A Key Opening Mysterious Texts of Scripture

THE TRAITORS GUERDON. A Sermon preached on the Gowries conspiracy before his Grace, and divers Lord's and persons of eminent quality, at Croydon, August 5. Anno Dom. 1618. THE FIFTH SERMON.

WEe are at this present assembled with religious Rites and sacred Ceremonies, to celebrate the unfortunately fortunate Nones of August, which are noted in red letters in the Roman Calendar (as I guess) to represent the blood of many thousand Martyrs spilled upon them: (twenty three whereof were put to most exquisite torments by Dioclesian in Rome) but deserve to be distinguished from other days by golden letters in ours, in memory of two of the most renowned Princes that ever swayed Scepter in these Kingdoms wherein we live; the one received life, the other escaped death on this day. For Beda and Baronius in their Church Rolls of Martyrs, record on the fifth of August the nativity of King Oswald; who united the Crowns of England and Scotland, and after he had much enlarged the bounds of Christ's Kingdom with his own, in the end exchanged his Princely Diadem for a Crown of Martyrdom, and signed the Christian Faith with Royal blood. So happy an uniter of the Royal Diadems, and Princely Martyr of our Nation, should not be forgotten on this day; yet may he not every way compare with our Rex Pacificus, who hath so fastened these Diadems together, that we hope they shall never be severed again. Nor is the birth of any Prince by the usual course of Nature so remarkable, as the unheard of, and little less than miraculous preservation of our Sovereign his Royal person, from the bloody assacinate of the Earl Gowry, and Alexander Ruthen his brother, to the everlasting memory whereof our Church hath consecrated the public and most solemn devotions of this day. And therefore we are now to change the old spell, Quintam fuge, and 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , that is, Carefully shun the fifth day, into Quintam cole, Religiously observe the fifth day of this Moneth; if not for King Oswald, yet for King James sake: if not for the birth of the one, yet for the safety of the other: if not for the ordinary Genesis and entry of the one into the gate of life, yet for the extraordinary Exodus, or exit of the other out of the chambers of death. Which wonderful delivery of our gracious Sovereign that I may print the deeper in your memories, I have borrowed characters from King David's royal press as you see: But those that seek my soul, &c. Ver. 9, 10, 11.

All which Verses, together with their several parts and commaes, even to the least Iota or tittle, by the direction and assistance of God's holy Spirit, I will make use of in my application, if I may entreat your Gracious patience, and your Honorable attention for a while in their explication. And first of the translation, then of the relation of these words, as well to the eternal destruction of the enemies to Christ's Cross, as to the temporal punishments of the traitors to David's Crown.

The vulgar Latin, upon which the Roman Church so doteth, that she is in love with the errors thereof, as Alceus was with the wirts in his boys face, rendereth the Hebrew thus: Quaesiverunt in vanum animam meam, introibunt in imâ terrae; They have sought my soul in vain, they shall go into the lowest parts of the earth. Of which words in vanum inserted into the Text, I may say as Aristotle doth of the ancient Philosophers discourse de vacuo, of a supposed place void of a body to fill it. Their disputes, faith he, of this void or empty space, are empty, void, and to none effect. For neither are they found in any original copy, as is confessed, neither serve they as artificial teeth to help the speech, which soundeth better without them: yet Cardinal Bellarmine to help out the vulgar Interpreter, with an officious lie beareth us in hand, that his book was otherwise pointed than ours are, and that where we read 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 he reads 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 as if Leshoath and Leshava, the one signifying to destroy, the other in vain, differed no more than in pricks or vowels, and not in consonants and radicals; or the sense were so full and currant, they seek my soul in vain, as they seek my soul to destroy it, or for the ruin or destruction thereof they shall go to the lowest parts of the earth, that is, they that seek to overthrow me, and lay mine honor in the dust, they shall lie in the dust themselves.

They shall fall by the sword. So we read in the last translation, and the members of the sentence seem better to fall and shoot one in the other, if we so read the words, They shall fall by the edge of the sword, they shall be a portion for Foxes, than if we read according to the Geneva Translation, They shall cast him down with the edge of the sword, they shall be a portion for Foxes. Yet because Calvin, Moller, Musculus, Tremellius, and Junius concur with the Geneva Translation & Note, understanding these words as a special prophecy of Saul's death, who was David's capital and singular enemy; and this translation and exposition fitteth better the application which I am to make of this Scripture to the present occasion: but especially because the Hebrew Jaggirhu signifieth as the last Translators rightly note in the margent, They shall make him run out like water by the hand of the sword, that is, his blood shall be spilled by the sword; I prefer the Geneva Translation before the last; and as the Macedonian woman appealed from Philip to Philip, so I appeal from the Translators in the Text, to themselves in their Marginall note, and read the tenth Verse thus: They shall cast him down, or slay him with the edge of the sword.

Thus having accorded the Translations, I now set to such heavenly lessons, as the Spirit of God hath pricked for us in the rules of this Scripture. The first is pricked in the title of this Psalm, (A Psalm of David when he was in the wilderness of Judah) and it is this:

[Doctr.] 1. That the wilderness it self may be, and is often a Paradise to the servants of God. If the Poet could say of himself and his friend,

Wheresoever we two are, we make that place as Rome to us: have we not great reason to think, that wheresoever God and the faithful soul are together, and the one enjoyeth the presence of the other, there is Paradise, nay, there is Heaven? This sweet flower I gather from this wilderness, to which David was driven by the pursuit of Saul his dreadful and powerful enemy. It was a vast and wild place, a thirsty land without water, verse the first: yet here David is refreshed with waters of comfort, and rivers of pleasure: there was neither Church nor Chapel in it; yet here David seeth the glory of God as in the Sanctuary, verse the second. It was a barren soil, yielding no manner of sustenance for men or cattle; yet here David is satisfied as with marrow and fatness, verse the sixth. It was a hot and scorching place; yet here David findeth a shade to cool himself, (viz.) under the shadow of God's wings, verse the eighth. In regard of which commodities of this wilderness, I cannot but break out into the praises of it, as Saint Jerome doth into the commendations of the Desert of Syria: O Wilderness, enameled with the flowers of Paradise! O Desert, in which those stones grow, of which the heavenly Jerusalem is built! O solitude, enjoying the familiarity of God and his Angels! Why doest thou keep under the shade of houses? Why doest thou shut thyself up in the prison of smoky Cities? come hither to me, thou shalt find here freer air, and much more light. Such pleasure this holy Father took in that solitary and uncouth place. And Saint Hilary seemeth to be in love with the like places, by those speeches of his: You do ill to dote upon walls, to build your faith upon stately buildings. I for my part prefer hills and woods, deserts and dens, and caves, and rocks, and lakes, for these have been the habitations and lodgings of God's dearest servants the Prophets. The Law was first given in the Wilderness of Arabia. The Gospel was first preached by John the Baptist in the Wilderness of Judeah. The noblest duel that ever was fought, was between Christ and the Devil, and the pitched field was the Wilderness. The woman that was clothed with the Sun, and had the Moon under her feet, lived obscurely in the Wilderness a thousand, two hundred, and sixty days: and many of God's dearest children all the days of their life, Apoc. 12.6.

The number of whom was so great, and their labors so profitable, and their lives so admirable in the Primitive Church, that as the Prophet spake of the barren woman, that she had more children than she that had an husband; so we may say of the barren soil and wilderness, that it hath brought forth a greater increase to the Church than many inhabited countries, and better husbanded land. There are divers sorts of plants and fruits, that must be set in the Sun, or else they will not prosper; but others are scorched with the heat thereof, and better thrive in the shade: such were Paulus Eremita, St. Antony, St. Hilarion, St. Basil, S. Jerome, St. Isidore Pelusiotes, and others, which proved the fairest flowers in the garden of the Church, and prime-roses of Christ's Spouse, yet grew in the Wilderness: with whom the Bishops of the greatest Sees may not compare, least of all the Bishops of Rome, of whom their own creature Platina hath often nothing to say, but that he can say nothing: This Pope, saith he, left nothing behind him worth memory. Well fare this Popes gout, but for it he had gone out of the world without any notice taken of him. Baronius himself, who received a Cardinals cap, to burnish the Popes triple golden Mitre, reckons himself up a dicker of Popes, who served for nothing but as ciphers to fill up the number of Bishops, or Chronologicall marks to design the times. But I am afraid, lest I shall lose myself in this Wilderness of Ziph; and therefore I will make haste out of it, and come into the rode of my Text.

They that seek my soul to destroy it, shall go, &c.

[Doctr. 2] David's confidence in God in this Epitasis of all his troubles, and Crisis of all his affairs, and the height of his hope in the depth of misery, ought to settle fast the anchor of our hope in all the surges of temptations. We see in him what is the carriage of God's Saints in their greatest extremities. They never cast away the buckler of their faith, but lift up their hearts and hands to the God of their salvation, and hope even above hope in him, who is able to save beyond all means. Thus resolute Martin Luther, when he had stirred up the whole world against him, and there was no other appearance, but that the doctrine of the Gospel should have been stifled in the cradle, flies to his God, lays hold on him by faith, and offereth violence unto him by prayer, and never leaveth wrestling with him, till he received comfort from him, and rising up cheerfully from his devotion, comes out of his closet triumphantly to his fellow-laborers, saying: Vicimus; We have overcome: at which time Sleidan observeth, that there came out a Proclamation from Charles the fifth, that none should be farther molested for the profession of the Gospel. What speak I of a noble Champion of Christ? Numa Pompilius a Heathen King of the Romans, when news was brought him of his enemies, that they were at hand ready to surprise him, put the messenger off with this memorable speech: 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , What tell you me of dangers or enemies? do you not see that I am about sacrificing to God? Numa his confidence was paralleled by Pausanias the Lacedaemonian General, who at Platea, when his Army was overtaken by the enemies horse, and overwhelmed with flights of arrows; as thick as hail, quietly sat still, not making any defense or resistance, till the sacrifices for victory were happily ended; yea, though many were hurt and slain before any good sign appeared in the enirals. But as soon as he had found good tokens of victory, he arose, and with excellent courage received the charge of the Persians, slew Mardonius that commanded in chief, and many thousands of the Barbarians. Did Heathen Religion put such courage, and breed such confidence in the worshippers of Idols, that they feared no danger while they were about their superstitious rites? and shall not true Religion beget more noble resolutions in us, who have God bound by promise to deliver us, when we faithfully crave his succor and assistance? Will he not glorify himself by delivering us in time of trouble, who calleth upon us, to call upon him, to this end: Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me? Wherefore, as the Athenians, when they were in greatest danger at sea, accustomably cast out the great anchor called the holy Anchor. Whence grew the Proverb, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ; so when we are tossed with waves of persecution, and so overwhelmed with violence of temptation, that we are ready to sink in despair, let us lift up our hands to God, and cast anchor in heaven; and though we see no means at all to subsist, yet still hang upon God's providence. It is scarce possible, that we should be put to a greater plunge than David was in this wilderness, who having but a handful of men, and most of them hunger-starved, or fainting for want of water to quench their thirst, was surrounded by Saul's royal Army; yet in this deplorate, and almost desperate estate, after parley with God by prayer, shall I say he conceived hope of delivery? nay, he assureth himself of the Crown, and in a manner insulteth over his enemies, as if they were already under his feet, saying: They that seek my soul to destroy it, shall go into the lowest parts of the earth. They shall cast him, &c. that is, they that go about to cast me down from my high throne of Majesty, shall fall low themselves; they who seek to devest me of my royal Purple and Diadem, shall be clothed with confusion as with a garment: they who hunt after me, and would make a prey of me, shall be themselves a portion for Foxes: they that seek my soul to ruin it, shall down themselves; They shall cast him down. [Doctr. 3] These words in Hypothesi contain a prophecy of Saul's bloody end, and the desolation of his Army on the mountains of Gilboa; but in Thesi, a general judgment of God upon the wicked, whom he entangleth in their own malice, and punisheth with their own sin, and bringeth to confusion by their own order.

Which Verses of the profane Poet may be thus translated, and they become sacred Oracles: The ungodly shall be trapped in the works of his own hands: he made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made; his mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate. For it is just with God to mete to the wicked their own measure, as he did to the accusers of Shadrach, Mesach, and Abednego, who were burned in the fire of that furnace which they had caused to be heat seven times more than ordinary for those three noble Confessors. And to the traducers of Daniel, who were cast to the Lions, which they kept fasting, on set purpose, that they might make but one morsel of the Prophet. And to Haman, who had the honor to be hanged on that high gallows, to which he would have preferred Mordecai. And to Adonibezeck, who when his thumbs were cut off by Judah, beshrewed his own fingers, saying: Threescore and ten Kings, having their thumbs and great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table: As I have done, so God hath requited me. All ages yield examples in the like kind, insomuch that the Heathen themselves have taken notice of God's using the wicked's mete-wand, to measure out their own ruin. Thraseus instructing Busirus how to expiate the wrath of the gods, by the effusion of strangers blood, was first himself sacrificed, and constrained to write a probatum est under that conclusion with his own blood:

What Puny in the Schools hath not read Ovid's golden Motto upon Perillus his brazen Bull:

There can be no juster law, than that the devisers of man's ruin should rue their own devices, and that the inventers of new deaths should die by their own inventions. Sciron the Giant, that sat upon the cleft of a high rock, and kicked down all that scrambled up to it into the sea, was himself served in the like manner by Theseus, who coming behind him, pushit him down with his foot into the deep. And Termerus, who had a strange fashion of beating out men's brains, by playing at hard head with them, in the end met with his match at that barbarous sport, and lost the little brain he had, his skull being broken by Hercules. What should I relate the tragedy of an agent of Pope Hildebrands, who standing upon a plank in the roof of a Church in Rome, and taking up a huge stone to cast down upon the Emperor, when he was at his devotion, by the weight of the stone and his own, the plank brake under him, and he fell down into the floor, having his brains struck out by the rolling of that stone upon him? Or of Laurentius Medices, who having fitted a flesh-bait for Alexander Medices, and as he was greedily catching at it, being naked and disarmed, set a desperate villain, in the habit of a Masquer, to stab him with a Stilletto; and himself was shortly after stilletoed at Venice, by a suborned Traitor at a Masque, in the habit of a Whiffler? The ancient Romans glanced at this retaliation in their sacrifices to Ceres and Bacchus, to whom they offered Swine and Goats, because these of all creatures most annoy corn and wine: I will not charge your memory with more examples at this present than of Pope Alexander the sixth, who was poisoned in that very cup, through a mistake, and with that very potion, which he prepared for the Cardinals of the opposite faction: and of the conspirators against Julius Caesar in the Senate, who most of them were slain with the same daggers numero, wherewith they had stabbed him before: and of Saul, who fell upon that sword of his, which he sought to draw through David's bowels; as he here prophesieth of him: They shall cause him or his blood to run out like water by the hand of the sword, (viz.) his own sword.

