Mr. Bolton's last and learned work of the four last things death, judgement, hell,…Mr. Boltons last and learned worke of the foure last things death, iudgement, hell,…

And that no marvel, for many reasons. And yet I will not here trouble you, in telling how miserably and extremely ill those who be better borne are ordinarily educated. Alas, they are too often brought up in ignorance, idleness, excessive pursuit of sports and vain things: in drinking, carnal looseness, riotous excess, in sensuality, pride, profanation of the LORDS Day: In strange fashions, healthing, gaming, good-fellowship: in frequenting Plays, those grand impoysoners of many hopeful plants, with universal, profane, unnatural dissoluteness, melting unhappily the vigour of their spirits into effeminateness, lightness and lust. And almost ever in a constant opposition to the good way, the power of godliness, and strictness of the Saints, who are the ordinary objects of their greatest distaste, jesting and scorn: and whereas they (of all others) have best means, largest maintenance, most time, capacity, and pregnancy of wit, and other encouraging advantages whereby they might become excellent scholars, of eminent abilities, proportionable to their precedency in birth: yet for want of a conscionable care in their education, of choice ⟨p. 216⟩for godly and worthy School-masters, Tutors, Teachers, Consorts, Ministers, and restraint from the corruptions of the times: and by reason of their perverting and empoisoning by the forenamed youthful aberrations, or rather exorbitancies. They pass through those famous nurseries of learning and law, without any material impressions of Academical worth, or wisdom of State. At length returning many times unto rich inheritances, and fair estates, and then reflecting upon their lost time with late repentance, and finding in themselves neither any competent sufficiencies to serve their Country, or to little purpose, and very poorly; nor any solid stock of sound learning for their working spirits to be exercised in, and feed upon with contentment: they resolvedly languish and dissolve into idleness and pleasures, as though they were put into the world, as Leviathan into the sea, to take their pastime therein. And so at last in respect either of personal worth, or the public good, they become but unprofitable burdens of the earth: and by their exemplary ill expense of time, if not far baser tricks; the very bane of the Countries that bred them, and great dishonour to the families that own them.

And that no marvell, for many reasons. And yet I will not here trouble you, in telling how miserably and extremely ill those who be better borne are ordinarily educated. Alas, they are too often brought up in ignorance, idlenesse, excessive pursuit of sports and vaine things: in drinking, carnall loosenesse, riotous excesse, in sensuality, pride, prophanation of the LORDS Day: In strange fashions, healthing, gaming, good-fellowship: in frequenting Playes, those grand impoysoners of many hopefull plants, with universall, prophane, unnaturall dissolutenesse, melting unhappily the vigour of their spirits into effeminatenesse, lightnesse and lust. And almost ever in a constant opposition to the good way, the power of godlinesse, and strictnesse of the Saints, who are the ordinary objects of their greatest distast, jesting and scorne: and whereas they (of all others) have best meanes, largest maintenance, most time, capacity, and pregnancy of wit, and other encouraging advantages whereby they might become excellent schollers, of eminent abilities, proportionable to their precedency in birth: yet for want of a conscionable care in their education, of choice ⟨p. 216⟩for godly and worthy Schoole-masters, Tutors, Teachers, Consorts, Ministers, and restraint from the corruptions of the times: and by reason of their perverting and empoysoning by the forenamed youthfull aberrations, or rather exorbitancies. They passe through those famous nurceries of learning and law, without any materiall impressions of Academicall worth, or wisdome of State. At length returning many times unto rich inheritances, and faire estates, and then reflecting upon their lost time with late repentance, and finding in themselves neither any competent sufficiencies to serve their Countrey, or to little purpose, and very poorely; norany solid stocke of sound learning for their working spirits to be exercis'd in, and feed upon with contentment: they resolvedly languish and dissolve into idlenesse and pleasures, as though they were put into the world, as Leviathan into the sea, to take their pastime therein. And so at last in respect either of personall worth, or the publike good, they become but unprofitable burdens of the earth: and by their exemplary ill expence of time, if not farre baser trickes; the very bane of the Countreys that bred them, and great dishonour to the families that owne them.

