him dwell alone without the camp shall his habitation be and were it not to prevent the application which is to come anon I should tell you that in Gospel there is a retenta sunt si retinueritis whose sins the Leprosie of the Soul the Priest retains by excommunication they are retained the severest correction of all other But 3. As a rod of power correction so is the Priests rod a rod of guidance instruction too It is the guiding statue the Vibilia set up in the crosspaths of sin to guide the people in the way of Gods Commandments Hereupon the Prophet Malachi makes the Priests lips the Cabinet of knowledg and sends the People to seek the Law at his mouth 2 Mal. 7. From those Conduit-pipes flow those streams which make glad the City of God You know the stopping of the pipes deprives the tankard bearers of water as much as if the fountain head were dried up As good no law as none divulg'd And this was the misery of the Israelites under King Asa 2 Chron. 15.9 For a long season they had been without the true God and without a Priest to teach and without the law Observe the connexion no Priest to teach the Law for a while and presently the law it self is quite forgotten And this made Aaron have golden bells as well as Pomgranats the soundness of the fruit of the one is nothing without the tinkling of the other Moses made two silver trumpets as well as two stone tables that the law might be registred in the one and proclaimed with the other God admits nothing dumbe nothing barren in his service The very Cattle which draw the arke must be milch kine such as give down their milk and they must have calfes shut up at home that they may low after them as they go And this befalls not under the law alone but under the gospel too whose very name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 implies as much A good message it is but no message before it be delivered which imprints upon every Ministers heart S. Pauls vae mihi 1 Cor. 9.16 Wo is me if I preach not the gospel Lastly as to govern correct and guide so to support the people too Aaron has his rod and a heavy load is laid upon it if we look to the first institution 28 Exo. 38. He is to bear the iniquity of the offerings of the People Pliny tells us of a poysoned fountain of Arabia where the shepheards pay the price of the sheep that drink and perish Let Ezechiel interpret this Chap. 3.17 18 19 20 21 Verses the sum of all is this the blood of the wicked soul which dyes in his iniquity if he be not forewarmed and admonished God will require at the watchmans hands Nay not only the inquity of the Peoples offerings but the offerings themselves lye upon the Priests shoulders Heb. 5.1 He is ordained for Men in things appertaining to God that he may offer both guifts and sacrifiees for sins Have the People offended The Priest shall make an atonement for them before the Lord. Has Abimelech a curse upon his family send to Abraham he is a Prophet he shall pray for him and restore him Is Hezekiah discomforted by Rabshaketh send to Esayah he is a Prophet he shall lift up his prayer for the remnant that is left Is any man sick Let him send for the Ministers not the lay-Elders as some falsely interpret Saint James and let them pray over him and their prayer shall work for the health of his body and Salvation of his soul Thus is the Priest the staff which the people lean on and in these respects amongst many other a rod was the most proper subject for the miracle 2. It was Aarons rod Aaron who was summus Pontifex a Mountain as his name imports which overtops the rest God which is the God of Order would in no age ever leave his Church to the mischiefs of disorder and confusion Which Order God observed as soon as there was a Church and a Church there was so soon as their was a Congregation and Men upon the Earth to make it And first the most honourable the first born of the families were vertually called to this dignity to pray instruct and sacrifice for the rest Neither can I hear omit St. Austines observation that at the Creation where God brought foorth all other Creatures in abundance storing all the Earth with many individuums and particulars of the same Species as many beasts many birds and the like he made but one Man and devised all the rest should flow from his loynes and so acknowledg him their chief and principle and so from him a lineal descent should be derived by primogeniture in whose hands should rest the government of all the rest so that Monarchick Government is tantum non natural But when God as I may say had imbodyed his Church and formed them into a camp he then immediately from himself without any suffrage of the People elects his Governours and dignifies them with the rods of their authority Moses in the temporalls Aaron in the spiritualls From God I say immediately they were chosen not by themselves not by the People Not from themselves first for what power had a poor hireling Shepheard Reuels Son in law to ingage a whole army what policy what insinuations could he use which was slow of speech stammering of tongue Unwilling to receive his commission when t was given him unwilling to execute it when he had it fearing those very miracles which should confirm him flying from his rod now made a serpent which should incourage him Or