MY Text , and so my Sermon too , is the just character of man ; A common , and stale theme , you will say ; but a needfull one : we are all apt to misknow or to forget what we are ; No blacks , nor soule-bells , nor deaths heads on our rings , nor funerall sermons , nor tombes , nor Epitaphes can fixe our hearts enough upon our fraile , and miserable condition ; And if any man have condescended to see his face in the true looking glasse of his wretched frailty , so soon as his back is turned hee forgets his shape straight ; Especially at a Court where outward glory would seem to shoulder out the thoughts of poore despicable mortality ; Give mee leave therefore , ( Honourable and beloved ) to ring my owne knell in your eares this day , and to call home your eyes a little , and to shew you that which I feare you too seldome see , your selves . Lent and funeralls are wont still to go both in one Livery : There is no book so well worthy reading as this living one ; Even now David spake as a King of men , Of people subdued under him ; now hee speakes as an humble vassall to God : Lord what is man that thou takest knowledge of him ?

In one breath is both soveraignty and subjection ; An absolute soveraignty over his people ; My people are subdued under me ; An humble subjection to the God of Kings ; Lord , what is man ? Yea , in the very same word wherein is the profession of that soveraignty , there is an acknowledgement of subjection ; Thou hast subdued my people ; In that he had people , he was a King ; that they might be his people , a subjugation was requisite ; and that subjugation was Gods , and not his own ; Thou hast subdued ; Lo David had not subdued his people , if God had not subdued them for him ; Hee was a great King , but they were a stiffe people ; The God that made them swayed them to a due subjection ; The great Conquerors of worlds , could not conquer hearts , if hee that molded hearts did not temper them : By me Kings raigne saith the Eternall wisdome ; and he that had courage enough to encounter a Beare , a Lion , Goliah , yet can say : Thou hast subdued my people .

Contrarily , in that lowliest subjection of himselfe , there is an acknowledgement of greatnesse ; though he abaseth himselfe with a What is man , yet withall , he addes , thou takest knowledge of him , thou makest account of him ; And this knowledge , this account of God , doth more exalt man , then his own vanity can depresse him .

My Text then , yee see , is Davids rapture , expressed in an extaticall question of sudden wonder ; a wonder at God , and at man ; Mans vilenesse : What is man ? Gods mercy and favour , in his knowledge , in his estimation of man : Lo , there are but two lessons that we need to take out here , in the world , God , and man ; and here they are both : Man in the notion of his wretchednesse ; God , in the notion of his bounty : Let us ( if you please ) take a short view of both , and in the one see cause of our humiliation , of our joy and thankfulnesse in the other , & if in the former , there be a sad Lent of mortification , there is in the latter , a chearfull Easter of our raising and exaltation .

Many a one besides David , wonders at himselfe , one wonders at his own honor , and though hee will not say so , yet thinkes What a great man am I ? Is not this great Babel which I have built ? This is Nebuchadnezars wonder : Another wonders at his person , and findes either a good face , or a faire eye , or an exquisite hand , or a well shap't leg , or some gay fleece to admire in himselfe : This was Absalous wonder : Another wonders at his wit , and learning : How came I by all this ? Turba haec . This vulgar that knowes not the law , is accursed . This was the Pharisees wonder . Another wonders at his wealth , Soule , take thine ease , as the Epicure in the Gospell . Davids wonder is as much above , as against all these ; hee wonders at his vilenesse : Like as the chosen vessell would boast of nothing , but his infirmities : Lord what is man ?

How well this hangs together ? No sooner had hee said , Thou hast subdued my people under me , then he adds , Lord what is man ?

