indeed in the best of our performances an Affiance in the Merits of Christ That Gospel or Doctrine they Preach'd which came down from Heaven which was inspired and sealed by the Holy Ghost and confirmed by Miracles And this they did by immediate Inspiration of God We live in an age whose Religion dwells altogether in their Ears so little are we for the Practice They think now a days that Preaching as they call it not as the Scriptures mean it and Pulpit Extemporary Discourses are the sum total of the Priestly duty and the best of Christian Privileges But this is a gross Abuse both of the thing the Preachers and themselves For let it be granted as most true it is that Preaching is an holy excellent Ordinance of God appointed by him for the salvation of Souls if warrantably undertaken and rightly managed and performed It may be a Comfort to the Conscience that is Comfortlesse a Relevation to Souls that are Afflicted a Deletory for Sin an helpful means to a good life and an excellent instrument tending to promote all the parts of Gods service and at last to bring us to Salvation It pleaseth God saith St. Paul 1 Cor. 1.21 by the foolishness of Preaching to save some and saving true Faith comes by Hearing and Hearing by the Word of God and how shall they hear without a Preacher says the same Apostle to the Romanes chap. 10. v. the 14. But then we must not mistake but warily distinguish what is meant by the Word of God which is The Doctrine of the Gospel and what by Preaching which is Not the manner of delivering but the matter delivered For notwithstanding all the wonderfull and rare Effects which may be wrought by Preaching yet Preaching and Sermons such as are now in use are not the Word of God in the properest and strictest sense Though yet the English Puritan will not believe this insomuch that he magnifies any Pulpit Discourse above the written Word of God comprehended in the Writings of the Prophets and Apostles daily read in Churches at the set time of Divine Service and which he makes of little or no esteem or use in the conversion of Soules unto God Beleeving it to be much inferiour to that of Preaching upon a Text by the sandy Clock Certainly That thing which sweetens others must be far sweeter of it self And if the waters in the channels or the veyns of the Earth be so pure and pleasant how much more excellent and wholesome must the Spring it self be and the place from whence those Waters flow In the one there is no fear of the Spawn of Toads or the Vipers venome no destructive soul-damning Tenents of Hereticks to be found in the Scriptures imposed on us whereas by too sad experience we have known and find it that the pestiferous breath of some Pulpit-men hath been that which hath first given life to the Factions and Heresies in this our Church and then by their laying about with their Hands and Tongues hath fired the Church and Kingdom nay almost burn'd it to ashes had not God in his mercy as well as in his Justice removed the Incendiaries who because they cannot daringly go on and prosper lay all the Private trains they can to disturb our Peace the Peace of the Church and Kingdome too and to break our Unity I shall not inveigh here against the secular ends and Ungodly Interests which of late were introduced by this their Pharisaical kind of piety nor tell you how they corrupted the savour of life into a savour of death Corruptio optimi est pessima You well know the Seditions and Disturbances the Cheats and Treasons Murders Plunders Sequestrations Imprisonments Banishments c. which were caused and acted by some mens publick as well as private Insinuations whose Calling gave them too great an opportunity and all under the notion of Painful Soul-saving Godly Preachers superseminare haeresin to scatter tares in the Field of God and sow that which Preaching ought to Root up And as one says very well for me Preaching and Thirsting after the Word are so good things that the very Names of them may mislead good People if they be misapplyed And so they are very often For a great many there are that most vainly and impertinently apply to Sermons or popular Orations all those glorious things which are spoken of the Word of God and of Preaching as Faith and Salvation Ro. 10.14 1 Cor. 1.21 Man by the Fall got a crack in his Understanding his Wil grew Perverse and his Affections dull and heavy All the Faculties of his Soul are depraved and he is ready to comply with any thing but the commands of God and Obedience to the truth and therefore indeed upon this consideration it may it must be granted that there is more need of humane Artifice witty Complyings sober Insinuations and Ingenious devices to recover men from the errors of their ways and to keep them right when they are so But this may be done by other ways would men admit of the Tryal as well nay better and with more ease than by the Pulpit For I do beleeve for I know no reason to the contrary as many souls went to Heaven Before