my Saviour, confess, that upon my death-bed, thou wast a liar, and wouldest have been a murderer, and the Lord shall, and I, in him, shall rebuke thee. See that ye refuse not him, that speaketh, says the apostle"; not any that speaks in his name; but espe cially not him, whom he names there, that speaks better things, than the blood of Abel; for, the blood of Abel speaks but by way of example, and imitation; the blood of Christ Jesus, by way of ransom, and satisfaction. Hear what that blood says for you, in the ears of the Father, and then no singing of the flatterer, no lisping of the tempter, no roaring of the accuser, no thunder of the destroyer shall shake thy holy constancy. Take heed what you hear, remember what you have heard; and the God of heaven, for his Son Christ Jesus' sake, by the working of his blessed Spirit, prosper and improve both endeavours in you. Amen. SERMON CIX. PREACHED TO THE KING, AT THe court, IN APRIL, 1629. GENESIS i. 26. And God said, Let us make man, in our image, after our likeness. NEVER such a frame, so soon set up, as this, in this chapter. For, for the thing itself, there is no other thing to compare it with. For it is all, it is the whole world. And for the time, there was no other time to compare it with, for this was the beginning of time, In the beginning God created heaven and earth. That earth, which in some thousands of years, men could not look over, nor discern what form it had: (for neither Lactantius, almost three hundred years after Christ, nor St. Augustine, more than one hundred years after him, would believe the earth to be round) that earth, which no man, in his person, is ever said to have compassed, till our age; that earth which is too much for man yet, (for, as yet, a very great part of the earth is unpeopled) that earth, which, if we will cast it all but into a map, costs 39 Heb. xii. 25. many months' labour to grave it, nay, if we will cast but a piece of an acre of it, into a garden, costs many years' labour to fashion, and furnish it: all that earth, and then, that heaven which spreads so far, as that subtle men have, with some appearance of probability, imagined, that in that heaven, in those manifold spheres of the planets, and the stars, there are many earths, many worlds, as big as this, which we inhabit; that earth and that heaven, which spent God himself, Almighty God, six days in furnishing; Moses sets up in a few syllables, in one line, in principio, in the beginning God created heaven and earth. If a Livy or a Guicciardine, or such extensive and voluminous authors, had had this story in hand; God must have made another world, to have made them a library to hold their books, of the making of this world. Into what wire would they have drawn out this earth? Into what leaf-gold would they have beat out these heavens? It may assist our conjecture herein to consider, that amongst those men, who proceed with a sober modesty, and limitation in their writing, and make a conscience not to clog the world with unnecessary books; yet the volumes which are written by them, upon this beginning of Genesis, are scarce less than infinite. God did no more but say, Let this and this be done; and Moses does no more but say, that upon God's saying it was done. God required not nature to help him to do it: Moses required not reason to help him to be believed. The Holy Ghost hovered upon the waters, and so God wrought: the Holy Ghost hovered upon Moses too, and so he wrote. And we believe these things to be so, by the same Spirit in Moses' mouth, by which they were made so, in God's hand. Only, beloved, remember, that a frame may be thrown down in a much less time, than it was set up. A child, an ape can give fire to a cannon and a vapour can shake the earth: and these fires, and these vapours can throw down cities in minutes. When Christ said, Throw down this temple, and in three days I will raise it; they never stopped upon the consideration of throwing it down; they knew, that might be soon done; but they wondered at the speedy raising of it. Now, if all this earth were made in that minute, may not all come to a general dissolution in this minute? Or may not thy acres, thy miles, thy shires shrink into feet, and so few feet, as shall but make up thy grave? When he who was a great lord, must be but a cottager; and not so well; for a cottager must have so many acres to his cottage; but in this case, a little piece of an acre, five-foot, is become the house itself; the house, and the land; the grave is all: lower than that; the grave is the land, and the tenement, and the tenant too: he that lies in it becomes the same earth, that he lies in. They all make but one earth, and but a little of it. But then raise thyself to a higher hope again. God hath made better land, the land of promise; a stronger city, the new Jerusalem; and inhabitants for that everlasting city, us; whom he made, not by saying, Let there be men, but by consultation, by deliberation, God said, Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness. We shall pursue our great examples; God in doing, Moses in saying; and so make haste in applying the parts. But first receive them. And since we have the whole world in contemplation, consider in these words, the four quarters of the world, by application, by fair, and just accommodation of the words. First, in the first word, that God speaks here, Faciamus, Let us, us in the plural, (a denotation of divers persons in one Godhead) we consider our east where we must begin, at the knowledge and confession of the Trinity. For, though in the way to heaven, we be travelled beyond the