The Saints Zeal Against Sinful Altars

TO THE Reader.

THou hast here a Sermon some monetths since preached at the command of some in authority in the Church, on a day of Humiliation for the spreading Errors, Heresies and Scismes of our place and times. It was then by some sincere worshippers at God's Altar, desired to be made more public; but was by the Author denied, and adjudged to remain in silence; yet revived importunity hath reversed that sentence, and presented it to thy view and censure; if thou hast, as doth become the sons of Zion been observant of what hath past in our English Israel, thou canst not but have seen Church against Church, Ministry again Ministry, Baptism against Baptism, Fast against Fast, and Thanksgiving against Thanksgiving; some worshipping God one way, • thers in a way direct contrary. Certain it is, both cannot be the way of the Lord, one must be human invention, will-worse • ip, an Altar against God's Altar, and s • the object of zealous resistance; receive then this small Tract, as that which may by the grace of God be in some measure useful to discover the sinful Altar, and direct thy duty towards it.

Two things I desire to premise to thee at the entry of the work: The first is an answer to an objection, of which in the preaching of the Sermon I had not time to take notice; neither have since, as I might have done, inserted it; but think convenient to note to thee in this place, It is this:

If God will be worshipped at one only Altar, how came it to pass that the Patriarchs and holy men of God did worship at various and distinct Altars?

To this I answer.

First, these various and distinct Altars were used before God had pitched his Tabernacle and the visible Ark of his presence, and fixed his Name and people in a settled station: such were the Altars of Abraham and the Patriarchs in their pilgrimage and travels: but when God had settled Israel, we read not of any ordinarily built or used. Hence when David was banished from Jerusalem, w • read of his panting thirsty desire of return for the Sanctuary sake, but not of his rearing any Altar elsewhere. It was his sad affliction to want worship at God's Altar; is would have been his sin to set up an Altar in a strange place.

Secondly, The Altars that at any time were erected, were able to plead extraordinary and immediate command from God on extraordinary and emergent occasions: of this nature was Abraham's Altar in mount Moriah, and Gideon's Altar called Jehovah Shalom, Judges 6.24. and David's Altar in the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite, 2 Sam. 24.25. Extraordinary precepts cannot be ordinary proofs.

Thirdly, These were temporary and transient, passed away as soon as they had served the special occasion for which they were erected; so that God had but one permanent abiding Altar at which he was constantly worshipped.

Lastly, Though these Altars were various and distinct in matter, yet they were one for object and form of Divine service; and if God dispence with the matter by an immediate command, it will be no warrant ordinarily to set up different matter of divine worship.

The second thing I would premise, is, by way of admonition; when thou resistest sinful Altars, keep rank and order: step not out of thy place and calling: invade not the Ministers Chair, with authority to reprove, and excommunicate: nor yet the Magistrates Throne, to draw the sword of vengeance, and drive a present precipitate war against brethren. In thy place observe the sin, mourn under it, admonish brethren of it, wait with patience and in peace to see what the Princes and Priests of Israel will do against it: It is true in the text under consideration, all Israel were up in arms with sword in hand, and purpose in heart to resist the sin; but observe Joshua and Phinehas, the Princes and Priests of the Lord summon to it, and lead them in it: Israel might never stir to war till summoned by the sounding alarms of the silver trumpets: they rose not to war against the Altars of Baal, when Solomon was addicted to a sinful Toleration. If God give Magistrates up to a sinful indulgence of false Altars, it is thy duty to sit in peace, and by secret mournings to resist the sin: thy irregular insurrection will be the sin of thy soul, and shame of thy profession. Courteous Reader, let me therefore charge thee to perform the practices of piety with a spirit of peace, and to keep thy own compass in expression of thy zeal to God's Altar. I will hold thee no longer, but to let thee know, that if any shall charge this Sermon with violence and bitterness, it is nothing but what is expected; and therefore was endeavored to be declined as far as was consistent with Ministerial plainness and zeal; and the charge being groundless, will not be regarded by the Author, who hath taken it up for a lamentation, that our days denominate zeal violence, and lukewarmness moderation, contending for connivence at, and indulgence of positive sin, and endeavoring to extend Toleration of all religions so far, that Schisms, Errors, and Heresies may not only be exempted from the Magistrates sword and Churches Censures, but even Ministerial reproof and private Christians complaint. So commending thee to the consideration of thy duty hereby declared; and both it and thee to the grace of a jealous God; I subscribe myself

Errata.

PAge 6 line 1 woid read would, p 16 l 7 for defecton defection, p 47 l 25 for Congregration r Congregation, p 49 l 20 for consent r consent, p 50 l 4 r not se p 71 l 5 r as if, p 79 l 14 for Aretius r Acesius, p 80 l 5 for sot is r it, p 105 l 13 their of r of their p 111 l 21 concernig r concerning, p 120 l 10 word r wordie, p 112 l 4 immoderately r immediately p 138 l 11 unifermity r uniformity p 150 l ult, set r let.

The INDEX. The Saints zeal against sinful Altars, in which you have this Doctrine.

• THe building Altars besides the Altar of God's is a sin to be seasonably seen unto by sincere worshippers at God's Altar. Page 9

This is illustrated by showing,
• 1. The signification of the word Altar. p. 10, to p. 20
• 2. Several ways of building Altars besides God's Altar; as
  • Materially. Page 20
  • Objectively. Page 23
  • Formally. Page 24
• 3. Several duties of sincere worshippers.
  • 1. Seeing the sin Page 31
  • 2. Sensibly affecting themselves with it. Page 32
  • 3. Seasonable caution and counsel. Page 33
  • 4. Speedy removal of temptation. Page 34
  • 5. Zealous resistance. Page 36

The Doctrine is proved by showing the sinfulness of the sin in respect of the grounds of it.
• 1. Shameful novelty. Page 41
• 2. Swelling pride. Page 46
• 3. Self-advancement and advantage. Page 52

Sinful acts of it.
• 1. Receding from the Lord. Page 59
• 2. Renddring man's will the rule of divine worship. Page 63
• 3. Rebellion against God and the Church. Page 69

Sad effects of it.
• 1. Rending from the Church. Page 73
• 2. Running God upon straits. Page 79
• 3. Rendering God's worship vile. Page 86
• 4. Reviving the Lord's fury. Page 88

Aggravating properties.
• Singularity of the subjects. Page 91
• Sin agninst standing counsel. Page 92
• Shuts God's ears. Page 93

The Doctrine is applied by way of examination, in which you have the Characters of sinful Altars by the concomitants of it.
• 1. Doctrines dissonant to truth. Page 100
• 2. Public astrological predictions. Page 103
• 3. Separation from the Church. Page 117
• 4. Enmity to such as minister at God's Altar. Page 121
• 5. Dispensation of divine worship without due call. Page 126
• 6. Doleful contests for universal Toleration. Page 129
• Enquiry whether as sincere worshippers, we have done our duty for God's Altar. Page 132

Humiliation provoked by considering:
• 1. We sin under strokes of God's fury. Page 136
• 2. Under a solemn Covenant. Page 138
• 3. It will subject us to severe judgments. Page 140
• 4. It is a symptom of God's departure. Page 141

The second Use of the Point is exhortation to such as seem to build Altars.
• To admit enquiry, and to give to brethren a cheerful account of their actions. Page 143
• To such as have forsaken God's Altar, to return to it again. Page 147

To such as yet worship at God's Altar.
• To stick to it, to stand up for it against all opposition. Page 150

Fraterna Correptio, OR, SAINTS ZEALE Against Sinful Altars.

SIncerity in the Lord's Worship being always suspicious of mixture, corruption or apostasy, doth instigate and bring forth a zealous resistance of everything that bears but the show of innovation: This we may find very fully manifested by the ten tribes of Israel, that had passed over Jordan, and possessed the promised land on that side: if we observe their zealous carriage (grounded but on a supposition and suspecting jealousy) towards their brethren of the two tribes that did abide on the other side of Jordan, which in this Chapter is at large declared.

The Chapter is, as the Book, Historical; and contains in it these two parts.

First, is Joshua's religious dismission of Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh, to their allotted portion of the promised land: wherein after the commendation of their past obedience, ready attendance on their brethren, he sends them away with a solemn charge, to continue their obedience to God's Commandments, and their constant adherence to him, with all their heart and soul, unto the 9. verse.

The second part declares the Consequents of their return, and they are two as the most considerable.

[Conseq. 1] First, the work begun by them in their return to their possession: and that is the building of a great Altar, like unto the Altar of God. A thing that might well provoke jealousy, v. 9, 10.

Secondly, the wise carriage of their [Conseq. 2] brethren towards them, and theirs towards their brethren, on the jealous apprehensions of the work begun by them; and this is to the end of the chapter. And in their mutual carriage we may observe these things.

1. The nine tribes and half observe it, they heard it, and heed it, v. 11.

2. Prepare a power, and purpose a positive resistance of it, if found to be as they suspected, v. 12.

3. Presently dispatch Phinehas with ten Princes to demand an account of their work, and weighty reasons that might induce to it: as also to caution and counsel their desistance and cessation, v. 13, 14. who coming to them discharge their duties, and execute their commission these ways.

First, by representing to them the apprehensions of their brethren, concerning their Altar-building, v. 16.

Secondly, by rendering the sin vile in their sight, if they had intended it as was feared: by aggravating the same by the sin of Achan and Baal-Peor, for which sins the wounds received were yet green, v. 17, 18, and 20.

Thirdly, requiring by their authority a cessation from so sinful a work: and propounding an expedient to the conceived cause, v. 19.

4. A pathetical, religious and brotherly answer of the two tribes and the half, unto the message received from their brethren, wherein they (though building an Altar) yet do not stubbornly deny to give their brethren an account of their proceedings therein: but do

First, by a solemn appeal to God, protest that it was not, as was suspected by their brethren, to separate from them, or set up a place for the Lord's worship not by him commanded, or to commit idolatry.

Secondly, they publish the very grounds and reasons inducing, and end whereunto they built their Altar, after the fashion of the Altar of God; (viz) that it might be a monument of their obedience, and relation to the Lord, as also an engagement to posterity to worship the same God, at his own appointed place: shut out the feared differences that might grow by the distance of their possession; from v. 21. ad 30.

5 ^lie . The pleasant departure of the messengers, satisfied in the answer received, and cheered by this evidence of God's presence and mercy, v. 30, 31, 32.

6 ^lie . The people's denomination of their finished Altar, according to their declared end of its erection, v. 3 • , 34.

The chapter thus opened, you may see the words of the text to fall under the ten tribes apprehension of the work of the two tribes, and message delivered by Phinehas, and the ten Princes, and they are an authori • tive dehortation, wherein we may observe these two parts.

1. The suspected sin dehorted from: to build an Altar besides the Altar of the Lord.

2. The serious reasons exhibited to enforce it, which are two, setting out the nature of the sin as it is a rebellion against

• God:
• Us, his People.

If time would admit, and it were now convenient, I might from the distributed parts of the chapter infer many useful Conclusions and necessary Doctrines, but that I decline as a work more proper to the exposition of the whole chapter, then indeed to any one thing chosen to be spoken to in it. I might also if I delighted in the mincing of the words into many parts, observe many particulars, as

1. The dehorters, the ten tribes by their Priest and Princes.

2. The dehorted, the two tribes and half.

3. The matter from which they are dehorted, from building an Altar besides the Altar of God.

4. The manner of the dehortation, with the reasons enforcing it.

From these several parts I might infer so many several Conclusions, and speak to them particularly: but my design and desire is, to lay before you the sinfulness of the sin of Altar-building, suspected by the ten tribes to be in act in the two tribes; and therefore I shall desire you to look on the words, as an abstract of the whole carriage of the ten tribes towards the two tribes on a conceived guilt: or a compendious manifestation of their sincerity to, and zeal for the true Worship of God, against the supposed defection of their brethren.

As for the explication of the words, there is in them little or no difficulty: as for what might be said to show this sin to be a rebellion against God, and against his people, I shall (God willing) speak to it in the doctrinal prosecution of the truth to be inferred: only I shall desire you to take notice, that from this history, is by the general judgment of Expositors inferred, the Magistrates power in punishing heretics and apostates, and duty to preserve uniformity of divine worship: nay, hereby is justified the making war against such as make defection from the Altar of God; Piscator saith, It was Piety in the ten tribes, that they resolve to make war with the two tribes for their defection from the true God. The Assembly of Divines say, Such was their zeal, that they had rather hazard their lives, then suffer God's true Religion to be corrupted: for God had ordained there should be but one place for public worship and service, and but one Altar. The Geneva and Dutch Annotatiors approve the war. Not to note anything out of Popish Writers, as Vatablus, Cafetan, Cornelius A Lapide, Masius and others, who generally justify the war, and with Ferus say, They sent messengers to try the crime, and bring to repentance, and were ready if the two tribes obeyed not, armis discernere, to decide the matter by war; and this is necessary for you to take notice of, that God had ordained a station for his worship, as well as for his people, and determined one special Altar to be erected, to which he bound his people to bring all their offerings, and by a positive Law prohibited the erection of any other Altar, (as in Deut. 12. is to be seen at large) then that which was built by Moses before the Tabernacle, and afterwards by Solomon in the Temple, which, as Piscator observeth, laid a necessity on the ten tribes to make war with the two tribes, by reason of which they did not consult whether they should do it or no, but the manner how to manage it: so that the standing Ordinance of God, for adherencie to one only Altar (as the sign of one only Mediator, and the bond of unity in Religion) was by the ten tribes contended for, when they conceived their brethren's erection of another Altar, in a place distinct from that prescribed by the Lord to be the violation thereof; and this occasioned the dehortation in the text, Rebell not against the Lord, nor rebel against us by building you an Altar besides the Altar of the Lord. So that from the words thus generally considered and briefly opened, I shall commend to your Christian and serious consideration, this general Observation or Point of Doctrine.

Erection of Altars besides the Altars of God, [Doct.] is a sin to be seasonably seen unto by the sincere Worshippers of God.

The zealous discharge of this duty by Hezekiah and Josiah, in the demolishing of Altars, besides the Altar of God, and reducing the people to the unity of worship, is in sacred Records specially mentioned as the luster of their religious reforming times: whilst the neglect thereof is singled out and set up as the black butt of blemish to religious Asa, Amaziah, Azariah and Jotham, sincere Worshippers of God.

But for the more full prosecution of this truth I shall propound this method, to speak to you by way of Illustration, Confirmation and Application.

First, by way of Illustration, and shall endeavor to open to you two things.

First, how Altars may be said to be built, besides the Altars of God, and that even in Gospel-days.

Secondly, how and wherein sincere Worshippers of God are to act and approve their duty in seeing to this sin of Altar-building.

First, then to speak to the first of these, (viz.) how Altars may be built, even under the Gospel, besides the Altars of God; I shall desire you to consider the term; Altar is in Scripture-phrase, properly or improperly and figuratively significant.

1. In a proper sense, it signifies organum divini cultûs praecipuum, the chief instrument of the divine worship, ordained to be built before the Tabernacle, or in the Temple, on the which the Priests were to wait, that they might offer the sacrifices the people were bound to present in that very place; of which we read in Deut. 12. where God commands an Altar to be built, and the people to worship him there: even an instrument of his worship; and thus it is generally read in the Old Testament, for that very instrument of God's worship: in this sense the Heathens generally use the word and thing, and the Papists contend for the same thing, by imposing on us the proper and restrict sense of the word: persuading and practicing the building of Altars, distinct places of divine worship for the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper to be offered on, whence they call that Ordinance, the sacrifice of the Altar. What man of but mean capacity and knowledge in the Scriptures, observing the Lord Jesus the Antitype of both Sacrifice and Altar, sees not their assertion as well as argument to be Jewish? (but I intending an illustration, not confutation: This having been by many of the Learned confuted,) shall not stand upon, or spend time to do it: only I desire you to note, that in this proper sense God under the Gospel, requiring no sacrifices, requireth no Altar of stone, or brick, or the like matter to be built unto him, but a sincere and spiritual apprehension and adherence to Christ, as our real and proper Altar, as well as sacrifice, to which every believing soul is privilegio, not officio, a spiritual Priest to offer prayer, praises, &c. unto God, 1 Pet. 2.5. So that to build material Altars of wood, stone and the like, must needs be a sin to be seen unto, and withstood, as opposite to Christ our one only Altar unto God; and that to contend for Altars in this sense, is so far from my intent, that I with Pareus declare them foolish and simple that so do.

2. In an improper and figurative sense, the word is more strictly and allegorically used by the Fathers, as Augustine, Optatus and others, when they do by this word denominate the Table, Instrument, or seat on which the bread and the wine at the Lord's Supper was placed the Altar, and so did vulgarly call that Ordinance the Sacrament of the Altar: the which term of theirs the Papists taking advantage or occasion by, labor to justify their Altars, & impose it on us on pain of heresy to be received, much advancing the Fathers above the Scriptures authority, the which their persons and judgments were subject to, and whosoever observes the expressions of the Fathers, doth clearly see the opposition of Altar in the Temple to our Altar in Heaven, the denomination of it the wedding Supper, and in express terms sometimes the Table, and the Lord's Supper, cannot but confess that they did allegorically use the term Altar: and in their complaints of the furious carriage of the Donatists and Arians, cry out of their breaking down of the boards of the Altar, and many times expressly of the tables, and burning the wooden board, &c. for many of them at last, seeing the corruption which began to grow by the use of the word Altar, where the thing was denied did more warily and improperly use 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 a table, for the place of the elements: so that in this sense we do not take the word Altar in the Doctrine: for though the Sacraments be parts of the divine worship, yet I shall not limit and bound the word Altar to the place and ordinary instrument of their use: for I shall say of Tables in private places, as Bullinger of fixed Altars, or rather Tables so called. I condemn them, not being used to the proper end, and in a right manner. Only the conveniency of public Instruments, kept in public places, to public ends duly preserved, I am so far from restraining the term Altar, to signify that instrument we vulgarly call the Communion Table, that I shall with Peter Martyr confess the catachrestical use of it by the Fathers, and acknowledge words of this nature thus used, may not profit the people, but accidentally draw them to have too reverend an esteem of Jewish, Heathenish, and (let me now say) Popish rites, the sense not being understood in the use of the word.

