Poetry.

WOMAN.

(From "Poetic Vigils;" By Bernard Barton.)

METHODIST MAGAZINE,

FOR NOVEMBER, 1824.

Divinity.

From the Imperial Magazine.

SPECIMEN OF BISHOP DUPPA'S PREACHING.

Angels Rejoicing for Sinners Repenting. Delivered in a Sermon by the Right Rev. Father in God BRIAN DUPPA, Bishop of Salisbury, year 1648.

in the

(Concluded from page 367.)

It was a strange error in Lactantius, so learned a father, being deceived by the translation of the Septuagint, in the second of the sixth of Genesis, to think that those sons of God, that fell in love with the daughters of men, because they were fair, were the angels; for, besides other absurdities, were all the beauty of the heavens transferred into the face of a vicious sinful woman, certainly no angel could have joyed in her; and St. Austine gives the reason of it for their joy extends no further (saith he) than the works of God; but peccator non est inter opera Dei, a sinner is no work of God. Look in the first chapter of Genesis, you shall not find him in the whole catalogue of his creatures; as he is man, he is God's work, true; but as he is sinful man, he is his own work see him in the pure robe of original righteousness, he is God's work; but look on him in the dressings of his own vanity, he is his own work, or if not his own, I am sure the devil's; no argument then of joy here, no ditty for such an anthem.

For do but consider with thyself, oh sinner, think of it seriously; the angels that were by, when God stampt his image on thee, when he wash'd thee in baptism as clean as the untouch'd snow,* when he married thee to his son Christ Jesus, made thee a temple of his Holy Spirit, how can they either know or joy in thee, when that image is rased out, that innocence polluted, that contract violated, that temple turn'd into a sink of filth, into a den of serpents?

* Wash'd thee in baptism as clean as the untouch'd snow.—This is giving an efficacy to water baptism hardly compatible with scripture authority, and which is abundantly contradicted by daily experience; baptized children evincing all the turpitude of their fallen nature.-EDS. M. MAGAZINE.

How will they look, think you, when God the Father turns away his face, God the Son cries out, thou hast crucified him again; thou hast pierced him with thy oaths, spit on him with thy lust, wounded him with thy malice, when God the Holy Ghost shall leave thee either to a fluctuating unquiet, or (which is worse) to a seared, a stupified conscience? Which of those spirits can then take joy in thee? shall not the ill angels rather give thee their plaudite?

Come, say those damned spirits, let us see this creature that was made to fill up our seats in heaven; this creature that was the angels' joy, and his God's delight, see where he is fallen, how deep, how dangerously fallen, how still he lies in his foul sins, without any motion left, any sense of grace: Ecce (say they) factus est tanquam unus è nobis, behold he is become like one of us.

Bat Mentimini mali Dæmones, (a devout father answers them) ye were liars all from the beginning; so are ye now. For though a sinner be fallen, though fallen into the depth of sin, he is not become like one of you; for you fell, nullo tentante, without a tempter: damned are you therefore, nullo reparante, without a Saviour. But this fallen sinner you thus tread upon, alterius malitia cecidit, alterius meritis resurget, he fell by another's malice, and shall rise by another's merit. They were some of the black crew that helped to throw him down: the Son of God shall help him up again for though sin hath been his poison, yet repentance may be his antidote; though his sins have made the devil sport, yet his repentance may breed his (God's) angels' joy. A sinner is no good prospect; but at the sight of a repentant sinner heaven opens all her windows: the text is warrant enough for such a doctrine, for there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.

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Not for a sinner then, but for a repentant sinner; not for him that hardens himself in sin, but for the sensible, melting, bleeding sinner. But he that would draw repentance to the life, that would make such a resemblance of her, as the angels might delight in, let him look that he fit her with two faces, on the one side a mourning dejected countenance, looking sadly back on the sins she hath committed; on the other side a more cheerful lively aspect, looking forwards on new resolutions; for there is a beauty in both, in the sad as in the cheerful. God too, will look on both, or not at all.

As for the sadder look, though Andreas Vega, a Spanish writer, doted so much upon it, that he is censured by his own friend Bellarmine for maintaining that the sorrow of the heart for sin was of so high a value, that he that conceived that sorrow as he ought, needed no formal explicit purpose of amendment;-though I confess this melancholy friar went too far, yet let not any therefore deceive himself, or incline so far to the other side, as to think the way to heaven is strewed with roses, that he can leap

out of the state of sin into the favour of his God, without so much as a single tear or sigh. No, as it cost thy Saviour more to redeem thy soul, so it must cost thee more to apply that redemption to thee. Saint Ambrose therefore calls repentance Laboriosum Baptismum, a loborious, a painful baptism, a baptism in Marah, in the waters of bitterness: for we must as well Flere commissa, as Flenda non committere, as well deplore the ill we have done, as not do again the ill we have deplored.— It is true indeed what Saint Bernard saith, non si te excories potes satisfacere, should we weep ourselves blind, kneel ourselves cripples, should we flay the skin from this wretched body of ours, all could not satisfy for sin, but our joy is that Christ hath already done it; his blood hath fully satisfied for the whole world: yet withal, there lies a condition on every sinner vel hic flere, vel in futuro, a condition that cannot be avoided, either to mourn here, or in the world to come; either to endure now a sorrow that shall have end, or to endure then a sorrow that shall have none.

