the judgment of controversies, not of all, but of those which are
_controversiæ juris_, controversies of right; neither yet of all these,
but of the chief and most weighty controversies of the orthodox faith, or
of the most hard and unusual cases of conscience. Of the controversies of
fact there is another and different consideration to be had; for besides
that it would be a great inconvenience that plaintives, persons accused,
and witnesses, be drawn from the most remote churches to the general or
universal council, the visible communion itself of all the churches (on
which the universal council is built, and whereupon, as on a foundation,
it leaneth) is not so much of company, fellowship, or conversation, as of
religion and doctrine. All true churches of the world do indeed profess
the same true religion and faith, but there is beside this a certain
commixture and conjunction of the churches of the same nation, as to a
more near fellowship, and some acquaintance, conversing and companying
together, which cannot be said of all the churches throughout the
habitable world.
38. And for this cause, as in doctrinal controversies, which are handled
by theologists and casuists, and in those which belong to the common state
of the orthodox churches, the national synod is subordinate and subjected
to the universal lawfully-constituted synod, and from the national to the
oecumenical synod (when there is a just and weighty cause) an appeal is
open: so there is no need that the appeals of those who complain of injury
done to them through the exercise of discipline in this or that church,
should go beyond the bounds of the national synod; but it is most
agreeable to reason that they should rest and acquiesce within those
bounds and borders; and that the ultimate judgment of such mutters be in
the national synod, unless the thing itself be so hard and of so great
moment, that the knot be justly thought worthy of a greater decider; in
which case the controversy which is carried to the universal synod is
rather of an abstract general theological proposition than of the
particular or individual case.
39. Furthermore, the administration of the ecclesiastic power in
consistories, classes and synods, doth not at all tend to weaken in
anywise, hurt or diminish, the authority of the civil magistrate, much
less to take it away or destroy it; yea, rather, by it a most profitable
help cometh to the magistrate, forasmuch as by the bond of religion men’s
consciences are more straitly tied unto him. There has been, indeed,
fantastical men, who, under pretence and cloak of Christian liberty, would
abolish and cast out laws and judgments, orders also, degrees and honours,
out of the commonwealth, and have been bold to reckon the function of the
magistrate armed with the sword among evil things and unlawful: but the
reformed churches do renounce and detest these dreams, and do most
harmoniously and most willingly confess and acknowledge it to be God’s
will that the world be governed by laws and policy, and that he himself
hath appointed the civil magistrate, and hath delivered to him the sword
to the protection and praise of good men, but for punishment and revenge
on the evil, that by this bridle, men’s vices and faults may be
restrained, whether these are committed against the first or second table.
40. The reformed churches believe also, and openly confess, the power and
authority of emperors over their empires, of kings over their kingdoms, of
princes and dukes over their dominions, and of other magistrates or states
over their commonwealths and cities, to be the ordinances of God himself
appointed as well to the manifestation of his own glory, as to the
singular profit of mankind: and withal, that by reason of the will of God
himself, revealed in his word, we must not only suffer and be content that
those do rule which are set over their own territories, whether by
hereditary or by elective right, but also to love them, fear them, and
with all reverence and honour embrace them as the ambassadors and
ministers of the most high and good God, being in his stead, and preferred
for the good of their subjects, to pour out prayers for them, to pay
tributes to them, and in all business of the commonwealth which is not
against the word of God, to obey their laws and edicts.
41. The orthodox churches believe also, and do willingly acknowledge, that
every lawful magistrate, being by God himself constituted the keeper and
defender of both tables of the law, may and ought first and chiefly to
take care of God’s glory, and (according to his place, or in his manner
and way) to preserve religion when pure, and to restore it when decayed
and corrupted: and also to provide a learned and godly ministry, schools
also and synods, as likewise to restrain and punish as well atheists,
blasphemers, heretics and schismatics, as the violaters of justice and
civil peace.
42. Wherefore the opinion of those sectaries of this age is altogether to
be disallowed, who, though otherwise insinuating themselves craftily into
the magistrate’s favour, do deny unto him the authority and right of
restraining heretics and schismatics, and do hold and maintain that such
persons, how much soever hurtful and pernicious enemies to true religion
and to the church, yet are to be tolerated by the magistrate, if so be he
conceive them to be such as no way violate the laws of the commonwealth,
and in nowise disturb the civil peace.
43. Yet the civil power and the ecclesiastical ought not by any means to
be confounded or mixed together. Both powers are indeed from God, and
ordained for his glory, and both to be guided by his word, and both are
comprehended under that precept, “Honour thy father and thy mother,” so
that men ought to obey both civil magistrates and ecclesiastical governors
in the Lord; to both powers their proper dignity and authority is to be
maintained and preserved in force: to both also is some way intrusted the
keeping of both tables of the law, also both the one and the other doth
exercise some jurisdiction, and giveth sentence of judgment in an external
court or judicatory: but these and other things of like sort, in which
they agree notwithstanding, yet by marvellous vast differences are they
distinguished the one from the other, and the rights of both remain
distinct, and that eight manner of ways, which it shall not be amiss here
to add, that unto each of these administrations, its own set bounds may be
the better maintained.
44. _First_, therefore, they are differenced the one from the other, in
respect of the very foundation and the institution: for the political or
civil power is grounded upon the law of nature itself, and for that cause
it is common to infidels with Christians; the power ecclesiastical
dependeth immediately upon the positive law of Christ alone: that
belongeth to the universal dominion of God the Creator over all nations;
but this unto the special and economical kingdom of Christ the Mediator,
which he exerciseth in the church alone, and which is not of this world.
45. The _second_ difference is in the object, or matter about which: the
power politic or civil is occupied about the outward man, and civil or
earthly things,—about war, peace, conservation of justice, and good order
in the commonwealth; also about the outward business or external things of
the church, which are indeed necessary to the church, or profitable, as
touching the outward man, yet not properly and purely spiritual, for they
do not reach unto the soul, but only to the external state and condition
of the ministers and members of the church.
46. For the better understanding whereof it is to be observed, that so far
as the ministers and members of the church are citizens, subjects, or
members of the commonwealth, it is in the power of the magistrate to
judge, determine, and give sentence, concerning the disposing of their
bodies or goods; as also concerning the maintenance of the poor, the sick,
the banished, and of others in the church who are afflicted; to regulate
(so far as concerneth the civil order) marriages, burials, and other
circumstances which are common both to holy, and also to honest civil
societies; to afford places fit for holy assemblies, and other external
helps by which the sacred matters of the Lord may be more safely,
commodiously, and more easily in the church performed, to remove the
external impediments of divine worship or of ecclesiastical peace, and to
repress those who exalt themselves against the true church and her
ministers, and do raise up trouble against them.
47. The matter may further be thus illustrated, there is almost the like
respect and consideration of the magistrate as he is occupied about the
outward things of the church, and of the ecclesiastic ministry as it is
occupied about the inward or spiritual part of civil government, that is,
about those things which in the government of the commonwealth belong to
the conscience. It is one thing to govern the commonwealth, and to make
political and civil laws, another thing to interpret the word of God, and
out of it to show the magistrate his duty, to wit, how he ought to govern
the commonwealth, and in what manner he ought to use the sword. The former
is proper and peculiar to the magistrate (neither doth the ministry
intermeddle or entangle itself into such businesses), but the latter is
contained within the office of the ministers.
48. For to that end also in the holy Scripture profitable, to show which
is the best manner of governing a commonwealth, and that the magistrate,
as being God’s minister, may by this guiding star be so directed, as that
he may execute the parts of his office according to the will of God, and
may perfectly be instructed to every good work; yet the minister is not
said properly to treat of civil businesses, but of the scandals which
arise about them, or in the cases of conscience which occur in the
administration of the commonwealth, so also the magistrate is not properly
said to be exercised about the spiritual things of the church, but rather
about those external things which adhere unto and accompany the spiritual
things.
49. And in such external matters of the church, although all magistrates
will not, yet all, yea even heathen magistrates, may and ought to aid and
help the church: whence it is that by the command of God prayers are to be
made also for an heathen magistrate, that the faithful under them may live
a quiet life, with all godliness and honesty, 1 Tim. ii. 1, 2.
50. Unto the external things of the church belongeth, not only the
correction of heretics and other troublers of the church, but also that
civil order and way of convocating and calling together synods which is
proper to the magistrate; for the magistrate ought by his authority and
power both to establish the rights and liberties of synods assembling
together at times appointed by the known and received law, and to indict
and gather together synods occasionally, as often as the necessity of the
church shall require the same. Not that all or any power to consult or
determine of ecclesiastic or spiritual matters doth flow or spring from
the magistrate as head of the church under Christ, but because in those
things pertaining to the outward man, the church needeth the magistrate’s
aid and support.
51. So that the magistrate calleth together synods, not as touching those
things which are proper to synods, but in respect of the things which are
common to synods with other meetings and civil public assemblies, that is,
not as they are assemblies in the name of Christ, to treat of matters
spiritual, but as they are public assemblies within his territories; for
to the end that public conventions may be kept in any territory, the
license of the lord of that place ought to be desired. In synods,
therefore, a respect of order, as well civil as ecclesiastical, is to be
had; and because of this civil order, outward defence, better
accommodation, together with safe access and recess, the consent and
commandment of him who is appointed to take care of, and defend human
order, doth intervene.
