THE THIRD SERMON.* HOSEA XIV. 2, 3. So will we render the calves of our lips. Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses; neither will we say to the works of our hands, Ye are our gods, &c. SECT. 1. Having handled the general doctrine of our entering into covenant with God, I shall now proceed unto the particulars, which they here engage themselves unto; whereof the first, is a solemn thanksgiving, "We will render the calves of our lips." All the sacrifices of the Jews were of two sorts: some were ilastical, propitiatory, or expiatory, for pardon of sin, or impetration of favour: others were eucharistical sacrifices of praise, (as the peace-offerings,) for mercies obtained. With relation unto these, the church here, having prayed for forgiveness of sin, and for the obtaining of blessings, doth hereupon, for the further enforcement of those petitions, promise to offer the peace-offerings of praise, not in the naked and empty ceremony, but with the spiritual life and substance, viz. " the calves of their lips," which are moved by the inward principles of hearty sincerity and thanksgiving. From hence we learn, That sound conversion and repentance enlargeth the heart in thankfulness towards God, and disposeth it to offer up the sacrifice of praise. And this duty, here promised, cometh in this place under several considerations; for we may consider it, SECT. 2.-I. 'Ut materiam pacti,' as the matter of a Folio edition, page 523. Vid. Gul. Stuck. Antiq. Convival. 1. 1. c. 33. -Weems. excrcit. Ceremonial. exercit. 13. quamvis alii aliter distinguunt.Cornel. A Lapid. in Synop. c. 1. Levit.-Torniel. An. 2545. sect. 21.—Pined, in Job i. 5.-Aler. Hales, p. 3. qu. 55, et memb. 4. art. 8. sect. 3. vit. 12. Psalm cvii. 22. b Levit. covenant or compact, which we promise to render unto God, in acknowledgement of his great mercy in answering the prayers, which we put unto him for pardon and grace. It is observable, that most of those psalms wherein David d imploreth help from God, are closed with thanksgiving unto him, as Psalm vii. 17. xiii. 6. lvi. 12, 13. Ivii. 7, 10, &c. David thus, by a holy craft, insinuating into God's favour, and driving a trade between earth and heaven, receiving and returning, importing one commodity, and transporting another, letting God know that his mercies shall not be lost,that as he bestows the comforts' of them upon him, so he would return the 'praises' of them unto Heaven again. Those countries that have rich and staple commodities to exchange and return unto others, have usually the freest and fullest traffic and resort of trade made unto them. Now there is no such rich return from earth to Heaven as praise: this is indeed the only tribute we can pay unto God,-to value and to celebrate his goodness towards us. As, in the Alux and reflux of the sea, the water that in the one comes from the sea unto the shore, doth, in the other, but run back into itself again; so praises are, as it were, the return of mercies into themselves, or into that bosom and fountain of God's love from whence they flowed. And therefore the richer any heart is in praises, the more speedy and copious are the returns of mercy unto it. God hath so ordered the creatures amongst themselves, that there is a kind of natural confederacy, and mutual negotiation amongst them, each one receiving and returning, deriving unto others, and drawing from others what serves most for the conservation of them all,—and every thing, by various interchanges and vicissitudes, flowing back into the original from whence it came : thereby teaching the souls of men to maintain the like spiritual commerce and confederacy with Heaven, to have all f d David omnes ferc Psalmos, in quibus Dei auxilium implorat, gratiarum actione claudit. Muis in Psalm x. 16. e Cives habent propinquam fructuosamque provinciam, quo facile excurrant, ubi libenter negotium gerant: quos illa mercibus suppeditandis cum quæstu compendioque dimittit, &c. Cicer. in Verr. Act. 2. lib. sec. 6.—Hujusmodi nobile emporeum erat Tyros, Phoenicia urbs, Ezek. xxvii. 12, 14. de qua regione Lucanus, "Primi docuere carinis Ferre cavis orbis commercia." f Gratiarum cessat decursus, ubi recursus non fuit. Bern. Ser. 1. in cap. Jejunii.-Ad locum, unde exeunt gratiæ, revertantur. Idem Ser. 3. in Vigil. Nativit. &c. the passages between them and it open and unobstructed,— that the mercies which they receive from thence, may not be kept under and imprisoned in unthankfulness, but may have a free way in daily praises, to return to their fountain again. Thus Noah, after his deliverance from the flood, built an altar, on which to sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving; that as his family by the ark was preserved from perishing, so the memory of so great a mercy might, in like manner, by the altar be preserved too. So Abraham, after a weary journey, being comforted with God's gracious appearing and manifestation of himself unto him, built an altar, and "called on the name of the Lord ";" and after another journey out of Egypt, was not forgetful to return unto that place again 1;God's presence drawing forth his praises, as the return of the sun in a spring and summer, causeth the earth to thrust forth her fruits and flowers, that they may, as it were, meet and do homage to the fountain of their beauty. If Hezekiah may be delivered from death ;-if David from guilt';they promise to sing aloud of so great mercy, and to take others into the concert, "I will teach transgressors thy way, and we will sing upon the stringed instruments." Guilt stops the mouth, and makes it speechless "; that it cannot answer for one of a thousand sins, nor acknowledge one of a thousand mercies. When Jacob begged God's blessing on him in his journey, he vowed a vow of obedience and thankfulness to the Lord, seconding God's promises of mercy. with his promises of praise, and answering all the parts thereof: "If God will be with me, and keep me, I will be his, and he shall be mine:'--if he single out me and my seed, to set us up as marks for his angels to descend unto with protection and mercy, and will indeed give this land to us,' and return me unto my father's house;' then this stone which I have set up for a pillar and monument, shall be 'God's house,' for me and my seed to praise him in." And accordingly we find he built an altar there, and changed the name of that place, calling it the House of God,'-and God, the God of Bethel.' And lastly, If God indeed will not leave nor forsake me, but will give so rich a land as this unto Gen. viii. 20. 1 Psalm li. 14. h Gen. xii. 7. i Gen. xiii. 4. k Isai. xxxviii. 20. me, I will surely return a homage back; and of his own, I will give the tenth unto him again.'-So punctual is this holy man to restipulate for each distinct promise a distinct praise, and to take the quality of his vows, from the quality of God's mercies; [Gen. xxviii. verses 20, 22. compared with verses 13, 15. Gen. xxxv. 6, 7, 14, 15.] Lastly, Jonah, out of the belly of Hell, cries unto God, and voweth a vow unto him, that he would sacrifice with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell all ages, that salvation is of the Lord ".—Thus we may consider praises as the matter of the church's cove nant. SECT. 3.-II. Ut fructum pœnitentiæ,' as a fruit of true repentance and deliverance from sin. When sin is taken away, when grace is obtained, then indeed is a man in a right disposition to give praises unto God. When we are brought out of a wilderness into Canaan "; out of Babylon, unto Sion P;then saith the prophet, "Out of them shall proceed thanksgiv ing, and the voice of them that make merry," &c. When Israel had passed through the Red Sea, and saw the Egyptians dead on the shore, the great type of our deliverance from sin, death, and Satan,-then they sing that triumphant song; Moses and the men singing the song, and Miriam and the women answering them, and repeating over again the burden of the song, "Sing to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider, hath he thrown into the sea 9." When a poor soul hath been with Jonah in the midst of the seas, compassed with the floods, closed in with the depths, brought down to the bottom of the mountains, wrapped about head and heart, and all over with the weeds, and locked up with the bars of sin and death; when it hath felt the weight of a guilty conscience, and been terrified with the fearful expectation of an approaching curse, lying as it were at the pit's brink, within the smoke of Hell; within the smell of that brimstone, and scorchings of that unquenchable fire which is kindled for the Devil and his angels ;-and is then, by a more bottomless and unsearchable mercy, brought unto dry land, snatched as a brand out of the fire,-translated unto a glorious condition, from a law to a gospel, from a Jonah ii. 9. xv. 1, 20, 21. Deut. viii. 10. P Jer. xxx. 18, 19. q Exod. curse to a crown, from damnation to an inheritance, from a slave to a son;-then, then only, never till then, is that soul in a fit disposition to sing praises unto God, when God hath forgiven all a man's 'iniquities,' and healed all the 'diseases' of his soul, and redeemed his life from destruction,'-or from 'Hell,' as the Chaldee rendereth it;-and crowned him with loving kindness and tender mercies; turning away his anger, and revealing those mercies which are "from everlasting in election unto everlasting" in salvation; removing his sins from him as far as the east is from the west;— then a man will call upon his soul over and over again, and summon every faculty within him, and invite every creature without him to "bless the Lord," and to ingeminate praises unto his holy name, Psalm ciii. 1, 4, 20, 22. And as David there begins the Psalm, with "Bless the Lord, O my soul," and ends it with "Bless the Lord, O my soul;"-so the apostle,-making mention of the like mercy of God unto him, and of the exceeding abundant grace of Christ, in setting forth him who was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and injurious, as a pattern unto all that should believe on him unto eternal life, begins this meditation with praises, "I thank Christ Jesus our Lord;" and ends it with praises, "Unto the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever, Amen." It is impossible that soul should be truly thankful unto God, which hath no apprehensions of him, but as an enemy, ready to call in, or at the least to curse, all those outward benefits which, in that little interim and respite of time between the curse pronounced in the law, and executed in death, he vouchsafeth to bestow. And impenitent sinners can have no true notion of God but such. And therefore all the verbal thanks which such men seem to render unto God for blessings, are but like the music at a funeral, or the trumpet before a judge, which gives no comfortable sound to the mourning wife, or to the guilty prisoner. SECT. 4.-III. Ut medium impetrandi,' as an argument and motive to prevail with God in prayer. For the church r Ab æterno per prædestinationem in æternum per glorificationem. Ber. Ser. 2. in Ascens. Dom. s1 Tim. i. 12, 27. Qualem te putaveris Deo, talis oportet appareat tibi Deus. Bern. in Cant. serm. 69. |