For assure your selves, to be well borne, and live like an humane beast, is a notorious blemish to a noble House: and let never any be so vain, as to brag of their birth, except they be new-borne: this honour of birth (saith Charron) may light upon a vicious¹ man, &c.

For assure your selves, to be well borne, and live like an humane beast, is a notorious blemish to a noble House: and let never any be so vaine, as to brag of their birth, except they be new-borne: this honour of birth (saith Charron) may light upon a vicious¹ man, &c.

1. 1Pag. 2•1.

Neither will I here take up a complaint of the much lamented degeneration of our modern Nobility and Gentry (I ever except the truly worthy and noble) from even the civill worthiness, military valour, and noble deportment of former times. Now adays, if a man look big, be first in the fashions, shake his shag-hair in a boisterous and ruffian-like manner, carry himself with a disdainful neglect and proud bravery, and with an affected, and artificial haughtiness of countenance, outbrave others, and brow-beat his brethren, better than himself, he is the man. But alas! How far distant is this, and degenerating from true generousness, and that sweet amiable courtesy and affability which is wont to dwell in the gentle breasts of the ancient English Nobles? I am afraid if we go on, our posterity will find in the next age the basest generation of English that ever breathed in this famous Kingdom. Sir Walter Rawleigh, I confess in his excellent Work having discoursed and discussed of this Question,¹ whether the Romans could have rectified the Great Alexander, makes good in a second place to the matchless honour of this Nation, that neither the Macedonian nor the Roman soldier was of equal valour to the English. But when were those times? When his Father sent to the Black Prince, fighting (as it were) in blood to the knees, and in great distress this message: Let him² either vanquish or die. When Warwick, Bedford, and that famous Talbot, and such other victorious English Commanders with their valiant ⟨p. 218⟩armies walked up and down France, like so many invincible Lions. But oh the mighty, and unconquerable manhood and magnanimity of the ancient English! Whether art thou gone, and where art thou buried, that we might visit thy Tomb? But I say, to let these pass, I only lay hold upon that which is most pregnant and punctual to my purpose. These Nobles in my text, and ordinarily in all times swallow down so many bai•s from the Devils hands, are so surrounded with variety and strength of temptations: so ill brought up, and so vainly puffed up with insolency and self-estimation because they are lifted up above others: They are so lined with inextricable ensnarements, by pleasures, riches, honours, ease, liberty, earthly splendour, bravery, applause of the world, and pride of life;

It is the ripened and actuated strength and rage¹ of original corruption that furiously executes the rebellious dictates of the Devil, and desperate projects of mens sensual hearts: stands at defiance, professes open hostility against grace, goodness, good men, good causes, and all courses of sanctification: seeds upon so long, and fills it self ⟨p. 219⟩so full with worldly vanities and pleasures, that growing by little and little incorrigible, and hating to be reformed, it breeds, and brings forth (as its natural issue) despair, horror, and the worm which never dies.

It is the ripened and actuated strength and rage¹ of originall corruption that furiously executes the rebellious dictates of the Devill, and desperate projects of mens sensuall hearts: stands at defiance, professes open hostility against grace, goodnesse, good men, good causes, and all courses of sanctification: seeds upon so long, and fils it selfe ⟨p. 219⟩so full with worldly vanities and pleasures, that growing by little and little incorrigible, and hating to be reform'd, it breeds, and brings forth (as its naturall issue) despaire, horrour, and the worme which never dies.

1. 1Corrupt affection defined.

And this corrupt affection is of it self, and naturally, First, untameable; Secondly, insatiable; Thirdly, desperate.

And this corrupt affection is of it selfe, and naturally, First, untameable; Secondly, insatiable; Thirdly, desperate.