52. Moreover, when the church is rent asunder by unhappy and lamentable
schisms, while they who have raised the troubles, and given cause for the
solemn gathering of a synod (whether by their heresy, or schism, or
tyranny, or any other fault of others), use to place the great strength
and safeguard of their cause in declining and fleeing the trial and
sentence of a free synod as being formidable to them, who seeth not that
they cannot be drawn to a public and judicial trial, nor other disobedient
persons be compelled to obedience, without the magistrate’s public mandate
and help.
53. The object of ecclesiastical power is not the same with the object of
the civil power, but much differing from it; for the ecclesiastical power
doth determine and appoint nothing concerning men’s bodies, goods,
dignities, civil rights, but is employed only about the inward man or the
soul; not that it can search the hearts or judge of the secrets of the
conscience, which is in the power of God alone: yet notwithstanding it
hath for its proper object those externals which are purely spiritual, and
do belong properly and most nearly to the spiritual good of the soul;
which also are termed τὰ εἴσα τῆς ἐκκλησίας, _the inward things of the
church_.
54. Those things, then, wherein the ecclesiastical power is exercised, are
the preaching of the word, the administration of sacraments, public prayer
and thanksgiving, the catechising and instructing of children and ignorant
persons, the examination of those who are to come to the holy communion,
the ecclesiastical discipline, the ordination of ministers, and the
abdication, deposing, and degrading of them (if they become like unsavoury
salt), the deciding and determining of controversies of faith and cases of
conscience, canonical constitutions concerning the treasury of the church
and collections of the faithful, as also concerning ecclesiastical rites
or indifferent things which pertain to the keeping of decency and order in
the church, according to the general rules of Christian love and prudence
contained in the word of God.
55. It is true that about the same things the civil power is occupied, as
touching the outward man, or the outward disposing of divine things in
this or that dominion, as was said, not as they are spiritual and
evangelical ordinances piercing into the conscience itself, but the object
of the power ecclesiastical is a thing merely and purely spiritual; and in
so far as it is spiritual (for even that jurisdiction ecclesiastical which
is exercised in an outward court or judicatory, and which inflicteth
public censures, forbiddeth from the use of the holy supper, and excludeth
from the society of the church) doth properly concern the inward man, or
the repentance and salvation of the soul.
56. Surely the faithful and godly ministers, although they could do it
unchallenged and uncontrolled, and were therein allowed by the magistrate
(as in the prelatical times it was) yet would not usurp the power of life
and death, or judge and determine concerning men’s honours, goods,
inheritance, division of families, or other civil businesses, seeing they
well know these things to be heterogeneous to their office; but as they
ought not to entangle themselves with the judging of civil causes, so if
they should be negligent and slothful in their own office, they shall in
that be no less culpable.
57. To the object also of ecclesiastical power belongeth the assembling of
synods, so far as they are spiritual assemblies proper to the church, and
assembled in the Holy Ghost; for being so considered, the governors of
churches, after the example of the apostles and presbyters, Acts xv., in a
manifest danger of the church, ought to use their own right of meeting
together and convening, that the churches endangered may be relieved and
supported.
58. _Thirdly_, These powers are differenced in respect of their forms, and
that three ways: for, first, the civil power, although in respect of God
it be ministerial, yet in respect of the subjects it is lordly and
magisterial. Ecclesiastical power is indeed furnished with authority, yet
that authority is liker the fatherly than the kingly authority; yea also
it is purely ministerial, much less can it be lawful to ministers of the
church to bear dominion over the flock.
59. Emperors, kings, and other magistrates are indeed appointed fathers of
the country, but they are withal lords of their people and subjects: not
as if it were permitted to them to bear rule and command at their own will
and as they list (for they are the ministers of God for the good and
profit of the subjects), yet it belongs to their power truly and properly
to exercise dominion, to hold principality, to proceed imperiously. It is
indeed the duty of ministers and rulers of the church to oversee, to feed
as shepherds, to correct and rectify, to bear the keys, to be stewards in
the house of Christ, but in nowise to be lords over the house, or to
govern as lords, or lord-like to rule; yea, in brief, this is the
difference between the civil magistrate and the ecclesiastical ministry,
in respect of those who are committed to their trust, that the lot of the
former is to be served or ministered unto, the lot of the latter to
minister or serve.
60. Now we have one only Lord who governs our souls, neither is it
competent to man, but to God alone, to have power and authority over
consciences. But the Lord hath appointed his own stewards over his own
family, that according to his commandment they may give to every one their
allowance or portion, and to dispense his mysteries faithfully; and to
them he hath delivered the keys, or power of letting into his house, or
excluding out of his house those whom he himself will have let in or shut
out. Matt. xvi. 19; and xviii. 18; Luke xii. 42; 1 Cor. iv. 1; Tit. i. 7.
61. Next, the civil power is endued with authority of compelling; but it
belongs not to the ministry to compel the disobedient. If any compulsion
be in or about ecclesiastical matters, it is adventitious from without, to
wit, from the help and assistance of the magistrate, not from the nature
of ecclesiastical power, from which it is very heterogeneous; and,
therefore, if any suspended or excommunicate person should be found who
shall be so stiff-necked, and so impudent, that at once he cast off all
shame, and make no account at all of those censures, but scorn and contemn
the same, or peradventure shall insolently or proudly obtrude himself upon
the sacrament, or being also filled with devilish malice do more and more
contradict and blaspheme, the ecclesiastical ministry in such cases hath
nothing more to do by way of jurisdiction: but the magistrate hath in
readiness a compelling jurisdiction and external force, whereby such
stubborn, rebellious, and undaunted pride may be externally repressed.
62. Last of all, the power of the magistrate worketh only politically or
civilly, according to the nature of the sceptre or sword, maketh and
guardeth civil laws, which sometimes also he changeth or repealeth, and
other things of that kind he effecteth with a secular power: but the
ecclesiastical power dealeth spiritually, and only in the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and by authority intrusted or received from him alone:
neither is exercised without prayer or calling on the name of God; nor,
lastly, doth it use any other than spiritual weapons.
63. The same sin, therefore, in the same man may be punished one way by
the civil, another way by the ecclesiastical power; by the civil power
under the formality of a crime, with corporal or pecuniary punishment, by
the ecclesiastical power, under the notion and nature of scandal, with a
spiritual censure, even as also the same civil question is one way
deliberate upon and handled by the magistrate in the senate or place of
judgment, another way by the minister of the church, in the presbytery or
synod; by the magistrate, so far as it pertaineth to the government of the
commonwealth, by the minister, as far as it respects the conscience; for
the ecclesiastical ministry also is exercised about civil things
spiritually, in so far as it teacheth and admonisheth the magistrate out
of the word of God what is best and most acceptable unto God; or as it
reproveth freely unjust judgments, unjust wars, and the like, and out of
the Scripture threateneth the wrath of God to be revealed against all
unrighteousness of men: so also is the magistrate said to be occupied
civilly about spiritual things.
64. Therefore all the actions of the civil magistrate, even when he is
employed about ecclesiastical matters, are of their own nature and
essentially civil, he punisheth externally idolaters, blasphemers,
sacrilegious persons, heretics, profaners of holy things, and according to
the nature and measure of the sin he condemneth to death or banishment,
forfeiture of goods, or imprisonment; he guardeth and underproppeth
ecclesiastical canons with civil authority, giveth a place of habitation
to the church in his territory, restraineth or expelleth the insolent and
untamed disturbers of the church.
65. He taketh care also for maintaining the ministers and schools, and
supplieth the temporal necessities of God’s servants; by his command
assembleth synods, when there is need of them; and summoneth, calleth out,
and draws to trial the unwilling, which without the magistrate’s strength
and authority cannot be done, as hath been already said; he maketh synods
also safe and secure, and in a civil way presideth or moderateth in them
(if it seem so good to him) either by himself or by a substitute
commissioner: in all which the power of the magistrate, though occupied
about spiritual things, is not for all that spiritual, but civil.
66. _Fourthly_, They differ in the end. The immediate nearest end of civil
power is, that the good of the commonwealth may be provided for and
procured, whether it be, in time of peace, according to the rules of law
and counsel of judges, or in time of war, according to the rules of
military prudence, and so the temporal safety of the subjects may be
procured, and that external peace and civil liberty may be preserved, and,
being lost, may be again restored.
67. But the chiefest and last end of civil government is, the glory of God
the Creator, namely, that those who do evil, being by a superior power
restrained or punished, and those who do good getting praise of the same,
the subjects so much the more may shun impiety and injustice, and that
virtue, justice, and the moral law of God (as touching those eternal
duties of both tables, unto which all the posterity of Adam are obliged)
may remain in strength and flourish.
68. But whereas the Christian magistrate doth wholly devote himself to the
promoting of the gospel and kingdom of Christ, and doth direct and bend
all the might and strength of his authority to that end: this proceedeth
not from the nature of his office or function, which is common to him with
an infidel magistrate, but from the influence of his common Christian
calling into his particular vocation.
