most conduce to our ease, and to our ends. And this is impingere, to stumble, not to go on in an equal and even pace, not to do the will of God cheerfully. And a second degree is calcitrare, to kick, to spur at this stone; that is, to bring some particular sin, and some particular law into comparison: to debate thus, if I do not this now, I shall never have such a time; if I slip this, I shall never have the like opportunity; if I will be a fool now, I shall be a beggar all my life: and for the law of God that is against it, there is but a little evil for a great deal of good; and there is a great deal of time to recover and repent that little evil. Now to remove a stone which was a landmark, and to hide and cover that stone, was all one fault in the law; to hide the will of God from our own consciences with excuses and extenuations, this is, calcitrare, as much as we can to spurn the stone, the landmark out of the way; but the fulness and accomplishment of this is in the third word of the text, cadere, to fall; he falls as a piece of money falls into a river; we hear it fall, and we see it sink, and by and by we see it deeper, and at last we see it not at all: so no man falleth at first into any sin, but he hears his own fall. There is a tenderness in every conscience at the beginning, at the entrance into a sin, and he discerneth awhile the degrees of sinking to: but at last he is out of his own sight, till he meet this stone; (this stone is Christ) that is, till he meet some hard reprehension, some hard passage of a sermon, some hard judgment in a prophet, some cross in the world, something from the mouth, or something from the hand of God, that breaks him: He falls upon the stone and is broken.

So that to be broken upon this stone, is to come to this sense, that though our integrity be lost, that we be no more whole and entire vessels, yet there are means of piecing us again: though we be not vessels of innocency, (for who is so?) (and for that enter not into judgment with thy servants O Lord) yet we may be vessels of repentance acceptable to God, and useful to his service; for when anything falls upon a stone, the harm that it suffereth, is not always (or not only) according to the proportion of the hardness of that which it fell upon, but according to the height that it falleth from, and according to that violence that it is thrown with: if their fall who fall by sins of infirmity,

should refer only to the stone they fall upon, (the majesty of God being wounded and violated in every sin) every sinner would be broken to pieces, and ground to powder: but if they fall not from too far a distance, if they have lived within any nearness, any consideration of God, if they have not fallen with violence, taken heart and force in the way, grown perfect in the practice of their sin, if they fall upon this stone, that is, sin, and yet stop at Christ, after the sin, this stone shall break them; that is, break their force and confidence, break their presumption and security, but yet it shall leave enough in them, for the Holy Ghost to unite to his service; yea, even the sin itself, Co-operabitur in bonum, as the apostle saith, the very fall itself shall be an occasion of his rising: and therefore, though St. Augustine seem to venture far, it is not too far, when he saith, Audeo dicere, It is boldly said, and yet I must say it, Utile est ut caderem in aliquod manifestum peccatum; A sinner falleth to his advantage, that falleth into some such sin, as by being manifested to the world, manifesteth his own sinful state, to his own sinful conscience too: it is well for that man that falleth so, as that he may thereby look the better to his footing ever after; Dicit Domino susceptor meus es tu, says St. Bernard, That man hath a new title to God, a new name for God; all creatures (as St. Bernard enlarges this meditation) can say, Creator meus es tu, Lord thou art my Creator; all living creatures can say, Pastor meus es tu, Thou art my Shepherd, thou givest me meat in due season; all men can say, Redemptor meus es tu, Thou art my Redeemer; but only he which is fallen, and fallen upon this stone, can say, Susceptor meus es tu, Only he which hath been overcome by a temptation, and is restored, can say, Lord thou hast supported me, thou hast recollected my shivers, and reunited me; only to him hath this stone expressed, both abilities of stone; first to break him with a sense of his sin, and then to give him peace and rest upon it.

Now there is in this part this circumstance, Quicunque cadit, Whosoever falleth; where the quicunque is unusquisque, whosoever falls, that is, whosoever he be, he falls; Quomodo de cœlo cecidisti Lucifer? says the prophet", the prophet wonders how

Lucifer could fall, having nothing to tempt him (for so many of the ancients interpret that place of the fall of the angels, and when the angels fell, there were no other creatures made), but Quid est homo aut filius hominis? Since the father of man, Adam, could not, how shall the sons of him that inherit his weakness, and contract more, and contribute their temptations to one another, hope to stand? Adam fell, and he fell à longe, far off, for he could see no stone to fall upon, for when he fell there was no such Messias, no such means of reparation proposed, nor promised when he fell, as now to us; the Blessed Virgin, and the forerunner of Christ, John Baptist, fell too, but they fell prope, nearer hand, they fell but a little way, for they had this stone (Christ Jesus) in a personal presence, and their faith was always awake in them; but yet he, and she, and they all fell into some sin. Quicunque cadit is unusquisque cadit, whosoever falls, is, whosoever he be, he falls, and whosoever falls, (as we said before) is broken; if he fall upon something, and fall not to an infinite depth; if he fall not upon a soft place, to a delight in sin, but upon a stone, and this stone, (no harder, sharper, ruggeder than this, not into a diffidence, or distrust in God's mercy) he that falls so, and is broken so, that comes to a remorseful, to a broken, and a contrite heart, he is broken to his advantage, left to a possibility, yea brought to a nearness of being pieced again, by the word, by the sacraments, and other medicinal institutions of Christ in his church.