1. Untameable. The heart of man is naturally¹ of the hardest flint, hewed immediately out of the sturdy and stubborn rock of the race of Adam. It own corruption, the just curse of GOD upon it, and the accursed influence of hellish malice, fill it so full of iron sinews, and of such adamant and prodigious hardness, that no cross or created² power, not the softest eloquence or severest course; nay, not the weight of the whole world, or the heaviness of hell, if they were all pressed upon it, could possibly bend and break it, make it yield or relent one jot from it obstinate and outrageous fury in it own ways: this is only the work of the holy Ghost, with the hammer of the Word. The stubborn Israelites were heavily laden, with an extraordinary variety of most grievous crosses and afflictions: there was nothing wanting to make them outwardly miserable; and no misery inflicted upon them, but upon purpose to humble and take down their rebellious hearts. See Isa. 1. 5, 6, 7. How the Prophet paints out to the life the rueful and distressful state of their fresh-bleeding desolations: The whole head (saith he) is sick, and the whole heart is heavy, &c. for the ⟨p. 220⟩place is meant, not (as some take it) of their sins, but of their sorrows. But all the blows and pressures were so far from softening their hearts, that they hardened and emmarbled more and more. Wherefore (saith the Prophet) should ye be smitten any more, for ye fall away more and more? What created power can possibly have more power upon the souls of men, than the sacred Sermons of the Son of GOD, who spake as never man spake? And yet these dear entreaties and melting invitations which sweetly & tenderly flowed from that heart, which was resolved to spill that warmest and inmost blood for their sakes moved those stiff-necked Jews never a jot: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, saith he, which killest the Prophets, &c. Mat. 23. 37. Isaiah that noble Prophet, whose matchless eloquence surpasseth the capacity of the largest created understanding; and to which the powerful elegancies of profane writers is pure barbarism, shed many and many a gracious and golden shower of softest and sweetest eloquence upon a sinful nation and rebellious people, which was fruitlessly and vainly spilt as water upon the ground, or lost upon the hardest flint:

many a piercing and powerful Sermon had he spent amongst them, to the wasting of his strength and spirits; which yet was to them as an idle and empty breath, vanishing into nothing, and scattered in the air. The LORD (as He says Himself) made His mouth as a sharp sword,¹ and Himself as a chosen shaft; and yet that two edged sword was full often blunted upon their hardest hearts; and his keen arrows discharged ⟨p. 221⟩by a skilful hand, rebounded from their flinty bosoms, as shafts shot against a stone wall. And that made that Seraphical Orator, the unmatched Paragon of sacred eloquence, thus to complain, Isa. 47. 4. I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength in vain, and for nothing: A course of extraordinary severity and terror was taken with Pharaoh; he was not only chastised with rods, but even scourged with Scorpions: and yet all the plagues of Egypt were so far from piercing and softening his hard heart, as that every particular plague added a several iron sinew, and more flintiness to his already stony heart. And as the heart is naturally thus hardened towards godliness, so also hollow towards the godly: See Sauls carriage towards David. No material weight can more crush the heart of man, than braying in a mortar; and yet saith Solomon, Prov. 27. 22. Though thou shouldest bray a fool, a desperate sinner, a rebellious wretch in a mortar amongst wheat brayed with a pestle; yet will not his foolishness, his sinfulness, which is the greatest, depart from him, no more than the skin from the Black-moor, or the spots from the Leopard by washing him. Shame an old obstinate beaten sinner with his horrible ingratitude; show him the ugly face of his heinous sins, tell him of the loss of the happiness of heaven; affright him with the fear of hell and damnation: in all this he is like a Smiths anvil, that grows harder and harder for all his hammering. Lastly, a damned spirit, though he lie in the lowest dungeon of utter darkness, laden with that ⟨p. 222⟩burden of sin, which pressed down a glorious Angel of light and all his followers from the top of heaven into that lowest pit, with the full weight of the unquenchable and everlasting wrath of GOD; with all the heavy chains of that infernal lake;

and with that which (me thinks) is far worse and more cutting than many hells, than ten thousand damnations, even with despair of ever having ease, end, or remedy of those most bitter, everlasting, intolerable hellish torments: I say, though a damned soul be thus laden, and thus heavily pressed down with all this cursed weight, and heinousness of hell; yet he is still as hard as a stone. So certain it is, that no curse, or created power, not the softest eloquence or severest course, not the weight of the whole world or the heaviness of hell; if all were pressed and laid upon the heart of a man; could possibly break that stubbornness, or tame that rebellion. This is only the work of the blessed Spirit with the hammer of the Word.

