Works Volume 4

The IV. SERMON.

T WO Difficulties there are in these few words; what is meant by the Kingdom of heaven, and what by Repentance ; and then one plain matter of Practical Divinity that results from the union of them. The Difficulties must be explained, or else the Doctrine will not be come by: the Earth removed, ere the Ore be sprang; the Veil be rent, and then the Oracle will appear.

The former, what is the importance of the Kingdom of heaven, as being more disputable, I shall propose more civilly and tenderly and unconcernedly, as willing to give an Example of that meekness and that charity, that in matters of Opinion will keep a Christian from noise or quarrel: but the latter being more practical, to which your eternal weal is more closely consequent, (a little mistake in Repentance, being like the losing of a pin in a Watch, the Actions and Motions of the whole life, even the success of every temporal enterprize or hope, depending on it) you must give me leave to be more dogmatical, to affirm confidently, and, if need be, contend and quarrel you out of such errors. To begin with the first Difficulty.

The Kingdom of heaven in this place, I conceive to have a peculiar critical sense, different from what belongs to it in many other places; and to signify the destruction of the Jews, that remarkable vast 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , or final subversion of that Church and State, wherein the power, and so Kingdom, of Christ was most illustriously visible against his persecutors. And if you must have the reasons of my conceit, I will give you a taste to them.

First, The parallel use of the phrase in some other places; not to trouble you with many. In the 21 Luke, where our Savior having mentioned the beginnings of sorrows, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , beginnings of their throes of travail, and prolusions of this so bloody day, ( Jerusalem encompassed with Armies, and the Prodigies that should be observable about that time, the signs in the Sun and Moon, &c. ver. 25. parallel to the relations in Hegisippus and Josephus, and predictions in Joel, The Sun shall be turned into darkness, and the Moon, &c.) he then concludes in the words of this Text, When ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the Kingdom of God is nigh at hand.

A second Argument you may take from the Preacher, the Baptist, whose office it was to warn the Jews of this destruction, as you may see, Mal. 4.5, 6. Behold, I will send you Elijah the Prophet, i. e. John the Baptist a prophesying, before the coming of the great and dreadful Day of the Lord, and he shall turn the hearts of the Fathers, &c. directly the Sermon of Repentance, Conversion in my Text, lest I come and smite the earth ( 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , i. e. in the Scripture phrase, peculiarly the land of Judea) with a curse ; the clear interpretation of this Kingdom.

A third Argument you may have from the consequents in this Text, where the Baptist saith it over again to the Pharisees in other words, the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the wrath ready to come, and the axe laid to the root of the trees : and so it seems this Kingdom was a heavy, slaughtering, hewing Kingdom.

And so indeed the propriety of the word will bear, (which will serve for a fourth Argument) there being two notions of a Kingdom ; the one as it signifies reigning, the other as executing judgment ; the first ruling, the second coercing or punishing ; the first the golden scepter, the second the iron rod ; that 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , royal Officer of God, being 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , Rom. 13. an avenger or executioner for punishment. And for the matter in hand the case is most clear, Christ was never so demonstrably a King as in that royal act of revenge upon his Crucifiers, then was his standard set up, his ensign displayed, the sign of the Son of man appearing in Heaven; and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of Heaven with power and great glory, Matt. 24.30.

Once more, There is but one interpretation of this Kingdom of Heaven that can pretend against that which we have now given you, and that is, that it should signify the preaching of the Gospel, which at John the Baptist 's Sermon was not yet present, but 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , was at hand. But how could that be the thing meant, when Christ himself (who was this King, and his preaching this Kingdom) doth still continue the same style? Matt. 4.17. Jesus began to preach and say, Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand : the other Kingdom was already come in Jesus preaching, but still this Kingdom is to come, yet future, though 'twere at hand. Yea, and when the Apostles were sent out a preaching, which sure was the presence of that Kingdom, the same style was still continued by them. Luke 10. v. 9. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the Kingdom of God is at hand upon you ; and then immediately to give the interpretation of that Kingdom, they shake off the dust against them, a direful ceremony, and it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that City, v. 12. the destruction that Sodom met with, was more supportable than this.

I will now flatter myself, that I have given you some hints (and 'tis in kindness to my Auditory that I do no more) to acknowledge it not improbable, that the Kingdom of heaven may have a peculiar separate notion in this and some other few places, from that which it ordinarily signifies, and so denote the fatal final day to the Jews : and that will give our Baptist a preacher of Repentance, just as Jonas and Noah were, God's economy the same, and the style but little changed. [ Repent, for within 120 years the world shall be drowned,] was the sum of Noah 's Sermon; [ Repent, for within 40 days Nineveh shall be destroyed, ] was Jonah 's Sermon; and [ Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand, ] within the compass of this generation shall Jerusalem be destroyed, was the Baptist 's, the Christ 's the Apostle 's Sermon. And so I have done with my first difficulty.

The second will not detain or importune you so long; what is here meant by Repent : 'tis in a word, the amending of our lives, that 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , Heb. 6.1. repentance not for, but from, dead works, the giving over the sins of the former life. The Versicles before our Confession in the front of our Liturgy have directed and authorized this interpretation, Amend your lives, &c. and all other Languages agree in this Divinity: 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 in Greek, a change of mind ; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 in Hebrew, returning or Conversion; Resipiscentia in Latin, a return to our wits again; and Reformation or amendment of lives, in English.

Having thus past through the rougher part of your task of patience, seen what is most probably meant by the approaching Kingdom of heaven, and what undoubtedly by Repentance, (the first of which hath brought home the Text very near the present condition of this Kingdom: blessed Lord, that the latter might bring us home Proselytes unto the Text!) there is but one syllable left behind to exercise you, and that is the [ For ] betwixt this Kingdom and this Repentance ; and the importance of it comprehends these two things. 1. That Repentance is the only proper Use of such direful denunciations; 'It is the only design of God's threats, to extort Repentance from us; the same Baptist that denounces the approach of the bloody slaughtering Kingdom, requires Repentance of his Auditory: Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. 2. That Repentance is the only way of averting that that is now at hand, and will otherwise undoubtedly invade them: Repent, for it is at hand.

You see the double aspect of the [ 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , Repent :] one upon the [ 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the Kingdom ;] the other upon the [ 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , it is at hand :] The double propriety of this Grace; first, as the Use of the Doctrine, secondly, as the means to avert the Judgment; to answer God's importunity, and to deprecate his wrath: a duty of justice to him, and of prudence to ourselves: an Aphorism of Divinity and Policy too; they will both come seasonably to our wants. We had need to make better use of the impendencie of God's Judgments, than, God knows, hitherto we have made; and we had need to find out some stronger Antidote, some more approved 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , than hitherto we have taken: the Baptist's [ For ] will be instrumental to you for each of them. I begin first with the first, That Repentance is the only proper Use of such direful denunciations.

And that I must infer, through these two steps or degrees;

First, That no other Use is sufficient but Repentance ; and then, That no Repentance is sufficient, but the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the Change, which is here defined.

First, No other Use sufficient but Repentance.

To pass by those so frequent, but abominable, Uses which are made of these present Calamities; In one, a supine stupidity, a constant wretchlesness, an intermitting all the duties of our Callings till the Times be better, and so making it impossible without a second Miracle, that Peace should prove Peace, i. e. bring Prosperity after it: In a second, the relieving his melancholic thoughts with a cup of Lethe, a sleeping pill of good-fellowship, calling to the Ocean to drown, when the Hills will not be so kind as to fall upon him; like Saul sending to the Minstrel, when the evil spirit came upon him; or like his second address, that to the Witch, (for such is the cup wherein he divineth ) to charm the Judgment that is ready to invade him: In a third, the multiplying of sins as fast as God multiplies Judgments, like the Elephants by the blood of the Mulberies in the Maccabees, the more enraged in our 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , our fightings against God, by the bloudiness of the spectacle before us, advancing even to profaneness and Atheism; like the Emperor that, instead of reforming or trembling, would thunder back against Jupiter : all which I cannot compare better, than to the effect of the famous plague in Thucydides, that saith he, was pestilential to their souls as well as bodies, made them 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 & 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , swept away civility and humanity as well as men, left nothing but ferity and savageness among them. To omit these, (which sure are no sufficient Use, none of that 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , serving the time, which can be mistaken for 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , serving the Lord ) many other Uses there are, with which men are willing to content themselves; many inferior vulgar graces the Devil can allow us to be taught by these calamities, if by that means he may keep us off from this one grand necessary of Repentance. When the Whale approaches the Ship, 'tis the Mariner's stratagem to throw him out a Barrel or two to sport with, to keep him from that nobler game he came for, the tossing and drowning the Ship. When Xerxes was in danger in the tempest, Herodotus tells us of his Nobles, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , they made their obeisance and leapt over-board to save their Prince's life. And so when the Leviathan in the Text, a devouring denunciation makes towards us, that naturally delights in that charitable cruelty, the tossing and drowning the sinner-part of the man and state, wounding the vessel through the ribs, shipwrecking the affections, the lusts, the reigning sin, the Heathen Prince, the Devil in it, (that grand important work, that joy of such Angels or Messengers of Heaven, that (to them so delightful) game of Repentance) some lower meaner vessels we have to cast out to it, some inferior contents to sacrifice, some Nobles to leap over-board, some very virtues and graces we can have our great Pilot Satan's leave to retribute to these storms, these denunciations, so the body of reigning sin may be kept unshipwreck'd, so that fatal work of Repentance may not be required of us.

One or two not inconsiderable Graces these Times may already have wrought in the most of us: In one man, perhaps, contempt of the World, having by our present miseries learned so much of the contemptibleness of it, and by the world's contemning and affronting of us, had provocations to all returns of contumely and revenge on a villanous World ; and he that upon such unworthy usage, such barbarous, reproachful, incensing behavior, can but hold up a slight quarrel with this petulant enemy, charge it with some unkindness, and in that pet break off that strict League of friendship, vow never to love the unkind, treacherous, false World so well again, persuades himself he hath made a most excellent sanctified use of these Times. I confess I am glad to see such quarrels, glad that anything can allay that mad passion, that 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , as Isidor calls it, that fury of love and doting on our earthern God's, glad that they that have been so long tormented in their own Gallies, suo calculo damnati ad metalla, by their own tyrannical covetous minds condemned to that old Roman punishment, a digging and hewing in the Minerals forever, are by the bounty of these ill Times, returned from their thralldom, their captivity before their year of Jubilee, expel'd from these Gallies, banished out of this Inquisition; glad, that the World's forsaking of us, can work any degree of cure on our fits of spleen, our hypochondriack passions to the World. 'It is possible that the man thus dispossessed of his old Familiar, may at length have hospitable thoughts for some nobler guests, that the ill usage from the Harlot may bring the Spouse into favor again, that the sense of the ill Master that we have drudg'd under so long, may make us seek out some more gainful service; that the unprosperousness of the arm of flesh, the several failings of the Second causes which we have idolized so often, the many delusions and ill successes we meet with in the world, may make some forsake those Atheistical colors, and bring in Proselytes to Heaven; and so, this contempt of the World, may be a piece of prooemial piety, an usher or Baptist to repentance : but till it be thus improved and built upon, till this excellent piece of Philosophy be, as Clemens saith of the Pagan School, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , baptized by that Baptist, christianiz'd by the addition of Repentance, till the thorns that are now in the flesh, enter to the pricking and wounding of the heart, to the letting out all worldly trusts and aiery hopes out of it, till he that is fallen out with this world and his Egyptian Master there, come with him in the Gospel unto Christ in quest after the blessed heavenly Master, running, and kneeling, and asking, Good Master, what shall I do to get my portion in another World? and pursue Christ's directions to the utmost in that design; that contemner of the World must still know, he hath not yet taken out the Baptist's Copy, not made such use of the Doctrine of the Rod, as is expected from him, he is not yet advanced so far as to John 's Baptism, to that [ 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ] the so much as almost a Christian, which the Baptist could have made him. O then let him go on to the perfection of the Text, not satisfy himself with that use of it.

In another, perhaps, the complexion of the Times have had a yet nobler influence, inspired him with a perfect valor, an athletick habit of Soul, a contempt of Life itself, brought him to a dreadless approach of that supreme terror; and that not only the martial man, whose calling is to heard that Lion, but even the soft Courtier, who had imbibed no such bold principles; 'tis now no news to hear Death kindly treated. We can think of Death as of a Preferment, of the Grave as one of the greatest Dignities in the Church, and not only 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , but 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , bless this enemy, (when we have not so much meekness or charity for any other) count them happiest and blessedest that come earliest to it; each discontented Jonah hath his [ Take, I beseech thee, my life from me ;] the whole Kingdom is become wilderness, a many prickly Juniper-trees scattered everywhere in that wilderness, and an Elijah sat down under everyone of those Juniper-trees, [ a sighing cut his request for himself, that he may die; It is enough now, O Lord, take away my life: ] and I see, this passeth with some for a special piety and mortification; which, let me tell you, considered aright, is an act of the sullenest Atheism, a fellonious intent against themselves, which because (like Saul ) they are too cowardly to execute with their own hands, God must supply the Armor-bearer's place, be called in to do it for them. But I am not so uncharitable to think that all our thoughts of kindness to death, are the congelation of such black melancholic vapors; 'tis, I hope, in some an obedience to Plato 's precept, the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the endeavoring to behave ones self comely in whatever fortune, a Christian submission to God's will in either of the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , which way soever the economy of providence disposes us, even as far as to death itself; no hatred or satiety of Life, but an indifference to either lot; the hating Life only as we are commanded to hate our Parents, not with an absolute, but comparative hatred, (the denotation of the Hebrew 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ) only choosing the rest, preferring the dormitory, the being asleep in Christ, in Paradise with Christ, rather than to be in those uneasy postures, laborious marches, that an Hell on earth provides for us. And then, I shall commend your righteous judgment; but yet still, not flatter you that this is a sufficient Use of this Baptist's Sermon, of the present impendency of God's punishments. Thou mayest not only be content, but wish to die and be with Christ, which is far better, more desirable even to the carnal man, most gladly exchange the torments of a brittle life for the joys of an Eternity; and yet not have deposited the lusts and basenesses of this nauseated life: the former is but an act of the Judicative faculty, a conclusion that such premisses once considered cannot choose but extort from us; but the other is an act of the Will, which is not so easily brought to perform its duty, to mortify the flesh with the affections and lusts, the work of Repentance here required of us. And I beseech you, let us not be too confident that we have performed our task, though we could resolve to be content, nay, glad, to die with Christ, (for so you know, Peter could do, and deny and blaspheme him after it) unless we have that second Martyrdom, (that Cyprian, or somebody in his disguise, hath wrote a Book of) that vital Martyrdom of our exemplary, saintly, penitent lives to improve and consummate toother: and so still, we are not got so far as Repentance ; we require more storms, more thunderbolts, more rousing tempests, more pressing calamities yet, to drive us thither.

A third sort may have arrived to a third and greater degree of proficiency yet in the School of Judgments, to a resolution and practice of Patience under God's hand, how heavy soever it prove; and yet, let me tell you, come short of Repentance still: for, I beseech you observe, there is a double submission unto God, to his will, and to his wisdom : that to his will revealed as well as secret ; revealed for the duties, secret for the sufferings of this life: the first in an active, the second in a passive obedience to Heaven. The submitting to God's will in suffering what he lays upon us, (the utmost degree of Patience that the most of us attain to, and when we have done that, think ourselves Champions and Martyrs of the first magnitude ) is but a very moderate degree of Christian fortitude, that which Christ needed not have ascended to the Cross to preach unto us: a man must be a kind of mad Atheist to come short of that; for what is it but Atheism, to think it possible to resist his will? and what but madness to attempt it? 'It is that high Philosophy of submitting to his wisdom, the acknowledging God the best chuser for us, the stripes which he sends, far fitter for our turns, than all the boons we pray for, his denying of our demands, the divinest way of granting them, and, in a word, the resolving that whatever is, is best, whatsoever he hath done, best to be done, whatsoever permitted, best to be permitted, ( 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , that very fury and madness of earth and hell, is a piece of God's economy ) whatsoever is revealed to be his will by its coming to pass among us, is (though the Actors in that Tragedy shall pay dearly for it, yet) better and more desirable and eligible for us, than all friends and Patron-guardians in heaven and earth, yea, and our own Souls, could have contrived and chosen for us. The good Hezekiah 's [ Good is the word of the Lord which he hath spoken ] when it denounced destruction to his whole family ; old Nahum 's 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , even this for good, to the heaviest news that ever came, so oft repeated, that we find him in Elias Levita surnamed Gamzo, Even this, the firm adherence to the truth of that Apostolical Aphorism, that all things tend to good to them that love God, from tribulation through seven degrees to sword or death itself, and the forming all our lives by the plastick virtue of this one Article; this submission, I say, to his wisdom, superadded to that other to his will, and that attended with its natural consequent, a rejoicing in tribulation, is the lesson God's rod must teach us ; yea and submission in actions as well as sufferings, to his precepts as well as to his decrees, doing cheerfully as well as patiently enduring his will ; or else we are still but punies in St. Paul 's Academy, but triflers in the School of the Cross of Christ.

