A Key Opening Mysterious Texts of Scripture

Ambodexters Ambosinisters: Or, One God, one true Religion. THE LIX. SERMON.

NOt to suspect your memory, or wrong your patience, by any needless repetition of what hath been formerly observed out of the whole text jointly, or the parts severally considered: the drift of the Prophet Elijah in this sprightly reproof, is to excite the King, Nobles and Commons of Israel to resolution and zeal, in the true and only worship of the true and only God; and agreeably to this his main scope and end, he bendeth all his strength and forces against those vices that bid battle, as it were, to the former virtues. These are two:

• 1. Wavering unsettledness opposite to resolution.
• 2. Timorous lukewarmness the sworn enemy to zeal.

To displace and utterly overthrow them, and establish the contrary virtues in the soul of every faithful Israelite, is the direct intent of the Prophet: yet if we consider the assembly before whom he spake, and the fact ensuing upon it, viz. the putting Baals priests to the sword, we shall clearly perceive by the analogy, which is between the state of the whole body politique and the members thereof, that this text may be applied to the decision of that great question now in agitation, in this and other Kingdoms, concerning the toleration of divers religions in the same State. For as a private Christian then halteth in judgment, when he wavereth between two religions, uncertain which to adhere unto: so the whole body of the Common-wealth then seemeth to halt between two opinions, when either no religion is by authority established, or divers publicly allowed. Besides ye have here in the event ensuing, upon a motion made by the Prophet Elijah, a notable example to encourage all zealous Magistrates and Ministers in a good cause, how potent soever the opposition be. The state of true religion was at this time most deplorate, and almost desperate in Israel; the Prophets and men of God were slain, and their ensigns and streamers coloured with their blood, the greatest part of the common soldiers fled treacherously to the enemy: yet when Religion was even now driven out of the field, God taketh part with her, and miraculously giveth her the victory over four hundred and fifty Priests of Baal, all slain by the people at the command of Elijah.

Toleration of divers religions falleth within the compass of the mysteries of State, which are fitter to be debated at the Council Table, than determined in the Schools or Pulpit. I therefore leave it, giving only this premonition, that in a deliberation of this nature, the reverend Prelates of the Church are to be of the Quorum. For first it is to be inquired, whether bearing with a false religion be a thing justifiable by the rules of true religion, and whether in any case God dispense with tolerating those that worship him otherwise than he hath appointed in his Word; and it being resolved in case of conscience that some kind of toleration is lawful for some time to prevent a greater mischief, the Council of State may then securely inquire, whether the condition of the present state be such, that the only means to suppress errors and idolatry, is for a while to connive at them. They are also seriously to consider whether the cockle and darnel be sown so thick and spread so far, that it cannot be weeded out without the spoil of much good corn. If the Grecians never undertook any matter of great consequence, before they received answers from their Oracles: neither the Jews, before they consulted with God by the Ephod: nor the Romans, before they had the approbation of their Soothsayers; doubtless all Christian estates are to expect either a command, or at least a warrant from Scripture, before they proceed in matters so nearly concerning God and his service: otherwise they go about to set the Sun-dial by their watch, not their watch by their Sun-dial; to alter the house to the hangings, not the hangings to the house: whereas all wise Governors, like good Pilots, have manum ad clavum, & oculos ad astra, their eye upon the stars, and their hand upon the helm, stearing their course below, by direction from above. But because it better sorteth with my profession to handle states of controversies, than controversy of State, I will rather apply this reproof of Elijah, to deter all that travel in these parts from that dangerous evil and mischief, into which many fall, by seeing the free exercise of two contrary religions, to wit, either indifferency, or flat Atheism. For thus the Devil worketh upon advantage: The Popish religion is idolatry, as the Protestants demonstrate; The Protestants religion is schism and heresy, as the Papists teach: therefore you may choose either, or neither. The Papists refute the Protestants arguments, and the Protestants the Papists: therefore there is but probality, no certainty either way. This Text may serve for an antidote against this Laodicean 〈1 page duplicate〉 〈1 page duplicate〉 temper. As there is but one God, so there can be but one true religion: either the Reformed Church must be in the right, or the Roman; therefore no halting between both. Beware therefore, dear brethren, of the agents of Rome, who go about to withdraw you from the love of your Country, your allegiance to your Prince, and which is worst of all, from the true and pure worship of God. If stealing away the bodies of your sons and daughters be so heinous a crime, that many conceive it better to deserve the gallows, than stealing of a horse or sheep, what punishment do you suppose do they deserve, who steal away their souls from God, and their hearts from you? If you account them as capital enemies who seek the ruin of your estate, can you esteem otherwise of them, who seek the utter ruin and overthrow of your souls? Pliny writeth of certain Serpents in Tyrinth, and Snakes in Syria, which never touch the inhabitants, or if they bite them, never hurt them, but sting foreiners in such sort, that they put them to insufferable pain, and greatly endanger their life. It may be some may have such an opinion, that the Priests and Jesuits, and other Papists of their own country, which they meet withal in these parts, have no will or power to hurt them; and therefore I see many boldly converse with them, because their outward behavior is fair, and company delightful: but I beseech them to consider that the Panther hideth her ugly visage, which would terrify any other beast to come near her, that she may the better allure them by the sweet smell of her body; but as soon as they come within her clutches, she maketh a prey of them. Take heed how ye enter into the house of Rimmon; ye cannot be present there, but either you must give great offense, or commit a greater: give great offense if ye do not as they do, or commit a greater if ye join with them in their superstitious rites. The Corinthians might not be partakers of such meats as were offered to idols: may we be partakers of such prayers as are offered to them? It was unlawful for them to sit at the same table with idolaters when they kept their solemn feast: can it be lawful for us to stand at the same Altar with them? Beloved, think again and again upon those fearful menaces, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive the mark in his fore-head or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, and he shall be tormented in fire and brimstone before the holy Angels, and before the Lamb: and the smoke of their torments shall ascend forever. And they shall have no rest day nor night, which worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the print of his name. I dare boldly say that none of you, my Beloved, have received any print of the beast; ye are yet free from the least suspicion of familiarity with the Whore of Babylon, ye have kept yourselves unspotted of Popery: wherefore as ye tender your honor and reputation, nay the salvation of your bodies and souls, keep yourselves still from Idols: be zealous for God's honor, and he will be zealous for your safety: abstain from all appearance of that evil, which the spirit of God ranketh with sorcery and witch-craft. If in your travels you chance to see the heathenish superstitions, and abominable idolatries of the Roman Church, make this profitable use thereof; let it incite you to compassionate the blindness and ignorance of so many silly souls nuzzled in superstition, who verify the speech of the Psalmist, They that worship idols are like unto them, they have eyes and see not the wonderful things of God's Law, they have ears and hear not the word of life, they have hands and handle not the seals of grace, they have feet and walk not in the ways of God's commandments. What a lamentable thing is it, to see the living image of God to fall down before a dead and dumb picture? for men endued with sense and reason, to worship unreasonable and senseless metal? wise men to ask counsel of stocks and stones? for them who in regard of their souls are nobly descended from Heaven, to do homage and perform religious services and devotions to the vilest and basest creatures upon the earth, yea to dust and rottenness? How much are we bound to render perpetual thanks to God, who hath opened our eyes that we see the grossnesse of their superstition, and hath presented unto us a lively image of himself, drawn to the life in holy Scripture, an image which to look upon is not curiosity, but duty: to embrace not spiritual uncleanness, but holy love: to adore not idolatry, but religion: to invocate not superstition, but piety!

If the Lord be God, follow him. Turn we the Rhetoric of this text into Logic, and the Dilemma consisting of two suppositions into two doctrinal positions, the points which I am to clear to your understanding, and press upon your religious affections, will be these:

1. That there is but one true God: either the Lord or Baal, not both.

2. That this one true God is alone to be worshipped: either Baal must be followed or Jehovah, not both. But the Prophet will prove by miracle and the evidence of fire, that Baal is not God, nor to be worshipped; the conclusion is therefore, that Jehovah the God of Israel is the only true God, and he alone to be worshipped.

That there is but one true God, is one of the first principles which all Christians are catechized in: the Decalogue, Lord's prayer, and Creed, all three begin with one God, to teach us,

• 1. Religious worship of one God.
• 2. Zealous devotion to one God.
• 3. Assured confidence in one God.

At our first Metriculation (if I may so speak) into the University of Christ's Catholic Church, we are required to subscribe to these three prime verities,

• 1. That there is a Deity
  • 1. Above all.
  • 2. Over all.
  • 3. In all.
• 2. That this Deity is one.
• 3. That in this Unity there is a Trinity of persons.

We acknowledge

• 1. A Deity against all Atheists.
• 2. The Unity of this Deity against all Paynims.
• 3. A Trinity in this Unity against all Jews, Mohammedans, and Heretics.

Through the whole Old Testament this one note is sounded by every voice in the Choir. We hear it in the Law: Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. We hear it in the Psalms: Who is God but the Lord? We hear it in the Prophets: Thou shalt know no God but me; for there is no Savior besides me: and, Have we not all one father? hath one not God created us?

The New Testament is as an echo resounding the same note; One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and father of all, who is above all, and through you all, and in you all. For there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. And, This is life eternal to know thee the only true God, and whom thou hast sent Jesus Christ. For although we read Elohim, as if ye would say God's in the plural number, yet the verb Bara is in the singular number, to signify the Trinity in the Unity: & howsoever we find the Lord rained upon Sodom & Gomorrah brimstone & fire from the Lord out of heaven: and likewise in the Psalms, The Lord said to my Lord: yet S. Athanasius in his Creed resolveth us, there are not more God's, or more Lord's, nor more eternals, nor more incomprehensibles, but one eternal and one in comprehensible. In the mystery of the Trinity there is alius and alius, not aliud and aliud: on the contrary, in the mystery of the incarnation of our Lord and Savior, there is not alius and alius, but aliud and aliud; in the one diversity of persons in one nature, in the other diversity of natures in one person. God is, as Plato styleth him, the Sun of the invisible world: and it is as clear to the eye of reason that there is one God, as to the eye of sense that there is one Sun: for God must be sovereign, and there cannot be more sovereignes. The principles of Metaphysick laid together demonstrate this truth after this manner; There is an infinite distance between something and nothing: therefore the power which bringeth them together, and maketh something, nay all things of nothing, must needs be infinite: but there cannot be more infinite powers, because either one of them should include the other, and so the included must needs be finite; or not extend to the other, and so it self not be infinite.

Out of natural Philosophy such an argument is framed; Whatsoever is either hath a cause of its being, or not: if it hath a cause of its being, it cannot be the first cause; if it have no cause of its being, it must needs be the cause of all causes. For there cannot be an infinite process from causes to causes, which nature abhors; therefore we must needs come to one first cause that setteth all on working, and it self dependeth upon no other former cause. This truth the Poets fitly resembled by a golden chain upon which heaven and earth hang, whose uppermost link was fastened to Jupiter's chair.

The moral Philosophers also yield a supply of their forces to aid this truth. There can be but one chief good (say they) which we desire for it self, and all other things for it; but this must needs be God: because nothing but the Deity can satisfy the desire of the reasonable soul, and because in the highest and chiefest of all good, there must needs be an infinity of good, otherwise we might conceive a better and more desirable good; now no infinite good can be conceived but God.

Neither is it a weak pillar wherewith the Statesman supporteth this truth,

No one Kingdom can stand, where there are two supreme and uncontrollable commanders: therefore neither can the whole world, which is a great Empire or Kingdom, be governed by two or more supreme Monarchs. This argument may be illustrated by the fact and apophthegme of the Grand Seignior, who when his son Mustaphas returning from Persia was received and entertained with great shouts and acclamations of all the people, he commanded him presently to be slain before him, & this oracle to be pronounced by the Priest; Unus in coelo Deus, unus in terris Sultanus: One God in heaven, one Sultan on the earth. Lactantius also harpeth upon this string, There cannot be many masters in one family, many Pilots in one ship, many Generalls in one army, many Kings in one Realm, many sun’s in one firmament, many souls in one body; so the universality of things runs upon an unity. These and the like congruities induced the greater part of the heathen Sages to assent to this truth. Mercurius Trismgeistus giveth this reason why God hath no proper name, because he is but one, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . Orpheus calleth God the one true and first great begotten, because before him nothing was begotten, whose nature because he could not conceive, he saith he was borne of immense air.

Pythagoras termeth him Animam mundi; and Anaxagoras, Mentem infinitam; Seneca, Rector of the whole world, and God of heaven and all gods. Tully and Plato were confessors of this truth, and Socrates a Martyr of it: but, Beloved, we need not such witnesses: for we have the testimony of those three that bear record in heaven; of God the father, I am God, and there is none other; of God the son, this is life eternal to know thee to be the only true God, & whom thou hast sent Jesus Christ; of God the holy Ghost, O Lord there is none like thee, neither is there any God but thee: there is but one God the father, of whom are all things, and we in him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him. This point is not more clear in the proof, than profitable in the use: which,

1. Convinceth the error of the Manichees, who taught there were two God's: and of the Tritheites, who worshipped three: and of the Greeks, who multiply their God's according to the number of their cities: and of the Romans, Qui cum omnibus gentibus dominarentur omnium gentium servierunt erroribus: who when they had subdued all nations, made themselves slaves to the errors of all. There was no star almost in the sky, no affection in the mind, no flower in the garden, no beast in the field, nothing almost so vile and abject in the world, which some of the Heathen deified not; Omnia colit error humanus praeter eum qui omnia condidit.

This Unity of the Trinity inferreth a Trinity of Unity, Viz.

• 1. Of faith.
• 2. Baptism.
• 3. Charity.

The two former the Apostle inferreth in that verse, wherein he declineth, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 : surely there can be no verity of unity, where there is no unity of verity. If there be but one God, then the worship of him must needs be the only true religion; if there be no name under heaven by which we may be saved, but the name of Jesus Christ, it ensueth hereupon, which serveth wonderfully for our everlasting comfort, and the terror and confusion of all Infidels, that only the Christian can be saved. The Poets feigned that the way to heaven was via lactea, a milky way: but the Scripture teacheth that the only way thither is via sanguinea, not a milky, but a bloody way, by the cross of Christ.

3. From unity of faith and Sacraments there followeth a third unity, to wit, the unity of love. For how can they be but united in love, who are members of one mystical body, and quickened by one and the self same spirit? The nearest and strongest tie among men is consanguinity: how near and dear ought then all Christians to be one to another, who are not only made all of one blood, as all men and women are; but also are redeemed by one blood, the blood of Christ, and participate also of one blood in the Sacrament? Where the union is or should be firmer, the division is always fowler: how then cometh it to pass, that as in the Church of Corinth one said, I am of Paul, another said I am of Apollo, another I am of Cephas: so in our Church one saith, I am of Luther; another, I am of Calvin; another, I am of Zwinglius? Is Christ divided? Is the reformed religion deformed? Is not this a cunning sleight of Satan to divide us one from another, that so he may prevail against us all, as Horatius did against the Curiatii: the manner whereof Livy describeth at large, it being agreed by both armies of the Romans and the Albans, for the sparing of much blood-shed, to put the trial of all to the issue of a battle between six brethren, three on the one side the sons of Curatius, and three on the other side the sons of Horatius: While the Curatii were united, though they were all three sorely wounded, they killed two of the Horatii; the third remaining, though not hurt at all, yet finding himself not able to make his party good against all three, begins to take his heels, and when he saw them follow him slowly one after the other, as they were able, by reason of their heavy armor and sore wounds: he falls upon them one after another, and slays them all three. When Cyrus came near Babylon with his great army, and finding the river about it, over which he must pass, so deep, that it was impossible to transport his army that way, he suddenly caused it to be divided into many channels, whereby the main river sunk so on the sudden, that with great facility he passed it over and took the city. That maxim in Philosophy, Omne divisibile est corruptibile, holds in all States & societies. After the Donatists had made a faction in Africa, as they brake the unity of the Church, so they were broken themselves into divers fractions: and so in a short space came to nothing. The division among the Trojans brought in the Grecians, the divisions among the Grecians brought in Philip, the division of the Assyrian Monarchy brought in the Persian, of the Persian brought in the Macedonian, of the Macedonian brought in the Roman, of the Roman brought in the Turk. Lastly, the division among the Britain's of this nation, brought in first the Saxons, next the Danes, and last of all the Normans: So true is the axiom of our Savior, A kingdom divided against it self cannot stand. The barbarous Soldiers, beloved Christians, divided not Christ's coat, shall we rend and tear asunder his body by schism and faction? The lines, the nearer they come to the center, the nearer they are one to another: we cannot be one with God, so long as we are thus divided one against another. I conclude as the Orator doth his oration upon the answers of the Soothsayers. When upon the news of earth-quakes and other prodigious signs, the Soothsayers foretold great calamities were likely to befall the State, unless the wrath of the gods were suddenly appeased; the Orator determineth the point most divinely, God will be easily reconciled to us, if we be reconciled one to another. If we be at peace one with another, Beloved, God will soon be at peace with us; and if God be at peace with us, all creatures shall be in league with us, and neither Devil, nor man, neither anything else shall have any power to hurt us. So be it. Deo Patri, &c.

