dilemma, to think that either your understandings or your consciences are very bad. If, indeed, you so little know a good cause from a bad, then it must needs tempt men to think you very unskillful in your profession. The seldom and smaller differences of divines, in a more sublime and mysterious profession, is yet a discovery so far of their ignorance, and is imputed to their disgrace. But when almost every cause, even the worst that comes to the bar, shall have some of you for it, and some against it, and in the most palpable cases you are some on one side, and some on the other, the strange difference of your judgments doth seem to betray their weakness. But if you know the causes to be bad which you defend, and to be good which you oppose, it more evidently betrays a deplorable conscience. I speak not of ycur innocent or excusable mistakes in cases of great difficulty; nor yet of excusing a cause bad in the main from unjust aggravations: but when money will hire you to plead for injustice against your own knowledge, and to use your wits to defraud the righteous, and spoil his cause, or vex him with delays, for the advantage of your own unrighteous client, I would not have your conscience for all your gains, nor your account to make for all the world. It is sad, that any known unrighteous cause should have a professed Christian, in the face of a Christian judicature, to defend it, and Satan should plead by the tongues of men so deeply engaged to Christ: but it is incomparably more sad that almost every unjust cause should find a patron; and no contentious, malicious person should be more ready to do wrong, than some lawyers to defend him, or a (dearbought) fee! Did you honestly obey God, and speak not a word against your judgment, but leave every unjust man to defend his own cause, what peace would it bring to your consciences; what honor to your now reproached profession; what relief to the oppressed; and what an excellent cure to the troublesome contentions of proud or malicious men !

3. To your juries and witnesses I shall say but this: You also are not your own; and he that owneth you hath told you, “That he will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." It is much into your hands that the law hath committed the cause of the just should you betray it by perjury and false witnesses, while there is a conscience in your guilty breast, and a God in heaven, you shall not want a witness of your sin, or a revenger of the oppressed, if the blood of Christ on your sound repentance do not

rescue you.

4. If plaintiff and defendant did well consider that they are not their own, they would not be too prone to quarrels, but would lose their right, when God, the chief proprietor, did require it. Why

do you not rather take wrong, and suffer yourselves to be defrauded, than to wrong and defraud, and that your brethren? 1 Cor. vi. 7-9.

To conclude: I earnestly entreat you all, that have heard me this day, that, when you go home, you will betake yourselves to a sober consideration of the claim that God hath laid to you, and the right he hath in you, and all that you have; and resolve, without any further delay, to give him his own; and give it not to his enemies and yours. When you see the judgment set and the prisoners waiting to receive their sentence, remember with what inconceivable glory and terror your Judge will shortly come to demand his due; and what an inquiry must be made into the tenor of your lives! As you see the eclipsed sun withdraw its light,* so remember how before this dreadful final judgment, the sun and moon, and the whole frame of nature, shall be dissolved! And how God will withdraw the light of his countenance from those that have neglected him in the day of their visitation! As ever you would be his, then see that you be his now; own him as your absolute Lord, if you expect he should own you then as his people. Woe to you that ever you were born! if you put God then to distrain you for his due, and to take that up in your punishment, which you denied to give him in voluntary obedience. You would all be his in the time of your extremity; then you cry to him as your God for deliverance. Hear him now, if you would then be heard live to him now, and live with him forever. A Popish priest can persuade multitudes of men and women to renounce the very possession of worldly goods, and the exercise of their outward callings, in a mistaken devotedness to God. May not I, then, hope to prevail with you to devote yourselves, with the fruit of your callings and possessions, to his unquestionable service? Will the Lord of mercy but fasten these persuasions upon your hearts, and cause them to prevail, what a happy day will this prove to us! God will have his own, the church will have your utmost help, the souls of those about you will have the fruit of your diligence and good examples, the commonwealth will have the fruit of your fidelity, the poor will have the benefit of your charity, I shall have the desired end of my labor, and yourselves will have the great and everlasting gain.

This sermon was preached at the time of the eclipse.

