have seen the fulness of time, the Gentiles did (in some measure,) see it, and we must (if we will have any benefit by it,) see it too. It is an observation of St. Cyril, that none of the saints of God, nor such as were noted to be exemplarily religious and sanctified men, did ever celebrate with any festival solemnity their own birth-day. Pharaoh celebrated his own nativity, but who would make Pharaoh his example? And besides he polluted that festival with the blood of one of his servants. Herod celebrated his nativity, but who would think it an honour to be like Herod? And besides, he polluted that festival with the blood of John Baptist. But the just contemplation of the miseries and calamities of this life into which our birth-day is the door and the entrance, is so far from giving any just occasion of a festival, as it hath often transported the best disposed saints and servants of God to a distemper, to a malediction, and cursing of their birthday. Cursed be the day wherein I was born, and let not that day wherein my mother bare me be blessed. Let the day perish wherein I was born, let that day be darkness, and let not God regard it from abore. How much misery is presaged to us, when we come so generally weeping into the world, that, perchance, in the whole body of history we read but of one child, Zoroaster, that laughed at his birth. What miserable revolutions and changes, what downfalls, what break-necks, and precipitations may we justly think ourselves ordained to, if we consider that in our coming into this world out of our mother's womb, we do not make account that a child comes right, except it come with the head forward, and thereby prefigure that headlong falling into calamities which it must suffer after? Though therefore the days of the martyrs, which are for our example celebrated in the Christian church, be ordinarily called natalitia martyrum, the birth-day of the martyrs, yet that is not intended of their birth in this world, but of their birth in the next; when by death their souls were new delivered of their prisons here, and they newly born into the kingdom of heaven; that day, upon that reason, the day of their death, was called their birth-day, and celebrated in the church by that name. Only to Christ Jesus, the fulness of time was at his birth; not because he also had not a painful life to pass through,

2

* Gen. xl. 22.

3 Jer. xx.

• Job iii.

but because the work of our redemption was an entire work, and all that Christ said, or did, or suffered, concurred to our salvation, as well his mother's swathing him in little clouts, as Joseph's shrouding him in a funeral sheet; as well his cold lying in the manger, as his cold dying upon the cross; as well the puer natus, as the consummatum est; as well his birth, as his death, is said to have been the fulness of time.

First, we consider it to have been so to the Jews; for this was that fulness, in which all the prophecies concerning the Messiah were exactly fulfilled :-That he must come whilst the monarchy of Rome flourished'; and before the temple of Jerusalem was destroyed'; that he must be born in Bethlehem'; that he must be born of a virgin; his person, his actions, his passion so distinctly prophesied, so exactly accomplished, as no word being left unfulfilled, this must necessarily be a fulness of time. So fully was the time of the Messiah's coming, come, that though some of the Jews say now, that there is no certain time revealed in the Scriptures when the Messiah shall come, and others of them say that there was a time determined and revealed, and that this time was the time, but by reason of their great sins he did not come at his time; yet, when they examine their own supputations, they are so convinced with that evidence that this was that fulness of time, that now they express a kind of conditional acknowledgment of it, by this barbarous and inhuman custom of theirs, that they always keep in readiness the blood of some Christian, with which they anoint the body of any that dies amongst them, with these words, If Jesus Christ were the Messiah, then may the blood of this Christion avail thee to salvation; so that by their doubt, and their implied consent in this action, this was the fulness of time, when Christ Jesus did come, that the Messiah should come.

It was so to the Jews, and it was so to the Gentiles too. It filled those wise men which dwelt so far in the east, that thay followed the star from thence to Jerusalem. Herod was so full of it, that he filled the country with streams of innocent blood, and lest he should spare that one innocent child, killed all. The two emperors of Rome, Vespasian and Domitian, were so full of it, that in

5 Dan. ii.

6

Hagg. ii.

7 Mich. v.

8 Isaiah vii.

9

jealousy of a Messiah to come then, from that race, they took special care for the destruction of all of the posterity of David. All the whole people were so full of it, that divers false Messiahs, Barcocab and Moses of Crete, and others, rose up, and drew and deceived the people, as if they had been the Messiah, because that was ordinarily known and received to be the time of his coming. And the devil himself was so full of it, as that in his oracles he gave that answer, that an Hebrew child should be God over all gods; and brought the emperor to erect an altar to this Messiah, Christ Jesus, though he knew not what he did. This was the fulness that filled Jew and Gentile, kings and philosophers, strangers and inhabitants, counterfeits and devils, to the expectation of a Messiah; and when comes this fulness of time to us, that we feel this Messiah born in ourselves?