69. For every member of the church (and so also the faithful and godly
magistrate) ought to refer and order his particular vocation, faculty,
ability, power and honour, to this end, that the kingdom of Christ may be
propagated and promoted, and the true religion be cherished and defended:
so that the advancement of the gospel, and of all the ordinances of the
gospel, is indeed the end of the godly magistrate, not of a magistrate
simply: or (if ye will rather) it is not the end of the office itself, but
of him who doth execute the same piously.
70. But the end of ecclesiastical power, yea, the end as well of the
ministry itself as of the godly minister, is, that the kingdom of Christ
may be set forward; that the paths of the Lord be made straight; that his
holy mysteries may be kept pure; that stumblingblocks may be removed out
of the church, lest a little leaven leaven the whole lump, or lest one
sick or scabbed sheep infect the whole flock; that the faithful may so
walk as it becometh the gospel of Christ, and that the wandering sheep of
Christ may be converted and brought back to the sheepfold.
71. And seeing this power is given of the Lord not to destruction but to
edification, therefore this same scope is propounded in excommunication
(which is the greatest and last of ecclesiastical censures), namely, that
the soul of an offending brother may be gained to Christ, and that, being
stricken with fear, and the stubborn sinner filled with shame, may by the
grace of God be humbled, and may (as a brand plucked out of the fire) be
snatched out of the snare of the devil, and may repent unto salvation; at
least the rest may turn away from those which are branded with such a
censure, lest the soul-infection do creep and spread further.
72. _Fifthly_, They are distinguished by the effect. The effect of civil
power is either proper, or by way of redundance. The proper effect is the
safety temporal of the commonwealth, external tranquillity, the fruition
of civil liberty, and of all things which are necessary to the civil
society of men: the effect by way of redundance is the good of the church,
to wit, in so far as, by execution of justice and good laws, some
impediments that usually hinder and disturb the course of the gospel, are
avoided or taken away.
73. For by how much the more faithfully the magistrate executeth his
office in punishing the wicked, and cherishing and encouraging good men,
taking away those things which withstand the gospel, and punishing or
driving away the troublers and subverters of the church,—so much the more
the orthodox faith and godliness are reverenced and had in
estimation,—sins are hated and feared. Finally, All the subjects contained
(as much as concerneth the outward man) within the lists of God’s law,
whence, also, by consequence, it happeneth, by God’s blessing, that the
church is defiled with fewer scandals, and doth obtain the more freedom
and peace.
74. But the proper effect of the ecclesiastical power, or keys of the
kingdom of heaven is wholly spiritual; for the act of binding and loosing,
of retaining and remitting sins, doth reach to the soul and conscience
itself (which cannot be said of the act of the civil power): and as unjust
excommunication is void, so ecclesiastical censure, being inflicted by the
ministers of Christ and his stewards according to his will, is ratified in
heaven (Matt, xviii. 18), and therefore ought to be esteemed and
acknowledged in like manner as inflicted by Christ himself.
75. _Sixthly_, They are also differenced in respect of the subjects. The
politic power is committed sometimes to one, sometimes to more, sometime
by right of election, sometime by right of succession; but the
ecclesiastical power is competent to none under the New Testament by the
right of succession, but he who hath it must be called by God and the
church to it; neither was it given by Christ to one, either pastor or
elder, much less to a prelate, but _to the church_, that is, to the
consistory of presbyters. It is confessed, indeed, and who can be ignorant
of it, that the power, as they call it, of order, doth belong to
particular ministers, and is by each of them apart lawfully exercised. But
that power which is commonly called of jurisdiction is committed not to
one, but to the unity, that is, to a consistory; therefore ecclesiastical
censure ought not to be inflicted but “by many,” 2 Cor. ii. 6.
76. _Seventhly_, They differ as touching the correlative. God hath
commanded, that unto the civil power every soul, or all members of the
commonwealth, of what condition and estate soever, be subject; for what
have we to do with the Papists, who will have them whom they call the
clergy or ecclesiastical persons, to be free from the yoke of the civil
magistrate? The ecclesiastical power extends itself to none other subjects
than unto those which are called brethren, or members of the church.
77. _Eighthly_, There remaineth another difference in respect of the
distinct and divided exercise of authority, for either power ceasing from
its duty, or remitting punishment, that doth not (surely it ought not)
prejudice the exercise of the other power, namely, if the magistrate cease
to do his duty, or do neglect to punish, with secular punishment, those
malefactors who, by profession, are church members nevertheless, it is in
the power of the governors of the church, by the bridle of ecclesiastical
discipline, to curb such men; yea also, by virtue of their office, they
are bound to do it, and on the other part, the magistrate may and ought to
punish in life and limb, honours or goods, notwithstanding of the
offender’s repentance or reconciliation with the church.
78. Therefore, the one sword being put up in the scabbard, it is free, and
often necessary, to draw the other. Neither power is bound to cast out or
receive him whom the other doth cast forth or receive the reason whereof
is, because the ecclesiastical ministry doth chiefly respect the
repentance to salvation, and gaining of the sinner’s soul, wherefore it
also embraceth all kinds of wicked men repenting, and receiveth them into
the bosom of the church; the magistrate proposeth to himself another and
much differing scope, for even repenting offenders are by him punished,
both that justice and the laws may be satisfied, as also to terrify
others,—hence it is that absolution from ecclesiastic censure freeth not
at all the delinquent from civil judgment and the external sword.
79. Seeing, then, there are so many and so great differences of both
offices, and seeing also that the function of ministers and elders of the
church is not at all contained in the office of the magistrate, neither,
on the other part, is this comprehended within that, magistrates shall no
less sin in usurping ecclesiastical power, ministering holy things,
ordaining ministers, or exercising discipline ecclesiastical, than
ministers should sin in rushing into the borders of the magistrate, and in
thrusting themselves into his calling.
80. Neither are those powers more mingled one with another, or less
distinguished, where the magistrate is a Christian than where he is an
infidel, for as in a believing father, and in an infidel father, the
rights of a father are the same, so in a Christian magistrate, and in an
infidel magistrate, the rights of magistrates are the same; so that to the
magistrate converted to the Christian faith there is no accession of new
right, or increase of civil power, although being endued with true faith
and piety, he is made more fit and willing to the undergoing of his office
and the doing of his duty.
81. So, then, the word of God and the law of Christ, which by so evident
difference separateth and distinguisheth ecclesiastical government from
the civil, forbiddeth the Christian magistrate to enter upon or usurp the
ministry of the word and sacraments, or the judicial dispensing of the
keys of the kingdom of heaven, to invade the church government, or to
challenge to himself the right of both swords, spiritual and corporal; but
if any magistrate (which God forbid) should dare to arrogate to himself so
much, and to enlarge his skirts so far, the church shall then straightway
be constrained to complain justly, and cry out, that though the Pope is
changed, yet popedom remaineth still.
82. It is unlawful, moreover, to a Christian magistrate to withstand the
practice and execution of ecclesiastical discipline (whether it be that
which belongs to a particular church, or the matter be carried to a class
or synod). Now the magistrate withstandeth the ecclesiastic discipline,
either by prohibitions and unjust laws, or, by his evil example, stirring
up and inciting others to the contempt thereof, or to the trampling it
under foot.
83. Surely the Christian magistrate (if at any time he give any grievous
scandal to the church), seeing he also is a member of the church, ought
nowise disdain to submit himself to the power of the keys; neither is this
to be marvelled at, for even as the office of the minister of the church
is nowise subordinate and subjected to the civil power, but the person of
the minister, as he is a member of the commonwealth, is subject thereto,
so the civil power itself, or the magistrate, as a magistrate, is not
subjected to ecclesiastical power; yet that man, who is a magistrate,
ought (as he is a member of the church) to be under the church’s censure
of his manners, after the example of the emperor Theodosius, unless he
will despise and set at nought ecclesiastical discipline, and indulge the
swelling pride of the flesh.
84. If any man should again object that the magistrate is not indeed to
resist ecclesiastical government, yet that the abuses thereof are to be
corrected and taken away by him, the answer is ready. In the worst and
most troublesome times, or in the decayed and troubled estate of things,
when the ordinance of God in the church is violently turned into tyranny,
to the treading down of true religion, and to the oppressing of the
professors thereof, and when nothing almost is sound or whole, divers
things are yielded to be lawful to godly magistrates, which are not
ordinarily lawful for them, that so to extraordinary diseases
extraordinary remedies may be applied. So also the magistrate abusing his
power unto tyranny, and making havoc of all, it is lawful to resist him by
some extraordinary ways and means, which are not ordinarily to be allowed.
85. Yet ordinarily, and by common or known law and right in settled
churches, if any man have recourse to the magistrate to complain, that,
through abuse of ecclesiastical discipline, injury is done to him, or if
any sentence of the pastors and elders of the church, whether concerning
faith or discipline, do displease or seem unjust unto the magistrate
himself, it is not for that cause lawful to draw those ecclesiastical
causes to a civil tribunal, or to bring in a kind of political or civil
popedom.
86. What then? Shall it be lawful ordinarily for ministers and elders to
do what they list? Or shall the governors in the churches, glorying in the
law, by their transgression dishonour God? God forbid. For first, if they
shall trespass in anything against the magistrate or municipal laws,
whether by intermeddling in judging of civil causes, or otherwise
disturbing the peace and order of the commonwealth, they are liable to
civil trial and judgments, and it is in the power of the magistrate to
restrain and punish them.
