to the evidence of the Word of God to acknowledge that to be sin which the Word of God condemns for sin and to yield that to be a Duty which by the light of Scripture appears to be so When we come to the House of God we should be ready to say as the Prophet Samuel did Speak Lord for thy Servant heareth That is as Mendoza glosses that place Speak Lord what thou pleasest and I am ready not only to hear but to obey it Such a readiness appeared in St. Augustine Da Domine quod jubes jube quod vis O Lord give me grace to obey and command what thou wilt And now shall I be so bold as to inquire whether the Feet of your Souls be in that obediential posture as the Lord expects you should be Solomon speaks in general terms in the Text but it may be expedient for your better edification that I instance in some few particulars Lay the two Tables of the Law of God before you and examine your selves whether ye are henceforth resolved to conform your lives according to those sacred Rules First art thou resolved to have no other God but the God of Heaven Wilt thou no longer serve the God of this World Mammon for the wages of unrighteousness Secondly art thou resolved never more to dishonour God by worshipping him in or before some graven Image Wilt thou never hereafter disguise and palliate thy Idolatry by a nice distinction Thirdly Art thou resolved that henceforth thou wilt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain Wilt thou not swear rashly and customarily Wilt thou not make a false Oath in the Courts of Justice to take the righteousness of the Righteous from him Fourthly Wilt thou hereafter remember to Keep holy the Sabbath day never moâ—e to profane it by idleness or drunkness or feasting or luxury or worldliness Fiftly Art thou resolved henceforth to Honour thy Parents To Honour the King as the common Parent of the Country To Honour the Ministers of God who have begotten thee in Christ To Honour thy natural Parents who have brought thee into this world and bred thee up in it in care and sorrow Sixtly Art thou resolved that henceforth thou wilt do no Murther That thou wilt not take up Arms against thy King and destroy thy fellow subjects upon the mistaken quarrel of Religion and Liberty Seventhly Art thou resolved henceforth never to commit Adultery never more to pollute thy body which is the Temple of the Holy Ghost by unclean thoughts or actions Eightly Aâ—t thou resolved henceforth never to wrong thy neighbour in his goods neither violently nor fraudulently Wilt thou not hereafter use false Dice nor false Weights nor false Measures nor false words nor over-reach thy neighbour in any matter Ninethly Art thou resolved henceforth never to bear false witness against thy neighbor Wilt thou not for fear or favour nor for a bribe give a false testimony to blind the eyes of the Judge and to pervert the course of Judgement Lastly Art thou resolved never hereafter to covet any thing that is thy neighbours Wilt thou hereafter restrain thy self from all covetous practices and labour to be content with such things as the Lord in a gracious providence shall please to allow and assign to thee In this Glass in this perfect Mirror you may see whether the feet of your souls stand right whether they be wash'd and cleansed from all purposes and resolutions to sin For let me tell you Unless ye can say with David and say truly Oh Lord my heart is ready my heart is ready I will have respect unto all thy Commandments I am purposed that I will not offend Unless I say ye are in this ready posture for holy Obedience all your prayers and all your Fasts and all your days of humiliation are but the sacrifice of Fools they will avail nothing either to remove the guilt of sin or to appease the wrath of God Let me give you but one Note more in this Point This resolution which I have been speaking of will be best discovered by your constancy and fervency in prayer both in private and in publick for Mercy in regard ye have transgressed the Laws of God and for Grace that the Lord would incline your hearts to keep them And therefore it was a pious provision in our Church Liturgy that after the Minister hath repeated the several Commandments as from the mouth of God the whole Congregation are enjoyned to say Lord have mercy upon us in that we have broken those Commandments And incline our hearts to keep them that is give us grace to do so no more Bucolcerus tells us of Henricus Auceps one of the Emperours of Germany that when his City of Mersburg was assaulted by a vast Army of the Hungarians he slew and put them to flight his Souldiers crying out with a loud voice Lord have mercy upon us Lord have mercy upon us And truly I do not know a better defence against temptation to sin then to pray with David Oh Lord incline my heart to thy Testimonies nor a better remedy against the guilt of sin then to pray with the poor Publican in the Gospel Lord be merciful to me a sinner The Feet of our Souls are well kept when we have taken up a firm resolution of obeying the Commandements of God but yet we must take one step further We must keep the Kings Commandment also this is certainly a Duty however some men endeavour to distinguâ—sh themselves out of it I counsel thee says Solomon and surely the counsel of so wise a man is worthy to be heard and regarded as if he had said I Solomon who require obedience from mine own Subjects do counsel all Subjects to yield obedience to their Kings And St. Paul delivers the same Doctrine Let every Soul be subject to the Higher Powers not onely for wrath but for conscience sake But wherein