[Doctr. 4] And they shall be a portion for Foxes.

Beasts were given to men for their food, but here men are given to beasts for a prey. A lamentable spectacle to see the vilest of all creatures ravenously feast themselves with the flesh of the noblest; and irrespectively hale and tear in pieces the casket, which whilome enclosed the richest jewel in the world. Is it not against the law of Nature, that men should become beasts meat; yea, the meat of such beasts as are carrion, and not man's meat? Questionlesse it is: yet Nature giveth her consent to this kind of punishment of unnatural crimes. For it is consonant to reason, that the law of Nature should be broken in their punishment, who brake it in their sin; that they who devoured men like beasts, should be devoured of beasts like men: that they, who with their hands offered unnatural violence to their Sovereign, should suffer the like by the claws and teeth of wild beasts, their slaves: that they, who bare a Fox in their breast in their life, should been tombed in the belly of a Fox at their death.

Saint Austin, expounding this whole prophecy of Christ, yieldeth a special reason of this judgment of God, by which the Jews were condemned to Foxes. The Jews, saith he, therefore killed Christ, that they might not lose their country; but indeed they therefore lost their country, because they killed Christ: because they refused the Lamb, and chose Herod the Fox before him, therefore by the just retribution of the Almighty, they were allotted to the Foxes for their portion. Notwithstanding this allusion of Saint Austin to Foxes in special, Jansen and other Expositors extend this grant in my Text to all wild beasts and fowls, which are, as it were, in patent with the Fox, and have full power and liberty given them to seize upon the corps of Traitors to God and their Country. But Foxes bear the name, because they abound in those parts, where was such store of them, that Sampson in a short time with a wet finger caught three hundred, so that upon the matter, they shall be a portion for Foxes, is all one with that doom in the Poet:

They shall be exposed to the teeth of every cruel beast, and to the bill and talons of every ravenous fowl.

I might insist upon the several branches of this Scripture with delight and profit, but because the occasion of our meeting at this present is rather to offer unto God the fruits of our devotion for his Majesty's and our enemies destruction, than to gather fruits of knowledge from Scripture for our instruction; I descend from the general explication of the whole, to the particular application of the parts: and first, I will show you how this prophecy, according to the several members thereof, was accomplished in Christ David's Lord, then in David the Lord's Christ, and last of all in King James our David.

Saint Austin, Saint Jerome, Arnobius, and almost all the ancient Interpreters of this prophetical Psalm, understand the letter spiritually of Christ; on the other side, Calvin, Musculus, Mollerus, and others understand the spirit literally of David. I know no reason why we may not spell them together, and of two make one perfect and complete interpretation of this Scripture. Wherefore to avoid vain jangling, where the golden bells of Aaron may be orderly rung, and distinctly heard; for the literal exposition, I accord with the later Interpreters, yet bear a part with the Ancients in their spiritual descant upon the ground of the letter; the rather, because David is a known type of Christ: and therefore by the law of contraries, Saul and his host of Satan or Antichrist, and their infernal troops; but especially, because (as Calvin piously observeth) that we never read of any blamed for drawing too much water out of the Well of life; so it is most certain, that we cannot offend in ascribing too much honor to the King of glory. Then take the cliffe as you please, the notes will follow accordingly; if you take it higher from Christ, thus the notes follow: They that seek my soul to destroy it, that is, Herod and Pilate, Scribes and Pharisees, Rulers and people that conspire against the Lord, and against his anointed, to take away his life from the earth, they I say shall go into the lowest parts of the earth; that is, the nethermost hell, without repentance: they shall make him run out like water; that is, Pilate, who in discontent was driven to slay himself; as also did Saul, to whom the letter pointeth: or, as we read in my text, They shall fall by the edge of the sword; that is, the Nation of the Jews shall fall by the sword of the Romans: who shall make such a slaughter of them at Jerusalem, where they crucified Christ, that the channels shall run with gore blood, and the streets be strowed with dead carcasses, left unburied for a prey to the fowls of heaven, and every ravenous beast: but the King, viz. the King of glory, and Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus, shall rejoice in God, and triumph at the right hand of his Father; and everyone that sweareth by him, and putteth his trust in him, shall glory in these his victories. But the mouth of all Jews and Gentiles, Turks and Infidels, Atheists and Idolaters, that belch out blasphemies against him, shall be stopped when he shall come in the glory of his Father, with his elect Angels, and sit in judgment upon quick and dead. Then at the sound of the last trump the earth shall tremble with the inhabitants, but thou O Christian shalt rejoice. When thy Lord comes to judge, the world shall roar hideously, all the kindreds of the earth shall smite their breasts; the most puissant Kings shall appear without their guard, panting for fear: Jupiter himself (the chief Idol of all the heathen) with all his offspring, shall be seen all in true fire: foolish Plato shall be brought with his disciples; Aristotle's sophistry shall stand him in no stead. Then thou poor and simple country swaine shalt leap for joy, and say, Behold my God who was crucified, behold the Judge who sometimes wrapped in swaddling clothes cried in a manger: this is the Carpenters son, this is he who borne in his mothers arms being God fled from man into Egypt: this he who was clad in purple, and crowned with thorns: see O Jew the hands which thou nailedst: view O Roman the side which thou diggedst with thy spear: behold O Jew the head which thou prickedst with thorns, now compassed with radiant beams: behold the face thou defiledst with spittle, shining brighter than the Sun: behold the hands thou woundedst with Iron nails, holding a rod of Iron, and bruising his enemies like a potters vessel: behold O Roman the naked side which thou piercedst with a spear, now guarded with a troupe of Angels with their polaxes: behold the body thou strippedst stark naked, clothed with light as with a garment. In a word, behold him whom thou esteemedst the scorn of the earth, made now the glory of the heavens, in a triumphant march, with millions of Saints and Angels, riding on bright clouds, as it were fiery chariots, through the air, to execute speedy vengeance upon all his enemies, and to take up all the elect with him into heaven: Etiam sic veni Domine Jesu; Even so come Lord Jesu, come quickly.

You have heard how sweet and heavenly the music is, if you take the highest cliffe from Christ; if you take the middle from David, thus the notes follow; They that seek my soul to destroy it, that is, my blood-thirsty enemies, shall go into the lowest parts of the earth; that is, either enter into their graves, or hide themselves in caves of the earth: they shall make him to run out like water; that is, cause Saul my capital and mortal enemy to spill his own blood, by falling upon his own sword.

And they shall be a portion for foxes. This clause of the prophecy was not fulfilled in Saul his person, nor his sons, for their flesh was burnt and their bones buried under a tree at Jabesh: but in his servants and soldiers, which mortally wounded on the mounts of Gilboa, and being not able to help themselves, nor having any to bury them after they had breathed out their last gasp, fell to the foxes share: and therefore David purposely altereth the number, saying not they shall cast him down, and he shall be a portion for foxes; but they shall be a portion for foxes, as in the truth of the story afterwards they fell to the foxes commons. Now after the death first of Saul, and the discomfiture of his royal army, and the overthrow afterwards of the Philistines, and destruction of all his enemies round about; King David, sitting safely and quietly in his throne, full of joy and comfort, breaketh forth into a Psalm of thanks-giving to God for his wonderful victories and strange deliverances, and all the loyal subjects of Judah and Israel bear a part with him in it: whereat all those that before had falsely traduced his person, or impugned his right to his crown, were put to silence and shame.

Thus have I set the tune in my text to the middle key also, and as you hear the music is sweet; if you will have the patience to hear it once more set to the lowest key, you will all perceive that every note in it conforteth not only with our voices, but our thoughts and affections at this present. I have shown you how this prophecy in my text was fulfilled in Christ, David's Lord, and secondly, in David the Lord's Christ: may it please you out of your love to him, to whose honor you have dedicated this feast, to stretch out your patience to the length of the hour, and I shall briefly exemplify the same in our Israel's David. To resume then the words of this Scripture, and by the parts of it to draw the lineaments of that narration, which shall serve for my conclusion. First, I will relate unto you the attempt of the conspirators the Earl Gowrie and Alexander Ruthen his brother, and their complices, by the occasion of these words, They that seek my soul to destroy it. Secondly, the event, by occasion of the words following, shall go to the lowest parts of the earth, &c.

They that seek my soul to destroy it. Were there ever any such? or are there any at this day? Doth he breathe that would go about to stop the breath which so many thousands draw? Doth the Sun give light to any that would go about to quench the light of Israel? can the earth bear any such an ungrateful and graceless varlet, whose conscience is burdened with so heavy and heinous a sin as Parricide in the highest degree; laying violent hands upon the Father of his country, whom for his clemency and wisdom the world at this day cannot parallel? Yes beloved, this hath been the lot of the best Princes that ever ware corruptible Crowns. Titus surnamed Delitiae humani generis, The darling of mankind, drew this lot; and Augustus before him, the mirror of mildness,

And David before them both, a man after God's own heart;

Moses the meekest Magistrate that ever drew the sword of Justice had a murmuring Core, and his Majesty a mutinous Gowrie, and a brother in iniquity, Ruthwen; both bearing as the hearts so the names of two ancient most infamous Rebels and Traitors, the one of Core, whom the earth swallowed up: the other of Ruthenius a desperate caitiff, that attempted a like villainy upon the person of Tiberius, to that which Ruthwen would have acted upon the person of King James.

• Nomen
• Omen

• Core
• Gowry

• Ruthenius
• Ruthwen

convenient rebus nomina saepe suis.

As their names were ominous, so their facts were abominable. It is pity it should be so, yet it is certain that it is so. A Prince may be hated by some, (wrongfully I grant) yet hated he may be though he hate no man; and that which is to be bewailed with bloody tears, he may have bloody treasons plotted against him, though his innocence be untainted with the effusion of the least drop of blood: for ambition is a sworn enemy to sovereignty, envy to eminency, liberty to law, disorder to justice, faction to peace, schism to unity, heresy to true religion: whereby it comes to pass that Princes, who are to right all men, are themselves most wronged of all men, by mis-information of their subjects demeanors towards them, and mis-construction of their actions, and proceedings, and affections also towards their subjects. You will yet say, be it that the actions of Princes are subject to censure, and their persons, though sacred, yet sometimes lie open to violence: howsoever, if they establish their throne with judgment, and support their scepter with equity, their innocence shall be a perpetual guard unto them, and the arm of the Almighty shall be a buckler of steel over them, and the love of subjects shall be a wall of brass about them; so that the enemy shall not be able to hurt them, the sons of wickedness shall not come near them. Notwithstanding all this, it pleaseth him, by whom Kings reign, either to make Princes to walk more humbly before him, and more warily before their subjects; or for the greater trial of their faith in greatest distresses, or clearer manifestation of his power in their delivery, to expose their persons to imminent dangers, and suffer them to be led to the brink of destruction, and to be entangled in the snares of death. How did he suffer Charles the fifth to ascend to the top of the Pantheon in Rome, and there to look out of a great gallery window, where there was a desperate villain set to take him up by the heels and throw him down headlong? How did he suffer that stain of the French Nobility to approach near Augustus in the dangerous passage of the Alps, with a purpose to justle him out of the narrow path into the steep of the hill, where it was imposble to stay himself? Was not Titus past all man's help, and given over for dead a thousand times, when scouting out with a few to spy the enemies campe, at the siege of Jerusalem, he fell unawares into an ambush, and was constrained to pass through a volly of darts and arrows, cast and shot at him, whereof some fell before him, some behind him, many on each side of him: yet by God's marvelous protection not one fastened on him? Was not Frederick the first at the brink of destruction by the river side, when a soldier took hold on him, and clasped about him to draw him with himself into the deep and drown him? Had not Parry the means and opportunity to parley with Queen Elizabeth of famous memory in her garden privately, with a dagger in his hand, and a dag charged? These and many other presidents of the like nature make me the less marvel that God should suffer Ruthwen, with a golden hook, (a pot full of outlandish coin) to draw his Majesty through divers chambers, which he still locked after them, into that dismal study which was more fearful than any Jesuits chamber of meditation; in which they shut up their desperate instruments to crack their brains, and fit them for horrid designs. For there are but pictures only of Devils, and Images of several kinds of death; but here were very Devils incarnate, and death it self. Books he saw none in this study, but those two mentioned by Suetonius, in which Caligula wrote the names of those men whose heads he meant to take off; calling the one of them, which was longer, gladium, the sword; the other, which was shorter, pugionem, the dagger. The subject he was now to meditate upon was a bloody assacinate, and the points he was to handle, no other than the sharp ends of swords and rapiers. Made then he was to believe that he should there take an outlandish man, with great store of treasure; but he found an armed man, ready to take away that from him which was more precious unto him than all the jewels in the world. Here we see what a sovereign care the Highest hath over sovereign Princes his vicegerents on earth, and what a terror sacred Majesty striketh into the hearts of barbarous and bloody traitors. The Italian varlet had not the power to lift at Charles the fifth: with a lift only he had thrown him out of the window. The French miscreant had not the power to push at Augustus: with a push only he had broken his neck down the steep Alps. Parry had not the power to draw the pin of his fire-lock: upon the moving but of a pin the dag had gone off in his hand, and the Queen had been shot through the heart. Parry 's dag fell out of his hand, and Henderson's dagger stuck in his hand; he could no more stir it than the soldier at Minternum, who drew upon Gaius Marius, but was not able to strike a stroke, nor make a thrust at him.

