Chapter LIX: Preface: To the Reader (1)

Divine providence hath made it my lot, and a calling hath induced me (who am less than the least of all the servants of Christ) to appear among others in this cloud of public witnesses. The scope of the sermon is to endeavour the removal of the obstructions, both of _humiliation_ and _reformation_; two things which ought to lie very much in our thoughts at this time. Concerning both I shall preface but little. _Reformation_ hath many unfriends, some upon _the right hand_, and some upon _the left_; while others cry up that _detestable indifferency_ or _neutrality_, abjured in our solemn covenant, insomuch that Gamaliel (Acts v. 38, 39) and Gallio (Acts xviii. 14-17), men who regarded alike the Jewish and the Christian religion, are highly commended, as “examples for all Christians,”(1361) and as men walking by the rules not only of policy, but of “reason and religion.” Now, let all those that are either against us or not with us do what they can, the right hand of the most High shall perfect the glorious begun reformation. Can all the world keep down “the Sun of Righteousness” from rising? or, being risen, can they spread a vail over it? And though they dig deep to hide their counsels, is not this a time of God’s overreaching and befooling all plotting wits? They have conceived iniquity, and they shall bring forth vanity: “They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” (Hos. viii. 7). Wherefore we “will wait upon the Lord, that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and will look for him” (Isa. viii. 17); and “though he slay us, yet will we trust in him” (Job xiii. 15). The Lord hath commanded to proclaim, and to say “to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh” (Isa. lxii. 11); “Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, all ye that mourn for her” (Isa. lxvi. 10); for “behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. vi. 2). But I have more to say: Mourn, O mourn with Jerusalem, all ye that rejoice for her; “This day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and of blasphemy: for the children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth” (Isa. xxxvii. 3): it is an interwoven time, _warped_ with mercies, and _woofted_ with judgments. Say not thou in thine heart, The days of my mourning are at an end: Oh! we are to this day an unhumbled and an unprepared people; and there are among us both many cursed Achans, and many sleeping Jonahs, but few wrestling Jacobs; even the wise virgins are slumbering with the foolish (Matt. xxv. 5): surely, unless we be timely awakened, and more deeply humbled, God will punish us yet “seven times” (Lev. xxvi. 18, 21, 24, 28) more for our sins; and if he hath chastised us with “whips,” he will “chastise us with scorpions;” and he will yet give a further charge to the sword to “avenge the quarrel of his covenant” (Lev, xxvi. 25). In such a case, I cannot say, according to the now Oxford divinity, that _preces et lachrymae_,—prayers and tears,—must be our only one shelter and fortress, and that we must cast away defensive arms, as unlawful, in any case whatsoever, against the supreme magistrate (that is, by interpretation, they would have us do no more than _pray_, to the end themselves may do no less than _prey)_; wherein they are contradicted not only by Pareus, and by others that are “eager for a presbytery” (as a prelate(1362) of chief note hath lately taken, I should say _mistaken_, his mark), but even by those that are “eager royalists”(1363) (pardon me that I give them not their right name: I am sure, when all is well reckoned, we are better friends to royal authority than themselves). Yet herein I do agree with them, that “prayers and tears” will prove our strongest weapons, and the only _tela divina_, the weapons that fight for us from above: O then “fear the Lord, ye his saints” (Psal. xxxiv. 9); O stir up yourselves to lay hold on him (Isa. lxiv. 7); “Keep not silence; and give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth” (Isa. lxii. 6, 7). O that we could all make wells in our dry and desert-like hearts (Psal. lxxxiv. 6), that we may draw out water (1 Sam. vii. 6), even buckets-full, to quench the wrath of a sin-revenging God, the fire which still burneth against the Lord’s inheritance. God grant that this sermon be not “as water spilt on the ground” but may “drop as the rain” and “distil as the dew” (Deut. xxxii. 2) of heaven upon thy soul.

SERMON.

EZEK. xliii. 11.

“And if they be ashamed of all that they have done, show them the
form of the house, and the fashion thereof, and the goings-out
thereof, and the comings-in thereof, and all the forms thereof,
and all the ordinances thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all
the laws thereof: and write it in their sight, that they may keep
the whole form thereof, and all the ordinance thereof, and do
them.”

It is not long since I did, upon another day of humiliation, lay open England’s disease from that text, 2 Chron. xx. 33, “Howbeit the high places were not taken away; for as yet the people had not prepared their hearts unto the God of their fathers.” Though the Sun of Righteousness be risen, Mal. iv. 2, “with healing in his wings,” yet the land is not healed, no, not of its worst disease, which is corruption in religion, and the iniquity of your holy things. I did then show the symptoms, and the cause of this evil disease. The symptoms are your high places not yet taken away, many of your old superstitious ceremonies to this day remaining, which, though not so evil as the high places of idolatry in which idols were worshipped, yet are parallel to the high places of will-worship, of which we read that the people, thinking it too hard to be tied to go up to Jerusalem with every sacrifice, “did sacrifice still in the high places, yet unto the Lord their God only,” 2 Chron. xxxiii, 17; pleading for their so doing, antiquity, custom, and other defences of that kind, which have been alleged for your ceremonies. But albeit these be foul spots in the church’s face, which offend the eyes of her glorious Bridegroom, Jesus Christ, yet that which doth less appear is more dangerous, and that is the cause of all this evil in the very bowels and heart of the church; the people of the land, great and small, have not as yet prepared their hearts unto the Lord their God; mercy is prepared for the land, but the land is not prepared for mercy. I shall say no more of the disease at this instant.