CHRISTIAN READER,

WHEN I had resolved, at the desire of the Honorable Judge of Assize, to publish the foregoing sermon, I remembered that, about six years before, I had preached another on the like occasion, on a subject so like, and to so like a purpose, that I conceived it not unfit to be annexed to the former. I have endeavored to show you, in both these sermons, that Christ may be preached without Antinomianism; that terror may be preached without unwarrantable preaching the law; that the gospel is not a mere promise, and that the law is not so terrible as it is to the rebellious; as also what that superstructure is, which is built on the foundation of general redemption rightly understood; and how ill we can preach Christ's dominion in his universal propriety and sovereignty, or yet persuade men to sanctification and subjection, without this foundation. I have labored to fit all, or almost all, for matter and manner, to the capacity of the vulgar. And though, for the matter, it is as necessary to the greatest, yet it is for the vulgar, principally, that I publish it; and had rather it might be numbered with those books which are carried up and down the country from door to door in pedlers' packs, than with those that lie on booksellers' stalls, or are set up in the libraries of learned divines. And to the same use would I design the most of my published labors, should God afford me time and ability, and contentious brethren give me leave. RICHARD BAXTER.

August 7, 1654.

A SERMON

OF THE

ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY OF CHRIST;

AND THE

NECESSITY OF MAN'S SUBJECTION, DEPENDENCE, AND CHIEFEST LOVE TO HIM.

PREACHED BEFORE THE JUDGES OF ASSIZE AT WORCESTER.

PSALM ii. 10, 11, 12.

BE WISE NOW, THEREFORE, O YE KINGS; BE INSTRUCTED, YE JUDGĖS OF THE EARTH. SERVE THE LORD WITH fear, anD REJOICE WITH TREMBLING, &c.

To waste this precious hour in an invective against injustice and its associates, is none of my purpose; they are sins so directly against the principles in nature, so well known, I believe, to you all, and so commonly preached against upon these occasions, that, upon the penalty of forfeiting the credit of my discretion, I am bound to make choice of a more necessary subject. What! Have we need to spend our time and studies to persuade Christians from bribery, perjury, and oppression; and from licking up the vomit which pagans have cast out? And that in an age of blood and desolation, when God is taking the proudest oppressors by the throats, and raising monuments of justice upon the ruins of the unjust? And I would fain believe that no corrupt lawyers do attend your judicatures, and that Jezebel's witnesses dwell not in our country, nor yet jury that fear not an oath. I have therefore chosen another subject, which, being of the greatest moment, can never be unseasonable; even to proclaim him who is constituted the King and Judge of all, to acquaint you with his pleasure, and to demand your subjection.

The chief scope of the Psalm is, to foretell the extent and prevalency of the kingdom of Christ, admonishing his enemies to submit to his government, deriding the vanity of their opposing pro

jects and fury, and forewarning them of their ruin if they come not in.

The verses which I have read are the application of the foregoing prediction, by a serious admonition to the proudest offenders: they contain, 1. The persons admonished, "kings and judges." 2. Their duty: 1. In general to God, "serve him;" with the adjuncts annexed: 1. Rejoicing. 2. Fear and trembling. 2. More especially their duty to the Son, "kiss him." 3. The motives to this duty. 1. Principally and directly expressed, "lest he be angry," which anger is set forth by the effect, "and ye perish;" which perishing is aggravated, 1. From the suddenness and unexpectedness, in the way." 2. From the dreadfulness, "kindled." 1. It is fire, and will kindle and burn. 2. A little of it will produce this sad effect. 3. It will be woe to those that do not escape it; which woe is set forth by the contrary happiness of those that by submission do escape. 2. The motives subservient and implied are in the monitory words, "be wise, be learned," q. d. else you will show and prove yourselves men of ignorance and madness, unlearned and unwise.

Some questions here we should answer for explication of the

terins: as,

1. Whether the Lord, in verse 11, and the Son, in verse 12, be both meant of Christ the Second Person?

2. Whether the anger here mentioned be the anger of the Father or the Son, "lest he be angry?" I might spend much time here to little purpose, in showing you the different judgment of divines of these, when in the issue there is no great difference, whichever way we take them.

3. What is meant by "kissing the Son?" I answer, According to its threefold object, it hath a threefold duty contained in it. 1. We kiss the feet in token of subjection; so must we kiss the Son. 2. We kiss the hand in token of dependence; so must we kiss the hand of Christ; that is, resign ourselves to him, and expect all our happiness and receivings from him.

3. We kiss the mouth in token of love and friendship; and so also must we kiss the Son.

4. What is meant by "perishing in the way?" I answer, (omitting the variety of interpretations,) It is their sudden unexpected perishing in the heat of their rage, and in pursuit of their designs against the kingdom of Christ.

I know no other terms of any great difficulty here.

Many observations might be hence raised: as,

1. Serving the Lord is the great work and business that the world hath to do.

2. This service should be accompanied with rejoicing.