jostling, the Roman church going that broad way, to believe as the church believes, may scape some particular differences, which we that go the narrower way, to try every thing by the exact word of God, may fall into. St. Augustine" tells us of a city in Mauritania Cæsarea, in which they had a custom, that in one day in the year, not only citizens of other parishes, but even neighbours, yea brethren, yea fathers, did fling stones dangerously, and furiously at one another in the streets; and this they so solemnized, as a custom received from their ancestors; which was a licentious kind of carnival. If any amongst us have fallen into that disease, to cast stones, or dirt at his friends, it is an infection from his own distemper, not from our doctrine; for, If any man list to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the church of God. We departed not from them then, till it was come to a hot plague, in a necessity of professing old opinions to be new articles of faith; not till we were driven by them, and drawn by the voice of God, in the learnedest men of all nations; when they could not discharge themselves by the distinction of the court of Rome, and the church of Rome, because, if the abuses had been but in the court, it was the greatest abuse of all, for that church, which is so much above that court, not to mend it. Nor can they require miracles at our hands, who do none themselves, and yet need them, because they induce new articles of religion; neither can they reproach to us our dissensions amongst ourselves; because they are neither in so fundamental points, nor pursued with so much uncharitableness, as theirs. So we justify our secession from them; but all this justifies in no part, the secession of those distempered men, who have separated themselves from us, which is our next, and our last consideration.

When the apostle says, Study to be quiet, (1 Thess. iv. 11.) methinks he intimates something towards this, that the less we study for our sermons, the more danger is there to disquiet the auditory; extemporal, unpremeditated sermons, that serve the popular ear, vent, for the most part, doctrines that disquiet the church. Study for them, and they will be quiet; consider ancient and fundamental doctrines, and this will quiet and settle the understanding, and the conscience. Many of these extem

49 De doctrina Christiana.

48 1 Cor. xi. 16.

poral men have gone away from us, and vainly said, that they have as good cause to separate from us, as we from Rome. But can they call our church, a Babylon; confusion, disorder? All that offends them, is, that we have too much order, too much regularity, too much binding to the orderly, and uniform service of God in his church. It affects all the body when any member is cut off; Cum dolore amputatur, etiam quæ putruit, pars corporis"; and they cut off themselves, and feel it not; when we lose but a mystical limb, and they lose a spiritual life, we feel it and they do not. When that is pronounced Sit tibi sicut ethnicus, If he hear not the church, let him be to thee as a heathen, gravius est quàm si gladio feriretur, flammis absumeretur, seris subigeretur, it is a heavier sentence, than to be beheaded, to be burnt, or devoured with wild beasts; and yet these men, before any such sentence pronounced by us, excommunicate themselves. Of all distempers, Calvin falls oftenest upon the reproof of that which he calls morositatem, a certain peevish frowardness, which, as he calls in one place, deterrimam pestem, the most infectious pestilence, that can fall upon a man, so, in another, he gives the reason, why it is so, semper nimia morositas est ambitiosa, that this peevish frowardness is always accompanied with a pride, and a singularity, and an ambition to have his opinions. preferred before all other men, and to condemn all that differ from him. A civil man will depart with his opinion at a table, at a council table, rather than hold up an argument to the vexation of the company; so will a peaceable man do, in the church, in questions that are not fundamental. That reverend man whom we mentioned before, who did so much in the establishing of Geneva, professes, that it was his own opinion, that the sacrament might be administered in prisons, and in private houses; but because he found the church of Geneva of another opinion, and another practice before he came, he applied himself to them and departed, (in practice) from his own opinion, even in so important a point, as the ministration of the sacrament. Which I present to consideration the rather, both because thereby it appears, that greater matters than are now thought fundamental, were then thought but indifferent, and arbitrary, (for, surely, if 45 Augustine.

44 Ambrose.

Calvin had thought this a fundamental thing, he would never have suffered any custom to have prevailed against his conscience) and also, because divers of those men, who trouble the church now, about things of less importance, and this of private sacraments in particular, will needs make themselves believe, that they are his disciples, and always conclude that whatsoever is practised at Geneva was Calvin's opinion. St. Augustine saith excellently, and appliably, to a holy virgin, who was ready to leave the church, for the ill life of churchmen, Christus nobis imperavit congregationem, sibi servavit separationem"; Christ Jesus hath commanded us to gather together, and recommended to us the congregation; as for the separation, he hath reserved it to himself, to declare at the last day, who are sheep and who are goats. And he wrought that separation which our fathers made from Rome, by his express written word, and by that which is one word of God too, vox populi, the invitation and acclamation of doctors, and people, and princes; but have our separatists any such public, and concurrent authorizing of that which they do, since of all that part from us, scarce a dozen meet together in one confession? When you have heard the prophet say, Can two walk together, except they be agreed", when you have heard the apostle say, I beseech you brethren by the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same things, and that there be no divisions among you, (for, if preachers speak one one way, another another, there will be divisions among the people) and then, it is not only, that in obedience to authority, they speak the same things; but, Be perfectly joined in the same mind, and in the same judgment, you had need make haste to this union, this pacification; for when we are come thither, to agree among ourselves, we are not come to our journey's end.