But I have now chosen a text which holds forth a remedy for this malady—a cure for this case; that is, that if we will humble our uncircumcised hearts, and accept of the punishment of our iniquity, Lev. xxvi. 41; if we be “ashamed and confounded” (Ezek. xxxvi. 32), before the Lord this day for our evil ways; if we judge ourselves as guilty, and put our mouth in the dust, and clothe ourselves with shame as with a garment; if we repent and abhor ourselves in dust and ashes, then the Lord will not abhor us, but take pleasure in us, to dwell among us, to reveal himself unto us, to set before us the right pattern of his own house, that the tabernacle of God may be with men, Rev. xxi. 3; and pure ordinances, where before they were defiled and mixed; Zech. xiii. 2, He “will cut off the names of the idols out of the land,” and cause the false prophet, “and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land,” and the glory of the Lord shall dwell in the land, Psal. lxxxv. 9. But, withal, we must take heed that we “turn not again to folly,” Psal. lxxxv. 8; that our hearts start not aside, “like a deceitful bow,” Psal. lxxviii. 57; that we “keep the ways of the Lord,” Psal. xviii. 21, and do not wickedly depart from our God. Thus you have briefly the occasion and the sum of what I am to deliver from this text; the particulars whereof I shall not touch till I have, in the first place, resolved a difficult, yet profitable question.

You may ask, What house or what temple doth the Prophet here speak of, and how can it be made to appear that this scripture is applicable to this time?

I answer, Some(1364) have taken great pains to demonstrate that this temple, which the Prophet saw in this vision, was no other than the temple of Solomon; and that the accomplishment of this vision of the temple, city, and division of the land, was the building of the temple and city again after the captivity, and the restoring of the Levitical worship and Jewish republic, which came to pass in the days of Nehemiah and Zorobabel. This sense is also most obvious to every one that readeth this prophecy; but there are very strong reasons against it, which make other learned expositors not to embrace it.

For, 1. The temple of Solomon was one hundred and twenty cubits high, the temple built by Zorobabel was but sixty cubits high, Ezra vi. 3.

2. The temple of Zorobabel (Ezra iii. 1, 8, vi. 3, 5, 7) was built in the same place where the temple of Solomon was, that is, in Jerusalem, upon mount Moriah, but this temple of Ezekiel was without the city, and a great way distant from it,(1365) chap. xlviii. 10 compared with ver. 15. The whole portion of the Levites, and a part of the portion of the priests, was betwixt the temple and the city.

3. Moses’ greatest altar,—the altar of burnt-offerings, was not half so big as Ezekiel’s altar, compare Ezek. xliii. 16 with Exod. xxvii. 1,(1366) so is Moses’ altar of incense much less than Ezekiel’s altar of incense, Exod. xxx. 2 compared with Ezek. xli. 22.

4. There are many new ceremonial laws, different from the Mosaical, delivered in the following part of this vision, chap. xlv. and xlvi., as interpreters have particularly observed upon these places.(1367)

5. The temple and city were not of that greatness which is described in this vision; for the measuring reed, containing six cubits of the sanctuary, not common cubits (chap. xl. 5), which amount to more than ten feet, the outer wall of the temple being two thousand reeds in compass (chap. xlii. 20), was by estimation four miles, and the city (chap. xlviii. 16, 35) thirty-six miles in compass.

6. The vision of the holy waters (chap. xlvii.) issuing from the temple, and after the space of four thousand reeds growing to a river which could not be passed over, and healing the waters and the fishes, cannot be literally understood of the temple at Jerusalem.

7. The land is divided among the twelve tribes (chap. xlviii.), and that in a way and order different from the division made by Joshua, which cannot be understood of the restitution after the captivity, because the twelve tribes did not return.

8. This new temple hath with it a new covenant, and that an everlasting one, Ezek. xxxvii. 26, 27. But at the return of the people from Babylon there was no new covenant, saith Irenæus,(1368) only the same that was before continued till Christ’s coming.

Wherefore we must needs hold with Jerome,(1369) Gregory,(1370) and other later interpreters, that this vision is to be expounded of the spiritual temple and church of Christ, made up of Jews and Gentiles; and that not by way of allegories only, which is the sense of those whose opinion I have now confuted, but according to the proper and direct intendment of the vision, which, in many material points, cannot agree to Zorobabel’s temple.