87. Again, it hath been before showed, that to ecclesiastical evils
ecclesiastical remedies are appointed and fitted, for the church is, no
less than the commonwealth, through the grace of God, sufficient to itself
in reference unto her own end, and as in the commonwealth, so in the
church, the error of inferior judgments and assemblies, or their evil
government, is to be corrected by superior judgments and assemblies, and
so still by them of the same order, lest one order be confounded with
another, or one government be intermingled with another government. What
shall now the adversaries of ecclesiastical power object here, which those
who admit not the yoke of the magistrate may not be ready, in like manner,
to transfer against the civil judicatories and government of the
commonwealth, seeing it happeneth sometimes that the commonwealth is no
less ill governed than the church?
88. If any man shall prosecute the argument, and say that yet no remedy is
here showed which may be applied to the injustice or error of a national
synod, surely he stumbleth against the same stone, seeing he weigheth not
the matter with an equal balance, for the same may, in like sort, fall
back and be cast upon parliaments, or any supreme senate of a
commonwealth, for who seeth not the judgment of the supreme civil senate
to be nothing more infallible, yea, also, in matters of faith and
ecclesiastical discipline, more apt and prone to error (as being less
accustomed to sacred studies) than the judgment of the national synod?
What medicines then, or what sovereign plasters shall be had, which may be
fit for the curing and healing of the errors and miscarriages of the
supreme magistrates and senate? The very like, and beside all this, other
and more effectual medicines by which the errors of national synods may be
healed, are possible to be had.
89. There wanteth not a divine medicine and sovereign balm in Gilead, for
although the popish opinion of the infallibility of counsels be worthily
rejected and exploded, yet it is not in vain that Christ hath promised he
shall be present with an assembly which indeed and in truth meeteth in his
name with such an assembly verily he useth to be present, by a spiritual
aid and assistance of his own Spirit, to uphold the falling, or to raise
up the fallen. Whence it is that divers times the errors of former synods
are discovered and amended by the latter; sometimes, also, the second or
afterthoughts of one and the same synod are the wiser and the better.
90. Furthermore, the line of ecclesiastical subordination is longer and
further stretched than the line of civil subordination; for a national
synod must be subordinate and subject to an universal synod in the manner
aforesaid, whereas yet there is no oecumenical parliament or general civil
court acknowledged, unto which the supreme civil senate in this or that
nation should be subject. Finally, neither is the church altogether
destitute of nearer remedies whether an universal council may be had or
not.
91. For the national synod ought to declare, and that with greatest
reverence, to the magistrate, the grounds of their sentence, and the
reasons of their proceedings, when he demandeth or inquireth into the
same, and desireth to be satisfied; but if the magistrate nevertheless do
dissent, or cannot, by contrary reasons (which may be brought, if he
please), move the synod to alter their judgment, yet may he require and
procure that the matter be again debated and canvassed in another national
synod, and so the reasons of both sides being thoroughly weighed, may be
lawfully determined in an ecclesiastical way.
92. But as there is much indeed to be given to the demand of the
magistrate, so is there here a twofold caution to be used, for, first,
notwithstanding of a future revision, it is necessary that the former
sentence of the synod, whether concerning the administration of
ecclesiastical discipline, or against any heresy, be forthwith put in
execution, lest by lingering, and making of delays, the evil of the church
take deeper root, and the gangrene spread and creep further; and lest
violence be done to the consciences of ministers, if they be constrained
to impart the signs and seals of the covenant of grace to dogs and swine,
that is, to unclean persons, wallowing in the mire of ungodliness; and
lest subtile men abuse such interims or intervals, so as that
ecclesiastical discipline altogether decay, and the very decrees of synods
be accounted as cobwebs, which none feareth to break down.
93. Next it may be granted that the matter may be put under a further
examination, yet upon condition, that when it is come to the revision of
the former sentence, regard may be had of the weaker which are found
willing to be taught, though they doubt; but that unto the wicked and
contentious tempters, which do mainly strive to oppress our liberty which
we have in Christ, and to bring us into bondage, we do not for a moment
give place by subjecting ourselves; for what else seek they or wait for,
than that, under the pretence of a revising and of new debate, they cast
in lets and impediments ever and anon, and that by cunning lyings in wait
they may betray the liberty of the church, and in process of time may, by
open violence, more forcibly break in upon it, or at least constrain the
ministers of the church to weave Penelope’s web, which they can never
bring to an end.
94. Moreover, the Christian magistrate hath then only discharged his
office in reference to ecclesiastical discipline, when not only he
withdraweth nothing from it, and maketh no impediment to it, but also
affordeth special furtherance and help to it, according to the prophecy,
Isa. xlix. 23, “And kings shall be thy nursing-fathers, and their queens
thy nursing-mothers.”
95. For Christian magistrates and princes, embracing Christ, and sincerely
giving their names to him, do not only serve him as men, but also use
their office to his glory and the good of the church; they defend, stand
for, and take care to propagate the true faith and godliness,—they afford
places of habitation to the church, and furnish necessary helps and
supports,—turn away injuries done to it,—restrain false religion,—and
cherish, underprop, and defend the rights and liberties of the church: so
far they are from diminishing, changing or restraining those rights; for
so the condition of the church were in that respect worse, and the liberty
thereof more cut short, under the Christian magistrate, than under the
infidel or heathen.
96. Wherefore seeing these nursing-fathers, favourers, and defenders, can
do nothing against the truth, but for the truth, nor have any right
against the gospel, but for the gospel; and their power, in respect of the
church whereof they bear the care, being not privative or destructive, but
cumulative and auxiliary, thereby it is sufficiently clear that they ought
to cherish, and by their authority ought to establish the ecclesiastical
discipline; but yet not with implicit faith, or blind obedience; for the
reformed churches do not deny to any of the faithful, much less to the
magistrate, the judgment of Christian prudence and discretion concerning
those things which are decreed or determined by the church.
97. Therefore, as to each member of the church respectively, so unto the
magistrate belongeth the judgment of such things, both to apprehend and to
judge of them; for although the magistrate is not ordained and preferred
of God, that he should be a judge of matters and causes spiritual, of
which there is controversy in the church, yet is he questionless judge of
his own civil act about spiritual things; namely, of defending them in his
own dominions, and of approving or tolerating the same; and if, in this
business, he judge and determine according to the wisdom of the flesh, and
not according to the wisdom which is from above, he is to render an
account thereof before the supreme tribunal.
98. However, the ecclesiastical discipline, according as it is ordained by
Christ, whether it be established and ratified by civil authority or not,
ought to be retained and exercised in the society of the faithful (as long
as it is free and safe for them to come together in holy assemblies), for
the want of civil authority is unto the church like a ceasing gain, but
not like damage or loss ensuing; as it superaddeth nothing more, so it
takes nothing away.
99. If it further happen (which God forbid) that the magistrate do so far
abuse his authority, that he doth straitly forbid what Christ hath
ordained, yet the constant and faithful servants of Christ will resolve
and determine with themselves, that any extremities are rather to be
undergone than that they should obey such things, and that we ought to
obey God rather than men; yea, they will not leave off to perform all the
parts of their office, being ready in the meantime to render a reason of
their practice to every one that demandeth it, but specially unto the
magistrate (as was said before).
100. These things are not to that end and purpose proposed, that these
functions should be opposed one against another, in a hostile posture, or
in terms of enmity, than which nothing is more hurtful to the church and
commonwealth, nothing more execrable to them who are truly and sincerely
zealous for the house of God (for they have not so learned Christ); but
the aim is, first, and above all, that unto the King of kings and Lord of
lords, Jesus Christ, the only monarch of the church, his own prerogative
royal (of which also himself in the world was accused, and for his
witnessing a good confession thereof before Pontius Pilate, was unjustly
condemned to death) may be fully maintained and defended.
101. Next, this debate tendeth also to this end, that the power, as well
of ecclesiastical censure as of the civil sword, being in force, the
licentiousness of carnal men, who desire that there be too slack
ecclesiastical discipline, or none at all, may be bridled, and so men may
sin less, and may live more agreeably to the gospel. Another thing here
intended is, that errors on both sides being overthrown (as well the error
of those who, under a fair pretence of maintaining and defending the
rights of magistracy, do leave to the church either no power, or that
which is too weak, as the error of others, who, under the veil of a
certain suppositious and imaginary Christian liberty, do turn off the yoke
of the magistrate) both powers may enjoy their own privileges; add hereto,
that both powers being circumscribed with their distinct borders and
bounds, and also the one underpropped and strengthened by the help of the
other, a holy concord between them may be nourished, and they may mutually
and friendly embrace one another.
102. Last of all, seeing there are not wanting some unhappy men, who cease
not to pervert the right ways of the Lord, and with all diligence go about
to shake off the yoke of the ecclesiastical discipline where now it is
about to be introduced, yea, also where it hath been long ago established,
and as yet happily remaineth in force, it was necessary to obviate their
most wicked purposes; which things being so, let all which hath been said
pass, with the good leave and liking of those orthodox churches in which
the discipline of excommunication is not as yet in use; neither can any
offence easily arise to them from hence, yea (if the best conjecture do
not deceive), they cannot but rejoice and congratulate at the defence and
vindication of this discipline.