Howbeit, though Henderson's faint heart and benumbed hand would not serve him to act his bloody part; yet the Devil so hardened Ruthwen, that he took out the other dagger, and set the point thereof at his Majesty's royal breast. And now if ever any lay inter sacrum & saxum, between the axe and the block, or 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , upon the edge of the razor, or in ipsis fati faucibus, in the very chops of destiny, or jaws of death it self; at the point lay the hope then, and now the joy and life of us all. Alone, in a remote place, his servans and attendants barred from him by many doors locked and bolted, himself destitute of all weapons, between two Conspirators, with a poynard bent to his heart. O King live forever, is not thy God whom thou servest able to deliver thee from this peril of death? Could he not snatch thee out of the paw of the Lion? Could he not have struck down both the Conspirators dead to the floor with a thunderbolt from heaven, or at the least taken away the use of Ruthwens limbs, drying up that hand that presumed to touch the apple of his own eye, the sacred person of our Sovereign? With a word he could, but it seemed best to his all-sweetly-disposing providence wonderfully to preserve his Majesty, yet without a miracle. For if he had rescued him by any such miraculous means as I named before, there had been no occasion offered, nor place left for his Majesty's faithful servants to stake their lives for their Master: neither had the world taken such notice of his Majesty's rare gift of eloquence, by the force whereof, like another Antony, intentos gladios jugulo retudit, he stayed the Traitors hand, and delayed the intended blow: first, clearing his own innocence from the aspersion of blood in the execution of the Traitors father, by course of justice, in his Majesty's minority; then recounting to him the many princely favors he had conferred upon his brother, himself, and all their kindred: but especially laying before his eyes the horror of the guilt of embruing his hands in the blood of the Lord's anointed; which said he, if my children and subjects should not revenge, the stones out of the wall, and the beams of the timber, conscious of such a villainy, would execute vengeance upon thee for so unnatural, barbarous, and bloody an act. In fine he promised in the word of a King, pardon for all the violence he had hitherto offered him, if he would yet relent and desist from his murderous intent and attempt of spilling royal blood. At which words Ruthwens heart, though of Adamant, began to relent and give in; in such sort, that he gave his Majesty a time to breathe, and offer up prayers with strong cries to the God of his salvation, who heard him in that he feared, as you shall hear anon. In the interim, Ruthwen consults with the Earl Gowrie his brother, and according to the Latin proverb, the asp sucks poison from the viper, wherewith he swelleth, and brusling up himself, flies at his Majesty the second time to sting him to death, and wrapping about him, begins to bind his royal hands; who nothing appalled at the hideous shape of death within a fingers breadth of his heart, answers like himself, that he was borne free, and would die free and unbound: forthwith he unlooseth his hands, and with one of them clasping the Traitors sword, with the other he grapples with him, and, after much struggling, his Majesty draweth the Traitor to the window, by which it so pleased God to dispose for his Majesty's safety, that some of his Majesty's servants passed at that very instant, and both heard and saw in part, in what distress his Majesty was, and made all possible speed to rescue him: but before they could force a way through so many doors, the King by power from above got the Traitor under him, and drew him by main force to the top of the stair-case; where soon after the Kings servants, forcibly breaking through all bars, bolts and locks, met with him, and throwing him down stairs sent him with many wounds to his own place, verifying the letter of this prophecy in the confusion of our David's enemies, qui quaerunt praecipitium animae meae, they which seek the downfall of my soul, they shall go or rather tumble down with a witness. And so I pass from the Traitors attempt to the event and happy catastrophe, on the Kings part, of this not feigned Interlude.

They shall go down. By this time as I intimated but now, the Kings servants partly made, and partly found their way into the study, rushing in to save the life of their Sovereign; where they had no sooner dispatched one of the brothers Alexander Ruthwen, but the other brother the Earl, with seven of his servants well appointed, encountreth them. The skirmish grows hot between them; these fighting for their lives, they for their Sovereign; these animated by hope, they whet on by desperation, After many wounds given and received on both sides, they of the Kings part, according to the words of the tenth verse, cast him down; or, as it is in the Hebrew, make his blood spin or run out like water on the ground: his, I say, the arch-Traitor the Earl Gowrie, who may be compared to Saul David's chief enemy; whose downfall the spirit in the pronoun in the singular number him pointeth at, in many respects, but especially in this, that he took counsel of the Devil to murder the Lord's Anointed. For as Saul conferred with the Witch at Endor before he put himself into the field which he watered with his blood, so the Earl Gowrie, before he entered into this Acheldamah field of blood, pitched by himself, he made the Devil of his counsel, and was found with many magic characters about him when he fell by the edge of the sword.

If any man question how it could so fall out that Alexander Ruthwen, being more nimble, strong, and expert in wrestling, and having many ways advantage on his Majesty, should not throw him down, or get him under him; I answer out of the words immediately going before my text, dextra Jehovae sustentabat eum, the right hand of the Lord supported him the King: by whose special providence it was ordered, that his Majesty's servants should pass by the window at the very moment when his Majesty looked out; as also, that some of them should find that blind way by the turn-peck into the study which the Earl Gowrie caused to be new made for this his devilish enterprise. Therefore his Majesty, as soon as the bloody storm was blown over, kneeled down in the midst of all his servants, and offered up the calves of his lips to the God of his life; promising a perpetual memory of this his delivery, and professing that he assured himself that God had not preserved him so wonderfully for naught, but that he reserved him for some greater work and service to his Church, as we see this day. There remaineth yet one clause in my text; And the mouth of everyone that speaketh lies shall be stopped: and answerably an appendix to the narration of the conspiracy of the Gowries, for stopping the mouths of all that shall call in question the truth of that relation. Which besides the conscience of his Majesty, the deposition of his servants, the public justice of the Parliament of Scotland, the solemn piety and devotion of the Churches of great Britain and Ireland, was sixteen years after the plotting thereof, and eight years after the acting confirmed by the public, free, and voluntary confession of George Sprot, arraigned and executed at Edinburgh for it.

Thus have I fitted each member of this prophecy to the several parts of the story of his Majesty's deliverance as on this day: between which there is such good correspondency, that the prophesy seemeth text to the story, and the story a commentary on the prophesy. Observe I beseech you the harmony of them, and let your heart dance with joy at every strain.

1. The first is, They that seek my soul to destroy it, shall go down, &c. This was exemplified, and according to the letter accomplished in Alexander Ruthwen, who sought the ruin of our David, and was himself thrown down the stairs, and after part of him into the lowest parts of the earth, a deep pit, into which his bowels were cast.

2. The second is, They shall cast him down by the edge of the sword. This was accomplished in the Earl Gowrie, whom the Kings servants smote in the study with the edge of the sword, that he died and fell at their feet.

3. The third is, And they shall be a portion for foxes; that is, lie unburied for a prey to the fowls of heaven, and beasts of the earth: this was accomplished in all the Traitors, who were according to the Laws of the kingdom hanged, drawn and quartered, and their quarters set up upon the most eminent parts of the City, where the fowls preyed upon them till they dropped down to the ground, and were made an end of by some ravenous beasts.

4. The fourth is, The King shall rejoice in God. This was literally verified in our King, who joyful after he was plucked out of the jaws of death, gave public thanks to God, and ascribed the whole glory of his deliverance and victory over his enemies to his gracious goodness; and in memory of this so great a benefit, commanded this feast, which we now celebrate, to be solemnly kept in all his Dominions yearly.

5. The fifth is, And all that swear by him, that is, all which worship the true God, the God of our Jacob; or all that swear to him, that is, allegiance to his Majesty, shall glory. This, as it was accomplished in other congregations, so is it in us here present, assembled to glory in the Lord for this wonderful delivery of their then, and now also our Sovereign.

6. The sixth and last is, And the mouth of all that speak lies shall be stopped. This was also fulfilled by the means of George Sprot, who by his pious behavior, and penitent confession at his death, and a sign which he promised to show after his breath should be stopped, and accordingly performed (after he had hanged a great while, clapping his hands above his head) stopped the mouth of all such as before spake lies against the truth of the precedent relation. To the lively expression whereof, I have borrowed, as you see, David's princely characters, and set the press, placing each letter in his rank, and part in his order. What remaineth but that I pray to God by his spirit to stamp them in our hearts, and so imprint them in our memories, that he that runneth may read our thankfulness to God for this deliverance, and confidence in his future protection of our Sovereigns person, and love and loyalty to his Majesty, whom God hath so strangely saved from the sword, to save the sword from us; that in peace and safety he might receive and sway the Scepter of these Kingdoms of great Britain and Ireland. Which long may he, with much prosperity and honor, to the glory of God, and propagation of the truth, liberty, and safety of the Church and Common-wealth, exceeding joy and comfort of all his friends, and remarkable shame and confusion of his implacable enemies. So be it. Deo patri, &c.

THE LORD PROTECTOR OF PRINCES; OR DEUS ET REX, GOD AND THE KING. A Sermon appointed to be preached before his Grace at Croydon, August 5. 1620. THE SIXTH SERMON.

THat manifold, or (to make a new compound to translate a compound) in the Original multivarious wisdom and goodness of God, which hath illustrated the firmament with variety of stars, some more, some less glistering and glorious; enamell'd the meadowes with choice of flowers, some more, some less beautiful and fragrant; enriched the sands of the Sea with pearl, some more, some less orient; and veins of the earth with metals, some more, some less precious: hath also decked and garnished the Calendar of the Church with variety of Feasts, some more, some less holy and solemn. You may observe a kind of Hierarchy among them; some have a preeminence over the rest, which we call greater and higher Feasts. Among which this day challengeth his place, on which we refresh the memory of his Majesty's rescue out of the profane and impious hands of the Earl Gowry and Alexander Ruthwen. A pair of unnatural brethren; brethren in nature, and brethren in a most barbarous and unnatural attempt against their Sovereign the Lord's anointed: brethren by blood, and brethren also in blood: who by the just judgment of God cleansed that study with their own blood, which they would have forever stained by the effusion there of the Royal blood of the most innocent Prince that ever sat on that or this Throne: whom almighty God seemeth not so much to have preserved from those imminent dangers he then escaped, as reserved for these invaluable blessings we now enjoy by the prorogation of his life; enlarging of his Scepter and propagation of his Issue. In his life the life of our hope is revived; in his Scepter the Scepter of Christ is extended; in his stock the root of Jesse is propagated, and shall, I hope, flourish to the end of the world. For this cause the King shall rejoice, &c. he shall rejoice in thee, we in him; he in thy strength, we in his safety; both in thy salvation. Here is God assisting, and the King trusting: God saving, and the King rejoicing: God blessing, and the King praising: lastly, the King desiring, and God satisfiing his desires to the full, as you may see through the whole Psalm. In this verse you may discern three remarkable conjugations or couples.

• 1. God is joined with the King.
• 2. Strength with confidence.
• 3. Salvation with exceeding great joy. And thus they depend each of other.

• 1. The King of God.
• 2. Confidence of strength.
• 3. Joy of salvation.

• 1. God exalteth the King.
• 2. Strength begetteth confidence.
• 3. Salvation bringeth with it exceeding joy.

• 1. God is above the King.
• 2. Salvation is above strength.
• 3. Exceeding joy above confidence.

If the King seek God, in him he shall find strength, and in his strength salvation, and in his salvation exceeding great joy. Mark the word King; it standeth as a cliffe before a song, which directeth the singers how to tune the notes, and lift up or depress their voices. If the King stand here as a lower cliffe for David, then strength is aid, salvation victory, rejoicing thanks-giving: but if the word King be set as an higher cliffe for Christ, then strength here is omnipotency, salvation redemption of mankind, rejoicing the exaltation of the human nature to the highest degree of celestial glory and happiness. This heavenly Manna of Evangelical doctrine which the Fathers find within the golden pot, that is, the inward sense of the words; the Jewish Rabbins note to be carved in the outside of the letter: to speak yet somewhat plainer, that mind and meaning which the Christian Expositors make of the words, by referring them to the truth whereof David was a type, they gather from the very characters, for 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 transposed, is 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the Anagram as it were of the word which signifieth to rejoice is Mesiach, that is, Christ, or the anointed.

Now the title of King is attributed to Christ in Scriptures sometimes absolutely, sometimes with additions; but such as make him more absolute, exalting his crown as far above all corruptible crowns as the heaven is above the earth. For his style given by the sacred Heralds is King immortal, King of Heaven, King of righteousness, Prince of peace, Lord of life, Lord of quick and dead, Lord of all, King of Kings, and Lord of Lord's. This heavenly crown in glory, as much obscuring the luster of earthly Diadems as the Sun doth the least blinking star, belongeth to our head Christ Jesus by a threefold right:

• 1. Of birth.
• 2. Of donation.
• 3. Of conquest.

His birth giveth it him; for he is the first born of the Father, and therefore heir of all things, and Lord of all.

By gift also he hath it. Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

It is his also by conquest, for he hath overcome the world, John 16.33. he hath conquered hell and death, and hath the keys of both, Rev. 1.18. If you demand where his throne is, I answer, above at the right hand of his Father, Psal. 110.1. below in the hearts of all the faithful, whom he ruleth by the Scepter of his word.

Thus much for the cliffe, I set now to the notes, which are either

• 1. In rule.
• 2. In space.

1 The note in space I take from the coherence of this Psalm with the former; the last words of the former Psalm are Salvum fac Regem, Lord save the King, or Save Lord, let the King hear when we call: the first of this, Exultabit Rex in salute, The King shall rejoice in thy salvation. That which there the Church prayeth for the King, here the King praises God for. The Church prayeth God there, ver. 1. The name of the God of Jacob defend thee, send thee help, and strengthen thee out of Zion. And ver. 4. grant thee thy hearts desire, and fulfill all thy mind: and doth not the King in this Psalm trace the former footsteps, and follow the same notes in this Psalm of thanks-giving? The King shall rejoice in thy strength, ver. 1. And, thou hast given him his hearts desire, ver. 2. What instance I in divers Psalms? In the same Psalm, for the most part, in the beginning the Prophet soweth in tears, and in the end reapeth in joy; in the beginning he complaineth, in the ending he praiseth; in the beginning he cries for sorrow, in the end he sings for joy; in the beginning we have a storm of passion, in the end the sunshine of God's favor. The countenance of the Prophet, drawn to the life in this book of Psalms, resembleth the picture of Diana at Delphi, quae intrantibus tristis, exeuntibus hilaris videbatur, the face whereof seemed to frown upon all at their coming in, but to smile upon them at their going out. Such a copy of David's countenance we have Psal. 6. lowering at the first verse, Lord rebuke me not in thine anger, &c. but clearing up at ver. 8. Depart from me ye workers of iniquity, for the Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping. How dolefully doth the 22. Psalm begin? My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? but how sweetly doth it conclude from ver. 22. to the end? I will declare thy Name to my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee, &c. O the wonderful power and efficacy of prayer, which in a moment pierceth the clouds, and bringeth back a blessing before we can imagine it is gone out of our lips! Like a piece of Ordnance highly mounted it battreth the walls of heaven before the report thereof be heard on earth. No natural agent produceth any effect before it self be produced: nothing bringeth forth before it self is brought forth: yet prayer worketh oftentimes before it is made, and bringeth forth some good effect before it self is perfectly conceived: for God understandeth the thoughts before the notions are framed; he heareth the heart dictating, before the tongue, like the pen of a ready writer, copieth out our requests.

