the zeale love constancy knowledge of those noble Patriarches and those constant Martyrs in the Primitive times every drop of whose bloud bred and sprung up a new Saint if thou wert glorious as an Angell thy meat as Manna thy garments as Aarons Ephod thy breath as sweete as the perfume of the Tabernacle from the life of Nature to the life of Grace and so to the life of Glory all is from this Fountaine which is God Nay even that thou art not wicked as the most debauched creature in the world it is from the supporting and restrayning grace of God upon whom thou leanest in the wildernesse of this world as the Spouse upon her beloved Cant. 8. Or as Moses hands were supported by Aaron and Hur Exod. 17. 12. Or as the Altar of the Sanctuarie at the base thereof had Lyons for supporters so thou the Lyon of the Tribe of Iudah else how is it in man to direct his wayes aright without this Though Peter à Petra a Rocke surnamed Cephas for his stedfastnesse yet fell into a fearefull Apostacie Godly David moulded in the mint of Regeneration into Adultery and Murther these and much more hadst thou committed if God had not prevented Marshall then all thy guifts and graces together let them face one another as the Cherubins upon the Mercy-seate and all looke upon God For of him and through him and for him are all things Rom. 11. 36. Because it is a great part of Gods worship and even the most of that service which he requires at the hands of silly Men David in his Quaere makes it the summe of all Psal 116. 12. What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits towards me but onely this I will take the cuppe of thanksgiving and call upon the name of the Lord. For this purpose it is called a sacrifice of praise Heb. 13. 15. The calves of our lippes and the first fruite of faith Acts 2. 46. It is his honour and that hee will not give to another Sing unto the Lord a new song and his praise from the end of the earth c. Esay 42. 10. To teach us not onely to condemne in ourpractise that ingratitude which is a monster in nature As we call the gratefull man a kind man so the ingratefull an unnaturall an absurd soloecisme in manners consisting of two foule vices falshood in not acknowledging iniustice in not requiting a benefit Alexander the Great and Iulius Caesar both renowned the one for liberality the other for patience the one would not give nor the other forgive an ingratefull person Not onely this but forasmuch as every one arrogates a due performance of this duty To teach us how to tread right in the steps of his service And to this purpose consider that God is praised 1. vocally as sing to the Lord 2. Chordally praise him upon the Harpe 3. Pneumatically with Trumpets Shawmes Cimbals c. when our breath is the bellowes 4. Allegorically in our actions contemplations words works life death being not only temples 1 Cor. 3. 16. but also timbrels of the Holy Ghost Know then that thy right praising magnifying of God is thy obedience to his voyce his law his Gospell c. Never boast saith Augustine that thou blessest with thy mouth when thou cursest with thy life and conversation It is not only thy breath but thy breast thy song but thy soule thy voyce but thy life that must be this Davidicall trump of praise thanksgiving 1 Pet. 2. 12. Have your conversation honest among the Gentiles and by this meanes they which are yet without and strangers from God shall have occasion to glorifie God in the day of their visitation Math. 5. 16. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good workes and glorifie your Father which is in heaven Our praise is our obedience and our obedience is nothing else but a subiecting of our will to God So that it is with every disobedient person though he can marshall his words adorne his phrase that they be like apples of gold with pictures of Silver Prov. 25 11. as with a secretly disloyall traytor who in the chamber of Presence is highly extolling and commending the King the State Government but being without the Court gate is opening his poysonous jawes and casting whole Seas of contumelious reproches and outragious slanders against the same who will take this for a true subject and who will account a wicked man the servant of God though with his tongue he praise God when he speaks nothing but contradiction in his life and conversation This false and pseudo-christianity makes the Gospell and sincere professors thereof and even God himselfe to be traduced and as Iacob was accounted with the Sichemites Ye have troubled me speaking to his cruell sonnes to make me stincke among the inhabitants of the land Gen. 34. 30. For this cause Rom. 2. 