but the time and place kept them in many years debate, to while out the time till they hoped their zeal might cool: but at length called it was, but what was the Issue of it? why that councill that was designed for a scourge of the Church and Court of Rome proved a successful engine of its advnacement: such is commonly the re­sult of such great and tumultous assemblies, as they are managed by parts and partyes, So their ordinary product are the dictates of wit, and power; for the most part, to the raising of the worst, if not to the ruine of all, as we have but too lately seene: but to apply it to our purpose. Thou wouldest faine bring thy heart to the test to try whether it be that broken and mortified humble thing it pretends to. Never expect to find it willing to stand the triall. What to be cut and cauterized, to be prob'd and tented, to run through the macerations and martrizations of a thorough examination? It will never endure it, when it comes to the push, it will give thee the slip if thou doest not looke to it: it will use all the petty arts imaginable to keep it self from gaging and garb­ling: it will tell thee thy heart is a good heart if you can let it alone; there is many a worse heart that pas­ses for a better; is any man but you so nice and scrupulous, and so cruell to his own flesh (which he should love and cherish) as to rake and grable Eph 5. in his own heart, and to seek that in it, which thou wouldest be sorry to finde, and if thou doest not finde it, thou wilt be as sorry thou hast searched it? come let it alone, man thy heart is as good a heart as others are; but suppose all this fine deluding Rhetorick [Page 46] will not doe, thou seest a necessity of searching thy heart to the quick; and art resolved to set upon the work: see if the Devil and thine own heart have not some trick in lavender, to divert thy most seri­ous intentions with some plausible pretences or other, as sicknesse, business, company ( Pol me occidistis amici, is too often true in this case of breaking the heart) from breaking the heart. But to make short work with it, as thou must doe, if thou wilt make any work at all: If God at last smite thee by his word or sword, that thou beginst to reflect upon thy self, and say, sure I am not in the way to Heaven, that streight and narrow way? I am not so strict as I should be for all my heart flatters me thus. And therefore nothing shall keepe me from searching. Then look for the grandest cheat of all: then have a care thy treacherous heart doe not make thee believe, that every little qualm of conscience is a heart­breaking, every sleight touch at a Sermon, every heart-ach for any affliction thou fearest or feelest; and when all is done, have a care that thy heart does not out-wit thee at last, and that that meanes, which thou usest as the most proper expedient to break thy heart, doe not harden it more. O thou dost not know thine own heart man! It is a cunning and a cosening piece of flesh; you have a strange ex­ample of this if you need any) in Hazael, 2 Kin. 11. 12. 13. Elisha looked upon him stedfastly till he was a­shamede: and the man of God wept. and Hazael said, why weeps my Lord? and he answered, because I know the evils that thou shalt doe unto the Children of Israel. And when he had told him all his cruelties, he should be guilty of; What says Hazael, Is thy servant a [Page 47] dogg? He would not believe his heart was so base, and yet the man that was so much ashamed that the Prophet should think so ill of him, was not ashamed to be as ill as he thought, and doe as bad as he said. A man would have thought, that that tincture of grace, that dye of shame, that ingenuous blush which the Pro­phets eye had cast upon him, had been the life-bloud of his broken heart that leaped into his face to write his innocence in a dominicall character, that seasonable sally of modesty, a man would have thought had been vertues colours: but for all this he was so far from a bleeding heart, that he had a bloudy heart: a deceit­full heart lead him aside: he could not fathom the depth Esay 44. 20. of his own heart: The heart of man is deceitfull above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it? Jer. 17. 9. The word which we read, deceitfull, is [...], from whence Jacob is derived, that (you know) signifies sup­planter, and it has two very eminent senses in Scripture.

1. It signifies crooked, Es. 40. 4. The crooked shall be made streight [...]: Your hearts are crooked hearts, serpentine, winding hearts, the crooked ser­pent, you know not where to have them. The way to heaven is too narrow; the gate to life too streight, for such reeling, riddling, crooked pieces.

2. It signifies treacherous Jos. 8. 13. [...] Liers in wait. Your hearts are treacherous hearts and lye in wait to deceive you: your hearts are jugglers, can cast a mist before you, and make you think they are broken when they are utterly broke for want of breaking: an ordinary legerdemaine and deceptio vi­sus, look to it: O it is an unworthy thing for a man to be deceived, but more to be deceived by himself, by his own heart, but most of all; to be deceived by [Page 48] himself in so neere a concern as the breaking his own heart.

2. Remember that God (whose eye is in your heart and that is [...]) sees what course you take to break your hearts: your hearts (as false as they are) cannot cheat him: if you doe not pass a right judg­ment upon your hearts, but burne them with a cold Iron, pronounce them broken when they are not bro­ken, God will reverse your judgment, repeal your sentence, and break you because you are not broken.

3. If you be deceived in this point of heart-breaking, you will never thrive in the great work of Christiani­ty: if you judg not aright of your humiliation, you will be mistaken in the whole work of your sancti­fication; I was about to say, of your salvation, I will say of your satisfaction. This is the fundamentall work of grace: and it is in grace, as it is in nature, an er­ror in the first concoction is not mended in the second,

4. If you be deceived in this you are deceived for eternity: the foolish virgins were so deceived, and so eternally excluded. I am [...]ure that would be a great heart-breaking to you to see others in the Kingdome of Heaven and your selves thrust out. And therfore be sure, you use all the ways to break your hearts, and be sure, you use all the ways to be sure they are broken, that they may be broken so, as that you may goe in with the Bridegroome, and not broken because you cannot goe in with the Bridegroome: but see others goe in and your selves kept out. Let us pray therfore to the heart-maker, and to the heart-searcher, who is the great heart-breaker that he would give us broken Spirits and contrite hearts, that he would make them such Sacrifices as he will not despise. Be it so Lord. Amen Amen.