BLOUDY EDOME. THE LX. SERMON.

WHat a storm is in the sky, that a vehement passion is in the mind; it darkeneth, it stirreth and troubleth it, and after fearful crackes it resolveth in the end into a sad shower: such a violent perturbation seized at this time on the minds of the exiled Jews in Babylon, when the insolent Conquerors, adding affliction to their affliction, and gall to their wormwood, in a flouting and jeering manner called for their Hebrew songs and melody in that their heavy and doleful estate. What so unseasonable as to require a man to sing pleasant songs, when his very heart-strings are broken with grief? What so lamentable and pitiful, as not to be pitied in greatest misery? nay to be insulted upon and laughed at? Wherefore what with a longing desire of their country, and sorrow for their loss of it: what with zeal for the Lord's honor, and the glory of Zion: what with indignation against such savage and barbarous usage, the people of God over-cast as it were with a black and dismal cloud, partly break out into direful execrations, like thunder and lightening, ver. 7, 8, 9. partly vent their grief in sighs, ver. 4, 5, 6. partly resolve it into a shower of tears, ver. 1. Edom is blasted as it were with lightening for her wicked words, ver. 7. and Babylon is struck with a thunder-bolt for her cruel deeds against God's People, City, and Temple, verse. 8, 9. Edom shall be remembered for the mischievous counsel he gave; and the daughter of Babylon shall be forever razed out of memory, for razing Jerusalem to the ground. And let all the secret and open enemies of God's Church take heed how they employ their tongues and hands against God's secret ones: they that presume to do either, may here read their fatal doom written in the dust of Edom, and ashes of Babylon. Roses lose not their natural smell by transplantation, but (as Pliny observeth) grow more fragrant thereby. It is so with men, the natural affection they bear to their country is rather increased than decreased by peregrination; as the sighs which the captive Jews breathe out in this Psalm, and the plentiful tears which they shed by the waters of Babylon, may be abundant proofs unto us. As they walked in the pleasant fields about Babylon, they think of the lamentable estate of their own Country, and the ruin of their City and Temple, which cast down their countenance, and drew abundance of tears from their eyes, sighs from their heart, and prayers from their mouth for Babels Babel, that is, the confusion of the Babylonians, who neither spared City nor Temple, but sacked and razed both down to the ground.

This is the ground upon which the Psalmist sweetly runneth through the whole Psalm: wherein four things are particularly descanted on;

1. The grievous affliction of God's people, who were banished their native soil, and by the waters of Babylon sat down and wept.

2. The inhumane cruelty of the Babylonians, who not content to banish them out of their native country, endeavored also to banish all natural affection out of their minds, requiring from them light and merry songs in this their great heaviness.

3. The zealous affection of the people towards their Country.

4. Their effectual prayer to God against their enemies the Edomites, as the instigators of the siege and sack of Jerusalem; and the Babylonians as the chief actors in that bloody Tragedy.

Remember the children of Edom, &c. We have in these words,

• 1. A pathetical imprecation.
• 2. A prophetical denunciation.

Edom is accursed, Babylon is sentenced; the one for advising, the other for committing outrage upon God's people. Nothing will satisfy their malice and cruelty but a glut of blood, and massacre of God's Saints, and razing the holy City again and again if it were possible to a second foundation.

In the pathetical imprecation note we particularly,

• 1. The curse it self, Remember.
• 2. The parties accursed, The children of Edom.
• 3. The cause why they are accursed, their words steeped in the gall of malice, Down with it, down with it to the ground.

Likewise in the prophesy against Babylon observe,

• 1. Her title, Daughter of Babylon.
• 2. Her judgment, Which art to be destroyed.
• 3. Her sin, implied in those words, As she hath served us.

Remember. Remembrance is the calling to mind of such things as before we had forgot, or at least put by and laid aside for the present. God therefore, who at once apprehendeth all things past, present and future, cannot be properly said to remember anything; yet by a figure he is said to remember his covenant, when he performeth the conditions on his part: to remember his children, when he rewardeth them for their obedience: and to remember his enemies also when he repayeth unto them the works of their hands. The good thief taketh the Word in the good sense: Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy Kingdom. And David, Remember me, O Lord, with the favor thou bearest thy people: O visit me with thy salvation, that I may see the good of thy chosen, that I may rejoice in the gladness of thy nation, that I may glory with thine inheritance. But the Jews here take the words in the worst sense; Remember the children of Edom, that is, think upon them according to their deserts. There is a precious balm that breaketh the head, and the soft drops pierce stones; even so the mild and meek prayer of God's people here against their unnatural brethren the Edomites pierced the heavens, and prevailed with him that is omnipotent. God remembered his people's just complaints, and the Edomites paid for it. Thus if we would remember the words of God, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord; and when we are wronged in the highest degree, commit our cause to him, and not to vow, threaten, or practice our own revenge: God would certainly right us in due time. Are we not brethren? If then we have hard measure offered unto us, why do we not complain to our heavenly Father? Why do we not pour out our groans into his bosom either in the words of Brutus, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ? Or rather in the words of David, Plead thou my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me, fight against them that fight against me? Or of the slain under the Altar, How long, O Lord holy and true, doest thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell upon the earth?

Yea, but ye may object, Is not this Remember here an imprecation or a curse in words as smooth as oil, and yet in the sense as sharp as swords? What then? may the children of blessing curse? Is not cursing accursed by the Prophet? His mouth is full of cursing. As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he delighteth not in blessing, so let it be far from him. Are not curses fitly compared to arrows shot bolt upright, which fall down upon the head of him that draws the bow? Doth not our blessed Savior command us to bless them that curse us? And doth not the Apostle repeat it again and again for fear we should forget it, Bless them that persecute you, bless (I say) and curse not? Are not cursed speakers sharply censured by the Apostle, and ranked among the greatest sinners? Their throat is an open sepulcher, with their tongues they have used deceit: their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood.

The resolution of this doubt consisteth in a distinction of the

• 1. Parties,
  • 1. Cursing.
  • 2. Cursed.
• 2. Cause.

Saint Augustine alloweth of no cursing by malediction, but prophetical prediction. Peter Martyr putteth a great difference between cursing, which proceeds from a sense of our private wrong, and that which breaks out of zeal for God's honor when his name is blasphemed, or his kingdom opposed, and truth scandalized. Men (saith he) may not curse carnali affectu, out of a carnal affection: but it is another thing, cùm aguntur Spiritu Dei; when they are moved thereunto by the Spirit of God. He distinguisheth also of temporal and eternal evils, and he is of opinion, that in some case temporal evils may be wished to our enemies, because they may turn to their good; but in no wise eternal. Pareus having distinguished of human imprecations and divine, and subdivided these either into immediate or mediate, determineth, that observing some conditions, we may without sin curse some kind of men.

What we may safely build upon in this question, I will lay down in three assertions.

1. Men that have the gift of Prophecy may curse the enemies of God and his truth, not only in general, but also in particular: as David doth Judas, Peter Simon Magus, and Paul the high Priest. For this kind of cursing is not properly malediction, but prediction; neither is it spoken voto optantium, sed spiritu prophetantium, as Saint Augustine teacheth us to distinguish.

2. Men endued with ecclesiastical power may pronounce Anathema's, deliver to Satan, and curse obstinate heretics and contemners of ecclesiastical discipline. For this is jus dicere, not maledicere; an act of power, not impotent affection; of censure, not revenge. Howbeit, the Church must be sparing of these thunder-bolts of execration and excommunication, remembering always that this power is given to them for edification, not for destruction. For it is most true, that the Athenian Priest answered to those that would have had her curse Alcibiades: Priests (saith she) are appointed to bless, not to curse; to pray for people, not against them. Notwithstanding if the Church meet with a Simon Magus, set in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity: or an Elymas, that will not cease to pervert the right ways of God: or an Alexander that mightily withstandeth the preaching of the Gospel; she may brandish the sword of the Spirit, and cut such off from her visible assemblies for a time, till they make their peace with God by repentance, and with the Church by confession and humble submission to her sacred Canons.

3. Men neither inspired by God, nor authorized by the Church, yet may and ought to pray against the kingdom of Satan and members of Antichrist in general, and all whosoever stop the free passage of the Gospel, or hinder the advancement of Christ's Kingdom. For we cannot love God, but we must needs love them that love him, and hate them that hate him, even with a perfect hatred. As we must bless them that bless him, so we may and ought in general to curse all that curse him. In war we may aim at the Standard, and shoot at the Flagge and Ensigns; but it is against the law of arms to level at any particular man: in like manner we may shoot out of zeal fiery darts of execration at the Standard of Satan, and level at the Flagge and Colours of Antichrist; but we may not curse or doom to the pit of hell such a nation, city, assembly, or man in particular.

1. Because God only knoweth who are his: he that is now a great persecutor, or a scoffer at the truth, may be in time a zealous professor; and it is a fearful thing to curse the children of blessing.

2. Because it is very difficult, if not impossible for any in this kind to curse, but that malice and desire of revenge will mingle themselves with our zeal, and thereby we shall offer with Nadab and Abihu strange fire.

3. Because we are commanded to pray for our enemies, who the more they have wronged us, the more they stand in need of our prayers. For the greater injury they offer us, the more they hurt themselves: they wound us in body, but themselves in soul: they spoil us of our goods, but they deprive themselves of God's grace: they go about to stain our good name, but by detraction and false calumniation they worse stain their own conscience: they may work us out of favor with Princes and great men, but they put themselves out of favor with God thereby.

Ye hear how execrable a thing cursing and execration is, and yet what so common? I tremble to rehearse what we hear upon every sleight occasion. O remember from this Memento in my Text, that unless ye were inspired as the people here were, and knew that those whom ye curse were hated of God, as these Edomites were, by cursing others ye incur a curse, and by casting fire-brands of Hell at your brethren, ye heap hot burning coals upon your heads. And so I pass from the curse to the parties cursed:

The children of Edom. The Edomites or Idumeans were of the race of Esau, Jacob's elder brother, who coming home hungry from hunting, and finding his brother seething pottage, grew so greedy of it, that he bargained with him for a mess at the dear rate of his birth-right. This red broth bought at such a price, was ever after cast in Esau his dish, and from it he was called Edom, and all his posterity Edomites or Idumeans, as if ye would say, red or bloody ones. Such was their name, and such were they: a bloody generation, of the right blood of Esau. For as he sought the life of his brother Jacob, so they ever plotted the ruin and destruction of the Jews their brethren; and in the day of Jerusalem's fearful visitation, when the Babylonians had taken the City, and put all in it to the sword, and robbed the Temple, and ransacked all the houses, and left nothing but the wall, their unnatural brethren the Idumeans instead of quenching, or at least allaying the fury of the Babylonians by their prayers and compassionate tears, cast oil into the flame, and set them in a greater rage against them, and instigated them to a further degree of cruelty, even to pull down all the houses, and sack the walls, saying, Raze it, raze it to the ground. For which their inhumane and savage cruelty against the Church of God, God remembered them in due time, and rewarded them as they had served their brethren, to fulfill the prophecies of Jeremy and Obadiah: For thy cruelty against thy brother Jacob shame shall cover thee. In the day that thou stoodest on the other side; in the day that the stranger carried away captive his forces, and foreigners entered into his gates, & cast lots upon Jerusalem, even thou wast as one of them. But thou shouldest not have looked on the day of thy brother in the day that he became a stranger, neither shouldest thou have rejoiced over the children of Judah in the day of their destruction: neither shouldest thou have spoken proudly in the day of their distress. Neither shouldest thou have stood in the cross ways, to cut off those of his that did escape, neither shouldest thou have delivered up those of his that did remain in the day of distress. For the day of the Lord is near upon all the heathen: as thou hast done, so it shall be done unto thee, thy reward shall return upon thine own head. Behold a notable example of divine justice in meting to the wicked their own measure, and punishing them with that where with they offended. The Edomites proved false to the Jews their brethren, and their nearest friends prove false to them: They received a wound (ver. 7.) from the men of their confederacy, even from them that ate their bread:

Remember, O Lord, the Edomites, but destroy the Babylonians. Though the Edomites dealt most cruelly with their brethren the Jews, yet the Jews are not so far transported with passion against them, as not to put a difference between them and the Babylonians. By the way we may note the condition of Christ's dearest Spouse in the world: both Edomites and Babylonians, foreign and domestical enemies, those that are near, and those that are far off conspire against poor Jerusalem, and bring her (as you see) upon her knees, crying to heaven for revenge, and by the spirit of prophesy promising Cyrus good success in his enterprise against Babylon.

O daughter of Babylon, that is, City of Babylon, by an elegant Hebraism; as tell the daughter of Zion, that is, tell Zion. We read of a twofold Babylon in sacred Scriptures, of the one in the Old Testament, the other in the New: the one proper and material, the other figurative & mystical: the one the seat of Nebuchadnezzar, & the Emperors of Assyria, the other the seat of Antichrist: the on situate by the great river, by whose banks the Israelites sat down and wept, the other sitting upon many waters, that is, as the Angel expoundeth it, many people's, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues: the one keeping the bodies of God's people, the other their souls in captivity and bondage. This latter not only the ancient Fathers, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Saint Jerome, and Saint Augustine, but also the Jesuits themselves, Ribera, Vegas, and Bellarmine put upon the rack, and sorely tortured with the arguments of Protestants, confess to be Rome. For the Whore of Babylon is said to be the great City, which reigneth over the Kings of the earth: and ver. 17. She is said to sit upon a beast, having seven heads, which are seven hills, ver. 9. Now there was no City in the world which ruled over the Kings of the earth at that time when St. John wrote but Rome: neither was there any place so famously and generally known by any mark as Rome by the seven hills upon which it is built; which is therefore called septi-collis urbs, and her inhabitants in Tertullian's time septem collium plebs, and the chiefest feast which they kept in December upon those seven hills, septi-montium. What of all this will some Papists say? let the daughter of Babylon be the mother of fornications, let the speech of Saint Augustine be as true as it is elegant, Babylon quasi prima Roma, Roma quasi secunda Babylon, what will ensue hereupon? nothing but this, That the Pope is Antichrist. This consequent cannot be avoided by their usual distinction of ancient and new Rome, Heathenish and Christian, Imperial and Papal: for Saint John speaketh of Rome in her later time, when Antichrist should sit in her, when Babylon should fall, and be broken into ten pieces, or kingdoms: which was not fulfilled in the reign of the Heathen Emperors; and therefore must be accomplished in the reign of Popes, who are the seventh head of the Beast, that is, the seventh form of government of that City. Five were fallen in Saint Johns time (viz.) Kings, Consuls, Tribunes, Dictators, Decemvirs: the sixth was upon it (viz.) the head of Emperors; the seventh was to rise up (viz.) the head of Popes.

But because ye may suspect, that out of prejudicate opinion against the Pope, we wrest these Sciptures against the See of Rome, I will bring in all my evidence at this time against the Pope out of the writings of the ancient Fathers, who cannot be thought to deprave Scriptures out of an ill affection to Rome. For they then honored and highly esteemed the Church of Rome, as a principal member of Christ's Spouse: yet even then they conceived that she would in time become the Whore of Babylon. For Irenaeus calculating the number of the Beast 666. maketh of it this word, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , The name of Latinus (saith he) containeth the number 666. and is very likely to be the name of the Beast: for they are the Latins that now reign. And Tertullian ghessing at the time of Antichrists rising, saith, Romani Imperii abscessio in decem reges divisi, Antichristum superinducit; The decay of the Roman Empire being divided into ten kingdoms, shall bring in Antichrist. Saint Jerome strikes nearer the Popes triple crown: The purple Whore is Rome, and her name of blasphemy is, Roma aeterna. Saint Chrysostom expressly affirmeth, that Antichrist his throne shall be the vacant seat of the Roman Empire. Saint Gregory seemeth to have received some particular advertisement of the approach of the man of sin in his days: Antichrist (saith he) is setting forth, and an army of Priests is levied for him. Lay all these particulars together, and the total sum will be, that the Pope is Antichrist. The name of Antichrist is Latinus, his seat is Rome, his rising is upon the fall of the Empire, his guard is an army of Priests. Saint Gregory implies that Antichrist shall be a Bishop. Irenaeus that he shall be a Latin, or of the Latin Church. Saint Jerome that Rome shall be his See. Tertullian and Chrysostom, that he shall wax in the wane of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire is fallen long since, being divided into ten kingdoms to wit, of the Almanes, England, France, Spain, Denmark, Scotland, Poland, Navarre, Hungary, Naples, and Sicily. These ancients were far from the times of Antichrist, and yet you see how right they aim at him: the lesser marvel that many in succeeding ages, as Echardus, Otho Frisingensis, Robert Grosthead, Dulcinus Navarenus, Marsilius Patavinus, Dantes, Michael Cesenus, Johannes de Rupe-scissa, Franciscus Petrarcha, Henricus de Hassia, Walter Brute, John Huz, Johannes de Vesalia, & divers others hit him full, and fastened upon him the name of Antichrist. For they as being near him, saw in him clearly all those marks, whereby Saint Paul and Saint John describe that man of sin, and son of perdition. from which we thus argue:

• He in whom all or the principal marks of Antichrist are found, he is the Antichrist.
• But in the Pope all or the principal marks of Antichrist are to be found:
• Ergo the Pope is the Antichrist.