Now if the prayer of one righteous man prevaileth so much with the Omnipotent, how much more the united prayers of the whole Church? If one trumpet sound so loud in the ears of the Almighty, how much more a consort of all the silver trumpets of Zion sounded together? If one sigh is of force to drive our bark to the wished haven, how much more a gale of sighs breathed from a million of God's afflicted servants? What judgment cannot so many hands lifted up bear off from us? what blessing are they not able to pull down from heaven? Wherefore, as the whole Synagogue with one mouth prayed God for their King, so according to Saint Paul's precept, the whole Christian Church offered up their united devotions for the Roman Emperor. The matter and form of their prayer is set down by Tertullian; With hands spread abroad, because innocent; and bare head, because not blushing, we are always praying for all Emperors, that God would grant unto them a long life, a happy reign, a safe house, victorious armies, a faithful council, a loyal people, and a peaceable world. And if according to Saint Cyprians passionate admonition we would join publicly our prayers to their prayers, and our tears to their tears, and our sighs to their sighs, who groan under the heavy yoke of heathenish or antichristian tyranny; who knoweth whether God would not change the face of Christendom, and not only wipe blood from the body, but also all tears from the eyes of his most disconsolate Spouse?

Thus much of the notes in space; the notes in rule are specially

1. That the only security of Princes and States is in the strength of the Almighty.

2. That God holdeth a special hand over Sovereign Princes.

3. That Princes mightily defended and safely preserved by the arm of God must thankfully acknowledge this singular favor, and deliver their deliverances to after ages, that the children yet unborne may praise the Lord as we do this day.

1. That Princes and states have no safe repose but under the shadow of the Almighty, I need not allege any one Psalm for proof: it is the burden almost of every song. Not a string in David's harp but soundeth out this tune, briefly, happy are they that put their trust in him. Thou Lord only makest me to dwell in safety. Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the Name of the Lord our God. The King trusteth in the Lord, and through the mercy of the most High he shall not be moved. I will not trust in my bow, neither shall my sword save me. In God we boast all the day long: and praise thy Name forever. Selah. Upon this note how excellent doth he divide? The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer: my God, my strength in whom I will trust, my buckler, the horn of my salvation, and my high tower. It is not the golden Scepter we see Princes lean upon that supporteth them, it is the loyalty of their loving subjects which beareth them up: withdraw this golden Scepter from them they cannot stand. The best guard of a Prince, saith Pliny, is his own innocence, the best defense and munition to need none, for arms are provoked by arms; neither can a Prince be guarded from his own guard but by his buckler of faith, and the right hand of the Almighty: Dextra mihi deus est, My right hand is my god saith he in the Poet falsely and blasphemously: but David truly and most religiously, The Lord is the strength of my right hand. Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the City, the watchman waketh but in vain. Except the Lord protect the royal person of a Prince, the States-man counselleth, the Captain fighteth, the Guard waiteth but in vain: no magazine of treasure, no arsenall of armor, no fleet by Sea, no forces by land, no alliance with neighbor Princes, no allegiance of subjects can secure their persons for a moment.

Those in the bath who forsake their guides and will venter to go of themselves are often drowned: and travellers who refuse or distrust their convoy when they pass through thievish places, dismissing them or stealing away from them, for the most part by escaping seeming danger, fall into certain danger: so it fareth with them who rely not upon the protection of the Almighty, but seek other help, aid and support, from the arm of flesh, or the brain of worldly Politicians. Cursed is he who maketh flesh his arm, and trusteth not in the Lord his God. To the truth of which verdict the greatest Potentates in the world have subscribed with their own blood. Nebuchadnezzar trusted in his City Babel, and it became his Babel, that is, his confusion. Xerxes trusted in his multitude of men, his multitude encumbered him. Darius in his wealth, his wealth sold him. Eumenes in the valor of his regiment called the Silver-shields, his Silver-shields bound him and delivered him to Antigonus. Roboam in his young Counsellers, his young Counsellers lost him the ten Tribes. Caesar in his old Senators, the Senators conspired against him. Domitian in his guard, his guard betrayed him. Adrian in his Physicians, his Physicians cast him away: Multitudo medicorum perdidit Adrianum Imperat orem. These all leaned upon Egyptian reeds, which not only brake under them, and so deceived their trust; but also ran in to their hands and sides, and wounded them. By whom let us all learn to distrust all means of trust and confidence, save in the continuance of God's favor, and the support of his power and Grace. St. Prosper out of St. Augustine happily concludeth this point; Whosoever standeth upon himself standeth not; he who is confident in his own support, by this his arrogancy loseth the support of true confidence; opinion of self-sufficiency inferreth a deficiency from him in whom is all our sufficiency.

I have shown you the pictures of those who have suffered shipwreck by making worldly policy their Pilot, and committing their body and goods to those brittle barks which I before mentioned: behold now the cheerful faces of those who in a deluge of troubles have yet arrived to the fair havens, being steered by the compass of God's Word, and carried safe in the ark of divine protection. How many mutinies against Moses? how many stratagems against Joshua? how many attempts against David? what preparations against Hezekiah? what combinations against Jehoshaphat? what armies against Constantine? what fulminations from Rome, what Armadoes from Spain, what poisons, what dags and daggers from Traitours at home against Queen Elizabeth? Yet all these were compassed as it were with a wall of brass, and castle of Diamond, the Divine protection. Abijah and his people joining battle with Jeroboam smote him and all Israel, and slew five hundred thousand, and took Bethel with the Towns thereof, and Jeshanah with the Towns thereof, and Ephraim with the Towns thereof; and the children of Israel, though far more in number, were at that time brought under, and the children of Judah prevailed. Why? Because they were better soldiers? or better armed? or led by a more expert General? or because they had advantage of the place? Nay, rather they were every way disadvantaged. For Jeroboam caused an ambushment to come about behind them: so they were before Judah and the ambushment was behind them. To put you out of doubt, the holy Ghost yieldeth a reason of Judah's prevailing, because they relied upon the Lord God of their fathers. St. Austin parallels this wonderful victory with the like that fell out about his time. When Rhadagesus King of the Goths with a puissant army environed Rome, and by reason of the small preparations in the City no hope could be expected from man, how did God perform the trust by his Saints reposed in him, and fought for them in this their greatest extremity, and so discomfited the enemies, that in one day an army of a hundred thousand was utterly defeated, not a man of the Roman side being slain, nor so much as wounded? God loveth those best who trust him most, and he saveth them above means who hope in him above hope: as did Abraham the father of the faithful. Believe him who spake it out of his own experience: They that trust in the Lord shall be as mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth forever. He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most high, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night: nor for the arrow that flieth by day: nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness: nor for the destruction that wasteth at noon-day. A thousand shall fall by thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee. There shall no evil befall thee, nor any plague come nigh thy dwelling. Salvation belongeth to the Lord. It is he that giveth salvation unto Kings who delivereth David his servant from the hurtful sword. Why is the accent upon Kings? as likewise in the words of my text, The King shall rejoice in thy strength, exceeding glad shall He be of thy salvation. Doth not the wing of God's provident care extend to all his Children? are they not all safe under his feathers? They are all; yet Kings are nearest to his breast, they receive more warmth from him, he hath a special care of them, according to my second observation:

[Obser. 2] That God taketh Princes into his peculiar protection. He keepeth them as the Signet of his finger, because in them the Image of his Sovereign Majesty most brightly shineth. It concerneth him in honor to maintain them who are his Vicegerents upon earth. It concerneth him in love to defend the defenders of the faith, and cherish the nursing Fathers of his dearest Spouse. It concerneth him in wisdom to save them who are the breath of so many thousand nostrils; to keep them whole who are the bond which holdeth together the whole Common-wealth. In the danger of a King is the hazard of a State, in the hazard of a State the ruin of a Church, in the ruin of a Church God's honor lieth in the dust. The heathen Poet glanced at this truth, when everywhere he styleth Kings 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , as it were bred up and fostered in the bosom of Jove, or rather Jehovah. Keep me, saith David, as the apple of thine eye: Who can endure the least prick in the apple of the eye? no more will God abide his anointed to be so much as touched: Nolite tangere unctos meos.

Is God so tender over Princes safety, and ought not they to be as tender of his honor? Is he so gracious to them, and ought not they be as grateful to him? The planets that receive more light from the Sun, reflect more back again: the earth that receiveth rain from heaven, returneth it back in vapor: Cessat decursus donorum si cesset recursus gratiarum: [Obser. 3] God will shut the windows of heaven, and restrain the golden showers of his blessings, if we send not up the sweet vapors and exhalations of our thanks-giving and praise. He forfeiteth his tenure who refuseth to do his homage, be it but the tendering of a red rose in acknowledgement of service. Such a kind of homage Almighty God requireth of us for all we hold of him, the red roses of our lips, and the sweet savor of our devout meditations. Verily he deserveth to lose his garden who will not afford his Landlord a flower. Si ingratum dixeris, omnia dixeris; if you call a man unthankful you need say no more, for you cannot say worse: whosoever deserveth to be branded with a mark of Ingratitude, hath his conscience feared with a hot Iron. For what is Religion, but Gratitude to God; Piety, but Gratitude to Parents; Loyaltie, but Gratitude to Princes; Charity and friendship, but gratitude to our neighbor. Now of all men Princes are most obliged to be thankful to God, because the beams of his favor shine most bright in their Crowns and Scepters, he sets them in his own seat of authority, investeth them with his own robes of majesty, armeth them with his own sword of justice, supporteth them with his own Scepter of power, adorneth them with his own Diademe of royal dignity, and graceth them with his own style of Deity, Ego dixi dii estis, I have said ye are God's, and all of you are children of the most High. Above all therefore Princes ought to be most grateful to God, because God hath placed them in that high condition, that all other owe duty and thankful service to them, and they to him alone. Thanks are not thanks-worthy if they flote only in the mouth for a time, and spring not continually from the heart. That gratitude is grateful and acceptable to God and men, whose root is in the heart, and blossoms in the tongue, and fruits in the hands; whose root is love, and blossoms praises, and fruits good works. The root in the heart cannot be seen of any but God, the blossoms in the lips are blown away with a breath, but the fruits in the hands are more lasting. Wherefore Noah was not contented after he and his family were saved from the deluge to offer up a sweet smelling sacrifice of thanks-giving upon the Altar of his heart; but he leaveth behind him an Altar of stone, Jacob an house to God, Joshua a Trophey, Solomon a Temple, the Centurion a Synagogue, Veronica a statue of brass, Constantine many Churches and Hospitals, Paula a magnificent Monastery at Bethlehem, where our Lord was borne. The Heathen after they had escaped shipwreck hung up their votivas tabulas to Neptune. After victory, besides supplications per omnia pulvinaria deorum, they put garlands upon the Images of their gods, and left the chief spoils taken in war in the Temple of Mars. The Jews by the commandment of God reserved a golden pot of Manna in the Ark, in memory of that Manna which fell in the Wilderness. In a thankful acknowledgement of the deliverance of their first borne in Egypt, they offered every first borne to God: and to eternize the memorial of their passage out of Egypt, and freedom from servitude, they altered their Calendar, and made that month in which God by Moses delivered them out of the house of bondage the beginning of their months.

According to which religious presidents our gracious King, being as upon this day pulled out of the paw first of the Bear, and then of the Lion and his seven claws, hath erected a lasting, living, and which is more, a speaking monument of his thankfulness to God, by appointing the feast we now keep to preserve from oblivion his Majesty's wonderful preservation on this day from imminent destruction. When a motion was made in the Senate of dedicating a statue of massy gold to the honor of Germanicus, Tiberius the Emperor opposed it, but upon a very plausible pretence, that Images of brass and gold are subject to many casualties; they may be stolen away, they may be defaced and battered, foul indignities and scorns be put upon them. Those are the true Statues of virtue and Altars of fame which are set up in men's minds: such Altars hath our Sovereign erected in the hearts of all his loving subjects, upon which we offer this day throughout all his dominions the sacrifice of praise and thanks-giving for his Majesty's marvelous deliverance, unparalleled in our age. One day shall tell another, and one night shall proclaim it to another what great things the Lord did upon this day for his Anointed, whereat we rejoice. How was his Majesty wrapped over and over in the snares of death, when under color of taking a Seminary Priest (as he was made believe) newly arrived with a pot full of golden seeds to sow rebellion and treason in his Kingdom, he was led by Alexander Ruthwen through so many chambers into that study which was a long time before appointed for the stage whereon to act that bloody tragedy, whose catastrophe was as happy to the King and Kingdom, as dismal and fatal to the principal Actors. If ever study might be rightly termed according to the Latin name armarium, this was it; for it was not musaeum, but campus Martius, not a students treasury, but a traitors armory: here he findeth but two Authors, and they should both have been Actors. Instead of the gold which was promised, here he seeth Iron and steel, and no strange coin as he was borne in hand, but his own, I mean the cross daggers, not stamped on metal, but ready to be driven into his sacred breast, and sheathed in his bowels. Well might the King here cry upon Philo as Croesus did upon Solon when he stood on the pile to be burned, and the fire was kindled at the bottom: O Philo, Philo, I find thy words to be gospel, though thou wert an unbelieving Jew. Mans extremist necessity is God's chiefest opportunity: then cometh help from heaven when the earth is at a stand, and man at his wits end. What hope was here from man? whence could the King expect any help being unarmed, unattended, unguarded, between two Traitors (as Christ between two thieves) with the point of a dagger at his heart, in that dark room? Whence or how should there break in any light of comfort from any the least chinke? Where should his hope cast anchor? Upon his servants and train? But besides many doors, locks, bolts and bars between them and his Majesty, most of them by the Earl Gowry upon a false alarm were sent out of doors to post after him in the field. Upon the Traitor himself? But his respectlesse and barbarous carriage, his desperate speeches, his execrable oaths, his bloody looks, his sparkling eyes, and glistering poynard drawn threatened nothing put present death. Upon himself? But alas he had no weapon defensive or offensive, and now the sign was at the heart, I mean the daggers point at his breast. O the dread of sacred Majesty! O the bulwark of innocence! O the power of eloquence! O the force of conscience! which though they could not blunt the point of the Traito • dagger, yet they dulled the edge of his malice for a time. When a scholar of St. John the Evangelist, misled by ill company, had turned to a Ruffian, and common hackster, and robber by the high way, and drew at his master; upon a word only, spoken to him by St. John, he relents, flings away his weapon, falls down upon his knees, craveth pardon with tears, and promiseth forever to abandon his wicked course of life. So powerful is the ministry of the word and mighty in operation, so reverend is the calling of the dispencers of God's mysteries, that the naming only of a dead Preacher M ^r. Rollock preserved for a time the life of our Sovereign. Ruthwen cannot endure to hear that the soul of Master Rollock should accuse him before Christ's tribunal, for defiling the doctrine of the Gospel which he taught him, by the blood spilled by him of the Lord's Anointed. His heart gives in, and he withdraweth himself for a while, and thereby giveth his Majesty time to breathe, and means to cause the study window to be opened, at which entered some light of comfort. Sed urget eadem fortuna quae caepit; his Majesty must yet bear a worse brunt. For like as a Toad, being eased of his swelling for a time by eating of a planten leaf, if he meet with a Spider afterwards receiveth new poison, and swelleth more than before: even so Alexander meeting with the Earl Gowry his brother, (who was the Spider that spun all the web of this treason, which within a few hours was swept down and himself in it with the besom of destruction ) receiveth new poison from him, and now is so big with malice and treason that he is ready to break. In therefore he comes again to the study with two rapiers, and first binding himself by oath to bereave his Majesty of his life, he offereth to bind his royal hands. But the King putting on the resolution of the Orator, If we must die let us die as free men, looseneth his hands, and fastening upon the Traitors hand and sword grappleth with him, and by main force drew him to the window (a little before opened) whence by speech and signs he made known to his faithful servants, at that instant passing under the window, how things stood with him, and how near he was to utter ruin by treacherous villainy. As soon as they heard his Majesty's voice they made all possible speed to rescue their master; yet before they could force the way through so many doors, locks and bars between them and their immured Sovereign, the light of all Israel had in all likelihood been extinguished, but that one of the Kings servants by the secret conduct of divine providence lighted upon the false door opening to the stair case, which he had no sooner got up, but he seeth the King on the ground, and the Traitor grappling with him, whom after he had loosened from the King, with many wounds he tumbled down the stairs to receive his fatal blow from two other of his Majesty's servants, who by this time had found the blind way leading to the turnepecke. And thus was the first act of this bloody tragedy ended by the exit or going out of the first Actor Alexander Ruthwen, first out of that stage, and soon after of this world. The next act though more bloody yet was by so much the less dreadful, because the King by his servants, velut homerica nube tectus, was saved out of murders way. Now his Majesty's honorable attendance must prove their valor, and testify their loyalty by as many mouths as they received wounds in that hot skirmish, wherein their Antagonists had the advantage of all things save the cause: double they were in number, better appointed of weapons, and more acquainted with the place. For the Earl Gowry (like the man possessed in the Gospel, which walked through dry places, and took to him seven spirits worse than himself ) armed himself, and took seven of his servants with him, more hardy and desperate than himself, and finding his brother newly slain, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , was so enraged with fury and revenge, that he sweareth at his entry into the chamber that not a man of them should scape, calling them by his own name Traitors. Here malice and love, fury and courage, treachery and loyalty, villainy and piety try it out at the point of the sword, and the combat is soon ended by the death of the Arch-Traitor. Upon whose fall the hearts of the rest fail, and they are now easily driven out of the room, and fresh aid cometh to the King by the rest of his train, who by this time had broken down all the doors, and made a passage into the study, where now they find the King safe, and the Earl Gowry lying dead at his feet. Whereupon they all fell upon their knees, and praised the mighty God of Jacob, who giveth salvation to Kings, and then had delivered his servant James from the peril of the sword: then were the words of my text verified, The King shall rejoice in thy strength, O Lord, exceeding glad shall he be of thy salvation. Then, if ever, our King joyed in thy strength, and in thy salvation excessively rejoiced. And not long after the words following ( ver. 3.) were fulfilled in him; Thou preventedst him with blessings of goodness, and thou didst set a Crown of pure gold upon his head, viz. the Crown of England; which shortly after fell unto him, and hath ever since flourished upon his head: and so Lord may it still till he changeth this his corruptible crown with an incorruptible, and his mortal state with an immortal, purchased for him and all of us by the death and passion of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit be rendered all glory, honor, praise and thanks-giving now and forever. Amen.