I am herein very much strengthened while I observe many parallel passages(1371) betwixt the vision of Ezekiel and the revelation of John; and while I remember withal, that the prophets do in many places foretell the institution of the ordinances, government and worship of the New Testament, under the terms of temple, priests, sacrifices, &c., and do set forth the deliverance and stability of the church of Christ, under the notions of Canaan, of bringing back the captivity, &c., God speaking to his people at that time, so as they might best understand him.

Now if you ask how the several particulars in the vision may be particularly expounded and applied to the church of Christ, I answer The word of God, the “river that makes glad the city of God,” though it have many easy and known fords where any of Christ’s lambs may pass through, yet in this vision, and other places of this kind, it is “a great deep” where the greatest elephant, as he said, may swim. I shall not say with the Jews, that one should not read the last nine chapters of Ezekiel before he be thirty years old. Surely a man may be twice thirty years old, and a good divine too, and yet not able to understand this vision. Some tell us, that no man can understand it without skill in geometry, which cannot be denied, but there is greater need of ecclesiometry, if I may so speak, to measure the church in her length, or continuance through many generations, in her breadth, or spreading through many nations, her depth of humiliation, sorrows and sufferings, her height of faith, hope, joy, and comfort, and to measure each part according to this pattern here set before us.

Wherein, for my part, I must profess (as Socrates in another case), _Scio quod nescio_. I know that there is a great mystery here which I cannot reach. Only I shall set forth unto you that little light which the Father of lights hath given me.

I conceive that the Holy Ghost in this vision hath pointed at four several times and conditions of the church,—that we may take with us the full meaning, without addition or diminution.

Observing this rule, That what agreeth not to the type must be meant of the thing typified, and what is not fulfilled at one time must be fulfilled of the church at another time.

First of all, It cannot be denied that he points in some sort at the restitution of the temple, worship of God, and city of Jerusalem, after the captivity, as a type of the church of Christ, for though many things in the vision do not agree to that time, as hath been proved, yet some things do agree this, as it is least intended in the vision, so it is not fit for me at this time to insist upon it. But he that would understand the form of the temple of Jerusalem, the several parts, and excellent structure thereof, will find enough written of that subject.(1372)

Secondly, This and other prophecies of building again the temple, may well be applied to the building of the Christian church by the master-builders, the apostles, and by other ministers of the gospel since their days. Let us hear but two witnesses of the apostles themselves applying those prophecies to the calling of the Gentiles: the one is Paul, 2 Cor. vi. 16, “For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people;” the other is James, who applieth to the converted Gentiles that prophecy of Amos, “After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up,” Acts xv. 16.

Thirdly, But there is a third thing aimed at in this prophecy, and that more principally than any of the other two, which is the repairing of the breaches and ruins of the Christian church, and the building up of Zion in her glory, about the time of the destruction of Antichrist and the conversion of the Jews; and this happiness hath the Lord reserved to the last times, to build a more excellent and glorious temple than former generations have seen. I mean not of the building of the material temple at Jerusalem, which the Jews do fancy and look for,—but I speak of the church and people of God; and that I may not seem to expound an obscure prophecy too conjecturally, which many in these days do, I have these evidences following for what I say:—

1. If Paul and James, in those places which I last cited, do apply the prophecies of building a new temple to the first-fruits of the Gentiles, and to their first conversion, then they are much more to be applied to the fulness of the Gentiles, and, most of all, to the fulness both of Jews and Gentiles, which we wait for. “Now, if the fall of them (saith the Apostle, speaking of the Jews) be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness?” Rom. xi. 12. And again, “If the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?” ver. 15. Plainly insinuating a greater increase of the church, and a larger spread of the gospel at the conversion of the Jews, and so a fairer temple, yea, another world, in a manner, to be looked for.

2. The Lord himself, in this same chapter, ver. 7, speaking of the temple here prophesied of, saith, “The place of my throne, and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever, and my holy name shall the house of Israel no more defile, neither they nor their kings,” &c.; which, as it cannot be understood of the Jews after the captivity, who did again forsake the Lord, and were forsaken of him, as Jerome noteth upon the place, so it can as ill be said to be already fulfilled upon the Christian church, but rather that such a church is yet to be expected in which the Lord shall take up his dwelling for ever, and shall not be provoked by their defilements and whoredoms again to take away his kingdom and to remove the candlestick.

3. This last temple is also prophesied of by Isaiah, chap. ii. 2, “And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains (even as here Ezekiel did see this temple upon a very high mountain, chap. lx. 2), and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it,” &c.; ver. 4, “And they shall beat their swords into plow-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Here is the building of such a temple as shall bring peaceable and quiet times to the church, of which that evangelical prophet speaketh in other places also, Isa. xi. 9; lx. 17, 18. And if we shall read that which followeth, Isa. ii. 5, as the Chaldee paraphrase doth, “And the men of the house of Jacob shall say, Come ye,” &c., then the building of the temple there spoken of shall appear to be joined with the Jews’ conversion; but, howsoever, it is joined with a great peace and calm, such as yet the church hath not seen.