as do Now that we have so much Vulpit Preaching And yet mistake me not For I do not say this to decry and undervalue Preaching that ancient Ecclesiastical Ordinance but to magnifie the Reading and Hearing of the Scriptures which are indeed the Word of God and to teach you that the Scriptures are the best of Sermons That Word which came down from Heaven and was sealed by the Spirit of God That Word which has been spoke by the mouth of all the Holy Prophets and Apostles That Word which has been watered with the Blood of Martyrs confirmed by Miracles and strangely preserved even beyond all Miracle and Believed in all ages And which Word which way or in what manner soever it be conveyed unto us whether by Reading in Lessons or Epistles or Gospels is the same thing still and ought to have the highest estimate in our Affecti-and challenges as greedy an ear as any thing can doe That the Reading of the Scriptures in the Church is Preaching to the People I shall give you some unquestionable Testimonies of Councils and Fathers and if this be not sufficient or whether it be or no produce the Supreme Authority of the Scriptures themselves Let the first be that of Justin Martyr in his second Apology to the Gentiles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say On the Day called Sunday all that abide in Towns or the Countreys about meet in one place and the Records of the Apostles or the Writings of the Prophets are read as far as occasion serveth Then the Reader having done the President in a speech instructeth and exhorteth to the imitation of such excellent things and in another place he says that In their Writings the Judgment to come is Preached Take another from
John 11. v. 49 50. and 18 14. They would easily confess that it is too possible there may be more employed in the Building of Gods Ark the Church than shall be preserved in it To them who imagine an Infallibility of the Spirit accompanying all true Ordination and dare call them Lay-men which arrive not at the same perfection of knowledge which they dream themselves Masters of when indeed to differ from them in any one fond opinion is enough to fetch us under this Censure the woful experience of their too fruitful Errors is a sufficient answer And Lastly that Holy Orders consist in being qualified in some measure with abilities fit for the Execution of them hath not any Authority so far as I can find from holy Writ For although God do require this Ability in every one in some more in some less yet he hath not pass'd any promise to tye it to the Churches Ordination for the Comforter is no otherwise promised than other Graces of special Favour upon condition of our receiving them And we have too sad experience that we do often Grieve and Quench this Holy Spirit of God in our Understanding as well as in our Conscience Whatsoever therefore it is it must needs be an Accession to the Priesthood and we are to acknowledge God the Author of a double Blessing when he provides Bezaliels and Aboliabs for the work of this his Spiritual Tabernacle Whereas he hath then promised this Power of Orders to all that enter upon his more Immediate service when he directed the Apostles to lay us down that pattern of Ordination It being a Gift of perpetual Necessity in the Church which if at any time it were denyed would open a gap to confusion in the Dispensation or Administration of holy things which can in no wise proceed from the God of Order and Decorum It remains that the Gift of the Holy Ghost in Ordination is nothing else but that Authority and Right the Ordained have in the Administration of Divine Mysteries That Gift whereby the Priest not to speak here of the Bishops Power hath a kind of property in Dispensing Gods holy written word and Sacraments in Offering up the publick prayers of the Congregation for them and in Pronouncing Gods sentence of pardon or condemnation upon them And this is properly our Inward Calling Those other gifts of Grace and Knowledge such as Arts and Languages and Virtues which may precede our Ordination as they are Motives to any man so qualified to offer himself to the Church of Gods service are an Invitation and in that sense an Inward Calling As they do enable any man for the performance of his Duty they are not a warrantable Calling but a Blessing and do not confer any Right upon him to the Priesthood but only strengthen his hands in the Discharge of it Were this rightly considered the world would not be so full of mistakes concerning the Call to the Function But do we not now rather wonder that the Holy Ghost reserves not this so great a Gift in his own hands than that he owns the Donation of it It is a Power over the Consciences over the Souls of men That by which our Saviour differences God himself from the most Potent upon earth at the 10. of St. Mat. Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul And can Man confer this Power of his own authority No 'T is the Lord of the Harvest that must send these Labourers into his Vineyard and he never sends them into it by a False Key through a Back Dore over the Wall or in at a Window But hath given Order and Power to his Church to let them in by a solemn Consecration of them to his Service And so I am fallen upon The second particular or second part of their Commission Their External Commission for what they undertake given them by the laying on of hands They on whom the Prophets had layed their hands They were sent forth by the holy Ghost In the days of old there were three sorts of Persons that were Anointed The King The Priest and the Prophet who though they were designed and Appointed by God had yet some External Ceremonious actions performed towards them by Man And thus in the New Testament though the Holy Ghost be the Unction yet there is no way for it to be applied but by the Laying on of hands Which Imposition of hands is here put for all the ceremonies of Ordination as Preaching afterwards for the Apostles Office by a kind of Synechdoche a part being being put for the whole and is much us'd in Holy Scripture The more essential ceremony is the form of words used with it Receive the holy Ghost c. So that that late observation of the use of Imposition of hands upon Lay-men for Election into their Office had better have been spared than published to be layed open as it is to the giddy mis-interpretation of troublesome unsetled times and quarrelsome irreconcileable Spirits For What if the same were there used which was long enough ago confess'd Is therefore a Presbyter and an Elder of the same Sanhedrim all one both equally consecrated and set apart from the People These will be the collections of some readers Whereas if the Author had but mentioned the Forms of our Ordination as he hath done those of the Jews it had been an easie matter for every one to see some difference between Sit tibi facultas Judicandi and Accipe Spiritum Sanctum And those two Ceremonies some of the Church of Rome cited by Franciscus de Sancta Clara upon our 36. Article acknowledge sufficient for Ordination reckoning Unction to be but a mistake of the Greek Fathers expressions by understanding Material where they meant Spiritual All excepting some Sycophants of the Court of Rome that affirm the Pope can make a Priest by a Priest nay though never so far distant by saying only Esto sacerdos count them necessary chiefly in respect of the Apostles practise which in things not depending upon circumstances variable stands for a Law to their Successors but then withall perhaps in as much as it is scarce possible for the Church to express in fewer signs her Commission without which we can have no assurance of the Holy Ghosts Having in the beginning of this discourse shewed that Barnabas and Saul and others were manumi'zd by the Church even in those very times wherein the Holy Ghost was shed forth in an ample measure and that Men have always had to do in giving Commissions to all such as are to execute any office in the Church I might from hence press the necessity of a calling from the Church which Calvine himself urges from this place in the 4. book the 3. ch the 14 Section of his Institutes in these words Sic Paulum quoque Singulari praerogativâ Dominus per seipsum designavit ut Disciplinâ Ecclesiasticae Vocation is interim uteretur But since this
St. Chrysostom who was as great and as golden a Preacher as ever spake with Tongue yet his Writings tell us that it grieved his very soul to see men Flock and Crowd more to hear his Pulpit Discourses than they did to hear the Scriptures Read in time of Divine Service a Fault too common in this our age I shall quote you his own words make the best you can of them where he tells you that All things that are necessary to Salvation are plain and obvious to the eyes cleerly layed down in the Scriptures so that reading is sufficient to convey the knowledge of them to us and as for other things it is sufficient that they are not Necessary and that it is mens Curiosity or Slothfulness I may add their Invincible Ignorance that makes them so greedy of so much Pulpit Preaching The good Fathers words are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If you look into the Council of Vase you will find that the Fathers of that Council say The Priests being absent or troubled with Infirmity do Preach by their Deputies who are appointed in their stead to read the Homilies Lector personat verbà sublimia saith St. Cyprian Evangelium Christi legit à fratribus conspicitur cum gaudio fraternitatis auditur The fourth Council of Toledo calls the usual Reading of the Gospel Preaching And I meet with the same Opinion and expression divers times in Rupertus and Isidore in their Pooks de Officiis divinis Ecclesiasticis Isid lib. 1. chap. 10. Rupert lib. 1. ch 12 13. But if these authorities be not sufficient hear what the Scriptures themselves doe say Deuteron 31. v. 13. Ye shall Read this Law before all Israel that ye may