Some vaine heart would have beene lifted up with a conceit of his own eminence ; Who I ? I am not as other men ; I have people under me ; and people of my owne ; and people subdued to mee ; This is to bee more then a man ; I know who hath said , I said ye are Gods . Besides Alexander the great , how many of the Roman Cesars have been transported with this self-admiration , and have challenged Temples , Altars , Sacrifices . How have they shared the moneths of the yeare among them ; April must be Neronius , May Claudius , Iune Germanicus , September Antoninus , Domitian will have October , November is for Tiberius , by the same token , that when it was tendered to him , he askt the Senat wittily ( as Xiphiline reports it ) what they would doe when they should have more then twelve Cesars ; But if there were not moneths enow for them , in the yeare ; there were starres enow in the Skie , there was elbow-room enough in their imaginary heaven for their deification . What tell I you of these ▪ a sory Clearchus of Pontus , as Suidas tells us , would be worshipped , and have his son called Lightning ; Menecrates the Physitian ( though not worthy to bee Esculapius his Apothecaries boy ) yet would be Iupiter : Empedocles the Philosopher , if it had not been for his shoo would have gone for Immortall . Sejanus will be sacrificing to himself . I could tyre you with these prodigies of pride . I could tell you of a Xerxes that will be correcting the Hellespont , and writing letters of threat to the mountain Athos : of one of his proud Sultan successors Sapores that writ himselfe Brother to the Sun , and Moone : of his great neighbour of China that styles himself Heire apparent to the living Sun : and the wise Cham of Tartary , Son of the highest God ; Caligula would 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Dio , counter-thunder to God ; and will bee no lesse then Iupiter Latialis ; And the Scythian Roylus can say ; It is easie for him to destroy all that the Sun lookes upon ; Lord God! how can the vaine pride of man befoole him , and carry him away to ridiculous affectations ? The man after Gods own heart is in another vain ; when he lookes downward , he sees the people crouching under him , and confesses his own just predominancy , but when hee lookes either upward to God , or inward to himselfe , he sayes , Lord what is man ? It should not be , it is not in the power of earthly greatnesse to raise the regenerate heart above it selfe , or to make it forget the true grounds of his own humiliation . Avolet , quantum volet palea , as he said : Let the light chaffe bee hoised into the ayre , with every winde ( as Psal. 1. ) the solid grain lyes close , and falls so much the lower , by how much it is more weighty . It is but the smoke that mounts up in the furnace , it is but the drosse that swells up in the lump , the pure metall sinkes to the bottome , if there be any part of the crucible lower then other , there you shall finde it . The proud mountaines shelve off the rain , and are barren ; the humble vallies soak it up , and are fruitfull . Set this pattern before you ye great ones whom God hath raised to the height of worldly honor : Oh be ye as humble as ye are great : the more high you are in others eyes , be so much more lowly in your owne , as knowing that hee was no lesse then a King that said , Lord what is man ?

The time was when David made this wonder upon another occasion . Psal. 8. 3 , 4. When I see the heavens , the moon and the stars that thou hast ordained , Lord what is man ? When looking over that great night-piece , and turning over the vast volume of the world ( as Gerson termes it ) hee saw in that large folio , amongst those huge capitall letters , what a little insensible daghespoint man is , he breaks forth into an amazed exclamation Lord what is man ? Indeed , how could he doe other ? To compare such a mite , a mote , a nothing with that goodly and glorious vault of heaven , and with those worlds of light , so much bigger then so many globes of earth , hanging , and moving regularly in that bright and spacious contignation of the firmament , it must needs astonish humane reason , and make it ashamed of its own poorenesse : Certainly , if there could bee any man that when hee knowes the frame of the world could wonder at any thing in himselfe , save his owne nothingnesse , I should as much wonder at him , as at the world it selfe .

There David wondred to compare man with the world ; here he wonders too to compare man , with a world of men , and to see that God had done so much for him above others in his advancement , deliverances , victories . But if any man had rather to take this Psalme as a sacred Rhapsody , gathered out of the 18. and 8. and 39. Psalmes ; and this sentence as universall ; I oppose not ; Let this wonder be generall , not so much of David , a man selected , as of David , a man . These two are well joyned , Lord , What ? For however man when hee is considered in himselfe , or compared with his fellow-creatures , may be something ; yet when he comes into mention with his maker , he is lesse then nothing . Match him with the beast of the field , yea of the desert ; even there , however , as Chrysostom , every beast hath some one ill quality , but man hath all ; yet , in regard of rule , what a jolly Lord he is ; here is omnia subjecisti , thou hast put all things in subjection to him ; Not the fiercest Lyon , not the hugest Elephant , or the wildest Tyger , but , either by force , or wile man becomes his master ; and though they have left that originall awe , which they bare to him so soon as ever he forsook his loyalty to his King ; yet still they doe , ( not without regret ) acknowledge the impressions of Majesty in that upright face of his ; Wherfore are they but for man ? Some for his labor as the oxe ; some for his service as the horse : some for his pleasure as the dog , or the ape : some for his exercise , as the beasts of the forest , all for man : But when we look up at his infinite Creator , Lord what is man ? O God , thou art an intelligible sphere , whose center is every where , whose circumference is no where but in thy selfe : Man is a mere center without a circumference . Thou , O God , in una essentia omnia praehabes , in one essence forecomprisest all things , as Aquinas out of Dionysiw ; man , in a poore imperfect composition holds nothing . Thou art light , hast light , dwellest in light inaccessible ; Man of himselfe is as darke as earth , yea as hell . Thou art God alsufficient , the very heathen could say , ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) ; It is for none but God to want nothing : Man wants all but evill ; Shortly , thou art all holinesse , power , justice , wisdome , mercy , truth , perfection : Man is nothing but defect , error , ignorance , injustice , impotence , corruption ; Lord then , what is man to thee but a fit subject for thy wrath , yet let it bee rather a meet object of thy commiseration ; Behold we are vile , thou art glorious ; let us adore thine infinitenesse , doe thou pitty our wretchednesse . Lord what is man ?