By Pope we understand not this or that Pope in individuo, but rather in specie, or to speak more properly, the whole succession of Popes, from Boniface the third, or at least Gregory the seventh, otherwise called Heldebrand. As the word Devil in the New Testament for the most part signifieth not any particular spirit, but indefinitely an evil spirit, or the kingdom of Satan: and as the four beasts in Daniel stand not for four Monarchs, but four Monarchies; so the Beast in the Apocalypse, in whose ugly shape Antichrist appears, seemeth not to represent any singular Pope, but the See of Rome after it degenerated into the Papacy. Now in the Bishops of Rome after Boniface and Heldebrand, we find the name, the seat, the apparel, the pride, the cruelty, the idolatry, the covetousness, the imposture, the power, and the fortune of Antichrist.

1. The name of Antichrist containeth in it the number 666. which Irenaeus findeth in the word Latinus, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 .

2. The seat of Antichrist is a City built upon seven hills that ruleth over the whole world: this City Propertius will tell you to be Rome,

3. The ornaments of Antichrist are scarlet, and purple, gold, jewels, and precious stones, which the Pope wears, especially on high days.

4. The time of Antichrist his rising is fore-told to be after the division of the Roman Empire: after which it appears by all stories, that the Pope grew to his greatness.

5. The vices of Antichrist are these especially:

• 1. Pride: he shall exalt himself above all that is called God, that is, Princes; and doth not the Pope so, who admitteth them to kiss his feet, arrogateth to himself a power over them to depose them, and dispose of their kingdoms?
• 2. Idolatry or spiritual fornication: the great Whore is said to commit fornication with the Princes of the earth; and doth not the Pope entice all Kings and Princes to idolatry, which is spiritual fornication?
• 3. Cruelty: the Whore is said to be drunk with the blood of Saints. I need not apply this note, both their own and our stories relate of many thousands by the Popes means put to death for the profession of the Gospel, under the names of Lionists, Waldenses, Albigenses, Wickliffists, Hussites, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Huguenots.
• 4. Imposture: Antichrist shall come after the power of Satan, in all power of signs and lying wonders; and who pretend miracles, and abuse the world with Legends of lies, but the Popes adherents?
• 5. Covetousness: through covetousness he shall with feigned words make merchandize of you. Now the wares wherewith the Whore of Babylon deceiveth the world, what are they but her pardons, indulgences, hallowed beads, medalls, Agnus Dei's, and the like?

6. The Beast is said to have horns like a Lamb, and to speak like a Dragon, and to exercise all the power of the first beast. This agreeth to the Papacy and Pope, who resembleth Christ, whose Vicar he calleth himself, and arrogateth to himself Christ's double power, both Kingly and Priestly. He exerciseth also the power of the first beast, to wit, the Roman Empire described by seven heads and ten horns, because as the first beast, the Roman Empire by power and temporal authority, so the Pope by policy and spiritual jurisdiction ruleth over a great part of the world.

7. It is written of the Whore of Babylon, that the Kings of the earth should give their power to her for a time, but that in the end they should hate her, and make her desolate; which we see daily more and more fulfilled in the Papacy.

I will be as brief in the application, as I have been long in the explication of this Scripture. Babylon is figuratively Rome, and Rome is mystically Babylon. The Edomites the instigators of the Babylonians, and partners with them in the spoil of the Israelites, may well represent unto us Romish Priests and Jesuited Papists, rightly to be termed Edomites from Edom, signifying red or bloody. For a bloody generation they are, as appeareth by their treasonable practices against Queen ELIZABETH of happy memory, and our gracious Sovereign now reigning. These verily seem the natural sons of Esau, who hated Jacob because God loved him, and sought to destroy him and his posterity because their father blessed them; even so they hate our Jacob, and seek to root out his posterity, because God hath blessed him with so many crowns, and crowned him with so many blessings. They had thought in their minds, as we read, Genes. 27. The days of mourning will come shortly, and then we will kill Jacob. But blessed be the God of Jacob, who delivered his anointed from the power of the sword.

The more I look upon the Edomites or Esauites, the more likeness I find between them and our unnatural countri-men, Jesuited Papists. The Edomites pretended that they were of the elder house of Isaac, and these pretend that they are of the elder Church, which is the house of God. The Edomites, though they were brethren to the Jews, yet they behaved themselves towards them like mortal enemies; even so our English Papists, though they are our kinsmen and countri-men, yet since Pope Pius his excommunication of Queen ELIZABETH, they have proved the most dangerous enemies both of our Church and State: even in this resembling the Edomites, that as they not only vexed and persecuted the people of God themselves, but also instigated the Babylonians against them; so these not content to plot treasons, sow sedition, stir up rebellion in our kingdom, have dealt with foreign Kings & States to invade our Kingdom, and root out both Church and Common-wealth. What pity is it that our Rebecca should have her bowels rent within her by two such children striving in her womb? It followeth, In the day of Jerusalem. Jerusalem had a day, after which she slept in dust; & the daughter of Babylon appointed a day for England, a fatal and dismal day, a black and gloomy day, or rather a Gomorrhean night, in which a hellish design against our Church and Common-wealth was attempted, and if God himself had not miraculously defeated it, it had been acted: a design to destroy both at once with fire and brimstone, not falling down from heaven, but rather rising up from hell; I mean a deep vault digged by the myners of Antichrist, and fraught with juysses, billets, bars of iron, and 36. barrels of gun-powder, like so many great pieces of Ordnance full charged, and ready to be shot off all at once, to blow up the house of Parliament, with the royal stock, and the three estates of the Kingdom. Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in that day, or rather for that day, in which (shall I say) they said, Raze it, raze it to the very foundation? they more than said it, or cried it, they would have thundered it out; they assayed it, they did what they could to raze it. For they planted their murdering artillery at the very foundation of it. Cursed be their wrath, for it was fierce; and their rage, for it was furious, nay barbarous, nay prodigious, to cut off root and branch at once, to beat down City and Temple with one blow, to snatch away on the sudden the King and Prince, Queen and Nobles, Bishops and Judges, Barons and Burgesses, Papists and Protestants, Friends and Enemies, and carry them up in a fiery cloud, and scatter their dismembered members, or rather ashes over the whole City. O daughter of Babylon, worthy to be destroyed because thou delightest in destruction; happy shall he be that taketh thy young children and monstrous brats, viz. treasons, plots, conspiracies, and unnatural designs against Prince and State, and dasheth them against the stones.

To draw towards an end, and to draw you to a real thanks-giving to God for the deliverance of the three estates of the Kingdom, like the three children from the fiery furnace heat by the daughter of Babylon. God hath done great things for us this day, whereat we rejoice; let us do something to him and for him: he hath remembered us not in words, but in deeds, let us remember him as well in deeds as words: let us honor him with our substance, let us bless him with our hands, let us praise him with our goods.

Peradventure you will say, Our goods are nothing to him, our goodness extendeth not unto him, he is far above us, and out of the reach of our charity: see how the Prophet himself removeth this rub in the next verse, But to the Saints that are on the earth, and to them that excel in virtue. And our Savior assureth us, that Whatsoever we do unto them, Christ taketh it as done unto himself. In feeding the hungry ye feed Christ, in clothing the naked ye cloth him, in visiting the imprisoned ye visit him. Though ye cannot now with Mary Magdalene reach up to his head to break a box of Spicknard, and pour it on him, yet ye can anoint him in his sick and sore, comfort him in his afflicted, provide for him in his famished, relieve him in his oppressed, yea and redeem him also in his captive members. This to do is charity and mercy at all times, but now it is piety and devotion also. It is not sufficient for you to lift up your hands in prayer and thanksgiving, ye must stretch them out in pious and charitable contributions: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. And if ever such sacrifices are due to him, now especially upon the yearly return of the feast we celebrate for the preservation of our King and Kingdom, Church and Common-wealth, Nobles and Commons, Goods and Lands, nay Religion and Laws from the vault of destruction.

THE WATCHFULL SENTINELL. A Sermon preached the fifth of November. THE LXI. SERMON.

THe more the enemies of the Gospel endeavor to blot out this feast out of our Calender, and raze it out of the memory of all men, by giving it out where they see the coast clear, and none to encounter their falsehood, that the ground of this days devotion was a fiction of ours, not a design of theirs; a stratagem of state to scandalize them, not a plot of treason to ruin our King and State: by so much the more all that love the truth in sincerity ought to keep it with more fervency of devotion, celebrity of public meeting, and solemnity of all corresponding rites and ceremonies, that the voice of our thanksgiving, and the sound of God's praise for so great a deliverance, may ring to the ends of the earth, and the children yet unborne may hear it. Other feasts we celebrate by faith, this by experience and sense: other deliverances we believe, this we feel: the ground of other festivities are God's benefits upon his people indeed, but of other countries and other times, but of this is, the preservation of our own Country, in our own time. And therefore what S. Bernard spake of the feast of Dedication, we may say of this: We ought the more religiously to keep this feast, by how much the more near it concerns us; for other solemnities we have common with other Churches, this is so proper to us, that if we celebrate it not, none will. This we ought in special to own, because it presenteth to all thankful hearts, a special act of God's watchful care over our Church, our Nation, yea and this place. For this monster of all treasons, which no age can parallel, was conceived within our precincts, and so it should have brought forth ruin and destruction in our eyes, if God had not crushed it in the shell: we should have seen on the sudden the city over against us all in a light fire, all the sky in a cloud of brimstone, and the river died with blood: we should have heard nothing after the crack of thunder, but out-cries and voices in Ramah, weeping and mourning, and exceeding great lamentation, our Rachel mourning for her children, and she would not have been comforted, because they should not have been. The louder the cry of our sorrow would then have been, the louder ought now to be the shouts of our joy. To which purpose I have made choice of this verse for my text, taken out of a Psalm of degrees, that I might thereby raise my meditations and your affections to the height of this feast. The words may serve as a motto, and the work of this day for an image to make a perfect emblem of God's watchful care over his people, and the people's safety under the wings of his providence.

But before I enter upon the parts of this Psalm, it will be requisite that I clear the title, a Song of degrees. If the meaning be as some translate the words, Shur hamagnaloth, Canticum excellentissimum, an excellent song, as we read, Adam hamagnaloth, a man of eminent degree; are not all the other Psalms likewise excellent songs? Why then hath this only, with some few that follow it, the garland set upon it? Some will have these fifteen Psalms beginning from the 120. to have the name of songs of degrees, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , or 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , from the history, others from the ceremony, a third sort from the music, and the fourth from the matter and special contents of them.

1. They who fetch it from the history, affirm that these Psalms were penned, or at least repeated, and sung by the Jews Hamagnaloth, in their ascending or coming up from Babylon into their own Country: and this conceit is the more probable, because some of the Psalms speak expressly of their return from captivity, and most of them of God's deliverance of his people from great dangers and troubles.

2. They who deduce it from the sacred rite or ceremony used in the singing of them, relate that the Priest sang these Psalms Hamagnaloth, or 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , upon the stairs or steps, as they marched up into the house of the Lord.

3. They who derive the name from the music, report that these Psalms were sung hamagnaloth, that is, with ascensions, or raising up the voice by degrees, as it is said that the Levites praised God with a great voice, or a voice on high.

4. They who take it from the special contents of these Psalms, contend that the verses of this Psalm are like the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , rounds of Jacob's ladder, on which we may ascend up to heaven, as the Angels did upon that.

These reasons are in a kind of sequence like notes in music: for because they are Psalms full of special matter for instruction and comfort, it is likely that the chief Musician set them to an higher cliffe; and because both tune as well as ditty were excellent, it is probable that these were selected, both to be sung by the Jews in their ascending from Babylon, as also by the Priests in their going up usually into the Temple.

Thus the title is cleared on all hands: now the song it self admitteth a like partition to that of the Musicians in their pricked lessons; which consist of,

• 1. A ground.
• 2. Running in division upon it.

Here the ground contains but three notes:

• 1. The person, he.
• 2. The attribute, watchful providence or protection.
• 3. The object, his people Israel.

The division upon the first note is Jehovah, verse. 1. which was, and which is, and which is to come; maker of heaven and earth, verse. 2.

Upon the second, thy keeper, verse. 3. thy preserver, verse. 7, 8. thy protector in danger, verse. 5. from danger, verse. 7. for the time present and future, verse the last.

Upon the third, Israel in general, verse. 4. every one of Israel in particular, verse. 5. in body and soul, verse. 7. at home and abroad, verse. 8.

Behold, let your eye be upon him, whose eye never sleepeth nor slumbereth, observe your observer and preserver. Behold in he, sovereign majesty and omnipotent power: in keepeth, his gracious protection: in Israel, his peculiar affection: in neither slumbereth nor sleepeth, his continual watchfulness.

Behold, we have rung this larum bell heretofore, to awake your attention and affection, and now it giveth no uncertain sound: but what or whom are we to behold?

He. In the next verse the Prophet nameth him; Jehovah is thy keeper. Of all names of God this may seem to challenge a kind of precedency: for it is taken from the essence of God, and never in Scripture is attributed to any creature; this is 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the Greeks Tetragrammaton, the Latins Jove, the Jews Dread and Fear; who when they meet with it in the Old Testament, adore it with silence, or fill up the sentence with Adonai, Lord: only as we read in the Talmud, the high Priest in his holy vestments, when he entered into the Sanctum Sanctorum, in the sacred action of blessing the people, might pronounce it. Every syllable in it is a mystery; Je hath relation to the time future, ho to the present, vah to that which is past, as some of the Rabbins observe. And some Christian Interpreters conceive, that S. John alludes thereunto in the description of God, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , He which was, and is, and is to come. The verb from whence the name is derived signifieth to be, either to teach us that all being is from him, or that he alone may simply & absolutely be said to be, who was from all eternity what he is, and shall be to all eternity what he was and is; or to give us assurance of the performance of all his promises. How shall we doubt of any word that proceeds from his mouth, whose name carrieth in it existence or performance of all his words? or to insinuate in this name the best definition of his nature, which is this; an infinite spirit, who is his own being; or, who hath being from himself, in himself, and for himself. All creatures were of him, are in him, and must be for him: God alone is of himself, in himself, and for himself. Some wierdraw farther, and make so small a line, that it will scarce hold, viz. that all the letters in this name are quiescent, to intimate quietem in solo deo esse, that the rest of the soul is only in God; according to that divine speech of S. Augustine, Domine, fecisti nos ad te, & inquietum est cor nostrum donec perveniat ad te: O Lord, thou hast made us to or for thee, and our heart will never be at rest till we come to thee.

That keepeth. God keepeth us both immediately by himself, and mediately by Angels & men. His Angels are our guardians in all our ways: Magistrates both ecclesiastical and civil, Parents, Tutors, and Masters, keepers in time of peace; and Generals, Captains and Soldiers in time of war. And if you demand with the Poet, Quis custodes custodiet ipsos? Who shall look to the overseers of others? who shall watch our watchmen, and guard our guardians? I answer, this Custos Israelis in my text. There are two sorts of keepers,

• 1. Some keep from suffering evil, as a Guardian doth his Ward.
• 2. Others keep from doing evil, as the Lieutenant of the Tower, or a Messenger to whose custody a prisoner is committed.

God is our keeper in both senses; for he is both Custos protectionis, and Custos conversationis: he keepeth us from suffering evil, by his protecting power; and from doing evil, by his restraining grace: he keeps us in prosperity, that it corrupt us not; in adversity, that it conquer us not: he keepeth us in our conception from abortion, in our birth from hurt, in our life from manifold dangers, in our death from eternal terrors.

Israel. Israel, as the learned distinguish, is sometimes taken for Israel,

• 1. According to the flesh only, as unbelieving Jews.
• 2. According to the spirit only, as believing Gentiles.
• 3. According to the flesh and spirit, as the believing posterity of Jacob.

For as Tertullian spake of Christian Soldiers and Panims, a faithful Pagan is as well a Soldier in God's account, as an unfaithful Soldier is a Pagan: so we may truly say, that an unbelieving Israelite is a Gentile, and a believing Gentile is a true Israelite. Howbeit the former division is not adequate: a more complete may be this; Israel is taken in holy Scripture,

• 1. For the root, to wit, Jacob himself, to whom first the name of Israel was given upon a special occasion.
• 2. For the stock or trunk, the whole posterity of Jacob.
• 3. For the branch, to wit, the ten Tribes divided from the other two in Rehoboams time.
• 4. For the whole tree as it were, that is, the whole number of the elect, who because they prevail with God, are termed Israelites, and of Israel: in this last and largest sense the words of S. Paul are to be understood, All Israel shall be saved.