103. For those churches do not deny, but acknowledge and teach, that the
discipline of excommunication is most agreeable to the word of God, as
also that it ought to be restored and exercised; which also, heretofore,
the most learned Zachary Ursine, in the declaration of his judgment
concerning excommunication, exhibited to Prince Frederick, the third count
elector palatine, the title whereof is, _Judicium de Disciplina
Ecclesiastica et Excommunicatione, &c._
104. For thus he: “In other churches where either no excommunication is in
use, or it is not lawfully administered, and nevertheless, without all
controversy, it is confessed and openly taught, that it ought justly to be
received and be of force in the church.” And a little after: “Lest also
your Highness, by this new opinion, do sever yourself and your churches
from all other churches, as well those which have not excommunication as
those which have it; forasmuch as all of them do unanimously confess, and
always confessed, that there is reason why it ought to be in use.”
105. To the same purpose it tendeth which the highly esteemed Philip
Melancthon, in his _Common Places_, chap. _Of civil magistrates_, doth
affirm: “Before (saith he) I warned that civil places and powers are to be
distinguished from the adhering confusions which arise from other causes,
partly from the malice of the devil, partly from the malice of men, partly
from the common infirmity of men, as it cometh to pass in other kinds of
life and government ordained of God. No man doubteth that ecclesiastical
government is ordained of God, and yet how many and great disorders grow
in it from other causes.” Where he mentioneth a church government distinct
from the civil, and that _jure divino_, as a thing uncontroverted.
106. Neither were the wishes of the chief divines of Zurich and Berne
wanting for the recalling and restoring of the discipline of
excommunication. So Bullinger, upon 1 Cor. v.: “And hitherto (saith he) of
the ecclesiastical chastising of wickedness; but here I would have the
brethren diligently warned, that they watch, and with all diligence take
care that this wholesome medicine, thrown out of the true church, by
occasion of the Pope’s avarice, may be reduced; that is, that scandalous
sins be punished; for this is the very end of excommunication, that men’s
manners may be well ordered, and the saints flourish, the profane being
restrained, lest wicked men, by their impudence and impiety, increase and
undo all. It is our part, O brethren, with greatest diligence, to take
care of those things; for we see that Paul, in this place, doth stir up
those that were negligent in this business.”
107. Aretius agreeth hereunto. _Problem. Theolog._, loc. 33: “Magistrates
do not admit the yoke; they are afraid for their honours; they love
licentiousness,” &c. “The common people are too dissolute; the greatest
part is most corrupt,” &c. “In the meanwhile, I willingly confess that we
are not to despair, but the age following will peradventure yield more
tractable spirits, more mild hearts than our times have.” See also Lavater
agreeing in this, homil. 52, on Nehemiah: “Because the popes of Rome have
abused excommunication, for the establishing of their own tyranny, it
cometh to pass that almost no just discipline can be any more settled in
the church; but unless the wicked be restrained, all things must of
necessity run into the worst condition.” See, besides, the opinion of
Fabritius upon Psal. cxlix. 6-9, of spiritual corrections, which he
groundeth upon that text compared with Matt. xvi. 19; xviii. 18; John xx.
23.
108. It can hardly be doubted or called in question, but besides these,
other learned and godly divines of those churches were and are of the same
mind herein with those now cited; and, indeed, the very Confession of
Faith of the churches of Helvetia, chap. 18, may be an evidence hereof:
“But there ought to be, in the meantime, a just discipline amongst
ministers, for the doctrine and life of ministers is diligently to be
inquired of in synods: those that sin are to be rebuked of the elders, and
to be brought again into the way, if they be curable; or to be deposed,
and, like wolves, driven away from the flock of the Lord, if they be
incurable.” That this manner of synodical censure, namely, of deposing
ministers from their office for some great scandal, is used in the
republic of Zurich, Lavater is witness, in his book of the rites and
ordinances of the church of Zurich, chap. 23. Surely they could not be of
that mind, that ecclesiastical discipline ought to be exercised upon
delinquent ministers only, and not also upon other rotten members of the
church.
109. Yea, the Helvetian Confession, in the place now cited, doth so tax
the inordinate zeal of the Donatists and Anabaptists (which are so bent
upon the rooting out of the tares out of the Lord’s field, that they take
not heed of the danger of plucking up the wheat) that withal it doth not
obscurely commend the ecclesiastical forensical discipline as distinct
from the civil power; “And seeing (say they) it is altogether necessary
that there be in the church a discipline; and among the ancients, in times
past, excommunication hath been usual, and ecclesiastical courts have been
among the people of God, among whom this discipline was exercised by
prudent and godly men. It belongeth also to ministers, according to the
case of the times, the public estate and necessity to moderate this
discipline,—where this rule is ever to be held, that all ought to be done
to edification, decently, honestly, without tyranny and sedition. The
Apostle also witnesseth (2 Cor. xiii.), that to himself was given of God a
power unto edification, and not unto destruction.”
110. And, now, what resteth but that God be entreated with continual and
ardent prayers, both that he would put into the hearts of all magistrates,
zeal and care to cherish, defend, and guard the ecclesiastical discipline,
together with the rest of Christ’s ordinances, and to stop their ears
against the importunate suits of whatsoever claw-backs who would stir them
up against the church; and that, also, all governors and rulers of
churches, being everywhere furnished and helped with the strength of the
Holy Spirit, may diligently and faithfully execute this part also of their
function, as it becometh the trusty servants of Christ, who study to
please their own Lord and Master more than men.
111. Finally, All those who are more averse from ecclesiastical
discipline, or ill-affected against it, are to be admonished and
entreated, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that they be no longer entangled
and inveigled with carnal prejudice, to give place in this thing to human
affections, and to measure by their own corrupt reason spiritual
discipline, but that they do seriously think with themselves, and consider
in their minds, how much better it were that the lusts of the flesh were,
as with a bridle, tamed; and that the repentance, amendment, and gaining
of vicious men unto salvation may be sought, than that sinners be left to
their own disposition, and be permitted to follow their own lusts without
controlment, and by their evil example to draw others headlong into ruin
with themselves; and seeing either the keys of discipline must take no
rust, or the manners of Christians will certainly contract much rust: what
is here to be chosen, and what is to be shunned, let the wise and godly,
who alone take to heart the safety of the church, judge.
THE END.
A SERMON PREACHED BEFORE THE HONOURABLE HOUSE OF COMMONS AT THEIR LATE
SOLEMN FAST
A
SERMON
PREACHED BEFORE
THE HONOURABLE HOUSE OF COMMONS
AT THEIR LATE SOLEMN FAST,
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 1644.
BY GEORGE GILLESPIE,
MINISTER AT EDINBURGH, 1642.
“When the Lord shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his glory”—Psal.
cii. 16.
EDINBURGH:
ROBERT OGLE AND OLIVER AND BOYD.
M. OGLE & SON AND WILLIAM COLLINS, GLASGOW. J. DEWAR, PERTH. W. MIDDLETON,
DUNDEE
G. & R. KING, ABERDEEN. W. M’COMB, BELFAST.
HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO., AND JAMES NISBET & CO., LONDON.
REPRINTED BY A. W. MURRAY, MILNE SQUARE, EDINBURGH.
1844.
PREFACE TO THE READER.
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.
3. A third consideration concerning the kingdom is this. Notwithstanding
of all the happiness and gospel-blessings which it hath wanted in so great
a measure, and notwithstanding of all the sins which have so much abounded
in it, yet the servants of God have charged it with great
presumption,(1383) that the church of England hath said with the church of
Laodicea, “I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing,”
Rev. iii. 17. It hath been proud of its clergy, learning, great revenues,
peace, plenty, wealth, and abundance of all things, and as the Apostle
chargeth the Corinthians, “Ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned,”
that the wicked ones “might be taken away from among you,” 1 Cor. v. 2.
And would God this presumption had taken an end when God did begin to
afflict the land. It did even make an idol of this Parliament, and trusted
to its own strength and armies, which hath provoked God so much, that he
hath sometimes almost blasted your hopes that way, and hath made you to
feel your weakness even where you thought yourselves strongest. God would
not have England say, “Mine own hand hath saved me,” Judg. vii. 2; neither
will he have Scotland to say, “My hand hath done it:” but he will have
both to say, His hand hath done it, when we were lost in our own eyes. God
grant that your leaning so much upon the arm of flesh be not the cause of
more blows. God must be seen in the work, and he will have us to give him
all the glory, and to say, “Thou also hast wrought all our works in us,”
Isa. xxvi. 12. O that all our presumption may be repented of, and that the
land may be yet more deeply humbled! Assuredly God will arise and subdue
our enemies, and command deliverances for Jacob; but it is as certain God
will not do this till we be more humbled and (as the text saith) ashamed
of all that we have done.