4. We find in this vision, that when Ezekiel’s temple shall be built, princes shall no more oppress the people of God, nor defile the name of God, Ezek. xlv. 8; xliii. 7;(1373) which are in like manner joined, Psal. cii. 15, 16, 22, “The heathen shall fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth thy glory. When the Lord shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his glory; when the people are gathered together, and the kingdoms (understand here also kings, as the Septuagint do), to serve the Lord;” which psalm is acknowledged to be a prophecy of the kingdom of Christ, though under the type of bringing back the captivity of the Jews, and of the building again of Zion at that time. The like prophecy of Christ we have Psal. lxxii. 11, “All kings shall fall down before him; all nations shall serve him.” But I ask, Have not the kings of the earth hitherto, for the most part, set themselves “against the Lord, and against his Anointed”? Psal. ii. 2. And how then shall all those prophecies hold true, except they be coincident with Rev. xvii. 16, 17, and that time is yet to come, when God shall put it in the hearts of kings to “hate the whore (of Rome), and they shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire”? It is foretold that God shall do this great and good work even by those kings who have before subjected themselves to Antichrist.

5. That which I now draw from Ezekiel’s vision is no other but the same which was showed to John, Rev. xi. 1, 2,—a place so like to this of Ezekiel, that we must take special notice of it, and make that serve for a commentary to this,—“And there was given me (saith John) a reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles; and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.” This time of forty and two months must be expounded by Rev. xiii. 5, where it is said of the beast, “Power was given unto him, to continue forty and two months;” which, according to the computation of Egyptian years (reckoning thirty days to each month), make three years and a half, or twelve hundred and sixty days, and that is the time of the witnesses’ prophesying in sackcloth, and of the woman’s abode in the wilderness, Rev, xi. 3; xii. 6. Now lest it should be thought that the treading down of the holy city by the Gentiles (that is, the treading under foot of the true church, the city of God, by the tyranny of Antichrist and the power of his accomplices) should never have an end in this world, the angel gives John to understand that the church, the house of the living God, shall not lie desolate for ever, but shall be built again (for the measuring is in reference to building), that the kingdom of Antichrist shall come to an end, and that after twelve hundred and sixty years, counting days for years as the prophets do. It is not to my purpose now to search when this time of the power of the beast and of the church’s desolation did begin, and when it ends, and so to find out the time of building this new temple,—only this much I trust, I may say, that if we reckon from the time that the power of the beast did begin, and, withal, consider the great revolution and turning of things upside down in these our days, certainly the work is upon the wheel; the Lord hath plucked his hand out of his bosom, he hath whet his sword, he hath bent his bow, he hath also prepared the instruments of death against Antichrist: so saith the Psalmist of all persecutors, Psal. vii. 12, 13; but it will fall most upon that capital enemy. Whereof there will be occasion to say more afterward.

Let me here only add a word concerning a fourth thing which the Holy Ghost may seem to intend in this prophecy, and that is, the church triumphant, the new “Jerusalem which is above,” unto which respect is to be had, as interpreters judge, in some parts of the vision, which happily cannot be so well applied to the church in this world. Even as the new Jerusalem is so described in the Revelation (Rev. xxi.), that it may appear to be the church of Christ, reformed, beautified, and enlarged in this world, and fully perfected and glorified in the world to come; and as many things which are said of it can very hardly be made to agree to the church in this world; so other things which are said of it can as hardly be applied to the church glorified in heaven, as where it is said, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, [having come down from God out of heaven] and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God,” ver. 3. Again, “And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it,” ver. 24.

But now I make haste to the several particulars contained in my text: “I pray God (saith the Apostle) your whole spirit, and soul, and body, be preserved blameless,” 1 Thess. v. 23; Phil. i. 9, 11. And what he there prays for, this text, rightly understood and applied, may work in us, that is, gracious affections, gracious minds, gracious actions. In the first place, a change upon our corrupt and wicked affections,—“If they be ashamed of all that they have done,” saith the Lord; Secondly, A change upon our blind minds,—“Show them the form of the house, and the fashion thereof,” &c.; Thirdly, A change also upon our actions,—“That they may keep the whole form thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and do them.”

For the first, the words here used is not that which signifieth blushing through modesty, but it signifieth shame for that which is indeed shameful, filthy, and abominable,(1374) so that it were impenitency and an aggravation of the fault not to be ashamed for it.

I shall here build only one doctrine, which will be of exceeding great use for such a day as this: “If either we would have mercy to ourselves, or would do acceptable service in the public reformation, we must not only cease to do evil and learn to do well, but also be ashamed, confounded and humbled, for our former evil ways.” Here is a twofold necessity, which presseth upon us this duty,—to loathe and abhor ourselves for all our abominations, to be greatly abashed and confounded before our God: First, Without this we shall not find grace and favour to our own souls; Secondly, We shall else miscarry in the work of reformation.