Here Israel is taken primarily for the Church and Common-wealth of the Jews: but secondarily and consequently, for all Kingdoms and States professing the true worship of God, and commending themselves to his protection. As God is the Savior of all, but especially the elect: so he is the keeper of all his creatures, but of man above all, and of Israel above all men.

He keepeth all,

• 1. Creatures in their state.
• 2. Men in their ways and callings.
• 3. Israel in his favor.

• 1. All creatures by his power.
• 2. All men by his providence.
• 3. Israel by his grace.

• 1. All creatures from disorder and utter confusion.
• 2. All men from manifold calamities and miseries.
• 3. Israel from the power of sin and death.

He keepeth Israel,

• 1. As his chief treasure, most watchfully.
• 2. As his dearest spouse, most tenderly.
• 3. As the apple of his eye, most charily and warily.

He keepeth every faithful soul,

• 1. As his chief treasure, that the Devil steal it not.
• 2. As his chaste spouse, that the flesh abuse it not.
• 3. As the apple of his eye, that the world hurt it not.

In this respect, as Israel is elsewhere called his peculiar people; so here his peculiar charge: he maketh more account of Israel than all the world besides, he keepeth Israel above all, nay he keepeth all for his Israel's sake, that is, the elect. As he preserved the Ark for Noah's sake, and Goshen for the ancient Israelites sake, and all that were in the ship for S. Paul's sake, and all that were in the bath for S. Johns sake, and all that fled to the tombs of the Martyrs in Rome, when the Goths sacked the city, for the Christians sake: so at this day he supporteth all Kingdoms and States, for the Churches sake. The world is as an hop-yard, the Church as the hops, Kingdoms, States, and Common-wealths as the poles: and as the owner of the hop-yard preserveth the poles and stakes carefully, not for themselves, but that the hops may grow upon them: so God preserveth all states and societies of men, that they may be a support to his Church. We may take this note higher, and truly affirm that he keepeth heaven and earth for her sake; the earth to be as a nursery for her children, to grow a while; and the Heaven for his garden and celestial Paradise, whither he will transplant them all in the end. Wherefore although the world never so much scorn, and contemn, and malign, and persecute God's chosen; yet it is indebted to them for its being and continuance: for God keepeth the heavens for the earth, the earth for living creatures, other living creatures for men, men for Israel, and Israel for the elect sake. For their sake it is, that the heavens move, the sun, moon, and stars shine, the winds blow, the springs flow, the rivers run, the plants grow, the earth fructifieth, the beasts, fowls, and fishes multiply: for as soon as grace hath finished her work, and the whole number of the elect is accomplished, nature shall utterly cease, and this world shall give place to a better, in which righteousness shall dwell. Yet when heaven and earth shall pass, this word of God shall not pass: for he that now keepeth militant Israel in the bosom of the earth, shall then keep triumphant Israel in Abraham's bosom.

Shall neither slumber nor sleep. What the Roman Orator spake pleasantly of Caninius his Consulship, that set with the sun, and lasted but for one day, Vigilantissimum habuimus Consulem, qui toto Consulatu suo somnum non cepit; there was never so vigilant a Consul as Caninius, who during all the time of his Consulship never took a nap; may truly be said of the keeper of Israel, that he never suffereth his eyes to sleep, nor his eye-lids to slumber.

Rejoice, O daughter of Zion, for the keeper of Israel continually watcheth over thee for good: but tremble, O thou whore of Babylon, for he continually watcheth over thee for evil. Ne time à malo externo, fidelis anima, quia non dormit custos qui te conservat; time tibi à peccato & malo interno, quia non dormit custos qui te observat: O faithful soul, fear not outward evils, because he sleepeth not who conserveth thee; but be afraid of sin and inward evil, because he sleepeth not who observeth thee. God receiveth Israel into his special protection, and there is no safety out of it: Israel is now confined within the bounds of the Church, and questionless out of it there is no safety. While the Soldiers are within the leaguer, they may sleep all night securely, because they know the Sentinels keep their watches: but if they wander abroad, and sleep overtake them, they are every hour in danger to have their throats cut.

Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. What the Apostle S. Paul professeth of himself ( non mentientis astu, sed compatientis affectu ) I am made all things to all men, that I may by all means win some; may in a true and pious sense be applied to God himself, who to turn us, and gain us to himself, turneth himself (after a sort) into all forms and natures. To allure the hungry, he becomes bread; to excite the thirsty, a fountain of living water; to draw to him the naked, a wedding garment; to bring in them that are astray, the way; to revive the dead, the resurrection and the life. This accordeth with Origen his note on the Canticles: Christ becometh to every sense a most delectable object; light, that the eyes of the soul may have wherewith to be enlightened; the word, that the ears may have wherewith to be filled or rounded; the bread of life, that the taste may have to please it, and stomach to satisfy it; spicknard, to delight the smell of the soul; lastly, flesh, that the hands of the soul may handle the word of life. (1 Joh. 1.1.) O how should this enflame our love to God, that he should become to our soul whatsoever she can desire! And not this only, but that he should condescend in love to take upon him all callings and offices, for the safety, well-fare, and comfort of his Church. To give her contentment in himself, he weddeth her, and becomes her husband: to dress her vines, and ripen her fruits, her husband-man: to instruct her in the doctrine of salvation, her School-master: to cure her diseases, her Physician: to plead her title to the kingdom of heaven, her Advocate: and lastly, to keep her from all ghostly and bodily enemies, her Guardian and Watch-man. That which Cain refused to be to his own brother, God is to his Church, that is, her keeper; and so watchful and careful a keeper is he, that his eye is never off her day nor night. The point of special observation in the whole text is, the watchful eye of God's providence over his Church, which never closeth, nor so much as winketh. The parts are,

• 1. The person, who tendeth and tendereth Israel, he.
• 2. The office he undertaketh and performeth, keepeth.
• 3. His charge, that is, the object of his care, Israel.
• 4. His vigilancy over his charge, neither slumbereth nor sleepeth.

The enemies of the Church are either bodily or ghostly: against the former he fenceth her with his power, against the latter with his grace.

To keep, is to look to, preserve and protect, save and defend from all violence or injury, waste or spoil, hurt or destruction: as an husband doth his wife, a guardian his ward, a tutor his pupil, a Centurion his band, a watchman his quarter, a shepherd his flock, a keeper his park. And all these relations the Church hath to Christ, in regard of the kind offices which he continually performeth to her in greatest love. For she is his spouse, and he her husband: she his ward, and he her guardian: she his pupil, and he her tutor: she his band, and he her Sentinel: she his city, and he her watch-man: she his flock, and he her shepherd: she his park, or rather deer, and he her keeper.

In the verse immediately going before, the Prophet spake in the singular number, he shall keep thee: but here in the plural, extending the care of God to the Church in general, to teach us that our heavenly father holdeth such a watchful eye of providence over everyone of his faithful children, as if he tended him only, and yet taketh such a care of all in general, as of everyone in particular.

Shall neither slumber nor sleep. Somnus est ligatio sensuum: Sleep is the tying of the senses: which if they be heart-bound, we are said to sleep; if slack, or loose, to slumber. The senses of our body are the windows of the soul, which in a slumber are as it were shut to, but barred and bolted when we are fast asleep. Like as we see sometimes there ariseth out of the earth a thin mist, which the sun easily pierceth with his beams, and disperseth it with his heat; sometimes a thick vapor mounteth up to the middle region of the air, where by the temper of the place it is turned into a dark cloud that obscureth the sky for many hours: in like manner, when a thin fume ascendeth from the stomach into the brain, it causeth but a slumber, out of which we easily rouse up ourselves; but when a gross vapor climbeth up thither, it overcasteth the clear sky of our fancy, and in the fall stoppeth all the passages of our senses, and then we sleep soundly. But I need not discourse of the nature of sleep and slumber, there be few here but too accurately distinguish them: for though they count it a foul shame to sleep out a Sermon, yet they make no scruple of conscience to slumber, and sometimes nod; who shall not need with Aristotle to hold a brazen ball in their hand over a bason, to awake them if sleep chance to surprise them: if the words of our Savior continually ring in their ears, Can ye not watch with me one hour? Out of this brief representation of the nature of sleep, it appeareth that it is a matter of much more difficulty to abstain from slumbering, than from sleeping: therefore the members of this sentence may seem to be displaced; and therefore Calvin and Bucer thus translate the words, Non dormitat, nedum dormit; he that keepeth Israel never slumbereth, much less sleepeth: or we may paraphrase the words thus, He that keepeth Israel, neither suffereth his eye-lids to slumber by day, nor his eyes to sleep by night; but keepeth a continual watch over his people. The words thus illustrated, present to our serious thoughts these most important considerations:

• 1. That God himself is the Churches keeper.
• 2. That how many, or how great enemies soever lie in wait for her, ye she is kept.

Israel is an impregnable castle, not by reason of the nature of the place or situation, nor in regard of the great store of men and munition in it: but because he that keepeth it doth neither slumber nor sleep. Ecclesia oppugnatur saepe, expugnatur nunquam. Many times have they fought against me from my youth up, may Israel now say: Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth up, yet they have not prevailed against me. There can be no State, Society, Kingdom, or Common-wealth, so strongly built and fenced, but if the floods of sedition arise, and the raging tempest of foreign forces beat upon it, it may be ruinated, because it is founded upon sand, that is, men who are but sand and dust: but let the floods of persecution arise, and the wind of heresy blow never so furiously upon the Church, yet it will stand, because it is built upon the rock Christ Jesus. What speak we of clouds, which are the windows of heaven? the gates of hell shall never be able to prevail against it. By the gates of hell, many learned Interpreters understand the counsels, projects, plots, and designs of wicked men; because, for the most part, the counsel among the Jews, for their better security, sat in their gate-houses, which in all strong cities are best fenced by nature or art. For which cause the spirit of God describeth the strength of any city or country by the gates thereof. He shall make fast the bars of thy gates: and, Thy seed shall possess the gate of the enemy, that is, thy seed shall take their garrisons, and occupy their strongest holds. If we like of the former interpretation, Now Israel, now England may say, the gates of hell, that is, the deep projects and counsels, plots and machinations of the Miners of Antichrist, as deep as hell, have not prevailed against me: Or if ye please, ye may take the barrels of gun-powder laid in the vault of destruction, and chambers of death, for the gates of hell; and the massy pieces of iron and wood, for the bars of these gates, which if the Devil or his instruments could have then broken open in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, our King and Parliament, Nobles and Commons, Clergy and Gentry, with the chief records and monuments of this Kingdom, had been blown up with the breath of Satan, in a cloud of fire and brimstone into the air. That blast, in all likelihood, would have proved the last gasp of our Church and Common-wealth. If he that keepeth Israel, first God, next the King, had slept or slumbered that night: it is to be feared, we all here present had long ere this slept our last sleep in the dust of the earth. But blessed be the God of Israel, who hath saved and redeemed his people from the paw of the Devil and jaws of death, and hath raised up a mighty salvation for us in the hand of his servant James. The Devil and his instruments do not watch so narrowly to destroy us, as God and his Angels to save and protect us. He that saveth our life, in effect giveth it; and therefore Aristotle moveth a question, whom we are more bound to rescue, though it be with the peril of our lives, our father, or such a friend who hath ventured his life for us, and saved us from certain death. The decision whereof may be this, That we owe our life to both; but it being impossible that we should pay it to both, in all reason we are to lay it down for him first, to whom it was first due, and that is our father: Whereupon it ensueth, that we owe God many lives if we had them, because he not only gave us our life, but also saveth us from manifold deaths, both by ordinary and extradinary means, both by general and special providence. His providence in general looketh to all men good and bad, yea to all creatures whatsoever; which could not subsist for a moment, if he kept them not in the course of their nature. But above all creatures in special he is the preserver of men; among men, the children of Israel were his portion, the lot of his inheritance, whom he kept as the apple of his eye. As an Eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings; so the Lord led Israel. We must go yet farther; there is an Israel of Israel, to wit, the Elect in Israel, which are as a Diamond in the ring on his finger, & as the apple of his eye: He that toucheth you (saith he) toucheth the apple of mine eye. To them he vouchsafeth more special favors; for them he blesseth the people where they are, as he blessed Laban's house for Jacob's sake, and Pharaohs for Josephs sake. To this Israel belong the promises: He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. He shall give his Angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall keep thee up in their hands, that thou dash not thy foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the Lion and the Adder: the young Lion and the Dragon shalt thou trample under feet. And it is the keeper of this Israel which neither slumbereth nor sleepeth.

Ye may here object, If he that keepeth Israel never slumbereth nor sleepeth, what mean those expostulations and calling up (if I may so speak) of Almighty God? Up, Lord, why sleepest thou? arise, cast us not off forever: arise for our help, and redeem us for thy mercies sake. If God hath need to be awaked, he must needs be at least in a slumber: If the loud cries of his afflicted children awake him, and he standeth up like a Giant refreshed with wine to fight for them, it should seem before he was asleep. It may seem so indeed, because (according to outward appearance and semblance) he was so. When a man is asleep, though any miscall him, or make mouths at him, or put any indignity upon him, he stirreth not, nor hath any sense of anything that is done to him. Upon this ground the sweet singer of Israel runs in descant; Rise up, Lord, let not man prevail, let the Heathen be judged in thy sight. Why standest thou afar off, O Lord? Why hidest thou thy face in time of trouble? Awake, O Lord, why makest thou as if thou hearest not? Awake to my judgment, awake, why sleepest thou? Awake to my help: and, Behold, let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered: let them also that hate him flee before him, &c. The slumber of Almighty God is nothing else but the connivency of his justice for a time, and it is mercy which casteth him into this sweet sleep, which yet doth not so surprise his powers, or any way bind his senses, but that he seeth the deepest plots of his enemies, he heareth their secretest consultations, and is sensible of the least wrong offered to his chosen. Oculi ejus vident, palpebrae ejus explorant filios hominum; he looketh through his eye-lids, and marks well enough, though he seem to neglect it. As a fisher seeth a fish come to his hook, nibble at the bait, bite it, and swallow it down, and then he giveth a jerke with his angle-rod; so Almighty God permits wicked purposes and enterprises to hold on in a straight course, till they are even at the goal, and then he turns and overturneth them: In foribus Hydriam; he breaketh the pitcher at the door, cutteth down the ear when it is full, launceth the sore when it is ripe. How did he suffer an invincible Navy, as they termed it, to be built and furnished for the invasion and utter subversion of our Israel, and so great a design to be carried so close, that the Fleet was in sight of the haven before it was discovered? but then in the height of their swelling pride, when in hope and almost in sight they had devoured the whole kingdom:

Partly a tempest dispersed, partly wild-fire burned, partly the sea with open mouth swallowed down their shipping.

But this day presenteth afresh to our memory a stranger example of divine providence, and a prodigious design of Satan's malice, who put into the heart of that caitiff Catesby, the most hellish project and plot of treason that ever entered into the heart of man or Devil, to offer up our King, Queen, Prince, Nobles, Prelates, Judges, and all States assembled in Parliament for a holocaust, or whole burnt offering to the Moloch of Rome. The keeper of Israel seemed for a long time to slumber, nay rather to be fast asleep. The plot is contrived, the actors designed, the enginers provided, the mine digged, the wall pierced, the seller hired, the powder bought, the murdering artillery amassed, the train laid, and the incendiary ready with match and touch-wood.

But, Ecce non dormitat, neque dormit custos Israelis; be of good cheare, the keeper of Israel doth neither slumber nor sleep. By this keeper the Prophet meaneth Almighty God, whom he nameth in the verses following, The Lord himself is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand: the Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: the Lord shall preserve thy soul: the Lord shall preserve thy going out, and thy coming in from this time forth for evermore. and, Except the Lord keep the City, the watchman waketh but in vain. Yet in a second place we may entitle his majesty to this office of Lord-keeper: for he next under God watcheth over all God's Israel in his kingdoms, and ecce non dormitat, neque dormit hic custos Israelis, the Lord keepeth this keeper of Israel awake, and in the dead time of the night discovereth unto him the snares of death laid for him and his people. His Majesty receiveth the word from Almighty God, though spoken softly in his ear, and scarce audibly, & gave it to his faithful servants, who by the dark light he gave them of some blow by powder, searched the place, and found the fire-brand of Hell, and chop of the Devil, Guido Faux, with a dark lantern, making his trains, and sowing (if I may so speak) the seeds of all our destruction. How many miracles have we here of divine providence, and mirrours of his justice? Wonderful strange it was, that the arch plotter Catesby should for many months keep within him that monstrous and prodigious design, like strongest poison, and never break. Wonderful strange it was, that so horrible and damnable a conspiracy should be afterwards imparted by him to so many, noised abroad so far, brought to that maturity, that the success thereof was prophesied by some in scattered papers, prayed for almost by all of the Jesuits faction, at least in general; and yet Argus with his hundred eyes, the great Counsellers of State, who have eyes and ears in all places, should have no notice of it till near the hour in which it should have been acted: and most strange of all, that his Majesty by a violent and unnatural construction of a phrase in a letter should find out the violent and unnatural intendment of the authors of this treason, to destroy the state in as little a time, as the letter would be burnt in the fire.

