prophet's resolution, I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against him. The book which God gave Ezekiel to eat, was written within and without, with lamentations, and mournings, and woes; but when he ate it, he found it in his mouth as sweet as honey. When God offers the book, which is the register of our sins to our consciences, or the decree of his judgments to our understanding, or to our sense, it is written in gall and wormwood, and in the bitterness of sorrow; but if we can bring it to the first concoction, the first digestion, to that mastication, that rumination, which is the consideration of God's purpose upon us in that judgment, we shall change our taste, for we shall Taste and see, quam suaris Dominus, how good, and how sweet the Lord is; for even this judgment is mercy. Think not then thy valour sufficiently tried, if thou canst take it patiently, to have missed a suit long pursued, or failed of a preferment long expected; no not if thou have stood in a hail of bullets without winking, or sat the searching of a wound without starting; but muta fortitudinem, change thy valour, and when thou comest to bear great crosses, proportionable to thy great sins, with a spiritual courage, acknowledge that courage to be the mercy of God, and not thine own moral constancy. God loves his own example, to do as he hath done; Omni quæstione severius, à te interrogari; it was said to a Roman emperor, who examined with wisdom, and majesty too: It is truer of God; that it is more fearful than any rack, or torture, when he comes to search and sift a conscience: yet God did come to that office upon Adam, before he would condemn him. He came to a worse place than Paradise; he came to Sodom, to rack and torture them, with that confession, that there could not be found ten righteous men amongst them. But yet this he did, before he condemned them. God will visit thee in this rack, in this furnace, in these trials, before he proceed to thy condemnation. But when God does so, believe thou David, in his indulgence to his son, to have been a type of God's disposition to thy soul. When he sent out his army against Absalom, he stood in the gate to survey the muster, and to every one of the commanders, Joab, and the rest, still he said, Serrate mihi puerum Absalom, Intreat the young man Absa35 Ezekiel ii. 10. 38 Psalm xxxiv. 8. 34 Mic. vii. 9. lom well for my sake. The Lord of hosts may send forth his army against thee, sickness, loss, shame, pain, banishment, imprisonment, (which are all swords of his) but he says to them all, Serrate mihi Absalom, That soul that I have bought with my blood, preserve for me; fight but against mine enemies, his pride, his security, his presumption; but servate Absalom, preserve his soul unshaken, and unoffended. God hath said it before, and he says again to thee, in all thy afflictions, I know the thoughts that I think towards you, the thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end3. God said this, when a false prophet had promised them deliverance in two years; God prorogues the time; he would do it, but he would not do it under threescore and ten Limit not God in his time, nor in his means; the years. mercy consists in relieving thee so, as that thy soul suffer not, though thou do. And if that be preserved, his mercy is a compassing mercy, which is also another circumstance in this branch. The devil had compassed all the earth, and he was angry that God had compassed Job. He says in indignation, Hast thou not made a hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath, on every side 38? God did so for Job, and he will do so for thee: He redeemeth thy life from the grave, and crowneth thee with mercy, and compassion". This is the compassing in heaven, when we come to be crowned there. But there is a compassing here, and an empaling of God's children, in St. Paul's co-operantur, When all things work together, for good, to them that love God. When prosperity and adversity, honour and disgrace, profit and loss, the Lord's giving and the Lord's taking, do all concur to the making up of this pale, that must compass us; when we acknowledge that there must be nails in the pale, as well as stakes, there must be thorns in the hedge, as well as fruit-trees; crosses as well as blessings; when we leer not over the pale, neither into the common; that is, to the Gentiles and nations, and begin to think, that we might be saved by the light of nature, without this burden of Christianity: nor leer over into the pastures, and corn of our neighbours; that is, to think, that we are not well in our own Church, but must needs hearken to the doctrine, or disci38 Job. i. 10. 37 Jer. xxix. 11. 40 Rom. viii. 28. pline of another; when we see all that comes, to come from God, and are content with that, then omnia co-operantur, every piece serves to the making up this pale, and his mercy compasses us about. This is the root of our three branches, the foundation of our three stories; the bag of our three sums, in this portion, mercy, compassing mercy; and then the branches themselves, the rooms, the sums are but these three words, expressing, and exalting one affection, Be glad, rejoice, and shout for joy; which joy, is first an inward love of the law of God, Thy testimonies have I taken as an heritage for ever, for they are the joy of my heart". It is not dant, but sunt, not that they bring joy, but that they are joy; there is no other joy but the delight in the law of the Lord: for all other joy, the wise king said, Of laughter, thou art mad, and of joy, what is this that thou