24. The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you professing to knowe God but in workes denying him being abhominable disobedient and to euery good worke reprobate Tit. 1 16. And hence wee see plainely the reason and ground-worke of those foule aspersions daily slanders and Ismaelitish songes of Turkes Iewes Infidels and Papists which are daily cast as dirt into the face of Christianity to be onely our dissolute lives disobedient carriages and disordered conversation Christiani hoc ipso deteriores quo meliores esse deberent Christians are so much the worse as they ought to be better Either then be as thou seemest or seeme as thou art else thou art but like the little bird with the great voyce which the Fowler onely hearing and thinking her to be some great fowle took paines to take her and seeing her little body ill able to countervaile his paines he said Thou art a voice an Eccho an empty outward sound and nothing else Know then that all thine orall profession superficiall adoration and Pharisaicall sepulcher-like guilded outside is in Gods account without the inward subjection of the heart to his holy lawes no better than to cut off a dogges necke to offer swines flesh or to blesse an Idoll Esay 66. 3. so long as thy heart is unsanctified wanting the salt of Grace and remaining unwholesome as the poysonous waters of Bethel Christ reiecteth thy lip-praises and outward service as the sacrifice of fooles Psal 50. 16. Vnto the wicked saith God Why doest thou preach my lawes and takest my covenant into thy mouth wheras thou hatest to be reformed and hast cast my wordes behinde thee Christ will not suffer the Devill the father of lies to beare witnesse of his truth Mar. 1. 24. and Paul will not suffer the Pythonesse to proclaime the truth Acts 16. 18. O then the rottennesse of our times how is our obedience if we have any cut short and wee are become like that
sparing in some and too lavish and prodigail in others Obiect But it may be objected Valentinian the godly Emperor would be Baptised by none but Ambrose Answ The reason is apparant not to be respect of persons which caused him to travaile for Baptisme to Ambrose but because the Bishops of that time were generally possessed with Arianisme and scarce one so sound as Ambrose was the cause why he repaired thither But where Idolatry is banished Heresy demolished the Ministery of the Word and Sacraments established and sincerely delivered and administred Christ himselfe being the head and President over his Church giving gifts unto all that he sends though to some more to some lesse yet to all sufficient for their Calling Ephes 4. 11 We must not we ought not if we will escape the brand and marke of câ—rnall men have mens persons in admiration in setting one so farre before another to make them more than Christ himselfe ever made them which is to be instruments for the gathering of his Church It was his owne admonition Mat. 23. 8. Be ye not called Râ—â—bi for one is your Master which is Christ and he must be heard if he come in stammering Moses as well as in eloquent Paul or courtly Esay in the weakest and poorest of them Mat. 3. 17. and Math. 17. 5. This is my beloved Sonne in whom I am well pleased heare him Neither must we idolatrously magnifie the creature to shrinke in and pinche and pinne up too streight the large glory of the Creator The wise man Wisd 14. 15. laying downe the ground-worke of all Idolatry and spirituall fornication saith thus A Father afflicted with untimely mourning when he had made an Image of his child soone taken away now honoured him as a God which was then a dead man and delivered to those that were under him ceremonies and Sacrifices Thus we see out of the heat of a too ardent and earnest love transported in a preposterous current that is soone taken from the Creator and given to the creature and where that true-loving affection of man is placed there is way made for Idolatry if not rightly and strongly guided by the Spirit of Grace and thus we may offend even in things that are most deare most neare unto us in our wives children selfe love c. as 1 Sam. 2. 29. Eli honoured his children more than God Ambition in the disobedience of our first Parents in a selfe love to themselves is made the way to that fearefull Apostacy hence covetous men are called Idolaters Eph. 5. 5. Col. 3. 5. Mammon is the Idoll and the worldling the Priest that sacrificeth to their imprisoned god as the Gyants Aloydae did to their captived Mars And upon this he bestowes a double worship an inward for hee loves desires delights and trusts in his wealth and an outward for he spends most of his time upon his Idoll in gathering carefully keeping watchfully encreasing painefully and honouring dutifully his carved and painted God and yet the dust of earthly profits hath put out both his eyes that hee sees not his horrible Idolatry The like wee see Wisd 13. 1. c. The madnesse of man first to ascribe the praise due to the Creator to stockes and stones creatures insensible Secondly to men which are but dust and ashes vers 18. for health he calleth to that which is weake Thirdly to wicked men the worst of reasonable creatures and then even to Devils the enemies of God and man they gave that incommunicable name of God Thus by little and little the Devill brought on the highest pitch of Idolatry making the wayes of men and their Religion as uncertaine as Hanniball's crooked passages upon the Alpes That fooles make a mocke at sinne Pro. 14. 9. and they erre in their hearts not knowing the wayes of God Psal 95. 10. Thus when we will set our hearts upon these sublunary and terrestriall vanities it is iust with God to make our ignorance both our sinne and our punishment that the ignorant Idolater may complaine with the wicked Wisd 5. 