PANDORA'S BOXE; OR, THE CAUSE OF ALL EVILS AND MISERY. A Sermon preached before the high Commission in his Graces Chapel at Lambeth. THE SEVENTH SERMON.

I Should tremble to rehearse this text in your ears, if there were not comfort in it as well as terror, joy as sorrow, help as calamity, salvation as destruction. But you may easily discern in it a double glass set before us; in the one we may see our hurt, in the other our help; in the one Israel fallen, in the other raised up; in the one Adam and all his posterity wounded by a grievous fall from the Tree of knowledge, and weltering in their own blood, in the other healed and washed by Christ's blood; in the one destruction from within, (Thou hast destroyed thyself O Israel) in the other salvation from above; (but in me is thy help.) In the Original 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 it hath destroyed thee, or one hath destroyed thee, or thy destruction O Israel, or O Israel thy utter ruin and desolation. An abrupt and imperfect sentence, to be made up with something that goeth before, or to be gathered from that which followeth after, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 but or for in me is thy help.

There were never pictures held in greater admiration than those of Timanthes, and they for this especially, that they exhibited more to the understanding than to the eye, intimating more than was expressed, and presenting always somewhat to the conceit which could not by colors be represented to the sight. And for the like reason, those strains of Rhetoric most take the wise, and affect the judicious ear, which express more by expressing less, the sentence being broken off in the midst, to show the force of violent passion which bereaveth us on the sudden both of sense and speech. The Musicians also in their way tickle the ear by a like grace in music to that figure in speech by unexpected stops and rests, making a kind of Aposiopesis and harmonicall Ellipsis. Surely as the broken joints and maimed limbs of men uncovered much move us to compassion; so the imperfect and maimed members of sentences, uttered in anger or grief, are aptest both to signify and to move passion. Such is that broken speech of Joash the King concerning Elisha, over whose face he wept and said, O my father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof. And that of David, My soul is sore troubled, but thou O Lord how long! And the like of our Savior, If thou hast known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things that belong to thy peace. And semblable thereunto is this in my text, Shikethka, Jisrael perdidit te, or perditio tua, it hath undone thee, or thy ruin O Israel. For those words (ex te) which we find in many latin copies are added by the Translator to fill up the breach in the sentence: in the Hebrew there is a verbal Ellipsis or defect, which expresseth a real Ellipsis or utter failing of Israel's strength, and a figurative Ellipsis and seeming deficiency in God himself, through a deep taking to heart of Israel's now most deplorate estate:

The Crown of Israel is fallen from his head, and all his honor lieth in the dust. Israel after many grievous strokes and wounds received, now bleeds at the heart, and is a breathing out his last gasp; and the God of Israel by a Sympathy of grief seemeth to lie speechless. For his words faulter: thy destruction Israel, or it hath destroyed thee, Israel is destroyed, who hath destroyed Israel? or why is Israel destroyed? why is the cause and author of Israel's woe concealed, and the sentence left abrupt and imperfect? Tertullian speaking of the perfection of Scripture saith, I adore the fullness of the Scriptures: in another sense, yet true, I may use the contrary attribute, and say, I adore the deficiencies and seeming vacuities in Scripture sentences, where the room left for words is anticipated by passion, and filled up with sighs and groans. Will you have the cause why God expresseth not the cause of Israel's plagues? Because he would not add unto them. Had he filled up the bracke in the contexture of the sentence, it must have been with these or the like words, by the consent of Interpreters, It is thy stubborn heart, O Israel, and thy open rebellion against me: it is thy stoning my Prophets, and killing my messengers sent early and late unto thee: it is thy spiritual fornication, and Idolatrous worship of Jeroboams golden calves that hath heretofore brought all thy misery upon thee, and now hath wrought thy final overthrow. But alas this had been to mingle judgment with wormwood, to kill them with a word whom he meant to smite with a sword. It is enough for a Judge to pronounce the dreadful sentence of death, it is too much then to fall foul upon the prisoner with amplifications and bitter invectives. Howbeit, whether for these or better reasons best known to himself, God doth not here particularly set down the author or cause of Israel's woe; yet in the other member of the sentence (but in me is thy help) removing the cause from himself, and professing that there had been help in him for them, but for some bar: he giveth them to understand in general what it was he forbare to speak, but they could not but conceive, and we must gather out this Scripture for our instruction, that the cause of Israel's overthrow, and the ruin of all other Kingdoms is in their sins, and from themselves. As in music, though each string hath a different sound by it self, yet many of them struck together make but one chord: so the last translation which I follow, and all the former which I have read, though they much differ in words, yet they accord in the sense by me now delivered. For whether we read as some do, Rex tuus, thy King; or as others, Vitulus tuus, thy calf; or as Calvin, Aliquid praeter me, something besides me hath destroyed thee; or as St. Jerome doth, Perditio tua ex te, thy destruction is from thyself; or as the Kings Translators render the Hebrew, thou hast destroyed thyself, the sentence is all one, thy mischief is from thyself, but all thy hope of help is from thy God. Julian gave for his arms in his Scutchion an Eagle struck through the heart with a flight shaft feathered out of her own wing, with this Motto, propriis configimur alis, our death flies to us with our own feathers, and our wings pierce us to the heart. To apply this pattern to my text, and leave the print thereof upon it to imprint the doctrine thereof deeper in your memories. The Eagle struck dead is the Church and Common-wealth of Israel, the arrow is the swift judgment of God, the feathers shed out of her own wings which carried the arrow so swift, and drave the head of it in so deep are Israel's sins. It is a lamentable thing to hear of the ruin and utter overthrow of any Kingdom; how much more of the downfall of Israel God's chosen people, his chief treasure, his only joy? But that Israel should be Israel's overthrow, that Israel should be felo de se, and accessory to his own death and utter confusion; this must needs prick the quickest vein in our hearts. And these are the three points which by the assistance of God's spirit I am first to clear to your understanding, and after to press upon your religious affections:

• 1. The accident to the subject: Destruction.
• 2. The subject of this accident: Israel.
• 3. The cause of this accident in this subject: Thou, or thy sins; thou by thy sins hast destroyed thyself O Israel.

First, of the privative accident, destruction. Destruction is opposed to construction, as corruption to generation: and as that is the death and dissolution of all natural bodies, so this of all artificial. I except not such as are purposely made to preserve corpses from corruption and putrefaction, as coffins of lead, and sepulchers of Marble. For these also in time corrupt and moulter away:

Nay, we may make this strong line of the Poet a little stronger, and say truly, sunt ipsis quo que fatis fata; death it self hath his dying day: for my Prophet in this chapter threateneth death with death, and the grave with destruction. Howbeit destruction here, as it is applied to Israel, seemeth not so much to signify destruction in the vulgar acception, that is, the pulling down of the houses, or sacking of towns and villages, as the dissolution of the state, and downfall of the Kingdom of Israel: and therefore the point herein to be seriously thought upon is the Soph Pasuck full point, and fatal period of all earthly States, Societies, Common-wealths and Kingdoms. All natural things carry in their style Corruptible, all human in their style mortal, all earthly in their style Temporal: to distinguish the first sort from things supernatural, which are incorruptible; the second sort from things divine, which are immortal; the third sort from heavenly, which are eternal. The things which are seen, saith the Apostle, are temporal, but the things which are not seen, are eternal. It is the royal prerogative of him who hath written upon his thigh, and on his vesture, King of Kings and Lord of Lord's, that his Kingdom is bounded with no limits, nor confined to time: the eternity whereof is proclaimed in holy Scriptures by five noble Heralds, two Kings, two Prophets, and an Archangel. The two Kings are David and Nebuchadnezzar. The two Prophets are Daniel and Micah. The Archangel is Gabriel, whose trumpet soundeth most shrill, and giveth a most certain sound: Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus, ver. 31. He shall be great, and shall be called the son of the Highest, and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, ver. 32. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there shall be no end, ver. 33. Of all other there shall be. For all politic bodies are in some sort subject to the condition of natural bodies. As these, so they have their beginning or birth, growth, perfection, state, decay and dissolution. And as the statures of men in this decrepit and feeble age of the world are much diminished, and their life shortened; so even States and Empires fall short of their former greatness, and are like sooner to arrive to their period, natural end, or to speak more properly, civil death and dissolution, called in my text destruction. Some who have taken upon them to calculate as it were the nativity of the world, and erect a scheme of all the living, have set the utmost day of the duration of the one, and life of all the other to fall within four hundred years, according to an ancient tradition of the Jews fathered upon the house of Elias: The world shall last six thousand years; two thousand thereof there shall be a vacuity or emptiness; two thousand the Law shall continue; and the days of the Messiah shall make out two thousand more; of which if any be lacking, by reason of our many and grievous sins they shall be lacking. The Cabalists favor this conceit, and labor to wierdraw it out of the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis, where because they find six Alephs or A's which in numeral characters signify so many thousand years, conclude the duration of the world from the first creation to the end shall make up just that number of years. And many also of our Christian Chronologists, streining the letter of St. Peter too far, allot precisely six thousand years for the continuance of the world; at the seventh thousand they believe we shall all begin to keep our everlasting Sabbath in heaven. For the period of particular Kingdoms Gasper Peucerus observeth that it seldom or never exceedeth 500. years; which he proveth by these instances following. From the departure of the children of Israel out of Egypt to the building of the first Temple we find much about five hundred years run out: the first, as also the second Temple stood thereabouts: the Assyrians ruled in Asia so long: Athens was ruled by Kings, Rome by Consuls just so many years: From Augustus to Valentinian the last, five hundred years are reckoned, all which time the seat of the fourth Monarchy of the world was fixed at Rome. The Church of Rome in a sort continued in her purity for five hundred years: After the Papacie and superstition grew to the height in the western parts before the thousanth year, and five hundred years after the happy reformation begun by Martin Luther. Yet neither that tradition of the house of Elias, nor the observation of Peucerus are of infallible certainty. It belongeth not to us to know times and seasons: and though often God hath translated Kingdoms within the limits of five hundred years, yet not always: some have lasted longer, as the Monarchy of the Assyrians; some far shorter, as the monarchy of the Persians; and after them of the Grecians. The Christian Kings of Jerusalem finished their course within a hundred years. Men may probably guess at the circumvolution of great Empires and Kingdoms: but neither can the Astrologers certainly foresee by the course of the stars, nor Platonics define by the accomplishment of the nuptial number, nor Politicians foretell by their intelligence with foreign States, nor Magicians determine by conference with their familiar spirits: but the Prophets of God only forewarn by inspiration from him who hath decreed before all time the days of man, and continuance of families, and periods of Kingdoms, and ages of the world, and lasting of time it self. That which Belshazzar saw, a hand writing upon the wall, all Princes and States may see and read in the records of heaven kept in holy Scripture: Mene, Mene, thou art numbered, thou art numbered, thy years are summed, thy days are appointed, thine hour is set. Be thou as great and glorious as Nebuchadnezzar's Image with a head of gold, arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, and legs of Iron; yet thou standest upon feet of clay. And what is now become of the head of gold which represented the Assyrian? and arms of silver which resembled the Persian? and the thighs of brass which set forth the Grecian? and the legs of iron which signified the Roman Monarchy? Are they not all broken together, and become like chaff of a summers flower dispersed with the wind? How proudly doth Sennacherib insult over those Nations whom his Ancestors had destroyed? Where is the King of Hamath, and the King of Arphad, and the King of the City Sepharvaim, Hena and Ivah? Little did he then think of a bird from the East, Cyrus by name, that after a short time should chirpe the like note at the Court of the great King of Ashur: Where is the King of Shinar, and the King of Babylon, and the King of Damascus, and the King of Nineveh, and the great Monarch of Assyria? Whereas he should with Nebuchadnezzar have honored for these victories him that liveth forever, whose Kingdom is from generation to generation. And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the Inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What dost thou?

