SERMONS. SERMON LXXXI. PREACHED AT THE EARL OF BRIDGEWATER'S HOUSE IN LONDON, AT THE MARRIAGE OF HIS DAUGHTER, THE LADY MARY, TO THE ELDEST SON OF THE LORD HERBERT OF CASTLE-ISLAND, NoVEMBER 19, 1627. THE PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. O ETERNAL, and most gracious God, who hast promised to hearken to the prayers of thy people, when they pray towards thy house, though they be absent from it, work more effectually upon us, who are personally met in this thy house, in this place consecrated to thy worship. Enable us, O Lord, so to see thee, in all thy glasses, in all thy representations of thyself to us here, as that hereafter we may see thee face to face, and as thou art in thyself, in thy kingdom of glory. Of which glasses wherein we may see thee, thee in thine unity, as thou art one God; thee in thy plurality, as thou art more persons, we receive this thy institution of marriage to be one. In thy first work, the creation, the last seal of thy whole work was a marriage. In thy Son's great work, the redemption, the first seal of that whole work, was a miracle at a marriage. In the work of thy blessed spirit, our sanctification, he refreshes to us, that promise in one prophet, that thou wilt marry thyself to us for ever: and more in another, that thou hast married thyself unto us from the beginning. Thou hast married mercy and justice in thyself, married God and man in thy Son, married increpation and consolation in the Holy Ghost, marry in us also, O Lord, a love and a fear of thee. And as thou hast married in us two natures, mortal and immortal, marry in us also, the knowledge, and the practice of all duties. belonging to both conditions, that so this world may be our gallery VOL. IV. B to the next and ntarry in us, the spirit of thankfulness, for all thy benefits already bestowed upon us, and the spirit of prayer for the continuance, and enlargement of them. Continue, and enlarge them, O God, upon thine universal church, &c. MATTHEW Xxii. 30. For, in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. Or all commentaries upon the Scriptures, good examples are the best and the liveliest; and of all examples those that are nearest, and most present, and most familiar unto us; and our most familiar examples, are those of our own families, and in families, the masters of families, the fathers of families, are most conspicuous, most appliable, most considerable. Now, in exercises upon such occasions as this, ordinarily, the instruction is to be directed especially upon those persons, who especially give the occasion of the exercise; that is, upon the persons to be united in holy wedlock: for, as that is a difference between sermons and lectures, that a sermon intends exhortation principally and edification, and a holy stirring of religious affections, and then matters of doctrine, and points of divinity, occasionally, secondarily, as the words of the text may invite them; but lectures intend principally doctrinal points, and matter of divinity, and matter of exhortation but occasionally, and as in a second place: so that is a difference between christening sermons, and marriage sermons, that the first, at christenings, are especially directed upon the congregation, and not upon the persons who are to be christened; and these, at marriages, especially upon the parties that are to be united; and upon the congregation, but by reflection. When therefore to these persons of noble extraction, I am to say something of the duties, and something of the blessings of marriage, what God commands, and what God promises in that state, in his Scriptures, I lay open to them, the best exposition, the best commentaries upon those Scriptures, that is, example, and the nearest example, that is, example in their own family, when, with the prophet Isaiah', I direct them, to look upon the rock, from whence they are hewn, to propose to themselves their own parents, and to consider there the performance of the 1 Isaiah Li. i. |