6. Therefore have we erred from the way of truth and the light of righteousnesse hath not shined upon us and the Sunne of righteousnesse rose not upon us we wearied our selves in the way of wickednesse and destruction yea we have walked through deserts where there lay no way but for the way of the Lord we have not knowne it Neither must we with these bezling Bacchanalians of Belshazzar swallowing his last draught in the sacred bolles which his father had sacrilegiously taken from the Temple drinke wine and praise the Gods of gold Silver Iron brasse wood Dan. 5. 4. neglecting to praise and glorifie the God in whose hand our breath is and whose are all our wayes sacrificing to our cuppes and our cannes our nets and our navigations Thus as though we had made an atonement with death and an agreement with hell Esay 28. 15. Though we be poysoned with the drowsie venome of the Aspe securely snorting in the fooles Paradise and enchaunted castle of this ebrietie swimming in the charmed cupps of Calypso and the dangerous drugges of Circes we are for all this in no more saftety than â— man sleeping in the midst of the Sea or upon the top of the tottering maste of a shippe Pro. 23 34. and though it have the face of beauty yet in the end it bites like a Serpent armed in the taile with the sting of a Cockatrice and though wee misse the heavy doome of Elpenor who in this madnesse was sent to the grave if not to the horrible pit with a broken necke Yet let every intemperate Helluâ— and grape-devouring panther the auncient Hierogly phicke of this vice know that without his speedy amendment his belly is his God and he glories in his shame a fearefull destruction waites his cursed end Phil. 3. 18. For he is a lover of pleasure more than of God 2 Tim. 3. 4. Neither must wee place in this our Hallelu-jah an admiration of any superstition be it as auncient as the Embryons world in its nonage like those Ephesians Acts 19. 28. for their she god Diana erring in the knowledge of the true God which is a spirit and will be worshipped in spirit and trueth Io. 4 24. or like those famosed Idolaters Ier. 44. 17. Wee will burne incense to the Queene of heaven and powre out drinke offerings vnto her as wee have done and our Fathers our Kings and Princes have done in the Cities of Iudah and in the Streetes of Ierusalem for then had we plenty of all things wee were then well and sawe no evill See wee not this foolish generation to continue praising the superstitious times of heathenderived Popery even wholly sprung out of superstitious Gentilisme as hath bin proved their outward showes and their antique fashions in crossing creeping washing elevating their new-made god c. that we might wonder at them as sometime M. Cato did
Leopards c. swearers lyers drunkards forsaking their wicked loathed slavish drudgery to the world flesh and divell and submit their sinewy neckes uncircumcised hearts and prophane lives in obedience to the scepter of Christ and out of a syncere profession and unfaigned confession cry with the Souldiers under Iovinian We are Christians and will be true to the colours of the Crosse according to our Sacramentall Oath under the banner of our Michaël we will wage warre with the red Dragon and all the spirituall enemies of our salvation God by his Word hath perswaded us called and called us out of our inchanted fooles Paradise wherein we lay in the prison and dungeon of spirituall darkensse into his marvailous light hath opened our eyes freed our feete and as a bird we are escaped out of the cordes and manacles of our hellish sinnes And whereas we lived to our owne corruptions emancipated to our lusts even the devill the Prince of the ayre Eph. 2. 3. tutoring our disobedience now wee live to God the life of God the life of Grace our scorching lusts and rebellious natures which heavenly influence should have wasted the scalding cup of Gods wrath are washed cleansed in the bloud of the immaculate lambe made ours in our justification and sealed to us in the laver of our new baptizing renovation He that is the ministerial instrument of this wondrous work which causeth admiration and ioy in men and Angels Luke 15. 7. Though his tongue were the pen of a ready writer Psal 45. 2. and spake as the Oracle of God had the mouth of golden Chrysostome the gravity of Tertullian the spirit of heavenly Augustine could make Felix tremble with Paul conjure the cursed workes of darkenesse Yet if he sacrificed to his owne nets and yarne he robbes God of his praise and glorie It is not thy word nor thy eloquence or learning but Gods power that brings these mighty things to passe and so all other things If the mercy of God be not in our sustenance we may dye with meate in our mouthes as did the Israelites if his providentiall goodnesse restraine her influence and withold her vertue were our garments as rich as Aarons Ephod there were no heate or benefit in them Nature declines her ordinary working when Gods revocation hath chidden it Though thou labourest and sweatest with diligence till the taper of thy life were burnt out if the Lord prosper not thy handy worke thou makest but roapes of sand to bind Sampson Then sing with the Psalmist Not unto vs O Lord not unto us but unto thy name give the glorie The principall end of Gods actions must be the end of ours and his is his praise Prove 16. 