Ye have heard the miracles of God's providence in discovery of this powder plot: behold now the mirror of his justice. Of destruction it self there is good construction to be made, and order to be observed in confusion it self, which most justly fell upon the unjust authors thereof. The first contriver of the fire-works first feeleth the flame, his powder sin upbraids him, and flieth in his face. Their heads are lifted up above the house of Parliament, who would have blown up the heads and peers of our Realm thither. The quarters of the Black-birds of Hell, and Vultures of Antichrist, that would have preyed upon the barbarously murdered and cruelly quartered and dismembered corpses of our Church and Common-wealth, are set up for a prey for the fowls of heaven; and according to the letter of our daily prayer, the eyes that waited for the destruction of our King and State, are pecked out by the Ravens of the valley, and the birds of the air have eaten them. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , So let thine and our implacable enemies, O Lord, perish, but let them that love thee, be as the Sun when he goeth forth in his strength. Deo Patri, & Filio, & Spiritui sancto sit laus, &c.

ABRAHAM HIS PURCHASE. A Sermon preached at the Consecration of the Church-yard enclosed within the new wall at Lambeth. THE LXII. SERMON.

UPon the hearing of my Text read, I suppose many look for a Funeral Sermon, and have already so christened my future discourse in their preconceits. For here is the carrying of the dead, and the interring, together with a place for burial, purchased by Abraham for him and his heirs forever. But as Isaac said to his father Abraham, Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the Lamb for a burnt offering? so they may reason with themselves, Behold the bearers, and a sepulcher, and the ground, but where is the corps to be laid in it? My answer hereunto must be a thanksgiving to God, whose mercy hath altered the case with us, because his compassions fail not. It stood lately thus with us, when the ways of Zion mourned, because none walked in them; and the gates of the Sanctuary lamented, because almost none, specially of the better rank, who left us desolate, entered at them. We saw with weeping eyes and bleeding hearts a press as it were of dead corpses, and many suing for a reversion of a void room in our dormitory; but now (God be blessed) we have a place given for burial, and no corpses at this present to take real and corporal possession thereof. Howbeit, because what hath be fallen us heretofore, may also hereafter, and if death should strike any at this present without a writ of removal, which cannot be sued out of any court for ought I know against the dead, we know not where to bestow them: we could do no less in Christian charity and providence, than procure the bounds of our Golgotha to be enlarged. For though other houses and tenements stand void with us, the grave shall never want guests, nor the Church-yard and vaults under ground tenants against their will. All men and women are flowers, and all flowers will fall, and when they are ready to fall, we shall have slips (I fear) but too many to plant this parcel of ground which we have gained in by the gift of the father of this Shechem.

But hereof hereafter, when I shall have opened my Text, and the sepulcher in it, and who were interred there, and how they came thither. If in any Text almost of the whole Scripture, surely in this the coherence needeth to be handled. For at the first sight this relation of the burial of the Patriarchs seemeth to have no affinity at all with Saint Stephens apology for himself against the Jews, who charged him with blasphemy against Moses, and against the Law. Now as in a shooting match a stander by can hardly discern the flight of an arrow, unless he mark the Archers aim, and observe the flight-shaft as soon as it is delivered out of the bow; so unless ye mark Saint Stephens aim, and observe how he entereth into this story of the Old Testament, ye can hardly discern how direct it is to his main scope and purpose. But so it is, that as he that shooteth far draweth his arrow backward up to the head; and as he that leapeth forward fetcheth his feeze a great way back: so doth Saint Stephen here seem to give ground, and recoil a great way backward; but it is to come on with more force, and powerfully to confound the Jews, who began not now to persecute the Saints of God, and Witnesses of Jesus Christ, but in all ages had done the like. Fabius Maximus (as Livy writeth) kept aloof off from the Carthaginian army upon a high hill, till he saw that Hannibal had foiled Minutius in the plain; but then he falleth upon him, and routs all his troupes: whereupon Hannibal uttered that memorable speech, I ever feared that the cloud which hovered so long upon the hills would in the end pour down, and give us a sad shower. Saint Stephen like Fabius for a great while keepeth aloof off from the Jews, and his discourse resembleth a dark cloud hovering on the top of a hill, which on the sudden in the end rained down upon them, and caused a bitter storm, for killing first all the servants sent to them by the Master of the Vineyard, and last of all his Son. The Jews bragged much of their fathers; Saint Stephen by epitomizing the story of the Old Testament, showeth unto them that they ought rather to be ashamed of them, in whose wicked steps notwithstanding they trod, and were now (as their fathers ever had been) a stiff-necked people, of uncircumcised ears and hearts, resisting the spirit of God, and cruelly persecuting those to death, who shown before of the coming of the just One, of whom (saith he) ye have been now the betrayers and murderers: who have received the Law by the disposition of Angels, and have not kept it.

The accusers of Saint Stephen articled against him, that he had uttered blasphemy against the Law of Moses, and against the Temple, because he taught that the ceremonies of the Law were fulfilled in Christ, and that the shadow ought to vanish, the body being come in place. Saint Stephen answereth for himself, that the doctrine of the Gospel was ancienter than the Law or the Temple, and that all the furniture of the Temple and Ark were made according to the pattern in the Mount, and had a reference to heavenly and spiritual things revealed in the Gospel: that God was now to be worshipped in spirit and truth, by faith in Christ now come, as he had been by the fathers before the Law in Christ to come, who by faith gave charge that their bones should be carried out of Egypt, and buried in the land of Canaan, believing that God would certainly perform his promise made unto their posterity, first of the real possession of the earthly, & after that of the heavenly inheritance by the seed of Abraham, in whom all Nations are blessed, Christ Jesus, that should be born in that land. What they gave in charge was accordingly performed, as ye hear in the words of my Text, So Jacob went into Egypt and died, he and our fathers, and were carried over into Shechem, and laid in the sepulcher that Abraham bought, &c.

Ye see the coherence, but ye cannot yet discern the truth of the relation, because there is a mist on the words, which hath caused many to miss their way; and it cannot be otherwise dispelled, than by clearing this whole relation of Saint Stephen, and comparing it with the narration of Moses.

1. It is evident out of Genes. 23.16, 20. that Abraham for four hundreds shekels of silver bought the field of Ephron the Hittite, which was in Machpelah, and therein a cave to bury the dead.

2. It is evident out of Genes. 33.19. that Jacob bought a parcel of a field where he had spread his tent, at the hand of the children of Hamor Sechems father, for a hundred pieces of money.

3. It is evident likewise out of Genes. 50.13. that Jacob's sons carried him into the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field in Machpelah, which Abraham bought with the field for a possession of a burying place of Ephron the Hittite before Mamre.

4. It is evident out of Jos. 24.32. that the children of Israel brought the bones of Joseph out of Egypt, and buried them in Shechem in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of silver, and it became the inheritance of the children of Joseph.

Now the points of difficulty are three:

1. Whether all the Patriarchs were buried in Shechem, or only Joseph. For in the book of Joshua there is mention made of none buried there but Joseph; yet Saint Stephen here speaketh in the plural number, Our fathers died, and were carried over into Shechem. And Saint Jerome, who lived in those parts writeth, that in his time the sepulcher of the twelve Patriarchs was to be seen in Shechem.

2. Whether Abraham or Jacob bought this field wherein they were buried. For both bought ground for burial, but not at the same rate, nor in the same place, nor from the same Landlords. For Abraham paid for his purchase four hundred pieces of silver, Jacob an hundred: Abraham's lay in the country of Heth, Jacob's of Shechem: Abraham bought it of Ephron the Hittite, Jacob of Hamor the Sechemite. If the Patriarchs were laid in a sepulcher at Shechem, it could not be that which Abraham bought: for that was not in the tenure and occupation of the Shechemites, but of the Hittites.

3. Whether Hamor were the father or son of Shechem. For in Genesis we read, that he was the father of Shechem: but in the Acts many translate 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the son of Shechem.

1. The first doubt may be thus cleared. Joseph alone was buried in Shechem, and rested there: but the other Patriarchs were at the first buried at Shechem, but afterwards removed from thence to Ephron, and were buried all in Abraham's vault or cave: thus Josephus & S. Jerome are easily reconciled. For though the bones of them all lay in Ephron, yet at Shechem there might be some monument of them remaining, as empty tombs with some inscription.

2. The second difficulty is much more intricate, and those who have stroven to get out of it have more entangled themselves and others in it. Calvin's answer is somewhat too peremptory, that there is an error in all our copies of the New Testament, and ought to be corrected: and though Beza go about to excuse the matter by a semblance of some like misnomer in the Gospel, yet this his observation, unless he could produce some ancient copies, wherein such mistakes were not to be found, openeth a dangerous gap to Infidels and Heretics, who hereby will be apt to take occasion to question the infallible truth of the holy Writ. Cano in going about to take out the blot, maketh it bigger, saying, that Saint Luke erred not in relating Saint Stephens speech, but that Saint Stephens memory failed him, and that through error or inadvertency he confounded Jacob's purchase with Abraham's. This answer cometh near to blasphemy: for no man doubteth but that Saint Stephen in his speech spake as he was inspired by the holy Ghost. Therefore Lyranus, Lorinus, and many others, think to salve all by putting two names upon the same man, whom they will have sometimes to be called Ephron, sometimes Hamor: but they bring no good proof out of Scripture for it; and though they could make Ephron and Hamor the same man, yet they can never make the cave in the land of the Hittites, and that in the land of the Shechemites to be one and the same parcel of ground.

With submission to more learned judgments (quia hic Delio opus est natatore) I take it that either 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 should be rendered by, & joined to the word 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , and a comma at 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , and so the sense is, That the Patriarchs were translated into Shechem by the Shechemites, and laid in Abraham's sepulcher which he bought for money: or 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 to be understood, and then the meaning will be this, That some of the Patriarchs were laid in Abraham's sepulcher, some in the field that Jacob bought. Thus then (according to the original) we may render this verse, And they were carried over into Shechem, and laid in the sepulcher that Abraham bought, besides that which Jacob bought of Hamor, that is: Jacob died, and our fathers, and some of them were bestowed in Shechem in the cave which Jacob bought, and some of them in that which Abraham bought.

3. The third doubt is easily resolved. For Hamor was the father of Shechem, as we read Genes. 33.19. neither doth S. Stephen gain-say it: for his words are 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , of Shechem, which should have been translated the father of Shechem, as Herodotus in Clio saith, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , and in Thalia, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , and Saint Mark, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . Adrastus of Mydas, to wit, the father of Mydas; Cyrus of Cambyses, that is, the father of Cambyses; Mary of James, that is, Mary the mother of James.

The mist being thus dispelled, we may clearly see our way, and readily follow the Patriarchs in the funeral procession from Egypt, first to Shechem, and afterwards to Ephron.

And they were carried over, &c. This transportation offereth to our religious thoughts two acts:

• 1. Of Piety,
• 2. Of Charity.

both significative and mystical. For the carrying the Patriarchs bones from Egypt to Canaan, shadoweth our removal after death from Egyptian darkness to the inheritance of Saints in light; and the laying them by the bones of Abraham may represent unto us how the souls of all the faithful immediately after they were severed from their bodies, are carried by Angels into the bosom of Abraham. The first I call an act of piety or religion, because the Patriarchs before their death by faith gave charge of their bones; and their posterity executed their last Will in this point, to profess their faith in God's promise, which was to give the land of Canaan to their seed for an inheritance, and accordingly by their dead bodies they took a kind of real possession thereof.

And they. As by a Synecdoche the soul is put for the man, Anima cujusque is est quisque; so by the same figure the corpses of the Patriarchs are called the Patriarchs. Poole elegantly called his dead body his depositum: Scaliger his relique: Saint Paul the tent-maker agreeable to his profession, called it an earthly tabernacle. And although indeed it be but the casket which contains in it the precious ring, our immortal spirit, yet in regard of the union of it to the soul, and because it concurreth with the soul to the physical constitution of a man, it may by a figure be called a man.

Yea, but had the Patriarchs no privilege, but must they go the way of all flesh? They must: for earth is in their composition, and into the earth must be their resolution. As the world is a circle, so all things in the world in this are like a circle, that they end where, or as they began. The vapors that are drawn up from the earth, fall down again upon the earth in rain. The fire that descended at the first from the region of fire in the hollow of the Moon, ascends up thither again. The waters that flow from the sea return back to the sea: in like manner the soul of man, which was infused by God, returneth to God that gave it; but the body, which was made of red earth, returneth to dust as it was. We need not inquire of Scripture where reason speaketh so plain, nor interrogate reason where sense giveth daily testimony to the truth. Every passing bell rings this lesson in our ears: Omnis loculus locus est; every coffin is a topicke to prove it: every grave lays it open to us: every speechless man on his death-bed cries out to us, Memento mori, quod tueris eris.

Were carried over into Shechem. The life of man is a double pilgrimage:

• 1. Of the outward man.
• 2. Of the inward man.

The outward travelleth from the cradle to the coffin, the inward from earth to heaven. Of all creatures man only is properly a pilgrim on earth; because he alone is borne, and liveth all his time here out of his own country: of all men the Patriarchs were the greatest pilgrims, both in life and death; for they spent all their life in wearisome and dangerous peregrinations, and after their death their bodies went as it were in pilgrimage, and there visited first Shechem, and then Machpelah, where they took up their rest. It is the usual wish and proverbial speech of men, Though I toile and moile here, yet I hope one day I shall rest in my grave. No man can promise himself so much: for not only the bodies of men accursed of God have been digged out of their graves, to teach us, that there is no sanctuary for a wicked person living or dying; but even God's servants have been oftentimes removed out of their earthly beds, some in honor to them, and others out of malice again • •• em, to dishonor and disgrace them. The bodies of Gervasius and Protasius, Martyrs, were translated from a blind and obscure place in Millaine where they lay, to a more celebrious and illustrous Church, to do them the greater honor: on the contrary, Eusebius writeth, that divers Martyrs in France were by the Gentiles plucked out of their graves, and burnt to ashes, and their ashes cast into the river Roan: and the Papists, as if they would make it known to the world that no Painims or Gentiles should out-do them, in wreaking their malice against the professors of the truth, both digged up Wycliffe's and Peter Martyrs wives, and Paulus Fagius their bones after they had been long interred:

The Tomb-stone is said to be the bound of malice, and death a supersedeas for envy and all uncharitable proceedings: yet blind zeal in persecuting the members of Christ Jesus exceeds these bounds, and all terms of common humanity. O unheard of cruelty, saith the blessed Martyr Saint Cyprian, Their rage falleth upon the stripes of God's servants, and they now torture not so much their members as their wounds. We may go on further, because Popish cruelty hath gone on further, and say: Saevitum est in cadavera, saevitum est in ossa, saevitum est in cineres, saevitum est in manes: the rage and malice of Papists against Protestants is not satisfied with their blood, nor expireth with their life; they fall like savage Jackals upon their carcasses, they dignity up their graves, they rifle their coffins, they burn their bones, they persecute their ghosts; and this is their charity which they so much brag of. But I leave them, and come to the sepulcher which Abraham bought, where the Patriarchs were laid.

And were laid in the sepulcher. Though it little import the souls of God's Saints in heaven what becometh of their dead corpse on earth, no more than it concerneth a newly elected King, when he hath his Princely robes on him, what becomes of his old cast suits of apparel: in which regard Saint Monica told her son at her death, that she took no care where she was interred; yielding this for a reason, It is nothing to me (saith she) whether I lie far from home, or from any Church; I am sure nothing is far from God: neither do I fear but that he will find me at the last day, and raise up my corpse wheresoever it lies. Yet because the bodies of God's Saints were temples of the holy Ghost, and served as instruments in the performance of all duties of piety and charity; our piety and charity in some respect extendeth to them: piety I say, not to worship them, for that is idolatry; not to pray to them, for that at the best is 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , will-worship, and unwarrantable devotion; not to pray for them, for that is superstition: but to give God thanks for them, and to expect their and our joyful resurrection: charity to preserve their good name alive, and to bury their dead corpses, although I grant with Saint Augustine, that the care of funerals, and pomp of herses, and rites of burial are rather comforts of the living, than helps of the dead: yet with the same Augustine I cannot but acknowledge that the bodies of our parents or friends may challenge more affection and respect to them, than the apparel ring, or jewel they wore, which yet we make great account of, and carefully keep for their sake. Doth not Nature her self teach us this work of mercy to the dead? Do not some birds that are loving to man, if they spy a dead corpse in the wood, cover it over with leaves? Doth the young Phenix (as Tacitus writeth) as soon as ever it hath life, take care of burying the parent, carrying his corpse with a quantity of Myrrh, and laying it in the Temple of the Sun? and shall not men endued with reason and understanding do the like not only to their parents and friends, but even to strangers and their very enemies, especially if there be worth in them? Alexander the great opening Cyrus Tomb, set a crown upon his Herse, and carefully shut it again. Hannibal gave Marcellus the Roman Consul an honorable burial, put his ashes in a silver pot, and crowned it with a crown of gold, and sent it to his son to interre it. (To speak nothing of Cannibals, man-eaters, and other savages) all civil people in the world bury their dead, though in a different manner, and with several rites. The Jews washed, the Egyptians embalmed the corpse, the Romans burnt them with sweet perfumes, and kept the ashes in an urne or pot: the Ethiopians curiously paint them, and lay them in a glazed coffin: the most common and most agreeable to Scripture is interring the corpse. Moses alludeth to it: Dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return: and Solomon, Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and David, What profit is there then in my blood when I go down to the pit? shall the dust praise thee? or shall it declare thy truth? The Greeks for the most part, and other Nations also, excepting those above named, interred their dead: and therefore Pliny calleth the earth our tender mother, which receiveth us into her bosom, when we are excluded as it were out of the world, and covereth our nakedness and shame, and guardeth us from beasts and fowls, that they offer no indignity to our carcasses.