Once more, Denunciations of God's wrath may set us a praying oftener than we were wont before, make us assiduous and importunate in that duty: The tempest in Jonah, may cast the heathen Mariners upon their knees, crying every man unto his God ; and yet for want of the clean hands to spread forth towards Heaven, of the new Soul to exhale and breath forth those prayers, the liveliest of those flames, like all those which our earthy fire brings forth, faint and extinguish long before they come to that Region of purity. 'Twas the blind man's Divinity, Now we know that God heareth not sinners, a principle of blind Nature; and Hierocles a Philosopher descants excellently upon it, The sacrifice of such unreformed fools is but 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , but a feast for the fire to prey on, their offerings to the Temple 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , a prize for the sacrilegious to seize on; the wise man is the only Priest, the only friend of God, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the only man that knows how to pray, offering up himself for a sacrifice, hewing his lower Soul into an Image, his upper into a Temple of his Deity.

I might show you some more of these inferior uses, imperfect sudden motions, that these judgments may have forced from us; and so still like Chymicks in the pursuit of the Philosopher 's Stone, we meet with may handsome Experiments by the way, please ourselves in our journey, though never attain to our journeys end. These sad Times, and this forced study and contemplation of God in his Judgments, may have cast us upon some considerable Christian virtues, and yet not advanced us within any ken of that great transcendent treasure, to which all the ignis and the sulphur, the fire and the brimstone of his Judgments, that vast expense of thunder-bolts, to the emptying of his Armory, was designed. Repentance is a higher pitch than any or all of these, and 'tis only Repentance is the proper Use of this sad Doctrine; and not all kinds that pass under that Title neither: and that must be shown you in our next stage.

And first, the Repentance we speak of, is not Sorrow, whether for misery, or for sin. For Misery, that sluice which lets out such rivers of tears, which get away all the custom from godly sorrow or humiliation : Such sorrow as this, is admirably described by God, Hos. 7.14. and called assembling themselves for corn, fasting and praying only upon the loss and for the recovering of worldly plenty; and this, it seems, very reconcilable with all the impiety in the world, for it follows, [ and they rebel against me. ] Nor bare sorrow for sin neither, that which some men call Repentance ; and by so doing, have filled Hell with none but Penitents ; for I am confident there is not an unhappy creature there, which hath not both these parts of sorrow, both for his misery, and for his fall that betrayed him to it; had he not, Hell were not half so much hell as 'tis, two of the sorest tormentors would be missing, the sense of the flames, and the gnawing of the worm, the one extorting the tears, the other the gnashing of the teeth.

Nor, secondly, Humiliation alone, though that were a great rarity to be found among us: for though that might prevail to avert or defer secular calamities from a Kingdom, as it did from Ahab, (and therefore our Satan that accuses this Nation day and night before God, will not allow us this common grace ; after all our sufferings, the whole Nation, God knows, is as unhumbled as ever) yet will not a bare humiliation under God's rod be accepted for a sufficient return, when Repentance and change is called for.

No nor, thirdly, the sudden passionate motions toward Reformation, the shooting up of the seed in the stony ground : many such weak false conceptions there are in the world, and an 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , or speedy abortion, the common fate of them all; like the Goats in the Philosopher, that give milk when they are stung, but never else: When he slew them they sought him, and turned them early and inquired after God. Everyone of these is but a poor imperfect payment of that great arrear, that God's terrors and imminent Judgments are come, like the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , in the Gospel, to arrest us for: and if we do not presently make our peace with our adversary, by rendering him that only royal tribute, the sincere, impartial, uniform obedience of our whole age to come, and counting the time past of our lives sufficient to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, give ourselves up an early and voluntary sacrifice to Christ, first to be slain before him, then brought forth (like Antinous in Homer, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , there lies the sin, laid out a spotted Corps, that hath brought all the misery upon us) and then offered up upon his Altars so many devoted mortified new creatures, that have the addition of Fire to that of Air and Water in the mixture, the active, vital, as well as the sighing, weeping penitentiaries, (the imitation of the Sacrifices of old, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , gold poured about the horns of the Sacrifice ) not only the Ox or bestial part slain, but righteousness and mercy to the poor used as the Ceremonies of breaking off our sins, of slaying that sacrifice, (as in the Primitive times, no Penitent was re-admitted to the Church, without 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , or alms-deeds, and for him that was in the Church, there was yet no coming to the Sacrament, without an Offertory ;) then still, after all this passionate variety, hath God's message not yet had audience from us, and till God may be heard by us, there is small hope that we shall ever be heard by God; for Repentance is not only the only Use of the denunciation, but withal the only preservative or phylactery, the only way of averting the Judgment which is now at hand, my last particular, Repent, for it is at hand.

And here I shall be able but only to draw you a Scheme of what I had designed you, a rude draught of dead lines, and not venture to importune your patience with a 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , but only tell you that I had purposed,

1. To explain to you that mystery of Scripture, The distribution of God's Judgments into reversible and irreversible.

And 2. to give you the mark or character in Scripture discriminating the one from the other: the reversible under God's word only, the [ Nineveh shall be destroyed ] and yet Nineveh repents, and Nineveh is not destroyed. The irreversible under God's Oath also, Though these three men were in it, Noah, Daniel, and Job, as I live, saith the Lord, they shall deliver neither sons nor daughters, &c.

3. The commonness and frequency of the motion, of the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , or proficiency of one of these states into the other, the change that some addition of judgments, and years, and sins, and intercalary mercies, may make in God's decrees, their improvement into irreversible. Thus is it very possible, that upon the first breaking out of these Judgments upon this Land, the beginning of this rousing Sermon, the fate and state of this Kingdom might be a reversible mutable state, like the Souls of men in Maximus Tyrius, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , in a pendulous middle posture. But since the prodigious unkindly working of these medicinal inflictions, as of the bitter water in the trial of Jealousy, making the thigh to rot, and the belly to swell ; since to all the sins that before we had borrowed from our Neighbors, we have added so many more from the Fiends and Furies, to the rifling and impoverishing, as it were, of Hell itself; since those Armies of high uncleannesses, of lies, of crafts, of multiplied oaths, a strange discordant grating harmony in the ears of God, of sacrilegious rapines and profanations, of— (I beseech you save me the pains of confessing them for you) that sin might be exceeding sinful, and destruction exceeding destructive; and (after some intermission of Judgments, but none of provocations) since a Dove-like emblem of peace hath been hovering over our heads, but not permitted to rest upon us, disclaimed and driven out of our Region as a Vulture or Scriech-owl, the most ominous hated enemy; since the concurrence of all these, I say, 'tis also as possible we may be now improved and advanced to our full measure.

But then 4. I should have showed you also the indiscernibleness (to the eye of man) of the difference of these distant states, till God by his promulgate Sentence have made the separation ; (we have not such skill in Palmestry, as to interpret the lines and strokes in God's hand, which hath been long upon us; nor in Symptoms, as to judge whether 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , whether it be infallibly mortal or no) and from thence the possibility yet, that it may not be too late for us to return and live, to set God a Copy of repenting. But then,

5. Till this be done, every minute we breathe, we suck our poison, we run upon all the Spears and Cannons in the World; nay, if God should hear us before we have answered him, if Mercy should interpose, before Repentance, and Reformation make us capable of it, that very Mercy were to be deprecated as the greatest Judgment in the world, a kind of Hell of desertion, a [ why should ye be smitten anymore? ) a not vouchsafing us the medicinal stripes, a delivering us up to ourselves as to the fatallest revengefullest enemies, the most merciless, bloodiest executioners. God may spare us in wrath, relieve us in fury, give us a treacherous settlement, a palliate peace, (the saddest presage and fore-runner imaginable;) and such it is sure to be, if the surface of the flesh be healed, before the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the depth of the wound in the heart, be searched and mollified, if God repent before we repent : and against such mercies we have more reason to pray, than against all the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 and intestine flames, all the Tophets, and Purgatories, and Hells, that the fury of men or devils can kindle within our coasts. The same motive that made St. Basil call for his Fever again, to wit, if the recovering of his Health were the re-flourishing of his Pride, may move us to pray for the continuance of this State-fever, till our impenitent hearts be humbled. I will make you my Confessors; till this Kingdom be really and visibly the better for stripes, I cannot without some regrets, some fears of uncharitableness, pray absolutely for peace for it. Lord, purge us, Lord, cleanse us with thy sharp infusions, cure and heal our Souls by these Causticks of thine; and then thou mayest spare that charge, pour in thy Wine and thine Oil instead of them: but till then, Domine, nolumus indulgentiam hanc, Lord, we are afraid of thy indulgence ; we are undone, if thou be too merciful, we tremble to think of our condition, if thou shouldest give over thy Cure too early, if thou shouldest tear off our plasters and our flesh together, restore our flourishing, before thou hast humbled and changed our Souls.

I have done with my last particular also.

Please you now but to spell these Elements together, the sad threats of a direful Kingdom, the but one word between us and that, only Repentance, to sanctify it to us, and avert it from us, the Baptist miraculously born to preach it to them, and the same Voice now crying in the Wilderness to this Nation, in the midst of a whole Africa of Monsters, a Desert of wilder men: and if this Raven sent out of the Ark, the place of God's rest in Heaven, thus long hovering over this Earth of ours (going to and fro only on this errand, to see whether the waters be dried up from off the Earth, whether the Deluge of sin be abated) may not yet be allowed some rest for the soal of her foot; if at the heels of that, the Dove-like Spirit moving once more upon the Waters, may not find one Olive-leaf among us to carry back, in token that we are content to hear of Peace, to be friends with God; if having Moses and so many Prophets, the rod of the one so long on our shoulders, and the Thunder of the other in our ears, we cannot yet be brought this day to hear this voice, this 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , this clamorous importunate voice, Repent, or perish irreversibly; I must then divert with that other Prophet, with an [ O altar, altar, hear the word of the Lord, ] because Jeroboam 's heart was harder than that, with an [ O earth, earth, earth, ] with a [ Hear O heaven, and hearken, O earth, ] fly to the deafest creatures in the world, because I can have no better Auditors. In this case, Preaching is the most uncharitable thing, apt only to improve our ruin, like breath when it meets with fire, only to increase our flames: there is nothing left tolerably seasonable but our Prayers, that our hearts, being the only whole Creatures in the Kingdom, may at last be broken also; that by his powerful, controlling, convincing Spirit, the proud Atheistical spirit that reigns among us, may at last be humbled to the dust; that in the ruin of the Kingdom of Satan, his pride, his sorceries his rebellions, may be erected the humble heavenly Kingdom of our Christ, that meekness, that lowliness, that purity, that mercifulness, that peaceableness, that power of the Gospel-spirit, that we may be a Nation of Christians first, and then of Saints; that having taken up the close of the Angels Anthem, Good will towards men, we may pass through peace on earth, and ascend to that Glory to God on high, and with all that Celestial Choir ascribe to him the Glory, the Honor, the Power, the Praise, &c.

The V. SERMON.

T HE story of God's appearing to Jacob at Luz, Gen. 28. is so known a passage, so remarkable even to children by that memorative topick, the Ladder and the Angels, that I shall not need assist your memories, but only tell you that that passage at large, that vision and the consequents of it, from the 12 ver. of the 28. to the end of the Chap. is the particular foundation of the words of this Text, and the rise which I am obliged to take in the handling of them. That hard pillow which the benighted Jacob had chosen for himself in Luz, (and became so memorable to him by the vision afforded him there) he anointed and christened, as it were, named it anew, on that occasion, into Bethel, the house or residence of God, consecrated it into a Temple, solemnized that Consecration, endowed that Temple with a vow and resolution of all the Minchahs and Nedabahs, acts of obedience and free-will-offerings, duty and piety imaginable; and the whole business was so pleasurable and acceptable to God, God's appearing to him, and his returns to God, that in the words of my Text (twenty years after that passage) God puts him in mind of what there passed and desires to be no otherwise acknowledged by him than as he there appeared and revealed himself, I am the God of Bethel, &c.

For the clear understanding of which, it will be necessary to recollect the chief remarkable passages that are recorded in that story, and seem to be principally referred to here; and then I shall be able to give you the survey and the full dimensions of Bethel, the adequate importance of this Text.

And the passages are more generally but three.

1. God's signal promises of mercy and bounty to Jacob, emblematically resembled by the Ladder from Earth to Heaven, God standing on the top of that, and the Angels busy on their attendance, ascending and descending on it; and then in plain words the emblem interpreted, the hieroglyphick explained, v. 13, 14, 15. I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, &c. And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, &c. And behold (there is the signal Promise I told you of, that belongs to every Pilgrim Patriarch, every tossed itinerant servant and favourite of Heaven, that carries the simplicity and piety of Jacob along with him, though he be for the present, in that other title of his, the poor Syrian ready to perish) behold I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this Land: for I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.

The second passage is, Jacob 's consecrating of this place of God's appearance, anointing the Pillar, and naming it Bethel, in the 18 and 19. verses.

The third and last is, Jacob 's vow unto God on condition of that his blessing him, ver. 20. And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on, so that I come to my Father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God, and this stone which I have set for a pillar shall be God's house, and of all that thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto thee.

These are the three principal passages in that story; and in relation to each of these, I am now obliged to handle the words, and consequently to divide them, not into parts, but considerations, and so look on them as they stand.

First, in relation to God's promise there made; and so first, God is the God of Bethel.

Secondly, in relation to this dreadful, this consecrated Place, as Bethel signifies the residence, the house of God ; and so secondly, God is the God of Bethel.

Thirdly, in relation to Jacob's vow there made ; and so thirdly and especially and most eminently God is the God of Bethel, as it follows in the verse, I am the God of Bethel, where thou anointed'st a pillar, and vowed'st a vow unto me.

I begin first with the first of these, The relation of the words to God's appearing, and making promise to Jacob ; so Ego Deus Bethelis, God is the God of Bethel.

And in that first view you will have tender of three severals: I will give you them as they rise.

1. That God takes a great deal of delight in making, and recounting of promises made to his Children: the free omnipotent Donour of all the treasures of the world, is better pleased to behold himself our Debtor than our Prince, triumphs more in his punctual fidelity, than his superabundant mercy towards us; he that loves us passionately, that once put himself into a dropping sweat in a mere agony of love, poured out his heart blood in that passion, that delights to do us good, joying more in dispensing favors and obligations, than any man living in receiving them, doth yet more affectionately rejoice and triumph in seeing himself engaged and obliged to us, in being faithful and just, (which relates to his performing his engagements, that which by promise he hath bound himself to do, and so becomes his righteousness, and his payment of dues) then in the honor of being unlimitedly free to pour out acts of all mercy and unexpected bounty, matters of absolute choice whether he will do them or no. In the very story of which this Text is a part, God certainly might have enriched Jacob by what means he pleased, conducted him home to his Country upon that one score of his free mercy, (as well as he may bring his chosen to Heaven merely by acts of free Grace) but you see, he chooses to do it on that other style, as he is the God of Bethel, that ever since the mutual compact betwixt him and Jacob there, hath stood obliged to this poor Syrian, and must deny himself if he be not constant to Jacob. Thus Deut. 7.9. The Lord thy God he is God : and the only attribute that there he proclaims him in, is that of the faithful God; the faithful, and that further insisted on, which keepeth Covenant and Mercy ; first Covenant, and then Mercy: and so Isa. 49.7. Because of the Lord that is faithful. And how many times is this style repeated in the New Testament, God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above what you are able ; and, God is faithful, which will not forget your labor of love, &c. is as exact and punctual in performing Covenants, as strictly accurate in fulfilling of bargains, as the most covetous griping Merchant on earth would require his Chapman to be? And the reason or design of this method of Heaven, the aim of this economy, is presently discernible also.

First, to regulate and moderate the expectations and hopes of men, which are apt to be very sanguine and very precipitous, hoping proportionably to God's power, i. e. infinitely, unlimitedly, whatsoever our carnal hearts can aspire to, to have sins pardoned before they are mortified, to see God without any kind of purifying. Whereas this God of Bethel, that will be looked upon only as such, must be required to do no more than he hath promised to do; our hopes must be terminated in his revelations of his will, not whatever he may do by his infinite free Power, and Grace, but what he in wisdom hath thought good to promise, as the Rector of the Universe, not as an absolute irrespective Donor; and that is so far from a confinement or restraint, that it is a mighty inhancement of the mercy. His promises being generally conditional promises, and so exacting all manner of sincere honest endeavors towards cleansing, reach out to us, together with the mercy offered, an engagement of that purity and that sanctity, which, if it may be wrought in our hearts, is far the greater blessing of the two, hath more of divine and heavenly treasure in it, than the rescuing out of a sullen Laban 's clutches: and so, as 'tis observed of Pomponius Atticus, that by lending to the poor, and requiring payment again of the loan at the day appointed, he did more good than if he had absolutely and freely given, taught them Justice and industry, as well as relieved their wants, (and the two former the far richer Donatives;) so God by this course of promises, conditional promises, conditional liberality, gives us duty and piety also into the bargain, all manner of obligations to it; and so is a through Paraclet, an exhorter and comforter both, puts Jacob in mind of his vowed necessary obedience, by the mention of the promises made in Bethel : and that is one prime aim of this method, of God's magnifying himself in this relation.

