a Commonwealth soon after the coming of the Messias and that it did so about 40 years after our Saviour's Crucifixion is matter of Fact as evident and undeniable as the other Nay more than thus forasmuch as it is plain in Chronology that the Commonwealth of the Jews was not destroyed immediately upon the Birth of our Saviour nor immediately after his Death This Prophecy points directly at the time when that fatal Destruction should come upon them that should wrest the Sceptre out of their hands if we understand it as the Learned Mr. Mede doth much more agreeably to the Original and to the completion of it than is our English Translation viz. thus The Sceptre shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh come and the gathering of the people be to him and so it is plain that this Destruction of the Jewish Polity was not to happen immediately upon the coming of the Messias but first the people were to be gathered unto him i. e. were to submit to his Government and to own him for their Lord which was fulfilled when the Apostles had executed the Commission which our Saviour gave them and had converted the Gentiles in all Countreys of the then known World to the Christian Faith then immediately followed the utter Subversion of the Jewish State as our Saviour had foretold Matth. 24.14 This Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all Nations and then shall the end come Then did the Sceptre finally and totally depart from Judah according to this ancient Prophecy of the Patriarch Jacob. The second Prophecy which I shall instance in to prove that our Saviour came at the time appointed by God for the coming of the Messias is Hagg. 2.6 7 and 9th Verses Thus saith the Lord of hosts yet once it is a little while and I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land and I will shake all nations and the desire of all nations shall come and I will fill this house with glory saith the Lord of hosts The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former saith the Lord of hosts and in this place will I give peace saith the Lord of hosts Unto which I shall joyn that of Mal. 3.1 as being exactly parallel Behold I will send my Messenger and be shall prepare the way before me and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple even the Messenger of the covenant whom ye delight in behold he shall come saith the Lord of hosts The chief end and design of both these Prophecies is to foretel that the Messias should come while the second Temple was standing viz. that Temple which was built by Zerubbabel after that the Jews were returned from the Babylonish Captivity and afterwards repaired and beautified by Herod Thus the ancient Rabbies and Doctors of the Jews understood these Texts as well as we however their modern Writers now labour to wrest them to some other sense that they may not be forced to own our Saviour to be the true Messias at whom it is evident nevertheless that these Texts do directly point For whereas as we read Ezr. 3.12 when Zerubbabel had begun to build this Temple many of the ancient men among the Jews that remembred the former Temple that was built by Solomon wept when they considered how much inferiour this would be to that thereupon God sends the Prophet Haggai to encourage them in the building of it and to assure them That the glory of this latter house should be greater than of the former But wherein was the Glory of this Temple greater than that of Solomon's Indeed it lasted a little the longer of the two and but a little not the Age of a man for it never attain'd to be threescore and ten years older than the former But if it had lasted twice as long what is this to the Glory and Splendour of it For if Glory be the product of Age then an old Cottage is more honourable than a new Palace And as for any other Glory except that which it received by being honoured by the Presence of the Messias it is certain that in all other respects it came far short of Solomon's Temple For who can with any reason suppose that a conquered Nation newly returned out of Captivity from under the hand of a potent Enemy should have so much Wealth and Riches as to be able to build a Temple that might vie with that of Solomon's who exceeded all the Kings of the earth for riches and for wisdom And though it be true that Artaxerxes gave very large and magnificent Contributions towards the building of this second Temple yet is it not to be imagined that Artaxerxes an Heathen King either took so much care or bestowed so much cost about the building of this Temple as Solomon did about his who according to that mighty Wisdom and Riches with which God had blessed him built unto the Honour of God's name both for Cost and Workmanship undoubtedly the stateliest Fabrick that ever the world beheld Neither is it at all probable that Herod when he rebuilt and beautified this Temple anew made it equal to Solomon's But suppose it