Leave wee comparisons ; Let us take man as he is himselfe ; It is a rule of our olde country man of Hales , the acute master of Bonaventure , that a man should bee rigidus sibi , pius aliis , rigorous to himselfe , kinde to others : Surely , as Nazianzen observes , in one kinde , that nothing is more pleasing to talk of then other mens businesses , so , there is nothing more easie , then for a man to be wittily bitter in invectives against his own condition ; who hath not braine , and gall enough to be a Timon , depreciari carnem hanc ( as Tertullian speakes , ) to disparage humanity ; and like an angry Lion to beat himselfe to blood with his owne sterne ; Neither is it more rife for dogs to bark at men , then men at themselves . Alas , to what purpose is this currish clamour ? Wee are miserable enough though wee would flatter our selves ; To whose insultation can we be thus exposed but to our owne ? I come not hither to sponge you with this vineger , & gall , but give mee leave a little , though not to aggravate , yet to deplore our wretchednes ; There can bee no ill blood in this : Amaritudo sermonum medicina animarum , this bitternesse is medicinall , saith S. Ambrose ; I doe not feare wee shall live so long as to know our selves too well . Lord then what is man ? What in his being ? What in his depravation ? How miserable in both ?

What should I fetch the poore wretched infant out of the blinde cavernes of nature , to shame us with our conceptions , and to make us blush at the substance , nourishment , posture of that which shall be a man ; There he lyes , senselesse for some moneths ( as the heathen Oratour truly observes , ) as if hee had no soule . When hee comes forth into the large womb of the world , his first greeting of his mother is with cryes and lamentations , ( and more hee would cry if hee could know into what a world he comes ) recompencing her painefull throwes with continuall unquietnes ; what sprawling , what wringing , what impotence is here ? There lyes the poore little Lording of the world , not able to helpe himselfe ; whiles the new yeaned Lambe rises up on the knees , and seeks for the teates of her damme , knowing where and how to finde reliefe , so soone as it begins to bee . Alas , what can man doe , if hee bee let alone , but make faces , and noyses , and dye ? Lord what is man ? This is his ingresse into the world ; his progresse , in it , is no better . From an impotent birth , hee goes on to a silly childhood ; if no body should teach him to speake what would hee doe ? Historians may talk of , Bec , that the untaught infant said ; I dare say he learn't it of the goates , not of nature ; I shall as soone beleeve that Adam spake Dutch in Paradise according to Goropius Becanus his idle fancy , as that the childe meant to speak an articulate word unbidden : And if a mother or nurse did not tend him , how soone would he be both noysome , & nothing ; Where other creatures stand upon their owne feet and are wrapt in their owne naturall mantles , and tend upon their dams for their sustenance , and finde them out amongst ten thousand .