A second (benefit at least to us, and consequently) aim in God there is, to teach us by this copy, discipline us by this example, that we take care to allow God our proportionable returns, to be as just with God, as punctually faithful in all our promises to him, as forward to put God in mind of what we have obliged ourselves to perform to him, as he by proclaiming himself here the God of the Promises in Bethel, and in so many other places, the God of Abraham, i. e. that God that made so many promises to Abraham, (in which all the people of the world are concerned) hath done unto us. This were an admirable lesson from hence to be transcribed into our hearts, to have our frequent set (weekly or monthly) audits with God, to tell him freely how much we are in his debt: not only to recount those desperate arrears, the sins committed for which we come now for pardon, but especially the obligations entered, which we might set ourselves bodily to perform, most freely and cheerfully commemorating before him, not only the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 & 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the Divine admonitions and holy laws, whisper'd inarticulately in our hearts, which the heathen Porphyry tells of, the obligations that lie upon us as men and creatures, and must be discharged by us, if ever we aspire to the dignity of Christians or Saints, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , we must approve ourselves Men first, and then Christians, live a reasonable, before we are ever capable of the Angelical life, (first, that which is natural, and after that which is spiritual ;) but also the promises and engagements of an higher indenture, those of the Christian, either that one standing obligation entered at the Font, which must be resolved to have a close influence upon every minute of the Age after, or moreover all the many penitential resolutions, all the occasional quarrels against sin, the indignations and vowed revenges on those boutefeux that have so disturbed our peace with Heaven. Would we but spend our time in this recounting and discharging of promises and obligations, pay God his plain dues of obedience, that which we are most strictly bound to by the law of Christ, and for which our hands are so many times producible against us, we should not need much to take up our thoughts with the pride or confidence of our free-will oblations, the boasts of our charities and alms toward Heaven: he that would but consider that to be faithful (as in God toward men, so in man toward God) signifies not so much to believe the promises of others, as to perform our own, that the Faith by which the just do live, consists in the paying of our vows to Christ, as well as depending on his blood or promise for Salvation, would endeavor to recover Christianity and Faith to a better reputation in the world than now ordinarily seems to belong to it, would live more justly and more Christianly than he doth. And let that serve for the first part of your prospect, the first observable in the first view.

The second thing from this Title of God's, as it refers to his promises of mercy to Jacob, made in Bethel, and repeated now at his departure from Laban, is this, That God would have us consider the blessings we enjoy, and observe particularly how and whence they descend to us. This is the direct end of this vision to Jacob, ver. 11, 12. Lift up now thy eyes, and see, All the rams, &c. The thriving of that stratagem of Jacob 's, the invention of the peeled rods, whereby he was grown so rich, Chap. 30. in despite of Laban 's malice, God will have ponderingly considered, and imputed as an act of his special interposition or providence, partly in justice, that the covetous Laban should not too much oppress him, [ I have seen all that Laban doth unto thee ] partly to make good his promise at Bethel, made then, and now most particularly performed, I am the God of Bethel. And, believe it there is not a duty more necessary, and yet more negligently performed, more fruitful, and nutritive of piety, and yet more wretchlesly despised and intermitted, than this; this of observing this Ladder from Heaven to earth, of beholding all the good things that we lawfully enjoy, descending in an Angel's hand, and that filled (as the pitcher out of the well, or as Aaron 's Son's hands from his Father at the entering on the high Priest's office) from the hand of God standing on the top of the Ladder. He that would thus critically examine his estate upon interrogatories, put every part of it upon the rack and torture, to confess without any disguise from whence it came, whether down the ladder from Heaven, or up out of the deep, (for there, it seems by the Poets, Plutus or Riches hath a residence also) by what means it was conveyed, by whose directions it travel'd into that coast, and what the end of its coming is, and so learn the genealogy, as it were, of all his wealth, would certainly acknowledge that he were fallen upon a most profitable enquiry. For beside that he would find out all the ill-gotten treasure, (that Gold of Toulouse, that is so sure to help melt all the rest, that which is gotten by sacrilege, by oppression, by extortion, and so take timely advice to purge his lawful inheritance from such noisome, unwholesome acquisitions, and thrive the better forever after the taking so necessary a purgation) he will, I say, over and above, see the original of all his wealth, all that is worthy to be called such, either immediately or mediately from God: immediately, without any cooperation of ours, as that which is left us by inheritance from honest Parents, (our fortunes and our Christianity together;) mediately, as that which our lawful labor, our planting and watering, hath brought down upon us, wholly from God's 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 or 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , his prospering or giving of increase. And when we have once thus discerned the peculiarity of our tenure, only that of allodium, not from any, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , but from God, (as the Lawyers have derived that word) all that we have held in capite from Heaven; As this will be the sweetening of our wealth to us, give it a flavor or an high taste, whensoever we feed on it, more joy in one well-gotten morsel ( the festival of a good Conscience ) than all the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 or 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the portions fetched from the bloody polluted Heathen idol-Altars ever would afford us; so will it inflame our Souls toward so Royal a benefactor, teach us Piety from our fields and coffers, (as even Aristotle can talk of his 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , that rich men will love God, if for nothing else, yet because he hath done them good turns ; and Hippocrates, that though the poor did generally murmur and complain, yet the wealthy would be offering sacrifice ) yea and inspire our whole lives with an active vital gratitude, by the use of this wealth to demonstrate and acknowledge whence we have received it, by refunding and employing it not on our own ways, our own humors, our own vanities, but as that which God hath conveyed into our hands as into an Ecclesiastic treasury or Corban, a storehouse of God's, whence all his poor family is to be victual'd; that which God pours out of Heaven into our hands, being as particularly marked out for charitable, pious, i. e. heavenly uses, as that which by the bounty of men is entrusted to us particularly for those ends, and every rich man as directly and properly a Steward of God's, to feed his household when they want it, and as strictly responsible for this Stewardship, as ever the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 & 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 were, the auxiliary Governments, the Deacons in the ancient Church, ordained by the Apostles for that charitable Ministry. You remember the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the poor man's tithing among the Jews every third year, and till that was paid in Deut. 26.12. and given to the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, that they may • at within thy gates and be filled, their estates are to be counted profane and unhallowed, no looking for a blessing from God's holy habitation verse 15. He that sacrifices all to his own desires, be they in the eye of the world never so blameless and justifiable, to his own belly, his own back, nay his own bowels, (as his own good nature and not Christian charity suggests to him) he that hath not a month Abib, a green stalk, a first-fruits for Heaven, an effusion of bounty, to consecrate and bless all that is kept for his own necessities, is either very unkind or very imprudent; either sees not from whence he hath received, and that is Atheistical stupidity; or else never thinks of securing his tenure by the payment of his homage, of making so much as acknowledgment to this God, whose providence hath so wholly enriched him, the God of this Bethel in the Text, and that is the unthriftiest piece of ingratitude, the wildest and most irrational ill-husbandry in the world.

The third and last observable in the first view, in order to the promises of Bethel, is this, that our prayers and humble dependence on God, is the means required to actuate God's promises, to bring down his blessings upon us. In Bethel there were ascending Angels, parallel to which must be those two Ambassadors or Nuncio's ( i. e. Angels ) of every honest Christian heart, before any messages from God, any descending Angels are to be expected thence; and as it was then typified there, so God ever loves and appoints to have it still, I am the God of Bethel: and therefore whatever we want of either outward or inward accomplishments, secular or spiritual good successes, prosperities of Kingdoms or of Souls, would we but look critically into ourselves, we should go near to find imputable to the want in us of one or both these ascending Angels; either that the things we would have, we dare not justify the asking or expecting them from God, because they are such only as we desire to spend on our lusts, and then we have not, because we ask amiss ; or else we are so over-hasty in pursuit of them, that we utterly forget the dependence and waiting upon God, the [ Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. ] If he be not ready with his Auxiliaries on our first call, deliverance shall come in some other way; the Witch must prevent and supply the Samuel 's place, the first creature that will look a little kindly upon us, shall get away all the applications from Heaven, (as in some Countries, whatsoever they chanced to see first every morning, they solemnly worship'd all the day after;) the most aiery appearances of relief from the improbablest Coast, shall be able to attract our hopes and trusts, and unbottom us utterly from God, as Socrates is brought in by the Comedian with his [ 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ,] a making his addresses to the air or clouds, when he had turned out all other worships out of his heart. The thing that makes a worldling such a piteous creature, such a Meteor in Christ's, such an unstable wave of the Sea in St. James 's style, tossed perpetually betwixt ebbs and floats of hopes, (even without the association of any wind to drive him) while the only poor, patient, waiting Christian, that hath sent out his good genius on his message up the Ladder, and waits contentedly and calmly for his return again, is the only fixed Star in this lower Firmament, his feet stand fast, be the pavement never so slippery, he believeth in the Lord. That Orpheus that in his life-time had made his applications to as many gods as there be days in the year, (and thence perhaps it was that Mexico had so many Temples) grew wiser by more observation, and left in his Will 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , that there was but one. 'Twere well if we might do so too, profit by his experience, devest ourselves of all our aiery poetick dependencies betimes, and roll ourselves wholly upon God; 'twere the only probable thriving policy in the world.

I have detained you too long in the first Isle of this Bethel, that which gives you a view of God's promises there made: I hasten to the second, the atrium interius, to consider God in relation to this dreadful, this consecrated place, as Bethel literally signifies Beth El, the House, the Temple of God ; and so God hath a peculiarity of respect to that, I am the God of Bethel, in the second sense, i. e. the God of God's house.

And here were a copious Theme indeed, should we take a view of the material Bethel, and in it observe,

1. The voluntary institution and dedication of Temples, even before the Law was given to the Jews, (as after it the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 or Feast of dedication, being of a mere human original, instituted (as the Feast of Purim, and the Fast of the fifth and seventh month in Zacharias ) by the Jews themselves, 1 Mac. 4. and not by God's immediate appointment, was yet celebrated, and consequently approved by Christ in the 10. of John ;) and after the Jewish Law was laid asleep, yet the building and setting apart of Synagogues, and Oratories, and Upper-rooms; and since Basilicae and 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , (the parallels of the Bethel here) the Palaces of the great King and Lord, appropriate to his public worship, whenever Persecution did not drive it thence.

2. The vowed dedication and payment of Tithes toward the endowing of Bethel, before there was any such thing as Judaism in the world, which therefore 'twere strange that God's subsequent command to the Jews his own people, should make unlawful to a Christian, which otherwise, had he not commanded it, must have been as commendable now, as it was in Jacob.

These, I say, with divers others, are the so many Branches of this second Consideration of these words, of the relation of God to Bethel : But I have not that unkindness to my Auditory as to pursue them with such a shole of unseasonable subjects.

There is another Bethel, the flesh of man, wherein God himself was pleased to inhabit, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , saith St. John, to pitch his Tent or Tabernacle there, to consecrate it into a very Temple; our bodies are the Temples of that holy Ghost, by which Christ was so long ago conceived among us: and thence it is that his eyes and his heart are set so particularly upon this flesh of ours, to cleanse, and to drain, and to spiritualize it, to expostulate with us whenever we put it to any common profane uses, as if we violated and ravished Christ himself, and forcibly joined him to an Harlot, and at last (if it prove capable of such dignity) to array it in all holiness and glory, to clothe it upon with beauty and with bliss immortal: And so God is the God of this Bethel also.

Beside this, there is yet one more invisible House of God wherein he delights to be inthron'd, and, by God's own confession, Isa. 66. more than either in the Temple of his own building, or the Heaven of his own exalting, even the poor contemptible [ this man ] for whom nobody else hath any kind looks; He that is poor, and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at his word: this is that lovely dress that is so ravishing in God's eyes, that sets out every Cottage into a Temple, the poorest Peasant into the consecrated delight of Christ, the most abject stones in Luz (once anointed with this grace) into an awful royal Bethel, the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . God is content to be at a great deal of charge in the purchase of it, to pardon the absence of a great many other excellencies, which may possibly exalt us above measure, so he may acquire but this one desired, beloved meekness instead of all. Let us but possess ourselves of this one Jewel, the [ meek ] in opposition to the proud, the [ quiet ] in opposition to the tragical or turbulent, murmuring, impatient, Atheistical spirit, and the God of Bethel hath a peculiar propriety to us: he that owns and defends his Temples, that is the refuge of the very Sanctuary it self, and never, but for the pride and insolencies and provocations of his Church, suffers the Philistines to seise on the Ark of his glory, will be a refuge and sanctuary to us; the Angels at Bethel shall become thy guardians, the Cherubim-wings thy over-shadowing, until this tempest, this tyranny be over-past.

I have done with the second view also, as the Bethel here, is the dreadful House of God ; though it be not the dread of it that hath made our stay so short there, but only my desire to hasten to my last, as my principally-designed particular, as Bethel refers to Jacob 's vow there made, as it follows in the verse, Where thou vowedst a vow unto me ; and God hath a most particular respect and relation to such vows, and so in the chief, though last, place, Ego Deus Bethelis, I am the God of Bethel.

A Vow is a holy Resolution, and somewhat more: The matter of both is the same, a piece of holy valor or courage, entering under God's colors into a constant defiance of all the temptations and affrightments, invitations and terrors in nature: only the bare Resolution hath not the formality of a Vow in it, is not made so immediately and directly to God, with such a particular invocation of him as is required to the formality of a Vow. Yet will not this difference be so great, but that in all reason the good Resolution ought to be allowed its title of pretension to God's owning, (as he is the God of Bethel ) as well as the Vow, i. e. the material as well as the formal Vow ; God is a God of all such of either kind. I shall consider them undistinctly: Whether Resolutions or Vows, they are of two sorts; either the general necessary vow or resolution, that God shall be our God, as in the 21. verse of that 28. chapter, And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, &c. then shall the Lord be my God ; a vowed resolution of universal obedience unto God: or whether the matter of it be particularly qualified and restrained to free-will-offerings, things that he was not otherwise bound absolutely to have done, but yet were very fit matter of resolution and vow, especially in such case as this, If God will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in peace; then this Stone shall be God's House, and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give a tenth to thee ; a free-will-liberality this, the business of this Vow.

We shall look upon these two separately; and, first, on the former kind of them, and show you how God is the God of such, the near respect and close relation he beareth to them, and that most eminently expressed in three particulars. 1. In approving and applauding the making of them. 2. In prospering them when they are made. 3. In looking after them as his own property and goods, most severely requiring the payment, the performance of them.

For the first sort then, the general necessary resolution or vow that God shall be our God, the solemn ceremonious entering ourselves into his family, the giving up our ears to this new Master to be opened, in the Psalmist's, bored, in Moses phrase, to part from the benefit of all Sabbatical years or Jubilees, to disclaim all desire of manumission, and to become his vowed servants forever; this is that great duty of Repentance, or Conversion, or New-birth, that is the sum of all Christianity, that spiritual Proselytism, to which the Jew was wont to be washed, as the Christian is baptized, and both to take upon them new names, new kindreds and relations, as if they had entered into the mother's womb again, and come out in new Families, new Countries, born neither of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, i. e. none of the principles of this world, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the natural, the carnal, nay, nor the moral virtuous philosophical elements, but of God, of a supernatural, heavenly origination.

In a word, the cordial renouncing of all the impure, scandalous doubtful ways that either ourselves or any of the vicious company about us (the Lacedaemonian servants that God hath permitted to be drunk and bestial before us, to practice all villainies in our presence, that we might detest and abominate them the more) have at any time formerly been guilty of: such was Job 's covenant with the eye, that that should not run its riotous courses over the beauties or wealth of others; such the covenant with the tongue, to break it off its customary oaths and loose language.

It were infinite to number up the several branches of these so necessary resolutions: That this God of Bethel is the God of such, is the thing that we are obliged to demonstrate. And 1. in respect of God's approbation of such resolutions as these. There is no such snare or artifice of taking and obliging God to us, as our dedicating and consecrating ourselves to God. If Solomon consecrate a Temple to God, God binds himself to be present there, to hear and hearken, and answer what prayers or supplications soever any sinner shall make toward that Temple. And sure the same privilege belongs to the animate as well as dead Temple, to the Temple of flesh as well as of stone, to the anointed Pillar at Luz, when that turns Bethel, I mean, to the stony heart of man, when by the unction of the Spirit that is mollified and fitted and squared, vowed and consecrated into an habitation for God, when out of these stones, a child of Abraham, the faithful resolved new creature, is raised up. No such good news to Heaven as this; not only approbation, but joy in heaven over one such convert Prodigal : the music that Pythagoras talks of in the Orbs, was that of the Minstrels which our Savior mentions at the return of that Prodigal, to solemnize the Euge 's, the passionate welcomes of Heaven poured out on Penitents.