are the Commands of Kings to be obeyed Must we yield up our selves in a blind obedience to observe and do whatsoever the Higher Powers shall impose upon us This is a busie question and there is a short answer to it We must either Obey or Suffer If the Commands of Kings are consistent with the Laws of God our Obedience is indisputable yea I may say that in that case we do not so much obey the King as God So that the Tryal of our obedience to Kings lyes for the most part in such matters which we call indifferent which are neither positively commanded nor forbidden by the Law of God Such as are matters of Decency and Order in Divine Worship and such as are of absolute necessity namely the payment of Tribute and Custome for the preservation of his Person and his Honour and his People and his Kingdome to boggle at such Commands as these is as I am informed from very learned and pious men a rejection of this counsel of Solomon and that exhortation of St.
is something more in them Hippomanus and some other Expositor have objected The Second Sermon That that Ceremony of Discalceation among the Jews was used to signifie a mans departure from his Right in passing his Inheritance to another as we read Ruth 4. 7. And it is not improbable that Solomon in this Instruction might have respect unto that Ceremony When St. Paul called upon the Corinthians to glorifie God both with their bodies and their spirits he presses them to it by this Argument Ye are not your own ye are bought with a price as if he had spoken to them in the phrase of the Text Put off your Shoes from your feet Yeild up that right which ye have to the members of your bodies and the faculties of your souls unto Christ who hath redeemed them And from this Notion of the phrase which is genuine enough and analogous to the rule of divine Worship I may raise some other Notions which may serve to advance and promote the Duty which we have in hand I shall easily admit that account which Lorinus gives us that by foot here is meant the feet that is the affections of the soul but may I not put the question Of the soul only Had Solomons instruction no design upon the members of the body Doth Divine Reverence consist only in the pious frame and composure of the soul Certainly it requires the whole man the inward man and the outward man too and the ensuing Discourse will be managed accordingly in some short Directions for the decent behaviour of the outward man First I advise according to the letter of the Text. Keep thy foot when thou goest to the House of God When thou art going thither keep on thy way suffer no temptation either to stay thee at home or to turn thee aside from it It is one of the choicest arts of Satan in hindering men from going to the House of God he knows that there is not any thing that debauches the spirit of a man nor hardens his heaâ—t more then his frequent absence from divine worship that 's the sin which keeps men in ignorance of themselves and of the ways of God and discomposes them for that great account which they must render to the Lord at the last day 1 Chron. 21. 30. We read That David could not go up to Gibeon to inquire of the Lord because of the sword of the Angel of the Lord that is because he was to pass through infected places thither but when the way to the House of God is clear and safe thy absence from it will not be defended by either of those too common excuses some worldly business or the entertainment of a friend that came to visit thâ—e Again Keep thy foot when thou art come into the House of God Tertullian tells us that the primitive Christians had their Dies stationum days of standing wherein they thought it Nefas as he expresses it an unlawful thing to kneel though at Prayer and those days continued from the Passover to the Pentecost in memory as it is thought of our Saviours Resurrection St. Cyprian tells us that the Confessors and Martyrs who persevered in the faith were called Stantes The Standers The ancient Church took up another custom at the reading of some portions of the Gospel and at the repetition of the Articles of our Faith that the Congregation should stand up not only to acknowledge their unity and consent in faith but to testifie their resolution to persevere in that faith and to maintain the truth of that Gospel against all opposers And since that custom of standing at those times at the repetition of the Creed and the reading of the Gospel hath been derived down to us by the piety of our fore-Fathers I advise you to look to your feet then do not kneel at the Creed as the manner of ignorant persons is as if it were a prayer Do not sit as if ye doubted of the truth or were not concerned in that publick profession of your Faith and as if your constancy to it would be conditional that is so long as it stands in favour and is in fashion with the world But in the Name of God stand up at it and stand up for it that the Lord may stand with you as He did by St. Paul and strengthen you in the day of your tribulation I pursue my design of putting our outward Man into a reverend posture for divine worship and therefore the discourse riseth from the Foot to the Knee Look to that that it be not too stiffe in the House of God God standeth in the Congregation saith David doth God stand and do his holy Angels stand and look upon thee and wilt thou sit Wilt thou sit and never kneel St. Jerom's rule is not only frequenter orandum to be often in the duty of prayer but flexo corpore orandum to declare an inward humiliation by an outward Our coming to Church is a Testification a profession of our