4. There is another motive more evangelical: Let England be humbled even
for the mercy, the most admirable mercy which God hath showed upon so
undeserving and evil-deserving a kingdom. See it in this same prophecy, “I
will establish my covenant with thee; and thou shalt know that I am the
Lord: that thou mayest remember, and be confounded, and never open thy
mouth any more because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for
all that thou hast done, saith the Lord God,” Ezek. xvi. 62, 63. And
again: “Not for your sakes do I this, saith the Lord God, be it known unto
you: be ashamed and confounded for your own ways, O house of Israel,”
Ezek. xxxvi. 32; “O my God (saith Ezra), I am ashamed and blush to lift up
my face to thee,” Ezra. ix. 6. And what was it that did so confound him?
You may find it in that which followeth: God had showed them mercy, and
had left them a remnant to escape, and had given them a nail in his holy
place, and had lightened their eyes: “And now (saith he), O our God, what
shall we say after this? for we have forsaken thy commandments,” Ezra. ix.
10. Let us this day compare, as he did, God’s goodness and our own
guiltiness. England deserved nothing but to get a bill of divorce, and
that God should have said in his wrath, Away from me, I have no pleasure
in you; but now he hath received you into the bond of his covenant, he
rejoiceth over you to do you good, and to dwell among you; his banner over
you is love. O let our hard hearts be overcome and be confounded with so
much mercy, and let us be ashamed of ourselves, that after so much mercy
we should be yet in our sins and trespasses.
There is a third application, which I intend for the ministry, who ought
to go before the people of God in the example of repentance and
humiliation. You know the old observation, _Raro vidi clericum
poenitentem_,—I have seldom seen a clergyman penitent. As Christ saith of
rich men (Mark x. 24, 25), I may say of learned men, It is easier for a
camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a man that trusts in his
learning to enter into the kingdom of heaven. He will needs maintain the
lawfulness of all which he hath done, and will not be, as this text would
have him, ashamed of all that he hath done. Yet it is not impossible with
God to make such an one deny himself, and that whatsoever in him exalts
itself against Christ should be brought into captivity to the obedience of
Christ (2 Cor. x. 5). Among all that were converted by the ministry of the
apostles, I wonder most at the conversion of a great company of priests,
Acts vi. 7. I do not suspect, as two learned men have done,(1384) that the
text is corrupted in that place, and that it should be otherwise read. I
am the rather satisfied, because there is nothing there mentioned of the
conversion of the high priest, or of the chief priests, the heads of the
twenty-four orders which were upon the council, and had condemned Christ:
the place cannot be understood but of a multitude of common or inferior
priests, even as, by proportion, in Hezekiah’s reformation, the Levites
were more upright in heart than the priests, 2 Chron. xxix. 34.
And now many of the inferior clergy (as they were abusively called) are
more upright in heart unto this present reformation than any of those who
had assumed to themselves high degrees in the church. The hardest point of
all is, so to embrace and follow reformation as to be ashamed of former
prevarications and pollutions. But in this also the Holy Ghost hath set
examples before the ministers of the gospel. I read, 2 Chron. xxx. 15,
“The priests and the Levites were ashamed, and sanctified themselves, and
brought in the burnt-offerings into the house of the Lord.” They thought
it not enough to be sanctified, but they were ashamed that they had been
before defiled. A great prophet is not content to have his judgment
rectified which had been in error, but he is ashamed of the error he had
been in; “So foolish was I (saith he) and ignorant: I was as a beast
before thee,” Psal. lxxiii. 22. A great apostle must glorify God, and
humbly acknowledge his own shame; “For I am the least of the apostles
(saith he), that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted
the church of God,” 1 Cor. xv. 9. And shall I add the example of a great
father? Augustine confesseth(1385) honestly, that for the space of nine
years he both was deceived, and did deceive others. Nature will whisper to
a man to look to his credit: but the text here calleth for another
thing,—to look to the honour of God, and to thine own shame; and yet in so
doing thou shalt be more highly esteemed both by God and by his children.
Now without this let a man seem to turn and reform never so well, all is
unsure work, and built upon a sandy foundation. And whosoever will not
acknowledge their iniquity, and be ashamed for it, God shall make them
bear their shame; according to that which is pronounced in the next
chapter, ver. 10-15, against the Levites, who had gone astray when Israel
went astray after their idols; and according to that, Mal. ii. 8, 9, “Ye
have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the Lord of hosts: therefore
have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people.”
The fourth and last application of this doctrine is for every Christian.
The text teacheth us a difference betwixt a presumptuous and a truly
humbled sinner; the one is ashamed of his sins, the other not. By this
mark let every one of us try himself this day. It is a saving grace to be
truly and really ashamed of sin. It is one of the promises of the covenant
of grace, “Then shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that
were not good, and shall loathe yourselves in your own sight, for your
iniquities, and for your abominations,” Ezek. xxxvi. 31. Try, then, if
thou hast but thus much of the work of grace in thy soul; and if thou
hast, be assured of thy interest in Christ and in the new covenant. A
reprobate may have somewhat which is very like this grace: but I shall lay
open the difference betwixt the one and the other in these particulars:—
1. To be truly ashamed of sin, is to be ashamed of it as an act of
filthiness and uncleanness. The child of God, when he comes to the throne
of grace, is ashamed of an unclean heart, though the world cannot see it.
A natural man, at his best, looketh upon sin as it damneth and destroyeth
the soul, but he cannot look upon it as it defiles the soul. Shame ariseth
properly from a filthy act, though no other evil be to follow upon it.
2. As we are ashamed of acts of filthiness, so of acts of folly. A natural
man may judge himself a fool in regard of the circumstances or consequents
of his sin, but he is not convinced that sin in itself is an act of
madness and folly. When the child of God is humbled he becomes a fool in
his own eyes,—he perceives he had done like a mad fool, 1 Cor. iii. 18;
therefore he is said then to come to himself, Luke xv. 17.
3. The child of God is ashamed of sin as an act of unkindness and
unthankfulness to a sweet merciful Lord, Psal. cxxx. 4; Rom. ii. 4. Though
there were no other evil in sin, the conscience of so much mercy and love
so far abused, and so unkindly recompensed, is that which confoundeth a
penitent sinner. As the wife of a kind husband, if she play the whore
(though the world know it not), and if her husband, when he might divorce
her, shall still love her and receive her into his bosom; such a one, if
she have at all any sense, or any bowels of sorrow, must needs be
swallowed up of shame and confusion for her undutifulness and treachery to
such a husband. But now the hypocrite is not at all troubled or afflicted
in spirit for sin as it is an act of unkindness to God.
4. Shame, as philosophers have defined it,(1386) is “the fear of a just
reproof:” not simply the fear of a reproof, but the fear of a just
reproof. That is servile; this filial. The child of God is ashamed of the
very guiltiness, and of that which may be justly laid to his charge; the
hypocrite not so. Saul was not ashamed of his sin, but he was ashamed that
Samuel should reprove him before the elders of the people, 1 Sam. xv. 15,
30. Christ’s adversaries were ashamed (Luke xiii. 17), not of their error,
but because their mouths were stopped before the people, and they could
not answer him. A hypocrite is ashamed, “as a thief is ashamed when he is
found,” Jer. ii. 26; mark that, “when he is found;” a thief is not ashamed
of his sin, but because he is found in it, and so brought to a shameful
end.
5. When the cause of God is in hand, a true penitent is so ashamed of
himself that he fears the people of God shall be put to shame for his
sake, and that it shall go the worse with them because of his vileness and
guiltiness. This made David pray, “O God, thou knowest my foolishness; and
my sins are not hid from thee. Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord God
of hosts, be ashamed for my sake; let not those that seek thee be
confounded for my sake, O God of Israel,” Psal. lxix. 5, 6. The sorrow and
shame of a hypocrite (as all his other seeming graces) are rooted in
self-love, not in the love of God: he hath not this in all his thoughts,
that he is a spot or blemish in the body or church of Christ, and
therefore to be humbled, lest for his sake God be displeased with his
people; lest such a vile and abominable sinner as he is bring wrath and
confusion upon others, and make Israel turn their back before the enemy. O
happy soul that hath such thoughts as these!
I have now done with the first part of the text, wherein I have been the
larger, because it most fitteth the work of the day.
The second follows: “Show them the form of the house,” &c.
Before I come to the doctrines which do here arise, I shall first explain
the particulars mentioned in this part of the text, so as they may agree
to the spiritual temple or church of Christ, which in the beginning I
proved to be here intended.
First, We find here the form and fashion of a house; in which the parts
are very much diversified one from another. There are, in a formed and
fashioned house, doors, windows, posts, lintels, &c.; there is also a
multitude of common stones in the walls of the house. Such a house is the
visible ministerial church of Christ, the parts whereof are _partes
dissimilares_,—some ministers and rulers; some eminent lights; others of
the ordinary rank of Christians,—that make up the walls. If God hath made
one but a small pinning in the wall, he hath reason to be content, and
must not say, Why am not I a post, or a corner-stone, or a beam? Neither
yet may any corner-stone despise the stones in the wall, and say, I have
no need of you.
Secondly, The Prophet was here to show them “the goings out of the house,
and the comings in thereof.” These are not the same but different gates,
it is plain: “When the people of the land shall come before the Lord in
the solemn feasts, he that entereth in by the way of the north gate to
worship, shall go out by the way of the south gate, &c., he shall not
return by the way of the gate whereby he came in,” Ezek. xlvi. 9. And that
not only to teach us order, and the avoiding of confusion, occasioned by
the contrary tides of a multitude, but to tell us farther, “No man, having
put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of
God,” Luke ix. 62. We must not go out of the church the way that we came
in (that were a door of defection), but hold our faces forward till we go
out by the door of death.