Now because it is to small purpose to bestow the dead in rooms under ground, if they may not keep them, Abraham wisely provided for this: for he laid down a valuable consideration for the field where the cave was.

Were laid in the sepulcher that Abraham bought for a sum of money. As Abraham here bought a field out-right, and thereby assured the possession thereof to his posterity; so by his example the Synagogue under the Law, and the Catholic Church under the Gospel, especially in days of peace, secured certain places for the burial of the dead, either purchased for money, or received by deed of gift: and after they were possessed of them, sequestered them from all other, and appropiated them to this use only; by which sequestration and appropriation all such parcels of ground became holy, in such sort that none might otherwise use or employ them, than for the burial of the dead, without sacrilege or profanation. As the holy oil ran from Aaron's head to his body, and the skirts of his garments, so holiness stayeth not in the Chancel as the head, but descendeth to the whole body of the Church and the Church-yard as the skirt thereof.

Mistake me not, brethren, I say not that one clod of earth is holier than another, or any one place or day absolutely, but relatively only. For as it is superstition to attribute formal or inherent holiness to times, places, parcels of ground, fruits of the earth, vessel, or vestments; so it is profaneness to deny them some kind of relative sanctity, which the holy Ghost attributeth unto them in Scripture, where we read expressly of holy ground, holy days, holy oil, and the like. To clear the point we are to distinguish of holiness yet more particularly, which belongeth

• 1. To God the Father, Son, and Spirit by essence.
• 2. To Angels and men by participation of the divine nature or grace.
• 3. To the Word and Oracles of God by inspiration.
• 4. To types, figures, sacraments, rites and ceremonies by divine institution.
• 5. To places, lands, and fruits of the earth, as also sacred utensils, by use and dedication: as
  • 1. Temples with their furniture consecrated to the service of God.
  • 2. Tithes and glebe lands to the maintenance of the Priests.
  • 3. Church-yards to the burial of the dead.

Others come off shorter, and dichotomize holy things, which say they are

• 1. Sanctified, because they are holy, as God his name and attributes, &c.
• 2. Holy, because they are sanctified,
  • 1. Either by God to man, as the Word and Sacraments.
  • 2. Or by man to God, as Priests, Temples, Altars, Tables, &c.

Of this last kind of holy things by dedication, some are dedicated to him

• 1. Immediately, as all things used in his service.
• 2. Mediately, as all such things without which his service cannot be conveniently done; and here come in Church-yards, without which, some religious works of charity cannot be done with such conveniency or decency as they ought.

The Church is as God's house, and the yard is as the court before his door: how then dare any defile it, or alienate it, or employ it to any secular use for profit or pleasure?

To conclude, all Church-yards by the Ancients are termed 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , dormitories, or dortories, wherein they lie that sleep in Jesus. Now it is most uncivil to press into, or any way abuse the bed-chamber of the living, and much more of the dead. What are graves in this dormitory but sacred vestries, wherein we lay up our old garments for a time, and after take them out, and resume them new dressed and trimmed, and gloriously adorned, and made shining, and exceeding white as snow (so as no Fuller on earth can white them?) These shining raiments God bestow upon us all at the last day, for the merits of the death and burial of our Lord and Savior. Cui, &c.

THE FEAST OF PENTECOST. A Sermon preached on Whitsunday. THE LXIII. SERMON.

SAint Chrysostom, comparing the works of redemption with the works of creation, observeth, that as the Father finished the former, so the Son the later, in six days especially: in memory whereof his dearest Spouse, the Catholic Church, hath appointed six solemnities to be kept by all Christians, with greatest fervor of devotion, and highest elevation of religious affections. These are Christ his

• 1. Virgin birth.
• 2. Illustrious Epiphany.
• 3. Ignominious death.
• 4. His powerful resurrection.
• 5. His glorious ascension.
• 6. His gracious sending down of the holy Ghost.

The day of

• 1. His incarnation, by which he entered into the world.
• 2. His manifestation, on which he entered upon his office of Mediator.
• 3. His passion, on which he expiated our sins.
• 4. His resuscitation, by w ^ch he conquered death & the grave.
• 5. His triumphant return into heaven, on which he took seizin and possession of that kingdom for us.
• 6. His visible mission of the holy Ghost, in the similitude of fiery cloven tongues, on which he sealed all his former benefits to us, and us to the day of redemption.

This last festival in order of time was yet the first and chiefest in order of dignity. For on Christ's birth day he was made partaker of our nature, but on this we were made partakers after a sort of his: in the Epiphany one star only stood over the house where he lay, on this twelve fiery tongues, like so many celestial lights, appeared in the room where the Apostles were assembled: on the day of his passion he rendered his human spirit to God his father, on this he sent down his divine spirit upon us: on the resurrection his spirit quickened his natural body, on this it quickened his mystical, the Catholic Church: on the ascension he took a pledge from us, viz. our flesh, and carried it into heaven, on this he sent us his pledge, viz. his spirit in the likeness of fiery tongues, with the sound of a mighty rushing wind. After which the Spouse, as Gorran conceiveth, panted, saying, Awake, O North wind, and come thou South, blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out; let my Beloved come into his garden, & eat his pleasant fruits. The wind she gasped for, what was it but the spirit? and what are the fragrant spices she wishes may flow, but the graces of the holy Ghost, which David calleth gifts for men in the eighteenth verse of the 68. Psalm? the former part whereof may furnish the feast we lately celebrated, with a fit antheme, Thou hast ascended up on high, thou hast led captivity captive: the later may supply this present, thou hast received gifts for men, yea for the rebellious also, that the Lord God may dwell among them. Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation: for on this day Christ received gifts for his Church, the gifts of faith, hope and charity, the gift of prayer and supplication, the gift of healing and miracles, the gift of prophecy, the gift of tongues, and the interpretation thereof. Verily, so many and so great are the benefits, which the anniversary return of this day presenteth to us, that as if all the tongues upon the earth had not been sufficient to utter them, a supply of new tongues was sent from heaven to declare them in all languages. The New Testament was drawn before, and signed with Christ's blood on good Friday; but sealed first on this day by the holy spirit of God. Christ made his last Will upon the cross, and thereby bequeathed unto us many fair legacies: but this Will was not administered till this day; for the ministration is of the spirit.

Yea, but had not the Apostles the spirit before this day? did not our Lord breathe on them, ( John 20.22.) the day he rose at evening, being the first day of the week, saying, Receive ye the holy Ghost?

The learned answer, that they had indeed the spirit before, but not in such a measure: the holy Ghost was given before according to some ghostly power and invisible grace; but was never sent before in a visible manner: before they received him in breath, now in fire: before he was sprinkled, but now poured on them: before they received 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , but now 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 : before authority to discharge their function, but now power to work wonders: before they had the smell, now the substance of the celestial ointment was shed on them: they heard of him before, but now they saw and felt him

• 1. In their minds, by infallible direction:
• 2. In their tongues, by the multiplicity of languages:
• 3. In their hands, by miraculous cures.

S. Augustine truly observeth, that before the Apostles on this day were endued with power from above, they never strove for the Christian faith unto blood: when Satan winnowed them at Christ's passion they all flew away like chaff. And though S. Peters faith failed not, because it was supported by our Lord's prayer, Luke 22.32. yet his courage failed him in such sort, that he was foiled by a silly damsel: but after the holy Ghost descended upon him and the rest of the Apostles, in the sound of a mighty rushing wind, and in the likeness of fiery cloven tongues, they were filled with grace, and enflamed with zeal, and they mightily opposed all the enemies of the truth, and made an open and noble profession thereof before the greatest Potentates of the world, and sealed it with their blood, all of them save S. John; who had that privilege that he should stay till Christ came, glorifying the Lord of life by their valiant suffering of death for his names sake. In regard of which manifold and powerful eff • cts of sending the spirit on this day, which were no less seen in the flames of the Martyrs, than in the fiery tongues that lighted on the Apostles, the Church of Christ, even from the beginning, celebrated this festivity in most solemn manner; and not so only, but within 300. years after Christ's death, the Fathers in the Councils of Eliberis mounted a canon, thundering out the pain of heresy to all such as religiously kept it not. If the Jews celebrated an high feast in memory of the Law, on this day first proclaimed on mount Sinai; ought not we much more to solemnize it in memory of the Gospel now promulgated on mount Zion by new tongues sent from heaven? If we dedi ••• peculiar festivals to God the Father the Creator, and God the Son the Redeemer; why should not God the holy Ghost the Sanctifier have a peculiar interest in our devotion? S. Bernard addeth another twist to this cord, If we deservedly honor Saints with festivals, how much more ought we to honor him, who maketh them Saints? especially having so good a ground for it, as is laid down in this chapter and verse:

And when the day of Pentecost was come. As a prologue to an act, or an eeve to an holy day, or the Parascheve to the Passover, or the beautiful gate to the Temple; so is this preface to the ensuing narration: it presenteth to our religious thoughts a three-fold concurrence:

• 1. Of time.
• 2. Of place.
• 3. Of affections.

Upon one and the self same day, when all the Apostles were met in one place, and were of one mind, the spirit of unity and love descendeth upon them. Complementum legis Christus, Evangelii spiritus; As the descending of the Son was the complement of the Law, so the sending of the spirit is the complement of the Gospel: and as God sent his Son in the fullness of time, so he sent the spirit, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , in the fullness of the fiftieth day. When the Apostles number was full, and their desire and expectations full, then the spirit came down, and filled their hearts with joy, and their tongues with 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , Magnifica Dei facta, the wonderful works of God, verse. 11.

That your thoughts rove not at uncertainties, may it please you to pitch them upon four circumstances.

• 1. The time, when.
• 2. The persons who, They.
• 3. The affection or disposition, were with one accord.
• 4. The place, in one place.

• 1. The time was solemn, the day of Pentecost.
• 2. The persons eminent, the Apostles.
• 3. Their disposition agreeable, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 .
• 4. The place convenient, in an upper room at Jerusalem, where Christ appointed them to wait for the promise of the father.

1. Of the time. In the Syriac and Latin we read 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 or dies, days, in the plural number: but in the original, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the day in the singular. The Syriac and the Latin had an eye to the whole number of days, which now amounted unto fifty: the original designeth in the singular the precise day which made it up fifty, the day by the access whereof to the 49. the number of 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , or fifty, was made complete. Word for word according to the original we should thus read my text, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , in or upon the fulfilling of the fiftieth day from the feast of first fruits. Metall upon metal is no good Heraldrie; yet feast upon feast is good Divinity: especially when the one is the type, the other the truth. For this reason Severianus conceiveth that our Savior was offered up for our sins on the cross, the day and time of the day when the Paschal Lamb, according to the Law, was to be killed, to set the face to the picture, the truth to the type, that the body might as it were drive out the shadow, and occupy the space thereof. And in like manner Theophylact imagineth that he sent the spirit fifty days after, when the Jews kept a feast for the Law, to show that as then the holy Ghost proclaimed the Law, so now also: then the law and covenant of works, now the law of faith and covenant of grace. S. Augustine giveth another relish of his own; As (saith he) fifty days after Easter the Law was given, written by the finger of God in tables of stone: so the spirit, whose office it is to write it in the hearts of men, just so many days after Christ's resurrection, who is our Passover, fulfilled that which was figured in the publishing of the Law. S. Chrysostom striketh upon a different string, yet maketh good music: others fetched the congruity from the Law, he from nature. What, saith he, is Pentecost? It signifieth that season of the year, wherein the Jews thrust their sickle into the corn-harvest. In like sort the Lord of the harvest disposed that now the Apostles should put their sickle (the sickle of the Word) into the harvest of the world and reap it. I shall not need to strain farther for congruities, S. Cyril and S. Ambrose give me the hint of another synchronisme; for they affirm that on this day the Angel descended into the pool of Bethesda, and after the troubling the water cured the sick whatsoever the disease was. And what fitter day could have been thought upon for the holy Ghost to descend, to bestow the gift of miraculous cures, than upon this day of healing? I could tell you of the Jubilee, which fell upon the fiftieth year, in which all possessions returned to their former owners, and acquittances were given for all debts: but because the best stomachs rather desire solid than sweet meats, I therefore content myself at this present with Calvin his observation upon the circumstance of time. This solemnity being next to that of the Passover, was the fittest time to make the miracle wrought upon it more illustrious. For this reason Christ came up so often to Jerusalem at their solemn feasts, and S. Paul made haste in his journey that he might be there at the feast of Pentecost, to win more souls by the preaching of the Gospel, in a time of so great confluence of people from all parts. There is no fishing to the sea, and now it was full sea at Jerusalem, all the cities in Palestine like so many rivers emptying themselves into it. The gift of tongues could not at any time so fitly have been bestowed as at this, when there were present at Jerusalem men of every nation under heaven, Acts 2.5, 6. To convince all gain-sayers of the miracle, What are these (say they) that speak? Are they not Galileans? How then hear we everyone speak in our own tongue where we were borne? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and they that dwell in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Bithynia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and Proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God, verse. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, As we read in the 19. Psalm, verse. 2. Dies ad diem eructat sermonem, & nox ad noctem ostendit scientiam; Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge, or giveth intelligence: so here, Lingua ad linguam eructat sermonem: the tongues of men of all nations gave testimony to the miraculous gift of tongues in the Apostles. It is the wisdom of State, to appoint beacons to be set up on the highest hills, to give notice to all the Country. And Christ himself commandeth us not to hide a candle under a bushel, but to set it on a candlestick, that it may give light to all that are in the house. And in this consideration those Preachers of the glad tidings of salvation, who have had the best foil of modesty to set off the luster of their knowledge, have yet been desirous to deliver their Embassage from God to men in the fullest assemblies: not to gain thereby more applause to themselves, but more souls to God. When the ears stand thick in a corn-field, not a drop of rain falleth besides them on the ground. And this is a principal end of our celebration of Christian feasts, to draw multitudes together to hear Christ preaching by his Ministers, and working still miraculous cures upon the souls of men, by the Sacraments administered in the Church. And so from the holy day, I proceed to the sacred persons assembled on it, viz. the Apostles.

They were all together. Beza telleth us of an ancient manuscript, in which he found the substantive added to the adjective omnes, viz. Apostoli, which words though I find not in our copies, yet by comparing this verse with the last of the former chapter, it appeareth that the all here must be restrained to the Apostles, or principally meant of them; for they were, as S. Augustine setteth them forth, twelve beams of the sun of righteousness, or twelve great torches of the truth enlightening the whole world. They were as the twelve Patriarchs of the New Testament, to be consecrated as ecumenical Pastors throughout all the earth: they were as the twelve Wels of water in Elim, from whence the crystal streams of the water of life were to be derived into all parts: they were as the twelve stars in the crown of the woman which was clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet: and as the twelve precious stones in the foundation of the celestial Jerusalem.

The present assembly in this upper room was no other than a sacred Synod; and in truth there can be no Synod where the Apostles or their successors are not present, and Presidents. For all assemblies, how great soever, of Lay-persons, called together about ordering ecclesiastical affairs, without Bishops and Pastors, are like to Polyphemus his vast body without an eye:

But when the Apostles and their successors, Bishops, and Prelates, and Doctors of the Church are assembled, and all are of one accord, and bend their endeavors one way, to settle peace and define truth, Christ will make good his promise, to be in the midst of them, and by his spirit to lead them into all truth.