If the state of Kingdoms and Monarchies is so fickle, what folly, or rather madness is it for any private man to dream of perpetuities and certainties, and indefeisable estates? As if a man might be safe in a small cabbine under hatches, when the whole Ship is drowned under the water: or a Spider secure in his web, when the whole window is pulled down: or a young bird out of danger in the nest, when the whole arm of the tree is torn off. All private men's estates are ventered in the bottom of the Common-wealth, and all Common-wealths in the great vessel of the earth, which was once swallowed up with a deluge of Water, and shall be ere it be long with a deluge of fire. A house infected with some kind of Leprosy by the Law was to be pulled down and burnt to ashes: and when iniquity shall so abound on the earth that the whole world shall be infected with the Leprosy of monstrous and enormous sins, this great house which hath been long tottered, shall be burned, and fall down about our ears. And verily if all other signs be accomplished, as many of the learned in their commentaries upon the Apocalypse contend, I should think the world cannot long stand: for

Every sin is grown to the height. Atheism to the height, even in men of high calling: profaneness to the height, even on the Lord's Sabbaths, and in his holy Temple: Impuritie and immodestie at the height, even daring the consistory: Iniquity at the height, possessing the place and seat of justice: Drunkenness at the height, reeling at noon-day: Idolatry, Heresy, and Superstition at the height, advancing their followers to the highest preferments in the Church, and keeping under pure Religion, and the sincere Professors thereof.

It will be said, though plagues fall upon all Egypt, yet Goshen shall be free, though the whole world be destroyed, all Israel shall be saved. Israel is God's first-borne, who shall dis-inherit him? Israel is the Vine which the right hand of God hath planted, who shall root it up? Israel is the Signet on his finger, who shall pluck it off? Nay, Israel is the apple of his eye, who shall pull it out? Let heaven and earth pass away, yet God's covenant with Israel shall stand fast; his seed shall endure forever, and his throne shall be as the Sun before God. If these promises stand good unto Israel, this Prophecy of Israel's downfall must needs fall to the ground. For how can the Kingdom of Jacob, and the captivity of Jacob, Israel's gathering out of all Nations, and Israel's scattering abroad into all Nations, Israel's perpetual standing, and Israel's falling and utter subversion stand together?

To compose this seeming difference between God's promises to Israel, and his threats against Israel, we must distinguish of divers kinds of promises made to Israel, and of divers Israel's to which the promises may appertain. Israel sometime signifieth

• 1. Properly
  • 1. Either the whole posterity of Jacob:
  • 2. Or the ten tribes which were rent from Roboam.
• 2. Figuratively
  • The spiritual kingdom of Christ over the Elect.

Again, there is a threefold Israel:

• 1. According to the flesh only, of which the Apostle speaketh expressly; They are not all Israel which are of Israel. And obstinacy is come to Israel. Behold Israel after the flesh.
• 2. Israel according to the Spirit only. This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, I will put my Law into their minds, and write them in their hearts, &c. and so all Israel shall be saved, for this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins.
• 3. Israel according to the flesh and spirit; which may rightly be called the Israel of Israel, as Demosthenes termeth Athens 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the Greece of Greece: to Israel in this third sense Christ had a special commission: I am not sent, saith he, but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Saint Paul pointeth to this Israel, when the fullness of the Gentiles is come in, all Israel shall be saved. And Saint John, There were sealed an hundredth and forty and four thousand of all the Tribes of the children of Israel.

Retaine these distinctions of Israel, and put a difference between the promises; whereof

Some are

• 1. Absolute,
• 2. Conditional.

Some are

• 1. Temporal,
• 2. Spiritual:

and you shall easily reconcile those texts of Scriptures which seem to overthrow this prophecy concerning the utter overthrow of the Kingdom of Israel, (by which we are here to understand the ten Tribes) which fell out not long after this Prophecy, in the days of Hosea their last King.

As for Judah, the Scepter, according to Jacob's prophecy, departed not from it until Shilo came: but after he came and was rejected of that Nation, and the sacred twig of Jesse was nailed to an accursed tree, God cut it off root and branch by the Romans. Within less than half an age after our Lord's death, Jerusalem bewailed it with bloody tears, and the Temple rued it: in the ruins, dust, and ashes whereof we may read this motto: There is no place privileged from God's judgment: no Sanctuary for presumptuous sinners: no protection from arrests taken out of the Court of Heaven. The Palladium saved not Troy from the Greeks, nor the Ark the Israelites from the Philistines, nor the Temple the Jews from the Romans, nor the tombs of Martyrs Rome from the Goths, nor the Crucifix the Christians in Palestine from Saladine the Sultan of Egypt. God most hateth sin in them whom he loveth most, and most severely punisheth it in them; as Moses, Job, David, and Saint Paul felt by their own smart. When the Jews in Jeremiah cried out, The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, presuming that God would save them for the Temples sake; the Prophet might have answered, Which you have defiled, which you have polluted, which you have profaned. The cry of our sins will soon move the justice of heaven (if we stop it not) to turn the mouth of this roaring Cannon towards us. We are, we trust in the God of Israel, the Israel of God: and if we take not their destruction to heart, it will prove ours. For we cannot but thus reason with ourselves: If God spared not the natural branches for their unfruitfulness, will he spare the engraffed? If judgment beginneth at the house of God, where is it like to end? If God hath sent a bill of divorce to the beloved City, and hath quite forsaken his first love, may his latter Spouse the Church of the Gentiles presume to escape better, if she prove alike disloyal? If it hath been thus done, as before is specified, to the green tree, what shall be done to the dry? If Jerusalem be made an example, and the Temple a lamentable spectacle of divine justice, can Babylon and the house of Rimmon stand long? If the seven golden Candlesticks placed by Christ's own hand in Asia, and furnished with burning and shining lamps, are removed, and their lights put out, have not we cause to fear that our Candlesticks shall be removed if we love darkness more than light? Did God not spare his own House, but suffered it to be burnt to Ashes for the sins committed in it? will he, think ye, spare our houses if such wickedness be found in them for which he destroyed the Holy of Holies?

But I list not to dwell any longer upon the ruins of Israel: I hasten to the cause of Israel's woe. Which as it concerned the Israelites more nearly, so it will come also more home to us; Thou hast destroyed thyself: Tu, Te. Praise God O Israel for thy former prosperity, but now thank thyself for thy imminent desolation. Clemens Alexandrinus observeth acutely that although Theology, flowing from the fountain of sacred Scripture, run all in one channel; yet that many other rivers arising from divers heads and sources fall into it: as for example, in the proper doctrine of this text, that destruction is from ourselves, but salvation from God, Moral Philosophy entervaineth with Divinity in that her assertion; Nemo laeditur nisi a seipso, no man is hurt but by himself. Politie in that observation, In se magna ruunt, Great States as buildings are oppressed with their own weight, and fall upon themselves. Art military in that stratagem intus Equus Trojanus, that Trojane horse is within the walls which ruins the City. The sword of the enemy draweth out but a little corrupt blood, that may be well spared: it is sedition and intestine war that giveth the State her deaths wound.

Are not all mixed bodies corrupted by the disagreement of elements, and the elements themselves by the strife of contrary qualities within them?

Are not all metals defaced with their own rust? Trees and fruits eaten with little worms? Garments with moths breeding in them? What need I bring in out of Pliny the Hedge-hog for instance, disarmed by the water that comes from her, and softens her pricks and rots them? The Bees often choked with their own honey? The Eagle starved by his ravenous feeding, which makes his bill grow so big that he cannot open it wide enough to receive in food? The history of all times brings in evidence of fact to confirm the truth of this observation in human affairs. Sodom might have stood for all the five Kings that bid her battle, if the unnatural fire of lust had not drawn down upon her unnatural fire, I mean the fire of hell, as Salvian speaketh, from heaven. Troy might have stood a thousand years for all the Grecian Fleet of a thousand ships, if Antenor had not by treachery opened the Scean gate, and the Inhabitants upon the unexpected remove of the Fleet thrown their houses out at the windows; whereof the Greeks having intelligence

surprise the City, partly in a dead sleep, partly dead drunk. It was not Dan's vigilancy, but Laish her security that exposed her to spoil. It was not Cyrus his valor and prowess, but Babylon's effeminatenesse and luxury that subdued it: the Citizens kept a feast, and their King Belshazzar was quaffing in the bowles of the Sanctuary, when the Persians stole in upon them and slew them like beasts. They were not Fabius his soldiers, but Capua 's pleasures which conquered Hannibal. It was not Titus his siege without, but the Zealots sedition within the walls that dispeopled Jerusalem, strowing her streets with carcasses, and dying her common Seurs with blood. It was not the Turks puissance, but the covetousness of the Citizens of Constantinople which made it a prey to the enemy, as the Turk himself confessed, when in the sacking of the City, and rifling the houses, he found such a mass of treasure as might have easily secured the place if the owners would have contributed but a small part of it to the maintenance of the Greek Emperors war against the Saracens. And to come nearer my text, it was not the Assyrians horse and chariots, but Jeroboams golden calves, together with their sorcery, witchcraft, and other sins discovered unto them by the Prophets Amos and Hosea, but unrepented of, which destroyed Israel. It is true which Arnobius affirmeth, that we may by no means stain the decrees of God with any aspersion of bloody cruelty, or impute to him the miseries which befall us: and yet God by his Prophet Amos demandeth, Shall there be any evil in a City, and the Lord hath not done it? Salvianus excellently accordeth the seeming difference between these assertions; God is the cause, and we are the cause of our woe; God punisheth us, and we punish ourselves: God indeed punisheth us, but we cause, and after a sort force him to do it: God inflicteth stripes, but we deserve them: God striketh, but we provoke: God poureth out the vials of his wrath, but we fill them up to the brim by our over-flowing iniquities. God maketh us good if we are so: but in a true sense we make him just, (and which may seem a great Paradox) even by our injustice. For if we were not unjust in transgressing, God could not be just in punishing; neither would he desire any way to exalt his glory by the ruin of his creature. For he delighteth in mercy, ( Micah 7.18.) and goodness is his nature. He therefore never sendeth evil upon us before we have it in us, he never fills us a cup of red wine before the measure of our crimson sin is full; neither poureth he out the dregs of his wrath upon any, but such as Moab -like are settled upon their lees, Zeph. 1.12.

To strike sails then, and land my discourse: If our Israel, if the Scepter of our Moses, and the Rod of our Aaron's flourish not as in former times, if the people be multiplied, and yet our joy not increased, if our corn, and wine, and oil abound, and yet we are not enriched, if the public weal and every man's private, by some secret vein inwardly bleeding, hath been in a kind of consumption, if our State hath received any wound, or our Church any blow, we know where to lay the blame: we must say with mournful Jerusalem, The Lord is righteous, but we have rebelled against him: God hath been good to us, but we have rewarded evil unto ourselves: God hath not forgotten to be gracious, but we to be thankful: God would be better to us if we were better:

Doth any desire to know how it cometh to pass that our gold is not so pure? our silver so bright? our brass and iron so strong as heretofore? that is, the honor of our Nobility, the riches of our Gentry, the virtue and strength of our Commonalty is much impaired. If I and all Preachers should be silent, our loud sins would proclaim it, blasphemy would speak it, profaneness swear it, pride and vanity paint and print it, usury and bribery tell it, luxury vent it, gluttony and drunkenness belch it out. St. Peters argument were now of no force, these men are not drunk, seeing that it is but the third hour of the day: for all hours of day, yea and night too, are alike to many of our drunkards. Tiberius his advice in Tacitus may pass in point of policy for good, viz. to dissemble and conceal overgrown and head-strong evils, rather than by taxing them to make it known what vices have so got the mastery of us, that we cannot stand against them: but religion allows of no such political silence. God layeth this burden upon his Prophets, to burden all sorts of men with all sorts of sin, and to tell the greatest Potentates upon the earth, that Potentespotenter, that the mighty shall be mightily tormented; that the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven shall eat the flesh of Kings, and the flesh of Captains, and the flesh of mighty men. The louder our sins cry, the higher we must lift up our voice like a trumpet to cry them down, even by thundering God's judgments against them.

Pope Silvester when he was bid beware of Jerusalem, for that whensoever he should come thither, he should certainly die, he flattered himself that he should put off his death long enough, because he was sure that he never meant to travel into Palestine, little thinking that there was a Church at Rome of that name, into which he had no sooner set his foot, but he met with his evil Genius, as Brutus did at Philippi, and suddenly ended his wretched days. Suffer I beseech you the word of admonition and exhortation: It is not Rome in Italy which we need so much to fear, though it be the Seminary of Heretics and Traitors; but Rome in England, Rome at home; I mean the Popish faction among us, which casteth continually fire-balls of dissention in the State, and of Schism in the Church, to set all in a combustion. O take away the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the grapes of that far spreading vine which God hath planted among us by his word, and watered by the blood of so many noble Martyrs.