Having refused the proper sense of the word Altar, and that restrict improper figurative sense, used in past ages of the Church, we come now to consider it in a second improper signification, in which we shall find it used in Scripture, and that is in a metonymical and synechdochical sense of the word Altar, which being but an instrument, (though a principal one) of the Worship of God under the Law, is put for the whole and every part of it: and being the sign of it, is often used to express divine Worship signified, so that we must note the Altar used in that sense that a learned man affirms Sacrifice to be used, both words coming from the same root in the Hebrew, which signifies to sacrifice, and so the Altars are called Sacrificatories, and that is for the whole Worship of God, of which the sacrifice on the Altar was a chief part.

The word Altar thus put to express the Worship of God, we shall find in many places of the Old, and generally used so in the New Testament; as, 1 Kings 19.14. Elijah his complaint of Ahab's breaking down the Altars of God, which though it be by some understood literally, in its proper sense; yet by others it is expounded, that he demolished the Worship of God, and thus generally the defect on of God's Worship is called a casting off and forsaking the Altars of God; and reformation, a restoring of the same: and from this metonymical and synechdochical sense, it comes to be metaphorically used to express the Worship of God under the Gospel, wherein these instruments of Worship are not at all used, and so in those Prophecies which predict the Propagation of the Gospel, and the Worship of God we find promised, the Temple and the Covenant of the Priesthood to be restored, and the Altars of God to be erected, as in Jer. 33.17, 18, 21. So also the Lord promiseth to set up his Altar in Egypt, as in Isa. 19.19. and that the Egyptians should offer sacrifice unto him, v. 21. which must needs be understood of the Gospel Worship, which should be and hath been received in Egypt, and not in that literal sense apprehended by Onias the High Priest, and urged as the great argument to persuade, and indeed did (though with a clear reluctancy of his own thoughts) prevail with Ptolemy Philometor then King of Egypt, to build a Temple there, and according to their zealous ignorance to accomplish this Prophecy as he pretended, although they never proved the accomplishment of this Prophecy in the Egyptians, speaking the language of Canaan, crying to the Lord, and offering sacrifice and oblations unto him; as also bringing in the Assyrian to join with them, and Israel as the third party; all which are promised to be the concomitants of this Altar-erection, and therefore must confirm the former sense of the word Altar as taken for the Gospel-worship of God: so it is also used in the 56. chapter of this same Prophecy of Isaiah, the seventh verse, where God promiseth the sacrifices of the stranger to be accepted on his Altar, that is, the worship they shall do unto him through Christ; and thus also in the New Testament, the Worship of God is expressed by this word Altar, as, 1 Cor. 9.13:10, 18. wherein he teacheth, that such as are employed in the Worship of God, must be maintained by it: and that such as eat of the sacrifice offered to idols, partake in the worship of idols: and so the word Altar must needs signify the Worship of God; in Matth. 25.3. wherein our Savior by a kind of Jewish manner of speaking, shows the necessity of brotherly agreement, before an approach to God in any act of divine Worship: and thus is Jesus Christ evangelically dispensed, the Altar of which the subjects of Legal and Levitical dispensations cannot partake, Heb. 13.10. so that thus you see the word Altar, though a legal term, yet capable of an Evangelical signification, not only as it hath been used by the Professors of the Gospel, to express and signify the Table, on which the bread and wine is set in the Lord's Supper; but also as it signifies the whole Worship of God; and in this sense I understand it in the doctrine, and shall desire to be understood in the whole discourse about it: for as the Worship of God was amongst the Jews, corrupted and declined by the building of any Altars, besides the one only Altar prescribed by the Lord: so under the Gospel, all innovation of principles and practices, over and above, below or beside the prescribed Worship of God in his Word, I conclude to be a rebelling against the Lord and his People, by building an Altar besides the Altar of God; for that to build a sinful Altar besides the Altar of God, is in the language of the Psalmist to defile ourselves with our own works, and to go a whoring after our own inventions: it is to refuse to own the object to be the Author of divine Worship, to be regulated by any other Law, then our own reason dictates, and will determines, and so to set up against God and his people, that 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , superstition and will-worship which the Apostle dehorts the Christians from, Col. 2.23. and this was a sin not only committed under the Law and Levitical Worship of God, but may also be committed under the Gospel: I, and hath been; for the Fathers in the primitive times were wont to observe and declare the Arians, Novatians, Donatists, and other schismatic • l heretics disturbing the peace of the Church, corrupting the doctrine of faith and Worship of God, Altare adversus Altare erigere, to build Altars besides the Altars of God. And that you may the better understand the same, I shall briefly show you how Altars may be built, either materially, objectively, or formally.

First, Altars may be built against the Altars of God materially, as when any other matter it innovated and introduced into the Lord's Worship, as an essential part thereof, which the Lord himself never prescribed or required: and thus under the Law, the Jews are sadly complained of, and condemned, for the multiplying of their Altars as their Cities, J • r. 11.13. and according to the multitude of their fruit, Hos. 10.1. which were no other then material organs of divine Worship, distinct from that one, by which alone God would be adored: such as these were Jeroboams two Altars at Da • and Bethel, and such as generally all the usurping Princes of the ten tribes of Israel, and some of the Kings of Judah did erect. And under the Gospel we may observe the guilt of this sin charged on such as called themselves true, but are branded for false Apostles, 2 Cor. 11.13. in that they imposed on the Christians Circumcision, and the Levitical Law as essential parts of God's Worship, whilst it was a matter in abrogating and abolishing, though it had formerly been established: such are cantiously seen unto by the Church at Antioch: and considerately condemned by the Council of the Church convened at Jerusalem: Acts 15.24. for that they troubled the people of God, and subverted their souls from the proper prescribed Worship of God. These Saint Paul in all his Epistles, to Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Colossae, or others, writes against, as subverterers of the sincere Worship of God received, and Innovators of their own inventions and impositions, therefore called a will-worship, Col. 2.23. This innovation or rather retention of the matter of Levitical Worship under the Gospel, is by the Author to the Hebrews, set in a diametrical opposition (thorough the whole Epistle) to the Gospel-Altar of God, and declared to be so sinful, as was inconsistent with participation in the Christians Altar, in Heb. 13.10. Thus also the Papists innovating the crossing ceremony, sanctifying water, the five sacraments, sacrifice of the Altar, the Ave Maria, prayers to Saints, and the like matters, as essential parts of divine Worship, do clearly in the very matter build Altars besides the Altars of God: so that if the Ministers of God do offer unto God any other matter as acts of divine Worship, their Ministry will not sanctify their action, but their innovation makes them subject to the guilt of Altar-building, whilst the matter of their offering be like to the fire of Nadab and Abihu, strange fire before the Lord.

Secondly, this sin of building Altars, besides the Altars of the Lord, may be committed objectively, when the very material Altar continuing, is diveried from its proper object, unto such, as not being God's, cannot be the object of divine Worship: as when the Temple is used to idolatry, the incense of the Lord is smoking before idols, the sacrifices of God are offered unto Baal, and the like; all which, though in themselves the very Altar and proper matter of the Lord's divine Worship: yet not being duly tendered to him, is the building of an Altar besides his Altar; this sin was committed by Manasseh, in diverting the Temple to idolatry: and is expressly digitated to Ezekiel, when God shows him the defilements of his Sanctuary, the cloud of incense ascending before the images, and the twenty five men worshipping, not God, but the Sun, Ezek. 8. And of this God complaineth, (viz.) that they had defiled his Sanctuary, when they brought in their idol-service into his holy place, Ezek. 5.11, 23, 38. for the Temple of Jerusalem was not the Temple of the Lord, whilst diverted to idols, anymore then the temples of Apollo, or other heathenish gods are such, when by Christians they are disposed into convenient places, for the Assemblies of God's people to worship in: so that now under the Gospel, to give divine Worship to any but the true God in Christ, is to build Altars against him, and destroy his; for though prayer be a part of God's Sacrifice and Worsh • p, yet it is not so, nay, it is opposite thereunto, if Darius the King, the Lady Mary, Peter, Paul, or any other Saint whatsoever be the object thereof: and so the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, a great p • rt of God's Gospel-Altar, ceaseth so to be by the offering it unto God, as one to be appeased, satisfied and reconciled by a sacrifice; and not as one already satisfied and appeased; nay, it is by the change of the object, changed in its own nature, and of Divine made will-worship.

Thirdly, Altars may be built besides the Altars of God, formally: when the very Altar, sacrifice, incense, and every matter of the Lord's Worship is retained, and performed to the very object of divine Worship, the true God in a false manner of administration: matter miscarrying in the form is changed, as to its nature; for the axiom is true, that forma dat essentiam: the form denominates the thing 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , according to that which it is, distinguisheth it from other things, and indeed makes it to be what it is; for the matter is indeed the principium passivum, capable of being whatsoever the form doth make it; being the principuum activum: and thus the slaying of beasts by private men is no more then a moral act of slaughter, which when done by the Priest, is the religious act of Sacrifice: and so under the Law, Saul's offering of beasts in sacrifice, is so far from being divine Worship, that it is denominated disobedience, because not done according to the prescribed form of God, who not only ordains the matter of his Worship, but also the manner and form thereof: and in this sense the sin of Corah and his company may be said to be the erecting of an Altar besides the Lord's Altar, when by the gathering of a guedah or Congregation out of the Congregation, they did separate from the Church of God, and on the pretence of Piety crying up all the people as holy, invade the Ministerial despensation of God without due form and order: whereby they provoked the Lord to vindicate the formal administration of his Ordinances by the severity of his judgments on them, and by his Statute concerning their censers, that they should be plates of memorial, that no stranger, not of the seed of Aaron formally called, presume to celebrate divine Worship: and their sin the Apostle Jude in his general Epistle notes, to have been committed under the Gospel; and in all the action we find no change of the matter, but only the miscarriage of the manner in a separate way, by such as were not formal Ministers. An act like unto this was that of Uzzahs, in 2 Sam. 6.8. in laying hold upon the Ark of God not formally called: the danger of religions ruin will be no warrant for men not formally called to it, ministerially to support and save it.

The great aggravation of Jeroboams sin and evidence of his Altars to be against the Altar of God, was his expulsion of such as were formally called to celebrate divine Worship, and establishing of his usurped Magistracy, by an usurped Ministry, ( for he that would, made himself a Priest, to administer sacred actions contrary to God's standing Law, and signal severity on Corah and his company for this sin) as we at large see in 2 Coron. 13.9, 10. whilst Abijah declareth Judah to retain the truth of God's Worship and Altar, not only in the matter and object, but the form and manner thereof by the standing Ministry of God. And as we find the privation of the form under the Law in sacred dispensations, to be principium transmutationis, the changing of the nature of the Ordinance of God, from holy to profane: so also we shall see it to be under the Gospel; for though adjuration in the Name of Jesus be in itself a sacred action, yet when disorderly and precipitately without formal authority used by the Exorcists, it will provoke the devil himself to justify the power of Jesus and Paul, but to torment these usurping Intruders, Acts 19.13, 14, 15, 16. The neglect of the formal administration of the Lord's Supper in the Church of Corinth, will engage a sincere Paul to affirm positively, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper at all; for the form destroyed the entity which must be restored by a formal return to the first sacred institution: and I cannot but observe the care and pains taken by the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in asserting the formal inauguration, and exercise of the Lord Jesus in the work of the High Priest towards God, that he might convince the Jews that he was no usurping Impostor, but really and formally the High Priest expected, especially in the fifth chapter of the Epistle.

So that hereby we may see that men may provoke God by their own inventions, and go a whoring after their own ways, in not only adulterating the matter, but also the very manner of the Lord's worship: and this must needs be a grievous sin in Altar-building, to make God's Altar to stand against itself, nay, whilst it seems to be (and so is more apt to seduce,) what indeed for want of ministerial authority, and formal dispensation it is not: thus the Assemblies of the Novatians, Donatists and Arians, though using Word, Prayer and Sacraments, were denominated builders of Altars: for that action, which is sacred in the hands of a Minister, is but common in the hands of private men: the Lord's Supper duly administered by a lawful Minister thereun • o ordained, will be but at the best a Corinthian love-feast in a John of Leydens hand: and Baptism a sacred sign and sealing part of God's Worship, when administered by a lawful Minister in the Assemblies of God's people, will be (to use, but not to own the Anabaptists phrase) but baby-washing by a Midwife, and but mere washing of the body by the lowest of the people, renouncing or never receiving Ministerial authority: preaching of the Word, the great part of God's public worship in the mouth of a Minister, will be but the simple speaking of things as good or true, but not as engaged by office to enforce with authority by a private man. Having thus given you to see what I understand by Altars, and the different ways whereby they may be built, besides the Altar of God. I shall close this first part of the illustration of the Point, with this sad observation which I cannot be silent in, viz. that the corruption of our nature and times is apt to carry us from one extreme to another. Whilest we are reforming material innovations, we run after a superstitions manner of administration of sacred worship; and though we lately, and yet loudly cried for the purity of God's Altar, yet we are apt to destroy the power, by taking away the Priestly ministerial authority thereof, which must concur to make actions sacred, and parts of divine worship.

I come now in the next place to show you what must be done by sincere worshippers of God, that they may discharge their duty of s • eing to this sin of Altar-building, in the resolution of which I shall dictate some few directions from the precedent in this chapter; wherein if we observe the carriage of the ten tribes on this conceived act of Altar-building, we shall find these duties to be done by such as would see to this sin.

First, they must satisfy themselves of the certainty of such an act to be in agitation; they must take cognizance of the fact before they condemn it: they must have ears and eyes open to attend to reports, and observe actions; and hearts rightly acted to apprehend and determine the nature of such things as they hear and see; they must not shut their eyes at all affairs abroad because of their own liberty at home: nor live at peace themselves, and leave all others to serve God as they list; but knowing that there is but one God, and one Altar or way of worship, they must see whether all that call themselves by the Name of the God of Jacob, do wait on him at that one Altar, or erect any other to any sinful end. Thus we shall find the ten tribes carry towards their brethren; they are so far from condemning complaints of this nature, and contending for the liberty of the men, that they take notice of rumors, and are ready to fire their beacons on a bare report: see, v. 11, 12, they heard say, and begin to stir; yet they run not rashly upon a bare report to ruin their brethren, but send chosen men to require and receive an account of the work in hand, by them suspected to be sinful Altar-building: who returning satisfied in themselves, do also satisfy the Congregation; so that the first thing to be done, is to search out the certainty of the thing: that by sinful silence occasioned by non-observance, they indulge not building Altars besides the Altars of God, on the one hand, or on the other run rashly on the ruin of their brethren, condemning without conviction, the generation of the innocent in a just action.

Secondly, they must sensibly affect themselves with the nature of the sin and the sad aggravations thereof. The hiding of sin under the tongue shows that it is sweet in the mouth, and resolved to be kept and spared. Sins aggravation is the souls exasperation against it, wherein it is extenuated the heart is not affected with sorrow for it, or zeal against it: Nehemiah seeing to the reformation of the Sabbath of the Lord, heigh • ens the sin to his own and the people's sense; What evil is it that you do? did not your fathers thus? did not God bring all this evil for this sin? will ye yet bring the wrath of God on us? So the sincere worshippers of God in the text, contending against the suspicious act aggravate it very much, calling it a trespass committed, a turning away from the Lord, rebellion against God and their brethren considering it to be a provocation of divine wrath, parallelling it with Achan's sin; and making it the more grievous, because of the hand of God yet on them for the late sin of Baal-peor; in resisting the sin of Altar-building; we must then not abate, but aggravate the sinful nature thereof; for aggravations extract sorrow and emulate zeal.

Thirdly, seasonably caution, and seriously counsel the desistance of so sinful a design; all means must be used to cure the wound before it be pronounced immedicabile vulnus ense recidendum, incurable: for although to suffer obstinacy against advice, were sinful indulgence; yet to str • ke precipitately without solid conviction, and serious counsel to desist, is no better then Papal tyranny. Sincere worshippers must in contending for God's Altar, be actuated by God's counsel, to give first and second admonition before the rejection of an heretic, and imitate the pattern of God's patience, in warning and wooing before they war: sin persisted in against counsels and cautions, pleads the equity and necessity of justice and severity: whilst the pursuit of iniquity without these preventing means bears the complexion of passionate, and prejudged executions: and therefore the ten tribes though assembled with sword in hand, and purpose in heart to correct this supposed sin: check their courage, and command a stay to their proceedings, till they counsel their brethren's ceasing from so sinful a design by the embassie of Phinebas, and his associates.