Gentiles, when we come to confess but one God, (the Gentiles could not do that) yet we are still among the Jews, if we think that one God to be but one person. Christ's name is Oriens, the East', if we will be named by him, (called Christians) we must look to this east, the confession of the Trinity. There is then our east, in the Faciamus; Let us, us make man and then our west is the next word, Faciamus hominem. Though we be thus made, made by the council, made by the concurrence, made by the hand of the whole Trinity; yet we are made but men: and man, but in the appellation, in this text: and man there, is but Adam: and Adam is but earth, but red earth, earth dyed red in blood, in soul-blood, the blood of our own souls. To that west we must all come, to the earth. The sun knoweth his going down: even the sun for all his glory, and height, hath a going down, and he knows it. The highest cannot : divest mortality, nor the discomfort of mortality. When you see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway you say, There cometh a storm, says Christ". Christ3. When out of the region of your west, that is, your later days, there comes a cloud, a sickness, you feel a storm, even the best moral constancy is shaked. But this cloud, and this storm, and this west there must be; and that is our second consideration. But then the next words design a north, a strong, and powerful north, to scatter, and dissipate these clouds: Ad imaginem, et similitudinem; That we are made according to a pattern, to an image, to a likeness, which God proposed to himself for the making of man. This consideration, that God did not rest, in that pre-existent matter, out of which he made all other creatures, and produced their forms, out of their matter, for the making of man; but took a form, a pattern, a model for that work, this is the north wind, that is called upon to carry out the perfumes of the garden', to spread the goodness of God abroad. This is that which is intended in Job'; fair weather cometh out of the north. Our west, our declination is in this, that we are but earth, our north, our dissipation of that darkness, is in this, that we are not all earth; though we be of that matter, we have another form, another image, another likeness. And then, whose image and likeness it is, is our meridional height, our noon, our south point, our highest elevation. In imagine nostra, Let us make man in our image. Though our sun set at noon, as the prophet Amos speaks; though we die in our youth, or fall in our height yet even in that sunset, we shall have a noon. For this image of God shall never depart from our soul; no, not when that soul departs from our body. And that is our south, our meridional height and glory. And when we have thus seen this east, in the faciamus, That I am the workmanship and care of the whole Trinity; and this west in the hominem, that for all that, my matter, my substance, is but earth: but then a north, a power of overcoming that low, and miserable state, In imagine; that though in my matter, the earth, I must die; yet in my form, in that image which I am made by, I cannot die: and after all a south, a knowledge, that this image is not the image of angels, 3 Luke xii. 54. 4 Cant. iv. 16. Amos viii. 9. to whom we shall be like, but it is by the same life, by which those angels themselves were made; the image of God himself: when I am gone over this east, and west, and north, and south, here in this world; I should be as sorry as Alexander was, if there were no more worlds. But there is another world, which these considerations will discover, and lead us to, in which our joy, and our glory shall be, to see that God essentially, and face to face, after whose image, and likeness we were made before. But as that pilot which had harboured his ship so far within land, as that he must have change of winds, in all the points of the compass, to bring her out, cannot hope to bring her out in one day so being to transport you, by occasion of these words, from this world, to the next; and in this world, through all the compass, all the four quarters thereof; I cannot hope to make all this voyage to-day. To-day we shall consider only our longitude, our east, and west; and our north and south at another tide, and another gale. First then we look towards our east, the fountain of light, and of life. There this world began; the creation was in the east. And there our next world began too. There the gates of heaven opened to us; and opened to us in the gates of death; for, our heaven is the death of our Saviour, and there he lived, and died there, and there he looked into our west, from the east, from his terrace, from his pinnacle, from his exaltation (as himself calls it) the cross. The light which arises to us, in this east, the knowledge which we receive in this first word of our text, Faciamus, Let us, (where God speaking of himself, speaks in the plural) is the manifestation of the Trinity; the Trinity, which is the first letter in his alphabet, that ever thinks to read his name in the book of life; the first note in his gamut, that ever thinks to sing his part, in the choir of the Triumphant church. Let him, him have done as much, as all the worthies; and suffered as much as all nature's martyrs, the penurious philosophers; let him have known as much, as they that pretend to know, Omne scibile, all that can be known nay, and In-intelligibilia, in-investigabilia, (as Tertullian speaks) un-understandable things, unrevealed decrees of God; let him have writ as much, as Aristotle writ, or as is written upon Aristotle, which is, multiplication enough: yet he |