had been equal to it or exceeded it in the Splendour and Magnificence of its building yet it is certain and the Jews themselves acknowledge it that it was far inferiour to it in matters of an higher Nature For gold and silver and precious stones were the least part of the Glory of Solomon's Temple It s greatest Glory was that God was pleased to make it the peculiar place as it were of his Residence and especial Presence here upon Earth The place where his honour dwelt and that far more visibly and eminently than ever it did in the second Temple before the coming of Christ For besides that at the Dedication of Solomon's Temple we read that Fire came down in a wonderful manner from Heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices and the glory of the Lord filled the house so that by reason of it the Priests were not able to enter into it and there is no mention made of any such Miracles being shewed at the Dedication of the second it had also the Urim and Thummim and the Ark of the Covenant which were signal Tokens of the Divine Presence and from whence God was wont to give Answers to the High Priest when he came to enquire of him both which were wanting in the second To this we may add also the Spirit of Prophecy so frequently manifest in the Prophets during the time of the first Temple and ceasing all the time of the second for about 400 years together even from Malachy the last of the Prophets in the Old Testament until the coming of our Saviour Since then in all these respects the Glory of the second Temple was far short of that of the former and yet God here by his Prophet
TWELVE SERMONS UPON Several Occasions BY SAMUEL SCATTERGOOD Late Vicar of Blockley in Worcestershire LONDON Printed by J. Heptinstall for John Hartley over-against Gray's-Inn-Gate in Holborn 1700. Collegium S. S. et Individuae Trinitatis in Academia Cantabrigiensi TO THE READER Courteous Reader I Here present thee with Twelve Sermons being Part of a greater Number which the Authour some time before his Death permitted me to Print According to thy kind Acceptance of these I may perhaps be hereafter encouraged to present thee with the Rest I shall not trouble thee with any Account concerning the Authour nor offer to fore-stall thy Judgment in commending his Works to thee I shall onely beg of thee to believe that if I had not great Reason to hope that thou would'st think these Sermons well worthy of thy Perusal no private Interest could ever have induc'd me to have made them Publick J. S. THE CONTENTS SERMON I II III. Gal. IV. 4 5. But when the fulness of the Time was come God sent forth his Son made of a Woman made under the Law To redeem them that were under the Law that we might receive the Adoption of Sons Page 1 16 32 SERMON IV V. 1 Cor. VI. 20. For ye are bought with a Price therefore glorifie God in your Body and in your Spirit which are Gods P. 47 66 SERMON VI. Heb. IV. 14. Seeing then that we have a great High priest that is passed into the Heavens Jesus the Son of God let us hold fast our Profession P. 85 SERMON VII Matth. XI 28. Come unto me all ye that Labour and are heavy Laden and I will give you Rest P. 100 SERMON VIII Col. II. 18 19. Let no Man beguile you of your Reward in a voluntary Humility and worshipping of Angels intruding into those things which he hath not seen vainly puffed up by his fleshly Mind And not holding the Head from which all the Body by Joints and Bands having Nourishment ministred and knit together increaseth with the Increase of God P. 115 SERMON IX Matth. V. 20. For I say unto you That except your Righteousness shall exceed the Righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees ye shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of Heaven P. 133 SERMON X XI 1 Pet. IV. 18. And if the Righteous scarcely be saved where shall the Ungodly and Sinner appear P. 148 164 SERMON XII 1 Cor. X. 12. Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall P. 180 SERMON I. GAL. IV. 4 5. But when the fulness of the time was come God sent forth his son made of a woman made under the law To redeem them that were under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons THE Galatians unto whom S. Paul writes this Epistle had in his absence been perverted and seduced from the true Doctrine of the Gospel which he had preached unto them by some false Teachers that had crept in among them and had perswaded them that tho' they did believe and that rightly that Jesus was the true Messias whom the Prophets foretold should come into the world yet still it was necessary for them to be Circumcised and to conform to the Law of Moses which they thought was never to be abrogated as well as to the Law of Christ unto which they had so lately vowed Obedience This Doctrine S. Paul confutes in this Epistle and thunders an Anathema against whosoever he be that teaches it though it were an Angel from Heaven Though we saith he or an Angel from heaven preach any other Gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you let him be accursed chap. 1.8 And afterwards in the close of the Epistle he proves to them at large that the Ceremonial Law was totally abrogated by the Law of Christ and that by Faith in him not only Jews but Gentiles were the children of Abraham and heirs of the Promise Know ye therefore that they which are of faith the same are the children of Abraham and the Scripture foreseeing that God would justifie the Heathens through faith preached before the Gospel unto Abraham saying In thee shall all Nations be blessed So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham chap. 3. 