Fourthly, speedily accommodate our brethren with a removal of what ariseth from ourselves as an accidental temptation to the sin, and may safely be removed: self-interest is always a sad obstructer of sincere contentions for God's worship: when self-denial sets God's Altar above all our own enjoyments, and commands a condescension of the lowest and hardest suffering terms that may anticipate positive and direct sin: Sincere worshippers must have a Paul's spirit, to become all things to all men, that all men may in sincerity obey the Gospel of Christ; who will rather never eat flesh then any shall thence take occasion to refuse or recede from Christianity: who will • ather labor with his hands then that the burden of God's worship shall make it be distasteful (though he have power to expect, if not exact maintenance) and like unto the ten Tribes in the Text, who will rather though to the diminution of their already divided inheritances, admit another division, and allow a portion for their brethren, then that they shall divide from the Altar of God: Knowing that it is better for them to admit poverty then profaneness. Groundlesse scrupulosity sometimes doth (as in the case in the Text it was conjectured to have done) engage men to schism and separation from the sincere worship of God; therefore wherein the pretended cause, though clearly accidental, may with some disadvantages as to our own enjoyments be removed; the care of such as contend for the conservation of the Altars of God, must be to see it done, and condescend to the same: that thereby they may show to the silencing of the sinners, it is simple purity of God's worship they pursue.

The fifth and last duty, inferred from this very story, to be done by sincere worshippers of God in their contending for the Altars of God, is zealously to resist the sin of Altar-building: this is the part of their duty the loud cries of general liberty amongst us doth decrie: yet it must be done: everyone being bound in his proper place, and according to his capacity, to approve themselves true attendants on God's Altar and Sanctuary, by withstanding sin in the genus of it, and so in every particular species, eminently attempting to restrain schism from the Church, and sad apostasies from the worship of God. Although we do not see, or say that strangers to the God, and Altar of Israel were to be by force compelled to become proselytes to their religion, and to worship at their Altar: yet what is clearer in all the story of the Church then that they were to be restrained from worshipping at any other Altar, or any other god in the midst of them: how much more clear is it that all defection, or backsliding from the worship and Altar of God by such as were joined under the visible administration of his Covenant, was with a Spirit of zeal and a strong hand to be restrained? Is not this in this very story, so very clear, that he that runs may read? See we not the people of the ten Tribes generally assembled with power in hand, and purpose in heart to impede the suspected sin, and so to keep in due order of attendance on God's Altar? Is it not to this end that God hath invested his Church with authority, and censures, and requires the due execution thereof, that by fear men may be forced from sin? Is not the cutting off the troublers of God's Church, rejection of heretics, casting off and delivering up to Satan for the buffeting of the flesh, the very act of this resistance? Was it not the discharge of this duty that emulated the Apostles in their days, and succeeding faithful Ministers of the Gospel, by the Authority of Christ to withstand the false Apostles, and seducing teachers of their times, as sinful Altar-builders, that this lies as a duty on the authority of the Church is generally granted by all, even by such as deny the same to be a duty in the Magistrate, which at this time is not my part or purpose to disp • re, having been done by more able men, and that very fully; that only which I would dictate is, that in general every professed sincere worshipper of God, is to approve himself such, not only by cautionating against, or counseling from, but also in his place, and according to his capacity, in contending against the sin of Altar-building, as private Christians by friendly objurgations, and discountenancing the same, even by drawing from communion and otherwise, when duly called: Ministers of the Church by reproving, condemning and censuring, nay if thereunto called, defending the place of God's worship against their entrance into the same, to correct their sin, as did Alexander that famous Bishop of Constantinople, and undergoing not only censures of bitterness and violence, but even banishments and saddest sufferings, as did Athanasius Bishop of Alexandria in withstanding the Arians: and when I consider Christian Magistrates waiting on the Altar of God by the fullness of their power, and influence of their authority on the sons of men, to be in the sittest capacity to manage to the purpose this resistance. I cannot see (whatever others say to the contrary) how to exempt them from the approving themselves sincere worshippers at God's Altar, by the faithful and zealous discharge of this duty.

Thus then I have done with the second thing to be illustrated, and have shown you what duties he on the sincere worshippers of God in seeing to the sin of Altar-building, and you see they must, 1. See it. 2. Be sensibly affected with it. 3. Speedily cautionate from it. 4. Seasonably remove accidental occasions as far as may be. 5. Zealously resist when other means will not avail, that so they may not share in their guilt. I now come to the confirmation of the Point thus illustrated, by giving the reasons of it.

The reasons, why the building of Altars besides the Altar of God is to be so seasonably seen unto by the sincere worshippers of God, I shall briefly comprehend under one general head, and that is this:

To build Altars besides the Altar of God is a sin exceeding sinful: it is sufficient to emulate a sanctified heart against it, to assert it simply to be a sin, though of the lowest order; for saving grace doth militate against sin as such, not as it is more or less grievous: yet how much more fervently and fully will it bend itself against sin, as it appears aggravated, vile, and exceeding sinful, more eminently and immediately dishonoring God, provoking fury, scandalizing religion, and sadly dividing the Churches of God? of which nature, to the emulating of zeal, and engaging the strength of sincere worshippers of God against it, I shall labor to let the people of God see this sin of Altar-building to be; and that in the consideration of the grounds, actings, effects, and sad aggravations thereof.

F rst, Altar-building besides the Altar of God, will appear a sin exceeding sinful, if we consider the sinful grounds from whence it springs and ariseth; amongst others we may specially take notice of these three common causes thereof.

First, shameful novelty; that frame [Ground 1] of spirit which for its vileness is noted to be the effect of idleness and want of serious employment which might six the soul; this is that frame of Spirit which renders a man weary of everything though in itself never so good: whereby men become Athenians to give up themselves to things as they are new, rather then as they are good, and inquire after Paul's Doctrine as new, and so suitable to their curiosities rather then as true and saving to their souls; the which although noted as an occasion of Paul's preaching, yet is taxed as an evidence of their vanity who minded nothing else but novelties, which might be vanities according to the Greek proverb 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , Novelties commonly are vanities. This is that shameful sin which brings a distaste on the most pleasont object , and placeth affection on that which is more base: a disposition more fit for babes and children, then men of discretion, who should embrace by reason: this novelty is the mother of sedition in States and Republics, which a wise Lycurgus will labor to anticipate by his perpetual absence from his Lacedaemonian subjects engaged to constancy of obedience till his return: and chiefest polliticians, by assenting to Plato his directions, and seeing that ne quid in rebus ad religionem attinentibus innovetur, that novelties in religion be not admitted. In a word, such is the vileness of this novellous temper, that Satan cannot endure his ways and doctrines to be charged with novelty, which he therefore cloaks with the plea, and brings in with the loud cry of Antiquity, whilst he makes the truths, and ways of God distasteful with the charge of novelty, which need; no clearer proof then the Papists contention for their shameful absurdities, and horrid innovations with the pretence of antiquity, whilst their common captious calumniating question against the true Churches doctrine and worship of God is, Where was Protestant religion before Luther's time? this sinful frame of spirit, this shameful inconstancy of the soul in its object and weariness of anything, though in itself never so good, when a little old is clearly in Scripture dictated to be the cause or reason of building Altars against the Altars of God. God expressly charged it on the Jews, that being more novellous then other Nations they had changed their glory into that which would not profit, Jer. 2.11. When thou didst nothing else but build other Altars unto Idol-gods: which in this very regard, to note this very ground of following them, by forsaking God, are called new gods, that came newly up, whom their fathers feared not. As in Deut. 32.17. And when God calls them off from this sin of Altar-building, we may find him correcting their novelty, as that which led them into the sin, by calling on them to inquire after the good way, and the old, and walk therein, Jer. 6.16. and many times he pleads his antiquity as a Creator, and as their Redeemer to confirm against Babylonish idolatry, and curb their novelty in acting this sin: thus and to this end is God opposed to idols with expostulating terms: Have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have you not understood from the foundations of the earth, that I as the everlasting Creator of all things, am the sole and only object of Altar-worship? Isa. 40. from ver. 18. to the end of chap. 41. at large to be seen; and so also we shall find the sin of Gospel-Altar-building in turning away from the doctrine and worship of the Gospel to be expressly grounded on, and flowing from this shameful novellous property: the Apostle useth no enigmatical terms when he makes this sinful, base disposition, and its effects the argument to excite faithful Ministers of Christ to approve themselves sincere worshippers of God, by zealous and diligent preaching, in season and out of season; for the time will come when men having itching ears, given wholly to novelty, (not to be pleased for their delicacy) will turn from the Altar of God not enduring sound Doctrine, but will set up new Altars according to their own lusts, by the heap of teachers gotten to themselves, 2 Tim. 4.3, 4. So that shameful novelty to be the ground of this grand iniquity we see clearly and positively asserted in Scripture; to which we might add the experimented disposition of such in all ages of the Church of God, who declining the sincere Word and worship of the Lord, and dividing from the society of sincere worshippers, have by the distastes of found doctrines, and inconstancy in their own opposed principles, and practices embracing and with zeal advancing for truth today, that which with no less zeal shall be condemned for error tomorrow: increasing to themselves teachers, and desirous to hear everyone speak, though they will know none to be over them in the Lord: being (in a word apt) to try all things, but never to determine anything, to hold it fast as good: approve themselves men acted by no other principle then novelty: but thus much may suffice (I hope) to convince, that Altar-buildings many times comes from this very ground shameful, sinful, childish novelty, which as you heard is so vile, as to make a people to decline their God long, nay, always enjoyed and approved merciful and gracious to them, to embrace those novellous vanities which are but momentary, and with which they were not acquainted: but I must pass to the consideration of the second ground, or cause of Altar-building, which we shall find no less sinful to the aggravation of this effect.

[Ground 2] The second ground of Altar-building is swelling pride, that diabolical disposition that put the evil Angels on an opposition of their Creator, from their very beginning to build their own Kingdom: that high frame of spirit which admits no peers, much less superiors: that boundless property that cannot endure to be prescribed by any rules, or confined within any banks: which advancing its own inventions will contend with men, nay, as much as may be with their sovereign Creator for Mastery, to which nothing but singularity and superiority can give satisfaction. In a word, that cursed principle, which sucks nourishment from God's greatest mercies, and most gracious favors; and when strengthened thereby, manageth a resistance of his sacred pleasures, and struggles to seat itself in the divine chair, much more easily to prescribe the form and bounds of that obedience which it will yield; this is a root so notoriously vile, that none will own it but where it reigns be ready to excuse, I and with seeeming zeal condemn it: its evil nature is so fully known as well by the light of nature and long experience, as by the law of God, that to enlarge on the discovery of its vileness were almost lost labor: yet from this odious and abominable root doth spring this cursed branch of Altar-building: which must needs savor of that seed it doth extract: this was the principle that put forward Corah and his company to gather a Gnedah out of a Gnedah, a Congregation out of a Congregration, and to build an Altar against the Altar of God, by declining, nay, diverting the formal administration of divine worship in the hand of Aaron; for we see not that they went about to renounce the material Altar of God: who can observe their stubborn refusal to come, when Moses called, with a proud, though unjust recrimination on Moses, their puffed up spirits expressed in their plea of universal holiness, with which they being too highly affected durst argue against order and priority, and think all above them to take too much upon them: who can consider the severity of God's judgment, and their censers made signs and monuments of caution to humility for future generations, and not be clearly convinced that pride was the root of all their evil of sin, which caused their sorrow? Moses charged this sin of Altar-building in the declining of the Altar of the true God, and setting up Altars to their new gods to be the overflowing effect of the Jews swelling pride, when he digitates the time of this abomination to be when Jesuron was waxed fat: and expressly notes to have been the cause thereof, Deut. 32.15, 16, 17. And as this evil disposition drew strength from God increasing mercies in after-ages, so also did increase this sin of Altar-building causing the sad complaints of the Prophets in Hos. 10.1. according to the multitude of fruit they have increased their Altars. Throughout the Old Testament, whensoever God by his servants reproves this sin, he aggravates the same by the expr • ssions of their pride, as in Is. • 5. from the 2. to the 7. verse. And in the New Testament, we find Apostates, Seducers, Innovators in to the Lord's Word and Worship, stigmatized with this brand of pride; the Apostle Paul, describing such as labor to draw aside silly women, and to set up their own Altar, saith of them among other properties that apt them for this work, that they are proud, heady, high-minded, in 2 Tim. 3.2, 4. and in his first Epistle, the sixth chapter, the third and fourth verses, notes, that such as teach oth • rwise, and consent not to wholesome doctrine, are puffed up, knowing nothing, and that he may clearly, evidence that this proud property produceth a declining of the Altar of God, and building others, he labors to anticipate this sad effect by a necessary caution concerning the cause, in such as take the charge of the Churches of God, 1 Tim. 3.6. where he adviseth, that a Bishop be not a novice, ungrounded in the principles of Religion, and that for this very cause, lest he be proud, and so fall into the snare of the devil. The Apostle Peter, in his se-second Epistle, the second chapter, sets out seducers with the same characters, They speak evil of dignities, and of what they know not, and speak great swelling words of vanity. And Jude omits not this property, when he asserts them to despise Governments, and to speak evil of dignities, to speak proud things; and analogically asserts their way to be the gain-saying of Corah. But to close up what might be more largely spoken to evidence this graceless property, to be the ground of this grand iniquity, that might appear grievous in the eyes of the sincerely gracious; I will only add this one general observation, (viz.) the sin of Altar-buildng never was so eminently acted in the Churches of God, before or since the Gospel preached, Christ come in flesh, as when the peace and prosperities of the world had procreated and matured pride. In the Church of the Jews it is evident, whilst they were beset with wars and troubles, though by some men and at sometimes this sin was acted, yet Solomon's peace, plenty and glory, was attended with the eminency of increasing various and glorious Altars, to Ashteroth and Milcom, and the gods of the Nations, to which his wives were related. And in the Christian Church, who knows not that the ten pressing persecutions did generally by the humility of the Churches, conserve purity of Word and Ordinances, notwithstanding the sometime endeavors of particular heretics, to subvert the same until the Churches peace and prosperity, conferred by Constantine the Christian Emperor, gave occasion for the proud man of sin to appear, and advance his abominations, increasing his Altars, to the very casting down of the Altar of God, in the greatest part of the Christian world, giving the Church, on sad experience to complain the truth of that saying, reported to be heard from heaven; Hodie venenum infunditur in Ecclesiam, Now is the poison of pride poured into the bosom of the Church: nay, my brethren, it is well, if we find not on serious observation, this sin to be admitted and advanced by such, as present prosperity and external glory hath lifted up. And so I have done with the second ground of Altar building, which must needs evidence it to be exceeding sinful, whilst acted from such vile principles: I now pass to the third and last ground of this sin: and that is

Self-advancement and advantage: that cursed principle, which is inconsistent with sincere affections to God and his worship: which hurrieth a man forward by right or wrong, to establish his own glory, and possess himself of creature transitory enjoyments: this is that which will make a man active for God, and his Altar, so long as ambitious self can in that way obtain its object: but that once missed or obtained, affections abate, nay, are altogether alienated from the ways of God: this useth Religion on a Machivilian account, to establish their own throne, and keep up their own glory; so that whatsoever is but serviceable to this base end, though but for a season, that shall be embraced and advanced. In a word, this is that cursed principle decried by Christ, in such as take upon them the Profession of his Name, as that which unsits them for adherencie to his Altar: yet this we shall find clearly to be a ground of this grievous sin of Altar-building, if we do but consider, how the wages of unrighteousness engaged Balaam, to go contrary to God's Will, and by building many Altars in different places to attempt the cursing of Israel, contrary to God's declared pleasure, as in Numb. 22.23. chap. is to be seen; in which regard seducing Apostates, under the Gospel Altar-builders, acted by this principle of self-advantage and advancement, are said to follow the way of Balaam, who loved the wages of unrighteousness, 2 Pet. 2.15. and to be cast away by the deceit of Balaam's wages, Jude 11. so also we shall find this principle provoking this sin of Altar-building in Jeroboam, when he rebelled against the house of David, and made Israel to sin in the same way with himself: if we do but observe the Holy Ghost expressly noting his erection of a usurped Ministry, to this very end, that he might stablish his usurped Magistracy, and his setting up his Altars at Dan and Bethel, to be grounded on his desire and design, to settle the Crown on his rebellious head; for, saith the text, Jeroboam thought in his heart, If this people go up and do sacrifice at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their Lord, even to Rehoboam King of Judah, so shall they kill me, and go again to Rehoboam: whereupon the King took counsel, &c. 1 Kings 12.26, 27, 28. et ad finem capitis: for usurpers know, that the sincere Worship of God teacheth due subjection to their lawful Sovereigns: this self-establishment is declared to be the cause of Ahaz sinful Altar-building: who (his faith not fixed in the living God of Israel ) feared his approaching fall, and hoping to establish his throne, built Altars to the gods of Damascus; as we see, 2 Chron. 28.23, 2 • . This cursed principle of self-advancement was it, which did actuate the spirit of Jehu, with readiness and resolution to do the work of the Lord, to the demolishing of the house, and destruction of the Priests of Baal, so as to call Jonadab to see his zeal for the Lord of Htstes, so long as this work of the Lord was concurrent with, and conducing to his own establishment; but when these two may be divided and distinct, his zeal abates, and himself can follow the way of Jeroboam, to own the Altars at Dan and Bethel, 2 Kings 10. As under the Law we find expressly the sin of Altar-building, to be the sad fruit of self-advancement: so we shall see clearly, that from the same root doth it also spring, under the Gospel, all declinings of the Altar of God's true worship, ways and doctrine, and following after innovated principles and practices, those false and opposite Altars, spring and get strength, if we do but seriously observe the Apostles characterizing deceivers, seducing Apostate Altar-builders, to be lovers of themselves, proud, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more then lovers of God, 2 Tim. 3.2, 4. such as count gain godliness , 1 Tim. 6.5. such as have hearts exercised (with might and strength, as the Orig.) with covetousness, 2 Pet. 2.14. Such as followed the way of Balaam, and were cast away with the wages of unrighteousness, (as I noted before) nay the Apostle Peter affirms, that through covetousness they make merchandise of souls, 2 Pet. 23. And St. John in his third Epistle, the ninth vetse, notes Diotrephes corrupt practice to spring from this, that he loved to have the preeminence. Should we unto these clear Scripture-instanced-evidences, add examples out of other histories: who shall observe the devil exciting his Turkish instruments, to crown apostasy from the Christian Religion, with the honorable order of Mamelukes, and Janizaries, but must needs conclude advancement to be the proper way to seduce a selfish spirit from the Altar of God? This was the very ground which led Mahomet the first Turkish Emperor, to fail the hopes of his mother, and the expectation of the Christians, by embracing the Mahumetane Altar, and abhorring the Christian to which he was educated: self-establishment in his treacherously obtained Empire, was the principle that engaged Michael Paleologus, to subject the Christian liberty the Greek Churches did enjoy, unto the Antichristian yoke, and Papal tyranny of Gregory the tenth; nay, we might show that the desire of being reputed a Saint and shame of being shut out of communion with the Church, was that which gave occasion to Marcion, his heretical Altar-building: and the proud affectation of the dignity of a Bishop, was the cause of Novatus sinful separation, and uncharitable opinions. What shall we say of Cerinthus, Samosatenus, Manes, Arrianus, &c. those great Altar-builders against God's Altar, is it not easy to see self-advancement to have been the bellows which did blow their false fire: nay, will not our own experience, of the pride and self-advancement of the Authors or Indulgers of innovated principles and practices, clearly evidence this sin of Altar-building to be the fruit of that bitter root, and so to be exceeding vile, and to be seen unto by the sincere worshippers?

