indictment, and the last evidence, there shall follow your very repentances in the list of your sins, and it shall be told you, and all the world then, here, and here you deluded that God, that forbore to inflict his judgments, upon new vows, new contracts, new promises, between you and him; even your repentances shall bind up that book, and tie your old sins and new relapses into one body. And let this meditation bring you ad vocem gratulantis, to rejoice once again in this lavi pedes, that you have now washed your feet, in a present sorrow, and ad vocem indignantis, to a stronger indignation, and faster resolution than heretofore you have had, never to defile them again.

SERMON LXXXIX.

PREACHED AT A CHURCHING.

MICAH ii. 10.

Arise and depart, for this is not your rest.

ALL that God asks of us, is, that we love him with all our heart: all that he promises us, is, that he will give us rest, round about us; Judah sought the Lord with a whole desire, and he gave her rest, round about her. Now a man might think himself well disposed for rest, when he lies down, I will lay me down, and sleep in peace, says David'; but it is otherwise here; Arise and depart; for here, (that is, in lying, and sleeping) is not your rest, says this prophet. These words have a three-fold acceptation, and admit a three-fold exposition; for, first, they are a commination, the prophet threatens the Jews; secondly, they are a commonition, the prophet instructs all future ages; thirdly, they are a consolation, which hath reference to the consummation of all, to the rising at the general judgment. First, he foretels the Jews of their imminent captivity; howsoever you build upon the pactum salis, the covenant of salt, the everlasting covenant, that God will

'Psalm iv. 8.

be your God, and this land your land, yet since that confidence sears you up in your sins, Arise and depart, for this is not your rest, your Jerusalem must be changed into Babylon; there is the commination: secondly, he warns us, who are bedded and bedrid in our sins; howsoever you say to yourselves, Soul take thy rest, enjoy the honours, the pleasures, the abundances of this world, Tush the Lord sees it not, the Master will not come, we may lie still safely, and rest in the fruition of this happiness, yet this rest will betray you, this rest will deliver you over to eternal disquiet : and therefore arise and depart, for this is not your rest, and that is the commonition. And in the third acceptation of the words, as they may have relation to the resurrection, they may well admit a little inversion; howsoever you feel a resurrection by grace from the works of death, and darkness in this life, yet in this life, there is no assuredness, that he that is risen, and thinks he stands, shall not fall; here you arise and depart, that is, rise from your sins, and depart from your sinful purposes, but you arise, and depart so too, that you fall, and depart again into your sinful purposes, after you have risen; and therefore depart and arise, for here is not your rest; till you depart altogether out of this world, and rise to judgment, you can have no such rest, as can admit no disquiet, no perturbation; but then you shall; and that is the consolation.

First then, as the words concern the Jews; here is first an increpation, a rebuke, that they are fallen from their station, and their dignity, implied in the first word, arise, for then they were fallen; secondly, here is a demonstration in the same word, that though they liked that state into which they were fallen, which was a security, and stubbornness in their sins, yet they should not enjoy even that security, and that stubbornness, that fall of theirs, but they should lose that; though it were but a false contentment, yet they should be roused out of that, arise; first arise, because you are fallen, and then, arise, though you think yourselves at ease, by that fall. And then thirdly, here is a continuation of God's anger, when they are risen; for they are not raised to their former state and dignity, from which they were fallen, they are not raised to be established, but it is arise, and depart; and in all this (which is a fourth consideration) God precludes them from any hope by solicitation, he reveals his purpose, his decree, and conse

quently his inexorableness evidently, in that word, for; never murmur, never dispute, never entreat, you must depart, for it is determined, it is resolved, and here is not your rest; in which also the commination is yet more and more aggravated; first in that they lose their rest, which God hath sold them so dearly, by so many battles, and so many afflictions, and which God had sworn to them so solemnly by so many ratifications; they must lose their rest, they must have no rest, here; not there; not in the Land of Promise itself; and then lastly, as they are denied all rest there; there, where was the womb, and centre of their rest, so there is no intimatión, no hope given, that they should have rest any where else, for as they were to rise, only to depart, so they were to depart into captivity.