Yea the very spider weaves so soon as ever it comes out of the egge : Assoone as age and nurture can feoffe him in any wit , hee falls to shifts ; all his ambition is to please himselfe in those crude humours of his yong vanity : If hee can but elude the eyes of a nurse or Tutor , how safe hee is ? Neither is he yet capable of any other care , but how to decline his own good , and to be a safe truant ; It is a large time that our Casuists give him , that , at seven yeares , hee begins to lye ; Vpon time and tutorage , what devises hee hath to feed his appetite ? what fetches to live ? And if , now , many successions of experiments have furnisht him with a thousand helps , yet , as it is in the text ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) What is Adam , and the son of Enosh ? How was it with the first man ? how with the next ? Could we look so far back as to see Adam and Eve , when they were new turned out of Paradise ; in dignam exilio terram ( as Nazianzen speakes of his Pontick habitation ) Oh that hard-driven , and miserable paire ! The perfection of their invention and judgement was lost in their sinne ; their soule was left no lesse naked then the body . How wofully doe we thinke they did scramble to live ? they had water and earth before them , but fire , an active and usefull element , was yet unknowne ; Plants they had , but metalls whereby they might make use of those plants , and redact them to any forme , for instruments of work , were yet ( till Tubal-cain ) to seek . Here was Adam delving with a jawbone , and harrowing with sticks tyed uncouthly together , and paring his nailes with his teeth : there Eve making a comb of her fingers ; & tying her raw-skin'd breeches together with rindes of trees , or pinning them up with thornes . Here was Adam tearing off some arme of a tree , to drive in those stakes which he hath pointed with some sharp flint ; there Eve fetching in her water in a shell ; Here Adam the first mid ▪ wife to his miserable consort , and Eve wrapping her little one in a skin , lately borrowed from some beast ; and laying it on a pillow of leaves , or grasse ; Their fist was their hammer , their hand their dish , their armes and legges their ladder , heaven their Canopy , and earth their fetherbed ; & now ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ) What is Adam ? In time Art beganne to improve nature ; Every dayes experiments brought forth something ; and now , man durst affect to dwell , not safe , but faire ; to be clad , not warme but fine ; and the palate waxt by degrees , wanton , & wilde ; the back and the belly strove whether should be more luxurious ; and the eye affected to be more prodigal then they both ; and ever since , the ambition of these three hath spent , & wearyed the world ; so as in the other extreme we may well cry out , Lord what is man ?

For , to rise up with his age and the worlds now , when man is grown ripe in all professions , an exquisite artist , a learned Philosopher , a stout champion , a deep politician , whither doth he bend all his powers , but to attain his own ends , to crosse anothers ? to greaten himselfe , to supplant a rivall , to kill an enemy , to embroile a world ; Mans heart ( as Bernard well ) is a mill , ever grinding some grist , or other , of his own devise ; and I may adde , if there bee no graine to work upon , sets it self on fire . Lord what is man ? ( even after the accession of a professed Christianity ) but a butcher of his owne kinde ? Seneca told his Lucilius ( the same that Iob hath ) that vivere militare est ; It is true now not morally but literally : What a wofull shambles is Christendome it selfe ever since the last Comet becomne . Fryer Dominick was according to his mothers dream a dog with a fire brand in his mouth , sure ever since , religion hath been fiery and bloody . Homicida cucurbitarum , was the style that S. Austin gave to Manicheus ; now every man abroad strives to be bomicida Christianorum : As if men were growne to the resolution of the old Tartars , of whom Haytonus ; they thought it no sin to kill a man , but not to pull off their horses bridle when hee should feed , this they held mortall . What hils of carcasses are here ? What rivers of blood ; At tu domine usquequo ? How long Lord , how long shall men play the men in killing ? and seek glory in these ambitious murders . Oh stay , stay thou preserver of men , these impetuous rages of inhumane mankinde , and scatter the people that delight in warre : And blessings be upon the anointed head of the King of our peace , under whose happy scepter we enjoy these calme & comfortable times , whiles all the rest of the world is weltring in blood , and scorching in their mutuall flames ; May all the blessings of our peace returne upon him , who is ( under God ) the author of these blessings , and upon his seed for ever , and ever .