And if you please, I can do more than the Pythagorean would pretend to, make you auditors of one of those Aires. No sooner doth the poor penitent Votary begin to God in the Psalmist's Note, [ Then said I, Lo, I come to do thy will, O my God, ] (and let me tell you, could you hear those words in the language that David sang them, there were without a Figure, Rhythm and Harmony, Numbers and Music in them) but you may presently hear God himself answering in the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 or counter-part, echoing back a Venite, one in Isa. 55.1. Ho everyone that thirsteth, come, &c. another in the Gospel, Christ taking up his part in the Consort, Come unto me all ye, &c. yea, and to make up the Anthem complete, the Third Person comes in also, Revel. 1.17. The Spirit saith, Come ; and after that, all the inferior Orbs are called in to bear their part in the Chorus, The Bride saith, Come: and let him that heareth say, Come, and let him that is a-thirst, Come : and Quicunque vult is the Title of the Hymn that they all join in, Whosoever will thus come, (let him be sure of the hospitable reception) Let him take the water of life freely. One signal evidence we have of God's special approbation of such Vows, in Abraham 's circumcising himself and posterity: that, you know, was the solemnity of his coming to God, the ceremony of his Proselytism, the Sacrament and Seal of his resolute vowed obedience unto God, of his renouncing that 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , those abominable Gentile impurities, the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the unnatural excrescencies of lust, which the rest of his idolatrous Country-men had long been guilty of, and which brought that fire and brimstone from heaven before his eyes upon some of them. Abraham it seems resolved and vowed against those heathen abominations, covenanted with God a life of Purity, and to that end a going out of that polluted Country; then sealed this Covenant to God, (as the custom of the Eastern Nations was in leagues and bargains) sealed it with blood: and see what an obligation this proves to God, not only to call him and account him a friend of God, to style himself by him, as he doth here by Bethel, I am the God of Abraham, through the whole Book of God; but the obligation goes higher upon God, it prevails so far that he comes down himself, and assumes flesh on purpose to seal back the counterpart of that indenture to Abraham in blood also, and in that, that he is his shield, and an exceeding great reward to all that shall but resemble him to the end of the world, in that faithful coming, that vowed resolution of obedience to his commands. The short of it is, these resolutions and vows, if they be sincere, not the light transient gleam, the sighs only that we are so ill, or wishes that we were better, but the volunt as firma & rata, the ratified, radicated, firm purpose of new life, even before it grow to that perfection as to bring forth the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the worthy, meet, proportionable fruits of such change, are instantly accepted and rewarded by God, with pardon of sin and justification: and so God is the God of Bethel, hath a particular respect to these vows and resolutions at the very making of them; and that was the first thing.

And so again, secondly, for the prospering them when they are made. He that gives himself up to God, becomes by that act his Pupil, his Client, part of his charge and Family, an Orphan laid at his gates, that he is bound to provide for, engaged by that application (if once accepted) to be his Patron-guardian; as among the Romans, he that answers to the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , to the Clients calling him Father, is supposed to adopt, undertakes the protection of the Haeredipeta, obliges himself to the office and real duty of a Father. And I remember the story of the Campanians, that could not get any aid from the Romans against a puissant enemy; they solemnly came and delivered themselves up into the Romans hands by way of surrender, that by that policy they might oblige the Romans to defend them, and espouse their cause, with a si nostra tueri non vultis, at vestra defendetis, if you will not lend us your help, preserve our region, yet now we are your own, you are obliged to do it, quicquid passuri sumus, dedititii vestri patientur, whatsoever from henceforth we suffer, it will be suffered by your Clients and Subjects: and so certainly the resigning ourselves up into God's hands, the penitent sober resolution of [ The Lord shall be my Lord, ] giving ourselves up not as Confederates, but Subjects, to be ruled as well as to be aided by him, no such way in the world as that, to engage God's protecting and prospering hand, to extort his care and watchfulness over us. He that comes out but resolutely into the field to fight God's battles against the common Enemy, God and the Angels of Heaven are ready to furnish and fortify that man. Resolution itself, courage but upon its own score, is able to break through most difficulties, and the want of that, is the betraying of most Souls that come into Satan's power: But then over and above, the prospering influence of Heaven that is still ready to assist such Champions, the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , which the LXXII. puts in into the last verse of the 17. of Exod. the secret invisible hand, by which God will assist the cordial Joshua, and have war against Amalek forever, fight with him, as long as Joshua fights, the co-operation of the spirit of God with all that set resolutely about such enterprises of valor, his 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 to our 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , this is a sure fountain of relief and assistance to such resolutions. Do but try God and your own Souls in this particular, for the vanquishing of any sin that your nature and temper is most inclined to. Take but the method of this Text; Come into God's presence, resolve sadly and advisedly in that Bethel, never to yield to that sin again; resolve not only on the end, but the means also that are proper to lead thither; foresee and vow the same resistance to the pleasant bait, that to the barbed hook under it, to the fair temptation, that to the horrid sin itself: and then those weapons that may be useful for the resistance, the fasting and the watching (that are proper to the exorcising that kind of devil) be sure to carry out into the field with thee; and in every motion of the battle let the Moses as well as the Joshua 's hands be held up, the sword of the Lord with that of Gideon, implore and importune that help of God's which hath given thee to will, to resolve, that he will continue his interposition, and give thee to do also, that having begun the good work in thee, he will not lose the pledge, but go on also to perfect it : And whenever thou art next tempted to that sin, recall and remember this resolution of thine, bid that very remembrance of thine stand by on thy guard, and, if you please, by that token that this day I advised you to do so; and withal consider the temptation, that it is an express come just from Satan, that sworn enemy of Souls, against which in God's presence the first time thou ever camest into the Church, thou didst thus vow and profess open defiance and hostility, that this disguised Fiend shakes a chain in Hell, be his address to thee never so formal, and is now come on purpose to supplant or surprise thy constancy, to see whether thou considerest thy reputation with God or no, whether thou makest scruple of breaking vows and resolutions: and then, instead of treating with that sin, cry out to God to defend thee against it, either to give strength, or remove the temptation; and deal honestly and sincerely with thine own Soul, betray not those helps that God thus gives thee in this exigence: and then come and tell me how it hath proved with thee. In the mean time, till thou hast made this experiment, be not too querulous of thine own weakness or the irresistableness of sin. Believe it, a few such sober trials and practisings upon anger, lust, and the like, and the benefit that would infallibly redound from thence, might bring the ancient Church-order of Episcopal Confirmation into fashion and credit again; which had it but its due ingredients and advantages restored to it, (every single Christian, come to years of knowledge and temptations, in the presence of God and Angels and fellow-Christians repeating that Vow in his own name which was made by his Proxies at the Font, and the blessings of Heaven powerfully called down by those who have a title to the promise of being thus heard) as it would by the way fully satisfy all the pretensions and arguments of the Anabaptist, so would it also be a more probable effectual restraint for sin, than those which have so solemnly decried, or but formally practiced, that institution, have taken care to afford us in its stead.

But then, 3. God is a God of resolutions, to exact performance of them. The paultring trifler in this kind hath all the vengeance of the God of Bethel belonging to him, all that pertains to the sacrilegious profaner of that Temple which himself had consecrated, the censure and reward not only of the impious, but the fools; Eccles. 5.3. When thou vowest a vow, defer not to pay; God hath no pleasure in fools: and Prov. 20.25. It is a snare to a man to devour that which is holy, to profane that heart which is once consecrated to God, and after vows to make enquiry. To doubt of the performing, faulter in the execution of what is thus solemnly resolved in God's service, is the fetching the sacrifice from the Altar, and is sure to bring the coal of fire along with it, the perfectest treachery to a Soul that any sacrilegious enterprise can design it. And yet God knows how many such fools there be in the world, that solemnly resolve themselves to his service, come to the Font to make, to the Table of the Lord to repeat these Vows, and all their lives after do but busy themselves to wipe off the water of one, vomit up, disgorge the other; bequeath themselves to Heaven in the presence of Angels, and then repent of the fact, and labor all their lives long to retrive and recover themselves back again: and the Apostle hath given those men their doom, It had been sure better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, never to have raised an expectation in Heaven that they meant any kindness to it, than thus to cheapen it, and not come to the price of a little perseverance and constancy to go through the purchase. Had they never undertaken God's business, never put in for the title of Friends and Votaries, with a Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest, they had not been perjured, though they had been profane: but now the affront is superadded to the crime, the contumely to the impiety, and all the spiritual desertion, with-holding, and with-drawing of grace, and consequently the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the impossibility for such to renew or recover themselves, without some prodigy of new bounty from Heaven, (which provokers have little grounds to expect) is directly become their portion.

I have dwelt too long on the Portal to Bethel, the general necessary Resolutions or Vows that are precursory to those other particularly qualified; I must in the last place be so just to the Text and Auditory, as to reserve a few minutes for those Vows of building and endowing a House for God, which was but a free-will-offering in Jacob, designed by him as a return of acknowledgment for God's care over him, if he shall bring him again to his father's house in peace : and so God hath a peculiar respect to such Vows beyond all others, and in that relation, in the last place, Ego Deus Bethelis, I am the God of Bethel.

He that hath a long and a doubtful journey before him, a voyage of uncertainty and danger, and considers how little he hath of his own to contribute towards his convoy, how nothing but the benign gale from Heaven to waft him safely thither, (and such certainly is the condition of some of us here at this time) may well be allowed to call in and consult at Bethel, take directions from old Jacob here, how to set out and begin his journey; and that is with vowing a Vow unto the Lord. This, I confess, was the main of my errand, which hath been thus prepared for and prefaced unto you all this while: and there is not a more prudent at once and Christian course, that hath more of piety and stratagem in it, not a more agreeable, seasonable, proper use of the present distress, and an engagement on God to deliver us out of it, than thus to take ourselves now in the pliable season, and indent some acts of voluntary piety with Heaven, most certainly and solemnly to be paid him hereafter, whenever God shall so be with us as to return us home in peace, to restore us those halcyon days after which we are all so impatiently gasping. I say not with Jacob literally to build Houses for God, material Bethels ; (to design such stately Structures in an Age of destroying, were but a Romance-project for any of us; nay, blessed be God, we need not a Solomon to erect, or Zerubbabel to restore ; a Prop to preserve from falling will yet serve the turn:) but from this blessed Copy every emulous, though weak, hand to transcribe somewhat at the distance and in proportion to strength: One to undertake the building one room of such an house, a private 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 or oratory for God; I mean, to vow unto God the so many daily close retirements, by confession of sins and deliverances, to acknowledge in prostration of Soul (if not of body also, to bear it company) the provocations that have whet God's glittering sword against us, (every man the plague of his own heart, the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , in the style of the ancient Liturgies, my fault, my exceeding great fault ) and the fatherly goodness that shall have sheath'd it again; and never to give over those constant returns of devotion (with Daniel, three ? nay,) with David, seven times a day, to keep some poor kind of proportion with such a deliverance: Another, to vow the building a Porch of such an house, when God shall furnish him with materials, where the poor may have but a dining place sometimes; I mean, not the loose formal scattering of the crumbs of the table among them, but sequestering a set, and that a liberal, part of all the revenue that God shall ever bestow, or now rescue out of the devourer's hand, and provide or preserve for us, that God in his poor members may have a first-fruits, a twentieth, a tenth, a fifth of all; every man out of the good treasure of his heart, not in obedience to any prescript quotum, (I shall be sorry to wrong any man so much, as so to change it from being his perfect free-will-offering) but as out of a heart attracted by Heaven, a liberal, cheerful, heaven-like effusion; the constancy and equability of which, yea, and the performing it upon vow or promise; will yet be no blemish to it, or make it less like that of Heaven, of Divinity itself. But among all the Epitome's of this Bethel, the domicilia, little (tents rather than) houses of God, which we are thus to consecrate and vow unto him, here was one at Bethel that would never be wanting, never left out in our thriving'st sparing'st vows, I mean that pure crystal breast of Jacob 's that God so delighted to dwell in, (as he was by the Poet supposed to do in poor Pyramus 's cottage) that plain, honest, well-natured, undisguised heart both toward men and God, emblematically expressed by those smooth hands of Jacob, the fair open Campania of even, clear, unintricated designs, far from the Groves and Maeanders, the dark depths, the intrigues, the dexterities and subtleties and falsenesses of the Merchant-worldling. Might but this Judgment that hath prey'd and gnaw'd so long upon the bowels of the Kingdom, but pare the heart of the Englishman into such a plain equable figure, leave never an angle or involution in it, make us but those direct-dealing honest fools that we are reproached to be, (but God knows are not guilty of that gracious Jacob -like quality;) might it but have that benign influence upon us here present; might it return us home with this one vow in every of our mouths and hearts, to be for the rest of our lives the English Nathanaels, the true Israelites, in whom there is no guile ; might but this last minute of my hour make this one impression, I shall not hope on a rude multitude, but I say on my present Auditory, to be content to live and die with down-right honest Jacob, thrive or perish on clear direct Israelitish principles, (which will, I doubt not, one day have the turn of thriving in this world, when everything else hath the reproach of imprudent and improsperous, as well as unchristian, the Dove advanced, when the Serpent is a licking the dust) and with Drusus in Paterculus, instead of the Artificer that would provide for the deep privacy, (that saevi animi indicium in the Orator) send for him that could design the diaphanous house, wherein there might be all evidence, every man thought fit to behold that, without an optic or perspective, which will, never be disguised or concealed from the eye of Heaven; might we by the help of a fast Vow now stricken, and, with the blessing of God, practiced every hour of our lives after, come home to our Father's house, old honest Jacob 's plain Tent, with peace and simplicity, cleanness, uncompoundedness of spirit, (a quality that would be able to commend and improve, Christianize and bless that peace to us, and make it like that of God, a true and durable one;) I should then with all cheerfulness dismiss you with old Jacob, into the hands of this God of Bethel, the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, that owned and blessed the simplicity and fidelity, the plainness and the trustiness of those three Patriarchs, before all the glorious wisdom and politics of the world: Whose sincerity and whose reward, whose uprightness and acceptation, integrity and crown, God of his infinite mercy grant us all; To whom, with the Son, &c.

The VI. SERMON.

T HERE is not, I conceive, any piece of Divinity more unluckily mistaken, more inconveniently corrupted and debauched by the passions and lusts of men, made more instrumental to their foulest purposes, than that of the Promises of Christ; whether by giving them the inclosure and monopoly of our Faith, (the Commands of Christ and the threats of Christ, which have as much right to be believed as they, his Kingly and Prophetick Office, to which he was as particularly anointed as to that of our Priest, being for the most part set aside as unnecessary, and by many steps and degrees at last not only left quite out of our Faith, but withal fallen under our envy, become matter of quarrel against any that shall endeavor to obtrude them not only so impertinently, but so dangerously, either on our Gospel or on our Practice:) or whether again by persuading ourselves and others that the Promises of Christ are particular and absolute, confined to some few, and to those howsoever they be qualified; when the whole harmony and contexture of Christian doctrine proclaims directly the contrary, that they are general and conditional, a Picture that looks every man in the face that comes into the room, but cannot be imagined to eye any man else, unrestrained to all so they shall perform the condition, and an [ 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ] those diffusive store-houses sealed up against all who do not perform it.

Shall we therefore have the patience, and the justice, and the piety, a while to resist these strong prejudices, to rescue this sacred Theme from such misprisions, to set up the Promises of Christ in such a posture as may have the safest and kindest influence, the benignest and most auspicious aspect upon our lives, not to swell and puff up our fancies any longer, with an opinion, that we are the special Favorites to whom those Promises are unconditionally consign'd, but to engage and oblige our souls to that universal cleansing that may really instate us in those Promises, either of deliverance here, or salvation eternally; that may, like the Angel to St. Peter in Prison, even to God himself, shake off those gyves and manacles which have even encumbered his Omnipotence, made it impossible for him to make good his Promises, temporal or spiritual, to such unclean uncapables as we? To this purpose there is one short word in the Text which hath a mighty importance in it, the [ 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ] the [ these ] anext to the Promises. What's the interpretation of that you must inquire of the close of the former chapter; and that will tell you, that upon coming out from the pollutions and villainies of an impure profane Heathen world, (and such is our unregenerate estate, I would I could not say, such is the condition of many of us that most depend on God's promises) on our going out of this tainted Region, our strict separation from all the provoking sins of it, all the mercies of Heaven and (which some have a greater gust and appetite to) of earth also, are become our portion, a most liberal hospitable reception; I will receive you, and I will be a Father to all such Proselyte guests, and you shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty : as if his Almightiness, which is here pawn'd for the discharge of these promises, could not bring them down upon us, unless by this coming out of Sodom (to which this Angelical exhortation was sent to rouse us) we should render ourselves capable of them.