But I fear to lance any public sores any deeper: let me give but a prick at our private wheales, and then I will soon rid you and myself of pain. Beloved, we are all querulous, yet none almost either knoweth or looketh after the cause of their woe. One complaineth that he goeth backward in the world, and sinketh in his estate, and he layeth all the blame either upon bad servants, or thievish neighbors, or racking Land-lords, or hard times, or some losses by sea or land; but never looketh into his own heart, where the true cause lies, be it covetousness, or distrust of God's providence, or a quarrelling disposition, or pride, or idleness, or luxury, or sacrilege. Another is still whining that he cannot get or keep his health, and he imputeth this either to his crazy constitution by nature, or ill air, or over much labor and study; whereas indeed the cause is his ill diet, his sitting up all night at Revels, his pouring in strong wines, and spending the greatest part of the day in Taverns, his intemperancy or incontinency. All other sins are without the body, but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. First, against the honor of his body; for thereby he maketh the members of Christ the members of an harlot: next, the strength, health, and life of the body, which nothing more enfeebleth, empaireth, and endangereth, than greedily drinking stolen waters, and coveting after strange flesh. A third is troubled in mind, and he feeleth no comfort in his conscience, the good spirit hath left him, and the evil spirit haunteth him, and scorcheth his soul with the flashes of Hell fire; and he ascribeth this to some melancholy blood, or worldly discontent, or the indiscretion of some Boanerges, sons of thunder, who preach nothing but damnation to their hearers; whereas the true cause is in himself; he grieveth the spirit of grace, he turneth it into wantonness, and quencheth the light of it in himself; and therefore God withdraweth this holy Comforter from him for a time. When Zopyrus had cut his own lips and nose, he gave it out that the Babylonians had so barbarously used him: such is the condition of most men; they disfigure their souls, dismember their bodies by monstrous sins, and yet lay the whole blame upon others. The enemies of a man, saith our Savior, are those of his own house. So it is, so it is, saith S. Bernard, in mine own house, in my proper family; nay, within myself I have my accuser, my judge, my witness, my tormentor. My conscience is the accuser, my memory the witness, my reason the judge, my fear the torturer, my sinful delights my torments. Plancus Plautius hiding himself in the time of the proscription, was found out only by the smell of his sweet oils wherewith he used luxuriously to anoint himself, Sorex ut dicitur suo indicio. Sylla hearing some displeasing news, was so enflamed with anger, that streining himself to utter his passion, he brake a vein, and spitting blood died. Remember the words of dying Caesar, when he felt their daggers at his heart whom he had saved from the sword; Mene servare ut sint qui me perdant! O that I should save men to do me such a mischief! O that we should harbor those snakes in our bosoms, which, if we long keep them there, will sting us to death! A strange thing it is, and much to be lamented, that the soul should prescribe remedies against the maladies of the body, and yet procure nourishment for her own diseases. What are the vicious affections we feed and cherish within us, but so many pernicious infections of the mind? What is anger, but a fit of a frenzy? fear, but a sh • king fever? ambition, but a wind collicke? malice, but an apostem? faction, but a convulsion? envy, but a consumption? security, but a dead palsy? lust, but an impure itch? immoderate joy, but a pleasing trance of the soul? These are the greatest causes of our woe, not only because they disturb the peace of our conscience, and set us upon scandalous and dangerous actions; but also because they draw upon us heavy and manifold judgments. From which if we desire to be freed, that they prove not our utter destruction, let us

First, confess our sins with David to be the fuel of God's wrath, and the fountain of all our miseries: Against thee, thee only have we sinned, and done this, and that, and the third, and many more evils in thy sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and clear when thou art judged: and with Salvianus, Whatsoever our miseries are, or afflictions, or persecutions, or overthrows, or losses, or diseases, they are testimonies of an evil servant and a good master. How of an evil servant? Because in them we suffer in part what we deserve. How testimonies of a good master? Because by them he showeth us what we deserve, and yet layeth not upon us so much as we deserve.

Secondly, let us compose ourselves to endure that with patience which we have brought upon ourselves: Tute in hoc tristi tibi omne exedendum est.

Thirdly, let us forsake our beloved sins, and then God will take away his plagues from us: let us be better ourselves, and all things shall go better with us: let repentance be our practice, and a speedy reformation our instruction, so God's judgments shall not be our destruction.

THE CHARACTERS OF HEAVENLY WISEDOME. A Sermon preached before his Grace, and divers other Lord's and Judges spiritual and temporal, in Lambeth. THE EIGHTH SERMON.

THe mirror of human eloquence apologizing for his undertaking the defense of Murena against Cato the elder pertinently demandeth who so fit a patron of a Consul as a consull himself? The like may be said in the justification of King David's lesson read in my text to Princes and Judges; a quo tandem aequius est doceri Reges quam a Rege? erudiri Judices quam a Judice? Who so proper to tutor Kings as a King? who might better give Judges their charge than the chief Judge and Sovereign Justice in his Kingdom? Not only nature and blood, but arts also and professions make a kind of brotherhood: and an admonition that cometh from a man in place to another in like place and office, (that is, spoken by authority to authority) carrieth a double authority, and cannot but be entertained with due respect and careful regard. Therefore God in his wisdom instructed the Prophet David by Nathan a Prophet, reproved the Apostle Saint Peter by Paul an Apostle, informed John the Elder by an Elder, and here adviseth Kings by a King. Be wise now therefore, O ye Kings: be learned ye Judges of the earth.

In this verse we have

• 1. A lesson applied,
  • Of wisdom to Kings.
  • Of instruction to Judges.
• 2. A reason implied in the words of the earth; that is,
  • Either Kings and Judges made of earth,
  • Or made Kings and Judges of earth.

Kings and Judges are but men of earth, earthly and therefore in subjection to the God of heaven: and they are made Kings and Judges only of the earth, that is, earthly and human affairs, and therefore in subordination to divine and heavenly Laws. For the order, first King David commendeth wisdom to Kings, and then instruction or learning, viz. in the Laws, to Judges. Kings are above Judges, and wisdom, the glory of a Prince, above learning, the honor of a Judge. Kings make Judges, and wisdom makes learned: as the power of Kings is the source of the authority of Judges, so wisdom is the fountain of all laws, and consequently of all instruction and learning in them. First therefore be wise O ye Kings to make good Laws, and then be learned O ye Judges in these Laws, and found

• Ye your wisdom,
• Ye your learning in humility:

for it is earth not only upon which your consistory stands, but also of which you yourselves consist. As the tongue is moved partly by a muscle in it self, partly by an artery from the heart: so besides the motive to these virtues in this verse it self, there is a reason drawn by the spirit to enforce these duties from the heart of this Psalm, ver. 6. which is like an artery conveying spirit and life to this admonition here: Yet have I set my King, &c. as if the Prophet had said, Behold, O Kings, a throne above yours set in the stars: behold, O Judges of the earth, a tribunal or judgment seat above yours established in the clouds. There is a King of heaven by whom all earthly Kings reign, and a Judge of quick and dead to whom all Judges of the earth are accountable.

Kings are dreadful to their subjects, God to Kings: Judges call other men to the bar, but Christ Jesus shall summon all Judges one day to his tribunal, justissime judicaturus a quibus est injustissime judicatus, most justly to judge Judges by whom both in himself and in his members he hath been most unjustly judged.

O Kings. The more excellent the office the more eminent the quality ought to be: no virtue so befits a Prince as religious wisdom, the Queen of all virtues: be wise therefore O ye Kings, excel in the grace which excelleth all others: crown your royal dignity with all Princely virtues, and chain them all together in prudence with the links following. Serve the Lord with fear, fear him with joy, rejoice in him with love, and love him with confidence. First, serve him not carelessly, but solicitously, fearing to displease him. Secondly, fear him, not servilely, but filially, with joy. Thirdly, rejoice in him, not presumptuously, but awfully, with trembling. Fourthly, Tremble before him, not desperately, but hopefully; so fear him in his judgments, that ye embrace him in his mercies, and kiss him in the face of Jesus Christ. Though he frown on you in his anger, yet still seek to please him: yea, though he smite you in his wrath, and kill you all the day long, yet put your trust in him and you shall be happy.

Be wise. Wisdom is the minds eye, by which she pryeth into all the secrets of nature, and mysteries of State, and discerneth between good and evil, and prudently guideth all the affairs of life, as the helm doth a ship. No good can be done without her direction, nor evil be avoided but by her forecast. She is the chief of the four cardinal virtues, and may rightly be styled Cardinalium cardo, the hinge that turns them all about. They advance not till she strikes an alarm, nor retire till she sound a retreat. What the Apostle speaks of the three heavenly graces, now there remain these three, faith, hope, and charity, but the greatest of these is charity; may be in like manner affirmed concerning the preeminence of wisdom in respect of the other cardinal virtues, now there remain these four:

• 1. Wisdom to direct,
• 2. Justice to correct,
• 3. Temperance to abstain,
• 4. Fortitude to sustain;

but the greatest of these is wisdom. For wisdom informeth justice, moderateth temperance, and leadeth fortitude. Wisdom giveth rules to justice, setteth bounds to temperance, putteth reins on fortitude. Without wisdom justice hurteth others, temperance ourselves, fortitude both ourselves and others.

Saint Bernard deriveth sapientia a sapore, sapience from sapour, because wisdom giveth a good relish to virtue. Discretion is the salt of all our actions, without which nothing that is done or spoken is savory. What doth pregnancie of wit, or maturity of judgment, or felicity of memory, or variety of reading, or multiplicity of observation, or gracefulnesse of delivery steed a man that wanteth wisdom and discretion to use them? In these respects and many more Solomon the wisest King that ever wore corruptible Crown, in his prayer to God preferreth wisdom to all other gifts whatsoever. And indeed so admirable a virtue, so rare a perfection, so inestimable a treasure it is, that the heathen who had but a glimpse of it, discover it to be a beam of that light which no man can approach unto, haec est una hominis sapientia, non arbitrarite scire quod nescias: this is the chiefest point of man's wisdom, saith Tully out of Socrates his mouth, to have no opinion of his wisdom, but to know that undoubtedly he knoweth nothing, at least as he ought to know. Justinian, though a great Emperor, could not avoid the censure of folly for calling his wife by the name of Sapientia; because, saith Saint Austin, nomen illud augustius est quam ut homini conveniat: because the name of wise, and much more of wisdom in the abstract, is too high a title for any on earth to bear. What greater folly then can be imagined in any man or woman to assume wisdom to themselves, whose greatest wisdom consisteth in the humble acknowledgement of their follies and manifold oversights? Therefore Lactantius wittily comes over the seven wise masters, as they are called, whom antiquity no less observed than Sea-men do the seven Stars about the North Pole. When, saith he, there were but seven wise men in all the world, I would fain know in whose judgment they were held so, in their own or the judgment of others; if in the judgment of others, then of fools, by their own supposition empaling all wisdom within the breasts of those seven: if in their own judgment they were esteemed the only wise of that age, then must they needs be fools; for no such fool as he who is wise in his own conceit. This consideration induced Socrates to pull down his crest, and renounce the name of a wise man, and exchange Sophon into Philosophon, the name of Sophister into Philosopher, of wise into a lover of wisdom, with which title all that succeeded him in his School of wisdom contented themselves. When the Milesian Fishermen drew up in their net a massy piece of gold in the form of a Table or plank, there grew a great strife and contention in Law whose that draught should be, whether the Fishermens who rented the fishing in that river, or the Lord's of the soil and water. In the end, fearing on all hands lest this Altar of gold should melt away in law charges, they defer the judgment of this controversy to Apollo, who by his Oracle answered, that it neither appertained to the Fishermen, nor to the Lord of the Manor, but ought to be delivered as a present to the wisest man then living. Whereupon this golden Table was first tendered to Thales the Milesian, who sendeth it to Bias, Bias to Solon, Solon in the end to Apollo, whom the heathen adored as the God of wisdom. By this shoving of the Table from wise man to wise man, and in the end fixing it in the Temple of Apollo, they all in effect subscribed to the judgment of him who thus concludes his Epistle, To God only wise be glory forever. And questionless, if we speak of perfect and absolute wisdom, it must be adored in heaven, not sought for on the earth. He alone knoweth all things, who made all things: he comprehendeth them in his science, who containeth them in his essence. Yet ought we to seek for the wisdom here meant as for treasure: and although we may not hope in this life to be wise unto perfection, yet may we and ought we to know the holy Scriptures which are able to make us wise unto salvation. In these we find a fourfold wisdom mentioned:

1. Godly,	1. Godly wisdom is piety:
2. Worldly,	2. Worldly wisdom is policy:
3. Fleshly,	3. Fleshly wisdom is sensuality:
4. Divelish.	4. Divelish wisdom is mischievous subtlety.

1. Godly wisdom is here meant, as the words following make it evident, Serve the Lord with fear; and reason makes it yet more evident. For the Prophet needed not to exhort Princes to worldly wisdom, the point of Policy is too well studied by them: nor to fleshly wisdom, for they mostly take but too much care to fulfill their lusts, and maintain their Port, and provide for their temporal peace and safety. As for devilish wisdom, which makes men wise to do evil, so holy a Prophet as David was would not so much as have taken it in his lips, unless peradventure to brand it with the note of perpetual infamy. The wisdom therefore which he here commendeth to Kings is a godly, a holy, and a heavenly wisdom. A wisdom which beginneth in the fear of God, and endeth in the salvation of man. A wisdom that rebuketh the wisdom of the flesh, and despiseth the wisdom of the world, and confoundeth the wisdom of the Devil. A wisdom that advertiseth us of a life after this life, and a death after this death, and showeth us the means to attain the one, and avoid the other. Moral or civil wisdom is as the eye of the soul, but this wisdom the Spirit here preferreth to Kings, is the eye of the spirit. Ubi desinit Philosophus ibi incipit Medicus, where the Philosopher ends there the spiritual Physician begins. The highest step of human wisdom is but the lowest and first of divine. As Moses his face shined after he communed with God, so all moral and intellectual virtues, after we have communion with Christ, and he cometh near to us by his spirit, receive a new luster from supernatural grace. Prudence or civil wisdom is in the soul as a precious diamond in a ring; but spiritual wisdom is like Solis jubar, the Suns rays falling upon this Diamond, wonderfully beautifying and illustrating it. Of this heavenly light, at this time by the eye-salve of the Spirit clearing our sight, we will display five beams.