Our life is a warfare; other wars, in a great part end in marriages: ours in a divorce, in a divorce of body and soul in death. Till then, though God have brought us, from the first Babylon, the darkness of the Gentiles, and from the second Babylon, the superstitions of Rome, and from the third Babylon, the confusion of tongues, in bitter speaking against one another, after all this, every man shall find a fourth Babylon, enough to exercise all his

46 Ep. 209. Felicia Virgini.

47 Amos iii. 3. 48 1 Cor. i. 10.

forces, the civil war, the rebellious disorder, the intestine confusion of his own concupiscences. This is a transmigration, a transportation laid upon us all, by Adam's rebellion, from Jerusalem to Babylon, from our innocent state in our creation, to this confusion of our corrupt nature. God would have his children first brought to Babylon, before he would be glorified in their deliverance, Venies usque ad Babylonem; ibi liberaberis"; To Babylon thou shalt come; there I will deliver thee; but not till then; that is, till you come to a holy sense of the miseries you are in, and what hath brought you to them.

Though then you have suffered the calamities of all these Babylons, in some proportions, though you be not incolæ, but indigenæ, not naturalized but born Babylonians, (original sin makes you so) yet since you are within the covenant, hear him, that said to you in Abraham's ears, Egredere de terrâ tuâ3, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, unto the land I will show thee; come out of Babylon to Jerusalem; since ye are within his adoption, and may cry, Abba, Father, hear that voice Egredimini filia Sion", Come forth ye daughters of Sion, come to Jerusalem. Though ye be dead, and buried, and putrefied in this corrupted, and corrupting flesh, yet since he cries with a loud voice, (as it is said in that text) Lazare veni foras", Lazarus come forth, come forth of your tombs in Babylon, to this Jerusalem, come from your troubled waters, your waters of contention, of anxiety, of envy, of solicitude, and vexation of worldly encumberances, and come ad aquas quietudinum 53, to the waters of rest, the application of the merits of Christ, in a true church: Vinum non habetis? Have ye no wine to refresh your hearts; no merits of your own to take comfort in? Implete hydrias aquâ, Fill all your vessels with water, that water of life, remorseful tears, perchance he will change your water into wine, as he did in that place; perchance he will give you abundance of temporal blessings; perchance he will change that water into blood, as in Egypt; that is, into persecutions, into afflictions, into martyrdom, for his sake, for he will accept our water for blood, our tears of repentance

49 Mich. iv. 10.

52 John xi. 43.

50 Gen. xii. 1.
53 Psalm xxiii. 2.

51 Cant. iii. 11. 54 John ii. 4.

and contrition for martyrdom, ut cum desit martyrium sanguinis, habeamus martyrium aquæ, that we may be martyrs in his sight, and shed no blood; martyrs of a new dye, white martyrs. That our waters of sorrow for sin may answer our Saviour's tears over Lazarus and over Jerusalem; and the sweat of our brows in a lawful calling may answer our Saviour's sweat of water and blood in his agony; and that our reverent and profitable receiving of the sacrament, may answer the water and blood that issued from his side, which represented omnia sacramenta, all the sacraments; that, as we do, we may still feed upon grass " that is not trodden, and drink water that is not troubled, with the feet of others, or our own; that we be never shaked in the sincerity nor in the integrity of religion with their power, nor our own distempers of fears or hopes. But that our meat may be, to do the will of him that sent us, and to finish his work 56.

55

SERMON CVII.

PREACHED TO THE KING, AT WHITEHall, the firST
SUNDAY IN LENT.

ISAIAH LXV. 20.

For the child shall die a hundred years old; but the sinner, being a hundred years old, shall be accursed.

PEACE is in Sion; God's whole choir is in tune; nay, here is the music of the spheres; all the spheres (all churches) all the stars in those spheres (all expositors in all churches) agree in the sense of these words; and agree the words to be a prophecy, of the distillation, nay, inundation, of the largeness, nay the infiniteness of the blessings, and benefits of Almighty God, prepared and mediated before, and presented, and accomplished now in the Christian church. The sun was up betimes, in the light of nature, but then the sun moved but in the winter tropic, short and cold, dark and cloudy days; a diluculum and a crepusculum, a dawn56 John iv. 34.

55 Folio edition "grace."