and with that which (me thinkes) is farre worse and more cutting than many hels, than ten thousand damnations, even with despaire of ever having ease, end, or remedy of those most bitter, everlasting, intolerable hellish torments: I say, though a damned soule be thus laden, and thus heavily prest downe with all this cursed waight, and hainousnesse of hell; yet he is still as hard as a stone. So certaine it is, that no curse, or created power, not the softest eloquence or severest course, not the waight of the whole world or the heavines of hell; if all were prest and laid upon the heart of a man; could possibly breake that stubbornesse, or tame that rebellion. This is onely the worke of the blessed Spirit with the hammer of the Word.

This hardness of heart had attained a strange height even in the worlds infancy: into what a prodigious rock is that grown now then by length of time, in so many ages, sith every generation since, by invention of new sins, and addition of heinousness unto the old, have every one added thereunto a several iron sinew, and a further degree of flintiness. What a heart was got into Cains breast, who was first cut out of the stony rock of corrupt man-kind; remorse of shedding the guiltless blood of his murdered brother, ⟨p. 223⟩which was able to have melted an adamant into bloody tears, moved him never a whit. Nay, the presence of Almighty GOD, at which the ¹earth trembles, the hills melt like wax, which turneth ²the rock into water-pools, and the stint into a fountain ³of water, (as David speaks) yet made his stony heart relent never a whit. Nay, yet further, GODS mighty voice immediately from His own mouth, which breaks the cedars, and shakes the wilderness, which was able with one word even in a moment to turn the whole world into nothing, and the sons of men as though they had never been; yet (I say) this powerful and mighty voice did not at all amaze or mollify the un-relenting stubbornness of this bloody wretch: but in a strange dogged fashion he answers GOD Almighty even to His face. For, when GOD mildly and fairly asked him what was become of his brother Abel, he answered, I cannot tell: Nay, further, as though he had bid GOD go look, he faith, Am I my brothers keeper? Where take this⁴ note by the way; Let not Christians think much to receive dogged answers and disdainful speeches from profane men: you see how doggedly this fellow answers even GOD Almighty: The Disciple is not above his Master, nor the servant above his Lord: It is enough for the Disciple to be as the Master, and the servant as his Lord: if they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of his household? Mat. 10. 24, 25.

What a strange stony heart lodged in the breast of the tyrant Pharaoh? When the Prophet (1 Kin. ⟨p. 224⟩13.) cried to the altar of Jeroboam, O altar, altar, the altar clave presently asunder at the Word of GOD in the mouth of the Prophet; but this mighty hammer of the Word, (Jer. 23. 29.) with ten miracles gave ten mighty strokes at Pharaohs heart; and yet could find no entrance, could not pierce it; but rebounded back as an arrow shot against a stone wall. Let no man then think it strange to see many stubborn and rebellious wretches run on in their courses, and rage against the ways of GOD, though they have both the Ministry of the Word of GOD to reclaim them, and be many times singled out particularly by the hand of GOD with some special judgement, for the abatement of their fury. For, the rebelliousness of mans nature can never possibly be tamed, corrupt affection can never be conquered, until the heart wherein it sits enthroned, be crushed and broke in pieces: and this hardness of heart can never be mortified, no created power can possibly pierce it, until the Almighty Spirit take the hammer of the Word into His own hand; that by His special, unresistable power He may first break and bruise it, and after by sprinkling it with the blood of CHRIST, dissolve it into tears of true repentance, that so it may be softened, sanctified, and saved. And let no man marvel, that the powerfullest Ministry doth produce by accident the most pestilent scorners, cruellest persecutors, and men of most raging carriage against the means of their salvation; for these reasons.