And thus I have done with the first thing propounded, to set forth the vile and sinful nature of Altar-building, against God's Altar; which, unless men may gather grapes of thistles, and figs of thorns, sincere worshippers of God cannot but conceive to be exceeding vile and sinful, whilst the odious and bitter fruit of shameful novelty, swelling pride, and self-advantage and advancement. I now come to show the second thing that sets forth its vileness, (viz) its sinful actings: which if we find but answerable to the grounds of it, must needs render it a sin so grievous, that it is not only to be difrelished, but with all power in their proper places to be resisted, by the sincere worshippers of God's Altar: and in this sinful work, the Actors contract upon themselves the guilt of a threefold sinful acting: 1. A receding from God. 2. A rendering our wills the rule of divine Worship. And 3. A rebellion against the divine Majesty.

The first sinful act in building Altars, besides the Altar of God, is the receding from tht Lord, a forsaking of, and departing from God, not only when we directly and immediately change the object, and set up Altars unto strange gods, stocks and stones, idols which are no gods, which must needs be granted to be the effect of a receding from the Lord: but when we withdraw from the matter or form of God's worship, even then we may be, and are justly said to depart from the true God. To withdraw from God, and to embrace another object in his stead, are two distinct acts, and ever distinctly noted in Scripture with distinguishing terms; the one may be done, where the other doth not immediately, if ever, follow; for as a wicked wife may depart from her husband most treacherously, and yet marrieth not another: so may men depart from God, and not so much as embrace any divine object in the room thereof, but with Atheists, say in their heart, There is no God: nay, usually the departing from God in declining his Altar and Worship goes before, and is the way to embracing strange gods, or entertaining mere Atheism; this the Church, wanting the Ordinances, Altar, and true Worship of the true God was afraid of, (as some note in the days of Jeroboam ) when she prays and cries earnestly, to know where the flocks of God did rest, urging the argument of her present danger; Why should I turn aside by the flocks of thy companions? (so calling themselves,) Cant. 1.7. and the ten tribes of Israel by Jeroboam, were drawn from God before they worshipped at Dan and Bethel; for the receding from the cause must needs be a refusing of the effect; denial of God's Altar is the declining of communion with God. As in the Ordinances and at the Altar of God, men are said to draw nigh unto the Lord, to appear before him, or in his presence, as, Levite. 10.2. Psal. 42.4. so the turning from them may be justly termed a turning from the Lord, being a declining of that matter, and that form God hath prescribed himself to be enjoyed, and to enjoy his people by, so that if any do objectively depart from God, by changing their God, they will be justly charged, not only to depart from God, but also to worship idols, to change their god • , to forsake the fountain of living waters, and to dig cisterns that hold no water, Jer. 2.11, 13. and therein they commit two evils; but if they refuse to worship God at his Altar, • nd according to his own declared Will, if they corrupt the matter of God's Worship, or adulterate the form of their administration, they are justly charged with a going from God: thus God by the Prophet Isaiah, in chap. 65.11. chargeth the people with a forsaking him, in that they forget his holy mountain: and by the Prophet Malachi, chap. 2.8. he upbraids the Priests with a departing out of his way, for corrupting of his Covenant and doctrine: and the Author to the Hebrews exhorts to a constant adherence to the administrations of God's Worship, according to the Gospel-form, denominating the declining of it, a departing from the living God, Heb. 3 13. In Altar-building, as in other actions, there is considerable the term from which before, the term to which they move, and so the first act in this grievous sin is in Scripture-phrase in the Old and New Testament, denominated a forsaking of God in • he complaints of the sincere, as, 1 Kings 19.10. the chsrges of the sin by the Prophets, 2 Chron. 12.5, 24.20.24. Isa. 1.4. and by the confessions of the penitent, Judge. 10.10. Ezr 9 10. when Reheboam ready to join battle with Jeroboam declares the grounds of his confidence, amongst others this is not the least, that they by changing the matter of divine Worship, or the Priestly form of administration, ordained of God, and so proceeding to the sin of Altar-building, they had not forsaken their God, as had the ten tribes: and in the very story to which our text refers, we find the suspected Altar-building branded with this epithet, a turning aside from following the Lord, Josh. 22.16, 18, 23. And under the Gospel such as turn from the truth to innovations, are said to depart from the faith, 1 Tim. 4.1. to forsake the way of truth, 2 Pet. 2.15. and to depart from the living God, Heb. 3.12. So that God's charge upon the Altar-building Jews may be charged on all Altar-builders, As a wife that treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt with me, Jer. 12.20. Is it not a vile thing, sinful and sadly provoking amongst men, for soldiers to forsake their colors, children their Parents, and wives their husbands? how much more vile must that sin be, whereby creatures forsake their Creator, the redeemed depart from their Redeemer? they that are naturally bent to pursue solid satisfying comforts, forsake the fountain of living waters: nay; and how foolish must it be to provoke, by turning from that presence from which we cannot flee? mountains and hills, hell and darkness cannot hide, and that power which we can neither resist nor escape, but it will follow the sinful Altar-builders that forsake him, to cover them with shame, and to write them in the dust, Jer. 17.13. Thus then by this first act, we cannot but see this sin to be so very sinful, and to be speedily seen to by sincere Worshippers of God.

The second act in Altar-building is, the rendering our own wills the rule of the Lord's Worship, and against the express prohibition a doing that which is right in our own eyes, and so sinfully subjecting a divine object to the obedience of human pleasure: and a sovereign God and Creator to such matter and measure of service, as suits to the fancy of a frail, ignorant, sinful creature to yield: which is in its nature so vile and shameful, that it may make every soul that seriously considereth it, to blush and tremble to think that frail man should once presume to prescribe obedience to be yielded to a great God: whilst nature itself teacheth, that all superior objects of service and obedience must dictate the Laws, and prescribe the form in which they will acquiesce and receive content. Is it not below supreme authority, to see the Laws despised, and obedience yielded according to the subjects fancy? What father could brook his sons obedience according to his own will? what General would relish his armies subjection after its own conceit? Obedience after the will of the subject is the subversion of authority and supremacy, and exemption from the charge of rebellion in every action, though never so vile. How much less shall the God of Heaven endure to be disrobed of his Sovereignty, in being denied the Prerogative of prescribing his worship, service and obedience? This God would not admit in the evil Angels, but for their attempt thereof, cast them into utter darkness. And if God would not leave man to the liberty of his will, in the obedience he should yield his Creator in the estate of his innocence, when he was in a capacity of yielding perfect and pleasing obedience, but would proclaim his Sovereignty by the prescription of some special act of obedience, as the approvement of his due subjection, how much less shall the sons of men think to satisfy his Will, by following their own inventions since their fall, with the attempt of which, to everlasting reproach human nature stands stigmatized, as the thing which cast the same out of happiness? We shall find God so exact in his service, that he constituting Israel his chosen people to bear his Name amongst other Nations, leaves them not to worship him according to their own will, but gives them laws, and statutes, and ordinances, and by his terrible appearance on Mount Sinai: his severe, judgments, and serious charge of Moses, engageth them to the observance thereof: nay, so exact is he in his worship and service, the very instruments and form of the administration, that he gives Moses a pattern of the Tabernacle, and all other things, requiring and straitly charging everything to be done according to the pattern shown in the Mount, Exod. 25.9, 40. Heb. 8.5. the due observance of which, approved Moses faithful in God's house. It is the observation of Dr. Willet, that the form of the Tabernacle is not left to the will of man, no not to the judgment of Moses; to teach us that God will not be worshipped with will-morship, according to the devices and inventions of men, but as himself hath appointed: the which we may also infer from David's care, concerning the edification of the Temple, when he not only leaves his charge on Solomon his son to do this work, (intended by himself) but also to do it according to the pattern he delivered him: enforcing his charge with this very reason, All this God made me to understand in writing, by his hand upon me, even all the work of this pattern, 1 Chon. 28.11, 12, 19. therefore called the pattern of all that was with him by the Spirit; by all which we may see the Sovereign God challenging, (which is his due) the prerogative of prescribing his own worship, and the very instruments and form thereof, yet such is the vileness of corrupt nature, that though God complain of the sin in the Jews, that their fear of him was taught by the precepts of men, Is. 29.13. and Christ chargeth and aggravateth their sin by the same, asserting, that in vain men worship him, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men, Mat. 15.9. that the sons of men are apt to measure the worship they will yield to God by the rule of their own will: in which regard sinful Altar-builders are (in Scripture-phrase) commonly said to forsake the Covenant, Deut. 29.25. 1 Kings 19.10. and Commandments of God, Ezra 9.10. and Law of the Lord, Jer. 9.13. the right way, 2 Pet. 2.15. and to follow their own inventions, after which, to the provocation of divine justice, they go a whoring, as, Psal. 106.29, 39. of which God will take vengeance, Psal. 9 • .8. in which regard the Apostle Paul calls seducements from the truth of the doctrine of Jesus Christ, though upon never so eminent pretences of Piety, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , or will-worship, Col. 2.23. the which he condemns, and cautions Christians to take heed of, as having only a show of wisdom, but being indeed sinful fooleries; so that thus we see men, whose spirits are subjects to motion à quo ad quem, being in the first act loosed from the Altar and Worship of God in the sin of Altar-building, not capable of living without some religion or other; In the second act, consult their own inventions, and erect an Altar and Worship unto God, according to their own will; although to the shame of men it be registered in sacred record, that God made man upright, and he sought out many inventions, Eccl. 7.29, Thus then I have done with the second act of Altar-builders, the rendering their own wills the rule of their obedience, and now pass to the third act.

The third act is, rebellion against God, and against the authority to which God hath committed the charge of his Altar; and to stand on the proving this at large, were but time and pains spent in vain, whilst I should but do what is done already: for having cleared the two former acts of this sin, (viz.) that it is a recession from God, and rendering our own wills the rule of divine worship; I have cleared the premises, which must needs enforce this Conclusion, for these two are the integral and essential parts of rebellion, according to which it is denominated: for when men go from the Covenant and Commandments of God, what do they otherwise then stand opposite to him, with a stubborn will, uttering the rebellious language of the rebellious Gentiles, in Psal. 2.3. Let us break his bands in sunder, and cast his cords from off us? and those rebellious Citizens spoken of in the Parable, in Luke 19.14. whose message was, We will not have this man to reign over us: and hence the words, which in the Greek and Hebrew are commonly used to signify rebellion, are also used to signify defection, delinquencie, and Apostasy or turning aside from God; so that these several words in our language are and may be synonom • , or of the same signification, to express the same sin: and hence also all rebellion is said to be a defection from the superiors to whom they owe subjection: yet might I give instances in Scripture, where this sin is called a rebellion, and stubborn opposition of God, as Corah and his company, Numb. 16, 17. ch. and Jeroboam, nay all the Altar-building Princes of Judah and Israel are said to rebel against the Lord, when they follow after idols in the acting of this sin; but why go I to look instances, at this distance, when the very text denominates it thus: saying, Rebel not against the Lord, and rebel not against us? only this you may take notice of in the text, that the term Rebel not against the Lord, comes from the same root in the Hchrew, from which is derived Nimrod, the name of that great Hunter before (or as Augustine, Jerome, and others of the Ancients against) the Lord, if he were so called from his Apostasy, defection and rebellion: his rebellion was so great, as that his name is proverbially given to every rebellious tyrant, by way of allusion to him: he is noted to be the head of that rebellious work against God, which we read of in Gen. 11. and that from a very probable conjecture, seeing in Scripture that place of Babel is called his Kingdom, Gen. 10.10. his rebellious act was this very sin of Altar-building, if (as Hugo notes) he was the first bringer in of idolatry, teaching men to worship the fire, or as Josephus, that he excited men to contemn God and follow fortune in their own united power, and so was the first founder of idolatry, of whose mind is Dr. Willet, conceiving him to be the same whom foreign story calls Belus, and makes the first founder of their Babylonian Monarchy, of whom the Gentiles in the Eastern parts of the world, called their idols, Belial, Beelzebub, Belphegor. You see then clearly that Altar-builders, by departing from God, and following their own ways, do rebel against the Lord: which must needs render the sin exceeding vile in the eyes of such as are the Lord's subjects; for what spot of infamy and reproach can be cast on the sons of men more odious and hateful then rebellion? what is so immediately and highly provoking unto Sovereignty as rebellion? for most clement Princes must needs with a severe hand chastise rebellion: such is the vile nature of rebellion, that found in children against the Parents, by God's Ordinance among the Jews, the subject of it must be stoned with stones, Deut. 21.18, 19, 20. And when Moses would exalt God's mercies to Israel, he aggravates their unworthiness by charging them to have been a stiff-necked and rebellious people, Deut, 9.6, 23, 24. And Samuel charging Saul with this guilt, asserts rebellion to be as the sin of witchcraft for its vile nature. And when Jerusalem's enemies would make her vile, they will denominate her a rebellious City, Ezra 4.12, 15. And did ever any yet rebel against the Lord and prosper? let the severe judgments of God upon Judah and Israel for their rebellions witness. Whilst then this sin of Altar-building appears so vile, not only in the ground, but also the acts thereof, let all sincere worshippers at God's Altar consider, whether their loyalty to their great Creator, and gracious Redeemer do not engage them in their places, to see to so great and crying a sin.

The third thing that may evidence building Altars, beside the Altar of God, to be a sin exceeding sinful, is the sad effects thereof, which we cannot but expect to be exceeding sad and bitter, whilst the root and branches thereof are so exceeding vile; for the fruit must needs be suitable to the tree that bears it: and those are these four.

1. A rending from the body of the Church, a withdrawing from the communion God himself hath set us in; a making a schism and rent in the Church of God: as Diodate notes, a severing ourselves from the communion of the Church: in which alone is the true service of God, and the participation of his grace and Covenant, that sad effect of sins Sovereignty among the Corinthians, 1 Cor. 3.4. which is so evil, that the Propagators thereof are to be declined, Rom. 16.17. which violates unity, and deprives the Church of that blessed fruit of the Spirit: this is that which as nature condemns in the body, so the Gospel in the Church, 1 Cor. 12.25. which when making factions and parties in the Church, as sedition in a Commonwealth, is dangerous, and many times destructive, being attended and seconded with envies, strifes, hatred and the like; yet this evil fruit springs from Altar-building as its sad effect, as is evident in the story under consideration, wherein it is clear, that the two Tribes suspected the act in hand to be to this end, to withdraw from any longer communion with their brethten, and to worship God distinct and by themselves: which they desire to prevent by rather giving them inheritances on the same side of the river with them, then the division of portions should divide their piety and joint attendance on God's Altar: So Corah and his company did rend themselves from the body of the Church, and make a fearful division in refusing to keep communion with the people of God, according to his appointed administration, in Numb. 16. when they were about to erect their Altar against God's: what a sad rent from the Church did Jereboam's Altar-building make? not to this day semented, though sought after by such as earnestly supplicate the accomplishment of the gracious Promise of God, that the stick of Ephraim, and the stick of Judah shall become one in his hand, in Ezek 37. from 16, to 21. In which is to be noted that the accomplishment thereof, is promised to be accompanied with the abolishment of their Altar-building sin, and unity in God's ways and worship, v. 22, unto the end of the chapter: which grievous rent from the communion of the Church, a burden not to be borne by the sincere worshippers at God's Altar, provokes (as I before noted out of Mr. Cotton, ) that pathetical prayer to be directed to the true Church and Altar of Christ, in Cant. 1.7. that they might be delivered from the danger thereof: nay, it persuaded not only the Priests and Levites to prefer the Altar and Church of God above their suburbs and possessions, but also all such as set their heart to seek the Lord, to run the hazard of going to Jerusalem to sacrifice unto the Lord with their brethren, 2 Chron. 11.13, 14, 16. This sad effect doth the Spirit witness to follow this sin, nay, flow from it under the Gospel; The Apostle Paul, Acts 20.30. foreseeing the appearance of seducers, Apostate-Altar-builders, that would innovate doctrines and forms of worship, contrary to Christ's institution, chargeth the Elders of the Ephesian Church to see to this sin, at least that their members be not seduced; urging this sad effect as a swaying reason, They shall draw aside many disciples after them: from the communion of the Church, saith one, or make sects, saith another; and the Apostle Peter, in the second Epistle, the second chapter, the third verse prophesies, false teachers should be in the Christian Churches, which building their own Altars of damnable doctrines, many should follow their pernicious ways, speaking evil of the way of truth: for the confusion of Religion must needs be destructive to the concord of the Churches, which God witnessed by constituting one only Altar for all his people's attendance, with one only form of administration, and this cannot but be seen in the Apostles days, by such as shall seriously observe the Apostolical redargution of schisms and seducers, characterizing false apostles, charging the Churches to observe and decline them, as those that make divisions and trouble them: frequent commendations of the union and communion of the Church and disciples, and fervent persuasion to, and prayers for the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace: which all suggest to us, and clearly imply, that this sin of Altar-building by will-worshippers, was in act to the dividing of the members from the body in their very days, and who is there, that looking into Ecclesiastical story, sees not the sad rentings from, and confusions in the Church, effected by the Altar-building (of doctrines) dissonant to truth, and the Altar of Christ, propagated by the many heretics of the primitive times, as Novatus, whom Dionysius in his Epistle to him chargeth with a renting and dividing from the Church, as a sin most grievous, counting the suffering for the unity of the Church a more glorious martyrdom, then the sufferings for not sacrificing to devils? for this is suffered for one soul, that for the universal Church. So also the Donatists, Manichees, Paulus Samosatenus, of whom the Synod of Antioch sadly complain, that the Church was so rent, that faith and religion was run, into great spite, hatred, and slander, by reason of his swelling pride, as also by the Arians, which filled the whole Christian world with confusion and division; some taking this side, and some that; some communicating here, and some there, even to most bloody persecution of the true sincere Ministers and people of God, the which schism, how sadly complained of by Athanasius the good Bishop of Alexandria, how earnestly endeavored to be cemented by Constantine the good Emperor, and how strongly it reigned to the checking of the Churches comforts, and clouding of the glory of the the Gospel: Eusebius at large declareth, in his first and second books of Ecelesiastical history; but may not the separations from the communion of the Church, and sad schisms amongst ourselves, produced by such as are of late risen up to build Altars of innovated doctrines, contrary to the doctrine of Christ, call us back from wandering so far to seek confirmation of this sad effect of so grievous a sin, and provoke us with shame and sorrow, to own the evident effect upon our own sad experience, and set to our seals, that of a truth Altar-building against God's Altar is an odious, because a Church-renting sin? for to how many may we say, as Constantine the Emperor to Aretius the Novatian Bishop, Why sever ye yourselves from the communion of the faithful? whose answer may occasion our reply as his: Provide you a ladder to climb into Heaven alone.