grant that ambitious minds do politickly decline that which they most greedily affect what was there here that could inflame their desires pugna est de paupere regâ—o a bare Soveraignty over naked Men whom they must guide through a tedious Wilderness and feed and furnish with all necessaries in a forty years journey and when they have Canaan their desires in view then be swept away and leave them Unlikely that any men aspired to be thus miserable or chose so burthensome a dominion And more unlikely the People chose them to it who were more likely to rebell against them then to obey them And for all their pains paid them no other tribute but that of murmerings and revilings inconstant fickle men whose queazy stomacks sometimes affect garlick onions before quailes Manna The Levites which but lately drew their swords with them now bandy themselves against them and these which at the beginning of the Chapter give praise for a late deliverance before the end murmure for a new affliction But commissions signed from Heaven are armour of proof against all the conspiraces of the Earth Moses knew I am that I am alters not and though the Princes of the Congregation take censers in their hands they do but kindle a fire to their own destruction the brass of their censers shall make a lasting Monument
whether Jews or gentiles whether bond or free unite all interests into the grand concernment of peace and righteousness Having therefore this charity for others I cannot have a distrust of theirs to me by a suspicion that this Paraenesis to Loyalty will seem unseasonable to any although it was prepared for the most disloyal times For the first of these Sermons was preacht in the University immediately after his Majesty of blessed memory had retired into the North to avoid the rude and unseemly deportment of the tumultuous rabbl◠so to escape the raging of the waters and the madness of the People Where the acceptance which it found arose not from any intrinsick worth it had I dare not flater my self with so vain a conceit but from the suitablenesse of the subject to the affections of that learned and religious Auditory For the good King having lately passed that way had left so deep an impression upon the hearts of the Loyal Students that any man was welcome to them who was a memoria his shall I say Or their Remembrancer of him And here it had dyed with that Generation that soon after passed away had it not come to the knowledg of some of our Countrey-Committee-men four years after some men have long ears for whom I have reason to bless God who raised them up as instruments to make me be thought worthy to suffer any thing for that righteous cause Doctor Holdsworth Yet the Reverend and pious Vice-chancellor obliged me then to another course to supply which the Second Sermon was prepared upon a Text which had been blasphemed in that Pulpit not long before which happened soon after the Signall battail of Edghill But alas when I came to suck the breasts of my dear Mother I found them rub'd over with gall and wormwood The Scene was chang'd Athens was turned to a Mars's hill The Musick of Apollos harp could not he heard for the noise of trumpets For on the night before that MAN OF BLOOD came down with a troop of horse which was then his only command the Cockatrice at that time was but an egg and had blockt up the Pulpit with his Janizaries so that prudence bad me retire unlesse I would mingle my blood with my sacrifice The third Sermon was composed for a Visitation at what Time I the unworthiest of those that wait upon Gods Altars by the favour of a Reverend Prelate was nominated to an Ecclesiastical dignity But those places fell in the day of Gods Visitation and the Sermon proved abortive If any thing contained in them may conduce to the settlement of Church and State or inflame thee to a conscionable discharge of thy duty in reference to both I have my end Give God the glory and let him have the benefit of thy prayers who is Thine in all Christian Offices T. Stephens Bury St. Edm. June 6. 1660. Judges 21. 25. In those dayes there was no King in Israel every man did that which was right in their own eyes THen those dayes have been and they have been in Israel too we have Scripture for it sayes our Phanatick and why may they not be again This place I confess is plain enough and as well urged on this occasion as his who maintained his heterodox opinions from St. Pauls position Cor. 1.11 Of necessity heresies must be amongst you But wo be to that man by whom these things come to pass When Every man must be his own Carver and sits Judge upon his own actions there is no King indeed but whole legions of Tyrants each domineering affection every lusting thought all Bastard-off-springs the unreasonable appetites of our reasonable souls will Lord it over us Take away this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 must needs follow Kings we may have still but no Subjects to obey every man will be his own Ruler yet every man as unruly as he was before Where there is so much confusion in the text you can expert no curious method in the prosecution of it An Anarchy and the effects of it do divide it Israel had no King there is the Fountain but the rivulets streaming from it they are divers there is division enough in the effects as many parts as men every man has his share they are all in action and actions speciously good too they are every man doing right if themselves may be both judge and parties Their eyes are the Lesbian rules which measure the works of their hands Physiologers tell us a crooked object is received into the eye by strait beams Crooked things may seem strait that may be right in our eyes which is wrong in Gods eyes that notwithstanding we walk in the wayes of our own heart and in the sight of our own eyes Eccl. 9. 