But mistake me not, I do not counsel you to a sullen, continued, unintermitted melancholy but yet pardon me, if I would have you thoroughly sensible of your sins when you have done them; for without sorrow on the earth, I am confident there is no joy in heaven; there is no sinner that repenteth.

But St. Austine makes the question, which were more bound to God, he that should be preserved ever innocent, or he that were converted to be truly penitent? and he resolves it thus: Innocens majora, hæmitens majis debet, extensively the innocent ones, more intensively the penitent. Innocence, a jewel of higher price in the substance, but repentance of greater value in the workmanship; so much of greater value, that in the 7th verse of this chapter, it is proclaimed, that there is more joy for one repentant sinner, than for ninety-nine that needed no repentance.But Saint Paul gives a reason for it, when he saith, that where sin hath abounded, there grace hath much more abounded. So that I dare say, that God looks neither on the heaven of heavens, nor on the purest seraphim, with such content, such joy, as on a heart well wrought, a heart either carved or cut, or inlaid with sorrows, where grief hath been as witty in punishing, as pleasure was before in sinning; a heart still under the hammer, and broken into a thousand pieces. O how busy is thy Saviour at such a sight; watching thy sighs, and numbering thy tears, gathering up the several pieces of thy broken heart, as if they were so many scattered diamonds! how gently he handles them, how curiously he re-unites them, like a rich watch took asunder to be made cleaner, and set together again. But doth any doubt, when his heart is thus broken, whether this care will be taken for it or no? is he loath to venture on so bitter a receipt without his physician's eath? Why, God will swear rather than thy soul shall waver :

for look in the 33d of Ezekiel, the 11th verse, Vivo, inquit Dominus: As I live, (saith the Lord) I take no delight in the death of a sinner: Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways, for why will ye die, ye house of Israel? Could any thing be spoken more passionately? He protests, he exhorts, he expostulates; why then do we doubt? will he not save us when we repent, that hath threatened not to save us unless we repent? Non patitur contriti cordis holocaustum repulsam. St. Cyprian had learned so much of holy David, A broken heart, O God, thou wilt not, (or, as some translations render it, thou shalt not) despise: no, we have him safe in his own fetters, entangled to us in his own promises, if we repent, he will, he must forgive us, for he neither will nor can deceive us let every one of us therefore make that confession as Saint Austine did, O Domine si non sum dignus oculos, orando ad cœlum levare, at sum dignus oculos plorando cæcare: though I am not worthy, O God, to lift up my eyes in praying, yet I am sure I am worthy to wear out my eyes in weeping; though I can plead no innocence, yet I would fain plead repentance; that as my sins have caused the sorrows of thy Son, so my sorrows might cause the rejoicing of thy angels.

I would go on, but methinks I hear some troubled soul thus call to me,-You tell me heavenly things of this repentance, what power a religious sorrow hath, that the lizard doth not gaze more earnestly on him that sleeps, nor the dolphin on the mariner, than the angels do on a weeping sinner; nay, that God himself is pleased with such a sight; that he suffers all his anger to be washed away in such a shower: Credo Domine, I believe this, O my God, but wretch as I am, I cannot sorrow. He that should

tell me, that all the joys of heaven were to be bought for one single tear, how could he comfort me that could not shed that tear? when my eyes are dried up like the parched earth in summer, my very heart turned marble, what Moses shall I call to, to strike this rock for water?-But stay, be not discouraged whoever thou art; the mother of Peter Lombard, it seems, was in as great a strait as this, when having transgressed her vow of continency, she told her confessor plainly, that when she saw what a son she had brought forth, she could not repent, that she had sinned in having him : a hard condition! but her confessor sadly answered her, Dole saltem quod dolere non possis, be sorry at least that thou canst not sorrow and the like must I say to thee, O troubled sinner; if thou findst but so much impression made as to grieve really, that thou canst not grieve, know that thou art already come to a degree of that which thou grievest thou are not come to; know again, that it is the beginning of that thaw, which at last will dissolve thy very heart to water. Six times Elias his servant looked towards the sea, before he could see any thing; the seventh time he saw but a cloud no bigger than his hand, yet that cloud within a few hours covered the heaven with darkness, and the earth with rain :