The first is an increpation, they were fallen; but from whence? It was once said, Qui jacet in terra, non habet unde cadat, But he that is earth itself, whither can he fall? Whither can man, derived from earth before his life, enamoured of the earth, embracing it, and married to it in his life, destined to the earth, betrothed to it for a second marriage after this life, whither can he fall? It is true of us all, I shall say to corruption, Thou art my father, and to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister; and can we fall into worse company, contract an alliance with a more base, and beggarly kindred than this? Not if we were left there; then we could not: but when we consider a nation, of whom God hath said, Sponsabo te mihi, I will marry thee, without any respect of disparagement in thy lowness, I will not refuse thee for it, I will not upbraid thee with it, I will marry thee for ever, and without any purpose of divorce (sponsabo in æternum,) of this nation thus assumed, thus contracted, thus endowed, thus assured, why may not we wonder as vehemently, as the prophet did of the fallen angels, Quomodo cecidisti de cœlo, Lucifer filius Orientis, How did this nation fall out of God's arms, out of God's bosom? Himself tells us how; what he had done to exalt them, what they had done to divest his favours for their natural lowness, he says, In thy nativity when thou wast born, thy navel was not cut, thou wast not washed, thou wast not salted, thou wast not swaddled; no eye pitied thee, but thou wast cast into the open fields in contempt, I passed by, and saw thee

Job xvii. 14.

in thy blood, and said, thou shalt live; I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, and thou becamest mine; I washed thee, anointed thee, and adorned thee: and thou wast perfect through my beauty, which I set upon thee; well then, in this state, Quomodo cecidisti de calo; How fell she out of God's arms, out of his bosom? thus; Thou didst trust in thine own beauty, because of thy renown, and so playedst the harlot. When that nation was in massa damnata, a loaf of Adam's dough, through all which the infectious leaven of sin had passed without difference, when that nation had no more title, nor pretence to God's mercy, than any of their fellow worms, when God had heaped, and accumulated his temporal blessings upon them, and above all, dwelt with them, in the alliance, and in the familiarity of a particular religion, which contracted God and them, and left out all the world beside, when God had imprinted this beauty in them, and that they had a renown, and reputation for that, they trusted to their own beauty, (to worship whom they would, and how they would) they followed their own invention; yea, they trusted in beauty, which was not their own, in borrowed beauty, in painted beauty, and so took in, and applied themselves to all the spiritual fornications, to all the idolatries of the nations about them; some that were too absurd to be hearkened to; some too obscene and foul to be named now by us, though the Prophets, (to their farther reproach, and confusion) have named them; some, too ridiculous to fall into any man's consideration, that could seriously think of a majesty, in a God, which should be worshipped; yet all these absurd and obscene and ridiculous idolatries they prostituted themselves unto.

Take them in their lowness, for any disposition towards the next world, and this was their state, their navel was not cut; that is, they were still incorporated into their mother, to earth, and to sin; and they were not one step higher, than all the world beside, in Jacob's ladder, whose top is in heaven. Take them in their dignity in this world, and then we find them in Egypt, where they were not persona, but res, they were not their master's men, but their master's goods; they were their cattle, to vex, and wear out, with their labours spent upon the delights of others;

3 Ezk. xvi. 4, 5, 6.

they must go far for straw; a great labour, for a little matter; and they must burn it, when they had brought it; they must make brick, but others must build houses, with their materials, and they perish in the fields; they must beget children, but only for the slaughter, and to be murdered as soon as they were born; what nation, what man, what beast, what worm, what weed, if it could have understood their state, would have changed with them then?

This was their dejection, their exinanition in Egypt, if we shall begin there to consider, what he did for them as after in the Christian church, he made the blood of the martyrs, the seed of the church, so in Egypt, he propagated, and multiplied his children, in the midst of their cruel oppressions, and slaughters, as though their blood had been seed to increase by; under the weight of their depressions, he gave them growth, and stature, and strength, as though their wounds had been plasters, and their vexations cordials; when he had made Egypt as a hell, by kindling all his plagues in her bosom, yet non dereliquit in inferno, he left not his beloved in this hell, he paled in a paradise in this hell, a Goshen in Egypt, and gave his servants security; briefly, those whom the sword should have lessened, whom labour should have crippled, whom contempt should have beggared, he brought out numerous, and in multitudes, strong, and in courage, rich, and in abundance; and he opened the Red Sea, as he should have opened the Book of Life, to show them their names, their security, and he shut the sea, as that book upon the Egyptians, to show them their irrecoverable exclusion. If we consider, what he did for them, what he suffered from them, in their way, the battles that he fought for them in an out-stretched arm, the battles that they fought against him, in the stiffness of their necks, and their murmurings, we must, to their confusion, acknowledge, that at a great deal a less price, than he paid for them, he might have gained all the people of the earth; all the nations of the earth, (in appearance) would have come in to his subjection, upon the thousandth part of that which he did for the Israelites in their way. But for that which he did for them, at home, when he had planted them in the Land of Promise, as it were an ungrateful thing, not to remember those blessings, so it is some degree of