First, I say, let us do all the good we can, God is not pleased with us unless we be ashamed and humbled for former guiltiness. Be zealous and repent (Rev. iii. 19), saith Christ to the Laodiceans; be zealous in time coming, and repent of your former lukewarmness: “What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?” (Rom. vi. 21,) saith the Apostle to the saints at Rome, of whom he saith plainly, that they were “servants to righteousness,” (ver. 19;) and had their “fruit unto holiness.” But that is not all; they were also ashamed while they looked back upon their old faults, which is the rather to be observed, because it maketh against the Antinomian error now afoot.(1375) It hath a clear reason for it, for without this God is still dishonoured, and not restored to his glory: “O Lord (saith Daniel), righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of faces,” Dan. ix. 7. These two go together. We must be confounded, that God may be glorified; we must be judged, that God may be justified; our mouths must be stopped, and laid in the dust, that the Lord may be just when he speaketh, and clear when he judgeth (Psal. li. 4). And as the Apostle teacheth us, 1 Cor. xi. 31, that if we judge ourselves, we shall not be judged of God; and, by the rule of contraries, if we judge not ourselves, we shall be judged of God; so say I now, if we give glory to God, and take shame and confusion of faces to ourselves, God shall not confound us, nor put us to shame: but if we will not be confounded and ashamed in ourselves, God shall confound us, and pour shame upon us; if we loathe not ourselves, God shall loathe us.

Nay let me argue from the manner of men, as the Prophet doth, Mal. i. 8, “Offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person?” Will thy governor, nay, thy neighbour, who is as thou art, alter an injury done to him, be pleased with thee, if thou do but leave off to do him any more such injuries? Will he not expect an acknowledgment of the wrong done? Is it not Christ’s rule (Luke xvii. 4) that he who seven times trespasseth against his brother, seven times turn again, saying, I repent? David would hardly trust Ittai to go up and down with him, who was but a stranger (2 Sam. xv. 19), how much more if he had done him some great wrong, and then refused to confess it? And how shall we think that it can stand with the honour of the most high God, that we seem to draw near unto him, and to walk in his ways, while, in the meantime, we do not acknowledge our iniquity, and even accuse, shame, judge, and condemn ourselves? Nay, “Be not deceived, God is not mocked,” Gal. vi. 7.

This is the first necessity of the duty which this text holdeth forth. The Lord requireth of us not only to do his will for the future, but to be ashamed for what we have done amiss before.

The other necessity of it, which is also in the text, is this: That except we be thus ashamed and humbled, God hath not promised to show us the pattern of his house, nor to reveal his will unto us; which agreeth well with that, Psal. xxv. 9, “The meek will he teach his way;” and ver. 12, “What man is he that feareth the Lord? him shall he teach in the way that he shall choose;” and ver. 14, “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him, and he will show them his covenant.” There is sanctification in the affections, and here is humiliation in the affections, spoken of as necessary means of attaining the knowledge of the will of God. Let the affections be ordered aright, then light which is offered shall be seen and received; but let light be offered when disordered affections do overcloud the eye of the mind, then all is in vain.

In this case a man shall be like “the deaf adder” (Psal. lviii. 4, 5,) which will not be taken by the voice of the charmers, “charming never so wisely.” Let the helm of reason be stirred as well as you can imagine, if there be a contrary wind in the sails of the affections, the ship will not answer to the helm. It is a good argument: He is a wicked man, a covetous man, a proud man, a carnal man, an unhumbled man; therefore he will readily miscarry in his judgment. So divines have argued against the Pope’s infallibility! The Pope hath been, and may be a profane man; therefore he may err in his judgment and decrees. And what wonder that they who receive not the love of the truth be given over to “strong delusion, that they should believe a lie?” 2 Thess. ii. 9, 10. It is as good an argument: He is a humbled man, and a man that feareth God; therefore, in so far as he acteth and exerciseth those graces, the Lord shall teach him in the way that he shall choose. I say, in so far as he acteth those graces,—because when he grieves the Spirit, and cherisheth the flesh, when the child of God is more swayed by his corruptions than by his graces, then he is in great danger to be given up to the counsel of his own heart, and to be deserted by the Holy Ghost, which should lead him “into all truth,” John xvi. 13.

But we must take notice of a seeming contradiction here in the text. God saith to the Prophet in the former verse, “Show the house to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities;” and, Jer. xxxi. 19, Ephraim is first instructed, then ashamed. And here it is quite turned over in my text; if they be ashamed show them the house.