In a word, the Promises here, as all other in the Gospel, are not absolute, but conditional Promises, on condition of cleansing from all impurity, and not otherwise; and if there be in the whole world an engagement to cleansing, an obligation to the practice of the most defamed purity that a profane Age can scoff or rail at, this certainly may be allowed to pass for it. Having therefore, &c.

The words are an Exhortation to cleansing, and in them you may please to observe these three particulars:

• 1. The Ground.
• 2. The Address.
• 3. The Exhortation itself.

The Ground the fittest in the world for this turn when you shall consider it thoroughly; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , these Promises.

The Address, adding somewhat of sweetness to that of rational advice, [ Having these Promises, dearly beloved. ]

And the Exhortation itself, in the remainder of the words at large in the whole verse. We shall content ourselves with the contraction of it, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , let us cleanse ourselves.

I begin with the first, The ground or foundation of the Apostle's exhortatory to cleansing, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , these promises.

• 1. Promises.
• 2. And particularly, conditional Promises.

And yet 3 lie, more particularly, the conditional Promises of this Text, the [ these Promises ] as they are set down in the end of the former Chapter, are the most competent, most engaging, effectual arguments or impellents to set any Christian upon the work of Christian practice, that especially of impartial universal cleansing.

'Twill be best demonstrated if we take them asunder, and view them in the several gradations.

1. Promises are a very competent argument to that purpose, a bait to the most generous passion about us, our emulation or ambition, drawing us with the cords of a Man, the most rational masculine allectives, I shall add, (to an ingenuous Christian man, as that signifies neither Saint in Heaven, nor Beast on Earth, but that middle imperfect state of a Christian here) the most agreeable proper argument imaginable to set us a cleansing.

Two other arguments there are, both very considerable, I confess.

1. The Love (in the Moralist of Virtue, but in the Christian) of God himself; and that Love, if it be gotten into our hearts, will be very effectual toward this end; the love of God constrains us, saith the Apostle.

2. The Fear of those threats, those formidable denunciations which the Gospel thunders out against all unmortified carnal men, that horrid representation of our even Christians God, as he is still under the Gospel, (to all unreform'd, obdurate sinners) a consuming fire ; and consequently, what a direful thing it is to fall into the hands of that living God: and knowing these terrors of the Lord we persuade men, saith the same Apostle. There is some rousing oratory, some awakening rhetoric and eloquence in this also. And let me tell you, though it be but by the way, that I am not altogether of their opinion, that think these terrors of the Lord, are not fit arguments to work on regenerate men; that fear is too slavish a thing to remain in a Child of light, a Christian. I confess myself sufficiently persuaded that our Apostle made choice of no arguments, but such as were fit to be made use of by Christians, and those terrors are more than once his chosen arguments, even to those that had received the Kingdom that cannot be moved, Heb. 12.28. and are exhorted 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , to have grace, to make use of that precious talent received, (which supposes a gracious person) or possibly 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , to be thankful to this munificent Donour for this inestimable gift, yea, and this duty raised to the highest pitch that a Christian is capable of, to serving God 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , whether that refer to the persons, and signify serving with all cheerfulness and alacrity and well-pleasedness, or to God, as we render it, serving him acceptably with reverence and godly fear ; you have still in this Apostle these terrors immediately annexed to enforce this duty, for our God is a consuming fire. And so again you cannot but remember the advice of working, and working out salvation, and emphatically our own salvation, with fear and trembling ; not only with love and faith, but peculiarly fear and trembling, this trembling fit enough to accompany the Saint to Heaven gates, to Salvation itself: and therefore the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , without fear, in the 1. of Luke, which we ordinarily join with the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , as if we were thereby obliged to serve him without fear, is in ancient Copies and Editions join'd with the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , that we being delivered without fear, (i. e. without danger) might serve him in holiness, &c. And so I think 'tis a little clear, that the fear which is so cast out by perfect love, that, as the Apostle saith, 1 John 4.18. there is no fear in love, is not the fear of God's wrath, but of temporal dangers and persecutions: For so that love to Christ, if it be perfect, such as Christ 's was to us, Chap. 3.16. (and is referred to again, Chap. 4.17. that as he is, so we should be in this world ) will make us content to adventure anything for the beloved, even death itself, the most hugely vast formidable, (as 'tis there, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , to lay down our lives for Christ;) but sure not the displeasing of God, and torments of Hell; that were too prodigal an Alms, too wild a Romance valor, would have too much of the modern point of honor for St. John to prescribe, and so certainly is but mis-applied to this business. And so still I cannot but think it wisdom and sober piety in him that said, He would not leave his part in Hell (the benefit which he had from these terrors) for all the goods of this world; knowing how useful the flesh of the Viper was to cure his poison, the torments to check the temptations, the apprehension of the Calenture that attended to restrain from the pleasant but forbidden fruits, that were always a soliciting his senses: and she that ran about the City (that Novarnius tells us of) with the brand of fire in one hand, and a bottle of water in the other, and said, Her business was to set Heaven on fire with the one, and quench Hell-flames with the other, that there might be neither of them left, only pure love to God to move or incite her piety, had certainly a little of the flatus thus to drive her, her spleen was somewhat swoln, or distempered, or, if one may guess by her appearing in the street, she was a little too wild and aereal in her piety. But this by the way, as a concession that there is (not only Love, but) Fear also that may set men a cleansing, as well as the Promises in the Text; the denunciation of Punishments is as considerable an act of Christ's Kingly office, whereby he is to rule in our hearts by faith, as that of proposing Rewards, that other act of Regality, Rom. 13. And the truth is, all's little enough to impress the duty: and happy is he that hath this threefold cord, this threefold obligation, paternal, and both kinds of regal, each actually in force upon his Soul; and eternally happy, if either or all may effectually perform the work on him.

But then still, if we observe distinguishingly, and exactly apply and proportion the arguments to the imperfect Christian state, you shall find that Promises are the most proper, congruous, agreeable argument, most apt and hopeful to do the deed, to have the impression upon the heart.

Fear is an argument, but to an ingenuous nature not altogether so appropriate.

Hope, the relative to Promises, is more generous than that, more noble, more worthy of the Christian's breast, a person of so royal an extraction.

On the other side, the Love of God, (for his own sake) Love of his attributes and excellencies, that admirable, dazzling, amazing beauty of his Divine Essence, O! 'tis a warming grace, infinitely melting and ravishing to those that have their hearts truly possessed with it.

But is not this, again, a little above the proportion of the imperfect, inchoate, very moderate state of the Christian in this life? is it not a little more proportionable to that of the future vision? The Christian, you know, here is made up of two Contraries, the flesh and spirit, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , combind'd and yok'd together; and as the Fear may be too degenerous for the spirit, so the Love of so transcendent a spiritual object, will be far too elevated and generous for the flesh, 'tis not capable of so pure, Angelical a guest.

This of Hope is of a middle temper, and so a little more congruous and apportion'd to the middle state, more ingenuous than Fear, and not so elevated as Love. Let Hell be set open wide upon us on one side, and it is apt to swallow us up with horror and despair, and so that Fear may miscarry and ruin us: Let the transcendent Excellencies of God be let loose on us on the other side, and they swallow us up again in ecstasy and amazement. When our Savior comes into Peter 's Ship, clothed but with one ray of this infinite beauty, (the gracious miracle of the fish) poor creature! he falls down at Jesus 's feet with a [ depart from me, for I am a sinful man :] and the Text gives the reason, For he was astonished at such a presence of his. And you know what Moses thought of seeing God's face, ut videam & vivam ! he should be never able to out-live it. And as the beholding and the presence, so the high pitch of Love let in by that beholding, fastened on the divine luster, 'tis most-what too high for our earthly state, even for the regenerate Christian in this life. The beholding him in the reflection and the dark beholding is that which in the Apostles judgment is the richest portion we can aspire to in this life; and that is the beholding him in his graces and in his promises, as Hope is but a glimpse of Vision : and thus we cheerfully, and with delight to our very flesh, expect that glory which shall be revealed ; not which is revealed already, or if it were, would burn up and calcine this flesh of ours, turn the natural into a spiritual body, could not consist with such tempered or constituted Tabernacles as now we carry about with us. And let that serve for the clearing the first step in the gradation, that Promises are a fit and proper argument to work upon our present state, to set us a purifying.

And, O that this might be our use of Promises! no flattering ourselves into Hell with a claim of Heaven, but as a crane or engine to raise us from the depth, fetch us from the lees of sin, and, like the Sun-beams on this earth of ours, to attract and force us up toward its region of purity; that as the Philosopher in Eunapius was taller in his study, in time of speculation, than at any other time, so this meditation and study of this part of the Book of life, the Promises of Christ, might be able to raise us above our ordinary pitch or stature, to rarify, and so to cleanse. Having therefore these Promises, let, &c.

2. Of all Promises the conditional are fittest for this turn, to oblige and engage us to purifying. 'It is the property of conditional Promises, never to belong to any but those that perform the condition. That which Christ requires of us in the great Indenture between him and us, as the homage to be performed to him on our part, be it never so slight and inconsiderable, never so despicable a pepper-corn, so pitifully unproportionable to the great rent he might require, or to the infinite treasure of glory that he so makes over to us, that mite of obedience, of faith, of love, of purity, is yet most strictly required by Christ, even now (under the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 of the Gospel) to be performed to him. The mercy and the pardon and the huge moderation of that Court, though it hath mollified the strict Law into never so much Chancery, will not proceed further, and mollify obedience into libertinism: It hath treasures of mercy for those who have not obeyed the Law in the strictness of perfect un-sinning obedience; the Evangelical righteousness shall serve turn where the Legal is not to be had: but then still there must be honest punctual payment of the Evangelical; and without that, the Gospel is so far from being Gospel, message of mercy, embassie of Promises, that it is but an enhancement and accumulation of much sorer punishments on them that have sin'd against that, that have not obeyed the Gospel of Christ. Our Savior hath brought down the market, provided as easy bargains of bliss for us as could be imagined; but this being granted, you must not now fancy another farther second Savior, that must rid you of these easy gainful tasks, which the first in mere kindness and benignity to you, hath required of you.

Be Heaven and the vision of God never so cheap a purchase, yet the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the Law of Faith, of Gospel, is as that of the Medes and Persians, that no unclean thing shall enter therein ; and that without holiness ( 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , all one with the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 in the Text) without that sincere, though never so imperfect, sanctification, without cleansing, mortifying here, no man shall ever see the Lord. Should any boisterous, unclean, unqualified invader, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , break in on those sacred mansions, commit such riots, such burglary upon Heaven. Heaven must be unconsecrated by such violence, cease to be the Palace of God, a place of purity, or of bliss. And if this be not an argument fit to impress this duty, the necessity, but withal the ease, of the performance, the no Heaven without it hereafter, and yet the no grievance by it here, if this be not an obligation to cleansing, I know not what may be counted such. He that hath taken down all the Promises of the Gospel, as absolute, unconditionate Promises, that sees his name written indelible in the Book of life, I know not through what tube or perspective, and resolves that all the provocations and sacrileges and rebellions against Heaven, shall never be able to resist his Nativity, to disturb his horoscope, to reverse his fatal destined bliss, may well be excused, if he be not over-hasty to cleanse or purify.

'It is an act of the most admirable power of the divine restraining, or preventing grace, that some men that do thus believe this doctrine of unconditional Promises, are yet restrained from making this so natural use of it, from running into all the riots in the world.

And certainly, 'tis as irrefragable a convincing testimony of man's free will to evil, even after his Reason and the Spirit of God have offered him never so many arguments to the contrary, that many men which believe the conditionate Promises, do not yet set resolutely a cleansing, the obligation hereto from Reason being so direct and conclusive, that all the Devils in Hell cannot answer the force of it. Only our stupid, undisciplin'd, absurd, illogical hearts have the skill to avoid it, running headlong and willfully after the old impurities, even then when they are most fully without all dubibitancy resolved, that all the joys of Heaven are forfeited by this choice.

I have done with the second step in my gradation, the special convincing energy of the conditional promises to enforce cleansing.

Come we now to the third and last step in the gradation, the particularity of the [ these conditional promises ] in this Text, Promises of God's receiving us upon our separating, his being our Father, and we His Sons and Daughters, upon our coming out, &c. in the end of the former chapter.

God will not receive any uncleansed, polluted sinner, will not be a Father to any, be he never so importunate or confident in his 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , will not own him to any degree of Sonship that doth not bodily set a purifying.

'Twas a virulent objection and accusation of the Heathen Celsus against Christ, that he called all Sinners to come unto him, Publicans, Harlots, all, and had an hospitable reception for such ; from whence his ignorance and malice was willing to conclude Christ's Church to be a Sanctuary for such uncleannesses, a kind of Romulus 's Asylum, to be filled only with those Inhabitants which all other Religions had loathed and vomited out. And 'twas Zosimus 's descant upon Constantine, that he turned Christian, because he had committed those crimes for which no other Religlon would admit expiation. But Origen in his admirable Writings against that Heathen's objections makes a distinction of Invitations; There is, saith he, the invitation of the Thief, and the invitation of the Physician: of the Thief, to get as many Companions; of the Physician, as many Patients as he can: the first to debauch the innocent, the second to recall the lapsed, to cure the diseased; the former to continue and confirm them in their former impure courses, the latter to purge out and to reform all their impurities. And the latter only was the interpretation and design of Christ's call, [ that of sinners to repentance ] the very language in this Text, the Come out and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing. And so Christianity in Zosimus 's style, but another sense than what he designed it, is 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the strongest purgative in the world, the Angel a hastening and leading out of Sodom with an escape, fly for thy life, neither stay thou in all the plains ; and then, and not till then, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , and I will receive you.

And so still the peculiarity of these promises, these of our being sons, or our being received, hath a most persuasive quickening force toward the duty of purifying. Will any man be content to be that abject from God, that loathed, refuse, reprobated creature, such an one that all the prayers of all the Saints on earth, intercessions and suffrages of Martyrs and Angels in heaven, yea, the very gaping wounds and vocal blood of Christ upon the Cross, I shall add, the minutely advocation and intercession of that glorified Savior at the right hand of his Father, cannot help to any tolerable reception at God's hands? Can you have fortifi'd yourself sufficiently against that direful voice of the Go ye Cursed into everlasting fire ; and not only not God, but not the so-much-as mountains or hills willing or able to receive you into any tolerable degree of mercy, not one Lazarus with one drop to cool the tip of a flaming tongue, but only the gaping insatiable pit, that irreversible abyss of pollutions and of horror, that region of cursings and torments, of sin and flames, the only hospital to receive thee? If thou canst think comfortably of this condition, be well pleased to venture all this for the enlarging of thy carnal fruitions one minute longer, and withal disclaim the whole birthright of thy Christendom, the dignity and inheritance of sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty ; if thou dost not repent of thy long, tedious, prodigal march into the Egyptian far Country only to accompany with Swine, and be fed with their 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , to which the advantages of sin are compared, (that wooden, unhealthy fruit of the Carobe, or arbor Ceratonia, as Dioscordies and Pliny describe that which we render husks in the Gospel;) if, I say, we can upon deliberation prefer this starving and pining in the Herd, before feasting and being embraced in the Father's house, this portion of Swine before that of Sons, we have then a sufficient fortification against this argument in this Text, a serious supersedeas for purifying: but upon no cheaper condition than this, can it be sued out; you must give yourselves up to the certain fire and brimstone of Sodom, if you will still continue in the impurities and burnings of Sodom ; not the least gleam of hopes upon any terms but those of purifying; Whosoever hath this hope on him, the this, that is, the conditional hope of seeing there, or here of being received by God, if it be 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , hope on God, he purifies himself, saith St. John. If he do not purify, 'tis either,

1. Not so much as 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , absolute throwing off, disclaiming all hope, perfect fury and despair; or, if he have any hopeful thought about him, 'tis

2. None of the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , none of the rationable, grounded, conditional, but a flattering, fallacious, foundationless, because unconditionate, hope, which the bigger it swells the more dangerous it proves; an Aposteme or Tympany of hope, made up either of air or putrid humor: and then 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , like the consumptive Patient, the more he hopes the farther he is gone, the more deeply desperate is his condition.

Or, 3. no 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , hope on him, on God: 'It is a dependence on some fatal chain, (some Necromantick trick, of believing thou shalt be saved, and thou shalt be saved) nay, on Satan himself, some response from his Oracle, that 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , that wizard flesh within us, that hath thus bewitched us to its false pleasures first, and then its fallacious hopes, the fatal'st, horrid'st condition in the world: you may excuse the Preacher and the Apostle, if it carry them both into a kind of 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , an out-cry of love, and pity, and desire, to prevent this unremediable ruin to which thou art posting, to catch thee when thou art nodding thus dangerously, with a most affectionate, compassionate compellation of a [ dearly beloved] let us cleanse. Which brings me to the second General, the Address, adding somewhat of earnestness and somewhat of sweetness to the Exhortation, Having therefore these Promises, dearly beloved.