Religion and to testifie our fall in Adam the Church appoints us at certain times to fall upon our knees and to testifie our faith in the Resurrection both of Christs and our own the Church hath appointed certain times to stand but no man is so left to his liberty as never to kneel Genu-flexio est Peccatorum Kneeling is the sinners posture If thou come hither in the quality of a sinner and if thou do not what dost thou here put thy self into the sinners posture Kneel sometimes Habe reverentiam Deo ut quod pluris est ei tribuas is devout Bernard's counsel And let me improve it thus Do but remember with what reverence thou hast come into thy Masters presence when thou wast a Servant Do but remember with what reverence thou hast come into thy Landlords presence when thou wert a Tenant Do but remember with what reverence thou hast come into a Court of Justice when thou wert either a Client or a Pleader or a Witness or but a stander by Do but remember with what reverence ye have come into the Kings presence or the Council Table or which was much lower to a Committee-Table Collect I say but the reverence which thou hast shewed to these Persons and in these places and though I could wish the Lord had but as much such bowing of the knee such bending of the body such uncovering of the head even in the coldest weather such mannerliness in all points yet Quod pluris est says Bernard God must have thus much reverence and more for all these expressions of reverence may be counterfeit these honourable Persons may have the body but not the heart but the Lord must have all Remember that call of David in the 95. Psalm O come let us worship and fall down and kneel before the Lord our Maker From the reverence of the knee we may pass to the reverence of the hands I will says St. Paul that men pray every where lifting up
holy hands This Rite in Prayer was observed by the Heathens even by the instinct of Nature So Virgil speaking of Aeneas Ingemit duplices tendens ad sidera palmas He sighed and lift up his hands to Heaven Many other authorities might be cited of this nature Cosma Magalianus glosses upon these words of St. Paul The lifting up of the hands is Orantis forma ex alto auxilium petentis 't is such a posture of Prayer whereby we declare that we seek for help from Heaven This was that posture to which the Prophet Jeremy exhorted the distressed Jews Let us lift up our hearts with our hands to God in the Heavens Lamenta 3. 41. Not the heart alone but hands and heart too I had not mentioned this particular but to remember you what an express and punctual charge the Lord gives for all parts of bodily Worship among which this of lifting up the hands is so eminent that the whole duty of Prayer is comprehended under it When ye stretch out your hands I will turn mine eyes from you says the Lord by his Prophet Isaiah And this may serve to shame us for our dulness and sluggishness and for that no motion which our bodies express in the time of Divine Woâ—ship Outward gestures are not only the Ornaments of Religion but the Incentives of Devotion The lifting up of thy hands may be the raising up of thy Pew-fellows heart he may take a spark from thy holy zeal and kindle himself into a flame of piety but however it fare with him if thou bow down thy knee before God he will bow down his ear to hear thee and if thou lift up thy holy hands thy help shall come from on high and the Lord will fill them with good things I should in the next place give you notice that there is a reverence due to the House of God from the tongue And I hope there is not such a critical Auditor in this Congregation as to charge me with a digression from the Text because Solomon speaks to this subject in the verse immediately following he advises there Be not rash with thy mouth and let not thy heart be hasty to utter any thing before God Cajetan gave this sense of the words Oratio ad Deum careat festinatione tam in ore quam in corde Our prayers to God must be so ordered that our hearts be neither hasty in conceiving nor our tongues in uttering The Original word says Lorinus signifies festinare praecipitanter an headlong haste that is when a man gives himself the liberty of speaking quicquid in buccam venerit whatsoever comes next into his thoughts without premeditation whether the words whereby those thoughts must be presented be proper and acceptable or no. And therefore in provision against this vanity of the tongue it seemed good to the Church in all ages to pâ—epare Liturgies and set forms of Prayer by which the devotion of the people of God should be regulated that their mouths should not be rash nor their hearts hasty to utter any thing before God That great searcher into Antiquity Mr Gregory hath delivered it unto us from very reverend Authority that Noah himself while he was in the Ark used a set form of Prayer whereof he gives us the Copie out of an Arabick Manuscript and although there be no need to distrust the faith of such a venerable Record yet we have other evidence for the use of forms of Prayer from unquestionable authority We have the manner of the Temple-service as it was in use in our Saviours time and we find not any where that he took offence at it Yea we find that when his Disciples came to him and besought of him that he would teach them to pray as John had taught his Disciples He prescribes them a set form When ye pray say Our Father c. Verba et recitationem certam praescribit says Melancton Christ commands to repeat the very words Aliter orare quam Deus docuit non ignorantia sola est sed culpa says St Cyprian