I shall not here make any digression unto the debates and distinctions of schoolmen, what influence and power the affections have upon the understanding and the will; I will content myself with this plain answer: Those two might very well stand together,—light is a help to humiliation, and humiliation a help to light. As there must be some work of faith, and some apprehension of the love of God, in order before true evangelical repentance, yet this repentance helpeth us to believe more firmly that our sins are forgiven. The soul, in the pains of the new birth, is like Tamar travailing of her twins, Pharez and Zarah (Gen. xxxviii. 28-30): faith, like Zarah, first putting out his hand, but hath no strength to come forth, therefore draweth back the hand again, till repentance, like Pharez, have broken forth,—then can faith come forth more easily. Which appeareth in that woman, Luke vii. 47, 48: she wept much, because she loved much; she loved much, because she believed; and by faith had her heart enlarged with apprehending the rich grace and free love of Christ to poor sinners: this faith moves her bowels, melts her heart, stirs her sorrow, kindles her affection. Then, and not till then, she gets a prop to her faith, and a sure ground to build upon. It is not till she have wept much that Christ intimates mercy, and saith, “Thy sins are forgiven thee.” Just so is the case in this text: Show them the house, saith the Lord, that they may be ashamed; give them a view of it, that they may think the worse of themselves, that they want it, that they may be ashamed for all their iniquities, whereby they have separate betwixt their God and themselves, so that they cannot “behold the beauty of the Lord,” nor “inquire in his temple,” Psal. xxvii. 4; and if, when they begin to see it, they have such thoughts as these, and humble themselves, and acknowledge their iniquities, then go to and show them the whole fabric, and structure, and all the gates thereof, and all the parts thereof, and all things pertaining thereto.

I suppose I have said enough for confirmation and clearing of the doctrine concerning the necessity of our being ashamed and confounded before the Lord. I have now a fourfold application to draw from it.

The first application shall be to the malignant enemies of the cause and people of God at this time, who deserve Jeremiah’s black mark to be put upon them: “Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they wore not at all ashamed, neither could they blush,” Jer. vi. 15; viii. 12. When he would say the worst of them, this is it: “Thou hadst a whore’s forehead, thou refusedst to be ashamed,” Jer. iii. 3. There are some sons of Belial risen up against us, who have done some things whereof, I dare say, many heathens would have been ashamed; yet they are as far from being ashamed of their outrages as Caligula was, who said of himself, that he loved nothing better in his own nature than that he could not be ashamed: nay, their glory is their shame, Phil. iii. 19; and if the Lord do not open their eyes to see their shame, their end will be destruction. Is it a light matter to swear and blaspheme, to coin and spread lies, to devise calumnies, to break treaties, to contrive treacherous plots, to exercise so many barbarous cruelties, to shed so much blood, and, as if that were too little, to bury men quick? Is all this no matter of shame? And when they have so often professed to be for the true Protestant religion, shall they not be ashamed to thirst so much after Protestant blood, and in that cause desire to associate themselves with all the Papists at home and abroad whose assistance they can have, and particularly with those matchless monsters (they call them subjects) of Ireland, who, if the computation fail not, have shed the blood of some hundred thousands in that kingdom? For our part, it seems they are resolved to give the worst name to the best thing which we can do, and therefore they have not been ashamed to call a religious and loyal covenant a traitorous and damnable covenant. I have no pleasure to take up these and other dunghills, the text hath put this in my mouth which I have said. O that they could recover themselves out of the gall of bitterness, and bond of iniquity, Acts viii. 23; O that we could hear that they begin to be ashamed of their abominations, “Lord, when thy hand is lifted up, they will not see: but they shall see, and be ashamed for their envy at the people,” Isa. xxvi. 11; the Lord “shall appear to your joy, and they shall be ashamed,” lxvi. 5.

But now, in the second place, let me speak to the kingdom, and to you whom it concerneth this day to be humbled, both for your own sins and for the sins of the kingdom which you represent. Although yourselves, whom God hath placed in this honourable station, and the kingdom which God hath blessed with many choice blessings, be much and worthily honoured among the children of men, yet when you have to do with God, and with that wherein his great name and his glory is concerned, you must not think of honouring, but rather abashing yourselves, and creeping low in the dust. Livy tells us,(1376) that when M. Claudius Marcellus would have dedicate a temple to Honour and Virtue, the priests hindered it, _quod utri deo res divina fieret, sciri non posset_, because so it could not be known to which of the two gods he should offer sacrifice. Far be it from any of you to suffer the will of God and your own credit to come in competition together, or to put back any point of truth, because it may seem, peradventure, some way to wound your reputation, though, when all is well examined, it shall be found your glory.