The Exhortation to purifying, reforming, mortifying of sins, is an effect and expression of the greatest kindness, sincerest love, and tenderest affection imaginable. You shall see this exemplified by the most earnest Lover that ever was in the world. Will you believe the holy Ghost? Greater love than this hath no man shown, than to lay down his life for his friend. Now our Savior you know, laid down his life (somewhat more than the life of a mere man, the life of the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , that divine celestial Person) on purpose to fetch back this divine, but scorned, Purity into the world again: He gave himself for us, saith St. Paul, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, Tit. 2. laid down his life for that only prize to which the Apostle here exhorts, this of purifying. You shall see it again, Act. 3. ult. God having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless us, in-turning everyone from his iniquities: This turning from iniquities, the purifying in the Text, was the prime end and design of Christ's coming into the world, of all his glorious Offices, and the exercises of them, and that the most blessed work of mercy that could ever be meant to polluted Souls; this turning is there the interpretation of his blessing of us, [ to bless us in turning, &c.] 'Twere superfluous farther to assist this truth, in showing you what an act of benefaction and mercy, of charity and real blessing it is, to contribute in any the smallest manner to the mortifying of any sin in any: 'tis the rescuing him from the most noisome, miserable, putrefied, piteous condition in the world. The plagues of Egypt, the Frogs, and Flies, and Lice, and Locusts of Egypt, and the Murren, and Death of the first-born, were but the imperfect emblems of these unclean hated Vermin in the Soul, that devour all the fruit and corn of the land, all the Christian virtues and graces, despoil and depopulate all that is precious or valuable in it; and then what proud Pharaoh would not fall on his knees to Moses, to make use of his power with Heaven, to deliver him from such plagues as these?

And yet to see how quite contrary 'tis ordered in the world: God is fain to send suppliants to us, that we will but be content to part with an impurity, that we will but endure so huge a blessedness. You know we are Ambassadors for Christ, and what's the nature of an Embassage? why, setting up this impure unmortifi'd sinner in a throne, (to have an Embassy addressed to him, is an argument of a Prince) and not only men, but God himself, as it were, prostrate before his footstool, the King of Heaven to this proud reigning sinner on earth, to beseech him but to part with these weapons of his hostility against God, these provoking impurities; as though God did beseech you by us, (God himself becomes the suppliant, and then we Ministers may very well be content with the employment) we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled unto God. Thus through the whole Book of Canticles, is the beloved Husband of his Church most passionately a wooing her to this duty, to this opening to him, giving him an admission, all upon this score, that he might come in to bless and purify; and O what Rhetoric is bestowed on her! far beyond the [ dearly beloved ] in this Text, Open to me, my love, my dove, my undefiled, my fair one : he calls her fair and undefiled on purpose that he may make her such: and O that we had but that Savior-like passion, that blessing kindness to our own poor perishing Souls, some of those bowels of love to our own bowels! That we have not, is the greatest defect of self-love, the most contrary sin against our grand fundamental principle, that of Self-preservation, (which can combine with the devil for the undermining and ruining and subverting of whole Kingdoms, on that one commanding design of getting off the cross from off our one shoulders, on whomsoever it be laid, but cannot think fit to assist Heaven in purging out one refuse impurity out of the Soul.) Yet shall I not on such discouragements give it over as a forlorn impossible hope, but proceed one Stage farther on this errand, to the last General, the Exhortation itself, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , &c. Let us cleanse ourselves: 1. Cleanse, 2. ourselves, 3. us ourselves: the verb is active, the pronoun reciprocal, and the verb and pronoun both plural. And so, beside the duty itself of cleansing, two Circumstances of this duty we must learn from hence; namely, 2. That it is the Christian's task upon himself, this of purifying : then, 3. That it ought to be the common united design of all Christians, the Apostle and people together, to assist one another in this work, this of purifying.

For the first, the duty itself, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , cleanse. This is not the actual acquiring, but the motion and proficiency and tendency toward Purity.

And so there again you have two things:

• 1. What this Purity is ;
• 2. What this motion toward Purity.

The Purity is of two sorts; the first opposed to filth, the second to mixture : as the Wine is pure, both when 'tis fetched off from the lees and dregs, and when 'tis not mingled with water. In the first notion, the purifying here, is the purging out of carnality; in the second, of hypocrisy : the first is the clean heart in David ; the second, the right or sincere, single or simple spirit: the first, from the filthiness of the flesh ; the second, of the spirit : and you will never be prosperous Alchemists, never get the Philosopher's stone, never acquire the grand Christian hope, if you miscarry in either of these.

The first kind of Purity again, that of the flesh, is twofold, proportionable to the two fountains and sources of carnality, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 and 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , lust and rage, that 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , infernal pair, that hath so undermined the peace of Souls and Kingdoms.

Lust, the common parent both to all fleshly and all worldly desire, to the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye : the lust of the flesh again, either the warm, or the moist carnality, the burnings of the incontinent, or the thirsts of the luxurious; that deluge of fire and water, that had and shall have the honor to divide betwixt them the first and second ruin of the world. And for the lust of the eye, that cold dry piece of sensuality, that strange kind of Epicurism, that mad raving passion after Stones and Minerals, the deifying of that forlorn Element, which, saith Aristotle, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , could never get any Advocate to plead for it, that which struck Moses into such a passion, These people have committed a great sin, have made them gods of gold ; This love of the world and things of the world, extravagant desire, hot pursuit of such cold embraces, (like the Embalmers in Herodotus, that had flames toward the chill'd earth, the Carkasses before them) this dry juiceless sin, is yet able to pollute and defame the Soul, as earth, you know, is as apt to foul and s222ully as anything; covetousness is as irreconcilable with purity, as incontinence and intemperance, and all with the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the these Promises in the Text.

So, in the second place, for that of Rage, 'tis a fruitful teeming mother, which contains all the more sublimate kinds of carnality, pride, and ambition, and all the generation of those vipers, Gal. 5.20. Hatred, variance, emulation, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, and the like, all prime works of the flesh, verse 19. though somewhat more volatile and aerial, i. e. have more of Satan and Lucifer in them than the other. Even he that but sides in Religion, that makes that band of all charity and humility, an engine of faction or pride, that saith, I am of Paul, &c. is he not carnal? 1 Cor. 3.4. the most undoubted carnality in the world. A multitude of sins there are under this one head, able to bespot a Man, a Nation, into a Leopard; and those spots are far from being the spots of sons, reconcilable with the promises of this Text. But above all, one that pollutes in grain, that crimson die, the guilt of Blood, in which those Souls that are rolled (as every malicious, unpeaceable spirit certainly is, though he never had the courage to shed any) look so direful in God's sight, that in comparison with them, the mire and mud of the basest Swine may pass for a tolerable beauty; the blood of men, saith Psellus, yielding a fume or nidour that the Devils (and sure none, but of their complexion and diet) are fed and fatten'd with: and Maimonides to the same purpose, that 'tis the food of Devils; that he that can feed on it, is a guest 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 at the table of Devils, and literally guilty of that which St. Paul mentions so sadly, 1 Cor. 10.20. I would not that ye should have fellowship with Devils, partake of that Cyclops feast prepared, like Hell, peculiarly for the Devil and his Angels, (those great Abaddons and Apollyons ) and cannot without injury and riot be snatched out of his hands, be swill'd and wallowed in by us; those 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , (that were so scandalously charged on the Primitive Christians, and cost Justin Martyr and Athenagoras such Apologies) their feasting on one another's flesh: which charge should it be now resumed and brought in by Turks or Indians against us Protestants, (as they say it is, but certainly will be, when it is told in Gath and Askalon ) Good God! what should we do for an Apologist?

Come we then in the last place to the last degree of Purity, that which excludes Hypocrisy or mixture, the sin which hath so died this Nation, given it an heir-apparency to all the Pharisees woes. Not only that Notion of Hypocrisy which in our ordinary speech hath ingross'd the title, the vain-glorious publishing all our own acts of piety: O! that is but a puny degree of this sin; I know not whether I should not do well to give it some good words in comparison to its contrary, the desiring to appear more impure, more impious than we are, (that gross, confident, bold-faced devil, the far more dangerous of the two:) But, I say, the other more secret nice hypocrisy, the falseness to God, taking in rivals into the heart, the partial, halting, mutilate obedience, that which keeps a reserve for Satan, for Mammon, for myself, when all should be given up to God; but above all, that yet profounder piece, the Egyptian Temple, a most glorious Fabric most pitiously inhabited, nothing but Cats and Crocodiles within instead of God's; that of the painted Sepulcher, the noisome, poisonous secrecy under the loveliest disguise, the Vault or Charnel-house of rottenness, of all the impurity in the world, (the deep-dig'd Golgotha and Aceldama ) under the fairest and most inviting inscription; that Histrionical piece of the Beasts Tragedy, the couchaut, but ravening, Wolves under the Sheep's clothing, the God brought in for the basest services, the impurest contrivances in the world, and never pretended to, or thought on, till we had those vile employments for him: And this you will acknowledge sufficiently inconsistent with the purifying in this Text, and so with the [ these Promises. ]

Having given you the severals of this Purity by the contrary branches of the Impurity, we come now to the [ 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ,] the notion of cleansing or purifying, that is here so vehemently required of us: And that is not the having acquired this purity, having attained any perfection of this state in either kind; but only the being on the way, the constant motion and growth, a setting out, and progress and proficiency in it, a daily purging and rinsing of the Soul, that good innocent kind of 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , that pardonable Pharisaism of assiduous washings; a daily slaughtering of the great defilers one after another, one day of execution for Lust, another for Rage; one for the impurities of the Tongue, the oaths, the lies, the profanations, the blasphemies, the noisome unsavory discourses, (Blessed Lord, that this might but be the day of demolishing that Babel of strange heathen languages, the least degree of which is intolerable among Christians!) another for the impurities of the Eye, and a whole Ocean of purgations little enough for that; but above all, an every-day care for the drying up the great fountain of Leprosy in the Heart. In a word, a firm ratifi'd resolution of mortifying and crucifying, a devoting and consecrating all, and making as much speed with them as we can. To that end, though the perfect Purity be not acquired, yet must these three essaies be made toward it, these three degrees of ascent and proficiency observed:

1. Barring up the inlets, obstructing the avenues against all future breakings in of the great polluters, the resisting all fresh temptations, (by the remembrance how dear they have formerly cost our Souls, what floods of tears, if we have done our duty, what a whole shop of purgatives to get out one spot so contracted) but especially, stopping the recurrence of the old profane polluted habits, that 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the cleansed swine returned to her old beloved wallowing again.

2. Our daily, minutely recourse to that digitus Dei, finger of God, which alone, say the Jews, can cleanse Lepers, with a Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make us clean ; thou canst prepare new Jordans of Grace beyond all our Rivers of Damascus, new banks, new treasures of Purity.

And then, 3. taking the seasonable advice of the Syrian servants, going down and washing in that Jordan, acting upon ourselves by the power of this grace, thus fitly co-operating with God to the utmost of our derivative strength; not lying like Creeples on the bank when we have a Bethesda before us, which yet will cleanse none but those that go into it. And that brings me to the former of the two circumstances (belonging to this duty) denoted by the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , cleanse our selves, That it is the Christian's task upon himself, this of purifying; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , let us cleanse ourselves.

'It is the prerogative of the grace of Christ, that he that is vouchsafed his portion of that, is thereby thus enabled to mortify sin, and advance toward purity; and it is the duty of all that are thus vouchsafed and dignified, to make use of that strength to that end, to purify themselves. For as Aquinas observes out of Aristotle, that those things are possible for us, which are possible by our friends, so what we are enabled to do by the grace of Christ, we are able to do. He that is born of God, is born an Athleta and Victor, the whole world is but a Pygmy before him: this is the privilege of that high descent, that be he the impotentest creature in the world, considered in his natural, carnal, or moral principles, either as born of blood, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, he hath yet an acquisition of a kind of omnipotence, from the derived communicated strength of Christ, as he is born of God; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , he can do all things through Christ that strengthens him. God by his preventing and subsequent grace, works in the Christian to will and to do merely of his good pleasure of bounty; and then the exhortation belongs to that Christian, to work, and work out his own Salvation.

And were but the care and pains employed in the using and improving those Talents which God hath given us, and calling to Heaven for supplies, which is mis-spent and paultred away in pleading our impotencies, and disabilities, and wants of grace, (that is, in acusing, in the old Heathen style, God's illiberal dealing with his children, charging Heaven with all our failings) we might certainly reap better fruit of our time, be fairer proficience in this art of purging ; and in the mean may spend our spirits most profitably in calling and hastening one another to this so possible, and withal so necessary, task: and that is the last particular, That it ought to be the united design of all Christians, the Apostle and people together, to aid and assist one another in this work of purifying, by entreaties, by exhortations, by all the engagements of love and duty; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , Let us cleanse ourselves.

The work, 'tis acknowledged, though possible to be gone through with, in such a measure as shall be sure of acceptance, is yet of some more than ordinary difficulty. How long hath this poor Nation been about it? so many years in the Refiners fire, in God's furnace for purifying, worn out and rent to pieces under the Fuller's sope; and yet (God knows) as full of dross and spots as ever, the poor Leper-kingdom thrust out of the camp, (the Temple) banished from the old privileges of the Israelite, the Oracle and the service of God, God spitting in the face of it, in Moses 's style, (a kind of excommunicate state;) all, on that charitable purpose, that it might be ashamed and apply itself to the Priest, to God for his purgatives; I shall add, looked upon, prayed over by that Priest so many years together; and that cure still as far from being perfected as ever, the leprosy spreading in the skin, the sins multiplying under the Priests inspection, under God's rod; at the end of a seven years rinsing (not with sope, but nitre) a thousand times more odious spots, more provoking sins, more hellish impurities, than before. I remember what poor Porphyry was fain to do in pursuit of purgatives, the same that Saul after the commission of his sin that rent the Kingdom from him, betake himself 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , to magic and conjuring, make friends to the Devil to help purify him. O that we, having met with luckier prescriptions, (recipe's from Heaven, that would be sure to prove successful) would not betray all, for want of applying them, that while it is called today, while a poor spotted Kingdom lies a gasping, the benefit of the last plunge, the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , might not be quite let slip, that this of purifying, the only true expedient yet untried (whilst all others are experimented to be but mere Empirical state-mountebankery) might at length be thought on, prosecuted with some vigor, every man entering into the retirement of his own breast, there to search and view the spotted patient, the plague, the leprosy of his own heart! and again, every man making his arts of cure as communicative and diffusive, as charitable and Catholic as he can, that as David was ravished with joy, when they said unto him, Let us go into the house of the Lord, (that pleasant news and spectacle, a conspiration for Piety) so we for that only errand that sends us all to that house, the beginning and advancing of Purity; every man like an Israelite in his flight from Egypt, not only going out in haste, (a passover toward purity) but also despoiling his Egyptian neighbors, robbing one of his lusts, another of his detractions, one of his Atheistical oaths, another of his swinish excesses, one of his Infidel tremblings and basenesses, another of his covetings and ambitions, his jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiments, his most valued precious sins, (the curses with which he hath clothed himself as with a garment, and which would one day, if they were not snatched from him, come like scalding water into his bowels, and oil into his bones ) and so yet, if it be possible, come out a troop, a legion of naked Wrastlers, a whole shole of candidates toward Purity. Till somewhat be done this way, more than hitherto hath been done, Peace may hover over our heads, express its willingness to light upon us; but, ad candida tecta columbae, that dove will not enter or dwell where Purity hath not prepared for her: or if she should so unlearn her own humor, 'twere danger she would turn Vultur, that most desirable blessing prove our fatal'st curse, leave us in and to a state of all impurities, to deprecate and curse those mercies that had betrayed us to such irreversible miseries. Lord, purge, Lord, cleanse us; do thou break those vessels of ours that will not be purified; cast us again into what furnace thou pleasest, that we may at length leave our dross, our filth behind us: and having used thine own methods toward this end, and purged our eyes to see that it is thou that hast thought this necessary for us, that hast of very mercy, very fidelity thus caused us to be troubled, work in us that purity here, which may make us capable of that vision, that peace, that fullness of sanctity and glory hereafter: Which God of his infinite abyss of Purity grant us all; To whom, with the Son, that Image of his Father's Purity, and the holy, sanctifying, purifying Spirit, &c.

THE SEVENTH, Being a Lent SERMON at Oxford, A. D. 1643.

T HIS passage of Story not unagreeable to the time (every day of Lent being a 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 to the Passion-week) hath much of the present humor of the World in it, whether we consider it as an act of Censure, or as an act of Choice: both these it is here in the Jews.