9. Yet for all these things God will bring us into Judgment My Text will bear no long Doctrinall discourse neither know I whether I may more properly call it a history of those times or a prophesie of these for I am sure mutato nomine we are as deeply concerned in it as the Jews themselves I shall briefly but more plainly acquaint you with the story then in the Analogy make application to our selves When the pleasure of God had called the People of Israel to be his own peculiar inheritance he did not presently and at the first establish one perpetuall form of Government or set the imperial Crown upon the head of his Anointed but ushers in the Royalty of a King which Abraham enjoyed long before in a Prototype by way of promise Gen. 17. with some inferiour subordination of power from Captains he gave them Judges next to them his Prophets then Judges back again as if Almighty God contrived a way how best and upon the best experience he might be a safeguard to his own people But when these undertitles could not prevail against the daring outrages and bold presumptions of the tribes he then exalts his throne creates his Viceroy the old Scoene disappears and he discovers his King upon his holy hill of Sion And here he stops no change from hence St. Austin proves it for this cause the best because it was the last no supersedeas no removal from it Thus as the Epigrammatist congratulates diseases and honours them with the title of the first inventors of Physick we may bless the sores of the Common wealth which did produce so Soveraign a salve or rather bless God which did prepare an Antidote for yet out of such abominable Villanies For in this interregnum of judiciary power when the sins of the people had devoured their Judges as the Prophet speaks Hosea 7.7 when Owle-ey'd iniquity durst see the Sun Da Phaebe veniam si quid illicitum tui videre vultus and the high hand of sin disdained the coercive power of their petty Magistrates God raises up a new succession of Princes a race of Kings which might suppress such insolencies Which were so notorious in this evening of the Judges when their
Mountain at a great distance has seemed to vanish into the Air and prove a little nothing suffer your selves to be undeceived search the Scriptures and if ye be of Davids faith put on Davids conscience who after he had cut off the skirt of Saul's robe privily his heart smote him and his tears wash'd out his faule 1 Samuel 24.6 The Lord forbid that I should do this thing unto my Master the Lords Anointed to stretch forth my hand against him seeing he is the anointed of the Lord He did but cut off a lap and shall we lay our Lords anointed naked Naked not to relieve his wants naked to discover if any were his shames If we be Christians it makes good our title to him he is Christus Domini The Lords Christ if we be Protesants I speak it again such as disclaiming the names of Papists would not degenerate into their Religion we must confess that damnation is the portion of him that resists this ordinance of God Shall Isaiah call Cyrus the Lords anointed Baruch and Jeremiah bid us pray for Nebuchodonoser Peter and Paul command submission to Tyberius Nero and Caligula all heathenish persecuting Emperors and we neglect our Constantine our Theodesius the dew of Heaven which is fallen upon this fleece of England when all the World is wet with blood besides If we shall abuse his patience into fury can we expect any less judgment then to be forced under that fury to practise Patience If any then neglecting the Urim and the Prophets the establisht ordinance of God as fanatick Saul did 1 Sam. 28. and recurr to Wizards wise women as you call them and inquire of them the event of such a battle as this would prove they may perhaps bring you to Samuels Ghost some Devill in a Prophets likeness but look for no better success then he fourd there the death of your selves and your Sons The stars in their course from Heaven will fight against Sisera conjurati venient in classca venti the wind and the hail-stones will muster up their forces against Adonizedek and his confederates But for you which despise Micah and his private new fangled devotion which resist Dan and his riotous tumultuous assemblies which would cool Benjamin and his goatish ravenous lust make it your care to continue a Rex in Israel Suffer no Baanahs and Rechabs that dare murther Kings there beds no Bightans and Tharezes that dare entertain the motion in their hearts to live amongst you Oyles by experience we know will mix although power'd into a vessel much water be put betwixt them You which have found the Oyle of the holy Spirit in your hearts let it joyne your hearts and commix your souls to the Oyle upon the head of Gods anointed That