What a strange stony heart lodged in the breast of the tyrant Pharaoh? When the Prophet (1 Kin. ⟨p. 224⟩13.) cried to the altar of Ieroboam, O altar, altar, the altar clave presently asunder at the Word of GOD in the mouth of the Prophet; but this mighty hammer of the Word, (Ier. 23. 29.) with ten miracles gave ten mighty strokes at Pharaohs heart; and yet could find no entrance, could not pierce it; but rebounded backe as an arrow shot against a stone wall. Let no man then thinke it strange to see many stubborne and rebellious wretches run on in their courses, and rage against the waies of GOD, though they have both the Ministry of the Word of GOD to reclaime them, and be many times singled out particularly by the hand of GOD with some speciall judgement, for the abatement of their fury. For, the rebelliousnesse of mans nature can never possibly be tamed, corrupt affection can never be conquered, untill the heart wherein it sits inthron'd, be crusht and broke in peeces: and this hardnesse of heart can never be mortified, no created power can possibly pierce it, untill the Almighty Spirit take the hammer of the Word into His owne hand; that by His speciall, unresistable power He may first breake and bruise it, and after by sprinkling it with the bloud of CHRIST, dissolve it into teares of true repentance, that so it may be softened, sanctified, and sav'd. And let no man marvell, that the powerfullest Ministry doth produce by accident the most pestilent scorners, cruellest persecutors, and men of most raging cariage against the meanes of their salvation; for these reasons.

1. From the nature of the glorious Gospel ⟨p. 225⟩of JESUS CHRIST, the sun of righteousness, which shining upon one that hath spiritual life, will more revive and quicken him: but in one dead in sins and trespasses, causes him to stink more hatefully before the face of GOD and man.

1. From the nature of the glorious Gospell ⟨p. 225⟩of IESVS CHRIST, the sunn of righteousnesse, which shining upon one that hath spirituall life, will more reuiue and quicken him: but in one dead in sinnes and trespasses, causes him to stinke more hatefully before the face of GOD and man.

2. From the cruelty of Satan: who lays more burdens and heavier chains upon him; that the Ministers labour to pull out of h•s snares.

2. From the cruelty of Satan: who laies more burdens and heavier chaines upon him; that the Ministers labour to pull out of h•s snares.

2. Unsatiable. Corrupt affection is unsatiable in all it sensual pursuits for the empoisoned,

2. Vnsatiable. Corrupt affection is unsatiable in all it sensuall pursuits for the empoysoned,

1. Fountain of original pollution is bottomless, restless, and ever working; it sends out uncessantly fresh desires, new longings, and more greediness, for the grasping, engrossing, and devouring of earthly delights and carnal pleasures.

1. Fountaine of originall pollution is bottomlesse, restlesse, and ever working; it sends out uncessantly fresh desires, new longings, and more greedinesse, for the grasping, engrossing, and devouring of earthly delights and carnall pleasures.

2. When the heart of man forsakes the blessed and boundless Fountain of living waters; of which if it should drink heartily and sincerely, and every drop should be in it a well of water springing up to everlasting life; and digs unto it earthly pits; whereout to suck the muddy▪ and troubled streams of vanity and sensual delights; then GOD in his just Judgement makes those pits bottomless, that they'll hold no water; so that it shall seek and never be satisfied: it shall toil and tire out it self in ways of wickedness and destruction, and shall never find end and rest; but in endless woe and restless torments.

2. When the heart of man forsakes the blessed and boundlesse Fountaine of living waters; of which if it should drinke heartily and sincerely, and every drop should be in it a well of water springing up to everlasting life; and digs unto it earthly pits; wherout to suck the muddy▪ and troubled streams of vanity and sensuall delights; then GOD in his just Iudgement makes those pits bottomlesse, that they'le hold no water; so that it shall seeke and never bee satisfied: it shall toile and tire out it selfe in waies of wickednes and destruction, and shall never find end and rest; but in endlesse woe and restlesse torments.