You are now about the casting out of many corruptions in the government of the church and worship of God. Remember, therefore, it is not enough to cleanse the house of the Lord, but you must be humbled for your former defilements wherewith it was polluted. It is not enough that England say with Ephraim in one place, “What have I to do any more with idols?” Hos. xiv. 8. England must say also with Ephraim in another place, “Surely after that I was turned, I repented; and after that I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh: I was ashamed, yea, even confounded, because I did bear the reproach of my youth,” Jer. xxxi. 19. Let England sit down in the dust, and wallow itself in ashes, and cry out as the lepers did (Lev. xiii. 45), “Unclean, unclean,” and then rise up and cast away the least superstitious ceremony “as a menstruous cloth; thou shalt say unto it, Get thee hence,” Isa. xxx. 22. I know that those who are not convinced of the intrinsical evil and unlawfulness of former corruptions may, upon other considerations, go along and join in this reformation; for according to Augustine’s rule,(1377) men are to let go those ecclesiastical customs which neither Scriptures nor councils bind upon us, nor yet are universally received by all churches. And according to Ambrose’s rule to Valentinian, epist. 31, _Nullus pudor est ad meliora transive_,—it is no shame to change that which is not so good for that which is better. So doth Arnobius(1378) answer the pagans, who objected the novelty of the Christian religion: You should not look so much (saith he) _quid reliquerimus_ as _quid secuti simus_; be rather satisfied with the good which we follow, than to quarrel why we have changed our former practise. He giveth instance, that when men found the art of weaving clothes, they did no longer clothe themselves in skins; and when they learned to build houses, they left off to dwell in rocks and caves. All this carrieth reason with it, for _optimum est eligendum_. If all this satisfy not, it may be Nazianzen’s rule(1379) will move some man: When there was a great stir about his archbishopric of Constantinople, he yielded for peace; because this storm was raised for his sake, he wished to be cast into the sea. He often professeth that he did not affect riches, nor dignities, but rather to be freed of his bishopric. We are like to listen long before we hear such expressions either from archbishop or bishop in England, who seem not to care much who sink, so that themselves swim above. Yet I shall name one rule more, which I shall take from the confessions of two English prelates. One(1380) of them hath this contemplation upon Hezekiah’s taking away the brazen serpent, when he perceived it to be superstitiously abused: “Superstitious use (saith he) can mar the very institutions of God, how much more the most wise and well-grounded devices of men?” Another(1381) of them acknowledged that whatsoever is taken up at the injunction of men, and is not of God’s own prescribing, when it is drawn to superstition, cometh under the case of the brazen serpent. You may easily make the assumption, and then the conclusion, concerning those ceremonies which are not God’s institutions but men’s devices, and have been grossly and notoriously abused by many to superstition.

Now to return to the point in hand, if upon all or any of these, or the like principles, any of this kingdom shall join in the removal of corruptions out of the church, which yet they do not conceive to be in themselves, and intrinsically corruptions in religion, in this case I say with the Apostle, “I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice,” Phil. i. 18, because every way reformation is set forward. But let such an one look to himself, how the doctrine drawn from this text falleth upon him, that he who only ceaseth to do evil, but repenteth not of the evil,—he who applieth himself to reformation, but is not ashamed of former defilements, is in danger both of God’s displeasure, and of miscarrying in his judgment about reformation. It is far from my meaning to discourage any who are, with humble and upright hearts, seeking after more light than yet they have; I say it only for their sake, who, through the presumption and unhumbledness of their spirits, will acknowledge no fault in anything they have formerly done in church matters.

I cannot leave this application to the kingdom till I enlarge it a little farther. There are four considerations which may make England ashamed and confounded before the Lord.

1. Because of the great blessings which it hath so long wanted. Your flourishing estate in the world could not have countervailed the want of the purity and liberty of the ordinances of Christ. That was a heavy word of the Prophet, “Now for a long season Israel hath been without the true God, and without a teaching priest, and without law,” 2 Chron. xv. 3. It hath not been altogether so with this land, where the Lord hath had not only a true church, but many burning and shining lights, many gracious preachers and professors, many notable defenders of the Protestant cause against Papists, many who have preached and written worthily of practical divinity, and of those things which most concern a man’s salvation. Nay, I am persuaded, that all this time past, there have been in this kingdom many thousands of his secret and sealed ones, who have been groaning under that burden and bondage which they could not help, and have been “waiting for the consolation of Israel,” Luke ii. 25. Nevertheless, the reformation of the church of England hath been exceedingly deficient, in government, discipline and worship; yea, and many places of the kingdom have been “without a teaching priest,” and other places poisoned with false teachers. It is said (1 Sam. vii. 2), that all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord, when they wanted the ark twenty years. O let England lament after the Lord, until the ark be brought into the own place of it!