The second effect which must needs also show the building Altars, beside the Altar of God, to be exceeding sinful, is (to speak with due reverence) a running God upon straits, concerning the dispensations of his Providences, and the administration of his judgments or mercies; not that God is in his nature capable of such want of wisdom, who is the most wise, and readily disposeth all things according to the counsel of his own will: or weakness of power to effect and bring about his purpose, whose power is like himself, and not to be resisted as that is, should make him to doubt or dispute what to do, whether to strike or spare the sinner. But to speak to our capacity, such may be sometimes the effects of divine Providence, that to us God may seem to be in a strait, and, as it were, in doubt with himself; his justice provoked by the sin, putting forward to punish the sinner; and his mercies desiring repentance and deliverance, pleading for suspense or abatements of the afflictions striving together, make God (as it were) cry out, What shall I do unto thee? how shall I give thee, up Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? Wherein though this Altar-building Israel had deserved to be made as Admah and Zeboim for their sin, yet God doth seemingly dispute with himself, how should he do it to them: in Hos. 11.8. such another strait God seems to be in, when he stands over Jerusalem with his how long? and when shall it once be? as in Jer. 13.27. where he cri • s out of this sin of Altar-building, I have seen thine adulteries and neighings, the lewdness of thy whoredoms, and thy abominations on the hills in the field • ; Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem! as if he should have said, I have seen all Altars, and am ready to strike and punish thee severely for them: but yet he checks himself, and bids a stay to his justice, with a wilt thou not be made clean? when shall it once be? I would fain have my hand stayed, at last, even at last before the stroke that is up, fall: and as mercy and justice, those different properties in God, are (to speak with reverence of a God not in the least subject to passions) set, as it were, opposite by this sin; so also we shall see a seeming strife between God's purity, that cannot endure iniquity, and divine glory which he will not in the least give to another, and promise performance, faithfulness: for the sin being acted, God forsaken, his Law declined, and man's will and inventions advanced, then God's purity provokes divine justice to strike with such language as this;

Behold, thou crucified Christ, this is the league thy Christians in thy Name made with me, which they have without cause violated; now if thou be a God, as they say thou art, and as we dream, revenge the wrong now done unto thy Name, and me; and show thy power on thy perjurious people, who in their deeds deny thee their God.

And shall I not arise to chastise them? will not the honor of my holy Name and nature by severe judgments for their unholiness on those my people, who will not show it by their conformity, obeying my Laws, and fearing to offend my pleasure: be vindicated from the blasphemous thoughts of mine enemies?

Unto which God's power, glory, and faithfulness standing up, do (as it were) answer and plead, True O Lord, most holy, thy pure nature stands justly offended, thy people are by their Altar-building made naked in thy sight; they have moved thee to jealousy with that which is not God, or of God: it may be just that the fire kindled against them in thy wrath, should burn unto Hell, and that therein for their sin, thou mayest scatter them into corners, and make their remembrance for to cease, and thereby vindicate the glory of thy purity, and show thyself a sin-hating, by being a sin-revenging God; but what shall become of thy faithfulness? the glory thereof will be lost in the midst of the Heathen. O remember thy promise, Lord, thy promise made to Abraham, to Isaac, and Jacob; and let not the Heathen say thou hast spoken what thou wilt not perform, thou art not as man that thou shouldst lie, nor the son of man that thou shouldest repent: O let the mouth of Balaam witness to a cursing Balak, that thou hast said it, and thou wilt do it; thou hast spoken it, and thou wilt make it good, Numb. 23.19.

The third effect is, a rendering the worship of God vile in the eyes of the heathen which know him not: by this sin the enemies of the Lord have occasion to blaspheme the Name and ways of God, to reproach the Gospel and Doctrine of Jesus Christ: for in Altar-building men run from God, and actually speak the language of the Apostate covenant-corrupting Jews, It is in vain to serve God, and what profit have we that we have kept all his Ordinances? Mal. 3.14. and attribute the peace and plenty God's patience indulgeth, unto the Queen of Heaven, and their shameful impieties, Jer. 44.17, 18. and therefore God complains, that when his people built Altars unto Baal, they did not know that God gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied their silver and gold, Hosea 2.8. And God aggravates this sin ever with the mention of his mercies, whereby he declares how little cause they had so really to vilify his ways and worship, by departing from them: their rebellion against his will and words, must needs bespeak his yoke to be heavy and servile bondage, which is indeed perfect freedom, and his tender reign over his people, to be fierce and cruel. The Schisms and sad Divisions produced by this sin, give occasion to such as know not the doctrine of unity, to charge the ways and worship of God with the natural production thereof, never considering how they are the fruits of sin, not of God's sacred Altar. How hath Satan and his wicked instruments taken occasion to reproach vilify, and blaspheme the ways and worship of God from the lewdness of some that profess it in all ages; do not the Papists generally calumniate the Reformation of the Church with the charge of division and novelty, and the like? because some professing to it have divided from the Church, and propagated their Altar-building-principles: so that every observant eye cannot but see that Altar-building, besides the Altar of God, makes God's Altar, Word, and Worship, as Simeon and Levi, their cursed act on the circumcised Schechemites, made good Jacob's savor to stink among the Canaanites and Perizzites: in which regard it lies on the sincere worshippers of God with constancy to adhere to God's Altar, and with courage to suppress others in their places, as becomes the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The fourth and last effect of this sin of Altar-building, which may render it exceeding vile, is, a reviving of the Lord's fury: for these are the Altars of Bethel which God will visit, Amos 3.14. This is the sin that is written before the Lord as with a pen of iron, and point of a diamond, Jer. 17.1, 2. This is the setting of post by his post, and threshold by the Lord's threshold, to the defiling of God's holy Name till the subjects be consumed in his anger, Ezek. 43.8. This is the setting up the Altar of jealousy to the provoking of God to depart from his Sanctuary, Ezek. 8.6 This is the following new gods to the kindling of a fire in his wrath, which shall burn to hell, Deut. 32.21, 22. In a word, this is the golden Calf, which turns patience (to speak with reverence) into such rage, that a Moses prayer can hardly bind from destroying, Exod. 32.8, 9, 10. and the rebellion so highly provoking that a God most gracious, in all affliction afflicted, in pity and love saving and redeeming, being by it vexed in spirit, becomes an enemy, Isa. 63.9. How did Corah and his company by their but formal Altar-building, schismatical withdrawing from the administrations of divine worship, provoke the Lord's wrath to the causing of the earth to open her mouth and swallow them up alive? How did Solomon's Altars stir up divine displeasure, to the rending away ten Trib •• from his Kingdom, not to this day restored? What sad monuments of divine justice and fury hath it made Jerusalem and Samaria: it were easy to evidence the increasing property of this sin; but this may suffice to such as do but consider the fierceness of the Lord's fury, which will make the mountains to melt, and hills to shake, and Kings of the earth to tremble; for who can stand before his frown, much more fatal then the frown of the most cruel Turkish tyrant threatening present death? Can this Lion roar, and the beasts of the earth not tremble? If while his wrath is kindled but a little, they be happy that trust in Christ; what terror must possess them that by their Altars-building are naked before it; so that the sin must needs be vile, to be avoided, and seasonably seen to, that is so highly displeasing unto God.

I have now done with the third thing in the discovery of the sinfulness of building Altars beside the Altar of God, (viz.) the vile effects which spring from it: which tasted by serious contemplation, cannot but render it bitter in the mouth, and excite sincere worshippers of God against it; I shall only add one thing more to the aggravation of its vileness, and that very briefly, and so pass to the Application of the Point, viz. the aggravating properties.

The first aggravating property that may render Altar-building to be exceeding vile, is, the singularity of the subjects. Singularity is not savoury in any; it many times springs from pride, and bespeaks an evil disposition: this sin is many times acted by God's people only, who know the true God, and have worshipped at the true Altar: this sin God himself aggravates with this very property, in Jer. 2.11. expostulating with them, Hath any Nation changed their gods, though they be no gods? and yet my people have changed their glory for that which will not profit: and, Isa. 65. v. 5. the rebellious people which follow their own thoughts, and burn incense upon Altars of Brick, have their sin aggravated by their singularity; they say, Stand by thyself, come not near me, I am holier then thou: as that which makes a smoke in God's nostrils, and a fire to burn all the day: so that this adds much to this vile sin: The isses of Chittim, and coast of Kedar will not afford a parallel, or show such a thing: for whilst the Ephesians suspecting any innovation against their Diana, run together with great zeal crying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians, and readily contend for their Idol-goddess and superstitious worship, as resolved not to change, though for a better; and the Athenians, though given to novelty, think Paul odious in seeming to set forth new gods: the people of the true God are only seen to change sometimes the object, but many times the Altar the true God hath prescribed to be worshipped at.

The second aggravating property of Altar-building is, that it is committed against standing directions, dictated Laws and Ordinances, God's revealed will and pleasure concerning his Altar and Worship: as it is Israel's glory, that no Nation is so great a Nation that hath such Statutes and Judgments, as all the Law of the Lord their God; so it is laid on them as the greater duty to take heed to themselves, and to keep their soul diligently, that they forget them not, but teach them to their sons, & sons sons, and observe to do them; it is also their great aggravation, that they forsake the Covenant of their God, go away from his Statutes, forget his Laws, cast off his Commandments, to create to themselves an Altar and Worship according to their own inventions: and though the Athenian ignorance may extenuate their superstitious worship at the Altar to the unknown God: yet now light is come abroad, and God calls to repentance, they must walk as children of the light; for ignorance can now be no plea, where prescript rule is proposed: now as rebellion against a Kings Proclamation, and disobedience against a fathers declared will, so is this Altar-building heinous and abominable, because against directions exhibited.

The third aggravating property of this sin of Altar-building, is, that it shuts God's ears against prayer. What is spoken of sins in general, in Isa. 59.2. Your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear: is applicable, nay, applied to this sin in special, where God not only declares that when Israel, his Altar-building people, did cry to him in their trouble, he would not hear them, Ier. 11.11. but also prohibits the Prophets praying; Thou shalt not pray for this people, neither lift up a cry or prayer for them: and that is urged with a therefore, (viz.) because, according to the numbers of the streets of Jerusalem, they have set up Altars, ver. 12, 13. Let me alone, Moses, was the angry voice of God, produced by the Calf, and Altar at Horeb, Exod. 32.10. How just is it with God to deny the Petitions of them, that deny prescriptions from him in the way of his own worship? Prov. 1.25, to 33. For as children when stubbornly following their own wills fall into harm, their cries are not compassionated by the tender parent: so deals God with his stubborn people that make their wills the way or rule of his divine worship.

I have now done with the Doctrinal consideration of the Point, and shall leave it to the judgments of the sincere worshippers at God • Altar, to consider whether a sin springing from such causes, exercised in such acts, producing such effects, subject to such aggravations, be not exceeding sinful; and if but suspected to be undertaken, sufficient to stir the zeal of the ten tribes, to the resistance thereof, much to be seen to, sorrowed for, and soon suppressed, where it is, really, and indeed acted: I shall now briefly apply to our more particular instruction.

The first Use of the point may be of enquiry and humiliation, to put us apon the search whether in the midst of us we may not see some of our brethren, professing the same, and who have worshipped in the same Gospel-worship with ourselves, to withdraw from the Altar of God, and erect Altars after their own inventions; which if we find, our hearts should be heavy in us, and our eyes filled with tears: as humbling ourselves for so grievous a guilt: and upon enquiry, he that is not willfully blind, cannot but see beyond the river in the Church of Rome material, besides formal Altars built besides the Altar of God: five Sacraments innovated which God never instituted: objects of divine adoration advanced, never by the Lord, or themselves allowed: Sacrifices presented for sin, which God never prescribed: offices and orders of holy men and women maintained, which in the Canon of Scripture are never mentioned, nor by the same warranted: principles pressed as matters of faith necessary to salvation, and that on the pain of being branded with Heresy, such as were never found in the Apostles Creed; but repugnant to it, prayers, penance, and many the like practices performed with much devotion, which are not only not warranted, but condemned in Scripture as superstitious, and will-worship, and dissonant to reason in the very light of nature; all which may be matter of mourning to every gracious heart to see, although in a subject somewhat remote: but more especially if when in mercy God hath delivered us from serving at, or suffering for not serving at such Altars as did our progenitors; and whilst we ourselves profess a reformation of the Altar of God, Gospel-worship and Ordinances, we shall even at home find Altars of another kind erected, and erecting: it may be some casting off God's Altars of Gospel-Ordinances, not worshipping in any external and formal administration, but by their own pretended spiritual, supernatural, celestial way of omitting all duties which God hath prescribed, giving God only (if indeed ever) the private retirements and inward actings of the soul instead of Word and Sacraments; which is no less then down right profaneness, and (if any worship) a will-worship of their own invention for it, never was of divine prescription. But in such also as profess to God and his Altar; I fear we shall find upon serious enquiry, Altars at least formally, if not materially built besides the Altars of God: which if any do not discern, I shall say for their conviction, as Samuel to Saul: What meaneth the bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear? 1 Sam. 15.1 • . So say I, if we all cleave close to the Altar of God, what means the gathering of Churches in the midst of us: the distinct and opposite Assemblies: the Church-Covenant made a door of admission into Church-membersh • p, even unto the baptized into one body: the cry of men against the Ministry as Antichristian: and the Assemblies of Christians reformed, as Babylonish whores: the lowest of the people making themselves Ministers: with the cry, that All the Lord's people are holy: and the very opposition of God's own Ordinances (as to the matter of them) in the different forms of administration? Do we not see some dipping in rivers and standing pools, whilst others are baptizing in places of public worship: some breaking bread in distinct societies, shutting the door on such as themselves cannot deny to be by Baptism actually consecrated Church members (if that be which cannot be denied, the door of admission) but also not ejected, nay, themselves being witnesses, sincerely, godly, and savingly related to Christ, though not conforming to their separate constitutions, whilst others administer the Lord's Supper to the Lord's people as such, though not in such a Church-way? nay, my brethren, may not we see principle against principle, preaching against preaching, prayer against drayer, thanksgiving against thanksgiving, and Fast against Fast? as if we were resolved to confound the very God of wisdom with our divided worship of him: in which opposition both cannot be the Altar of God, the one must needs be our own threshold and post set by God's threshold and post in the Lord's Temple: both cannot plead divine prescription, and therefore the one must needs be human invention and superstition, whatever cry of holiness and sanctity go before it, or accompany it: now, which of these different administrations are the Altar of God, and which the Altar against the Altar of God, I will not determinately pronounce, lest I be reputed censorious, and charged with violence and bitterness, the common reproach of such as sincerely reprove the erroneous principles and practices of our days: but to the exciting of the humiliation required, and the quickening of sincere worshippers of God to their duty, I shall briefly direct to the object by some few Characters, the usual concomitants of Altar-building, that wheresoever we see such concomitants, we may conclude, or at least be jealous, that they are the people acting the sin of Altar-building: and if any man's conscience shall infer the conclusion from such premises rationally proposed, I desire them to observe the counsel of the Apostle James, to be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath, knowing that the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of maliciousness, and receive with meekness the Word that is graffed in you, which is able to save the soul, James 1.19, 20, 21. Considering the observation of a Reverend Expositor on the text, the worst thing we can bring to a religious controversy, is anger: the first character of Altars besides the Altar of God is, doctrines dissonant to the truth of God: for principles must needs square the practice and Altar-building must needs be theoretical before it be practical: hence commonly called our own inventions and imaginations so denominated from the corrupted understanding acting the same: The first profane Altar that ever Israel are noted to provoke divine wrath withal, was erected with the dissonant doctrine, These are thy gods, O Israel, that brought thee out of Egypt, Exod. 32.4. And throughout the whole History of the Altar-building of the backsliding Jews we shall find when ever the Priests offered unto Baal, the Prophets did prophesy lies in the Lord's Name: If they do but formally build Altars, invading the Priesthood, and corrupting the administration of divine worship, it must be ushered in with the doctrine of the people's holiness, and Moses and Aaron's ambition, as did Corah and his company under the Gospel; this sin is generally denominated man's doctrine, another gospel, the bringing in of damnable doctrine, divers and strange doctrines, by which such as follow them are said to be perverted and turned aside from the Gospel & doctrine of Christ: and this is observable, that the Apostle dehorting from divers strange doctrines, enforceth his dehortation with this reason, We have an Alter, &c. Heb. 13.9, 10. As if he would have said, These divers and strange doctrines are Altars against that Altar we have received and owned: and when the Fathers (as was before noted) said of Heretics, that they built Altar against Altar, it was occasioned by their cursed doctrines; so that where we see any with Arminius advance man's free will against God's free grace; or with Socinus teach our repentance to be God's acquittance against the propitiatory satisfying (to divine justice) property of the blood of Christ: With the Familists, Seekers, or Anabaptists, to teach immediate Inspirations and Revelations of a pretended spirit, to be equal to, nay, above the authority of the Scriptures: With the Arians, to deny Christ his divine nature: With the Seekers to deny Gospel-Ordinances in the matter, or with Anabaptists in the manner of their administration: With the Separatists, to teach that pollutions are sufficient ground of separation from true Churches, though retaining fundamentals: that Baptism is not sufficient to admission to Church-membership without the Congregational Covenant; that the holiness of men, as Saints, merely Saints, is a sufficient authority to invade the Ministerial function, and the like; there we may see, and with sorrow say, Altars are in building against the Altars of God: for these principles being oppugnant to the rules of the Lord's worship, must needs lead to practices opposite to his prescribed performances: this Character is so commonly the concomitant of Altar-building, that many times the professors of this sin conceal from their disciples the absurdest of their doctrines, till by some of less concernment they are made Skepticks in Religion, and so capable of admitting any doctrines: and when they dictate any, it is only as present light, which they may oppose shortly: as much as may be declining the teste and trial of the Word, that they may be usually and well called (by the epithet Tertullian gave them) Lucifugae Scripturarum, shunners of Scriptures light.