Thirdly, The text hath twice “all the forms thereof,” which I understand
of the outward forms and of the inward forms, which two I find very much
distinguished by those who have written of the form and structure of the
temple. The church is exceedingly beautified, even outwardly, with the
ordinances of Christ, but the inward forms are the most glorious: “For,
behold, the kingdom of God is within you,” Luke xvii. 21; and it “cometh
not with observation,” ver. 20; “The king’s daughter is all glorious
within;” yet even “her clothing is of wrought gold,” Psal. xlv. 13. When
the angel had made an end of measuring the inner house (Ezek. xlii. 15),
then he brought forth Ezekiel by the east gate, which was the chief gate
by which the people commonly entered, and measured the outer wall in the
last place. God’s method is first to try the heart and reins, then to give
to a man according to his works, Jer. xvii. 10. So should we measure, by
the reed of the sanctuary, first the inner house of our hearts and minds,
and then to measure our outer walls, and to judge of our profession and
external performances.
Lastly, The Prophet is commanded to write in their sight “all the
ordinances thereof, and all the laws thereof;” for the church is a house
not only in an architectonic, but in an economic sense. It is Christ’s
family governed by his own laws; and a temple which hath in it “them that
worship,” Rev. xi. 1, it hath its own proper laws by which it is ordered.
_Alioe sunt leges Coesarum, alioe Christi_ (saith Jerome(1387)),—Caesar’s
laws and Christ’s laws are not the same, but divers one from another.
Schoolmen say,(1388) that a law, properly so called, is both illuminative
and impulsive: illuminative, to inform and direct the judgment; impulsive,
to move and apply the will to action. And accordingly there are two names
in this text given to Christ’s laws and institutions: one(1389) which
importeth the instruction and information of our minds; another,(1390)
which signifieth a deep imprinting or engraving (and that is made upon our
hearts and affections), such as a pen of iron and other instruments could
make upon a stone. It is not well when either of the two is wanting; for
the light of truth, without the engraving of truth, may be extinguished;
and the engraving of truth, without the light of truth, may be obliterate.
All these I shall pass, and only pitch upon two doctrines which I shall
draw from this second part of the text: one concerning the will of God’s
commandment, what God requireth of Israel to do; another concerning the
will of God’s decree, what he hath purposed himself to do.
The first is this: “God will have Israel to build and order his temple,
not as shall seem good in their eyes, but according to his own pattern
only which he sets before them,” which doth so evidently appear from this
very text, that it needeth no other proof; for what else meaneth the
showing of such a pattern to be kept and followed by his people? Other
passages of this kind there are which do more abundantly confirm it.
The Lord did prescribe to Noah both the matter, and fashion, and measures
of the ark (Gen. vi. 14-16). To Moses he gave a pattern of the tabernacle,
of the ark, of the mercy-seat, of the vail, of the curtains, of the two
altars, of the table and all the furniture thereof, of the candlestick and
all the instruments thereof, &c. And though Moses was the greatest prophet
that ever arose in Israel, yet God would not leave any part of the work to
Moses’ arbitrement, but straitly commandeth him, “Look that thou make them
after their pattern, which was showed thee in the mount,” Exod. xxv. 40.
When it came to the building of the first temple, Solomon was not in that
left to his own wisdom, as great as it was, but David, the man of God,
gave him a perfect “pattern of all that he had by the Spirit,” 1 Chron.
xxviii. 11-13. The second temple was also built “according to the
commandment of the God of Israel” (Ezra vi. 14), by Haggai and Zechariah.
And for the New Testament, Christ our great Prophet, and only King and
Lawgiver of the church, hath revealed his will to the apostles, and they
to us, concerning all his holy things; and we must hold us at these
unleavened and unmixed ordinances which the apostles, from the Lord,
delivered to the churches: “I will put upon you (saith he himself) none
other burden: but that which ye have already hold fast till I come,” Rev.
ii. 24, 25.
I know the church must observe rules of order and conveniency in the
common circumstances of times, places, and persons; but these
circumstances are none of our holy things,—they are only prudential
accommodations, which are alike common to all human societies, both civil
and ecclesiastical, wherein both are directed by the same light of nature,
the common rule to both in all things of that kind, providing always that
the general rules of the word be observed: “Do all to the glory of God,” 1
Cor. x. 31; “Let all things be done to edifying,” 1 Cor. xiv. 26; “It is
good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy
brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak,” Rom. xiv. 21; “Let
every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. To him that esteemeth
anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean,” Rom. xiv. 5, 14.
The text giveth some clearing to this point: There is here showed to the
house of Israel a pattern of the whole structure, and of the least part
thereof, and all the measures thereof; yet no pattern is given of the
kind, or quantity, or magnificence of the several stones, or of the
instruments of building. The reason is, because the former is essential to
a house, the latter accidental,(1391) the former, if altered, make another
building; the latter, though altered, the building is the same: therefore
where we have in the text “the forms thereof,” the Septuagint read
ὑποστασιν αὐτοῦ,—_the substance thereof_.
But to clear it a little farther, I put two characters upon those
circumstances which are not determined by the word of God, but left to be
ordered by the church as shall be found most convenient. First, They are
not things sacred, nor proper to the church, as hath been said. They are
of the same nature, they serve for the same end and use, both in sacred
and civil things; for order and decency, the avoiding of confusion and the
like, are alike common to church and commonwealth. Secondly, I shall
describe them as one of the prelates hath done, who tells us,(1392) that
the things which the Scripture hath left to the discretion of the church
are those things “which neither needed nor could be particularly
expressed. They needed not, because they are so obvious; and they could
not, both because they are so numerous, and because so changeable.”
I will not insist upon questions of this kind, but will make a short
application of the doctrine unto you, honourable and beloved. You may
plainly see from what hath been said, that neither kings, nor parliaments,
nor synods, nor any power on earth, may impose or continue the least
ceremony upon the consciences of God’s people, which Christ hath not
imposed; therefore let neither antiquity, nor custom, nor conveniency, nor
prudential considerations, nor show of holiness, nor any pretext
whatsoever, plead for the reservation of any of your old ceremonies, which
have no warrant from the word of God. Much might have been said for the
high places among the Jews, as I hinted in the beginning; and much might
have been said by the Pharisees for their frequent washings (Mark vii. 2,
3, 4, 7), which, as they were ancient, and received by the traditions of
the elders, so they were used to teach men purity, and to put them in mind
of holiness; neither was their washing contrary to any commandment of God,
except you understand that commandment of not adding to the word (Deut.
iv. 2; xii. 32; Prov. xxx. 6), which doth equally strike against all
ceremonies devised by man.
“A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump,” Gal. v. 9; and a little leak
will endanger the ship. Thieves will readily dig through a house, how much
more will they enter if any postern be left open to them. The wild beasts
and boars of the forest will attempt to break down the hedges of the
Lord’s vineyard (Psal. lxxx. 13), how much more if any breach be left in
the hedges. If, therefore, you would make a sure reformation, make a
perfect reformation, lest Christ have this controversy with England,
“Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee,” Rev. ii. 4. And so much of
our duty.
The second doctrine concerneth God’s decree, and it is this: “It is
concluded in the council of heaven, and God hath it in the thoughts of his
heart, to repair the breaches of his house, and to build such a temple to
himself, as is shadowed forth in this vision of Ezekiel.” For the
comparing of this verse with ver. 7 in this same chapter, and with chap.
xxxvii. 26, 27, will easily make it appear, that this showing of the
pattern, and all this measuring, was not only in reference to Israel’s
duty, but to God’s gracious purpose towards Israel. According to that,
Zech. i. 16, “Therefore thus saith the Lord, I am returned to Jerusalem
with mercies: my house shall be built in it, saith the Lord of hosts, and
a line shall be stretched forth upon Jerusalem.” Now this vision cannot be
said to be fulfilled in Zorobabel’s temple, as I proved before, only here
take notice that the second destruction of the temple by the Romans was
worse than the first by the Babylonians,—that desolation was repaired, but
this could never be repaired, though the Jews did attempt the building
again of the temple,(1393) first under Adrian the emperor, and afterward
under Julian the apostate. The hand of God was seen against them most
terribly by fire from heaven, and other signs of that kind; and about the
same time (to observe that by the way) the famous Delphic temple was
without man’s hand, by fire and earthquake, utterly destroyed and never
built again,—to tell the world that neither Judaism nor paganism should
prevail, but the kingdom of Jesus Christ.
Where then must we seek for the accomplishment of Ezekiel’s vision, I mean
for the new temple in which the Lord will dwell for ever, and where his
holy name shall be no more polluted? Surely we must seek for it in the
days of the gospel, as hath been before abundantly proved; but that the
thing may be the better understood, let us take with us, at least, some
few general observations concerning this temple of Ezekiel, as it
representeth what should come to pass in the church of Christ.