7 8 9. And tho' indeed the Jews had most glorious Privileges and Favours conferred upon them by the bounty of God under the Mosaical Oeconomy beyond what he had vouchsafed to any People upon earth besides for unto them were committed the oracles of God and they received the Law by the disposition of Angels God had chosen them to be his own peculiar People his only visible Church upon earth until the coming of the Messias So that the Psalmist had great reason to confess that he had not dealt so with any Nation yet for all this our Apostle assures them that how great soever these Privileges of the Jews might seem and indeed really were in comparison of what God had vouchsafed to other Nations during the time of the Law yet they were far inferiour to those which the Church was afterwards to enjoy under the Oeconomy of the Gospel the glorious and everlasting Kingdom of Christ Whereupon he resembles the Law to a School-master which was to bring us unto Christ that we might be justified by faith chap. 3.24 But saith he After that faith is come we are no longer under a School-master For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus And in the beginning of this fourth Chapter he compares the Church under the Law to an Heir in his Minority but the Church under the Gospel to an Heir now come to Age and in Possession of his inheritance Now I say that the Heir as long as he is a Child differeth nothing from a Servant though he be Lord of all but is under Tutors and Governours until the time appointed of the father Even so we when we were children were in bondage under the Elements of the world But when the fulness c. Thus ye see the coherence and scope of the Text and ye cannot chuse but apprehend at the first view of it that it is very sutable to this present Season and that it will furnish us with excellent Matter with a most magnificent and heavenly Feast of fit and proper Meditations to entertain our Souls with at this great Festival which we celebrate in Memory of the wonderful Incarnation and Nativity of our blessed Saviour Indeed it is hard to instance in any other Text of Scripture wherein the whole Mystery of our Saviour's Incarnation is so amply and fully explained in so few words as it is in these which I have now made choice of for the Subject of my Discourse which evidently contains all these important Truths 1. Here is our Saviour's Divinity implied in these words God sent forth his Son 2. Here is his Humanity together with the manner how he became Man and how qualified made of a woman made under the law 3. The
of ordinary Capacities For sirst learned Men that are as well acquainted with the Hebrew Tongue as the Jews themselves have evidently made it appear that wheresoever this word occurs in any other place of the Old Testament it always signifies a pure and undefiled Virgin and no tolerable reason can be given why it may not signifie so in this place as well as in all the rest nay on the contrary very great reason may be given why in this place above all others it may and must of necessity signifie a Virgin as well as elsewhere forasmuch as otherwise this Prophecy will be made downright Nonsense which is the second absurdity contained in this Assertion of the Jews which I say is obvious enough to be discerned by an ordinary Capacity For this Prophecy was delivered upon this occasion Ahaz King of Judah being much afraid of the Kings of Syria and Samaria that were coming to war against him God sends the Prophet Isaiah to comfort him and to assure him that they shall not prevail against him and withal gives him leave to ask some great Sign to be given him to satisfie him that God would certainly protect him which when he refused to do I will not ask saith he neither will I tempt the Lord God himself most graciously promises to give him a Sign therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign And surely if God pleases to give a Sign he will give such a one as is worthy of himself one that is exceedingly wonderful and extraordinary But after all as the Jews would interpret the Text the Sign only to be this Behold a woman shall conceive and bear a son What Sign what Wonder is there in this Certainly no more than what is to be seen every day