The second Character of Altar-building, as many times it's concomitant, and indeed cause, tis the public exhibition of Astrological predictions, a religion amongst the Heathen, whose Altars stand opposite to the Altar of God; and willing to be received as an Art among Christians and professed people of God, but could never find entertainment but under the defection from God's true worship and the erection of Idolatry and Superstition: Starrie prophecies were ever more suitable for Egyptian and Babylonish idolaters then Israel -worshippers at God's Altars: never shall we read the same acted or allowed in Israel but in Altar-building days, and by Altar-building Princes; and as it rose with this sin, it fell with the same, being both together removed by religious Altar-reforming Princes: and usually the Prophets of God were found in Jerusalem the place of God's Altar whilst Soothsayers and false Diviners were in Samaria the Altar-building City: the Prophet Isaiah joins Jacob's being full with the manners of the East, and Sorcerers of the Philistines: with their being full of Idols, as the causes of God's desertion of them, Isa. 1.6. Not to stand upon the several upbraiding expostulations of God with his own people and other Nations for attending to the divined lies of their Magicians, Soothsayers, Star gazers, and monthly Prognost cators: I shall only desire you to observe that which seems a very observable evidence of this concomitant Character (viz) God's promise in the restoration of his Church by Christ to cut off Enchanters, and that they should have no more Soothsayers: is joined with the reforming of his own Altar by cutting off their Idols and turning them from worshipping the work • of their own hands, Mic 5.12, 13. Not only under the Law was this found to be a concomitant (if I may not say cause) of the many Altars against God, but also under the Gospel Soothsaying, Starrie Prediction, Astrological Prophecies will appear an attendant on, or indeed rather a preparer and precu • sor of Errors, Heresies, Schisms, and saddest corruptions in the doctrine and worship of God that Gospel Altar at which we worship: a witness hereof may be the Jews, who in their blindness retaining Moses against Christ, are by the Apostle hinted to be opposite to the Altar of God, Heb. 10.13. Do not the dictates of their Star-numbering Cabalists obdurate them in their superstitious way? Their false Prophets sometimes heighten their hopes of the approach of their fantastical Messiah (as did Abraham the Jew, assuring them that the time of his coming should be in 1464.) to the hardening their of hearts against the true Messiah already come: unto which we may add the experiences of the Primitive Church in the Heretics that rose up to corrupt the Word of truth: if we consider those sorts of Heretics, (viz.) Simonianists, Cleobianists, Dositheans, Gortheans, Menandranists, Carpocratians, Marcionists, Valentinians, Basilidians and Saturnilians ) in the Primitive times noted to bring in the false Christ's, false Prophets, false Apostles, renting asunder the Church with their false doctrine against God and Christ; which Thebulis at Jerusalem received and began to propagate. What a line of Astrology may be seen in their principles, attributing the production of many and various things, to many and various powers: advancing their own divinations above Scripture-Divinity: and their Magical practices and enumerations to the astonishing of their auditors; nay, this line is not only to be seen in, but as it were to lead unto their corrupting principles and practice. We might hereunto add Manes, the author of the Manichees, the founder of the Heresy of two beginnings, who taught the worshipping of the Sun, and the like principles, properly flowing from starry divination: and Mark the known Magician, confuted by Jrenaeus, who baptized in the name of the unknown father of all things, and in the truth mother of all things, &c. A clear Altar against God's Altar. But to what purpose should we send so far to find Heresy attended with Necromancie, when nearer home in later years it hath been, and is the great instrument to advance the Mohammedan and Popish superstition? who knows anything of the Papal stories, that knows not this to have been the step to advance the man of sin, and that Astrological conclusions, starry predictions, and magical actions have not only been countenanced and allowed, but also studied and advanced in their order of exercises: To the further evidencing its existence in the Church; we might muster up the censures of free Councils and Ecclesiastical Assemblies: the condemnations of it by the Primitive Fathers: the wholesome Laws, Imperial, Civil, Ecclesiastical against Diviners, Astrologers, and the like: the variety of punishments, as banishment, imprisonment, confiscation, death to the professors, or indulgers of starry predictions, and confessions of some of their own professors: all which do not only evidence its existence in, but also danger to the Christian Churches in the fullness of what is reported to have been confessed by one Cornelius Agrippa, once an Arch-Magician, who bewailing his mis-spent youth in this Art, saith, They that profess to it, fear not to teach most pernicious Heresies and Infidelities: whilst they profess with impious temerity, that the gift of Prophecy, the power of Relig • on, the secrets of conscience, the command over Devils, the virtue of miracles, the efficacy of supplications, and the state of the life to come, do all depend on the Stars are vouchsafed by them, and may be known by them. But thus much may be sufficient to evidence its concommitancie with this sin of Altar-building, both before and since Christ came in the flesh, and to give us cause, if we find the same to show it self in the midst of us (as it usually puts up in troublesome times and places, as most suitable to their doubtful destinies) to suspect Altar-building to attend it: but upon serious search, and diligent observation we shall easily see to the saddening of pious spirits, not only hath Astrology appeared under our confusions and commotions, but also not been rebuked, but rather indulged and countenanced, I, and by too many received to the emboldening of its professors with wonted impudency to enter the lists, and engage the contests for divining, predicting Astrology, so often foiled by Civil and Ecclesiastical censures in the Church; nay, and by Heathens themselves, strangers to the Church: their raging arguments produced against arguments of reason and Scripture: the reviling terms against Divines and Ministers of the Gospel, not only now living to defend divine providence from their starry encroachments, but even such as are long since rotted in the grave, doing what in them is, to the killing of their labors, which do live, and will live to their conviction and confusion: their declared enmity to Religion, publishing and predicting as the pretended influence of the Stars, the variety of confusions and sad divisions concerning it: evermore prophesying evil to the Truth according to the wonted practice of its professors: and their blazing forth the least of failings; (nay, sometimes imagined) in Divines, to the rendering of their persons and function vile: whilst they sound the trumpet of their own praise, often recollecting those things they have seemingly foretold, and have accidentally come to pass, but burying in oblivion their never accomplished predictions (which may set Mercury on) work, as Seneca once wittily fancied, to entreat the gods to abridge the life of Claudius, if for no other cause, yet of very pity and compassion to the poor Astrologers, who had already been taken with so many lies from year to year, that if the destinies were not more favorable then their ground was, sure the credit of Astrology would decay forever:) of which, if a man should, as it is reported of the Lord of Arundel, note but their yearly Almanacs with repugnant notes at the beginning, they would oftentimes prove more true then such predictions. These things I say are not to be past without observation as the evidence of that height of their existence and countenance in the midst of us (which may create our jealousy, if I may not say conclude) the sin of Altar-building to be on foot among us: Astrological impositions upon the people's faith, lately started up with peremptoriousness and impudence; with the people's apt reception thereof, as more infallible Prognostications of the government of the world and Church then either Scripture-prophecy or promise provoked a reverend Divine to redeem time from his more serious studies to the posing and puzzling of the Magical-Astrological-Diviner: induced by this very reason, conscience of duty (to use his own words) to stand up, to speak a word for God, Christ, the holy Ghost, Church and Saints against a press and pest of Magical, magephemerical, magnastrological, &c. of books of late crept, nay, crowded in amongst us, to the dishonor of God, denying of Christ, despighting the Spirit, cauponizing of the Word, disturbing the Church, subverting of Religion, distracting of the State, scandalizing weak Christians, and seducing of common people, yea, to the promotion of Idolatry, Superstition, Heresy, Schism, &c.

We see then, my brethren, this sinful Art of Star-divining, as a concomitant of the sin after which we are enquiring, to be too evident in the midst of us: I shall a little, and very briefly note to you the fitness of this sinful Art, to characterize the sin of Altar-building, that to the quickening of your affections, you may more seriously heed it, though it hath been but seldom hinted: and that in noting its nature, and the Churches observation concerning it.

First, as for its nature: not to stand upon it as erroneous, and heretical as it is in it self, the rules of it, and inferences from the same became directly contrary to the doctrine of faith: not its aptitude to engage needless scrupulosities and superstitious observations of this as ominous, and that as lucky, to the enslaving a man's will in every action to the observation of every circumstance, and subjection to the Stars: nor yet of its uncertainty, whereby the event sometimes falls contrary to the prediction, as Firminus, a friend to Saint Augustine found in observation of the fate of two children borne in his house, at one and the same moment, which yet was calculated by the stars to be the same, but by the Law and custom of the Country proved quite contrary: I shall only note its nature in relation to this sin; and we shall find it of a suitable nature to receive and propagate innovations and false will-worship, not only as it is Skeptical, certain in nothing but the uncertainty of their own assertions: but also as it disposeth the Stars and Celestial bodies into the chair of divine providence, whilst, as was before noted, it placeth all, even secrets and supreme happiness in the power of the Planets, which doctrine must needs set them as objects of admiration, and so of adoration: a very natural way to build Altars objectively, by giving the worship and honor of the Creator and disposer of all things to the creatures: without doubt this was to the Jews as to other Nations, the leading principle to worship the Queen and the host of Heaven, nay, further, dictates a doctrine of universal Toleration of all religions: never in the least admitting any limitation or restraint which might be of too sad a reflection upon itself: Hence Ptolemy saith, that the disposition or inclination which divers Countries have to worship one God before another, cometh from the constellation of the Planets: as Jupiter and Saturn make a Jew: Mars a Persian to worship the fire; Mercury a Christian: and with the Moon an Antichrist: so that whilst this sinful Prognosticating Art makes the Planets the authors, it must needs make them indulgers and approvers of the exercise of all religions, or religious forms, though never so repugnant and inconsistent each to other: (this is sure the reason why Astrologers have in our late days Prognosticated very often the liberty of all religions to be exercised, and no Discipline for the restraint thereof ever spoken for by them:) and is a fit foundation to build many Altars upon, as observed experience hath too clearly evidenced, for as an every days Sabbath is no Sabbath, so an every way of worship without confinement to divine prescription is no way of true worship unto God; for novelty will be building when at liberty: And Astrology it self may by this means come to be an Altar, a religion as it was among the Heathen.

And lastly, it's enmity to Christian Religion, which nature must needs render it very capable of introducing another, though directly opposite: this enmity is evidenced by that antithesis it hath ever stood in to Religion by the Magical operators, and planitary predicters, notorious malice and envy in defaming, disgracing, calumniating, deriding, contemning, opposing the Ministers of the Gospel: and predicting frequently the decays of the encouragements; nay, and the very falling of their calling, (promised to be perpetuated till the Church be perfect in heaven: ) nay, not only is their enmity against the instruments, which must hold up and continue the Altar of God, Christian Religion, but by their fatal (yet hitherto false) predictions against Religion itself; for in the first beginning and tender spring of faith the observers of the Planets gave out in their Pamphlets, That the Name of Christ should not be had in honor at the uttermost above two hundred years, which falling out by tract of time to be an egregious lie, Albumazar (to keep his disciples in life) adjourned the destruction of our Religion two hundred years higher, supposing undoubtedly this should be the utmost stint and period of our continuance, which (maugre their malice) continueth to this day, and shall continue; so that we see sufficient in its nature to make it a character being so capable of being a cause of Altar-building.

But let us pass on to the Observatitions of sincere worshippers of God concerning it: and what wise observer is or ever hath been in the Church of God to whom it hath not appeared that those Astrological artists ever were more rife in Heathenish then in Christian, in Popish then in Protestant, in former then in later times? that they were always most busy in turbulent, distracted times and places, where wars domestic or foreign, fitted people for sedition, faction or schism, &c. that the proper fruits of their Schools, Societies, Religion, Practice, and Profession, were the nourishing of Nations in Idolatry, Sorcery, Superstition and Impiety: that men of the greatest learning, wisdom, virtue, conscience and piety, have not derided and despised them whilst men of the contrary disposition have feared their Prognostications, and believed their Predictions: but to close up all of much that might be observed, that when and wheresoever their Divinations and Presagings were most received: it was not a fearful presage of a decay of Religion, and of a declining Church: in a word, that the Word Church, or true Religion of God never flourished, or was established in any Kingdom or Nation where Magicians, Diviners, Sooth-sayers and Astrologers were countenanced or connived at; nay, where they were not condemned and suppressed.

Now, my brethren, these things considered, I leave it to every unprejudiced man to consider whether the acting, advancing, seeking to, or suffering in silence, Astrology, and its Predictions; give not just cause to Ministers of the Gospel to complain of, and cry out against superstition, innovations, Altar-building against God's Altar, as the sad attendant on, or effect of Star-gazing? and wheresoever we see in divided parties exerc • sing distinct practices, this Art to be owned, allowed, pleaded for, and believed; there we may conclude a just suspicion at the least of their departing from the Lord and his worship, to follow their own inventions.

The third Character as the constant concomitant of Altar-building, is, dangerous separations from the union of the Saints and body of the Church of God. This is that which I have before noted to be the sad effect of this sin, whether materially or formally acted, as we have instanced in Korah's and his company's gathering a Congregation, and disjoining themselves from the Camp of Israel: Jeroboam and his subjects separation from the Temple, not to this day cemented by many evidences and instances under the Gospel. Well may I then call that a concomitant, which was before proved an effect of the sin, and well may that be a character, which is both a concomitant and effect of Altar-building: and now (my brethren) I would I could say with the Apostle, I rejoice to see your order and steadfastness in the faith: your order in orderly union, every member keeping its proper place without ambition or murmuration, and all keeping close in that one body into which we were all baptized, but alas! (horresco referens) I speak it to our shame and sorrow this day in the sight of God, What man that can but half see, seeth not factions, schisms, and sad divisions to increase in the midst of us? some men not only professing to this Minister, and crying him up, not only above, but against other Ministers; and others owning that, and adhering to him and his principles, making them matters of faith, because spoken by him, rather then grounded on the Word: so that some are of Paul, some of Apollo, as if neither themselves, nor the Ministers were of Christ: these contentions, strifes, divisions, the Apostle doth not only not commend whilst he dehorts from such dissensions, but expressly condemns them as carnal: and seemees to hint the same to be a setting of them as objects of their faith, worship, and so Altars against Christ the true Altar of them all: whilst he expostulates, Is Christ divided? was Paul crufied for you? either were ye baptized into the name of Paul? rejoicing he had baptized few among them, lest they should say he baptized in his own name: which expostulations are vehement affirmations, that such as denominate themselves by the name of their Teachers, as having their persons in admiration, though never so eminent; to divide Christ, to own their Teachers, as their Savior's and Redeemers, and such into whose name and profession they were baptized, 1 Cor. 12.13, 14. not only are we (I say) thus divided in our profession of relations to this and to that Minister: but also in Church-way, some of Independent Church-ways, some of Arminian, some of Socinian, some of Anabaptistical, some of Seekers, and it were well if some were not professedly of ranting Churches and Assemblies; all which separate from the body of the Church, refusing to worship God with thē in way of ministration by him prescribed, by it practiced: and such as do so divide, never yet disproved the same, either in matter or form, notwithstanding their calumniating charges of all out of their way, though baptized, and approved pious, as in ways and hedges with the Heathen: as the members of the scarlet-coloured whore: brats of Babylon, subjected to Antichristian Ministry, out of the way of Christ, and therefore to be gathered into a Church way: and exchange their baptismal admission into the Church for an admission by a Congregational Covenant; a word: profession of the faith which is not in them; and engaging to join in such Assemblies, and be edified in their principles of new light, though never so contrary to the old light of Scriptures; nay, and undetected, and so subject unto changes: nay, let the several subdivisions, and withdrawing of members from collected separate Churches: the many Sects and sorts of Churches that have appeared and been professed since the first rent from the body of the Churches in the Nation by the old Brownists, and of late Independen • s, be a witness of this sad effect and concomitant which so clearly characterizing the sin (whilst, as I before noted, all of these Sects and sorts that thus separate themselves from the Church, cannot be all, or any of them the way of God's worship, who is one, and will be worshipped by his own way, in his own Church.) may irritate our jealousy, may as premises lead us clearly to infer the conclusion that Altars are built, and in building against the Altar of God, with which our heart is to be affected, and ourselves humbled before God, as becomes sincere worshippers at his Altar.