dost 2? True joy is the earnest which we have of heaven, it is the treasure of the soul, and therefore should be laid in a safe place, and nothing in this world is safe to place it in: and therefore with the spouse we say, We will be glad in thee, we will remember thy love more than wine". Let others seek their joy in wine, in society, in conversation, in music; for me, Thou hast put gladness into my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased. Rejoice therefore in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice“: Again, that is, rejoice in the second manner of expressing it, by external declarations. Go cheerfully, and joyfully forward, in the works of your callings. Rejoice in the blessings of God without murmuring, or comparing with others. And establish thy joy so, in an honest, and religious manner of getting, that thy joy may descend to thine heir, as well as thy land. No land is so well fenced, no house so well furnished, as that, which hath this joy, this testimony of being well gotten. For, This thou knowest of old, since man was placed upon earth, that the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment “. And then the last degree is louder than this, Jubilate, Shout for joy; declare thy joy in the ears of other men. As the angels said to the shepherds, I bring you tidings of great joy, which 41 Psalm cxix. 111. 42 Eccles. ii. 2. 44 Phil. iv. 4. 43 Cant. i. 4. 45 Job xx. 4, 5. shall be unto all people, so be thou a cheerful occasion of glorifying God by thy joy. Declare his loving kindness unto the sons of men ; tell them what he hath done for thy soul, thy body, thy state. Say, With this staff came I over Jordan: be content to tell whose son thou wast, and how small thy beginning. Smother not God's blessings, by making thyself poor, when he who is truly poor, begs of thee, for that God's sake, who gave thee all that thou hast. Hold up a holy cheerfulness in thy heart; go on in a cheerful conversation; and let the world see, that all this grows out of a peace, betwixt God and thee, testified in the blessings of this world; and then thou art that person, and then thou hast that portion, which grows out of this root, in this text, mercy shall compass him about that trusteth in the Lord. SERMON LXII. PREACHED UPON THE PENITENTIAL PSALMS. PSALM LI. 7. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. In the records of the growth, and propagation of the Christian church, the ecclesiastical story, we have a relation of one Pambo, an unlearned, but devout, and humble hermit, who being informed of another man, more learned than himself, that professed the understanding, and teaching of the Book of Psalms, sought him out, and applied himself to him, to be his disciple. And taking his first lesson casually, at the first verse of the thirtyninth Psalm, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue, he went away with that lesson, with a promise to return again when he was perfect in that. And when he discontinued so long, that his master, sometimes occasionally lighting upon him, accused him of this slackness, for almost twenty years together he made several excuses, but at last professed, that at VOL. III. G the end of those twenty years, he was not yet perfect in his first lesson, in that one verse, I will take heed to my ways, that İ sin not with my tongue. Now, that which made this lesson hard unto him, was, that it employed all his diligence, and his watchfulness upon future things; to examine and debate all his actions, and all his words; for, else he did not take heed to his ways; at least, not so, as that he would not sin with his tongue. But if he had begun with this lesson, with this Psalm, which is but a calling to our memory that which is past, the sinful employment of that time, which is gone, and shall not return, the sinful heats of our youth, which, since we wanted remorseful tears to quench them, even the sin itself, and the excess thereof hath overcome, and allayed in us, sinful omissions, sinful actions, and habits, and all those transitory passages, in which the apostle shows us, our prodigality, our unthriftiness, our ill bargain, when he asks us that question of confusion, What fruit had you then in those things, whereof ye are now ashamed1? If he had begun his first lesson at this, with the presenting of all his passed sins, in the sight of the Father, and in the mediation and merit of the Son, he would have been sooner perfect in that lesson, and would have found himself, even by laying open his disease, so purged with hyssop as that he should have been clean, and so washed, as that he should have been whiter than snow. For, repentance of sins past is nothing but an audit, a casting up of our accounts, a consideration, a survey, how it stands between God and our soul. And yet, as many men run out of plentiful estates, only because they are loath to see a list of their debts, to take knowledge how much they are behind hand, or to contract their expenses: so we run out of a whole and rich inheritance, the kingdom of heaven, we profuse and pour out even our own soul, rather than we will cast our eye upon that which is past, rather than we will present a list of our spiritual debts to God, or discover our disease to that physician, who only can purge us with hyssop, that we may be clean, and wash us, that we may be whiter than snow. In the words we shall consider the person, and the action, who petitions, and what he asks. Both are twofold; for, the persons are two, the physician and the patient, God and David, do thou 1 Rom. vi. 21. |