2. There is another cause of this great humiliation, and that is, the point in the text, to be ashamed “of all that you have done.” Sin, sin is that which blacketh our faces, and covereth us with confusion as with a mantle, and then most of all when we may read our sin in some judgment of God which lieth upon us; therefore the Septuagint here, instead of being “ashamed of all that they have done,” read—“accept their punishment for all that they have done,” which agreeth to that word in the law:(1382) “If then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled (the Greek readeth there _ashamed_) and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity,” Lev. xxvi. 41. This is now England’s case, whose sin is written in the present judgment, and graven in your calamity as “with a pen of iron, and with a point of a diamond” (Jer. xvii. 1), to make you say, “The Lord our God is righteous in all his works which he doeth: for we obeyed not his voice,” Dan. ix. 14. Did not the land make idol gods of the court, and of the prelatical clergy, and feared them, and followed them more than God, and obeyed them rather than God, so that their threshold was set by God’s threshold, and their posts by God’s posts? as it is said, ver. 7. I speak not now of lawful obedience to authority. Is it not a righteous thing with the Lord to make these, your idols, his rods to correct you? Hath not England harboured and entertained Papists, priests, and Jesuits in its bosom? Is it not just that now you feel the sting and poison of these vipers? Hath there not been a great compliance with the prelates, for peace’s sake, even to the prejudice of truth? Doth not the Lord now justly punish that Episcopal peace with an Episcopal war? Was not that prelatical government first devised, and since continued, to preserve peace and to prevent schisms in the church? And was it not God’s just judgment that such a remedy of man’s invention should rather increase than cure the evil? So that sects have most multiplied under that government, which now you know by sad experience. Hath not this nation, for a long time, taken the name of the Lord in vain, by a formal worship and empty profession? Is it not a just requital upon God’s part, that your enemies have all this while taken God’s name in vain, and taken the Almighty to witness of the integrity of their intentions for religion, law and liberty, thus persuading the world to believe a lie? What shall I say of the book of sports, and other profanations of the Lord’s day? This licentiousness was most acceptable to the greatest part, and they “loved to have it so,” Jer. v. 31. Doth not the great famine of the word almost everywhere in the kingdom, except in this city, make the land mourn on the Sabbath, and say, “I do remember my faults this day?” Gen. xli. 9. Yea, doth not the land now enjoy her Sabbaths, while men are constrained not only to cease from sports on that day, but from labouring the ground, and from other works of their calling upon other days? What should I speak of the lusts and uncleanness, gluttony and drunkenness, chambering and wantonness, prodigality and lavishness, excess of riot, masking, and balling, and sporting, when Germany and the Palatinate, and other places, were wallowing in blood, yea, when there was so much sin and wrath upon this same kingdom? Will not you say now, that for this the Lord God hath caused your “sun to go down at noon,” and hath turned your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentations? (Amos viii. 9, 10.) Or what should I say of the oppressions, injustice, cozenage in trading and in merchandise, which yourselves know better than I can do how much they have abounded in the kingdom? Doth not God now punish the secret injustice of his people by the open injustice of their enemies? Do ye not remember that mischief was framed by a law? And now, when your enemies execute mischief against law, will you not say, Righteous art thou, O Lord, and just are thy judgments. One thing I may not forget, and that is, that the Lord is punishing blood with blood, the blood of the oppressed, the blood of the persecuted, the blood of those who have died in prisons, or in strange countries, suffering for righteousness’ sake. He that departed from evil did even make himself a prey, Isa. lix. 15. There was not so much as one drop of blood spilt upon the pillory for the testimony of the truth but it crieth to heaven, for precious is the blood of the saints, (Psal. lxxii. 14.) Doth not all the blood shed in Queen Mary’s days cry? And doth not the blood of the Palatinate and of Rochel cry? And doth not the blood of souls cry? which is the loudest cry of all. God said to Cain, “The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground,” Gen. iv. 10. The Hebrew hath it, “Thy brother’s blood,” which is well expounded both by the Chaldee Paraphrase and the Jerusalem Targum, the voice of the blood of all the generations and the righteous people which thy brother should have begotten crieth unto me. I may apply it to the thing in hand: The silencing, deposing, persecuting, imprisoning, and banishing of so many of the Lord’s witnesses, of the most painful and powerful preachers, and the preferring of so many either dumb dogs or false teachers, maketh the voice of bloods to cry to heaven, even the blood of many thousands, yea, thousands of thousands of souls, which have been lost by the one, or might have been saved by the other. God will require the blood of the children which those righteous Abels might have begotten unto him. There is, beside all this, more blood-guiltiness, which is secret, but shall sometime be brought to light. O blood! blood! O let the land tremble, while the righteous Judge makes “inquisition for blood,” Psal. ix. 12; O let England cry, “Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God”! Psal. li. 14.

But you will say, peradventure, many of these things whereof I have spoken ought not to be charged upon the kingdom, they were only the acts of a prevalent faction for the time.

I answer, First, God will impute them to the kingdom, unless the kingdom mourn for them. God gives not a charge to the destroying angel (Ezek. ix. 4) to spare those who have not been actors in the public sins and abominations, but to spare those only who cry and sigh for those abominations.

Secondly, When the ministers of state, or others having authority in church or commonwealth, take the boldness to do such acts, the kingdom is not blameless; for they durst not have done as they did, had the Lord but disclaimed, discountenanced, and cried out against them. It is marked both of John Baptist (Matt. xiv. 5), and of Christ (Matt. xxi. 46), and of the apostles (Acts iv. 21), that so long as the people did magnify them, and esteem them highly, their enemies durst not do unto them what else they would have done.