The fourth Character found to be the constant concomitant of building Altars against the Altars of God, is deadly enmity to the Ministers of God which wait upon God's Altar. In all Religions, the Priest, or Priestly Office, (as essential to the support of the Altar-worship) is ever advanced, protected, and provided for by the friends, supplanted, opposed and destroyed by the enemies of such Altar-worship: and it is to me very observable, that God's charge of constant waiting at his Altar, goes not without a Take heed thou forsake not the Levite all thy days, Deut. 12 19. So that Altar-Ministry, and the Altar itself, whether true or false, do always stand together: what rebellious innovation read we in the story of Altar-building Israel, not accompanied with a resistance of the Ministry appointed to wait at God's Altar: the rebellion of Corah and his company chargeth Aaron as well as, nay, more immoderately then Moses, to have taken too much upon him: the unjust affectation of the Priesthood is eminently reproved by Moses, and confuted by the miraculous budding of Aaron's rod: and their Censers beaten into plates: Jeroboam sets not up false Altars at Dan and Bethel without suspending the Ministers of God's Altar ab officio & beneficio, from their work and wages, and the stretching forth of his hand against the Prophet of God sent from Jerusalem: Ahab's Altars and Idolatry is not acted without an Elijah's complaint, They have broken down thine Altars, and slain thy Prophets: and if ever false Altars are subverted, and the Altar of God restored, if but by the seeming zeal of Jehu, or the sincere zeal of Elias, the Priests of Baal must be the sacrifice, that the Priests of God may be restored. It is recorded to the everlasting honor (and to the luster of the reformation) of Asa, Hezekiah and Josiah, restorers of God's true Altar, that they set the Priests and Levites (Ministers of the Altar) in their places, and provided their full maintenance to their encouragement; putting a period to the sad complaint that Israel had now for a long season been without the true God, and without a Priest to teach, and without Law; not only do instances abound thus under the Law, (which we use the more, because of the proper use of Altars under it) but also under the Gospel. Is it not clear to every reasonable observant eye; that the Jewish and Paganish Priests opposed by themselves, and provoked others against the Apostles of Christ? Do not the Apostolical Epistles demonstrate the deadly enmity of the false Apostles against the true Apost • es, calumniating them, subverting their Ministry, and dissuading from their maintenance; necessitating their boasting beyond their purpose: and pleading in the defense of Ministerial maintenance, as by the Altar-rule it was required, when themselves had sufficient and abounded? Did not the rage of Paganish persecution pursue an Ignatius or Polycarpus, and such Ministers of the Churches as the principal objects? will not an Apostate Julian subtly labor to subvert the worship of Christ, by subtracting the Ministerial maintenance: subverting the Schools of their qualification, and by universal toleration, supplanting their Ordination of Ministers. If ever Arius will build his Altar of denying Christ his Divinity, Athanasius must be the obj • ct of his opposition: so on the other hand, if a Christian Constantine will own and advance the Altar and worship of God in Christ, he will court and comfort, cherish and support the despised and dejected Ministers thereof; largely allowing of himself, and providing for their subsistence and encouragement: for superstitious seducers, and will-worship-innovators know the Ministers of the Gospel to be like the Dog in the Fable, defending the sheep from dissipation and destruction by their wolvish property: and the sincere worshippers of God well know that God will not be enjoyed immediately, having appointed a Moses a Mediator, nor can we expect the tender of divine worsh p in his immediate presence, who hath appointed an Ordinance of intercourse between himself and his Church; the Ministry of his Altar, which he hath promised to vindicate and preserve to the end of the world: when ever he promised the communications of himself to, or the acceptation of worship from his Church: so that enquiring after the actors of this sin of Altar-building, we must observe who they are that express enmity, not to the persons of particular Ministers only, but to the Ministry of God's Altar, making it a sufficient guilt, odium, and object of enmity to be denominated a Minister; let us take notice who decline and despise it; Who are they that make this Office the object of railing and reviling, denominating it Antichristian, needless, imperious, proud, insulting, enslaving men to needless nicity, and cruel bondage, and all because it corrects their error, curbs their superstition, and commands in the Name of the Lord their obedience to divine prescriptions: who they are that raise persecution against, and with railing terms render Ministers as Ministers vile in the eyes of men; and by pretended revelations and prophecy decry the Office, saying, This Antichristian Order and its Ordination to this Office must meet with a period: proclaiming liberty to Christians as Christians to invade this Sacred Function, and to speak in the Name of the Lord uncalled, and unqualified, and that provoke by principles, petition, or pretended example to destroy and have diverted the maintenance of such as wait on the Altar, designed to them both by God and man: these, I say, that thus appear deadly enemies to the Instrument of divine worship, the Ordinance of waiting at God's true Altar, the Gospel-Ministry, although with seeming sanctity, and a shout of saintship, cannot be excused from just ground (of suspicion at the least) of building Altars besides the Altar of God.

The fifth Character as the concomitant of building Altars besides the Altar of God, is, the dispensation of divine worship, without the divine stamp of a due Call and Ordination: God never yet appointed Altar-worship without an Altar-office, which might not be common to everyone, nay, which no man must take upon him, but he which is called of God, as was Aaron. If Ministry be as (it cannot be denied) a distinct Office under Law or Gospel, it must needs have a due Inauguration thereunto; for as in a State an every man's Magistracy is a no Magistracy; so in the Church an every man's Ministry is no Ministry: a sinful seeking of the Priests Office, upon the pretence of the people's holiness, to be witnessed against by the plates of their censers, and the budding of Aaron's rod is suitable to Korah's separate rebellion: a Whosoever will, let him bring a bullock, and consecrate himself a Priest, is a fit Canon of Jeroboams constituted Altar-worship at Dan and Bethel: the high-way to bring the lowest of the people into the Priests Office. When did false Prophets run so fast unsent by the Lord, but when the Altars of Israel were increased like the streets in Jerusalem? Not to multiply needles instances in this clear case, let the observation of the Churches of God in all ages witness the usurpation of the Ministerial Function never to be found in the Church whilst the doctrine and worship of Christ was preserved pure and uncorrupted, and never out of the Church when and where false doctrines and superstitious innovations did abound: the promise of Christ concerning the restoring of his Altar and worship came not without a promise to vindicate this Office from the invasion of the uncalled trades-man to the shameful conviction which shall extract his own confession: I am no Prophet, I am an husbandman men taught me to keep cattle from my youth, Z • ch. 13.5. If therefore we would find who they are that sinfully build Altars, we must consider who they are that preach and practice ministerial discharges without due Ordination; who they are that countenance and contend for this usurpation, counting it a glorious liberty that every man may lay his hand on his own head, and speak in the Name of the Lord: were the Lord as eminent and immediate in his vindicative strokes for this sin under the Gospel, as under the Law, how many Uzzahs would be found dead for their uncalled setting hand to hold the Ark of God's worship, notwithstanding the pretence of necessity: How many Uzziah -like leprous foreheads would be found amongst us, of such that by at least eighty Ministers of the Lord have been warned; it is not for them, but for the Ministers of the Gospel to offer unto the Lord. But I shall conclude this Character as a just cause to irritate our humiliation before the Lord with that observation of reverend Doctor Hall upon a case not much unlike this, though something different: It is a dangerous thi •• in the service of God to decline from his own institutions; we have to do with a power which is wise to prescribe his own worship (in matter and form) just to require what he hath prescribed, and powerful to revenge what he hath required.

The sixth and last Character which I shall note to you, and I will but briefly note it, is doleful contests for universal Tolerotion of all religions, which (a wi • e observant) notes is nothing else but the putting of the true Religion out of all protection, whilst therein Satan labors to exempt, privilege, and forever to secure his Agents and Brokers (the Seminaries and Teachers of soul-murthering doctrines) from being molested, discouraged and disturbed in his work by any Government and Discipline Ecclesiastical or Civil; whereby the hands of all in power are bound up (or rather cut quite off) that they may never be able to serve God as they ought in the protection and propagation of his Gospel and worship: who seriously considers the strict Laws the Lord left the Jews for the keeping of them to his true Altar, and sees not universal liberty leading from the same, to be sinful: nay, who considers man's novellous nature, and sees not a necessity of being kept to someone Religion by authority, knowing men are naturally bent to mint God's services in their own brain, and to go a whoring after their own inventions, to the building of Altars beside the Altar of God: Was this sin ever acted in Israel, where the sword was sharp and severe against innovations? The same may be demanded concerning the Christian Churches, and upon the contrary, was not this impiety evermore the effect of impunity and universal liberty?

I have done with the first part of the enquiry, whether in the midst of us Altars may not be seen besides the Altar of God? which we have too much cause to conclude in the affirmative: I have also noted the concomitants as Characters of this sin, so that the subjects of dangerous doctrine: of divining predictions: of dangerous separations: of deadly enmity to Gospel-Altar-Ministry: of dispensing divine worship without due call: and of doleful contests of Toleration of all religions; may justly be more then suspected abettors, advancers, if not actors of Altar-building: and who those are, I leave to the observation of the wise, whose eyes are in their head: and pass forward to the second matter of enquiry in order to our humiliation.

The second thing to be inquired, for the defect of which we are to be humbled in the presence of a God of jealousy, is, Whether the sincere worshippers have or do according to their duty see to this sin of Altar-building? wherein we might inquire after their sensible observation of, and affectation with the sin: their seasonable caution, and serious counsel to desistance; their speedy accommodations of their brethren in matter of accidental temptation: and their zealous resistance of the sin according to their places, which was before noted to be acts of this duty in the religious Israelites: but instead of a spirit faithfully discharging these duties, it were well, if to our grief, and God's great dishonor, some that have, and eminently do profess to the worship of the true God in truth, and whose places more eminently engage their priority in suspecting and seeing to innovation, superstition Altarbuilding were not to be seen.

First, staid by their self-interest from furious driving (with a seeming zeal for the Lord of Hosts) against the Altars and Priests of Baal, suffering Jehu -like, Jeroboams Calves at Dan and Bethel, and the high places thereof to stand unremoved and unrebuked, if not unobserved as to their sinful nature, so soon as the house of Ahab is subverted and themselves established in the high places of the Kingdom: as if Prelatical innovations and superstitious ceremonies were to be destroyed as obstructors of their honor and high enjoyments, not as of a sinful nature of human invention, and against divine prescription: alas! how many may we fear are so blinded with golden thrones and great revenues, rhat they cannot see (or rather will not) and so deasned that they cannot hear the reports of Apostasy, backsliding, error, heresy, and erected innovations, whereby they depart from the Lord to build Altars besides his Altar.

Secondly, if they be seen and heard, are not some that should be covered with shame, and sit in sorrow for so grievous a guilt, and greatly provoking sin: rejoicing and readily solacing themselves, and with Altar-building Israel, shouting not for grief, but great joy: counting, and calling it a glorious liberty of conscience: reputing the time of the Toleration thereof the glory of Gospel-days, rebuking the rebukers of so gross profaneness; nay, and what is worst of all, with brazen faces, and as given up to strong delusions, think they do God good service that so do: pressing into the presence of God with solemn praises, as if God were an object of confused administrations: and direct opposite worships: May we not with sorrow consider with Doctor Hall, that it is a miserable thing for Governors to humor people in their sins, and instead of mak ng up the breach, to enlarge it? Do we not know that sin will take heart by the approbation of the meanest looker on? but if authority once second it, it grows impudent.

Thirdly, some seeing the sin, and saying in their hearts, would it might not be, remain sinfully silent, not considering that the wicked are apt to interpret the silence of God himself as an argument of allowance: and that he that sees the wickedness of the wicked when duly called to speak, and warns not from the same, is chargeable with the guilt of the sin, and responsible for the blood of the sinner: How far is this from an Apostolical spirit, who will speak, though by speaking they create enemies?

Fourthly and lastly, see we not some speaking against the sin, yet slack in their rebukes, much below the zealous resistance of the Jews in the text, who mince not the matter, but in down-right terms discover the nature of the sin, and denominate it a rebellion against God and us: and dictate the aggravations thereof to render it vile, and not only so, but with sword in hand, and resolution in heart to reduce them to obedience, warn their desistance, but how many Superiors are l ke old Eli in their rebukes? It is an evil report that I hear of you, my sons, do not so evil against the Lord. Is it not sad to see in very many families, wives, children, servants sinfully following innovations and human inventions against the truth and worship of God with the silence, or at the best but slack rebukes of their husbands, parents and masters? whose sovereignty exercising its just severity, might be an instrument of keeping them more close to the Altar that is of divine prescription. It will be no excuse in the day of the Lord, for our neglect or cool, lukewarm discharge of our duty, to say we looked for God to reduce them into obedience to his own will, when God hath invested us with authority, as instruments to this end: since God himself expects this from man, why should man expect it from God? We might remember, though God could as easily have prevented and redressed the Altar at Horeb by an immediate hand, yet he sends Moses down the Mount to do it, by showing his severity: severe expressions of anger against Altar-building, do very well become and suit with the meekest Mo • es.

I have done with the enquiry, I shall leave to your serious and second thoughts how to find out the guilt and subjects thereof, only if such guilt be found in the Churches of God in the midst of us: that Altars be built, or in building against the Altar of God, and not regarded or seen unto: it is to us matter of mourning; and to the exciting your humiliation, give me leave to suggest to you two or three considerations as so many aggravations of this evil so vile in its nature, as hath been evidenced: but as to us will be found thereby much more vile and grievous.

The first thing that may excite our sorrow is such a motive as is in the story under consideration: viz. It is a sin committed whilst • od is striking for late iniquity: Is the iniquity of Peor, too little for us from which we are not cleansed to this day, although there was a plague in the Congregation of the Lord? Josh. 22.17. What a vile nature have we, that whilst our wounds are green for a past, to run upon a new rebellion? did not our late days abound with superstious innovations, giving cause to the Pap • sts insultingly to say, we were posting towards Rome? were not many pious people burdened in themselves to see Surplice-service, Altar-bowing, Eastern-worship, and the like, introduced to, and imposed on the Church as absolute parts of divine worship? Were not many faithful Ministers for their non-observance of such will worship suspended, silenced, and for their zealous resistance many ways afflicted? Was not the Lord provoked? did not his displeasure arise? have we not felt the weight of his stroke, and smart of his rod? are our wounds yet healed, our desolations repaired, and our glory restored? O then may it not be grief and heaviness of spirit to see some so soon to be turned from innovations of ceremonies to the bringing in of innovated doctr • nes, from such as were but circumstantial, and conserved the substance of divine worship, to those that are fundamental, in danger to subvert the whole frame of the divine Altar of Gospel-worship? O how sad is the echo that (methinks) I hear uttered from heaven against England, Why should you be smitten anymore, ye revolt more and more.

The second thing that may affect our hearts, and engage our hearty humiliation before God for the sin of Altar-building may be this; that if it be found in the midst of us unresisted, it is a sin committed under a solemn Covenant, wherein we stand obliged to the Lord, and with cheerful hearts and hands lifted up to the most high God, have sworn,

That we shall sincerely, really, and constantly, through the grace of God, endeavor in our places, &c. the preservation of the Reformed Religion in the Church of Scotland, &c. And to bring the Churches of God in the three Kingdoms, to the nearest conjunction and unifermity in Religion, in Confession of Faith, Form of Church-government, Directory for worship, and Catehizing, &c. Artic. 1.

Secondly, We shall in like manner without respect of persons, endeavor the extirpation of Popery, Prelacy, &c. Superstition, Heresy, Schism and Prophanenesse, and whatso • ver shall be found contrary to sound doctrine, and the power of godliness, &c. that the Lord may be one and his Name one in the three Kingdoms. Artic. 2.

Whatsoever is conceived, and hath been pleaded by some for the cessation of the obliging power of some Articles in this Covenant, yet I keow not any that have denied its obligation, and yet binding force in these Articles, and to these duties, unless it be such as profanely jesting with the whole, have called, or counted it an Almanac out if date: whilst therefore we are under the Oath of God, may we not be covered with shame to see it broken? Oh, can we with comfort remember our past condemnation of Vowes violation, and dispensations from the obliging power of Oaths in others, and run ourselves under the same guilt? O perfideous Nation that will keep no promise made, though to the God of faithfulness! O perjurious people, whom sacred bonds cannot bind, nor solemn Oath oblige! Can you without blushing look upon the Covenant hanging in the places of Assemblies, it may be many of your names subscribed to it, as an evidence of your solemn obligation by it: and remember that whilst you have sworn uniformity, you propagate, or at least indulge multiformity of Religion? whilst you have sworn the extirpation of Baals Altars, do you countenance or carry on the erection of Sup •• stition, Heresy, Schism? whilst you have sworn to endeavor that the Lord m • y 〈◊〉 one, and his Name one: Do you cast his worship according to your wills, and cast off his own standing rule, and indulge men's worshipping him, and professing his Name according to their corrupt fancies, pretended to be conscience? think you not God to be a God of jealousy, that will, and of power that can avenge the quarrel of his Covenant? Against what sin hath his severity been expressed so much as those sins that have been acted after, and against solemn Oaths? Let us with sorrow and shame remember that the Lord was wroth with Israel, and put them out of his sight, because they forsook his Statutes and his Covenant: and made Calves, and built Altars unto them contrary to his commandments, 2 Kings 17.15, 16, 17. and their obliging oaths.