First of all, there is but one temple, not many, showed to him,—which is
in part, and shall be yet more fulfilled in the church of the New
Testament, according to that, Zech. xiv. 8, “And it shall be in that day,
that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem;” which is the same that we
have, Ezek. xlvii. 1. Then follows, “And the Lord shall be King over all
the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one.” The
like promise we find elsewhere: “I will give them one heart, and one way,”
Jer. xxxii. 39; Ezek. xi. 19. It is observed, that for this very end of
uniformity, the heathens also did erect temples, that they might all
worship the same idol-god in the same manner. The plague of the Christian
church hitherto hath been temple against temple, and altar against altar,
“But thou, O Lord, how long?” Psal. vi. 3.
Secondly, Ezekiel’s temple and city are very large and capacious, as I
showed in the beginning; and the city had three gates looking toward each
of the four quarters of the world, Ezek. xlviii. 31-34: all this to
signify the spreading of the gospel into all the earth; which is also
signified by the holy waters issuing from the threshold of the temple, and
rising so high that they were waters to swim in, Ezek. xlvii. 1, 5. God
hath said to his church, “Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them
stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy
cords, and strengthen thy stakes: for thou shalt break forth on the right
hand and on the left,” Isa. liv. 2, 3. A great increase of the church
there was in the apostles’ times, Col. i. 6; but a far greater may be yet
looked for, Rom. xi. 12. Though the enemy did come in like a flood, the
Spirit of the Lord lifted up a standard against him, Isa. lix. 19; “The
sea saw it, and fled; Jordan was driven back,” Psal. cxiv. 3. But when the
gospel cometh, “like a noise of many waters” (as the Prophet calls it,
ver. 2, signifying an irresistible increase), it is in vain to build
bulwarks against it: God will even break open “the fountains of the great
deep,” and open “the windows of heaven” (Gen. vii. 11); and the gospel
will prove a second flood, which will overflow the whole earth, though not
to destroy it (as Noah’s did), but to make it glad; “For the earth shall
be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover
the sea,” Hab. ii. 14; Isa. xi. 9.
Thirdly, In this temple, beside the holy of holies, were three
courts:(1394) the court of the priests; the court of the people, commonly
called _Atrium Israelis_; and, without both these, _Atrium Gentium_, the
court of the heathen, so called, because the heathen, as also many of
those who were legally unclean, might not only come unto the mountain of
the house of the Lord, but also enter within the outer wall (mentioned
Ezek. xlii. 20), and so worship in that outer court, or _intermurale_;
unto which did belong (as we learn from Josephus(1395)) the great east
porch, which kept the name of _Solomon’s porch_,—in which both Christ
himself did preach (John x. 23), and the apostles after him (Acts v. 12);
by which means the free grace of the gospel was held forth even to
heathens, and publicans, and unclean persons, who were not admitted into
the court of Israel,—there to communicate in all the holy things: “For the
Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost,” Luke xix. 10.
This outer court of the temple is meant when it is said that the Pharisees
brought a woman taken in adultery into the temple, and set her before
Christ, John viii. 2, 3. Now all this will hold true answerably of the
spiritual temple; for, _first_, As the uncircumcised and the unclean were
not admitted into the temple among the children of Israel (Ezek. xliv. 9),
so all that live in the church of Christ are not to be admitted
promiscuously to every ordinance of God, especially to the Lord’s table,
but only those whose profession, knowledge and conversation, after trial,
shall be found such as may make them capable thereof: yet as heathens and
unclean persons did enter into the outer court, and there hear Christ and
his apostles, so there shall ever be in the church a door of grace and
hope open to the greatest and vilest sinners who shall seek after Christ,
and “ask the way to Zion, with their faces thitherward,” Jer. i. 5.
_Secondly_, There shall be also somewhat answerable to the court of the
children of Israel: God can raise up even of the stones children to
Abraham (Matt. iii. 9); he will not want a people to tread in the courts
of his house, and to inquire in his temple. _Thirdly_, And as in the
typical temple there was a court for the priests, so hath the Lord
promised to the church: “Yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a
corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers,” Isa. xxx. 20; and
again, “I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed
you with knowledge and understanding,” Jer. iii. 15. _Fourthly_, And as
there was a secret and most holy place, where the ark was, and the
mercy-seat, and where the glory of God dwelt, so Christ hath his own
“hidden ones” (Psal. lxxxiii. 3), “the children of the bride-chamber”
(Matt. ix. 15), who, “with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of
the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by
the Spirit of the Lord,” 2 Cor. iii. 18. There is also a time coming when
God will open the secrets of his temple, and make the ark of his testament
to be seen otherwise than yet it hath been; which shall be at the sounding
of the seventh trumpet, Rev. xi. 15, 19.
Fourthly, The fourth thing wherein Ezekiel’s temple represented the church
of Christ is in regard of the great strength thereof: it stood “upon a
very high mountain,” chap. xl. 2. The material temple also in Jerusalem,
as it is described by Josephus, was a very strong and impregnable place.
Interpreters think that Cyrus was jealous of the strength of the temple,
and for that cause gave order that it should not be built above threescore
cubits high, whereas Solomon had built it sixscore cubits high, Ezra vi.
3. The Romans afterwards, when they had subdued Judea, had a watchful eye
upon the temple, and placed a strong garrison in the castle Antonia (which
was beside the temple), the commander whereof was called “the captain of
the temple” (Acts iv. 1); and all this for fear of sedition and rebellion
among the Jews when they came to the temple. Now the invisible strength of
the spiritual temple is clearly held forth unto us by him who cannot
deceive us: “Upon this rock,” saith he (meaning himself), “I will build my
church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,” Matt. xvi.
18. The princes and powers of the world are more jealous than they need of
the church’s strength; and yet (which is a secret judgment of God) they
have not been afraid to suffer Babylon to be built in her full strength:
“There were they in great fear where no fear was” (Psal. liii. 5); for
when all shall come to all, it shall be found that the gospel and true
religion is the strongest bulwark, and chief strength for the safety and
stability of kings and states.
Lastly, The glory of this temple was very great, insomuch that some have
undertaken to demonstrate(1396) that it was a more glorious piece than any
of the seven miracles of the world, which were so much spoken of among the
ancients. But the greatest glory of this temple was, that “the glory of
the God of Israel” came into it, and “the earth shined with his glory,”
ver. 2; Christ, the brightness of his Father’s glory (Heb. i. 3), walking
in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks (Rev. i. 13), is and shall
be more and more the church’s glory; therefore it is said to her, “Arise,
shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon
thee,” Isa. lx. 1. Surely as it was said of the new material temple, in
reference to Christ, so it may be said of the new spiritual temple, which
yet we look for, “The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of
the former, saith the Lord of hosts; and in this place will I give peace,
saith the Lord of hosts,” Hag. ii. 9. Christ will keep the best wine till
the end of the feast (John ii. 10); and he will bless our latter end more
than our beginning, Ezek. xxxvi. 11.
That which I have said, from grounds of Scripture, concerning a more
glorious, yea, more peaceable condition of the church to be yet looked
for, is acknowledged by some of our sound and learned writers(1397) who
have had occasion to express their judgment about it: and it hath no
affinity with the opinion of an earthly or temporal kingdom of Christ, or
of the Jews’ building again of Jerusalem and the material temple, and
their obtaining a dominion above all other nations, or the like.
I shall now bring home the point. There are very good grounds of hope to
make us think that this new temple is not far off; and (for your part)
that Christ is to make a new face of a church in this kingdom,—a fair and
beautiful temple for his glory to dwell in: and he is even now about the
work.
For, first, “The set time” to build Zion is come, when the people of God
“take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof,” Psal. cii. 13,
14, 16. The stones which the builders of Babel refused are now chosen for
corner stones, and the stones which they chose do the builders of Zion now
refuse: “They shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a stone for
foundations,” Jer. li. 26. Those that have anything of Christ and of the
image of God in them begin to creep out of the dust of contempt, and to
appear like stars of the morning. Nay, to go farther than that, the old
stones, the Jews, who have been for so many ages lying forgotten in the
dust, those poor “outcasts of Israel” (Psal. cxlvii. 2), have of late come
more into remembrance, and have been more thought of, and more prayed for,
than they were in former generations.
Secondly, Are there not great preparations and instruments fitted for the
work? Hath not God called together, for such a time as this, the present
Parliament, and the Assembly of Divines, his Zorobabels, and Jehoshuas,
and Haggais, and Zechariahs? Are there not also hewers of stones, and
bearers of burdens? much wholesome preaching, much praying and fasting,
many petitions put up both to God and man? the covenant also going through
the kingdom as the chief preparation of materials for the work? Is not the
old rubbish of ceremonies daily more and more shovelled away, that there
may be a clean ground? and is not the Lord by all this affliction humbling
you, that there may be a deep and a sure foundation laid?
Thirdly, The work is begun, and shall it not be finished? God hath laid
the foundation, and shall he not “bring forth the head-stone?” Zech. iv.
7, 9. Christ hath put Antichrist from his outerworks in Scotland, and he
is now come to put him from his innerworks in England: “His work is
perfect” (Deut. xxxii. 4), saith Moses; “I am Alpha and Omega (saith
Christ), the beginning and the ending,” Rev. i. 8; “Shall I bring to the
birth, and not cause to bring forth, saith the Lord? shall I cause to
bring forth, and shut the womb, saith thy God?” Isa. lxvi. 9.