With one accord. All the ancient and later Interpreters accord in their note upon the word accord, that Animorum unio & concordia est optima dispositio ad recipiendum Spiritum sanctum: that Unity and concord is the best disposition of the mind, & preparation for the receiving of the holy Ghost. The bones in Ezekiel were joined one to another and tied with sinews, before the wind blew upon them and revived them: so the members of Christ must be joined in love, and coupled with the sinews of charitable affections one towards another, before the holy Spirit will enlive them. Mark (saith S. Augustine) in the natural body, how if a member be cut off, the soul presently leaveth it; while it was united to the rest of the members it lived, but as soon as ever it was severed, it became a dead piece of flesh: so it is in the mystical body of Christ; those who sever themselves by schism or faction from the body and their fellow-members, deprive themselves of the influence of the holy Spirit. Peruse the records of the Church, and you shall find for the most part that faction hath bred heresy. When discontented Church-men of eminent parts sided against their Bishops and Superiors, God's spirit left them, and they became authors of damnable heresies. This was Novatus his case after he made a faction against Cyprian: Donatus after he made a faction against Meltiades: Arius after he made a schism against Eustatius: and do we not see it daily in our Separatists, who no sooner leave our Church, but the spirit of God quite leaveth them, and they fall from Brownism to Anabaptism, from Anabaptism to Familism, and into what not? The Church and Common-wealth, like the Lapis Tyrrhenus, while they are whole swim in all waters; but if they be broken into factions, or crumbled into sects & schisms, they will soon sink, if not drown. And so I pass, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 from their unanimitie of affection, to their concurrence in place.

In one place. The last circumstance is the place, which was an upper chamber in Jerusalem. The Apostles and Disciples stayed at Jerusalem after the ascension of our Lord, partly in obedience to his command, which was not to depart out of Jerusalem till they were endued with power from above: partly to fulfill the prophecy, the Law shall go out of Zion, and the word of God out of Jerusalem. They kept all together out of love, and for more safety; and they took an upper chamber that they might be more private and retired, or because in regard of the great confluence of people at this feast, they could not hire the whole house: or as Bernardinus conceiveth, to teach us that the spirit of God is given to such as raise up themselves from the earth, and give themselves to the contemplation of high and heavenly mysteries.

Now to descend from this higher chamber, and to come near to you by some application of this text: It will be to little purpose to hear of the Apostles preparation this day, if we prepare not ourselves accordingly: to discourse of their entertainment, and receiving the holy Spirit, if we receive him not into our hearts. It is a mockery, as Fulgentius hath it, Ejus diem celebrare, cujus lucem oderimus, To keep the day of the Spirit, if we hate his light. If we desire to celebrate the feast of the Spirit, and by his grace worthily receive the Sacrament of Christ his flesh, we must imitate the Apostles and Disciples in each circumstance.

1. Rely upon God's promises by a lively faith, of sending the spirit of his Son into our hearts, and patiently expect the accomplishment of it many days as they did.

2. Ascend into an upper chamber, that is, remove ourselves as far as we can from the earth, and set our affections upon those things that are above.

3. Meet in one place, that is the Church; to frequent the house of God, and when we are bid, not to make excuses, but to present ourselves at the Lord's board.

4. Not only meet in one place, but as the Apostles did with one accord, to reconcile all differences among ourselves, and to purge out all gall of malice, and in an holy sympathy of devotion, to join sighs with sighs, and hearts with hearts, and hands with hands, and lifting up all together with one accord, sing, Come holy Ghost: so as this day is Pentecost, in like manner this place shall be as the upper room where they were assembled, and we as the Apostles and Disciples, and the Word which hath now been preached unto us, as the sound of that mighty rushing wind which filled that room: and after we have worthily celebrated the feast of the Spirit, and administered the Sacrament of our Lord's body and blood, we shall feel the effects of both in us: viz. more light in our understanding, more warmth in our affections, more fervor in our devotions, more comfort in our afflictions, more strength in temptations, more growth in grace, more settled peace of conscience, and unspeakable joy in the holy Ghost: To whom with the Father and the Son be ascribed, &c.

THE SYMBOLE OF THE SPIRIT. THE LXIV. SERMON.

SAint Luke in the precedent verse giveth us the name, & in this the ground of the solemn feast we are now come to celebrate, with such religious rites as our Church hath prescribed, according to the presidents of the first and best ages. The name is 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the feast of the fiftieth day from Easter; the ground thereof the miraculous apparition, and (if I may so speak) the Epiphany of the holy Spirit in the sound of a mighty rushing wind, & the light of fiery cloven tongues shining on the heads of the Apostles, who stayed at Jerusalem, according to our Lord's command, in expectation of the promise of the holy Ghost, which was fulfilled then in their eyes, and now in our ears, and I hope also in our hearts. After God the Father had manifested himself by the worlds creation, and the works of nature, and God the Son by his incarnation, and the works of grace; it was most convenient, that in the third place the third person should manifest himself, as he did this day by visible descension, and works of wonder. Before in the third of Matthew at the Epiphany of our Savior, the Spirit appeared in the likeness of a dove; but here (as ye hear) in the similitude of fiery cloven tongues, to teach us, that we ought to be like doves, without gall in prosecution of injury done to ourselves; but like Seraphim, all fire, in vindicating God's honor. This moral interpretation Saint Gregory makes of these mystical apparitions: All whom the spirit fills he maketh meek by the simplicity of doves, and yet burning with the fire of zeal. Just of this temper was Moses, who took somewhat of the dove from the spirit, and somewhat of the fire. For being warm within with the fire of love, and kindling without with the zeal of severity, he pleaded the cause of the people before God with tears, but the cause of God before the people with swords. Sed sufficit diei suum opus, sufficient for the day will be the work thereof: sufficient for this audience will be the interpretation of the sound: the mystical exposition of the wind which filled the house where the Apostles sat, will fill up this time. And lest my meditations upon this wind should pass away like wind, I will fasten upon two points of special observation,

• 1. The object vehement, the sound of a mighty rushing wind.
• 2. The effect correspondent, filled the whole house.

Each part is accompanied with circumstances:

• 1. With the circumstance of
  • 1. The manner, suddenly.
  • 2. The source or terminus à quo, from heaven.
• 2. With the circumstance of
  • 1. The place, the house where:
  • 2. The persons, they:
  • 3. Their posture, were sitting.

• 1. Hearken suddenly, there came on the sudden.
• 2. To what? a sound.
• 3. From whence? from heaven.
• 4. What manner of sound? as of a mighty rushing wind.
• 5. Where? filling the room where they were sitting.

That suddenly when they were all quiet there should come a sound or noise, and that from heaven, and that such a vehement sound as of a mighty rushing wind, and that it should fill the whole room where they were, and no place else, seems to me a kind of sequence of miracles. Every word in this Text is like a cock, which being turned, yieldeth abundance of the water of life, of which we shall taste hereafter.

I observe first in general, that the Spirit presented himself both to the eyes and to the ears of the Apostles: to the ears, in a noise like a trumpet to proclaim him: to the eyes, in the shape of tongues like lights to show him.

Next I observe, that as there were two sacred signs of Christ's body,

• 1. Bread,
• 2. Wine.

so there are two symbols, and (if I may so speak) sacraments of the Spirit:

• 1. Wind,
• 2. Fire.

Behold the correspondency between them; the spirit is of a nobler and more celestial nature than a body: in like manner, the elements of wind and fire come nearer the nature of heaven than bread and wine, which are of a more material and earthly nature. And as the elements sort with the mysteries they represent, so also with our senses to which they are presented. For the grosser and more material elements, bread and wine, are exhibited to our grosser and more carnal senses, the taste and touch: but the subtiler and less material, wind and fire, to our subtiler and more spiritual senses, the eyes and ears. Of the holy forms of bread and wine, their significancie and efficacy, I have heretofore discoursed at large; at this present by the assistance of the holy Spirit I will spend my breath upon the sacred wind in my Text; and hereafter, when God shall touch my tongue with a fiery coal from his Altar, explicate the mystery of the fiery cloven tongues.

After the nature and number of the symbols, their order in the third place cometh to be considered: first, the Apostles hear a sound, and then they see the fiery cloven tongues. And answerable hereunto in the fourth verse we read, that they were filled with the holy Ghost, and then they began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. With the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and then with the tongue he confesseth unto salvation. My heart (saith David) is enditing a good matter, and my tongue is the pen of a ready writer: first the heart enditeth, and then the tongue writeth. They who stay not at Jerusalem till they are endued with power from above, and receive the promise of the Father, but presently will open their mouths, and try to loosen the strings of their fiery tongues; I mean, they who continue not in the schools of the Prophets, till they have learned the languages and arts, and have used the ordinary means to obtain the gifts and graces of the holy Spirit, and yet will open their mouths in the Pulpit, and exercise the gift of their tongues, do but fill the ears of their auditors with a sound, and their zealous fiery cloven tongues serve but to put fire, and make a rent in the Church of God. The organ pipes must be filled with wind before the instrument give any sound: our mouths, lips, and tongues are the instruments and organs of God, and before they are filled with the wind in my Text, they cannot sound out 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , his wondrous works, whereof this is one, as followeth:

And suddenly, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . Every circumstance, like grains in gold scales, addeth to the weight. Oecumenicus conceiveth that this sound came on the sudden to scare the Apostles, and out of fear or amazement to draw them together. And indeed this sudden noise in this upper room, the Apostles sitting still, and there being no wind abroad stirring, seemeth not less strange than the sudden calm after Christ rebuked the wind and the sea. Winds are not raised to the height on the sudden, but grow more and more blustering by degrees: this became blustering on the sudden, and, which is more strange, it was 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , quasi 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , from 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 privative, and 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , appareo, without any cause appearing. To hear a thunder clap in summer, when we see a black cloud overcasting the whole sky; or a report, where we know there is a canon mounted, no way amazeth us: but to hear thundering in a clear sun-shine, when there is no cloud to be seen in all the sky; or the report like that of a canon, where there is no piece of ordnance; or a sudden light in a dark room, without lamp, candle, torch, or fire, somewhat affrighteth and amazeth us: so it was here, a noise is heard as of a mighty rushing wind, yet no wind; or if a wind, a wind created of nothing, without any cause or prejacent matter. There is a great controversy among the Philosophers about the causes of winds. Some, as Democritus imagined, that many atoms, that is, such small bodies and motes as we see in the beams of the Sun meeting together, and striving for place, stirred the air, and thereby made winds: others, as Agrippa, that the evil spirits ruling in the air, as they raise tempests, so also they cause winds. Aristotle endeavoreth to demonstrate that the rising up of dry exhalations from the earth generateth the winds, which so long rage as the matter continueth, after that faileth the wind lies. The Divines resolve with David, that God draweth them out of his hidden treasures. To which our Savior seemeth to have reference: The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, that is, originally:

There came a sound. Some will have this sound to be an echo, or a sound at second hand, because so it will be a fitter emblem of the Apostles preaching to the people, and ours to you. For first, the sound of the Gospel comes from God to us, and then it rebounds from us to you: but the word in the original is not 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , an echo, but 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , a sound: besides, the echo comes by reverberation from below, but this sound came from above.

From heaven. Lorinus and other Commentatours are of opinion, that heaven here, as in many other Texts of Scripture, is put for the air: as God is said to open the windows of heaven, and to rain fire and brimstone from heaven. But I see no reason why 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 here may not signify the efficient cause, and heaven be taken properly. For though the sense of hearing judged it, that the sound began but in the air, yet it was there made without any apparent cause: and why may not this sound be as well from heaven properly, as we read of a voice from heaven, saying, This is my well beloved Son in whom I am well pleased: and another voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it (my name) and will glorify it again: and yet a third voice from heaven, saying, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord? But what manner of sound was this?

As of a rushing mighty wind, or rather a rushing blast. For in the original it is 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , not 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , ruentis flatus, not venti. As our breath differeth from our spirit and breathing parts, so the spirit which the Apostles received, was not the holy Ghost himself the third person, but some extraordinary gifts and graces of the spirit. Though Peter Lombard the great Master of the sentences seemed to incline to that opinion, that the Apostles received the very person of the holy Ghost; yet this conceit of his is pricked through with an obelisque, and à magistro hic non tenetur by the later Schoolmen, who rightly distinguish between the substance of the spirit and the gifts. The infinite substance neither is nor can be imparted to any creature, but the finite graces, whereof they were only capable. The Law & the Gospel both came to the ears of men by a sound, the one from Sinai, the other from Zion; that was delivered in thundering & lightening, with darkness and an earth-quake, this in a sound of a gale of wind, and in the likeness of shining tongues, the Apostles sitting still, the place being filled, but not shook with the blast. As in lessons skillfully pricked, the musical notes answer to the matter of the ditty; so the manner of the publishing of the Law and Gospel was correspondent to the matter contained in them; that was proclaimed in a dreadful manner, this in a comfortable. For the Law worketh wrath, but the Gospel peace: the Law fear, the Gospel hope: the Law an obscure, the Gospel a more clear and evident knowledge: according to that sacred aphorism of Saint Ambrose, Umbra in Lege, imago in Evangelio, veritas in coelo; there was a shadow in the Law, an image in the Gospel, the truth it self in heaven. Moses himself quaked at the giving of the Law, but we read not that the Apostles were terrified, but exceedingly comforted at the receiving of the Gospel: as the room was filled with the blast, so their hearts with joy.

And it filled the place where they were sitting. The Apostles expected the fulfilling of Christ's promise, and it is very likely that they were praying on their knees: yet they might be truly said 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , which our translators render sitting. For the word in the original importeth only a settled abode, as it is taken in the verse following, There appeared cloven tongues like fire, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , and it sat upon each of them. Sitting (as the word is taken in our language) is a kind of posture of man's body, which cannot be imagined either in fire, or tongues: the meaning therefore is no more, than it abode or rested on them.

Thus have I peeled the bark, let us now suck the juice: we have viewed the engraving on the outside of the cup, let us now drink the celestial liquor, and relish the spiritual meaning couched under the letter. The later Commentatours for the most part (like Apothecaries boys) gather the broad leaves and white flowers that are found on the top of the water; but the ancient (like skillful Indians) dive deep to the bottom, and from thence take up pearls.

1. They observe that God useth signs to strike our senses, thereby to stir us up, that we may give more heed to that which he then fore-warneth us of, or at the present worketh in us. Of signs in Scripture we find three sorts:

• 1. Irae, of God's anger, as extraordinary earth-quakes, fire and brimstone falling from heaven, and other prodigious events.
• 2. Potentiae, of his power, or rather omnipotency, as miracles.
• 3. Gratiae, of grace and favor, and these were
  • 1. Significantia tantum, such as signified, or prefigured grace only, as types.
  • 2. Obsignantia, such as seal unto us, and actually exhibit grace, as sacraments.

The first sort are praeter naturam, the second contra naturam, the third supra naturam.

The signs here were transeunt only, as the burning bush, & the dove in the likeness whereof the spirit descended; and therefore could not be sacraments in the proper acception of the word: yet are they to be reduced to the third kind of signs, signa gratiae. Strange accidents for the most part fore-show strange events: and as many signs are miraculous, so many miracles are significant. In Sicily the sea water began to sweeten a little before the deposing the cruel tyrant Dionysius: in like manner Domitian dreamed that he saw a head of gold rise up upon the nape of his neck, which fore-shown that a better head of that Monarchy should succeed him. Before the civil war between Caesar & Pompey, there were seen two mountains running one at the other in the field of Mutina; and to show that Caesar should have the better at the beginning of the war, there grew in the Capitol on the sudden a laurell tree at the foot of his statue. Before the destruction of Jerusalem, there was seen a star in the sky like a drawn sword, perpendicularly hanging over the City. And not to build upon the sandy foundation of human Histories, the sacred Story affordeth the like. Before the true bread descended from heaven, Manna rained from heaven upon the Israelites. The water issuing out of the rock that was struck, fore-shown the fountain for sin and uncleanness, which was opened, when the side of Christ the true rock was struck and pierced by the spear of the soldier: the drowning of Pharaoh and all his host in the red sea, the destruction of the Devil and all our ghostly enemies in the blood of our Redeemer: the going back of the Sun in the dial of Ahaz, the setting back the finger in the dial of Hezekiah's life: the appearing of a new star to the Sages, the rising of a new light in the world, to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of the people Israel: the eclipse of the Sun at Christ's death, the obscuration of the divine majesty in the Son of God for a time: the great draught of fish which Saint Peter took after Christ's resurrection, the happy success of him and the rest of the Apostles, who were fishers of men, and caught many thousands at one draught in the net of the Gospel. There fell scales from S. Paul's eyes, before God drew from the eyes of his understanding the filme of ignorance and blind zeal: and here, before the Apostles were filled with the holy Ghost, and spake with divers tongues, the room where they abode was filled with a mighty rushing wind, and there appeared in the air fiery cloven tongues.

But what did the suddenness of it betoken?

Suddenly. The Fathers read three lectures upon this circumstance, teaching that the motions and operations of the Spirit are

• 1. Speedy,
• 2. Free,
• 3. Come and gone in an instant.

The first is read us by St. Ambrose, Spiritus nescit tarda molimina, the Spirit is quick in operation. As the lightening passeth in an instant from East to West, because it findeth no resistance; so the work of grace in the heart is suddenly done, especially for the reason given by St. Augustine, Because no hard heart can repel or refuse it: for the first work of grace is to take away the stone out of the heart; which being taken away, it presently receiveth the Spirits impressions. Who more averse from the Christian faith than St. Paul? yet in an instant by a vision from heaven he is changed from persecuting Saul to preaching Paul. At one Sermon of St. Peter many thousand souls were gained. And in Dioclesians time, after the edict set up in the market place for the utter extirpation of the Christian Religion, the whole world on the sudden turned Christian. When God knocketh by effectual grace, the iron gates of the hardest heart fly open on the sudden.