thus the religion of your hearts may burst our of joyfull lips with prayers That God would visit him as he did Moses in the bush Joshua in the Battell Gideon in the field David in the Temple that the dew of his abundant mercies may fall upon his head and that he would give unto him the blessings of David and Solomon That he would he his helmet of Salvation against the face of all his enemies and a strong Tower of defence in the time of adversity That his raign may be prosperous and his dayes many That peace and love holynesse and Justice and Truth all Christain Vertues may flourish in his time That his people may serve him with Honour and Obedience and that he may so duly serve God here on Earth that he may hereafter everlastingly raign with God in Heaven Amen Amen The Second SERMON JUDGES 4.23 Curse ye Meroz said the Angel of the Lord yea curse ye bitterly the Inhabitants thereof because they came not to the help of the Lord against the mighty A Text no doubt in season we have an age to Curse in I to curse bitterly too tanquam venena Aspidum the poyson of Aspes is under our lips And these lips we think are touched by the Angel of God too A coal from the Altar at least has fired our tongues Nay we are grown valiant of late we dare go out to fight now and make the people believe it is to the help of the Lord And that no title be left out 't is to the help the Lord against the mighty too Our pulpits by their Almighty power can create new forces and in one nights space proclaim them mighty whom our Saterdays night Pamphlets told us where to be pittied for their weakness Thus can we wrest the Scripture to our own destruction and gain this credit when we are once unmaskt that we have been plausible deceivers 'T is no new rule that corruptio optima fit pessima That the most Sovereign antidote when the Spirits are decay'd or that it self by some unskilfull Emperick mis-apply'd proves oftentimes the rankest poyson And I know indigefting stomachs may corrupt the most nourishing meats and the sweetest flowers may stink of his breath that smells them Thus that pure that sacred fountain of Holy Scripture whence the waters of life are drawn in their own Christall integrity when it is royld with our inventions proves aqua mortis the poyson'd waters of Sodom The standing lake which neither flows to other Contryes nor nourishes in their own tuus esse incipit This book of God so abused does God as little or less service then the Turkish Alcoran or the old Romane-Tables I know this place was never meant for controversy The intent of Sermons was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for conclusions to edification not for disputation they should not rob the chair But yet when Sheba shall dare to blow the Trumpet in the high-way and renounce his inheritance in David 't is time for Joab to cast a bank about his City and besiege him If any unprejudicate and well-affected Christians have drank in poyson at their ears which now 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 inflames their souls sets them a fire on mischief I shall desire which I do on my knees to heaven by a plain lesson on Deboras harp to disenchant them and by a true though homely relation of this story here a relation in which neither language nor method shall be concise to undeceive them The people of Israel Gods own inheritance was at this time under the government of their Judges which had then the supream authority Which authority whether it were the same with what their Kings did after injoy or onely a praeparative to it an Usher to the royall dignity I will not here determine Yet this I am sure of it came from Heaven and God himself was Author of it for when the common people queis semper mutare potentes principium est whose brains are alwaies turning round upon their changes did in the following story desire a King which might seem an honourable and fair exchange whether ye regard their higher credit with other nations or their greater security against forraign powers or the praedetermination
A comfort it was to Aaron no doubt to see the budding of his rod that there was life in it that God had quickened it and yet we know that a branch cut down so long as the stock of sap which is in it will feed it it will do so But when it shall prove like Jeremies tree planted by the waters Jer. 17.8 Which spreads out her root by the river and shall not feel when the heat cometh but her leafe shall be green and she shall bring forth blossomes This is delight as well as comfort And yet Hosea calls Israel vitem frondosam a vine full of leaves Hosea 10.1 Although within a few verses it wither'd and was plucked up But where the fruit is come to perfection grown hard and ripe and lasting then may it well be laid up in the Sanctuary to testifie for him in the latter day And surely beloved Aarons rod in a mysticall sense continues fruitfull to this day No Sermon which you hear which is but a branch cut off from the tree of Gods word shall return in vain but if it be dead to some and prove the savour of death it will quicken in others and prove the savour of life unto life everlasting Thus the very budding of this rod the watchfull attention of you that hear us puts us in some hopes that our labour is not in vain in the Lord. Or if