4. The Lord made all things for himselfe viz for his owne praise even the wicked for the day of evill Even out of the unhallowed heape of sinne will he mould the silver trumpet of his owne praise To teach us That God is praised magnified and made great by us when his Image is repaired in us Gen. 1. 26. Let vs make Man after our owne Image Now this image which is his righteousnesse and holinesse the new man Ephes 4. 24. newly comming out of the mint of Regeneration as furnace-smoaked Israel out of Egypt is a glorifying of God and this as a curious worke graces the artificer magnifies the maker Man the little Epitome or Compendium of the world hath bin admired for his wonderfull structure and frame called by that almost miracle of Antiquity a great Miracle Nothing more admirable than Man Man a certaine divine thing Memento quòd homo sit quoddam Omne what shines not in him Our Saviour CHRIST honours him with a large tytle Mark 16. 15. Goe Preach the Gospell to every creature and who but Man must have the benefit of this Gospell But if wee looke upon him as the image of God repaired a new creature nay a new creation 2. Cor. 5. 17 As Ioseph comming from Prison as Mordecai whom the King of honour will honour as Queene Hester perfumed with the aromaticall graces of the Spirit having the royall robe of Christs righteousnesse Cant. 4. 7. Thou art all faire my Love and there is no spot in thee comely as the Curtaines and pompe of Salomon having cast off the blacke scorchings of Kedar Cant. 1. 5. and the Gibeonitish ragges of sinne now remember old things no more Esay 7. he is now a glorious creature and here is God magnified the greater measure of grace affords a greater measure of praise Strive then beloved to have thy unhallowed soule sanctified thy life reformed thy crooked pathes of vanity straighted every thought brought into subiection that God may be made greater in thee and thou the trumpet of his praise And the further to stirre us up to holinesse consider that the magnifying of God is the magnifying of our selves Luke 1. 46. Mary sings My soule doth magnifie the Lord and verse 49. He that is mighty hath magnified me He that blesseth the Lord is encreased he that blaspheameth decreased Our exultation is the first staire of our exaltation Wouldest thou be exalted made great and honoured of God of men and Angels then season thy soule with grace honor God For they that Honour him he will honour and they that despise him shall be dispised 1 Sam 2. 30. He that goes to the Court of Honour must passe by the temple of vertue from the Pallace of Grace to the Place of Glory Learne then to have the praise of God in thy mouth Let Hallelu-jah be the Cadence in all our Musicke and our Musicke in all our actions that being our practice on earth we may one day be Angelicall Choristers in Heaven Praise the Lord O my soule and all that is within me praise his holy name for Omne bonum nostrum velipse vel ab ipso All our good is either God or from God Parties Gentile Iewe enjoyned to this duty 1. The Gentile the stocke of Iapheth one of the sonnes of Noah Gen. 9. 18. the eldest by birth but reckoned by way of Anticipation in the last place And though a long time they stoode as it were excommunicate and cut off from the Covenant of grace yet in Gods appoynted time this rejected seede is perswaded to dwell in the tents of their brother Sem the Iewe as Noah prophecyed And the neuer erring Spirit makes this place a propheticall prediction of Gods never failing purpose of their calling Rom. 15. 11. with many other scriptures pregnant to prove it the word Nations in the old testament in Hebers tongue being rendred by Paul Gentiles a most fit prophecy for this purpose sayth Marlorat and others upon the place Thus though a great while the forlorne Prodigall sate in darkenesse and in the shadowe of death and God vouchsafed his loves and favours to the Iewes
At Salem is his Tabernacle and his dwelling in Sion and gives this land a peculiar appropriation to himselfe Psal 108. 8. Gilead is mine Manasses is mine being as the signet upon his right hand yet the Flouds of his favour is shoured downe at last plentifully upon the heads of his long neglected Nation and now he decks them as Isaac his lovely Rebecca and marryes them to himselfe in righteousnesse judgement mercy compassion and faithfulnesse Hos 2. 19. hence this Doctrine God hath according to his word revealed Christ Iesus to be a Saviour to the Gentiles called them out of the night of their superstitious blindnes into the liberty of the sonnes of light and hath made them Choristers in the quire of his Saints and partakers of his grace unto salvation This was shadowed prophecied and testified long before Shadowed in the calling of Abraham out of his owne country Gen. 12. 1. into Canaan where the Canaanite the worst of the Gentiles dwelt This doth notably prefigure the calling both of Iewe and Gentile because he is called the Father of the Faithfull Also in the Candlesticke Exod. 25. 31 which is commaunded to be made of one entire piece but having sixe branches to signifie the multitude of the Churches of Iewes and Gentiles whose Originall is from the same shanke called a little sister Cant. 8. 