The second lesson is read by St. Gregory, That grace is free, and not procured by any merit of ours. Here was no matter of this wind, nor natural cause of this sound; no more can there be assigned any meritorious cause in us of supernatural grace. Who can cause the sun to rise, or the wind to blow, or the dew to fall? much less can any procure by his merits either the beams of the sun of righteousness to shine, or the gales of the spirit to blow, or the dew of grace to fall upon him. Therefore the Synod at Diospolis condemns them for Heretics, who affirmed Gratiam Dei secundum merita hominum dari; that the grace of God is given according to man's merits. And the Synod at Arausica pronounced an Anathema against such as teach, that man beginneth, and God perfects: Whosoever (say they) teach, that to him that asketh, seeketh, & knocketh, &c. grace is given, and not that by the infusion and inspiration of the holy Spirit this is wrought in us, that we believe, ask, or knock, gain-saith the Apostle demanding, what hast thou that thou hast not received?

The third lesson is Origen's, That good motions are as suddenly gone as they come. The Spouse in the Canticles on the sudden findeth her husband, & on the sudden loseth him; which I call God to witness (saith Origen) I myself have sensible experience in my meditations upon this book. And who of us in his private devotions findeth not the like? Sometimes in our divine conceptions, contemplations, and prayers, we are as it were on float, sometimes on the sudden at an ebb; sometimes we are carried with full sails, sometimes we stick as it were in the haven. The use we are to make hereof is, when we hear the gales of the Spirit rise, to hoise up our sails; to listen to the sound when we first hear it, because it will be soon blown over; to cherish the sparks of grace, because if they be not cherished, they will soon die.

There came a sound. Death entered in at the windows, that is, the eyes (saith Origen ) but life at the ears. For the just shall live by faith, and faith cometh by hearing. The sound is not without the wind; for the Spirit ordinarily accompanieth the preaching of the Word: neither is the wind without the sound. Away then with Anabaptistical Enthustiasts, try the spirits whether they be of God or no by the Word of God: To the Law and to the testimony (saith the Prophet Isaiah) If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them: And if we (saith the Apostle) or an Angel from heaven preach unto you any other Gospel than what ye have received, that is, (saith St. Augustine ) than what is contained in the Prophetical and Apostolical writings, let him be accursed.

From heaven. This circumstance affordeth us a threefold doctrine:

1. That the Spirit hath a dependence on the Son, and proceedeth from him: for the Spirit descended not till after the Son ascended, who both commanded his Disciples to stay at Jerusalem, and wait for the promise of the Father, which ye have heard (saith he) from me: and promised after his departure to send the spirit, and accordingly sent him ten days after his ascension with the sound of a mighty wind in the likeness of fiery cloven tongues.

2. That the Gospel is of divine authority. As the Law came from heaven, so the Gospel; and so long as we preach God's word, ye still hear sonum de coelo, a sound from heaven. Thus Lactantius concludes in the end of his third book of divine institutions, How long shall we stay (saith he) till Socrates will know anything, or Anaxagoras find light in darkness, or Democritus draw up the truth from the bottom of a deep Well, or Empedocles enlarge the narrow paths of his senses, or Arcesilas and Carneades, according to their sceptick doctrine, see, feel, or perceive anything? Behold a voice from heaven teaching us the truth, and discovering unto us a light brighter than the sun.

3. That the doctrine of the Gospel is not earthly, but of a heavenly nature, that it teacheth us to frame our lives to a heavenly conversation, that it mortifieth our fleshly lusts, stifleth ambitious desires, raiseth our mind from the earth, and maketh us heavenly in our thoughts, heavenly in our affections, heavenly in our hopes and desires. For albeit there are excellent moral and political precepts in it, directing us to manage our earthly affairs; yet the main scope and principal end thereof is, to bring the Kingdom of heaven unto us by grace, and us into it by glory. This a mere sound cannot do: therefore it is added,

As of a rushing mighty wind. This blast or wind is a sacred symbol of the Spirit, and there is such a manifold resemblance between them, that the same word, (in Hebrew 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 in Greek 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , in Latin spiritus ) signifieth both: what so like as wind to the Spirit?

1. As the wind bloweth where it listeth, so the Spirit inspireth whom he pleaseth.

2. As we feel the wind, and hear it, yet see it not; so we hear of the Spirit in the word, and feel him in our hearts, yet see him not.

3. As breath cometh from the heat of our bowels; so the third person, as the Schools determine, proceedeth from the heat of love in the Father and the Son.

4. As the wind purgeth the floor, and cleanseth the air, so the Spirit purifieth the heart.

5. As in a hot summers day nothing so refresheth a traveler as a cool blast of wind; so in the heat of persecutions, and heart burning sorrow of afflictions, nothing so refresheth the soul as the comfort of the Spirit, who is therefore styled Paracletus, the Comforter.

6. As the wind in an instant blows down the strongest towers and highest trees; so the Spirit overthrows the strongest holds of Satan, and humbleth the haughtiest spirit.

7. As the wind blowing upon a garden, carrieth a sweet smell to all parts whither it goeth; so the Spirit bloweth upon, and openeth the flowers of Paradise, and diffuseth the savor of life unto life through the whole Church.

8. As the wind driveth the ship through the waves of the sea, & carrieth it to land; so the gales of God's Spirit carry us through the troublesome waves of this world, and bring us into the haven where we would be. Cui cum Patre, & Filio sit laus, &c.

THE MYSTERIE OF THE FIERY CLOVEN TONGUES. THE LXV. SERMON.

AMong the golden rules of Pythagoras so much admired by antiquity, this was one, that we ought not to speak of God without light: the meaning of which precept was not, that we ought not to pray to God, or speak of him in the night, or the dark; but that the nature of God is dark to us, and that we may not presume to speak thereof without some divine light from heaven. Nothing may be confidently or safely spoken of him, which hath not been spoken by him. In which regard Salvianus professeth, that he wrote in defense of the true religion in fear and trembling. To the end therefore that the Apostles, who were appointed to be Pastores pastorum, Pastors of pastors, and Doctors of Divinity through the whole world, might not speak of him who dwelleth in a light which none can approach unto, without light; the holy Ghost on this day cast his beams upon them, shining in the fiery cloven tongues. The tongues appeared cloven (saith Saint Bernard ) to represent the multiplicity of thoughts, yet the multiplicity of them shined in one light of truth, and one fervor of charity, as it were one fire. There appeared new lightnings (saith Chrysologus) in the air, and the luster of shining tongues: shining to give them light that they might know what they spake, and tongues to give them eloquence, whereby they might utter what they knew. This apparition as it was very strange, so to outward appearance also most dreadful; for it was an apparition of a spirit, and that in fire, and this fire cast it self into the shape of tongues, and these tongues were cloven. Of all sights, apparitions of spirits most affright us: of all apparitions of spirits, those in fire most dazzle our eyes: and never fire before seen in these shapes sitting upon the heads of any. Yet was it a most comfortable apparition, because it was the manifestation of the Comforter himself. The Spirit was no evil spirit, but the holy Ghost: the fire was no consuming, but only an enlightening flame: the tongues proclaimed not war, but spake peace to the Apostles: neither did the cleaving of them in sunder betoken the spirit of contradiction or division amongst them, but the diversity of languages wherewith they were furnished: neither did the fire sitting on them, singe their hair, but rather crown their heads with gifts and graces befitting the teachers of the whole world. Let the seeming and outward terror then of the signs serve to stir up your attention, to listen to what the tongues speak unto you, and ye shall find the fire of the spirit at your hearts, to enlighten your thoughts, and enflame your affections, and purge out the dross of your natural corruptions.

Lo here

• 1. An apparition of tongues.
• 2. Tongues of fire.
• 3. Fire sitting.

• 1. Tongues cloven and floating in the air, a strange sight.
• 2. Tongues as of fire, a strange matter.
• 3. Fire sitting, a strange posture.

Of which before I can freely discourse, I must loosen three knots which I find tied upon the words of my text:

• 1. By Grammarians.
• 2. By Philosophers.
• 3. By Divines.

The first is, how doth 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , or sedit in the singular number, agree with 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , or linguae in the plural?

The second, whether was the miracle in the tongues of the Apostles, or in the ears of the hearers? For either way it might come to pass, that men of several languages might hear them speak in their several tongues the wonderful works of God.

The third, how was the holy Ghost united to these tongues? hypostatically or sacramentally?

The first knot is thus untied; either that there is an error in our copies, vitio scriptoris, writing 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 for 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 for α, or that 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 is to be construed with 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , ignis, not 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , and it sat, that is the fire, upon each of them.

The second is thus dissolved; the miracle was in the tongues of the Apostles: for Christ promised that they should speak with new tongues, not that their hearers should hear with new ears. Ye (saith Christ) shall be baptized with the holy Ghost, and with fire, not many days hence: and accordingly the Apostles saw fiery cloven togues, not cloven ears; and the fire sat upon them, it licked not the ears of their auditors. Moreover, it is evident out of the Epistle to the Corinthians, that many who were endued with the gift of tongues, might and did use it in the assembly of the faithful, when they that heard them understood them not, which could not be if the miraculous gift had been in their ears, and not in their teachers tongues.

The third knot is thus loosened: the holy Ghost was united to these tongues, neither hypostatically nor sacramentally, but symbolically only. If he had been united to them hypostatically, the Apostles might and ought to adore the Spirit in them, and the fire might as truly have been said the holy Ghost, as the man Christ to be God. Neither were the wind and fire Sacraments, because no seals of the covenant, no conduits of saving grace, of no permanent or perpetual use. S. Augustine thus resolveth, This fire cut out as it were into several portions like tongues, was no otherwise united to the holy Ghost than the Dove, Matth. 3. neither of which was so assumed, as that of it and God one person consisted: the Spirit in these apparitions useth the creature, but united not himself unto it personally or substantially.

And there appeared. In the original 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , there were seen: for it was no delusion of sense, but a true and real apparition: the Apostles with their eyes beheld them, and with their tongues testified the truth of this apparition of tongues. False religions, such as the Pagan and Popish, make use of false apparitions and lying wonders, whereby they blear the eyes, and seduce the souls of the simple: but the true religion, as it disalloweth all sophistical arguments and false shows of reason, so also it disavoweth all false apparitions and deceivable signs. The witch at Endor raised up a man, or rather a spirit, in the likeness of Samuel, who never was seen after that day he communed with Saul: but those whom our Savior raised lived many days if not years after. Conjurers and Enchanters set before their guests dainty dishes in show and appearance, but their greater hunger after them is an evident demonstration, that the Devil all the while fed their fancies with Idaeas and resemblances, and not their stomachs with solid meats: but our Lord when he multiplied the loaves and fishes, he gave this sensible and undeniable proof of the truth of this miracle, both by saturitie in the stomachs of the people, and by substantial remnants thereof in the baskets. When they were filled (saith the Evangelist) he said to his disciples, Gather the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost. Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above to them that had eaten.

Cloven tongues. The holy Ghost which now first appeared in the likeness of tongues, moved the tongues of all the Prophets that have spoken since the world began. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the holy Ghost. Of all the parts of the body God especially requireth two, the heart & the tongue; the heart whereby man believeth unto righteousness, and the tongue whereby he maketh confession unto salvation: the heart to love God, the tongue to praise him. Out of which consideration the Heathen, as Plutarch observeth, dedicated the Peach-tree to the Deity, because the fruit thereof resembleth the heart of man, and the leaf his tongue. And to teach us that the principal use of our tongue is to sound out the praises of our maker, the Hebrew calleth the tongue, Cobod, that is, glory, as, My heart was glad, and 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , my tongue also (Hebrew my glory also) rejoiceth. They who glorify not God with their tongue, may be truly said to have no tongue in the Hebrew language: and verily they deserve no tongues, who make them not silver trumpets to sound out the glory of God. And if such forfeit their tongues, how much more do they who whet them against God and his truth; whose mouths are full of cursing and bitterness, direful imprecations and blasphemous oaths? These have fiery tongues, but not kindled from heaven; but rather, as S. James speaketh, set on fire of hell: and their tongues also are cloven by schism, faction, and contention, not as these in my text for a mystical signification.

Cloven. Some by cloven understand linguas bifidas, two-forked tongues, and they will have them to be an emblem of discretion and serpentine wisdom: others linguas dissectas, slit tongues, like the tongues of such birds as are taught to speak; and these conceive them to have been an emblem of eloquence. For such kind of tongues Pierius affirmeth, that the Heathen offered in sacrifice to Mercury their god of eloquence; and they made them after a sort fiery, by casting them into the fire, ad expurgandas perperam dictorum labes, to purge out the dross of vain discourses: 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . In the original it is 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , tongues parted at the top, but joined at the root: and they represented (saith Gorran ) the dispersion of the Apostles, which after ensued, into all countries. These tongues were not of fire, but

As it were of fire. The matter of which these tongues consisted was not gross and earthly, but aerial, or rather heavenly, like the fire which Moses saw in the bush: for as that, so this had the light, but not the burning heat of fire. It is not said of fires in the plural, but of fire in the singular number, because as the silver trumpets were made all of one piece, so these twelve tongues were made of one fiery matter, to illustrate the diversity of gifts proceeding from the same spirit.

And it sat. Sitting in the proper sense is a bodily gesture, and agreeth not to tongues or fire; yet because it is a gesture of permanencie or continuance, the word is generally used in the original for 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , signifying to abide or reside: and so it may express unto us the continuance of these gifts of the Spirit in the Apostles, and may put us in mind of our duty, which is to sit to our preaching, and continue in the labors of the ministry. Give attendance (saith the Apostle) to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. Meditate upon these things, give thyself wholly to them, that thy profiting may appear to all.

Upon each of them. Whether these tongues entered into the mouths of the Apostles, as Amphilochius writeth of S. Basil, or rested upon their heads, as S. Cyril imagined; whence some derive the custom of imposition of hands upon the heads of those who are consecrated Bishops, or ordained Priests, it is not evident out of the text; but this is certain and evident that it sat upon each of them. It sat not upon Peter only, but upon the rest as well as him: S. Chrysostom saith, upon the hundred and twenty that were assembled in that upper room: those who say least, affirm that it rested upon all the Apostles. For howsoever the Papists take all occasions to advance S. Peter above the rest of the Apostles, that the Roman See might be advanced through him, (as Hortensius the Orator extolled eloquence to the skies, that he might be lifted up thither with her:) yet the Scripture giveth him no preeminence here or elsewhere: for Christ delivereth the keys of heaven (with the power of binding and loosing) into all of their hands: he breathes upon them all, John 20.21, 22. and sendeth them with as full commission as his Father sent him. All their names shine in the foundation and gates of the heavenly Jerusalem: and here in my text fiery cloven tongues sat upon each of them.

And there appeared unto them, &c. As in the Sacrament of Christ's body, so in these symbols of the spirit we are to consider two things.

• 1. The signs, or outward elements.
• 2. The thing signified by them.

Of the signs ye have heard heretofore: hold out, I beseech you, your religious attention to the remainder of the time, and ye shall hear in brief of the thing signified by them. Miracles for the most part in holy Scripture are significant: the cloudy pillar signified the obscure knowledge of Christ under the Law, the pillar of fire the brighter knowledge of him in the Gospel; the renting of the veil at the death of our Savior the opening of the way to the Sanctum Sanctorum, into which our high Priest Christ Jesus entered after his death, and there appeareth for us; the curing of all bodily diseases by the word of Christ, the healing of all spiritual maladies by his word preached. Now if other miracles were significant and enunciative, how much more this of tongues? Verily he hath little sight of celestial mysteries, who cannot discern divine eloquence in these tongues, diversity of languages in the cleaving of them, and knowledge and zeal in the fire. As S. John the Baptist was, so all the dispensers of God's mysteries ought to be, burning and shining lamps; shining in knowledge, burning in zeal.

There are three reasons assigned by learned Commentators, why the Spirit manifested himself in the likeness of fiery tongues.

1. To show his affinity with the Word, such as is between fire and light: the Word is the true light, that enlighteneth everyone that cometh into the world; and here the Spirit descended in the likeness of fire.

2. To show that as by the tongue we taste all corporal meats, drinks, and medicinal potions: so by the Spirit we have a taste of all spiritual things.

3. To teach us that as by the tongue we speak, so by the Spirit we are enabled to utter magnalia Dei, the wonderful works of God, and the mysteries of his kingdom: It is not ye that speak (saith our Savior) but the Spirit which speaketh in you, which Spirit spake by the month of the Prophets that have been since the world began. Our mouths and tongues are but like organ-pipes, the breath which maketh them sound out God's praises is the Spirit. And those that have their spiritual senses exercised, can distinguish between the sound of the golden bells of Aaron, and of the tinkling Cymball S. Paul speaketh of: for sacred eloquence consisteth not in the enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power. The fire by which these tongues were enlightened was not earthly, but heavenly, and therefore it is said,

As of fire. Christ three several times poured out his spirit upon his Apostles; first, Matthew