after hearing you fall a discoursing of some point delivered praise the Preacher commend the fitneses semen accipitis verba redditis sayes St Austin good seed you receive good words you give back laudes vestrae folia sunt fructus quaeritur as he goes on good words are but leaves or at the best but blossomes it is fruit we preach for and this St. Matthew calls Chap. 3. ver 8. fruit worthy of repentance restorative fruit which may be antitidote against the fruit of that other forbidden tree which poysn'd us all If this fruit appear it will testifie for us in the latter day Us that we are of Gods sending called of God as was Aaron You that you are of Gods planting and if by him planted you shall never be rooted up Mat. 15.13 Thus whilst some are budding others in the blossome others grown ripe God may every day receive a fruitfull harvest One word more behold these Almonds grow upon the rod still and are not gathered off and it is a good reason which a reverend Prelate has given why Aarons rod was treasurd up and not Moses because this carried the miracle still in it self whereas the wonders of that other rod were past and gone Those are rotten fruits which fall off from the bough that bears them The parable in 13 Mat. Tells us of seed sprung up hastily amongst the stones but because it had not depth of Earth it withered There is I know a sort of Gospellers whose hearts on a suddain are all on fire but are soon quenched again Jonahs gourd cannot outgrow them but smitten by a worm they wither Those are Gods Champions which stand fast in the faith those are his chosen that fall not away whose buds grow blossomes whose blossomes grow fruit and so they grow on in grace from one degree unto another till they become perfect in the Lord of all perfection Jesus Christ The 2. Circumstances yet remain and I shall handle them but as Circumstances the Time and Place On the morrow in the Sanctuary 1. For the time this change was wrought on a suddain one night was spring summer and harvest to the rod on the morrow it bore fruit We must not limit the eternal God to time miracles are his works and his works are like himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in an instant And as the high Priest under the law so the Apostles and Bishops in the Gospel on a suddain were advanced There was but an insufflavit he breathed upon them and with his breath they received the holy Ghost Which Spirit so changed their Spirits that it amazed their Adversaries to behold such Idiots as Saint Luke calls them Acts 4.13 men unlearned and simple command so many tongues and cure such diseases So what the Schools say of the Apostles I may say of this Rod probatur Deus per Virgam as this suddain change proves Aaron and the Apostles preferment came from God so by them it proves there is a God since none but he could work the Miracles Then secondly for the place 't was in the Sanctuary and no place so fit as Gods own House for Gods own Work That house which budded in Davids thoughts for which God commends him 1 Kings 3.18 But it flourished in Solomons hands who raised the glorious structure of it And however the zeal of some in these wretched dayes go about to eat it up as the zeal of that eat up Davids Heart Psal 69.9 or rather Christ in David typified 2 John 17. Yet Gods House it shall remain still so long as there be Nations upon the Earth to inhabit any other and that in a twofold respect First as God dwells in it it is his Temple secondly as his services are performed in it it is his House of prayer My house sayes the Prophet Isaiah 56.7 repeated by our Saviour in three Evangelists shall be called the House of prayer to all Nations And now let the brain-sick Separatists brood what conceit they list that Temples were but ceremonial and Christs Passion put them out of date either they must grant the fulness of the Gentiles before the descension of the holy Ghost and that all Nations met at prayers at Hierusalem which is ridiculous enough or that whilst nations acknowledg a God to be worship'd he shall have a House to be worship'd in And truly Sirs we need not wonder that Harons rod in our dayes seems withered since the Sanctuary in which it is kept is so neglected But alas What speak I of the crosier when the crown it self has found the same doom When the traytor Jeroboam seduced the ten tribes of Israel against their King he forbids them to go to the Temple at Jerusalem and sets up his high-way Religion to worship his calfs at Dan and Bethel Nay he drives away the Priests of the Lord the Sons of Aaron and Levi with the Sanctuary away goes the budding rod They are Relatives you see pull down Church government and the Church will not stand long after it 2 Chron. 13.9 and made him Priests like the people of other countreys Whosover comes to fill his hand with a young bullock and seven rams the same may be a Priest of them that are no Gods But what speak I of earthly Princes when neglect of the Sanctuary ushers in Rebellion against the King of heaven Hence we finde those precepts so frequently conjoynd of Observing Gods Sabbaths and reverencing his Sanctuary T is strange that the one should be Morall the other Ceremoniall 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 say the Heathen Psal 74.8 they will burne