every hour every minute in one place or other in the world If therefore we interpret the Text thus it is not reconcileable to Sense But as our Translation renders it Behold a Virgin shall conceive and bear a son this is a Wonder indeed such as the world never did nor ever shall behold but once this is an astonishing Sign worthy of God to give and a Prerogative so eminent as none else but the Messias was worthy to receive Now that our biessed Saviour was born of a pure Virgin is a thing so clearly revealed and firmly attested by persons of unquestionable Fidelity and Integrity authorized and commissioned by God himself to give the world a true account of these matters and guided and assisted by his Spirit in the doing of it that it can be denied by nothing less obstinate than the same malice which would pervert the sense of that famous Prophecy which foretold it That the Evangelists and Apostles have given us this account of the Birth of our Saviour is so well known that I need not insist upon it and to prove that their Writings are the word of God and consequently that they are most certainly and infallibly true is beyond my present Purpose which is to shew that there is not any one Prophecy in the Old Testament concerning the Messias which we find not punctually fulfilled even to the least tittle in the person of our Saviour in that account which the Evangelists have given us of him which sufficiently demonstrates him to be the true Messias and their Writings to be of Divine Authority This manner of our Saviour's Birth is very emphatically expressed by our Apostle in my Text. God sent forth his son made of a woman As he is God he is not made but begotten of the Father by an eternal and unspeakable Generation and as he is Man he was not begotten but made of a woman after an unconceivable manner by the omnipotent Power of God And thus it was necessary that the Messias should make his Entry into the world who was to be conceived and born without sin sanctified from the Womb holy harmless undefiled separate from sinners Thus much of the fourth Circumstance relating to the manner of the Messias his appearing in the world He was to be born of a Virgin and so was our Saviour The next thing to be considered is in what Quality and Condition he was to come This is that grand Stumbling-block at which the Jews are irreconcilably scandalized They are very ready to acknowledge that our Saviour appeared in the world in a very poor and despicable State and thus far they believe the Gospel as well as we but because he did appear in such a Condition they utterly deny him to be the Messias whom they still expect to come with exceeding great Pomp and Splendour and Glory becoming so great a King as was to sit for ever upon the Throne of David and to suddue all the Nations of the Earth and to reduce them to his obedience Had our Saviour come in this manner and made their Nation the head of the World it is more than probable that this one Circumstance would have fully satisfied them and without any scrupulous Enquiry of what Tribe he was born of what Family in what Place and in what manner they would have unanimously proclaimed him to be the true Messias the Son of David and the redeemer of Israel But that a person of so mean and obscure a Birth as our Saviour was one who as to his external Condition made so inconsiderable a figure in the world that the Carpenter the Son of Mary as they scornfully called him should declare himself to be the greatest of all the Sons of men their so long expected and earnestly desired Messias the Son of God and the King of Israel they lookt upon to be so great an affront to their Nation that instead of owning him to be the Messias they reject him as an Impostor and cut him off by an ignominious Death little knowing that in all this they fulfilled the Scriptures and that their very opposition rejection and Crucifixion of him were all necessary and material Arguments which we could by no means have wanted to prove him to be the true Messias Since then we cannot deny that our blessed Saviour did come into the world in a poor and mean Condition far different from that wherein the Jews expected the Messias should appear in such a Condition indeed in which humane Reason would little imagine that God would send into the world his only begotten Son the Son of his eternal Love in whom he is well pleased him who was to be so highly exalted and to have a name given him above every name For all the world as well as the Jews might very reasonably expect that such a person as this would come attended with the most pompous and magnificent Circumstances imaginable suitable to the Grandeur and Glory of him who was to be higher than the Kings of the earth it concerns us above all other Circumstances relating to the coming of the Messias firmly and substantially to prove this which of all others seems to be the most improbable that he was