1. An Act of popular Censure, i. e. most perfect injustice, very favorable to the Robber, and very severe to Christ; Barabbas may be released, the vilest wretch in the world, one that was attach'd for robbery, and for insurrection, may become the people's Favorite, be pitied and pleaded for, and absolutely pardoned: dat veniam corvis, the blackest Devils in Hell shall pass without any of our malice, our indignation, our animosities; but an innocent Christ, or any of his making, one that comes from Heaven to us, upon errands of holiness, of reformation, that by authority of his doctrine and example would put vice out of countenance, discover our follies, or reproach our madnesses, and in the Wisemans phrase, upbraid our ways, and reprove our thoughts, he that hath no sins to qualify him for our acquaintance, no oaths, no ribaldry to make him good company, none of the compliances or vices of the times to commend him to our friendship, at least to our pardon, none of that new kind of popularity of being as debauched and profestly vicious as other men, shall be supected, and feared, and hated, the most odious, unpardonable, unsufferable neighbor, grievous unto us even to behold, Wisd. 2.15. Innocence is become the most uncomely degenerous quality, virtue the most envious, censorious thing; the not being so near Hell as other men, the most ridiculous scrupulosity, and folly in the world. And the misery of it is, there is no discoursing, no reasoning this humor out of us, they had cried once before, and the crossing doth but more enflame them; the charm, that should have exorciz'd, doth but enrage the evil spirit, Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas.

But besides this, I told you, these words might be taken in another notion, and under that it is, that we are resolved to handle them, as an act of the Jews choice, of their absolute inconditionate decree, their loving of Barabbas, and hating of Jesus, not before they had done either good or evil, but after one had done all the evil, toother all the good imaginable; then hating the Jacob, and loving the Esau ; electing the Robber, and rejecting the Savior ; the Barabbas becomes a Barabbas indeed, according to the origination of the name, a son of a father, a beloved son in whom they are well pleased, a chosen vessel of their honor, and Christ the only refuse vessel of dishonor, the only unamiable, undesirable, formless, beautiless reprobate in the mass: Non hunc, sed Barabbam, Not this man, &c.

In the words under the notion of the Choice, you may please to take notice of these severals:

• 1. A Competition precedaneous to this Choice, presumed here, but expressed in St. Matt. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , which of the two will ye, &c.
• 2. The Competitors, Barabbas and Christ.
• 3. The choice itself, not only preferring one before toother, non hunc, sed, but 1. absolutely rejecting of one, non hunc, not this man; and then by way of necessary refuge pitching upon toother, Non hunc sed Barabbam, Not this man, but Barabbas.

And of these in this order.

And First, of the first, That there is a Competition, before what the Competitors are, or what the Choice.

1. I say that there is a Competition, a canvass, or plying, before we come to choose anything; This is a truth most constantly observable, in all which we are most concerned in, in that transcendent interest, the business of our souls. Were there but one object represented to the faculty, one Christ, one holiness, one salvation, the receiving him would be anything rather than Choice; Chance it might be, or Necessity it might be; Chance it might be, that such a thing had the luck to come first, to prepossess and forestal us, to get our favor when there was nobody else to sue for it; and indeed, he that should be godly, or Christian on such a felicity as this, through ignorance only, or non-representation of the contrary, he that should give his voice unto Christ, because there was nobody else to canvass for it, that if Mahomet had plied him first, would have had as much saith for the Quran, as he hath now for the Bible, been as zealous for a carnal, sensual, as now for a pure spiritual Paradise; he that if he had been born of Heathen Parents, or put out to nurse to an Indian, would have sucked in as much of Gentilism, as by this civil English education he hath attained to of the true Religion, that hath no supersedeas, no fortification against worshipping of Sun and Moon, posting from one Heathen Shrine (as now from one Sermon) to another, but only that Christianity bespake him earliest, that Idolatry was not at leisure to crave his favor, when Protestancy got it; is I confess, a Christian, he may thank his Stars for it, Planetarius Sanctus, a Saint, but such an one as a Jew would have been, might he have been a Changling stolen into that cradle, or the most barbarous China -Infidel, had he had (as he of old, fortunam Caesaris, so) fortunam Christiani, the Christians fortune to have tutor'd him: And so for virtue and sinlessness also, he in whom 'tis not conscience, but bashfulness, and ignorance of vice, that abstains only from uncreditable or unfashionable, from branded or difused sins, swears not, only because he hath not learnt the art of it, hath not yet gotten into the Court, or into the Army, the schools where that skill is taught, the snops where those reversed thunderbolts, so tempestuously shot against Heaven, are forged, he that is no Drunkard, no Adulterer, no Malicious person, only quia nemo, because he hath no company to debauch, no strength to maintain, no injury to provoke the uncommitted sin; is all this while but a child of Fate, born under a benign Aspect, more lucky, but not more innocent, more fortunate, but not more virtuous than other men.

Again, if there were no Competition, as it might be Chance, so it might be Necessity too; Thou art fain to be virtuous, because thou canst be nothing else, goodness must go for thy refuge, but not thy choice, were there no rival sin, no competitor lust to pretend for thee.

'It is therefore not only an act of wisdom, but of goodness too, observable in God's wonderful dispensation of things under the Gospel, to leave the Christian, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , in the confines of two most distant people, improvable into good, and capable of evil, like Erasmus 's Picture at Rome, or that vulgar Lie of Mahomet 's Tomb at Aleppo betwixt two Load-stones, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , as Synesius calls it, a stake between God on one side, and all the Devils in Hell on toother, made up of a Canaanite and an Israelite, a law in the members, as well as a law in the mind, or as Antoninus 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , persuasions in the members, many Topics of Rhetoric, many strong Allectives to evil in the lower carnal part of the man, as well as invitations and obligations to good in the upper and spiritual. Thus did God think fit to dispose it, even in Paradise itself, the flesh tempted with carnal objects, even before the first sin had disordered that flesh; A Palate for the sweetness of the Apple to please, and an eye for the beauty to invite, as well as an upper Masculine faculty, a Reason for commands to awe, and threats to deter; yea, and it seems in Heaven itself, and the Angels there, where is no flesh and blood, that officina cupidinum, shop or workhouse of desires, yet even there, is an inlet for Ambition, though not for lust, a liableness to the filthiness of the spirit, though not of the flesh, or else Lucifer had still stood Favorite, could never have forfeited that state of bliss. And so 'tis ever since in this inferior Orb of ours, Behold! I set before thee life and death, blessing and cursing, on one side all the joys of Heaven to ravish and enrap thee, the mercies of Christ to draw thee with the cords of a man, with the bands of love, to force and violence thy love by loving thee first, by setting thee a copy of that heavenly passion to transcribe, but then withal death in the other scale, death which it seems hath something amiable in it too, it would not be so courted else, a 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , as Macarius styles it, a gallantry of Hell, a purple garment of darkness, that such sholes of men, and I tremble to think and say, so large a quantity of baptized Christians are so ambitious of, sell all that's comfortable and valuable in this life, to purchase it: And were there not both these set before us by God, life on one side, and death on toother, blessing on one side, and cursing on toother, a double canvass for thy soul, a rivalry, a competition, and somewhat on both sides amiable to somewhat in thee, life to the immortal, death to the perishing part of thee, blessing to the rational, divine, cursing to the bedlam brutish part of thee, the man of God could not go on, as he doth in that place, Deut. 30.19. therefore choose life, that thou and thy sons may live. Were there but one in our reach, 'twere necessity still, and not choice, and that most absolutely destructive of all judgment to come; Hell might be our Fate, but not our Wages, our Destiny, but not our Reward, and Heaven anything more truly than a Crown of righteousness.

A Piece of the Philosopher there hath been a long while in the world, that hath had a great stroke in debauching the Divine, that the Understanding doth necessarily and irresistibly move the Will, that whatever hath once passed the judicium practicum, got not only the assent of the Judgment that 'tis true, but the allowance also that 'tis good and fit to be chosen, cannot choose but be desired and prosecuted by the Will: from whence the Divine subsumes, that where Faith is once entered, though that but a Speculative (I wish it were not sometimes but a Phantastical) Faith, there Works must and will infallibly follow. I confess it were admirable news if this were true, if all that knew these things were sure to do them, if there were no such thing possible as Sin against Light, Sin against Gospel, Sin against Conscience; if the lives of Believers could not prove infidel, the actions of those that acknowledge God, that make no doubt of the truth of Christianity, could not avoid or escape being Godlike and Christian, if 'twere but a flash of S. Augustine 's wit, that the wicked Infidel believes contrary to Faith, the wicked Believer lives contrary to it: There were then but one care left a Christian, to be catechiz'd aright, which the Solifidian calls Faith ; or to be confident of his own Election, which the Fiduciary calls Faith ; and then Quis separabit ? anything else will be wrought in me by Christ, or that anything else will be unnecessary to be wrought. Instead of this Pagan Principle that ties up all in the chains of inevitable Fate, if it be examined, give me leave to mention to you one Aphorism of Christian Philosophy, which is but the interpretation of the competition that now I speak of; that the Will is no more necessitated to obey the suggestions of Reason, than of the Sensual Appetite, of the upper than the lower Soul, that 'tis an indifferent middle Faculty, able to choose the evil and refuse the good, or (to satisfy the Philosophers importunity, which resolves it impossible to choose the evil, unless under the appearance of good, you may take it in a clearer notion) able to choose the pleasant and refuse the honest, to choose the sensual carnal, and refuse the intellectual spiritual good. And that you may see the ground of this, observe that the whole Man is made up of three parts, Spirit, Soul and Body.

1. The Body or Flesh lusting against the Spirit. And 2. the Spirit again lusting against the Flesh. Those two Extremes perfectly contrary one to the other in their appetites, and therefore called by the Ancients 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , and 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , one the Masculine, toother the Feminine part, one the Monarch in the Soul, toother the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , or Commonalty; one the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the Master, toother the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , or Child; one the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the voice and image of God in us, toother the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the bestial part; one the Man, toother the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the four-footed creatures in us. And these are contrary the one to the other, so that you cannot do, or, as the Greek, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , so that you do not, this is a consequent of that Contrariety, you do not the thing that you would; i. e. perhaps perfectly, purely without some tack or mixture; however I am sure, not quietly, stilly, without some opposition of the other. And then comes in in the third place, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the Soul, the Elective Faculty, i. e. the Will betwixt them, courted and solicited by both, as that which hath the determining casting voice; if the beast can carry it, if the sensual suggestions get the consent of the Will; obtain the embrace, have its carnal proposals yielded to; then in the Apostles phrase lust conceives, and within a while proceeds from consent to act, bringeth forth sin ; but when the Spirit prevails, when the Reason, the Conscience, the God within the, is allowed to be heard, when that chaste, sober, matronly Spouse gets the embraces, the consent of the Will; then the Spirit conceives, and from thence spring all the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , which the Scripture speaks of, the fruits and productions of the Spirit. You see now the competition, the constant importunities and solicitations, the rivalry for thy soul, not an action of moment or importance in thy life, but the house is divided about it, the spirit for one way, and the flesh for another, and that that prevails, i. e. gets the Will of its side, denominates the action, and the action frequently and indulgently reiterated, denominates thee either flesh or spirit, either captive to the law of sin, or obedient to the commands and dictates of Christ, a carnal sinner, or a spiritual disciple.

And then my brethren, by way of Use;

1. You see the answer to that hard problem, what is the reason and ground of the infiniteness of those punishments that await sinners in another world: Here you have the oil that maintains that accursed Vestal fire, so much beyond Tulliola's or Pallas 's Lamp in Licetus, burning so many Ages under ground and not consumed; I mean, this competition in this Text (the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , which of the two infinites will you) and that other we mentioned of life and death, blessing and cursing, set before us by God, the leaving to our option whether of the two infinites we will have; This, and nothing but this, hath made it most perfectly reasonable, that Despisers should perish eternally, that he that will contemn immortal life, that 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , as Clemens St. Paul's contemporary calls it, that eternity put into our hands by Christ, and make his deliberate covenant with death, that his immortal part may die eternally, should be thought worthy, as the Book of Wisd. hath it, to take his portion or part with it. And then,

2. O how much the more care, and caution, and vigilance will it require at our hands, to keep guard over that one faculty, that spring of life and death, that fountain of sweet and poisonous water, that of choosing or rejecting, willing or nilling; never to dispense those favors loosely or prodigally, never to deny them rashly or unadvisedly, but upon all the mature deliberation in the world! Keep thy heart with all diligence, the heart this principle of action, keep it above all keeping, for out of it are the issues of life, Prov. 4.23. That when I would do good, evil is present with me, temptations of the carnal appetite to the contrary, it matters little, so I hold off my consent, resist their importunity; and that all the Devils in Hell are a whispering blasphemy within me, it matters as little, so I reject the suggestions; Resist, and he shall fly ; that he is loose to tempt, this is my infelicity perhaps, but not my guilt, I and that mishap improved into a blessing, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , this tempter a kind of donative of Heaven, to busy my patience, and exercise my vigilance, to set out my Christian valor, to make me capable of the victory first, and then the crown; the nations left to prove Israel, Jud. 3.1. yea and to teach them war, verse 2. at least such as before knew nothing thereof. Only be sure that those Nations get not the upper hand; to that purpose, that they be not pampered and fed too high, till they grow petulant and unruly, that this jumentum hominis, as St. Jerome calls it, this Ass, or beast-part of the man, prove not the Rider's Master: this is the greatest danger first, and then reproach in the world, which you will more discern if you proceed from the competition to the Competitors, and consider who they are, in us spirit and flesh, God and Devil, as in the Jews Barabbas and Christ, my second particular.

'It is none of the least of God's mercies among his dispensations of providence, that the competition falls to be betwixt such persons so acknowledgedly distant, and hugely contrary, a Christ and a Barabbas, the one so precious, and the other so vile, the Prince of Peace, and the Author of an Insurrection, a 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 and an 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , a Savior and a Destroyer ; had it been betwixt a Christ and a Nicodemus, a Carpenters Son, and a Rabbi or Ruler in Israel, the choice might have been more difficult, or the mistake more pardonable; But so God loved the world, such were the riches of his goodness to an infatuated rebellious people, he sets before them a beautiful Christ, and an odious foil to make him more beautiful, to make it impossible for them to be so mad, as to refuse and finally to reject Christ, that was on such grounds, and in such company a suing and importuning for their favor; none but a Barabbas to pretend against him, that that notion had of him, might serve instead of the fishes gall to recover the blind Tobits sight, help the blindest natural man to discern somewhat tolerable, if not desirable in the Christ, that in so poor a choice, an undervalued, prejudg'd, scandalous Jesus might have leave to be considered, and owe a preferment ali • nis vitiis to the faults of the other, though not virtutibus suis to anything amiable or esteemable in himself. The same economy you may generally observe even from the first of Paradise to this day; When our first Parents were the prize, the Competitors were of somewhat a distant making, God and the Serpent, not the King of Heaven and one of his chief Courtiers, God and an Archangel of light, but God and a damned Spirit, a black Prince, and he but in very homely disguise, but of a Serpent, which though he were then a 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , as Cedrenus out of some of the Ancients will have it, somewhat a taller and goodlier creature, than now the Serpent is, that his Legs be cut off, yet the Text saith, a beast for all that, I and that beast branded for craft, infamous for the subtilest creature, and so not likely to prove the most honest and solicitous of their good; and this cunning Pytho had made friends to speak, contrary to his kind, there was sure some sorcery in that; and all this, one would think, was enough to have added authority to God by such a prejudg'd Competitor. And just so was it to the Israelites at their coming out of Egypt, God and a cruel Pharaoh, a Deliverer and a Tyrant, one to have them Slaves in Egypt, toother to have them Princes in Canaan ; a sufficient inequality betwixt the Pretenders, that it might be impossible for any to prefer the Onions and the Garlic, before the Manna and the Kingdom. After, 'twas betwixt God and a golden Calf, a Calf still, no very honorable creature, though 'twere of gold: and anon, betwixt God and a brazen Serpent, Serpent and brazen too, neither form, nor metal to commend it; and all along through the heathen world, the competition was yet more unequal, betwixt the God of Heaven, and Wood and Stone of the Earth, the most glorious Creator, and vilest Creature, nay the piece of Wood, as the Prophet sets it, that was not fit for any use, not so much as to be burnt, the very refuse of the refuse, is the thing the Idol was made of, and none but that Idol thought fit to be a Competitor with God for the adoration. If you look back to Judea again, at the time of the great competition for the hearts of Israel betwixt Rehoboam and Jeroboam, it was still of the same making, betwixt a Kings son, and a Servant, a right Heir and a cunning Seducer, a kind of Serpent again; yes, and betwixt the glorious Temple of Jerusalem on one side, and the upstart Dan and Bethel on toother; the high Priest on one side, and the basest of the People on the other, betwixt the Calves at that Dan, and the Cherubims at that Jerusalem ; and so still there was advantage enough, one would think, on God's side, against such Competitors. And if we look now abroad into the most idoliz'd adored Diana's, the sins that get all the custom away from Christ, the only rivals with him for our souls, we shall find them but little advanced above that old pitch, little lovelier than the Serpent, just such are our crafts, our unsanctified counsels, our wily artifices, that have nothing but Serpent in their composition; little honourabler than the Calf, just such are our God's of gold, which I cannot mention, but in Moses passion, O these people have committed a great sin, have made them God's of gold! all piety transformed and contracted into the worship of that one shrine, our gain the only godliness we can hear of: and then a multitude more, of a yet viler making, fit only for a competition with that knotty refuse piece of wood of which the Idol was made: the more shame, they should outvie a most glorious God, a Christ, that if he had nothing in his life amiable, yet hath died for us, and so hath dearly purchased a title to our love, yea and a blessed Spirit, come down on purpose to sublime our judicative faculty, to convince the world of the unreasonableness of sin; yea, and a poor thirsty panting soul (which hath some reason to expect kindness from us) a heaven and an immortal bliss.