But thirdly, we have the more cause to be humbled before the Lord, for that the severe judgments of God may seize upon us, and we have cause with fear to expect them: I have before noted that Altar-building doth incur Divine displeasure, and subject a people to the fury of the Lord: how may we mourn to see the sin acted and allowed, which is the sad omen of approaching misery.

Fourthly and lastly, this may affect our hearts, and fill us with sorrow, that sinful Altar-building is a sad provoker and symptom of the Lord's departure; the last, but heaviest of his judgments. God will stay and threaten many miseries before it come to a least my soul depart from you: I cannot but much observe the words of Phineas in this story, when the two tribes and half vindicated themselves from the jealousy of their justly suspicious brethren concerning their Altar-building, This day I perceive that the Lord is among us, because ye have not done this trespass, Josh. 22.31. which words do clearly imply, that Altar-building against God's Altar, is an undoubted argument, not only of God's future, but present absence: for if by unity and consent in divine worship God's presence be argued; by the rule of contraries, difference in, and dissent from divine worship must needs argue his absence: Contrariorum contraria est ratio: Contrary reasons enforce contrary assertions. O then, my brethren, is it not a woe to us, that God is departed from us, certainly God's departure in respect of his counseling, sin curbing, guiding and directing presence, is a sad presage of his departure in respect of his blessing, preserving, protecting presence: the final absence of God is hell itself: then every with-drawing of himself must be a spark of that fire: Happy is the man or place with whom God stays to chide; for whilst he stays to reprove, there is favor in displeasure; but when he leaves either man or Church, there is no hope but of sin and vengeance▪ the withdrawing of divine presence is notbing else but the presence of his wrath: O can we read the Schisms, Errors, Heresies, and many innovations in the midst of us; those sad effects and symptoms of divine withdrawing, as written in most legible characters without grief in our hearts, and tears in our eyes; nay, with a loud cry of golden liberty, and glorious times? O let us smite upon our thigh, and say, What have we done? Let us sit in the dust and sigh: Let us call for the mourning women, that they may lament: considering that the most heart-piercing and doleful tune that ever Altar-building Israel did lamentingly express as the very height of their maladies and calamities, was the Comforter that should relieve my soul, is far from me, Lam. 1.16.

The second Use that I shall make of the Point, is of exhortation unto such as profess (but are suspected in the Church of God) to be sincere worshippers of God: and unto them I would in the Name of the Lord desire to think well of their brethren's jealous enquiry after their courses, and suspicion of their rare and unusual practices springing from unknown principles: and with a spirit of meekness bear their just reproofs and Christian cautions, composing themselves to give an account unto their brethren's demands, and readily to declare the grounds and reasons of their more then ordinary undertakings: I do not deny but just actions may be unjustly suspected and condemned to be sinful: but if this jealousy can plead ignorance, it will thereby expect justification rather then censure: animosity of spirit, and outcries of violence and bitterness against the modest demands of jealousy doth very much argue guilt: for it is an observation as true as common, Innocence fears no trials. We shall find an example in this very story worthy imitation, the ten tribes and a half heating of an Altar-building-work, by their Ambassadors make a severe expostulating, reproving demand of the ground and end of so sudden, strange, unconsulted, and undeclared action: yet we here have no complaints of violence, bitterness, or censoriousness, but a speedy and meek submission to their brethren's demand, readily declaring their motive to this work (viz.) to engage posterity to God's Altar before the Ark, their end in the erecting this Altar to be, that it may be a witness of their relation to the God of Israel: Where is the spirit of brethren which should engage a ready satisfying of the suspicious demands of brethren? Where is the spirit of due subjection to the authority of the Churches, which should declare principles and practices, and submit them with meekness unto trial? If brethren stand at distance from such and expressed offense against their singular unusual courses, may they not reflect upon themselves, and conclude it to be a self created cross, whilst in pride or peevishness they refuse to declare and submit to censure the ground and end of their strange proceedings? Have not many a Phinehas both jointly and singly desired of separating congregational brethren, a platform of their pretended way of Christ, a sum of their settled principles to which they would stick, without making new light old: an express of the rules drawn from Scripture, which shall regulate their practice and proceedings so different from their brethren, if I may not say dividing from the body of the Church of God; that they might be compared with the pattern in the Mount, the Scriptures of God, by which all the way of the Churches must be judged? O that I might once more entreat in the name of the sincere worshippers at God's Altar, though not so immediately delegated as was Phinehas, or some of the Ministers of God's Gospel-Altar that have demanded it) that they would at last (after all their protestations, that they would walk closest with Ch • ist according to Gospel-rule, and Apostolical practice: their solemn promise to their brethren, the performance of which hath been long, though in vain expected:) approve their brotherly affection, and a due subjection to the authority of the Churches of Jesus Christ, by drawing up a plat-form of the way in which they walk: accommodating their brethren with the principles that rule their practice, submitting the same with alacrity, and meekness, unto trial: that an inability or unwillingness to discover the same, stir and strengthen not suspicion, and give us cause to conclude them Lucifugae Scripturarum, decliners of trial. Let me once more note to them this is necessary, that their principles may justify or condemn the practice of some that have taken up the profession of Christ in their way; for if we must gather their principles from present practice: their gathering Churches out of Churches: their covenant-admission into Church-membership: their private men's preaching and administration of Sacraments, with the Schism they have made from that one body in which they were baptized: we cannot but be jealous with a holy jealousy, that they do at the least formally build Altars against the Altar of God.

The second exhortation which may rather be a dehortation, is unto such as are turned aside from the holy command, and do either materially, as the Pap • sts and others; or formally, as congregational Separatists, build Altars besides the Altar of God: in the Name of the Lord desist your work, stay your proceeding, cease to build; for your work will find no acceptance with the Lord. Shall I use to you the dialect in the text, Rebel not against the Lord and against us (your brethren,) to build you Altars beside the A • tar of the Lord. Consider that although God's patience may long bear, and whilst you offer Incense to the Queen of heaven, and corrupt the worship of a holy God, you may have plenty of victuals, you may be well, and see no evil; yet fury will be provoked, and take away corn, and wine, and oil, &c. Hos. 2. Consider, and lay it seriously to heart, that offering false fire to the true God, and adoring a false god, are Homogeneal, of the same nature, Altars against God: God is provoked to jealousy by the rivality of false worship, as well as of false gods.

I shall not I hope again need to open the fury of the Lord provoked by, and expressed against this sin: only let me in general note to you, that God hath resolved to cover Altar-builders with shame, and fill them with blushing, notwithstanding his long silence he hath resolved that they shall be ashamed of their strange sacrifices, Hos. 4.19. and of the Oaks which they have made, and the gardens which they have chosen, Isa. 1.29. Know, that if any will presume to step out of his calling, and speak in the Name of the Lord, uncalled; that God hath said, who both can and will see it done: The Prophet shall be ashamed everyone of his Vision; and in their shame shall say, I am no Prophet, I am an husbandman; for men taught me to keep cattle from my youth, Zech. 13.4. I cease to admire, & cannot but adore the just dealing of a righteous God, that the doctrine & practice of the Nicolaitans was usually an attendant, or effect of the Heresies and Innovations of the Primitive times, and that sinful separations and Altar-building innovations in matter or in form, hath produced indulgence of filthy and abominable Ranting principles and practices in our days: when I seriously consider that sad denunciation of this shameful judgment in Hos. 4.12, 13, 14. The spirit of whoredom hath caused to err, and they have gone a whoring from under their God, they sacrifice on the tops of the mountains, and burn Incense upon the hills under the Oaks, &c. Therefore your daughters shall commit whoredom, and your spouses shall commit adultery: I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your spouses when they commit adultery: for themselves are separated with whores, and they sacrifice with harlots. Take heed lest God say unto you, as he once said unto Ephraim, because they have multiplied Altars to sin, Altars shall be unto them to sin, Hos. 8.11. For pretended piety in the increase of Altars may be justly punished with obduracie in the sin, that God may say, Seeing they will introduce sinful innovations contrary to divine prescriptions, they shall so do to their shame and sin. The Lord persuade the hearts of such as superstitiously build Altars in matter or form besides the Altar of God, to return and sincerely speak the language of repenting Ephraim, What have I to do anymore with Idols? So, what have we to do anymore with Altars, Innovat • ons, human inventions? we will wait on, and follow after divine prescriptions.

The third and last exhortation is, to such as are sincerely, and indeed worshippers of God at his own only Altar, holding fast the Covenant of God walking according to divine commandment, and keeping communion with the Churches of God; them I would exhort in the Name of the Lord to stick close to the Altar of God, and set yourselves in your several places against such as build Altars against God's Altar: Let not your souls be unstable in the ways of the Lord, declining divine prescriptions, and embracing human inventions, and superstitious innovations: Let the world witness you to be conformable Non-conformists, who not conforming to some Canons and Customs of the Churches, contrary to, and inconsistent with the Canon of Scripture, yet readily conform to the worship in matter and form, composed according to the pattern in the mount, the Word of God, conserving the unity of, and communion with the Churches of God, that continue the Altar according to divine prescription: set your zeal against superstition, rushing from extreme to extreme, schismatical societies, and heretical principles, and practice; proclaim sincerity, and not schism; following after purity in divine worship, and not faction: to have been the cause of that non-compliance which exposed you to the unjust charge of Puritanism, and separation from the Temple and Altar of God. Oh be persuaded to shake hands with such as shake hands with God and his worship. If any will cry, the people are all holy, to the decrying of Gospel-Ministry, conclude them too profane for you to join with. Let not example, or eminent professions of piety persuade you to receive principles or practices unproved. Be sure to follow the counsel of God, to go forth by the footsteps of the flocks, and to feed their kids beside the shepherds tents, when you are in danger to turn aside by the flocks of Altar-building companions: for unity to, and (as Diodate notes) imitation of the true Churches of Christ, is a preservative against Apostasy to Idolatry. If the ten Tribes would drive to the Altars at Dan and Bethel, draw (with the Levites, and all that set themselves to seek the Lord) to Jerusalem, to sacrifice to the Lord at his own Altar: though with the loss of your Cities, Suburbs, and sweet enjoyments: though Israel play the harlot, let not Judah offend; come not to Gilgal to transgresss, nor to Bethaven to swear by the Lord: put yourselves in days of general Apostasy, to be hid amongst the thousands of the Lord that bow not the knee to Baal: and under the protection of that God, that can restrain the fury of the fire, and rage of roaring Lions, when let loose against his servants for their adherencie to his Altar and worship; manifest yourselves approved in the Lord's Sanctuary, now Heresies are abroad, to a discovery of the unfound. Will it not be an answer of confidence and comfort to the Lord's demand in a day of general defection and dolor, The children of Israel have forsaken thy Covenant broken down thine Altars, and slain thy Prophets, and I, even I only am left alone? Is not constant adherencie to the sincere worship Altar of God commended to us by a cloud of witnesses, who suffered most exquisite torments for the same, not only by the Jews and Pagans, professed enemies to the Altar of God; but also by the Donatists, Navatians and Arian Heretics, apostatized from the truth of divine worship, besides Papists and Germane Anabaptists, who baptized such baptismo flaminis with fire, as would not be according to their fancy baptized baptismo fluminis with water; so that you see the counsel of God and cloud of witnesses in the Church, charging you to take heed of will-worship, human inventions, Altar-building beside the Altar of God.

Not only are you to be exhorted to stick close to the Altar of God, and take heed of declining to, or turning after false Altars; but also in your places, according to your capacity, set yourselves against the sin of Altar-building, sensibly observing, sadly bewailing, and speedily suppressing the sin in such as act, or advance it. Never let it be said that professed worshippers at God's Altar shut their eyes at the increase of Altars against God, and remain silent under the slighting of divine prescription, and sinful innovating of superstitious matter or forms in the Lord's service. Sad is the age in which we live; for that Christianity must be approved by apologizing for, nay, appearing in the defense of universal liberty of all, or any way of divine worship: and moderation made to consist in a mincing and extenuating of this sin of Altar-building; nay, in a positive silence as concerning it: as if Moses heart might not be soft towards Israel, whilst his fury is hot against their Calf and Altar: or Paul let his moderation be known to all men, and yet fervently ejaculate a Would they were cut off that trouble the Churches by their Altar-building superstitious doctrines. Be not deceived, my brethren, sins complaint of violence and bitterness, must be no check to sincere zeal: what if many things accompany Altar-building which are of the Lord's own drawing and directing; may not Moses more hate the golden Calf wherein is engraven the Idolatry of the Israelites, then honor the Tables of stone, wherein God had engraven his Commandments, and long more to deface the Idol, then care to preserve the Tables? What soul knows the right nature of zeal, and subscribes not to that unquestionable truth, that every man quoad captum, in their places, according to their powers, are bound to defend the Altar of God against all contrary Altars of human erection? considering the sword put into the hand of the Magistrate, the censures into the power of the Church, not only to be used against sins of the second, but also of the first Table: and see not sufficient reason to set itself against (much less to countenance and indulge) such as set their post by God's post, their threshold by the Lord's thr • should. The general commands of God to destroy the Altars and places built against his, with the exemplary zeal, not only under the Law, but also und • r the Gospel of Civil as well Ecclesiastical powers, may be forcible inducements to the resistance and restraining of Altars against God's: as of Constantine, Theodosius, Valentinianus and others; expressly decreeing, that in all places, and throughout every City the Temples be shut up, and liberty be denied to wicked men, to have access thither to commit Idolatry: as also that men be restrained from making sacrifice, whereby they restrained false Altars, though I confess they compelled not to the Altar of God, I shall never own or indulge such Papal cruelty, as did drive with whips the Pagan Natives in America to the font to be baptized before they were catechized in, and convinced of the doctrine of Jesus Christ, & divine worship: yet I wish Ferus wish that men in power in republiques might imitate the Magistratical zeal of these Emperors, in nor only restraining Heathenish, but also Arian Heretical Altars, and contending for unanimity in divine worship among such as have laid hold on God's Covenant, & are professed members of the Church: and that the authoritative Assemblies of the Churches would follow the foot-steps of the Apostolical Council at Antioch, against the Altar of Circumcision: the Synods in Asia, at Ancyra, at Antioch, in France, held against the Montanists Altar-building Heretics, when and where they excommunicated Montanus: Synods at Rome in Anno 246. and 254. against Novatus and his Heresy: at Antioch to the suppressing and condemning the Heresy of Paulus Samosatenus, and of the Nicene and other Councils against the Arian Heresy: and also the authority that Jesus Christ hath left in his Church to the rejecting of Altar-building Heretics after the first and second admonition: the charge of particular Elders of the Churches is charged on the Elders of Ephesus, in them on all others to look to the Churches of God committed to their charge, that they follow not seducers, which may arise from among themselves to draw aside disciples after them.

Let us take heed of adding silence or sinful indulgence of Altar-building (as the more sad symptom of God's departure) to the too many eminent and too evident signs thereof extant in the midst of us: what a black but of blemish was it to Asa, Amaziah, and other reforming Kings of Judah, That the high places were not removed, but the people yet did sacrifice? Will it not then be registered to all succeeding ages to the infamy of our begun Reformation, that Altar-building was acted by some eminent zealots therein, and superstitious doctrines and practice eminently indulged by universal Toleration? The late liberty of innovating superfluous and superstitious ceremonies consistent with the substance of divine worship, though unfit to be annexed, was reputed a posting towards Popery: but I am sure, suffering, and not suppressing Schisms, all sorts of doctrines, though never so dissonant to divine dictates, and liberty to embrace any religion without the establishing the Lord's Altar, is, & will be found to be the high-way to Atheism. The Ministers of the Gospel generally throughout the Nation, not many years since, acted by a spirit of zeal, did declare against Schism, Errors, Heresies, and the protection thereof by universal Toleration: Oh my brethren, take heed you lose not your first love: be entreated in the fear of the Lord to know the authority with which Christ hath invested his Churches, and entrusted you to the defending of his Altar, when Magistrates will not (nay, it may be there is no Magistrate for to) do it: unite you together in the fear of the Lord, exhibit and exercise the Discipline of the Lord in the midst of his people. Let not the bounds of Suspension and excommunication be utterly removed, as if never placed by the Lord about his holy Mount: Let the men of the world see that Christ can have a Church in a Nation formally no Nation, but a Chaos of confused people: second your attestation with a first and second exhortation to Altar-builders, if they will not cease, follow them with rejection and cutting off from the Sanctuary of God. Consider seriously, that if the having in the Church them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, and of the Nicolaitans: and suffering the woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a Prophetess, to teach and seduce the Lord's people: be the few things that God hath against us; we shall have cause to fear that we shall follow the seven Churches of Asia in their sad rejection for following them in sinful Toleration. Let therefore the Priests and Princes; nay, all the people of God's Israel say to such of their brethren, as they suspect to depart from the Lord; nay, and according to their capacity, labor to effect it, that they may not rebel against the Lord, and against us, to build an Altar beside the Altar of the Lord.