To pray otherwise then the Lord Christ hath taught us is not only our ignorance but our sin Wherefore says he My beloved brethren let us pray as God hath taught us And accordingly we find in Tertullian It was the manner of the Primitive Christians to begin their Divine Service with the Lords Prayer praemissa legitimâ ordinariâ Oratione Dominicâ When they had used that lawful and ordinary prayer which the Lord Christ had taught them then there was jus superstruendi A right of building upon that foundation and continuing their divine service according to those Liturgies which were compâ—led by Saint Mark and Saint James as the Eastern Church stedfastly believes Which Liturgies as it is supposed were afterwards altered by St. Basil and St. Chrysostom and fitted for more publick use and out of which and the ancient forms in the Western Church that Liturgy which is established in this Church of England was collected and composed Prayer is a duty and every duty is a debt and debts you know must be paid in currant money such as hath the present Caesars stamp or image upon it So that for the discharge of the duty and the payment of that debt of prayer I humbly conceive the safest and the most currant that is the most acceptable Coyn to pay it with will be in those Prayers which have the stamp and impressions of the Church of God upon them I mean in the Confessions and Absolutions and Collects and Letanies which are compiled to that purpose and which were present and end in the Name of Christ And when we pay our debt of prayer in the words and in the Name of Christ I see no reason we have to doubt of a discharge and acquittance of our sins in the blood of Christ Jesus There are yet two pieces of the outward man to be prepared and fitted for divine worship which must be taken into a short consideration lest I be too much streightned with time for the Points that remain The two parts or pieces of our outward man are the Eye and the Head and we must have an especial regard of these It was the resolution of a very holy man 't was Job That he would make a Covenant with his eyes he would not allow them that liberty which nature had given them of wandering upon every pleasant object And it was the confession of a very holy man 't was St. August that in his younger days Intra sacros parietes egi negotium procurandi fructus mortis Even while he was within the Walls of Gods House his eyes were wandring and lusting and he was making a bargain for the fruits of death Now forasmuch as the chastity of the soul is in so much danger to be violated and betrayed through the treason of the eye it will concern us to joyn with another holy man with David in his Prayer Turn away mine eyes from beholding
Paul before-mentioned we may make our selves lyable to the wrath of the King which as Solomon says is as the roaring of a Lion yea we may make our selves lyable to that which St. Paul terms Damnation an heavy word and the Lord incline all our hearts to such a prudent and conscionable obedience both to his own Commands and the Kings that we may never feel the weight of it The second general Part. The Caution For they consider not that they do evil Have ye yet one minutes patience more I hope ye have and indeed there needs not much more for the discussion of this part Solomon here points at a palpable and very dangerous piece of Folly As indeed what can be more foolish then for a man when he doth evil to think he doth well And what can be more dangerous then to dishonour God while we think we serve him It is an heavy word that of Solomon Who so turneth away his ear from hearing the Law even his Prayer shall be an abomination Prov. 28. 9. and that is a feaâ—ful state Let but a sinner against Gods and the Kings Commandments retire into some private place and there sit down and bethink himself and say What shall I do to be saved Righteousness I have none my whole life hath been as it were one continued transgression I have in an Hypocritical way come often to the House of God and heard many Sermons and observed many Fasts but my heart was not right towards God it went after covetousness my pretended zeal was cruel and bloody and I served my self while I bore the world in hand that I was a servant of Christs All my Religion lay in hearing but I had no obedience My practice was not conformable to my pretences and now what will become of me Should I betake my self to prayer and pour out my guilty soul in supplications Solomon tells me That they would be but the Sacrifice of Fools that my prayer would be an abomination that the Lord would cast it out as a filthy thing So that I am in great danger to lye under the guilt of sin and the wrath of God for ever Let I say a sinner I mean one that hath been more ready to hear then to obey but argue his own case with his own soul and he will quickly see his folly and with tears acknowledge that he hath done evil that there hath been iniquity even in his holy things and there remaineth nothing for him but a fearful expectation of vengeance to come But I would not close my discourse with such a sad note as this neither dare I tell you that the yoak of the Christian Religion is easier then it is You have had the Nature of Divine Worship represented to you both for the Form and the Matter of it The Form I place in those Reverential postures and gestures of the outward Man The Matter in an obedience to divine Commands and to the Kings so far forth as they are not repugnant to the Laws of God nor injoin any thing which is unlawful for or unworthy of a Christian And I beseech you to