In this fulness, in this coming of our Saviour into us, we should find a threefold fulness in ourselves; we should find a fulness of nature, (because not only of spiritual, but of natural and temporal things, all the right which we have in this world is in, and for, and by Christ, for so we end all our prayers of all sorts with that clause, per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum ; Grant this, O Lord, for our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus' sake) and we should find a fulness of grace, a daily sense of improvement, growth in grace, a filling of all former vacuities, a supplying of all emptinesses in our souls, till we came to Stephen's fulness, Full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, and full of the Holy Ghost and faith, and full of faith and power". And so we should come to find a fulness of glory, that is, an apprehension and inchoation of heaven in this life; for the glory of the next world is not in the measure of that glory, but in the measure of my capacity; it is not that I shall have as much as any soul hath, but that I shall have as much as my soul can receive; it is not in an equality with the rest, but in a fulness in myself. And so as I shall have a fulness of nature, that is, such an ability and such a use of natural faculties, and such a portion of the natural things of this world, as shall serve to fill up God's purpose in me. And as I shall have a fulness of grace, that is, such a measure of Barchochebas, a Jew, who carried on his imposture in Egypt. 11 Ver. 5 and 8.

10 Acts vi. 3.

grace as shall make me discern a temptation, and resist a temptation, or at least repent it, if I have not effectually resisted it; so even here I shall have a fulness of glory, that is, as much of that glory as a wayfaring soul is capable of in this world. All these fulnesses I shall have, if I can find and feel in myself this birth of Christ. His eternal birth in heaven is inexpressible, where he was born without a mother; his birth on earth is inexpressible too, where he was born without a father; but thou shalt feel the joy of his third birth in thy soul most inexpressible this day, where he is born this day, if thou wilt, without father or mother; that is, without any former, or any other reason than his own mere goodness that should beget that love in him towards thee, and without any matter or merit in thee which should enable thee to conceive him. He had a heavenly birth, by which he was the eternal Son of God, and without that he had not been a person able to redeem thee; he had a human birth, by which he was the son of Mary, and without that he had not been sensible in himself of thine infirmities and necessities; but this day, if thou wilt, he hath a spiritual birth in thy soul, without which both his divine and his human birth are utterly unprofitable to thee, and thou art no better than if there had never been Son of God in heaven, nor son of Mary upon earth. Even" the stork in the air knoweth her appointed time, and the turtle, and the crane, and the swallow observe the time of their coming, but my people knoweth not the judgments of the Lord. For if you do know your time, you know that now is your fulness of time; this is your particular Christmas-day; when, if you be but as careful to cleanse your souls, as you are your houses: if you will but follow that counsel of St. Augustine, Quicquid non vis inveniri in domo tua, non inveniat Deus in anima tua; That uncleanness which you would be loth your neighbour should find in your houses, let not God nor his angels find in your souls, Christ Jesus is certainly born, and will as certainly grow up in your

souls.

We pass from this to our second part, the manner of his coming; where we proposed two degrees of Christ's humiliation, that he was made of a woman, and made under the law. In the

first alone are two degrees too, that he takes the name of the son of a woman, and wanes the glorious name of the Son of God; and then, that he takes the name of the son of a woman, and wanes the miraculous name of the son of a virgin. For the first, Christ ever refers himself to his Father; as he says, The Father which sent me, gave me a commandment what I should say, and what I should speak 13: so for all that which he did or suffered, he says, My meat is to do his will that sent me, and to finish his work1: and so, though he say, I am come out from the Father, and am come into the world: yet, be where he will, still he and his Father were all one. But divesting that glory, or slumbering it in his flesh, till the Father glorify him again with that glory which he had with him from the beginning, in his ascension, he humbles himself here to that addition, The son of a woman, made of a woman.

Christ waned the glorious name of Son of God, and the miraculous name of Son of a virgin too; which is not omitted to draw into doubt the perpetual virginity of the blessed Virgin, the mother of Christ; she is not called a woman, as though she were not a maid; when it is said, Joseph knew her not, donec peperit, till she brought forth her son, this did not imply his knowledge of her after, no more than when God says to Christ, donec ponam, sit at my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool, that imports that Christ should remove from his right hand after; for here is a perpetual donec in both places; for evermore, the ancient expositors have understood that place of Ezekiel to be intended of the perpetual virginity of Mary: This gate shall be shut, and shall not be opened, and no man shall enter by it. Solomon hath an exclamation, Is there any thing whereof a man may say, Behold this is new? and he answers himself immediately before, There is no new thing under the sun. But behold, here is a greater than Solomon, and he says, now in action, by being born of a Virgin, as he had said long before, in prophesy, The Lord hath created a new thing upon earth, a woman shall compass a man". If this had been spoken of such a woman as were no maid, this had been no new thing; as it was, it was without example, and without natural reason; si ratio reddi posset, (says

13 John xii.

14 John iv.

15 John 16.

16 Jer. xxxi. 2.