1. The first, to begin with our end, and to provide for our eternal estate after this life in the first place. For here we stay but a while, and be our condition what it will be, it may be altered: there we must abide by it, without any hope of change. Here we slide over the Sea of glass mentioned in the Apocalypse, but there we stand immovable in our stations: here we are like wandering stars erraticke in our motions, there we are fixed forever, either as stars in heaven to shine in glory, or as brandirons in hell to glowe in flames. Therefore undoubtedly the unum necessarium, the one thing above all things to be thought upon is, what shall become of us after we go hence, and be no more seen. The heathen saw the light of this truth at a chincke as it were, who being demanded why they built for themselves glorious sepulchers, but low and base houses, answered, because in the one they sojourned but for a short space, in the other they dwelt. To this Solomon had an eye when he termeth the grave man's long home; and a greater than Solomon, when he informeth his Disciples that in his Fathers house there are many mansions, that is, standing or abiding places. Such are many in heaven built upon precious stones, but none on earth: here we have only stands for an hour, or boothes for a Faire, or bowers for a dance, or at the most Inns for a bait. There is a time, saith the wise man, to be borne, and a time to die: what, and no time betwixt? sometimes none at all, as in those that are still-borne: if it be any, as sometimes it is, he makes no reckoning of it, but joins death immediately to our birth, as if they were contiguous, and our cradles stood in our grave. The space between our birth and death, be it extended to the longest period, is but a moment in respect of eternity, and yet ex hoc momento pendet aeternitas, upon the well or ill employing of this moment dependeth our eternity. I will tell you a strange thing saith Seneca, Many die before they begin to live. I can tell you a stranger thing, many die before ever they think of the true life. These, howsoever they may carry the name of wise and great States-men, yet when it will be too late they shall see their folly far to exceed that of the simplest Idiot in the world: when at the hour of their death finding that they have laid out their whole stock of wealth and wit in purchasing and furnishing a chamber in a thorough fare, and provided themselves no house in the City, where they are forever to abide, shall cry out in the bitterness of their soul, either with Severus, Omnia fui, & nihil profui; I have been all things, and yet have done no good at all: or with Adrian,

O my pretty soul, the pleasant guest and companion of my body, into what places shalt thou now go, naked, cold, and trembling! or with the afflictors of the righteous; What hath pride profited us? or what good hath riches with our vaunting brought us? All these things are passed away like a shadow, and like a post that hasteth by. And as a Ship that passeth over the waves of the water, which when it is gone by, the trace thereof cannot be found, neither the path-way of the keele in the waves: Even so we in like manner, as soon as we were borne, began to draw to our end, and had no sign of virtue to show, but were consumed in our own wickedness. I like well of his resolution who said, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , I hate that wise man, whose wisdom reflects not upon himself, who is no whit bettered by his wisdom. He cannot be wise who is not provident: he is not provident who prepares not a place for his soul after she is dislodged of the body. He is no thrifty man who lavisheth out his time, and spendeth his strength in pursuing shadows, when with less pain and cost he might have purchased a substantial and indefeisable estate: he is no good husband who taketh perpetual care for his temporal affairs, and taketh little or none at any time for his spiritual and eternal; who gathereth treasure upon earth, where rust and moth doth corrupt, and thieves break thorough and steal; and lay •• up no treasure in heaven, where neither rust nor moth doth corrupt, and thieves do not break thorough and steal: who drives a great and rich trade in foreign parts, and returns no money by letters of exchange, sent by the hands of the poor, to be repaid him upon his return into his country in heaven: who travels sea and land to dig into the bowels of the earth, yea and sometimes rakes hell also for unrighteous Mammon, and when he hath great store of it, makes no friends with it, that when he fails they may receive him into everlasting habitations.

2. The second precept is to inform ourselves certainly how we stand in the Court of heaven, whether recti in curia or no: to know by the reflection of grace in our souls, whether God's countenance shine upon us, or there be a cloud between it and us. For as the Margarite or pearl hath such affinity with the sky, that if it be bred at the opening of the shell fish in a clear morning, the color thereof is clear, and the stone most orient: but if in a duskie evening, or when the heaven is over-cast with clouds, the color thereof is darker, and the stone less precious: so the hidden man of the heart is lightsome and cheerful when God's face shines upon him, but sad and dejected when heaven lowres upon him. Without assurance that we are in the state of grace, and reconciled to God in Christ, there is no comfort in life and death, because no sound joy, nor settled peace within. Neither is it so easy a matter as some imagine to get this assurance, or the knowledge thereof. For not only the sick patient, but also sometimes the skillful Physician is deceived in the state of our body, though all ordinary diseases have their certain symptoms by which they may be known, even to sense: how much more difficult a thing is it certainly to judge of the state of our soul? A man may set a good face on it, as Tiberius did, and brave it out, yea and riot also, who yet hath such a secret disease which will make an end of him in a few hours. Nay, a man may take infection, or receive some bruise inwardly, or spring some vein, and yet not know of it till it be too late to cure it: in like manner, a man that maketh great profession of Religion, and carrieth a great appearance of piety and sanctity, both at Church and in his own house, feeling no inward gripe of conscience, may yet have taken some infection of Heresy, or have still in him some poison of malice, or bruise of faction, or rupture of schism, or corrupt humors of luxury, and daily decay in grace, and be in a spiritual consumption, and yet perceive it not. I have no commission to ransack any man's conscience, nor to make privy search for concealed Idols, or masqued hypocrisy, or veiled impudency, or closely conveyed bribery, or secretly vented luxury, or statutable usury, or legal simony, or customary sacrilege. Only I will be bold to say the least breach which any of the above named sins make in the conscience, is like a small leak in the bottom of a Ship, which, if it be not stopped in time, will drown the greatest vessel, fraught with the richest merchandise. Your experience showeth you that Bristow and Cornish stones, and many other false gems, have such a luster in them, and so sparkle like true jewels, that a cunning Lapidarie, if he be not careful, may be cheated with them: such are the enlightening graces which shine in hypocrites, they so nearly resemble the true sanctifying and saving graces of the Elect, that the eye of spiritual wisdom it self may mistake them, if it be not single, and look narrowly into them. Are not repentance from dead works, faith in Christ, peace of conscience, and joy in the holy Ghost, the proper characters of a regenerate Christian and an elect child of God? Yet Esau counterfeited the first: (the Apostle saith that after he had sold his birth-right he sought it with tears.) Simon Magus the second: (St. Luke saith he believed.) The man possessed in the Gospel the third: (our Savior saith all things were in peace in his house.) The Jews the fourth: (the text saith they rejoiced at St. Johns preaching.) Here then is work for spiritual wisdom to discern a scented poison from Balsamum, to distinguish tears of repentance, such as Peters were, from tears of discontent and revenge, such as Esau 's were: a temporary faith, such as Simon Magus his was, from a justifying, such as Zacchaeus his was: a feared conscience, such as the possessed man had, from a secured conscience, such as St. Paul's was: lastly, a sudden exultation of the spirit, such as the Jews was, from true joy in the holy Ghost, such as David's was.

3. The third point of spiritual wisdom is, to consider what infirmities and maladies of mind our natural constitution, state, place, or profession, or course of life maketh us most subject unto, and to furnish ourselves with store of remedies against them; to mark where we lie most open to temptation, and there to have our ward ready. For Satan playeth always upon advantage, and for the most part boweth us that way to which we incline of ourselves, through the weakness of our nature: he sails ever with the wind. Is our knowledge in matter of faith deficient? he tempts us to error. Is our conscience tender? he tempteth us to scrupulousity and too much preciseness. Hath our conscience like the eclipticke line some latitude? he tempteth us to carnal liberty. Are we bold spirited? he tempteth us to presumption. Are we timorous and distrustful? he tempteth us to desperation? Are we of a flexible disposition? he tempteth us to inconstancy. Are we stiff? he labors to make obstinate Heretics, Scismatikes, or Rebels of us. Are we of an austere temper? he tempteth us to cruelty? Are we soft and mild? he tempteth us to indulgence and foolish pity. Are we hot in matter of Religion? he tempteth us to blind zeal and superstition. Are we cold? he tempteth us to Atheism and flat irreligion. Are we moderate? he tempteth us to Laodicean lukewarmednesse. The Chameleon when he lieth on the grass to catch flies and grasshoppers, taketh upon him the color of the grass; as the Polypus doth the color of the rock, under which he lurketh, that the fish may boldly come near him without any suspicion of danger: in like manner Satan turns himself into that shape which we least fear, and sets before us such objects of temptation as are most agreeable to our humors, natural desires, and inclinations, that so he may the sooner draw us into his net. St. Gregory long ago noted this subtle device of the wily serpent, he hath, saith he, fit allurements for all sorts of men, as fishermen have baits for fishes: for the luxurious he baiteth his hook with pleasure; for the ambitious, with honor; for the covetous with gain; for the licentious with liberty, for the factious with schism, for the studious with curiosity, for the vain-glorious with popularity. Here then is our spiritual wisdom seen to be strong always, there where our enemy is like to lie in ambush, and where he goeth about to undermine us, to meet him with a countermine. To unfold this precept of wisdom even to the meanest capacity: Art thou by nature a lover of pleasure? bend thy whole strength against the sin of luxury. Art thou of a fiery disposition? lay all upon it to bridle thy passion of anger, and desire of revenge. Hast thou too much earth in thy complexion, and art given to the world? furnish thyself continually with spiritual levers to lift up thy heart, and raise thy thoughts and affections to heaven and heavenly objects. Doth the eminency of thy place bring thee in danger of high mindedness? let thy whole study be humility. Doth thy profession incline thee to contention? study peace: to dissembling and cozening? study honesty: to extortion and exaction? study charity, and practice restitution: to corruption and receiving the wages of iniquity? let all thy prayers and endeavors be for integrity.

Socrates was wont say, facile est Athenienses Athenis laudare, that it was no unpleasing argument to commend the virtues of the Athenians at Athens: neither will it seem burthensome I hope to recommend yet more instructions of wisdom to you that are wise. God hath spread abroad the heaven and the earth as large samplars before our eyes, wherein every act of his special providence in governing the affairs of the world is as a flower or curious piece of drawn-work, which a wise man ought to take out by observation, and work it in his own life by imitation.

4. The fourth lesson therefore which wisdom readeth to all those that have ears to hear, is to observe the carriage of all affairs in this great City of the world, and to set a mark upon God's wonderful protection and care over the godly, and his fearful judgments upon the wicked. From the former spiritual wisdom gathereth the sweet fruit of comfort, from the latter the bitter fruit of terror, from both the most wholesome fruit of instruction. The fruit of comfort she gathereth by using Jacob's ladder to rest upon, when she is weary, Hagar's fountain to quench her thirst, the widows meal to sustain her in famine, Jonah 's gourd to shade her in heat, Jonathan's honey to clear her eye-sight, Hezekia 's figs to heal her plague-sores, the Samaritan 's oil to supple her wounds, and Christ's Cross to support her in all. The bitter fruit of terror she gathereth when she maketh the drowning of the old world a warning to her for security, the confusion of Languages at Babel for pride, the burning of Sodom for unnatural lust, the pillar of salt into which Lot 's wife was turned for backsliding and disobedience, the plagues of Egypt for hardness of heart, the captivity of Israel and Judah for Idolatry, and the final destruction of the City and Temple for infidelity, and persecution of Christ and his Gospel. When the Devil offereth us any forbidden fruit, seem it never so pleasant to the eye, let us think of Adam; when a wedge of gold, of Achan; when red broth, of Esau; when a pleasant vineyard lying near to our house, of Ahab; when a bribe, of Gehazi; when holy vessels to carouse in, of Belshazzar; when money for the gifts of the holy Ghost, of Simon Magus; when the price of innocent blood, of Judas; when a share in sacrilege, of Ananias. Let us learn by Adams fall to shut our ears against evil counsel; by Noah's shame, to abhor drunkenness; by David's adultery, to fly idleness; by Josephs swearing by the life of Pharaoh, to avoid ill company; by Peters denial, to beware of presuming on our own strength; by Paul's buffeting, to take heed of spiritual pride. Do the students at the law follow all Courts, and are ready at all assizes with their table-books to note what passeth in all trials, to put down the cases, and take the sentences of the Judges: and shall we neglect the judgments of the Almighty, and not write down in the tables of our memories such cases as are ruled in the Court of heaven? There is nothing will more deject us in the opinion of our own wisdom, and stir us up to the admiration of God's wisdom, justice, and power, than to observe how he compasseth the wise of the world in their own ways, and shooteth beyond them in their own bow, and over-reacheth them in their highest designs: how he chooseth the foolish things of the world to convince and rebuke the wise; the weak things of the world to conquer the mighty; the ignoble things of the world to obscure the glorious; and the things that are not to confound the things that are. When we see him draw light out of darkness, sweet out of sower, comfort out of misery, joy out of sorrow, and life out of death, how can we distrust his goodness? Again, when we see on the sudden how he turneth day into night, liberty into captivity, beauty into ashes, joy into heaviness, honor into shame, wealth into want, rule into servitude, life into death, how can we but fear his power? When we see Scepters made of mattocks, and mattocks of Scepters; hovils of Palaces, and Palaces of hovils; valleys raised high, and hills brought low, Kings cast out of their thrones to the ground, and poor raised out of the dunghill to sit with Princes; how can we be proud? When we observe the godly man like the Ox that goeth to plow, worn out with labor and pain, and the wicked like beasts fatted for the slaughter, abound with riotous superfluity, how can we but be patient? When we see daily stars rise and fall in the firmament of the Church, how can we then but be solicitous? Lastly, when we see our wants as well as our wealth, our defects as well as our exceedings, our falls as well as our risings, our sorrows as well as our joys, our fasts as well as our feasts, our sickness as well as our health, our terrors as well as our comforts, our crosses and afflictions as well as those we call blessings work for the best for us, how can we but be content? This rule of wisdom every man by his experience can easily draw out at length, and the time calls upon me to cut the thread of this discourse: wherefore in a word I will now deliver that precept of wisdom in the last place which in practice must challenge the first, viz. that in all serious and weighty affairs, especially such as concern our spiritual estate, we ask counsel of God, who among other glorious attributes, described by the Prophet Isaiah, is styled the wonderful Counselor, who freely gives us that counsel which cannot be got by any fee from mortal man. Success crowneth no great attempt which wisdom undertaketh not: wisdom undertaketh nothing but by the advice of counsel, and no counsel safe in deliberations of this kind but from the spirit of God. The Israelites usually asked counsel of God by the Ephod, the Grecians by their Oracles, the Persians by their Magi, the Egyptians by their Hirophantae, the Indians by their Gymnosophistae, the ancient Gauls and Britain's by their Druids, the Romans by their Augures or Soothsayers. It was not lawful to propose any matter of moment in the Senate, priusquam de coelo servatum erat, before their wizards had made their observations from the heaven or sky. That which they did impiously and superstitiously, we may, nay we ought to do in another sense piously, ( viz. ) not to imbark ourselves into any action of great importance and consequence, priusquam de coelo servavimus, before we have observed from heaven, not the flight of birds, or houses of planets, or their aspects or conjuncti • ns, such fowl or star-gazing is forbid by a voice from heaven; but the countenance of God, whether it shineth upon our enterprises or not, whether he approve of our endeavors, projects, and designs, or dislike them: if he approve of them we need not fear the success: for if it be not good for the present, it shall be good: if he dislike them we may not hope for success; for if the issue be not bad for the present, it shall be bad in the end. Tullius resolution is good; sapientis est nihil praestare praeter culpam, a wise man is to look to his intentions, and to answer for his actions, that they be without blame, not to undertake for the events. Let us make good our ends, and the means we use, and God will make good the issue, and turn all to the best. A Pilot, as Quintilian observeth, cannot be denied his lawful plea dum clavum rectum teneam,