Consider but a few of that glittering train of reigning sins in this our Land, in this my Auditory, and be astonished, O Earth, that they should ever be received in competition with Christ. The oaths, that all the importunity of our weekly Sermons turned into Satyrs against that sin, cannot either steal or beg from us, what gain or profit do they afford us? which of our senses do they entertain, which of our faculties do they court? an empty, profitless, temptationless sin, sensuality only to the devil-part in us, fumed out of hell into our mouths in a kind of hypochondriacal fit, an affront to that strict command of Christ, his ego autem to his Disciples, but I say unto you, Christians, swear not at all : the best quality that it can pretend to, is that that Hierocles of old mentions with indignation, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , to fill up the vacuities of the speech, to express and man a rage, i. e. to act a mad man the more perfectly. And of him that hath in his time sworn over all the hairs of his head, I would still ask but this one question, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , what fruit had he then of this sin, (then, when it was full in his mouth, a swelling his cheeks) whereof he is now ashamed, cannot choose but blush, his ears glow, or be in some pain till I have done speaking of it: and yet beyond this, the end of those things is death, a several fiend in hell most sadly to come, the payment of every of those gainless oaths. It were but a 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , or cold address to this kind of sinner, to bespeak in that of expostulating style; what advantageth it, to gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? 'twere more to his purpose to demand, what advantageth it him to gain not one atom, or most diminutive part of the world, not the least acquisition of anything desirable even to the carnal man, satisfactory to any part of his appetite, save that in a manner Platonic, designless love of sinning, and ruining his own soul, and yet to do that as sure, as if he had Satan's totum hoc, his whole Exchequer of wealth and honor in exchange for it? I shall rather add, what shall that man give in exchange for his soul to get it back again, which he hath parted with so cheap without any barter, sold it for naught and taken no money for it, in the Psalmists phrase, and now cannot redeem it with all his patrimony? 'Twould grieve one, I confess, that did but weigh this sin in this balance, and observe the Tekel in the wall over against it, how light and kexy and impertinent a sin this is, to hear that anybody should be damned for it in another world, part with such treasures for such trifles, make such African voyages, carry out the substantial commodities of a good land, and return with a freight of toys or monsters, pay so hugely dear for such perfect nothings; and yet 'twould grieve one more, that this sin should glitter in a Protestant Court, become part of the gallantry and civility of the place, I and defame and curse our Armies, that the improsperousness, ruin, perhaps 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , of a whole Kingdom should be imputable to one such sin, and all our prayers to Heaven for you, be outsounded and drowned with that most contrary eloquence. 'Twere the Justest thing in the world, that he, that upon my present instance, (this more than 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , second admonition) will not now vow to part forever with this one sin, so threatful to his Sovereign, his Country, his own Soul, to the hosts gone forth against the enemy, to all that is or should be precious to him, and so absolutely gainless to himself in his vilest capacity, even as a sensual brute, should never be admitted within these doors again, never be preached to more, never be considered as a Christian so much as in profession, that will part with his true Christ or Jesus, rather than with the Names of them to blaspheme by; That he should be delivered up to Satan, as the primitive Offenders were, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , to be corporally tormented by him, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , to the tearing that foul tongue, that noisome piece of flesh out of his mouth, that by that means at least, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , he may be disciplined or taught not to blaspheme.

Will you look into another sin (a time of humiliation may be an excuse for the digression) that of uncleanness, whether of the eye, the libidinous look, that men are so hardly persuaded to believe to be a sin, ( i. e. in effect, that Christ forbad anything under that phrase of looking in a Woman to lust ) or whether that of the tongue that oris stuprum, unsavory discourse, rotten, putrid, noisome conversation, which makes it so absurd for that man ever to pray, (to bless God in the Church, with that part that was so polluted in the Chamber) or whether the grosser sin, the making the members of Christ members of a Harlot, (meant by the Apostle as an huge expression, members of a Swine, a Toad, had been nothing to it) what is this, but a Barabbas still, a Robber in competition with Christ for that body, which is, saith the Apostle, for the Lord, and not for fornication, 1 Cor. 6.13. A vile infamous crime, that stays not, for the most part, for its hell, its punishment in another world, meets with its Limbo, its Tophet here, torments and curses enough in this life, if they might have leave to be considered.

'It is worth observing in the New Testament, that the Name of Idolatry, not often mentioned there, doth most times very probably denote this sin of uncleanness or carnality ; the observation might be made good at large, if 'twere now seasonable; and I would to God my auditory would be persuaded, thus to keep themselves from Idols, to fly from this kind of Idolatry, that men's natures have a thousand times more temptations to, than that other sin that bears the envy of all our misery, the Idolatry that the sacrilegious so declaim at: believe me, there is not a sin more incompetible with the Gospel-mercy, a more irreconcilable rival of all godliness, a greater waster of conscience, griever and quencher of the Spirit, a more perfect piece of Atheism, and Heathenism, be it the fairest outside Christian; nor withal, a greater blasting and curse to a Nation, an Army, a Garrison town, than the permission of this one sin, the voice of it crying to Heaven, as loud as Sodom, for fire from Heaven, for judgment upon the place. Remember the fierce judgment in Shittim, Numb. 25. upon the people's joining to Baal Peor, that filthy heathenish Idol, expounded ver. 1. by committing whoredom with the daughters of Moab ; the heads of the people, remember that, the heads of the people, the principal men in Israel, either because they were most guilty, or because the matter required such a • expiation, must be hanged up against the Sun, that the anger of the Lord might be turned away from Israel, (and I believe 'twould pose a man to give any reason why this sin (of adultery at least) in this Land, as well as stealing of a trifle, should not be awarded in the style of that text with hanging up against the Sun ) and the command there, is to them in place of Judicature to see the execution of the Law against them, Slay you everyone his men, ver. 5. But this is a Judaical outdated punishment among us, and it hath been the cunning of Satan that it should be so, who having prospered so far for his Clients, would not be quiet till he had gotten all kind of restraint or discouragement of this sin to be so too, till he had made the foulest incest a far cheaper sin and safer possession, than the practice of some Christian virtues; nay, which is observable to the lasting shame of this Land, till the injured man thus despoiled and robbed by the Adulterer, be made; by a kind of national custom, the only infamous person, and the Barabbas that robbed him, punished only with that curse in the Gospel, of having all men speak well of him. O what is this, but as the Psalmist saith, to bless them whom God abhors, or as the Prophet, Mal. 3.14. And now we call the proud, happy; and they that work wickedness, are set up! Believe it, one or two such ponderous guilts as these, are able to keep the justest cause from buoying up itself, and our ferventest prayers from their 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , from working any saving miracles upon a Land.

I wish there were now no more Barabbas 's amongst us, a canvassing against Christ, but I must not flatter you with so short a catalogue; Look on your indevotion, that heartless zealless behavior in this very house of God. Your Hearing, which is mostly the fairest part of you, what is it but as of a Rhetor at a Desk, to commend or dislike, the same which you have as well for the Stage as the Pulpit, a Plaudite or an Hiss ; and for that other of Prayer, though it be for those blessings of peace, of safety, the Shalom that many men have more devotion for, than that other great sense of that word, the salvation of their souls, and which ardent prayer is the only means to bring down upon us; yet what cold addresses, what wandering eyes and thoughts, what irreverent negligent motions, what yawning instead of sighing out our parts of it, what absolute indifference, if God will take our own witness, whether we be heard or no? This want of ardency in us, this no-fire on our Altar of Incense, is certainly the thing that hath provoked God to deliver up our Liturgy to Satan, to oppose and malign, to calumniate and defame as at this day; the Lord pardon us our part of this sin. This is the preferring of Barabbas, a Robber, a Devil perhaps, that steals away our hearts from Christ, even when we are in closest converse with him. As for fasting, what is that but an empty, formal, unsignificant name? The scorn of the Pharisees twice a week, hath quite driven it out of our Calendar. O consider this, and but once more consider; Look on the Sermon in the Mount, the several graces and duties that there make up the Christian somewhat above the pitch of a Scribe or Pharisee, and then every of the contrary vices, nay the very Jewish or Heathen, the moral or natural man's virtues, that come short of that high Philosophy, are everyone, the Barabbas in the Text, directly this Jewish choice; He that cannot forgive an enemy, bless him, pray for him, heap all the hot burning coals of Charity upon his head, and melt him by that artifice, rather than break him, ruin him, damn him by any other, what doth he but prefer his own revengeful lust, that hellish piece of sensuality, that food for the Wolf, the Vultur, the Salamander, the Devil in him, directly before the commands, not only counsels of Christ? and so Non hunc, sed Barabbam, a Barabbas is still the Choice, and the Christ the reprobate still; which brings me to the third particular, the Choice itself, not only preferring one before toother, but 1. absolutely rejecting of one: and then 2. ad evitandum vacuum, to fill up the vacuity, pitching upon toother, non, sed, not this, but, &c.

And 1. absolutely not this, a downright reiterated nolumus hunc, most vehement dislikes to Christ as soon as ever he is mentioned: the Jews had particular quarrels to him, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , they were many times scandalized at him, but not they only, but it seems, we Gentiles too, the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit, whether the graces or the promises, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , he receives them not, not only that he cannot attain to them, for that is said in the latter words, neither can he know them, but 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , he receives them not, will not accept them when they are offered, for they are foolishness to him, not worth taking up in the streets, he cannot stoop to such trifles; and in another place, the same Apostle saith it of Christ crucified, To the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Gentiles foolishness ; the things of the spirit are foolishness, and the Christ foolishness too, we not only not choose him, when any other comes in competition with him, but not take him, when none; An antipathy to Christ as Christ, an absolute aversation, rejection of such merchandise, though there were no price to be paid for them. This is a Mystery of hell, let us view it a while, and to that end consider Christ, in the two main parts of him, in which he shines most illustrious towards us, His graces and his promises, the diet all the year long for his servants, and the wages at the end of his service; the viaticum he affords in the voyage, and the reward in the haven.

For the former of these, for grace, the Bridegrooms feast, Luke 14. which so many were bid to, see there what difficulty there is, to bring men to it, not one comes on the first invitation, though it seems all were really expected, and the entertainment provided; when all is ready, the servants are again sent out to tell them, they are staid for, and the issue is, they all with one consent began to make excuses ; the feast was ready, grace ready to be spoil'd for want of guests, and yet neither civility, nor pity, nor common gratitude can work upon them, or extort the acceptance of such a donative; The Field, the Oxen, the Wife, are like the Barabbas here, not the reasons but excuses of their contempt, pretences only and opportunities of getting off more cleanly, more handsomely from Christ; and if you mark it, so it is. There's nothing that we have learned so perfect from Adam, as that art of excuses; and withal, nothing that we so vehemently desire to be excused from, as the power of grace, when it makes toward our souls, when by the preaching of the word powerfully applied, with an [ Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead ] and [ O consider this, ye that forget God, lest he tear you in pieces ] and [ Behold ye despisers, and wonder, and perish :] when by •• e message of that Angel come up close to us, the Holy Ghost begins to overshadow and beget Christ in us, that procreative light of Heaven darting its beams, and those attended with some conceptions of holiness in a carnal breast, O how uneasy we are, how encumbered, till we can get rid of this burden, like so many Harlots that live by the trade of not-conceiving, or when that will not be done, force an abortion if it be possible; we must be excused from that austerity, we are impatient of being so attenuated, and spiritualized, wreckt, though it be but from our lees; the last flash of the candle, pangs of the expiring soul, are time enough for this bearing fruit unto God. Lord make us chaste, make us sober, make us humble, then, let me die the death of the righteous, and my last end be like his, let me have a shower of sanctity, a Clinicks baptism, some good wholesome wishes or ejaculations to bathe me before my last journey, an Elias's fiery Chariot of zeal then to hurry me to Heaven, sed noli m • do, Lord none of this purity yet, the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , in Eunapius, the danger of being all soul, all holiness all heavenly mindedness so early, is a sad frightful thing for a young Courtier, a young Soldier, a young Academic, for any that are under the age, or not come to the infirmities of the Clinic • in the Primitive Church, (those that would not be Baptiz'd till they were ready to die, and so were literally 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , baptized for dead, then, and not till then, desired to be baptized.) Holiness is a dull melancholy thing, fit only for a hypocondriack to be entertained with. Thus when the crest-fallen Israelites were to be redeemed from an Egypt to a Canaan, they cry out upon Moses and Aaron, Exod. 5. chide with their Savior's, abomine their Deliverers; thus the harrast degenerous emasculate slave is offended with a Jubilee, a manumission, servitude is his sensuality, he will not go out free, brings his ear to his Master and desires to be bored thorough it, that he may be a slave forever. Once more, thus the man possessed with no less than a legion of Devils, casting him sometime into the fire, sometime into the water, tearing him till he foameth again, is passionately fallen in love with that legion, hath not the patience to be rid of these Devils; when Christ comes to cast them out, he is most out of charity with that Christ, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ; what have I to do with thee? not thou Devil, that hast tormented me all this while, but thou Jesus the eternal Son, or thou piety the precious grace of God, art thou come to torment, i. e. to sanctify or dispossess me before my time? torment me by delivering me from the Tormentor, disease by curing, poison me by thy balm or balsome, wound me by thy mollifying plasters, condemn me to Hell by bringing me into a sight of Heaven? thus when the Beloved comes and knocks at the door of the espoused soul, Open to me my sister, my love, and there waits without doors most unseasonably and beyond all patience, till his head be filled with the dew, and his locks with the drops of the night, all the answer that is to be had, is no more but this, I have put off my coat, how can I put it on? I have washed my feet, how shall I defile them? I have put off righteousness like a garment, denudated myself of all that looks like holiness, and all the wooings of the true-beloved, cannot give me patience to put it on again, I have washed my feet in m • e or ink, douz'd my carnal affections in all the vileness of the world, and how shall I defile them with grace, pollute them with chastity, defame or profane them with any thoughts of holiness? thus doth the swine wash herself in the mire, and he that comes to cleanse, defiles her; the linner never so well pleased, as when he is given up to all vile affections, the offers of Christ, the importunities of grace, go for the only oppression, and usurpation, and tyranny in the world, and so non hunc, not this man, not Christ, as Christ signifies grace, that inchoation of sanctity, that he came to bring among us.

And non hunc again, as that signifies the promises which Christ brought with him, though those promises be of all that is valuable to immortal souls, of nothing but Heaven and bliss, non hunc, none of Christ when he comes but a Herald of these. For even against this, we have two dislikes:

1. This bliss is of a new spiritual making, (and that is one reason why we despise the Promises) consists in the vision of God, contemplation of heavenly excellencies, nothing of the Turkish carnal Paradise in it, nothing that this flesh and blood, the habitual sinner can tell what to make of. I remember Philoponus his conceit, that to have a right apprehension of God, 'twas necessary to study the Mathematics. Men naturally cannot understand anything but by phantasms, and those still mixing in the contemplation of God, make men fancy God 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , with matter and corpulency; and the Mathematics are a necessary means to help us to abstract from that. I would to God we had some such engine, or crane, or pulley to elevate our fancies, to make it possible to think anything pleasure which is not corpulent and carnal. A madness, believe it, that we wrong the Epicureans, to think any of that ancient Sect was ever guilty of it: No, they could please themselves with spiritual beauty, as far as they apprehended there was any; witness Epicurus himself, who though he were under those pains of Strangury and Dysentery that were not capable of increase, of which, it seems by Laertius, he died, yet, saith he, in his Will, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , the joy of his Soul was able to hold out against all these: Only the Mahometan, and the carnal Christian, is the true Epicurean swine that Horace prophesied of, that can find no pleasure, but in the mire and dunghill, and that's one main reason of the non hunc, as he refers to promises; because they are celestial invisible felicities, that he cannot find any juice or taste in.

But besides that, there is another reason of it, another objection the carnal Jew-Christian hath to those promises, because indeed they are but promises, because of the futurity of them; he is a man of sense, and not of faith, filius hujus seculi, all for present possessions, nothing for advouzons and reversions. Ephraim is like the Heifer, saith the Prophet, that loveth to tread out the corn, the reason of that love was, because of that law, that the mouth of the Ox or Heifer must not be muzzel'd at that time; she is allowed to eat at the instant that she doth the work, is not put off to so long a date, so tedious an expectation of sweating here, and being fed and rewarded in another life, and that made