8. We have a little sister and she hath no breasts viz. small as yet through the rarenesse of her Converts and destitute of the helpe of any outward Ministery whereby she might either beare or nourish children unto God she hath no paps that is knowledge in the Doctrine of Salvation contained in the dugges of the two Testaments whereby she can as a mother suckle her new-borne babes being but newly come out of the wildernesse of damnable superstition the curiosity of Philosophy as the students in Ephesus Gods two Testaments in which onely is eternall life as testifying of Christ which is the truth the way and the life Ioh. 14. 6. are called the Tower of David built for defence a thousand shields hang therein furnished with rich Armorie which affoords infinite wayes of protection and monuments of victory Cant. 4. 4. and These are twins verse 5. like those of Hippocrates or those Socia's in Plautus one so like the other in resemblances that as our Saviour Christ said of the knowledge of his Father If ye have knowne me ye have knowne my Father And these the Gentiles Church knew not as yet which after was supplyed in the time of Constantine and after by those famous Luminaries of the world Chrysostome Eusebius Augustine c. called therefore the gates of the Church having the keyes of knowledge to let in the Godly Shadowed also Hos 1. 2. Goe take unto thee a wife of fornications Where it is observed that Hoseas signifying a Saviour intimates that Christ tooke unto himselfe for his spouse the polluted Church of the Gentiles a wife of fornications in worshipping Idols and Devils in stead of the living God that He might make it unto himselfe a glorious Church not having spot or wrinckle Eph 5. 27. or any such thing but to make it holy and without blame and so The not beleeving wife is sanctified by the beleeving husband 1 Cor. 7. 14. Shadowed also in Ruth the Moabitesse gleaning in the field of Boaz the Iewe and their providentiall marriâ—ge the poore ruthfull Gentile with the rich Iewe Ruth 2. 3. and 4. 13 And shadowed also in Peterâ—nd â—nd Iohn running to the sepulcher Iohn the Iewes they came first to Christ Peter the Gentiles overtaking them though not the sooner yet the sounder It was also shadowed in Christs buriall in Ierusalem where the dying sacrifices had given warning of his death but it was without the city to answere the type Levit. 16. 25 of the Scape goate sent into the wildernesse and to signifie his sufferings belonged to Gentiles as well as to Iewes In his birth borne in the night to signifie that he should lighten the Gentiles that sate in the darkenesse of superstition and ignorance Acts 10. 23. And thus was it shadowed in Peters vessell Act. 17. 11. descending like a Sheet in which the Doctor of the Iewes is taught to call the long rejected Gentiles called by the free mercy of God cleane Shadowed also in Iacob who served for Rachel and Leah Gen. 30. 31. And in the land of Egypt Gen. 41 And likewise in the marriage of Sampson Moses Gideons fleece and Davids building in Araunahs floore It was also fore-prophecyed Gen. 9. 27. God shall enlarge Iapheth and he shall dwell in the tents of Sem which signifieth not the enlarging onely of his borders and dominions and his surprising enchroaching and being in league with Sem for this was also in cursed Cham the Aegyptian and others of that spewed-out seede were in league with the Iewe and sometime enlarged their boarders upon them but gently to perswade them home to theyr Fathers house Luke 15. to become a chosen people partakers of the meanes of salvation and heyres of life The Greekes and Latines by these two languages did open the tents of Sem that is the Hebrew Scriptures layd up in Hebers sacred tongue and made them knowne to the Gentiles and so they were received into the Covenant The Church a long time stood pailed and imparked as a garden enclosed or a spring shut up Cant. 4. 12. Or as Israel in the land of Goshen within the skirts of honoured Palestina but now Christ hath broken downe the partition wall Eph. 2. 14. and hath made all one there is neither Iewe nor Gentile the two wals of Nations bond nor free the two wals of Conditions male or female the two walls of sexe the great two quicke and dead and the greatest two heaven and earth but all are one in Christ Iesus Gal. 3. 28. all these so many combinations all meete in him as in a Center he in the midst of all drawes all and knitts up all in one faith one blessed hope of his comming he is a Corner-stone or coyne to joyne these two walls together Zac. 10. 4. Out of him came forth the corner Zach. 3. 9. Esay 28. 16. c. and so that great gulfe that made a particion against us the Gentiles is taken away and all made one Esay 52. 10. All the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God And againe this Evangelicall Prophet or propheticall Evangelist Cap. 11. 10. In that day there shall be a roote of Iesse which shall stand for an ensigne of the people to it shall the Gentiles seeke and Cap. ult 19. They shall declare my glory among the Gentiles So though theyr eyes were as yet dimme as Elie's 1 Sam. 4. 15. and they could not see the light of saving truth yet there should come out of Iesse a light to