We must end only with touching upon the third part, Upon whom this stone falls, it will grind him to powder; where we shall only tell you first, Quid conteri, What this grinding is; and then, Quid cadere, What the falling of this stone is; and briefly this grinding to powder, is to be brought to that desperate and irrecoverable estate in sin, as that no medicinal correction from God, no breaking, no bowing, no melting, no moulding can bring him to any good fashion; when God can work no cure, do no good upon us by breaking us; not by breaking us in our health, for we will attribute that to weakness of stomach, to surfeit, to indigestion; not by breaking us in our states, for we will impute that to falsehood in servants, to oppression of great adversaries, to iniquity of judges; not by breaking us in our honour, for we

will accuse for that, factions, and practices, and supplantation in court; when God cannot break us with his corrections, but that we will attribute them to some natural, to some accidental causes, and never think of God's judgments, which are the true cause of these afflictions; when God cannot break us by breaking our backs, by laying on heavy loads of calamities upon us, nor by breaking our hearts, by putting us into a sad, and heavy, and fruitless sorrow and melancholy for these worldly losses, then he comes to break us by breaking our necks, by casting us into the bottomless pit, and falling upon us there, in this wrath and indignation, Comminuam eos in pulverem, saith he, I will beat them as small as dust before the wind, and tread them as flat as clay in the streets, the breaking thereof shall be like the breaking of a potter's vessel, which is broken without any pity. (No pity from God, no mercy, neither shall any man pity them, no compassion, no sorrow :) and in the breaking thereof, saith the prophet, there is not found a sheard to take fire at the hearth, nor to take water at the pit: that is, they shall be incapable of any beam of grace in themselves from heaven, or any spark of zeal in themselves, (not a sheard to fetch fire at the hearth) and incapable of any drop of Christ's blood from heaven, or of any tear of contrition in themselves, not a sheard to fetch water at the pit, I will break them as a potter's vessel, Quod non potest instaurari, says God in Jeremiah, there shall be no possible means (of those means which God hath ordained in his church) to recompact them again, no voice of God's word to draw them, no threatenings of God's judgments shall drive them, no censures of God's church shall fit them, no sacrament shall cement and glue them to Christ's body again; in temporal blessings, he shall be thankful, in temporal afflictions, he shall be obdurate: and these two shall serve, as the upper and nether stone of a mill, to grind this reprobate sinner to powder.

Lastly, this is to be done, by Christ's falling upon him, and what is that? I know some expositors take this to be but the falling of God's judgments upon him in this world; but in this world there is no grinding to power, all God's judgments here,

22 Psalm xviii. 42.

23 Isaiah xxx. 14.

24 Jer. xix. 11.

(for anything that we can know) have the nature of physic in them, and may, and are wont to cure; and no man is here so absolutely broken in pieces, but that he may be reunited: we choose therefore to follow the ancients in this, that the falling of this stone upon this reprobate, is Christ's last and irrecoverable falling upon him, in his last judgment; that when he shall wish that the hills might fall and cover him, this stone shall fall, and grind him to powder; He shall be broken, and be no more found, says the prophet, yea, he shall be broken and no more sought 25: no man shall consider him what he is now, nor remember him what he was before: for, that stone, which in Daniel2, was cut out without hands (which was a figure of Christ, who came without ordinary generation) when that great image was to be overthrown, broke not an arm or a leg, but brake the whole image in pieces, and it wrought not only upon the weak parts, but it brake all, the clay, the iron, the brass, the silver, the gold; so when this stone falls thus, when Christ comes to judgment, he shall not only condemn him for his clay, his earthly and covetous sins, nor for his iron, his revengeful oppressing, and rusty sins, nor for his brass, his shining, and glittering sins, which he hath filed and polished, but he shall fall upon his silver and gold, his religious and precious sins, his hypocritical hearing of sermons, his singular observing of sabbaths, his pharisaical giving of alms, and as well his subtle counterfeiting of religion, as his atheistical opposing of religion, this stone, Christ himself, shall fall upon him, and a shower of other stones shall oppress him too. Sicut pluit laqueos, says David, As God rained springs and snares upon them in this world (abundance of temporal blessings to be occasions of sin unto them): so pluet grandinem, he shall rain such hail-stones upon them, as shall grind them to powder; there shall fall upon him the natural law, which was written in his heart, and did rebuke him, then when he prepared for a sin; there shall fall upon him the written law, which cried out from the mouths of the prophets in these places, to avert him from sin; there shall fall upon him those sins which he hath done, and those sins which he hath not done, if nothing but want of

25 Dan. xi. 19.

26 Dan, ii. 45.

27 Psalm xi, 6.