How willingly would I now forget ( as an old man easily might ) to turne back to the dispositions , studies , courses of man , commonly bent upon the prosecution whether of his lust , or malice : Wo ▪ is me , how is his time spent ? In hollow visits , in idle courtings , in Epicurean pamperings , in fantastick dressings , in lawlesse disports , in deepe plots , crafty conveyances , quarrelous law-suits , spightfull underminings , corrading of riches , cozēing in contracts , revenging of wrongs , suppressing the emulous , oppressing inferiours , mutining against authority , eluding of lawes , and what shall I say ? in doing all but what hee should , so as in this , man approves Polybius his word too true , that he is both the craftiest of all creatures , & most vicious ; and in the best and all his wayes makes good the word in my text ( even in this sense ) Man is like unto vanity ; yea like is not the same ; Man is altogether vanity . Psal. 39. 6. Indeed so more then vanity that we may rather say vanity is like to man ; What a deale of variety of vanity here is ; Ones is a starved vanity , anothers a pamperd one ; ones a loviall vanity , anothers a sullen one ; ones a silken vanity , anothers a ragged one ; ones a carelesse vanity , anothers a carking ; and all these rivulets runne into one common Ocean of vanity , at last , universa vanitas omnis homo ; In this busie variety doth he weare out the time and himselfe , till age or sicknesse summon him to his dissolution ; But the whiles , in the few minutes of our life , how are our drams of pleasure lost in our pounds of gal ; Anguish of soule , troubles of minde , distempers of body , losses of estate , blemishes of reputation , miscariages of children , mis-casualties , unquietnesse , paines , griefes , feares take up our hearts , and forbid us to enjoy , not happinesse , but our very selves ; so as our whole life sits like Augustus , inter suspiria & lachrymas betwixt sighes and teares ; and all these hasten us on to our end ; and wo is me , how soon is that upon us ? I remember Gerson brings in an Englishman asking a Frenchman Quot annos habes ? ( how many yeares are you ? ) a usuall latin phrase when we aske after a mans age ; his answer is Annos non habeo ; I am of no yeares at al , but death hath forborn me these fifty ; Surely we cannot make account of one minute : besides the vanity of unprofitablenesse , here is the vanity of transitorinesse . How doth the momentaninesse of this misery adde to the misery ; what a flowre , a vapour , a smoke , a bubble , a shadow , a dreame of a shadow our life is ? We are going , and then a carelesse life is shut up in a disconsolate end , and God thinkes it enough to threat , Ye shall die like men : Alas , this wormeaten apple soon falls ; vitreum hoc corpusculum ( as Erasmus termes it ) is soone crackt , and broken . It is not for every one to have his soule suckt out of his mouth with a kisse as the Iewes say of Moses . He that came into the world with cryes , goes out with groanes ; The pangs of death , the anguish of conscience , the shrieking of friends , the frights of hell meet now together to render him perfectly miserable , and now , Lord , what is man ? Well , he dyes , saith the Psalmist , and then all his thoughts perish ; Lo what a word here is ? All his thoughts perish . What is man but for his thoughts ? Those are the only improvement of reason , and that in an infinite variety : One bends his thoughts upon some busie controversies , perhaps nec gemino ab ovo ; another , upon some deep plot of State to be molded up ( like to China clay ) some hundred yeares after , another , hath cast models in his brain of some curious fabrick wherewith he will enrich the surface of the earth ; another hath in his active imagination hookt in his neighbours inheritance , and takes care to convey it ; one studies Art , another fraud , another the art of fraud ; one is laying a foundation for future greatnesse , as low as hell ; another , is laying on a gilded roof where is no firme foundation , each one is taken up with severall thoughts , when hee dies all those thoughts perish ; all those castles in the ayre ( 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , as Aristophanes his word is ) vanish to nothing ; onely his ill thoughts stick by him , and wait on his soule to his hell : But I have not yet done with the body : Rameses which signifieth wormes , is our last station in this wildernesse ; yet one step lower e corpore vermes , e vermibus faetor , as Bernard well : Hee that was rotted with disorder , would be sweetned with odors ; but it is more then all Arabia can doe , neither is there more horror in the face of death , then in his breath , noysomenesse . Lord what is man ? But alas , it is well for this part that it is for the time senselesse ; the living Spirit payes the while for all , which if it bee but a mere mans , is hurried by divels immediatly , into the dreadfull regions of horror , and death , and there lyes for ever , and ever , and ever in unsufferable , unutterable , unconceivable torments , without all possibility of intermission , of mitigation . Oh wo wo wo to those miserable soules that ever they were created . And now , Lord what is man ?

Ye have seen man divided by his times , in his ingresse , progresse , egresse ; or , in Lactantius his termes , in his originall , state , dissolution : See him now , at one glance , divided in his parts , Bernards two mites , A body and a soule ; What is man then ? A goodly creature he is : When I looke upon this stirring pile , I can say , I am fearefully , and wonderfully made . Lord , I can admire thee in me , and yet abase my selfe : thou art so much more wonderfull in thy workes , by how much I am viler : What is this body of mine but a piece of that I tread upon , a sack of dust ( if not saccus stercorum as Bernard ) a sewer of ill humours , a magazine of diseases , a feast of wormes ; And as for that better part , the inmate of this ragged cottage , though as it proceeds from thee , it is a pure immortall spirit , a sparke of thine heavenly fire , a glimpse of thy divine light , yet as it is mine , how can I pity it ? Alas , how darke it is with ignorance ? For what have I here but that cognitionem nocturnam , which Aquinas yeelds to worse creatures , how foule and muddy with error , nec quis error turpitudine caret , there is no errour that is not nasty as Austin truly ; how earthly and grosse with mis-affections ; praecedit carnem in crimine , it ushers the flesh in sinfull courses , as Bernard ; how as unlike thee , as like him that marred it ? And , if both parts in their kind were good , yet put together they are naught ; Earth is good , and water is good , yet put together they make mudd and mire . Lord then what is man ?