learn to Fear the Lord. Blessed is he that Reads the Words of this Prophecy saith St. John and they that Hear and keep those things which are Written therein Revel 1. ver 3. and Acts 15. ver 21. Moses of old time hath them that Preach him in that he was Read or being Read every Sabbath day And surely good reason there is that the Scriptures and the Reading thereof should be preferr'd before that thing we call Preaching in the Pulpit For the One is the Immediate word of God who is Infallible the Holy Ghost did Preach it The Other are the words of a Mortal Red Earth who knows not the thousand part of what he is ignorant Humanum est errare Our Sermons are no farther pious and religious than that they are derived from the salutary Fountains of Holy Scripture They never were confirmed by Miracles from Heaven nor shall they be as the Scriptures have been And then for the Matter delivered and the Manner of the Delivery how Poor and Jejune and Shallow will the best shapen Words and Narratives of the best Rhetoricians Orators Poets or Historians appear when compared with the sacred Oracles of God Would you have the Efficacy of Preaching to consist in Derivation from Antiquity in the substance of Matter in Appositeness of Sentences in Elegancy of Style Evidence of things in validity of Proofs in the Authority of the Author and the Power it hath to effect that end for which it was ordain'd Take up the Scriptures then and fall to Reading and Frequent the Temple where it will be Preach'd i. e. Read unto you and the Lord give you a good and a right understanding By searching the Scriptures we look for life so said our Blessed Saviour They have Moses and the Prophets let them hear them For These things are written that ye might beleeve in him i. e. Christ and that Beleeving ye might have life through his name You know who said it Cursed is he that Adds or Diminishes I only say The bringing in of so many Sermons into the Church was the thrusting out of the Bible not long since The Church both can and doth Preach without Sermons namely when by her carefull order the books of Holy Writ are solemnly Read And truly for ought I know as the Learned Mr. Thornedike in his Just Weights and Measures page 101. says and most wise men believe they that never heard many Sermons may have heard more and better Preaching than hundreds and thousands of Sermons dangerous if not destructive to Salvation a thing which experience proves more than possible can furnish them who shall do nothing else but run from Sermon to Sermon I grant it was a just complaint at the Reformation that the People were not taught their duty But I do not grant either that they cannot be taught their Duty without two Sermons every Lords Day or that they are like to be taught their Duty by two sermons every Lords day It is not possible to have men for all Churches fit to preach twice a day to the edifying of the People It will never be possible to maintain their Preaching to be such as may be accounted an Office of Gods service Thus He and consequently not a Discharge of the Holy Ghosts and the Churches Commission so I. But you may read more concerning this point in the 5 book of the Judicious Mr. Hooker Thus I have done with the Explication of the parts or Doctrines deducible from the Text. Let us now look upon them in the Use of them and from the Four particulars named we shall receive especially Four Cautions towards the better performance of our Duty in order to the sacred charge undertaken One for the Bishop three for the Priests First From the Grant of our Commission from the Holy Ghost Not to dare to enter upon this Employment except we find our selves in some measure fit for the discharge of it Second From the Grant of our Commission from the Church Not to forget what Obedience we owe to our Spiritual Fathers in God Third From the efficacy of Imposition of Holy Hands towards the conferring of the Holy Ghost That Bishops use all possible care as they shall one day answer it not only for themselves but for all those whom they may by their own neglect or theirs whom they intrust for them suffer to run upon their own Perdition not to dispense this sacred Gift of the Holy Ghost but to the Glory of God and the Improvement and Benefit of the Church And lastly From their careful applying themselves to the Execution of their charge in Preaching the word That we prove diligent followers of so good an Example Each of these are very Weighty and might be very worthy Consideration I shall but touch upon each of them as far as is necessary and so conclude For to say true if the First and the Last only were well observ'd the Rest might be Spared Were All that come for Holy Orders fit for the Execution of their charge they would be better acquainted with their Duty to the Church than to smother or to spurn at her Commands and were all both Able and Likely to be Diligent in the use of their Abilities afterwards the Bishops choice would be made to his