think of it by a speedy resolution for new and better obedience secure and lay in a stock of comfort for your poor souls against the coming of the great Day of the Lord. If hereafter ye shall come rightly disposed and prepared to this House of Prayer the Lord according to his promise will meet you and bless you and make you joyful in it He will give you the comforts and the graces of his blessed Spirit to strengthen and guide you in the way wherein you should go and at your end receive you into that other House of his not made with hands which is eternal in the Heavens For which the Lord of his Mercy prepare us Amen Amen FINIS To the Honouâ—able Sir Christopher Turner Knight One of the BARONS OF HIS Majesties Exchequer My Lord AMong those many mercies which our good God in the happy Restoration of his sacred Majesty hath poured upon this unworthy Nation it is look'd upon by some pious and judicious persons as none of the least yea rather as one of the greatest that his Majesty hath placed such Iudges over us who understand both Law and Gospel and are able not only to administer Iustice and Iudgement to the people in their Civil Causes but to be guides and examples to them in their devotions and addresses to God It was no small comfort to me being by the Providence of God called to this service and directed to this argument that I found your Lordship such a practical Auditor recommending my mean discourse to the better consideration of the people by your exemplar reverence in the House of God And I have the sooner digested the Obloquy which was cast upon these weak pieces when I saw the duty which they pointed at Reverence in Divine Worship was so well known and so evidently performed beside your self by so many learned and pious and honourable persons Many and sore were the evils which lay upon this Church of England in our late troubles and although our chief cordolium arose that we see some of the fundamentals of our Religion undermin'd and shaken it could not but beget some sighs and sad thoughts in us to hear the circumstantials so decryed and despised as if Divine Worship consisted only in our hearts and spirits and it had been superstition in any respect to have glorified God with our bodies It was an ingenuous concession of Mr Calvin in the case of Ceremonies that if they were few in number easie to be observed and clear in their signification they might juvare rudiorum imperitiam assist the weakness of the ruder sort of people and that they would conduce Christum illustrare to make Christ better known to them And certainly the devout and reverend servants of God in the various and humble postures and gestures of their bodies in Divine Worship have no other design but to testifie that awful sence which they have of an extraordinary presence of God in Holy Assemblies by them to instruct and edifie the ignorant and to prepare them for their more solemn approaches to the Throne of grace It was judiciously said by a late learned man that reverence was the pale of Religion if that pale be broken down the Roes and the Hinds of the field as Solomon calls them weak and unstable souls will break out and wander into profaneness and Atheism and in a short time forget that God whom they see worship'd in such a sleight and homely manner Wherefore we have cause to bless the Lord that notwithstanding the Sectaries like wild Boars were so long foraging in his Vineyard which he had planted here amongst us and had well neer laid it waste by destroying the Dressers and rooting out those goodly plants of Order and Decency and Vniformity he hath yet preserved an holy seed who know him and fear him and come with hearts and bodies to sanctifie him at what time or in what places soever they draw neer to him It is the joy of our hearts notwithstanding we live so far remote from the Imperial City to hear of the signal reverence of his Sacred Majesty in holy Worship and it is our wish that his pious example may have such an influence upon the Nation that this Church of England which was so lately blackned by her own intestine troubles may recover her former comeliness and become once more a praise on the Earth Our expectations of this happiness are somewhat raised since we see the Episcopal Chairs and the Seats of Iudicature fill'd with such eminent persons who have given so ample testimony of their Loyalty to their King and their constancy to their Religion My Lord I am a poor stranger to you I had not the happiness to my best remembrance ever to see your face till I met you in the House of God and afterward received from your Lordship that more then sufficient reward a very candid signification of your acceptance of my well-meant labours And I humbly and heartily congratulate to you your Honour that by the favour of your Prince you shine in the Orb of Iustice and are such an illustrious and yet benevolent star in that Now glittering Constellation Good luck have you with your Honor and may you ride on prosperously as you have begun judging the Tribes of England in Truth and Meekness and Righteousness and may he whose name is The Councellour be continually assistant to you may you grow old honourable in the service of your Country and your King and your God and then when your Change shall come your comfort and assurance will be so much the greater that you shall be translated and adscited into the number of those who shall sit upon Thrones judging the Tribes of Israel These hopes and wishes shall be constantly and fervently seconded by the prayers of My Lord your most humbly devoted servant Mich. Thomas